Page 26 of The Hacienda
And do what? Wait on the generals who ordered my house be burned and killed my father? Simper and smile with their obedient wives?
No. San Isidro was freedom. San Isidro wasmine.
But San Isidro was also trying to break me, and I did not doubt the force of its will.
I needed help.
Stop, or go to the capital.
There had to be a third way.
The sacraments remind us we are not alone, Padre Andrés said.
And though I had just met him, though I had no reason to trust any stranger, much less a member of the clergy, I felt in my bones that the young priest was where I would find it.
***
PALOMA ACCOMPANIED ME TOchurch, a quiet shadow at my elbow. Disappointment seeped sourly through my mouth when I saw thatit was Padre Vicente, not Padre Andrés, who walked up the aisle past our pew to the altar.
Come often, Padre Andrés said. He never saidwhen. I would try again tomorrow, then. And if he were not here, then the next day.
But the thought of facing another night alone tightened my throat like a slipknot yanked taut. Bowing my head in prayer, I clasped my trembling lace-gloved hands together, my breath shallow and hitching. I would drown in San Isidro without help. The weight of the darkness would crush my lungs, crush my bones, grind me to dust and sweep me away...
Someone was looking at me.
I had grown familiar with the weight of attention after living under San Isidro’s roof. I lifted my eyes slowly.
A figure hovered behind the altar, blending into the shadows of the doorway that led to the sacristy. Padre Andrés. He lingered for a moment longer, his attention on my mantilla, and then vanished.
He had seen me. He would find me. Relief loosened the tightness in my throat, though not completely. I still did not know if he meant to help me. Nor how. Nor if he thought me mad.
Mass stretched interminably. Sleeplessness weighed heavy in my face, tender as a bruise. When Padre Vicente finally bid us go in peace, I stopped before one of the chapel eaves in the side of the church—that of la Virgen de Guadalupe. The paint of Juan Diego’s wooden face was fresh, his dark pupils turned upward in rapture as he held out his cloth blessed with the image of la Virgen. Carved red roses tumbled to his feet.
I knelt at the pew before it and took the rosary Rodolfo had given me on our wedding day from my bag. I ran my fingers over the crucifix and first five beads, relaxing my shoulders and tilting my chin up to la Virgen as if I were settling in for a full rosary.
Paloma’s skirts shifted behind me. She twisted a handkerchief in her hands, her eyes straying to the door, to the white afternoon that spilledinto the church. I knew that impatience well. How many times had I worn that same longing expression looking at the open door of a church, watching the silhouettes moving freely beyond it?
“Go ahead, if you wish,” I said. “To market or to see friends. I need some time. Today would be my father’s birthday,” I added.
My father’s birthday was in April, but no one knew that. Not even Rodolfo.
Paloma’s head snapped toward me, her mouth rounded into a sympathetic O. “My apologies, Doña Beatriz, I did not realize...”
The servants knew my sad story, then.
I gave Paloma a wan smile as I waved her away. I began the first of many Hail Marys, brushing my fingers over the wooden beads as the echo of her quick, birdlike steps moved away from me.Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.A murmur of voices from the door.Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus.The murmuring ceased.
A creak of the heavy wooden doors; they closed with a tired, self-satisfied thud.
I lifted my head, blinking to adjust my vision to the dimness.
Padre Andrés’s slim form stepped away from the doors. Subtly, barely even a nod, he gestured with his chin across the church, at a wooden confessional opposite la Virgen de Guadalupe’s eave.
The sacraments remind us we are not alone.
Of course.
I made the sign of the cross slowly as I rose, the shifting of my skirts and the tap of Padre Andrés’s shoes against tile the only sounds filling the quiet cavern of the church. By the time I reached the confessional, Padre Andrés had already disappeared inside.
