Fullepub 
10
10
THE NEXT LETTER I received from Rodolfo opened with the same piloncillo-sweet well-wishes as the first, but quickly dovetailed into harsh scolding.
Evidently, Padre Vicente had found it prudent to report my troubling behavior to my husband. And he had either embellished my state or truly believed I had taken leave of my senses.
I stood in my study as I read, my back to the wall. Two sleepless nights had passed since the visit from the priests. No matter where I was, no matter where I hid, it was as if the house knew where I was. Cold swept through the halls like flash floods through arroyos, gluttonous from rain, sweeping me away.
That morning, as I uncurled the stiffness in my back and watched the lilting smudges of bats returning outside my bedroom window, I wondered if I should try sleeping outside. Far from the house rather than in its belly. But the idea of being so exposed, of having no wall to put my back to, no door to shut if those eyes . . .
Gooseflesh crawled over my skin.
No more of this foolishness, Rodolfo wrote. I know you must be lonely—as I am without you by my side. But if you feel unwell in the country, come back to the capital. Do not draw the attention of the Church like this again.
Perhaps it was not embarrassment that caused Rodolfo to write. The Inquisition had released its bloody fervor and was abolished several years ago, but its suspicions were still firmly in place. We had never discussed it, for what newlywed politician would divulge anticlerical views to his pretty little wife? But I suspected he did not hold the institution of the Church in high regard, much less trust them.
Rodolfo’s message was plain: if San Isidro does not agree with you, come to the capital.
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 was mine.
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 TO church, a quiet shadow at my elbow. Disappointment seeped sourly through my mouth when I saw that it was Padre Vicente, not Padre Andrés, who walked up the aisle past our pew to the altar.
Come often, Padre Andrés said. He never said when. 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 spilled into 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.
The wood smelled of recent lacquer; inside the air was close and warm, but not unpleasantly so. It felt like stepping into the solemn quiet of someone else’s mind. I sank to my knees, skirts settling around me, my face close to the grate that separated the sides of the confessional.
“Forgive me, Padre, for I have sinned,” I murmured, dipping my chin out of habit.
“Something is wrong with that house.”
My head snapped up. From his visit to my property I had learned that Padre Andrés’s voice was low, thickened by a gentle, sleepy rasp. Now, it hummed with urgency.
I tightened my clasped hands as if in a fervent prayer of gratitude. “Thank God,” I whispered. The words came out strangled; hot tears had leaped to my eyes and lingered there, stinging. “You understand.”
“I felt it the moment I stepped through the gates,” Padre Andrés said. “It didn’t use to be like that. My aunt is Doña Juana’s cook, and I used to—”
A sharp rapping sounded on the confessional door.
I jumped.
“Carajo,” Padre Andrés breathed.
My hand rose to my lips in surprise. A priest? Cursing?
“There’s a storeroom behind the sacristy,” he whispered. “We can talk there. I—”
Light flooded the confessional.
“Padre Andrés!”
His head snapped to the door; a lock of straight black hair fell into his eyes. I had noticed his good looks when I first met him—how could I not have, when sun poured down on him like a saint in a painting?—but now that I was hidden behind the grate of the confessional, I could peer at him unseen. Shadow carved out sharp cheekbones and a severe, aquiline nose; sensitive hazel eyes blinked as they adjusted to the light. He frowned as he looked up at someone out of my line of sight.
“Padre Vicente, a parishioner wishes to have her confession heard,” Padre Andrés announced, voice open and innocent.
Padre Vicente. My chest tightened.
“Then why are you in here?” Padre Vicente’s voice was aghast. Accusing.
Evidently, confessions were not a responsibility of Padre Andrés’s. He was not a full parish priest, then. Perhaps he was too young, or perhaps his mixed heritage prevented him from taking on such responsibilities when criollo priests like Vicente and Guillermo ran the parish.
Padre Andrés blinked. He opened his mouth to speak. A short beat passed.
Then he grasped for something in the confessional and lifted a book in a swift movement. “My book of prayers. Padre Guillermo borrowed it and must have left it here by accident.”
Gold lettering winked at me through the confessional grate, peeking cheekily through Padre Andrés’s long brown fingers. The Holy Gospel.
A giggle rose to my lips. I pressed my hand over my mouth to keep it from escaping.
“Out!” Padre Vicente snapped.
Padre Andrés obeyed. His exit was neither graceful nor immediate; judging from the low thump of a skull against wood, it seemed the confessional was not built for someone of his height.
Padre Vicente settled into the confessional across from me, his pale, thinning hair nearly translucent in the light. He shut the door with a click and settled in with an expectant sigh.
“Buenas tardes, Padre,” I said, speaking out of the corner of my mouth to disguise my voice and layering in as much piousness as I could summon. My heart sank. I actually had to confess my sins to Padre Vicente before I followed Padre Andrés, didn’t I?
Carajo, indeed.
“Forgive me, Padre, for I have sinned . . .”
* * *TEN EXCRUCIATING MINUTES LATER, I stepped from the confessional and walked quickly to the back of the church. I exited through a smaller side door, deeply grateful that anonymity etiquette dictated Padre Vicente would wait until I was out of sight before stepping from the confessional himself.
Sunlight seared my eyes. I shook my head, blinking to clear my vision, and followed the white stucco wall of the church. What if I walked into another priest somewhere—how would I explain myself? The last thing I needed was to be caught stealing into a sacristy like a common thief, not after running afoul of Padre Vicente mere days ago.
But the alternative was to return to San Isidro without any help. And that was out of the question.
I turned a corner. A worn wooden door, only about as tall as I was, had been left slightly ajar, its angle an invitation. Was that the door to the sacristy storeroom? I slipped through it as quickly as I could and collided very solidly with Padre Andrés.
He leaped back.
“Excuse me!” I gasped at the same time he held a finger to his lips for silence.
I edged away from Padre Andrés as he closed the door, and immediately bumped into an abandoned pew. An old altar, covered in cobwebs and stacked with ceremonial linens, dominated the back of the room; rickety shelves lined the walls, stuffed with bowls and wooden chalices covered in a thin layer of dust.
I slipped back to the altar, sheepishly putting as much space between myself and Padre Andrés as possible. Which wasn’t much—even without the clutter, the room was cramped at best. I was surprised Padre Andrés didn’t knock his head against the ceiling as he turned to face me.
“My apologies about the confessional, Doña Beatriz,” he began. “I think here will be—”
There was a rap at the door.
Padre Andrés froze. Then the gravity of the situation struck me like a blow: what if someone opened the door and found us alone here?
Then—be Andrés a priest or not—I would have something even worse to explain to my husband than asking for an exorcism.
We stared at each other in shocked silence, momentarily paralyzed, realization of our predicament thick as copal on the air between us.
A second rap at the door. “Padre Andrés!”
Padre Guillermo’s voice.
I darted around the back of the altar and ducked beneath it, yanking my skirts around my legs and tucking my knees to my chest. Padre Andrés’s black trousers and shoes crossed the room in a step and a half; then a box scraped across the stone floor in front of the altar and he pivoted on his heel.
Daylight flooded the storeroom.
“Padre Andrés!” Padre Guillermo huffed. “Padre Vicente told me you were in the confessional with a parishioner.”
“I was looking for my prayer book, Padre Guillermo,” Padre Andrés said smoothly. “Of course it was an accident.”
But this was not. If anything about this conversation went awry, there was no explaining away why I was curled into a ball beneath a dusty altar with Padre Andrés concealing me.
A dusty, faded red cloth covered the middle of the altar, hiding me from sight, but beyond it I could see a dusty statue of la Virgen on a shelf. Her hands were spread wide, her painted face perfectly beatific.
Help, please. The thought flew from my mind before I could summon the shame to stop it. As if that prayer were worth listening to. Who would intercede on my behalf in a situation like this? Our Lady of Dust and Secrecy? Our Lady of Women Disobeying Their Husbands?
Padre Andrés smoothly diverted Padre Guillermo’s attention away from the confessional incident and drew him deep into some town affair involving the Sunday bell ringer and his incurable pulque habit. Soon he would usher the priest out and the danger would be gone.
Ducking beneath the altar had disturbed dust; it rose around me in a faint cloud. My nose itched with the beginning of a sneeze. Panic budded in my chest as I fought to suppress it, too afraid to move. If I failed, my hiding place would surely be revealed—
“What are you doing in here?” Padre Guillermo asked at last.
“Oh,” Padre Andrés drawled innocently, as if only then remembering his surroundings. “Penance, Padre.”
“You’re praying in here?”
“Dusting. Organizing. As you instructed me to do two weeks ago, and which I clearly haven’t done.”
Padre Guillermo’s sigh was deep. Long-suffering, but also affectionate. That was a sigh I had often directed at Mamá—the sound of someone who had long put up with the whims of a daydreamer. “Ay, Andrés. What will we ever do with you?”
“The Lord is in all things, Padre,” said Padre Andrés. “Buenas tardes.”
“Buenas tardes.”
A creak; the door shut. Footsteps retreated in the gravel, then faded entirely.
Padre Andrés turned and dropped to a crouch. He shoved the box to the side and lifted the altar covering that concealed me from sight. A thin veil of dust fell between us.
A moment passed. The dust settled. Reality settled: I was sitting on a dusty storeroom floor like a child, my knees pulled to my chest, looking up into the face of an unfairly handsome priest.
I sneezed.
“Salud,” Padre Andrés said solemnly.
His seriousness was so incongruous with our position that a sudden peal of laughter escaped my lips.
His finger flew to his lips. “Shh!”
I clapped a hand over my mouth to smother the sound but was unable to stop. I shook with silent laughter, tears leaking from my eyes.
Padre Andrés kept his expression carefully neutral, but I sensed he was mortified as I crawled out from under the altar. He held out a hand to help me to my feet. I accepted it, gasping for breath between stifled peals of laughter.
He released my hand as soon as I was upright, murmuring an apology, his gaze demurely downcast. “I was certain we would be undisturbed here. How Padre Guillermo knew . . .”
I waved a hand, finally catching my breath. “It’s all right,” I said, wiping tears from my cheeks and brushing dust from my skirts. When was the last time I had laughed like that? Sleeplessness was certainly stretching my sanity thinner than it had ever been. I inhaled deeply to compose myself and looked up at Padre Andrés, at the crease of concern that seemed permanently etched between his brows.
Papá distrusted the Church as a rule. Priests were conservative and corrupt, he said. I had never once told a priest anything aside from what was required from me in bland, unspecific confessions or society small talk. I knew I couldn’t trust them, not in my life before Papá’s death nor now, when I was alone in my torment in a cold, hostile house. Yet a curl of intuition drew me to Padre Andrés like moth to flame. You’ve never met a priest like him before, it whispered.
“We can speak freely here,” he said quietly.
And so I did.
He moved to my side, leaning against the altar as he listened. We had left the confessional behind, but I had never been so honest with a stranger. I laid everything bare, beginning when Rodolfo and I first arrived from the capital, with the red eyes I saw on that first night. I left out no detail. Not even Juana’s erratic behavior, believing me one day and dismissing me as mad the next. Nor did I forget Ana Luisa’s copal.
Padre Andrés listened, one hand rubbing his jaw thoughtfully, as I described the pounding on the doors and the cold that swept through the house and prevented me from sleeping. As I described the skeleton I had found in the wall that vanished.
When I finished, I glanced up at his face, bracing myself to see a look of horrified disbelief. Instead, Padre Andrés bit his lip, worrying it as he thought. He drummed the fingers of his left hand against the altar. “I think I can help,” he said at last.
A swell of relief overtook me. “Please,” I began. I tried to force a thank-you to my lips but couldn’t—for if I spoke, my voice would break, and take my composure with it. “Please come back to the hacienda.”
A long moment passed. I knew it was not an elegant invitation. It was just short of the begging of a madwoman. But I knew with a cold certainty, one that hung around my clavicles with the dread weight of a prophecy, that if I did not get help, I would die.
I had no one else to whom to turn.
Please.
“If anyone asks, say that you want Mass said for your villagers more regularly,” he said quietly. “It is common enough that, ah, no one will think more of it.”
No oneclearly meant Rodolfo. So he knew of Padre Vicente’s letter and had decided to help me anyway. Another wave of gratitude rose thick in my chest. I wouldn’t have to explain that secrecy was required. He knew.
Because he believed me.
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
He pushed himself away from the altar. “I think . . . I must ask you a favor, Doña Beatriz. I will need to stay long enough to walk through the house at night.”
“Of course. When can you come?” A tremble wound through my voice.
“As soon as possible. Tomorrow.” Now his attention was fully on me, he was present, and he was watchful. “Do you feel you will be safe until then?”
No, my heart cried, my chest tightening around it like a vise. No.
His gaze fell to my hands. I had been holding them clasped loosely before me, but now they were tight. Too tight.
That was answer enough for him.
“Burn copal,” he said firmly. “Fill any room you stay in with smoke.”
“What does it do?”
“It purifies your surroundings.”
So it did work. If I was to defend myself tonight, I needed it. I didn’t want protection; I wanted tools with which to protect myself. “I don’t have any. Do you—”
He looked over my head, scanning the shelves that lined the back of the room. “We keep some in here, for when we run out of the imported kind Padre Guillermo and Padre Vicente prefer . . . Wait one moment.”
The room was so tight, the space between boxes and altar and abandoned pews so narrow. It was impossible not to touch; his hands were ginger, light as the brush of a wing as they guided me by the shoulders to one side so he could step behind me.
From her quiet place on the shelf, Our Lady of Dust and Secrecy met my eyes over the priest’s shoulder.
Heat flushed my cheeks. I was certain she saw it.
“Here.” Padre Andrés turned and pressed three large pieces of resin into my palm, his fingertips brushing my wrist. He drew his hand back quickly and cleared his throat. “I will pack some things and come to the property tomorrow after Mass,” he said, serious once more.
“Thank you so much,” I breathed, my fingers curling over the resin. “How could I ever repay you for your help?”
He dropped his gaze, eyelashes brushing his cheeks, suddenly shy once more. “Tending to lost souls is my vocation, Doña Beatriz.”
The tenderness in his voice stole something from my chest, leaving me vulnerable and imbalanced.
“Is it not also Padre Vicente’s? Yet he had no interest in helping me,” I said. My bitterness hung on the air like smoke. That was the tone Mamá scolded me for time and time again, the one that made Tía Fernanda call me ungrateful and sharp.
It didn’t faze Padre Andrés in the least. He shrugged, birdlike with those slim shoulders. A slow, knowing smile played at the corner of his mouth. “He lacks expertise with certain things.”
“But aren’t you less experienced than him?”
Padre Andrés raised his eyes and held my gaze. Not with this, my gut said. “Do you trust me, Doña Beatriz?”
I did. I felt it with a certainty as powerful as the sweep of a tide.
I nodded.
“Then I will see you tomorrow. I will arrive at the capilla around noon,” he said. “Buenas tardes, Doña Beatriz.”
I dipped my chin to him in goodbye, the formality of the gesture so at odds with the intimacy of our conversation, how we stood only a foot apart from each other in a dim room.
I swallowed the thought quickly and raised my head with all the dignity I could muster. “Buenas tardes, Padre.”
“Please,” he said as I moved to the door. “Andrés. Just Andrés.”
