Wild Penance

19

The next morning, I arrived at the church in Agua Azuela after the monthly mass given by the priest had already begun. I entered as quietly as I could and slipped into a seat in the back pew. I knew my friend Regan would be there; I wanted to tell her that my book had been stolen. After all the information she had shared and stories she had told me, I knew she would be almost as devastated about the loss as I was.

This small adobe chapel had been built nearly five hundred years ago, under the oversight of a Franciscan priest direct from Spain. Its one narrow room held nine short pews, all on one side, and the high ceiling was supported with large vigas. A little wiring had been added to string a few lights from these vigas, but other than that one concession to modernity, it remained the same rustic adobe fortress as when it was first built. A member of the village had come early that morning to light a fire in the woodstove, but the three-foot-thick walls clung to the cold and refused to be persuaded to warmth. Two small stained and leaded glass windows were mounted high in one of the long walls, but these let in little light. Here in the deep crevice of the canyon, the sun was still behind the mountains, even at ten o’clock, and it felt more like twilight than the early part of the day. A small table behind the altar housed a group of carved santos, looking like caricatures with their crudely hewn, disproportionate features and bold, brilliant paint. Before them, candles burned in glass containers. On the back wall, a polychrome retablo-a small painted altar screen-depicted the patron saint of this chapel. A wooden statue of the Madonna, with real human hair and a carved, aquiline nose, wore a white polyester wedding dress like the kind made for a child to use for playing dress-up. This, together with a thin, shapeless veil, hung limply about Mary’s stiff form. Above the altar hung a large, graphic crucifix, the pinkish white paint of the figure’s skin flaking and peeling, the drops of blood where the crown of thorns touched the brow a faded shade of reddish purple. This bulto of Christ, built with hinged arms and legs so it could be hung on the cross or used in other ways, had real hair and human teeth, giving it a gruesome appearance. The image of the man on the cross falling from the bridge flashed before my eyes, and I had to look away from the altar to make it stop.

It was a curious mass. There was no piano or organ here, and the villagers sang the only hymn dispassionately in Spanish. While the priest was reciting the litany-also in Spanish-the local dogs began a haunting chorus of howling in the hills that surrounded the church. The worshippers seemed not to notice, but I was borne away on this sound and lost track of the service entirely. It was not until the parishioners began filing forward from the pews to take communion that I came back to the cold, sorrowful church. It felt like a house where someone was dying.

I went outside to wait, since I was not partaking in the communion. One by one, the villagers came from the church after receiving the sacrament. None of them spoke to me. Some waited for a friend or relative before leaving; some gathered with their neighbors to visit. Others lined up to use the outhouse at the rear of the churchyard, and a few scurried away to Sunday activities elsewhere. When Regan appeared at the door of the chapel, she was holding the priest by the forearm, speaking animatedly with him.

I felt fingernails clutch the back of my arm. I turned around to see a small bent figure in a thick lavender wool shawl and tan sackcloth dress. Her hair was pure white, and her bushy white eyebrows framed a deeply etched face. Two black eyes peered from under her brow at me. She squinted, as if to bring me into focus, then opened thin lips to reveal a random arrangement of seven or eight brown teeth, most of them in the top half of her mouth.

“Come have tea,” she demanded. Her harsh voice made me think of a bat’s cries, as if she were sending her voice out-not to be heard by me but rather to get a reading by bouncing it off me. Her grip on my arm tightened, her nails biting into my flesh.

“I have already made arrangements to visit a friend,” I said, wresting my biceps from her tenacious hold. I looked more carefully at this intrepid stranger. She was misshapen. Her back was twisted and a large hump at the base of her neck above her left shoulder had the effect of weighing the top of her torso down and pushing it forward, while the lower half seemed to be turned to the right. Even though it was very cold, she had bare legs beneath her dress, and her calves looked hard and knotted, like two twisted ropes. She wore a tired pair of too-large men’s brown wing tips without laces, the toes of which turned up like an elf’s.

“Do you know where I live?” She pawed at me with her left hand as if to grab me again.

“No,” I said, bewildered-almost repulsed. I did not recollect seeing this woman in the small church-from my seat in the rear pew, I would have noticed her sitting in front of me. Nor did I recall seeing her file out the only door after communion.

“Do you know the casita with the blue door?” she persisted.

Three out of five houses in New Mexico had a blue door-the locals believed this kept evil from their homes. They called the distinctive, sun-washed turquoise color Virgin Mary blue.

“Which one?” I asked.

“Go up the arroyo to the north,” she said. “There is a little hut behind some white willows. Turn to the west just past the hut and follow the acequia up into the hills. When you see a boulder with a hand on it, go north on the goat path. You will have to climb. I live on the slope that faces the sun. I will be waiting on the portal.”

From behind me, Regan’s voice intervened. “Jamaica, what a surprise! I’m so glad you came. I’d like you to meet Father Ximon Rivera.”

I looked around to see the padre and my friend walking toward me from the church, but instead of responding, I turned back to finish my conversation with the old woman. She was gone. A handful of villagers lingered in the dirt yard inside the wall, calling adiós to one another, promising to meet one another in Dixon for mass tomorrow, for it was Lent, and many of them tried to take communion every day.

“Jamaica,” Regan prodded, sounding embarrassed.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I turned and looked at Regan apologetically, then met the priest’s puzzled gaze. “I’m Jamaica Wild. Please forgive me. I didn’t mean to be rude. I was just talking to someone, and now she’s disappeared.”

Regan said, “Jamaica, I am so delighted you came for mass. I’m having a brunch at my place. Why don’t you come? You and Father Ximon can get acquainted where it’s warm.”

As she and the priest walked away, I turned once more to where the mujer had been standing. I panned around the churchyard, but she wasn’t there-only a few people remained inside the churchyard wall. I walked around the side of the church-nothing but a narrow patch of weeds between the building and the wall. I passed through the gates to the area in front of the wall where the road through the village ended in a wide dirt lot. The few cars that had been parked there were now gone. I saw three people walking down the road together, a lone man was walking up a lane to a house in the trees, and I saw Regan and the father leading a group across the bridge over the rio on the way to Regan’s house. I looked all around for the old hag who had wanted me to come for tea. She had simply vanished.