Bless Me, Ultima

  “You should have given me a penance,” he said.

  “You don’t have to do any penance,” I answered. I wiped my eyes and shook my head. Everything in me seemed loose and disconnected.

  “Are you going to confession?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I answered and finished buttoning my shirt.

  “You could never be their priest,” he said.

  I looked at the open door of the church. There was a calm in the wind and the bright sunlight made everything stark and harsh. The last of the kids went into the church and the doors closed.

  “No,” I nodded. “Are you going to confession?” I asked him.

  “No,” he muttered. “Like I said, I only wanted to be with you guys—I cannot eat God,” he added.

  “I have to,” I whispered. I ran up the steps and entered the dark, musky church. I genuflected at the font of holy water, wet my fingertips, and made the sign of the cross. The lines were already formed on either side of the confessional, and the kids were behaving and quiet. Each one stood with bowed head, preparing himself to confess all of his sins to Father Byrnes. I walked quietly around the back pew and went to the end of one line. I made the sign of the cross again and began to say my prayers. As each kid finished his confession the line shuffled forward. I closed my eyes and tried not to be distracted by anything around me. I thought hard of all the sins I had ever committed, and I said as many prayers as I could remember. I begged God forgiveness for my sins over and over. After a long wait, Agnes, who had been in front of me came out of the confessional. She held the curtain as I stepped in, then she let it drop and all was dark. I knelt on the rough board and leaned against the small window. I prayed. I could hear whisperings from the confessional on the other side. My eyes grew accustomed to the gloom and I saw a small crucifix nailed to the side of the window. I kissed the feet of the hanging Jesus. The confessional smelled of old wood. I thought of the million sins that had been revealed in this small, dark space.

  Then abruptly my thoughts were scattered. The small wooden door of the window slid open in front of me, and in the dark I could make out the head of Father Byrnes. His eyes were closed, his head bowed forward. He mumbled something in Latin then put his hand on his forehead and waited.

  I made the sign of the cross and said, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” and I made my first confession to him.

  Diecinueve

  Easter Sunday. The air was clear and smelled like the new white linen of the Resurrection. Christ was risen! He had walked in hell for three days and on the third day he had risen and was sitting at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth—

  The two lines stretched from the steps of the church out to the street. The girls’ line was neat; they looked like angels in their starched white dresses, each pair of hands holding a white prayer book and a rosary. The boys’ line was uneven, fidgeting nervously. We pulled at our ties and tugged at the tight fitting jackets. We did not hold our prayer books or rosaries in palmed hands. Around us proud parents smiled at each other, waiting for the priest to open the doors. From time to time a mother would move to the line and straighten this or that on a nervous kid.

  Behind me Horse whinnied into the clear Christian air.

  Bones snapped at him, and one of the high school sodality girls whose job it was to keep us in line whacked him on the head.

  —Christ will come to judge the living and the dead—

  I knew.

  “What was your penance?” Horse asked Lloyd.

  “Ain’t supposed to tell,” Lloyd sneered.

  “Bones got a whole rosary!”

  Everybody laughed. “Shhhhh!” the high school girl said.

  “Hey! There’s Florence!” Florence was standing against the wall, sunning himself in the morning sun that was just now beginning to warm the cool morning air.

  “He’s going to hell,” Rita whispered next to me and Agnes agreed.

  “Augh, augh, augh, hummmmph,” the Horse neighed nervously at the mention of hell. His large teeth chomped hard and a white spittle formed around the edges of his mouth. The air smelled of fresh-cut hay.

  Up in the bell tower the pigeons ducked and bobbed at each other and sang their soft cooing song. Christ was risen. He was in the holy chalice awaiting us.

  “I heard Rita’s confession,” Abel bragged.

  “You damn liar!” Rita hissed back.

  “Ah, ah, black spot on your soul,” Lloyd said and shook his finger at her.

  “Shhhhhh!” the high school girl warned us. She hit Bones again. She hit him hard because I could hear her knuckles striking the bone of his skull and her exclamation when it hurt her.

  “The door’s opening!” someone whispered. Father Byrnes stood at the entryway, smiling, surveying his flock. The parents returned his smile. They were pleased that he had done so well with us. I turned and looked at my father and mother and Ultima. Then the lines started moving forward.

  “Remember your instructions!” the high school girl threatened us.

  “Don’t go drop God on the floor!” Bones volunteered as he went by, and she whacked him again.

  We had been told to take the Host carefully in our tongue and swallow it immediately. No part of the Host must be lost from the time it left the chalice to the time it entered our mouths.

  “Don’t go bite on God,” Horse whispered.

  Swallow Him carefully, don’t chew on Him. I wondered how God must feel to go into Horse’s stinking mouth.

  Above us the choir sang. The two lines moved without incident down the aisle then filed into the front row of seats. Father Byrnes went up to the altar, the altar bell rang and mass began. All during the mass I prayed. I thought back to yesterday’s confession and about the mixed feelings that the revealing of my thoughts had left in me. But I had told everything, everything I thought was a sin. I had cleansed myself completely and prepared to take God into my body. Since the confession I had talked only to Ultima and my mother. I had kept myself pure.

  On the altar the priest began the ceremony of changing the bread into flesh and the wine into blood. The body and blood of the risen Christ. Soon He would be with me, in me, and He would answer all the questions I had to ask.

  The altar bell tinkled and we knelt; we bowed our heads and with our right fist softly beat our hearts, saying we believed in the mystery taking place before our eyes.

  “It’s blood now,” Abel whispered when the priest raised the chalice with the wine, and his thin voice mixed mysteriously into the ringing altar bell. I peeped and saw the chalice raised high, into the cooing of the pigeons, into the mystery of the sky.

  “Aggggh—” Horse spit on the floor, “blood—”

  The blood of Lupito, the blood of Narciso, winding its way along the river, crying on the hills of the llano…

  “Florence said it’s wine, and the priest drinks it because he’s a wino,” Lloyd said.

  “Florence said he wouldn’t eat God,” Bones added.

  I looked again and saw the flat round piece of bread the priest held up. That thin wafer was becoming God, it was becoming flesh.

  “… Bread made flesh…”

  “Meat,” Bones growled.

  “No Bones, not like that!” I nodded my head. Somehow I couldn’t understand, the mystery was beginning to escape me! I shut my eyes tightly and prayed for forgiveness.

  “It’s time—”

  “What?”

  “It’s time, the priest is waiting!”

  “¡Chingada!”

  I opened my eyes and stood. My heart was pounding. Was I ready? The line filed towards the altar railing. We knelt clumsily at the railing and tucked our hands beneath the white cloth that stretched over the top. The priest was at the far end of the railing; the girls were getting the communion first. There was still time to pray.

  Oh my God I am sorry for all my sins, “Because they displease Thee, Lord, Who art all good and deserving…”

  “Shh
hhh!” the high school girl said.

  We waited quietly. Then the priest came to our side. The girls were already filing back to their seats. The altar boy held the gold platter under each chin, the priest mumbled something in Latin and placed the host on the tongue. He moved fast.

  “Aghhhhhhh—” Out of the corner of my eyes I saw Bones jump up and push his finger into his mouth. The host had stuck to the roof of his mouth. He was jabbing God with his finger, trying to free Him, choking on Him.

  Then suddenly the priest was in front of me. I caught a glimpse of the small, white wafer, the risen Christ, and then I closed my eyes and felt the host placed on my tongue. I received Him gladly, and swallowed Him. At last! I flooded the sticky piece of bread with hot saliva and swallowed it. God. Now I would know the answers! I bowed my head and waited for Him to speak to me.

  “Tony! Tony!”

  “Yes!” I cried.

  “Go on! Go on!” It was the Kid poking me. “The line’s moving!”

  Bones passed by me, still fingering his mouth. I was holding up the line, confusing them. I moved quickly to get back in step. We filed back into the pew and knelt.

  “Lord—” I whispered, still seeking God’s voice.

  “Dumb ass,” Ernie poked me, “you got everybody mixed up!”

  “Damn! I nearly choked!” Bones whimpered through watery eyes.

  I closed my eyes and concentrated. I had just swallowed Him, He must be in there! For a moment, on the altar railing, I thought I had felt His warmth, but then everything moved so fast. There wasn’t time just to sit and discover Him, like I could do when I sat on the creek bank and watched the golden carp swim in the sun-filtered waters.

  God! Why did Lupito die?

  Why do you allow the evil of the Trementinas?

  Why did you allow Narciso to be murdered when he was doing good?

  Why do you punish Florence? Why doesn’t he believe?

  Will the golden carp rule—?

  A thousand questions pushed through my mind, but the Voice within me did not answer. There was only silence. Perhaps I had not prepared right. I opened my eyes. On the altar the priest was cleaning the chalice and the platters. The mass was ending, the fleeting mystery was already vanishing.

  “Did you feel anything?” I urgently asked Lloyd and clutched his arm.

  “I feel hungry,” Lloyd answered.

  My own stomach rumbled from the morning fast and I simply nodded. I glanced around, trying to find in someone’s face or eyes the answer that had escaped me. There was nothing, only the restlessness to get home to breakfast.

  We were standing now, the priest was talking to us. He said something about being Christians now, and how it was our duty to remind our parents to contribute to the collection box every Sunday so that the new school building could be built and sisters could come to teach us.

  I called again to the God that was within me, but there was no answer. Only emptiness. I turned and looked at the statue of the Virgin. She was smiling, her outstretched arms offering forgiveness to all.

  “Ite, missa est,” the priest said.

  “Deo gratis,” the choir sang back and the people stood to leave.

  It was over.

  Veinte

  After Easter I went to confession every Saturday and on Sunday morning I took communion, but I was not satisfied. The God I so eagerly sought was not there, and the understanding I thought to gain was not there. The bad blood of spring filled us with strange yearnings and tumult, and the boys from Los Jaros split off from the boys from town and there were gang fights. Since I was not from across the tracks or from town, I was caught in the middle.

  “It’s all part of growing up, Anthony,” Miss Violet told me one afternoon after school when I stayed to help her.

  “Growing up is not easy sometimes,” I said. She smiled. “I will come to see you next year when school begins,” I told her.

  “That would be nice,” she said and touched my head. “What will you do this summer—”

  I wanted to tell her that I was searching for something, but sometimes I didn’t even know what it was I sought. I would see the golden carp, but I couldn’t tell her about that. “Play,” I answered, “fish, take care of my animals, and go to El Puerto to learn about farming from my uncles—”

  “Do you want to become a farmer?” she asked. It was difficult to leave her, but outside I would hear the clamor of the departing kids. I had to get home.

  “I don’t know,” I said, “it’s part of the thing I must learn about myself. There are so many dreams to be fulfilled, but Ultima says a man’s destiny must unfold itself like a flower, with only the sun and the earth and water making it blossom, and no one else meddling in it—”

  “She must be a wise woman—” Miss Violet said. I looked at her and saw that she was tired, and somehow she seemed older. Perhaps we were all older.

  “Yes,” I said. “Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye,” she smiled and waved after me.

  I ran very hard, so that by the time I was at the bridge I was exhausted. My lungs were bursting with clean air and my heart was pounding, still I had the nerve to call out a challenge to the Kid.

  “Raaaaaaaaaaaaa-ssssss…” I shouted. He was walking with Ida. I had never seen the Vitamin Kid walking before, but there he was, just starting across the bridge, side by side with Ida. I raced by him and called the challenge again. I put all I had into that race, I ran as hard as I could, but the Kid never passed me. I reached the end of the bridge and turned to look back. Through watering eyes I saw the Kid and Ida, still walking side by side across the bridge! Andrew said that someday I would beat the Kid across, I remembered. But there was no sweetness to the victory, instead I felt that something good had ended.

  In a way I felt relieved school was over. I had more time to spend with Ultima, and in her company I found a great deal of solace and peace. This was more than I had been able to find at church or with the kids at school. The llano had come alive with spring, and it was comforting to walk in the hills and see the new birth take root and come-alive-green. But even in the new season and in the hills there were ominous signs. We found tracks near the junipers that surrounded the house. I asked Ultima about them and she laughed and said it was someone out hunting rabbits, but I saw how she studied the footprints carefully and then took a dry juniper branch and erased the prints in the sand. And at night I heard the owl cry in warning, not the soft rhythmic song we were so used to, but cries of alarm.

  “It is Tenorio,” I said.

  “Bah, do not bother your mind about that wolf,” she laughed.

  But I had heard the grown-ups rumor that Tenorio’s second daughter was dying and that she would not last the summer, and I remembered his threat. And then there were the rumors about the evil things happening on the Agua Negra ranch. A curse had been placed on one of the families of the Agua Negra, and because the man knew my father and about Ultima’s powers he came seeking help.

  “¿Cómo estás Téllez?” my father greeted the thin, weather-beaten man with an abrazo.

  “Aye, Gabriel Márez,” the gray, emaciated face smiled weakly, “it does my heart good to see an old compadre, an old vaquero—”

  They came arm in arm into the house where the man called Téllez greeted my mother and Ultima. The formalities did not last long, we all knew the man had come to seek Ultima’s help. My father would gladly give his help to anyone of his old compadres, it only remained to be seen if my mother would allow Ultima to go help. My mother had been very afraid for Ultima since the night Tenorio and his mob came, and she had not allowed Ultima to help anyone since.

  “People are ungrateful,” she said, “they seek her help and after la Grande has risked her life to help them then they brand her a witch. Nonsense! We have no use for that kind of people!”

  But now we listened intently while the man told of the horror that had enveloped his life.

  “I swear before God Almighty,” Téllez’ voice cracked with
the tremble of fear in it, “that there are things that have happened to my family that are directed by the devil himself!”

  “¡Ave María Purísima!” my mother exclaimed and crossed her forehead.

  “The pots and pans, the dishes lift into the air and crash against the walls! We cannot eat! The skillet full of hot grease badly burned one of my children. Just yesterday morning I reached for the coffee pot and it jumped up and spilled the scalding coffee on me.” He rolled up his sleeve and showed us the blistered pink flesh of the burn on his forearm.

  “Téllez,” my father said calmly, “the imagination—”

  “The imagination!” Téllez laughed sardonically. “This is not imagined!” He pointed again to the arm. “It was not an accident,” he insisted, “and I had not been drinking!”

  “Perhaps it is a bad joke, someone who has a grudge against you,” my father the skeptic questioned.

  “Gabriel, the people of the Agua Negra are good people. You know that! Who would carry out a joke this far. And who could make stones rain from the skies!”

  “Stones from the skies!” my mother gasped.

  “¡Sí! Day and night, without reason, the stones fall and pelt the house! Why? And how is this done? I am at my wit’s end! It is the devil’s work—” Téllez moaned.

  “Courage,” my father said and reached across and placed his hand on Téllez’ shoulder.

  “There was a curse like that at El Puerto when I was a little girl,” my mother nodded, “the dishes would move, the statues of the saints themselves were found in the pigpens and the outhouse, and stones would fall like rain on the house—”

  “Sí, sí,” Téllez nodded in agreement. He knew if my mother believed then he could get Ultima’s help.

  “The curse was lifted when the priest blessed the house with holy water—” she did not finish.

  “Ay, mujer,” Téllez groaned, “do you think my good wife did not think of that! The priest from Vaughn came and blessed the entire house. It did not help. Now he will not come anymore. He says no evil can withstand the blessing by holy water, and so we must be making up stories. Stories—” He nodded his head and laughed bitterly. “Such stories! We cannot eat, we cannot sleep. My children are like walking zombies, the evil presence moves them like ghosts and the priest says we make up stories! It is too much—” He cupped his head in his hands and cried.