Avenue of Mysteries

7. Two Virgins

There was a panel of push-buttons on the night table in Juan Diego’s hotel room. Confusingly, these buttons dimmed — or turned on and off — the lights in Juan Diego’s bedroom and bathroom, but the buttons had a bewildering effect on the radio and TV.

The sadistic maid had left the radio on — this perverse behavior, often below levels of early detection, must be ingrained in hotel maids the world over — yet Juan Diego managed to mute the volume on the radio, if not turn it off. Lights had indeed dimmed; yet these same lights faintly endured, despite Juan Diego’s efforts to turn them off. The TV had flourished, briefly, but was once more dark and quiet. His last resort, Juan Diego knew, would be to extract the credit card (actually, his room key) from the slot by the door to his room; then, as Dorothy had warned him, everything electrical would be extinguished, and he would be left to grope around in the pitch-dark.

I can live with dim, the writer thought. He couldn’t understand how he’d slept for fifteen hours on the plane and was already tired again. Perhaps the push-button panel was at fault, or was it his newfound lust? And the cruel maid had rearranged the items in his bathroom. The pill-cutting device was on the opposite side of the sink from where he’d so carefully placed his beta-blockers (with his Viagra).

Yes, he was aware that he was now long overdue for a beta-blocker; even so, he didn’t take one of the gray-blue Lopressor pills. He’d held the elliptical tablet in his hand but then had returned it to the prescription container. Juan Diego had taken a Viagra instead — a whole one. He’d not forgotten that half a pill was sufficient; he was imagining that he would need more than half a Viagra if Dorothy called him or knocked on his door.

As he lay awake, but barely, in the dimly lit hotel room, Juan Diego imagined that a visit from Miriam might also require him to have a whole Viagra. And because he was accustomed to only half a Viagra—50 milligrams, instead of 100—he was aware that his nose was stuffier than usual and his throat was dry, and he sensed the beginnings of a headache. Always deliberate, he’d drunk a lot of water with the Viagra; water seemed to lessen the side effects. And the water would make him get up in the night to pee, if the beer didn’t suffice. That way, if Dorothy or Miriam never made an appearance, he wouldn’t have to wait till the morning to take a diminishing Lopressor pill; it had been so long since he’d had a beta-blocker, maybe he should take two Lopressor pills, Juan Diego considered. But his confounding, adrenaline-driven desires had commingled with his tiredness, and with his eternal self-doubt. Why would either of those desirable women want to sleep with me? the novelist asked himself. By then, of course, he was asleep. There was no one to notice, but, even asleep, he had an erection.

IF THE RUSH OF adrenaline had stimulated his desire for women — for a mother and her daughter, no less — Juan Diego should have anticipated that his dreams (the reenactment of his most formative adolescent experiences) might suffer a surge of detail.

In his dream at the Regal Airport Hotel, Juan Diego almost failed to recognize Rivera’s truck. Streaks of the boy’s blood laced the exterior of the windswept cab; barely more recognizable was the blood-flecked face of Diablo, el jefe’s dog. The gore-glazed truck, which was parked at the Templo de la Compañía de Jesús, got the attention of those tourists and worshipers who’d come to the temple. It was hard not to notice the blood-spattered dog.

Diablo, who’d been left in the flatbed of Rivera’s pickup, was fiercely territorial; he would not permit the bystanders to approach the truck too closely, though one bold boy had touched a drying streak of blood on the passenger-side door — long enough to ascertain that it was still sticky and, indeed, was blood.

“¡Sangre!” the brave boy said.

Someone else murmured it first: “Una matanza.” (This means “a bloodbath” or “a massacre.”) Oh, the conclusions a crowd will come to!

From a little blood spilled on an old truck, and a bloodstained dog, this crowd was leaping to conclusions — one after another. A splinter group of the crowd rushed inside the temple; there was talk that the victim of an apparent gang-style shooting had been deposited at the feet of the big Virgin Mary. (Who would want to miss seeing that?)

It was on the heels of this rampant speculation, and the partial but sudden shift in the crowd — a mad dash leaving the scene of the crime (the truck at the curb) for the drama taking place inside the temple — that Brother Pepe found a parking place for his dusty red VW Beetle, next to the blood-smeared vehicle and the murderous-looking Diablo.

Brother Pepe had recognized el jefe’s truck; he saw the blood and assumed that the poor children, who were (Pepe knew) in Rivera’s care, might have come to some unmentionable harm.

“Uh-oh — los niños,” Pepe said. To Edward Bonshaw, Pepe said quickly: “Leave your things; there appears to be some trouble.”

“Trouble?” the zealot repeated, in his eager way. Someone in the crowd had uttered the perro word, and Edward Bonshaw — hurrying after the waddling Brother Pepe — got a glimpse of the terrifying Diablo. “What about the dog?” Edward asked Brother Pepe.

“El perro ensangrentado,” Pepe repeated. “The bloodstained dog.”

“Well, I can see that!” Edward Bonshaw said, somewhat peevishly.

The Jesuit temple was thronged with stupefied onlookers. “Un milagro!” one of the gawkers shouted.

Edward Bonshaw’s Spanish was more selective than just plain bad; he knew the milagro word — it sparked in him an abiding interest.

“A miracle?” Edward asked Pepe, who was pushing his way toward the altar. “What miracle?”

“I don’t know — I just got here!” Brother Pepe panted. We wanted an English teacher and we have un milagrero, poor Pepe was thinking—“a miracle monger.”

It was Rivera who’d been audibly praying for a miracle, and the crowd of idiots — or some idiots in the crowd — had doubtless overheard him. Now the miracle word was on everyone’s lips.

El jefe had carefully placed Juan Diego before the altar, but the boy was screaming nonetheless. (In his dreams, Juan Diego downplayed the pain.) Rivera kept crossing himself and genuflecting to the overbearing statue of the Virgin Mary, all the while looking over his shoulder for the appearance of the dump kids’ mother; it was unclear if Rivera was praying for Juan Diego to be cured as much as the dump boss was hoping for a miracle to save himself from Esperanza’s wrath — namely, her blaming Rivera (as she surely would) for the accident.

“The screaming isn’t good,” Edward Bonshaw was muttering. He’d not yet seen the boy, but the sound of a child screaming in pain lacked miracle potential.

“A case of hopeful wishing,” Brother Pepe gasped; he knew his words weren’t quite right. He asked Lupe what had happened, but Pepe couldn’t understand what the crazed child said.

“What language is she speaking?” Edward eagerly asked. “It sounds a little like Latin.”

“It’s gibberish, though she seems very intelligent — even prescient,” Brother Pepe whispered in the newcomer’s ear. “No one can understand her — just the boy.” The screaming was unbearable.

That was when Edward Bonshaw saw Juan Diego, prostrate and bleeding before the towering Virgin Mary. “Merciful Mother! Save the poor child!” the Iowan cried, silencing the murmuring mob but not the screaming boy.

Juan Diego hadn’t noticed the other people in the temple, except for what appeared to be two mourners; they knelt in the foremost pew. Two women, all in black — they wore veils, their heads completely covered. Strangely, it comforted the crying child to see the two women mourners. When Juan Diego saw them, his pain abated.

This was not exactly a miracle, but the sudden reduction of his pain made Juan Diego wonder if the two women were mourning him—if he were the one who’d died, or if he was going to die. When the boy looked for them again, he saw that the silent mourners had not moved; the two women in black, their heads bowed, were as motionless as statues.

Pain or no pain, it was no surprise to Juan Diego that the Virgin Mary hadn’t healed his foot; the boy wasn’t holding his breath for an ensuing miracle from Our Lady of Guadalupe, either.

“The lazy virgins aren’t working today, or they don’t want to help you,” Lupe told her brother. “Who’s the funny-looking gringo? What’s he want?”

“What did she say?” Edward Bonshaw asked the injured boy.

“The Virgin Mary is a fraud,” the boy replied; instantly, he felt his pain returning.

“A fraud—not our Mary!” Edward Bonshaw exclaimed.

“This is the dump kid I was telling you about, un niño de la basura,” Brother Pepe was trying to explain. “He’s a smart one—”

“Who are you? What do you want?” Juan Diego asked the gringo in the funny-looking Hawaiian shirt.

“He’s our new teacher, Juan Diego — be nice,” Brother Pepe warned the boy. “He’s one of us, Mr. Edward Bon—”

“Eduardo,” the Iowan insisted, interrupting Pepe.

“Father Eduardo? Brother Eduardo?” Juan Diego asked.

“Señor Eduardo,” Lupe suddenly said. Even the Iowan had understood her.

“Actually, just Eduardo is okay,” Edward modestly said.

“Señor Eduardo,” Juan Diego repeated; for no known reason, the injured dump reader liked the sound of this. The boy looked for the two women mourners in the foremost pew, not finding them. How they could have just disappeared struck Juan Diego as unlikely as the fluctuations in his pain; it had briefly relented but was now (once again) relentless. As for those two women, well — maybe those two were always just appearing, or disappearing. Who knows what just appears, or disappears, to a boy in this much pain?

“Why is the Virgin Mary a fraud?” Edward Bonshaw asked the boy, who lay unmoving at the Holy Mother’s feet.

“Don’t ask — not now. There isn’t time,” Brother Pepe started to say, but Lupe was already babbling unintelligibly — pointing first to Mother Mary, then to the smaller, dark-skinned virgin, who was often unnoticed in her more modest shrine.

“Is that Our Lady of Guadalupe?” the new missionary asked. From where they were, at the Mary Monster altar, the Guadalupe portrait was small and off to one side of the temple — almost out of sight, purposely tucked away.

“¡Sí!” Lupe cried, stamping her foot; she suddenly spat on the floor, almost perfectly between the two virgins.

“Another probable fraud,” Juan Diego said, to explain his sister’s spontaneous spitting. “But Guadalupe isn’t entirely bad; she’s just a little corrupted.”

“Is the girl—” Edward Bonshaw started to say, but Brother Pepe put a cautionary hand on the Iowan’s shoulder.

“Don’t say it,” Pepe warned the young American.

“No, she’s not,” Juan Diego answered. The unspoken retarded word hovered there in the temple, as if one of the miraculous virgins had communicated it. (Naturally, Lupe had read the new missionary’s mind; she knew what he’d been thinking.)

“The boy’s foot isn’t right — it’s flattened, and it’s pointing the wrong way,” Edward said to Brother Pepe. “Shouldn’t he see a doctor?”

“¡Sí!” Juan Diego cried. “Take me to Dr. Vargas. Only the boss man was hoping for a miracle.”

“The boss man?” Señor Eduardo asked, as if this were a religious reference to the Almighty.

“Not that boss man,” Brother Pepe said.

“What boss man?” the Iowan asked.

“El jefe,” Juan Diego said, pointing to the anxious, guilt-stricken Rivera.

“Aha! The boy’s father?” Edward asked Pepe.

“No, probably not — he’s the dump boss,” Brother Pepe said.

“He was driving the truck! He’s too lazy to get his side-view mirror fixed! And look at his stupid mustache! No woman who isn’t a prostitute will ever want him with that hairy caterpillar on his lip!” Lupe raved.

“Goodness — she has her own language, doesn’t she?” Edward Bonshaw asked Brother Pepe.

“This is Rivera. He was driving the truck that backed over me, but he’s like a father to us—better than a father. He doesn’t leave,” Juan Diego told the new missionary. “And he never beats us.”

“Aha,” Edward said, with uncharacteristic caution. “And your mother? Where is—”

As if summoned by those do-nothing virgins, who were taking the day off, Esperanza rushed to her son at the altar; she was a ravishingly beautiful young woman who made an entrance of herself wherever and whenever she appeared. Not only did she not look like a cleaning woman for the Jesuits; to the Iowan, she most certainly didn’t look like anyone’s mother.

What is it about women with chests like that? Brother Pepe was wondering to himself. Why are their chests always heaving?

“Always late, usually hysterical,” Lupe said sullenly. The girl’s looks at the Virgin Mary and Our Lady of Guadalupe had been disbelieving — in her mother’s case, Lupe simply looked away.

“Surely she isn’t the boy’s—” Señor Eduardo began.

“Yes, she is — the girl’s, too,” was all Pepe said.

Esperanza was raving incoherently; it seemed she was beseeching the Virgin Mary, rather than be so mundane as to ask Juan Diego what had happened to him. Her incantations sounded to Brother Pepe like Lupe’s gibberish — possibly genetic, Pepe thought — and Lupe (of course) chimed in, adding her incoherence to the babble. Naturally, Lupe was pointing to the dump boss as she reenacted the saga of the multifaceted mirror and the foot-flattening truck in reverse; there was no pity for the caterpillar-lipped Rivera, who seemed ready to throw himself at the Virgin Mary’s feet — or repeatedly bash his head against the pedestal where the Holy Mother so dispassionately stood. But was she dispassionate?

It was then that Juan Diego looked upward at the Virgin Mary’s usually unemotional face. Did the boy’s pain affect his vision, or did Mother Mary indeed glower at Esperanza — she who’d brought so little hope, her name notwithstanding, into her son’s life? And what exactly did the Holy Mother disapprove of? What had made the Virgin Mary glare so angrily at the children’s mother?

The low-cut neckline of Esperanza’s revealing blouse certainly showed a lot of the implausible cleaning woman’s cleavage, and from the Virgin Mary’s elevated position on her pedestal, the Holy Mother looked down upon Esperanza’s décolletage from an all-encompassing height.

Esperanza herself was oblivious to the towering statue’s implacable disapproval. Juan Diego was surprised that his mom understood what her vehement daughter was babbling about. Juan Diego was used to being Lupe’s interpreter — even for Esperanza — but not this time.

Esperanza had stopped wringing her hands imploringly in the area of the Virgin Mary’s toes; the sensual-looking cleaning woman was no longer beseeching the unresponsive statue. Juan Diego always underestimated his mother’s capacity for blame — that is, for blaming others. In this case, Rivera — el jefe, with his unrepaired side-view mirror, he who slept in the cab of his truck with his gear shift in reverse — was the recipient of Esperanza’s animated blame. She beat the dump boss with both her hands, in tightly clenched fists; she kicked his shins; she yanked his hair, her bracelets scratching his face.

“You have to help Rivera,” Juan Diego said to Brother Pepe, “or he’ll need to see Dr. Vargas, too.” The injured boy then spoke to his sister: “Did you see how the Virgin Mary looked at our mother?” But the seemingly all-knowing child simply shrugged.

“The Virgin Mary disapproves of everyone,” Lupe said. “No one is good enough for that big bitch.”

“What did she say?” Edward Bonshaw asked.

“God knows,” Brother Pepe said. (Juan Diego didn’t offer a translation.)

“If you want to worry about something,” Lupe said to her brother, “you ought to worry about how Guadalupe was looking at you.”

“How?” Juan Diego asked the girl. It hurt his foot to turn his head to look at the less noticed of the two virgins.

“Like she’s still making up her mind about you,” Lupe said. “Guadalupe hasn’t decided about you,” the clairvoyant child told him.

“Get me out of here,” Juan Diego said to Brother Pepe. “Señor Eduardo, you have to help me,” the injured boy added, grasping the new missionary’s hand. “Rivera can carry me,” Juan Diego continued. “You just have to rescue Rivera first.”

“Esperanza, please,” Brother Pepe said to the cleaning woman; he had reached out and caught her slender wrists. “We have to take Juan Diego to Dr. Vargas — we need Rivera, and his truck.”

“His truck!” the histrionic mother cried.

“You should pray,” Edward Bonshaw said to Esperanza; inexplicably, he knew how to say this in Spanish — he said it perfectly.

“Pray?” Esperanza asked him. “Who is he?” she suddenly asked Pepe, who was staring at his bleeding thumb; one of Esperanza’s bracelets had cut him.

“Our new teacher — the one we’ve all been waiting for,” Brother Pepe said, as if suddenly inspired. “Señor Eduardo is from Iowa,” Pepe intoned. He made Iowa sound as if it were Rome.

“Iowa,” Esperanza repeated, in her enthralled way — her chest heaving. “Señor Eduardo,” she repeated, bowing to the Iowan with an awkward but cleavage-revealing curtsy. “Pray where? Pray here? Pray now?” she asked the new missionary in the riotous, parrot-covered shirt.

“Sí,” Señor Eduardo told her; he was trying to look everywhere except at her breasts.

You have to hand it to this guy; he’s got a way about him, Brother Pepe was thinking.

Rivera had already lifted Juan Diego from the altar where the Virgin Mary imposingly stood. The boy had cried out in pain, albeit briefly — just enough to quiet the murmuring crowd.

“Look at him,” Lupe was telling her brother.

“Look at—” Juan Diego started to ask her.

“At him, at the gringo — the parrot man!” Lupe said. “He’s the miracle man. Don’t you see? It’s him. He came for us — for you, anyway,” Lupe said.

“What do you mean: ‘He came for us’—what’s that supposed to mean?” Juan Diego asked his sister.

“For you, anyway,” Lupe said again, turning away; she was almost indifferent, as if she’d lost interest in what she was saying or she no longer believed in herself. “Now that I think of it, I guess the gringo isn’t my miracle — just yours,” the girl said, disheartened.

“The parrot man!” Juan Diego repeated, laughing; yet, as Rivera carried him, the boy could see that Lupe wasn’t smiling. Serious as ever, she appeared to be scanning the crowd, as if looking for who her miracle might be, and not finding him.

“You Catholics,” Juan Diego said, wincing as Rivera shouldered his way through the congested entranceway to the Jesuit temple; it was unclear to Brother Pepe and Edward Bonshaw if the boy had spoken to them. “You Catholics” could have meant the gawking crowd, including the shrill but unsuccessful praying of the dump kids’ mother — Esperanza always prayed out loud, like Lupe, and in Lupe’s language. And now, also like Lupe, Esperanza had stopped beseeching the Virgin Mary; it was the smaller, dark-skinned virgin who received the pretty cleaning woman’s earnest attention.

“Oh, you who were once disbelieved — you who were doubted, you who were asked to prove who you were,” Esperanza was praying to the child-size portrait of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

“You Catholics,” Juan Diego began again. Diablo saw the dump kids coming and began to wag his tail, but this time the injured boy had clutched a handful of parrots on the new missionary’s overlarge Hawaiian shirt. “You Catholics stole our virgin,” Juan Diego said to Edward Bonshaw. “Guadalupe was ours, and you took her — you used her, you made her merely an acolyte to your Virgin Mary.”

“An acolyte!” the Iowan repeated. “This boy speaks English remarkably well!” Edward said to Brother Pepe.

“Sí, remarkably,” Pepe answered.

“But perhaps the pain has made him delirious,” the new missionary suggested. Brother Pepe didn’t think Juan Diego’s pain had anything to do with it; Pepe had heard the boy’s Guadalupe rant before.

“For a dump kid, he is milagroso,” was how Brother Pepe put it—miraculous. “He reads better than our students, and remember — he’s self-taught.”

“Yes, I know — that’s amazing. Self-taught!” Señor Eduardo cried.

“And God knows how and where he learned his English — not only in the basurero,” Pepe said. “The boy’s been hanging out with hippies and draft dodgers — an enterprising boy!”

“But everything ends up in the basurero,” Juan Diego managed to say, between waves of pain. “Even books in English.” He’d stopped looking for those two women mourners; Juan Diego thought his pain meant he wouldn’t see them, because he wasn’t dying.

“I’m not riding with caterpillar lip,” Lupe was saying. “I want to ride with the parrot man.”

“We want to ride in the pickup part, with Diablo,” Juan Diego told Rivera.

“Sí,” the dump boss said, sighing; he knew when he’d been rejected.

“Is the dog friendly?” Señor Eduardo asked Brother Pepe.

“I’ll follow you, in the VW,” Pepe replied. “If you are torn to pieces, I can be a witness — make recommendations to the higher-ups, on behalf of your eventual sainthood.”

“I was being serious,” said Edward Bonshaw.

“So was I, Edward — sorry, Eduardo—so was I,” Pepe replied.

Just as Rivera had settled the injured boy in Lupe’s lap, in the bed of the pickup, the two old priests arrived on the scene. Edward Bonshaw had braced himself against the truck’s spare tire — the children between him and Diablo, who viewed the new missionary with suspicion, a perpetual tear oozing from the dog’s lidless left eye.

“What is happening here, Pepe?” Father Octavio asked. “Did someone faint or have a heart attack?”

“It’s those dump kids,” Father Alfonso said, frowning. “One could smell that garbage truck from the Hereafter.”

“What is Esperanza praying for now?” Father Octavio asked Pepe, because the cleaning woman’s keening voice could be heard from the Hereafter, too — or at least from as far away as the sidewalk in front of the Jesuit temple.

“Juan Diego was run over by Rivera’s truck,” Brother Pepe began. “The boy was brought here for a miracle, but our two virgins failed to deliver.”

“They’re on their way to Dr. Vargas, I presume,” Father Alfonso said, “but why is there a gringo with them?” The two priests were wrinkling their unusually sensitive and frequently condemning noses — not only at the garbage truck, but at the gringo with the Polynesian parrots on his tasteless tent of a shirt.

“Don’t tell me Rivera ran over a tourist, too,” Father Octavio said.

“That’s the man we’ve all been waiting for,” Brother Pepe told the priests, with an impish smile. “That is Edward Bonshaw, from Iowa — our new teacher.” It was on the tip of Pepe’s tongue to tell them that Señor Eduardo was un milagrero — a miracle monger — but Pepe restrained himself as best he could. Brother Pepe wanted Father Octavio and Father Alfonso to discover Edward Bonshaw for themselves. The way Pepe put it was calculated to provoke these two oh-so-conservative priests, but he was careful to mention the miracle subject in only the most offhand manner. “Señor Eduardo es bastante milagroso,” was how Pepe put it. “Señor Eduardo is somewhat miraculous.”

“Señor Eduardo,” Father Octavio repeated.

“Miraculous!” Father Alfonso exclaimed, with distaste. These two old priests did not use the milagroso word lightly.

“Oh, you’ll see — you’ll see,” Brother Pepe said innocently.

“Does the American have other shirts, Pepe?” Father Octavio asked.

“Ones that fit him?” Father Alfonso added.

“Sí, lots more shirts — all Hawaiian!” Pepe replied. “And I think they’re all a little big for him, because he’s lost a lot of weight.”

“Why? Is he dying?” Father Octavio asked. The losing-weight part was no more appealing to Father Octavio and Father Alfonso than the hideous Hawaiian shirt; the two old priests were almost as overweight as Brother Pepe.

“Is he — that is, dying?” Father Alfonso asked Brother Pepe.

“Not that I know of,” Pepe replied, trying to repress his impish smile a little. “In fact, Edward seems very healthy — and most eager to be of use.”

“Of use,” Father Octavio repeated, as if this were a death sentence. “How utilitarian.”

“Mercy,” Father Alfonso said.

“I’m following them,” Brother Pepe told the priests; he was waddling hurriedly to his dusty red VW Beetle. “In case anything happens.”

“Mercy,” Father Octavio echoed.

“Leave it to the Americans, to make themselves of use,” Father Alfonso said.

Rivera’s truck was pulling away from the curb, and Brother Pepe followed it into the traffic. Ahead of him, he could see Juan Diego’s little face, held protectively in his strange sister’s small hands. Diablo had once again put his forepaws on the pickup’s toolbox; the wind blew the dog’s unmatched ears away from his face — both the normal one and the ear that was missing a jagged-edged, triangular piece. But it was Edward Bonshaw who captured and held Brother Pepe’s attention.

“Look at him,” Lupe had said to Juan Diego. “At him, at the gringo — the parrot man!”

What Brother Pepe saw in Edward Bonshaw was a man who looked like he belonged—like a man who had never felt at home, but who’d suddenly found his place in the scheme of things.

Brother Pepe didn’t know if he was excited or afraid, or both; he saw now that Señor Eduardo was truly a man with a purpose.

It was the way Juan Diego felt in his dream — the way you feel when you know everything has changed, and that this moment heralds the rest of your life.

“Hello?” a young woman’s voice was saying on the phone, which Juan Diego only now realized he held in his hand.

“Hello,” the writer, who’d been fast asleep, said; only now was he aware of his throbbing erection.

“Hi, it’s me—it’s Dorothy,” the young woman said. “You’re alone, aren’t you? My mother isn’t with you, is she?”