"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. "Senor 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. "Senor 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. "Senor 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.
"Si," Senor 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.
"Si, 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!" Senor 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.
"Si," the dump boss said, sighing; he knew when he'd been rejected.
"Is the dog friendly?" Senor 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 Senor 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. "Senor Eduardo es bastante milagroso," was how Pepe put it. "Senor Eduardo is somewhat miraculous."
"Senor 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.
"Si, 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 Senor 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?"
* 8 *
Two Condoms
What can you believe about a fiction writer's dreams? In his dreams, obviously, Juan Diego felt free to imagine what Brother Pepe was thinking and feeling. But in whose point of view were Juan Diego's dreams? (Not in Pepe's.)
Juan Diego would have been happy to talk about this, and about other aspects of his resurgent dream life, though it seemed to him that now was not the time. Dorothy was playing with his penis; as the novelist had observed, the young woman brought to this postcoital play the same unwavering scrutiny she tended to bring to her cell phone and laptop. And Juan Diego wasn't much inclined to male fantasies, not even as a fiction writer.
"I think you can do it again," the naked girl was saying. "Okay--maybe not immediately, but pretty soon. Just look at this guy!" she exclaimed. She'd not been shy the first time, either.
At his age, Juan Diego didn't do a lot of looking at his penis, but Dorothy had--from the start.
What happened to foreplay? Juan Diego had wondered. (Not that he'd had much experience with foreplay or afterplay.) He'd been trying to explain to Dorothy the Mexican glorification of Our Lady of Guadalupe. They'd been cuddled together in Juan Diego's dimly lit bed, where they were barely able to hear the muted radio--as if from a faraway planet--when the brazen girl had pulled back the covers and taken a look at his adrenaline-charged, Viagra-enhanced erection.
"The problem began with Cortes, who conquered the Aztec Empire in 1521--Cortes was very Catholic," Juan Diego was saying to the young woman. Dorothy lay with her warm face against his stomach, staring at his penis. "Cortes came from Extremadura; the Extremadura Guadalupe, I mean a statue of the virgin, was supposedly carved by Saint Luke, the evangelist. It was discovered in the fourteenth century," Juan Diego continued, "when the virgin pulled one of her tricky apparitions--you know, an appearance before a humble-shepherd type. She commanded him to dig at the site of her apparition; the shepherd found the icon on the spot."
"This is not an old man's penis--this is one alert-looking guy you have here," Dorothy said, not remotely apropos of the Guadalupe subject. Thus she'd begun; Dorothy didn't waste time.
Juan Diego did his best to ignore her. "The Guadalupe of Extremadura was dark-skinned, not unlike most Mexicans," Juan Diego pointed out to Dorothy, although it disconcerted him to be speaking to the back of the dark-haired young woman's head. "Thus the Extremadura Guadalupe was the perfect proselytizing tool for those missionaries who followed Cortes to Mexico; Guadalupe became the ideal icon to convert the natives to Christianity."
"Uh-huh," Dorothy replied, slipping Juan Diego's penis into her mouth.
Juan Diego was not, and had never been, a sexually confident man; lately, discounting his solo experiments with Viagra, he'd had no sexual relationships at all. Yet Juan Diego managed a cavalier response to Dorothy's going down on him--he kept talking. It must have been the novelist in him: he could concentrate on the long haul; he'd never been much of a short-story writer.
"It was ten years after the Spanish conquest, on a hill outside Mexico City--" Juan Diego said to the young woman sucking his penis.
"Tepeyac," Dorothy briefly interrupted herself; she pronounced the word perfectly before she slipped his cock back in her mouth. Juan Diego was nonplussed that such an unscholarly-looking girl knew the name of the place, but he tried to be as nonchalant about that as he was pretending to be about the blow job.
"It was an early morning in December 1531--" Juan Diego began again.
He felt a sharp nick from Dorothy's teeth when the impulsive girl spoke quickly, not pausing to take his penis out of her mouth: "In the Spanish Empire, this particular morning was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception--no coincidence, huh?"
"Yes, however--" Juan Diego started to say, but he stopped himself. Dorothy was now sucking him in a way that suggested the young woman would not bother to interject her points of clarification again. The novelist struggled ahead. "The peasant Juan Diego, for whom I was named, saw a vision of a girl. She was surrounded by light; she was only fifteen or sixteen, but when she spoke to him, this peasant Juan Diego allegedly understood--from her words, or so we're expected to believe--that this girl either was the Virgin Mary or was, somehow, like the Virgin Mary. And what she wanted was a church--a whole church, in her honor--to be built on the site where she appeared to him."
To which, in probable disbelief, Dorothy grunted--or she made a similarly noncommittal sound, subject to interpretation. If Juan Diego had to guess, Dorothy knew the story, and, regarding the prospect of the Virgin Mary (or someone like her) appearing as a young teenager and expecting a hapless peasant to build a whole church for her, Dorothy's nonverbal utterance conveyed more than a hint of sarcasm.
"What was the poor peasant to do?" Juan Diego asked--a rhetorical question if Dorothy had ever heard one, to judge by the young woman's sudden snort. This rude snorting sound made Juan Diego--not the peasant, the other Juan Diego--flinch. The novelist no doubt feared another sharp nick from the busy girl's teeth, but he was spared further pain--at least for the moment.
"Well, the peasant told his hard-to-believe story to the Spanish archbishop--" the novelist persevered.
"Zumarraga!" Dorothy managed to blurt out before she made a quickly passing gagging sound.
What an unusually well-informed young woman--she even knew the name of the doubting archbishop! Juan Diego was amazed.
Dorothy's apparent grasp of these specific details momentarily deterred Juan Diego from continuing his version of Guadalupe's history; he stopped short of the miraculous part of the story, either daunted by Dorothy's knowledge of a subject that had long obsessed him or (at last!) distracted by the blow job.
"And what did that doubting archbishop do?" Juan Dieg
o asked. He was testing Dorothy, and the gifted young woman didn't disappoint him--except that she stopped sucking his cock. Her mouth released his penis with an audible pop, once more making him flinch.
"The asshole bishop told the peasant to prove it, as if that were the peasant's job," Dorothy said with disdain. She moved up Juan Diego's body, sliding his penis between her breasts.
"And the poor peasant went back to the virgin and asked her for a sign, to prove her identity," Juan Diego went on.
"As if that were her fucking job," Dorothy said; she was all the while kissing his neck and nibbling the lobes of his ears.
At that point, it became confusing--that is, it's impossible to delineate who said what to whom. After all, they both knew the story, and they were in a rush to move past the storytelling process. The virgin told Juan Diego (the peasant) to gather flowers; that there were flowers growing in December possibly stretches the boundaries of credibility--that the flowers the peasant found were Castilian roses, not native to Mexico, is more of a stretch.
But this was a miracle story, and by the time Dorothy or Juan Diego (the novelist) got to the part of the narrative where the peasant showed the flowers to the bishop--the virgin had arranged the roses in the peasant's humble cloak--Dorothy had already produced a small marvel of her own. The enterprising young woman had brought forth her own condom, which she'd managed to put on Juan Diego while the two of them were talking; the girl was a multitasker, a quality the novelist had noticed and much admired in the young people he'd known in his life as a teacher.
The small circle of Juan Diego's sexual contacts did not include a woman who carried her own condoms and was an expert at putting them on; nor had he ever encountered a girl who assumed the superior position with as much familiarity and assertiveness as Dorothy did.
Juan Diego's inexperience with women--especially with young women of Dorothy's aggressiveness and sexual sophistication--had left him at a loss for words. It's doubtful that Juan Diego could have completed this essential part of the Guadalupe story--namely, what happened when the poor peasant opened his cape of roses for Bishop Zumarraga.
Dorothy, even as she settled herself so solidly on Juan Diego's penis--her breasts, falling forward, brushed the novelist's face--was the one who reiterated that part of the tale. When the flowers fell out of the cloak, there in their place, imprinted on the fabric of the poor peasant's rustic cape, was the very image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, her hands clasped in prayer, her eyes modestly downcast.