“The color of smothered coals,” Clarita adjusted.
Sylvia linked her arm through the older woman’s, walking her back to the store. “He makes me very happy, Clarita.” She had inferred that Lyle had been right, that Clarita was nurturing some apprehension that he would come between their close friendship. “I want you to meet him, I’ve told him about you, he already likes you. Look.” This was inspiration. She took one of the jangly bracelets he had bought her—“just trinkets in place of the real things that’re comin’,” he told her—and she held it out to Clarita. “He bought you this.”
Clarita studied the bracelet. Pretty, and not inexpensive either. She accepted the gift.
Without even banging her forehead to indicate a sudden vision, Clarita said to Sylvia, “A man in your life is going to make you happy—a man with brown hair and blue eyes.”
Sylvia smiled. Yes, Clarita was right, Lyle would make her very happy.
7
The deepening prospect of happiness.
“Goddamn, Ah love ya, sweet little hon. You gotta be my wife or I’ll just die, ya hear?” he said, lying in bed next to her, his love boots in their box—for now.
If she had loved him before, it was nothing compared to how she loved him now. Of course she would marry him.
“In a Catholic church?”
“Wherever you want, sweetheart.”
“Where will we live?” She thought of Clarita, having to leave her if he’d want to take her away. She’d take her with her! That settled that.
Lyle left to make necessary arrangements before their marriage—“and to buy-ya some thangs, muh sweet, sweet little girl.”
Sylvia Love did not need to employ Clarita’s psychic powers to know that, from now, her life would be happier than—well, just as happy as—if she won the Miss America title, although she would still, sometimes, touch her head as if the glittery crown would miraculously be there.
8
Eulah Love invades again.
“Sin! Woe unto sinners! They shall be plunged into hell to howl for eternity in blazing fire.” Eulah Love had burst in and was standing rigidly like a scarecrow—that gaunt now—with her black Bible brandished before her.
It was past noon, Sunday, and Sylvia was still in bed. Lyle would be returning later that night, had called to tell her he was “tied up on business for justa while longer, hon.”
“The Lord has ordered me to do today what I have long promised Him since the licentious exposure of your sacred body!” Eulah Love pulled her daughter forcefully out of bed. Sylvia was still groggy and bewildered. For a frail woman, the lunatic had a lot of strength. “The Lord has ordered that I take you to the prayer meeting to be purged.”
“Let me go, you lunatic!” Sylvia was now fully awake. “I don’t want to go to your fuckin’ prayer meeting.” She had stored some of Lyle’s words for the proper time, like now.
“If you don’t come with me, I’ll stand outside and shout.” She yowled: “Strummmmm-pet! Woman of Babylonnnnnn! Whore who exposed her sacred body for all to covet, whore who shamed herself and her flesh!”
Sylvia could hear the family in the apartment next to hers responding to the noise. She knew her crazy mother would carry out her promise. What if Lyle turned up now? She lived in fear that she would attempt to burst in while he was there. She had planned to pretend not to know “the crazy woman” if that happened, and then to push her out.
It seemed much easier to pretend to be going with her, then dash away, Sylvia determined. Too, she thought vaguely, there might be another purpose she might discover for wanting to be there. She put on a full sweater, which Eulah yanked even higher over her breasts as they walked out.
9
Eulah’s dramatic speech in tongues as she’s slain in the spirit.
At the Pentecostal Hall, the Gathering of Souls was riding a high tide of frenzy.
People from all around Alamito County and beyond crowded the cavernous hall for this mighty affair. Television cameras glowered from every direction. On the stage, a choir of men and women in red and black smocks sang gospel. The stage resembled a living room in a tacky motel suite—or a gaudy rectory—replete with puffed couches, crouched tables, a tawdry chandelier that seemed about to melt under glaring lights. Behind all this, high up, a painting of a rosy-cheeked Christ in splendid vestments, hands out, loomed over all.
In the center of the stage stood a woman with big breasts and a huge blond wig, almost a foot high. Her eyes, closed now, were laden with mascara so that they looked like dark holes carved into her white-powdered face, a stark, glossy red mouth its only other intrusion. She wore a cotton-candy yellow dress, with coils of ruffles, a dress a child might have been forced to wear to a birthday party. She held a large gleaming-gold Bible to her bosom so that it pushed her breasts into more aggressive prominence.
Beside her, a man with prematurely gray hair—even his skin looked gray—clutched his own Bible to his sunken chest. He had the slithery looks of a failed gigolo, long sideburns, a tiny mustache, darty eyes.
“Roll up your sleeves and let’s grapple with the old Devil and cast him out!” the man shouted to the cameras.
“Hallelujah,” the woman echoed. Giant tears exploded from her eyes, streaking her cheeks black.
“Do I hear an Amen?” the man goaded the audience.
“Amen!” men and women, grasping at the air, answered.
“Amen!” Eulah Love announced her entrance into the Hall with Sylvia. “I’m here to purge a grave evil! Stand aside!” She clasped Sylvia’s hand.
“Well, I told you she’d be here,” said a heavy woman with a trembling chin to a silent mousy man next to her. “Well, you know, she speaks in tongues once a year. Well, she’s inspiring.”
“Come and be cleansed!” the gray man exhorted.
“Shed your burden of woes,” the blond-wigged woman said in a childish voice, tiny, almost petulant.
A line of men and women, young, old, children—standing, crouching, bending, limping, marching, running, hobbling, stumbling—instantly formed, hands in the air, fingers weaving invisible pleadings. They cried, they sighed, they wailed and tears flowed, they moaned, they groaned, they pled and tears flowed, they mumbled, they stumbled, they screamed and tears flowed, they screeched, they beseeched, they implored and tears flowed.
Where was the woman who had sung so beautifully, those many years ago? Sylvia wondered, longing to hear again the voice that might have calmed this frightening pit of men and women writhing in what seemed to be ecstatic pain. She searched for her. She was not here.
On the stage, four burly men gathered around the two evangelists. A balloon of a woman in paisley print trembled before them. “Endless pain, can’t walk, can’t even crawl, can’t move!” she wailed.
The gray man babbled words, planted one hand on the woman’s forehead, and shouted, “I banish Satan, I banish pain, you are slain in the spirit of the Lord.” The woman attempted to fall; her weight would not shift. Two men behind her pulled her back, and two before her forced her down until she managed to lie quaking on the floor.
“You are cured!” the gray man called.
The woman tried to get onto her feet and fell back several times. The men lifted her, ushering her across the stage with difficulty while she screamed, “I can walk without pain,” as she hobbled, lurching about the stage.
“Let’s hear it for the Lord!” the man screamed.
The congregation praised God.
Cameras pursued the cured.
With Sylvia no longer resisting, Eulah worked her way to the crest of the crowds. Those who recognized her from previous revivals alerted others. A circle formed about the two. A camera swooped to gawk. Eulah trembled, her hands clasped nothing, her words tumbled out, sounds jumping on each other. Alerted, the gray preacher and the blonde woman cleared their way into the circle, locating themselves squarely before the cameras. “Speak the Lord’s Word, Sister Eulah!” the man demanded.
?
??I am here with this scarlet woman, my own blood, to proclaim, before the world that she—” Eulah began.
To speak it all again, to curse her again, to humiliate her even more publicly!—that is why she had dragged her here, Sylvia knew, enraged. But it might all turn around. Now!
“Speak out for the angels on earth to heed!” the blonde woman’s tiny voice squeaked at Eulah.
“—to proclaim before the world that she—”
Sylvia blocked Eulah’s further words. “Yes, mamma, speak! Tell them what a goddamned vicious and cruel woman you really are!” she screamed at the old woman, her words pitched into the frenzied cacophony of groans, moans, shouts.
Eulah fell back, clutching her chest, her hands grasping Sylvia’s, pulling her down to kneel next to her on the floor. She gasped: “You lived to kill me! My curse on you and your vile flesh forever!” Then she moaned: “Brggg—ugghhh—crsss—”
“Sister Eulah’s speaking in holy tongues!” the tinny voice of the blond evangelist announced.
“Grggg unhhhhh—”
“Sister Eulah talks with the tongue of the Lord!” the gray man intoned.
“She is slain in the spirit!” the blond woman’s squeaky voice proclaimed.
“Ughrrrrrr …”
An old man crouched over Eulah. “She ain’t slain, she’s dead, choked on her tongue.”
The gray man, the blond-wigged woman, and the camera fled from the dead woman.
Sylvia laughed so hard she doubled over on the floor until her laughter became sobs, not of sorrow—no, no; they were sobs of anger that Eulah had bested her again, had lived to curse her one more time, to blame her for her death. Looking down at the finally calmed face of the dead woman, Sylvia Love saw something that astonished her: Eulah Love must once have been very pretty!
Not wanting to see more, Sylvia ran out of the Hall.
10
Who is Sylvia’s father?
At the funeral, Lyle Clemens the First stood next to her with a sad face, a brand-new cowboy hat pressed against his chest. “Bought it just to honor your dear dead mamma,” he said. Clarita had refused to come, fearing evil vapors.
Sylvia was astonished to see that the few people who turned up were those she had never seen before, sad older faces. Had her mother once had another life? Who was that good-looking dark-skinned man, so sad? He might have been Mexican, she wasn’t sure. He was staring at her intently. In the next moment he turned away and left the funeral site.
Her father? She would have followed him to ask, demand, but, just then, she saw a tall, fair-haired man she had not seen before either. He was holding a hand over his heart and bowing before the lowered coffin. He, also, turned to face her. Was he her father? He dashed away. Had that pretty woman she had glimpsed in repose once had romantic yearnings? Sylvia did not welcome that question.
“Good riddance,” Sylvia said later to Clarita.
“Shhh—don’t speak about the dead, not yet. Her spirit has hardly had a chance to go to”—Clarita pondered—“wherever it’s going. The dead do retain some power, you know, especially the wicked ones, and especially soon after they’ve died, when their souls are still turning to smoke. Ay!”
11
A white rose is presented.
Sylvia was not entirely sure that she was pregnant, but she wanted to share the possibility with the man she was about to marry—and she would test his reaction. So she told him she was sure she was pregnant.
“Oh, hon, do ya know how happy ya make me?” Lyle spun her about in her apartment. As if remembering that she must be treated more carefully, he put her down gently. They had not yet made love, although she could tell by the bulge in his pants that he was ready. He touched her stomach gently. He had brought her one rose bud, white, not yet open, its petals huddled together, in a beautiful small crystal vase.
He did love her. How could she doubt it? His reaction had confirmed it, if it had needed confirmation—and it had not.
They made love, wonderful love, better each time.
The next day the bud opened and became the largest rose Sylvia had ever seen. She would constantly go to it and kiss it as she waited for Lyle.
He did not come back that day. Nor did he return the day after that, nor the week after.
Sylvia kept the rose until its edges turned brown, ashy. She crumbled it and put it in an envelope.
A letter arrived, postmarked Houston. She read the few words on a piece of plain paper exactly as he would have spoken them:
“Ah love ya, sweetheart. Don’t ever doubt it. Love ya with all muh heart. Your Lyle.” He had enclosed five new hundred-dollar bills.
“So you’d get an abortion, that’s why the desgraciado left you that money, I see it in a vision.” Clarita declared. She observed everything as if it were a revelation known only to her. “Be glad you’re rid of him, he would have broken your heart.”
“He already has,” Sylvia said. Would she be able to abort his child?
12
A figure from the past is summoned.
“Hello, sexy Chicano,” Sylvia smiled at Armando as he left the place where he was now a senior clerk. She had waited outside the building for him, knowing the approximate time when he would be leaving. She wore one of her sexiest dresses, coral, so perfectly fitted to her that it made love to her body when she moved.
“Sylvia! Wow!” Armando linked his finger under his belt in satisfaction that she was waiting for him, and with such admiring words! The times they had run into each other before, they had waved, nodded. He opened an extra button on his shirt; a few dark hairs peeped out.
“I’ve missed you,” Sylvia said.
“Oh, me, too. Oh, yeah, me, too!”
“Let’s do it again, sexy Chicano—the same place, just like before?”
“Oh, God, yes!” he was ready.
He raced with her in his new car to the same spot where they had first had sex, and they did it again. It was dusk and the lush greenery along what might have been the site of the hidden river had darkened, the pale sky auguring a Texas windstorm.
When they returned to the City, Sylvia asked him to drop her off where he had earlier times.
“Sure. Goddit! Everything just like before. Next time, I’ll rent a room at the Starlight Motel, we’ll spend the whole day and night fucking. Would you like that, gorgeous?”
She stepped out of the car. “I never want to see you again,” she told him. She didn’t look back to see his reaction.
13
Sylvia’s motives. Clarita struggles with an ethical consideration.
Now she would not know who had made her pregnant—if she was; and, if so, it would be easier to lose the child if she could tell herself it was not Lyle’s.
When she was sure that she was pregnant, she explained to Clarita: “I’m not ready to be a mother, but the thought of having a baby pulled out of me frightens me; I would keep thinking he was already alive.” And Lyle’s, she didn’t say.
That’s when Clarita bent over Sylvia’s stomach and tapped it several times.
Was she trying to make the inevitable easier for her friend, or was she convinced that her prognostication was accurate? Clarita would often ponder that later. Who knows? What is certain is that she said the child was already dead. “You can go ahead and do what you have to do.”
“You can tell, this far ahead that it’s dead?”
“Revelatory visions are timeless. La vida pasa así.”
Sylvia touched her stomach. Had the shame Eulah had denounced—her wantonness—led her to all this?
14
A vine is resurrected in the house of curses.
Now that she needed more room, Sylvia moved back into the house she had once occupied with Eulah, and had now inherited by default. Ferociously, she watered the vine that had withered over the small house once full of Eulah’s anger. She listened, no whisper remained. Soon, she saw clear hints of the vine’s resurrection, splotches of green struggling out of the gray tangle
s. By mutual invitation, Clarita moved in with her, assigning herself the role of housekeeper, cook, nurse, and, eventually, mother.
Lulled by all her confusions about the birth, taking sips of bourbon to allow her to cope with them, Sylvia postponed the constantly planned abortion, time after time—was the child Lyle the First’s, oh, was he?—until it was too late and Lyle Clemens the Second was born.
CHAPTER THREE
1
A return to Sylvia’s bedside. A pending question is asked.
After a deep, long sleep during which Clarita kept watch, Sylvia Love woke to another ambush of surprise at seeing the child lying next to her. She touched him tenderly, and then edged him away, just slightly. The words Clarita had spoken, before her deep sleep, popped into her mind as if they had just been spoken. “Clara!”—that’s what she called her when she wanted to assert firmness. “Tell me what the hell you mean about not taking me to the hills in time when the rapists were coming. Tell me now!” she said with accrued irritation.
The demand wasn’t necessary. Clarita was ready, on this eventful day, to roam through the past and its effect on the present. With a weary sigh and a grave sign of the cross, she told her long-withheld story. “It began, as many stories do, in Chihuahua,” she gave universality to her personal epic.
2
A pullback in time; Clarita’s flight to the hills of Chihuahua; the ravages of Pancho Villa; and an apparition by the Holy Virgin Guadalupe.
Clarita—Doña Clarita as she was then called, although she was a young woman of fifteen herself and that designation is usually reserved for older, very dignified women—was given the task of herding her three pretty nieces, ages fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen, into the hills near Chihuahua City when word reached their father, a wiry tangle of a man, that Pancho Villa was on one of his rampages raiding villages and abducting and raping the prettiest girls. He had been a good man, Pancho Villa, a man of the people; he had opposed the dictator Porfirio Diaz. But like others who wander away from Jesucristo, Our Lord and Savior, he had, himself, become a tyrant. “He’s coming!” said a worker on the rancho, “and he has that look in his eyes.”