“Come to Mass often, Do?a Beatriz,” Padre Andrés said. His voice was low, sonorous—low enough that Padre Vicente could not overhear him in the garden. “The sacraments remind us we are not alone.”
Then he dipped his head and stepped into the light. I watched his dark silhouette, slender as a young oak, as he crossed the courtyard in Padre Vicente’s wake.
There was a lilt of invitation in that final phrase, in the urgent shade of his eyes.
Come to the church, it said. I will help you.
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, Do?a 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.”