I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive (21 page)

Bang! Rattle! Bang! Rattle! Bang! Rattle!

It never failed. Somebody was knocking on the screen door downstairs. She sighed but she knew that she was alone in the place and that if she didn't answer it, no one would.

She padded down the stairs but before she reached the landing where she'd have a clear view of the front door, something nameless whispered in her ear. The voice was softer but more credible than Marge admonishing her not to run down the stairs, and she stopped and leaned around the corner and peeked under the banister. The silhouette of a man in a dark suit stood on the other side of the screen. When he leaned forward to knock once again, his features came into focus and Graciela stifled a gasp when she recognized the pastor from the mission church. In nearly a year that Graciela had lived in the Yellow Rose, no member of the clergy had ever come calling.

The young priest shaded his eyes and peered into the half-light where the small noise had come from.

"Is there anyone at home?"

Graciela took a couple of steps downstairs into the light.

"Well, hello there!" he began, and then, "Uh,
buenos días,
señorita."

She responded mostly out of pride in her English and regretted it immediately.

"May I help you, Padre? I was working. Cleaning. Upstairs, and I didn't hear you knock, Padre ..."

It was several seconds before the priest realized that Graciela was speaking rather than singing.

"Killen. Yes! So! You speak, uh, well, yes, I'm Father Killen. From the mission church." He pointed vaguely behind him and then self-consciously covered his bandaged right hand. His instinct was correct but it came too late. Graciela had noticed it immediately. "I was just in the neighborhood and I, well ..." He leaned closer to the screen and then retreated. Graciela had yet to blink. "I wonder, would it be all right if I came in? It's a little awkward standing out here like I'm selling something, if you follow me. And I'm not ..."

The voice in Graciela's ear hadn't given her permission to allow the priest past the threshold. "I can come out," she offered, and when she pushed the screen open the priest noticed her own bandage, bright red with fresh blood.

"Well, uh, okay then. Please, I would appreciate that ... Are you all right?"

"It's nothing. I bleed too much," she explained. "It doesn't hurt."

Father Killen stepped back a full two paces, twice the distance necessary to allow the door to open. He stumbled a step farther back when the screen door swept aside like a galvanized veil to reveal that Graciela had the face of an angel, both innocence and experience peering back at him through unblinking black eyes that seemed to assay his intentions. Still he lied without hesitation when she inquired after his own injury.

"An accident," he said. "Gardening. I—well, I just wasn't very careful. It's a nuisance but it isn't painful." As if to corroborate his story, he offered Graciela the injured hand in greeting. "Well, it's very nice to meet you," he said. Graciela held his hand for only an instant before she let it go as if it were hot, but the priest was so mesmerized that he took no notice and prattled nervously on. Up close she was even more beautiful than he could possibly have imagined. He found that he was able to maintain eye contact for just a few seconds at a time. He would glance away at intervals to avoid drowning in infatuation, only to look back and ecstatically submerge again. Words came to him, but very nearly randomly, and he found himself nervously anticipating the endings of his own sentences. "Like I said, I was in the neighborhood and I've always wondered about this big old house. I drive by it nearly every day and I, well, is it yours?"

Graciela smiled at the absurd suggestion, and Father Killen's heart nearly stopped. "No, Padre. It's a boarding house. I rent a room here."

"Well, of course it is! The sign in the yard. How silly of me. Oh, I'm sorry, did I introduce myself? Before Graciela could remind him that he had, he went on. "Let's just start over, then, shall we? I'm Father Padraig Killen from the mission church, and you are ... ?" He extended the bandaged hand again but Graciela ignored it this time.

"Graciela."

"Graciela!" He pronounced it correctly. "That's a beautiful name. Are you called Grace sometimes?"

"No."

"Well, fair play to you. It's a beautiful name. Your Christian name, I take it? You were christened in the Catholic Church?"

"Yes, Padre."

"And confirmed?"

"Yes, Padre. When I was seven."

"And how long have you lived here? In the parish, I mean."

Graciela said nothing to that, and the priest silently panicked. He had searched for this girl for weeks and he knew too well how easy it would be for her to simply vanish into the streets if he allowed her to slip away. If he couldn't keep her talking, it was only a matter of time before she closed the door in his face.

"And why, then, have you never come to Mass?"

Graciela smiled again, even though she had already made up her mind that there was something about this priest that she didn't like.

"Forgive me, Padre, but I have."

It was true that Graciela attended Mass at the mission church from time to time, but it didn't surprise her that the priest had never seen her there. Coming and going without being noticed was part and parcel of her gift.

Naturally it was her grandfather who had first recognized that spirits of all kinds were drawn to Graciela like moths to a flame and that she possessed the rare ability to see and hear them all. That same internal beacon attracted human attention as well, and her grandfather had told her that if she was to have any peace in this world, she had to learn how not to be noticed when she didn't wish to be. It was simply a matter, he said, of damping down that inner light.

Graciela took a step forward and the priest retreated again, blithely unaware that only inches separated him from a nasty tumble backward down the steps.

"I am sorry, Padre," the girl began, wringing her hands nervously, her eyes downcast as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "I know I should come to Mass more than I do but I work on some Sundays and most Saturdays, which is why I haven't been to confession in such a long time."

The priest looked down on the small figure standing before him, her hair hanging limply, her dress wrinkled and soiled, and her bare feet caked with yellowish dirt. The face that he had thought so fair only a moment before seemed rather plain now, and when the girl made excuses for her lack of devotion there was no longer any music in her voice. Even the bandage around her wrist had faded, going from a flaming red to a muted brown and dirty white in the light of the dying day, as had his conviction that he was in the presence of anything remotely miraculous. The girl droned on for some indeterminate period, responding to his questions without really answering, until, no longer able to recall what had been so urgent about his errand that day, the priest produced his card and offered it to Graciela. "Well then, we'll have to try to do better about getting ourselves to Mass, won't we?" The girl made no reply except to shuffle her feet some more. "Right. I'll keep an eye out for you, and, of course, you don't have to wait for Saturday or Sunday. You know where I am, so feel free to come call whenever you like. My door is always open."

Graciela didn't even look at the card. She backed inside and the screen rattled as the heavy oak door closed in Father Killen's face.

Somehow the priest managed to make his way down the steps and back to his car, though later he would remember only finding himself behind the wheel and navigating the moral wreckage that was the strip through the gauzy haze that had suddenly descended on South Presa Street. He rolled past the beer joint and the pawnshop, paying no attention to the whores on the corner and the dope fiends lined up behind the liquor store. Some of the girls recognized the station wagon; the word was out that nobody had seen Big Tiff for a while, so maybe her special trick was fair game now. But the priest never even slowed down. Once he crossed Roosevelt Avenue he could easily have pretended that he'd never heard of anyone called Graciela, and he was beginning to wish that he never had. He was ashamed. He had spent weeks chasing after smoke from one end of hell on earth to the other on the words of a handful of degenerate strangers, and for what? She was only a girl. An ordinary Mexican girl. How could he have been so stupid? He pounded the dashboard with his bandaged fist as hard as he could.

And it didn't hurt. Not even a little. He yanked the wheel to the right and slammed on the brakes, grunting out loud as the Ford lurched to a stop. He held his hand up so that the grimy bandage caught the light and he noticed a bright red smear and he knew instantly that the blood wasn't his own, and his heart began to pound. He frantically unwound the bandage and turned his hand front to back and then back to front again. He shouldered the door open, activating the dome light, and repeated the inspection of the hand that Graciela had touched, but there was nothing to see. Not a scab. Not a scar. Not a trace.

Graciela hurried up the stairs. She knew that the camouflage she had conjured was temporary and permeable, and it was only a matter of time before the priest returned.

In a basket beneath her bed she found a Mason jar half filled with
milagros,
tiny, shining lead charms. She shook them out across her bed and selected four.

The Eyes of Santa Lucia. The saint sentenced to be defiled in a brothel, then blinded and martyred when her persecutors found they could not move her there.

The Praying Man. For her grandfather, that the old
curan
dero
's wisdom and knowledge might flow through her.

The Sacred Heart of the Blessed Virgin. For her devoted mother, who said the rosary every day of her life, expecting nothing in return.

The House. For the protection of the Yellow Rose and all who dwelt within its walls.

She fastened them with straight pins to a thick white candle, kindled it, tilted it at odd angles to nurture the flame until it was tall and bright, and then anchored it in a puddle of molten wax on a saucer that she stationed on the windowsill, where it would be visible from the street.

She selected the herbs required to help repel the onslaught that was coming: manzanilla, verbena, and more sage. While the water boiled on the hot plate, she bruised them between her fingers, occasionally glancing out the window to scan the street below.

The priest was nowhere to be seen. But he would be back, if not today, then tomorrow, or the day after that. But he would come. Graciela was certain of that. She had known a priest who felt like this.

Back home in Dolores, Father Gutiérrez, the old parish priest who had christened her and all of her brothers and sisters, had died suddenly, without ever having had a day of illness though he was well into his eighties. He had simply gone to sleep at the end of a typically long day of service to his flock and failed to awaken in this world. Even Graciela's grandfather attended the old priest's funeral Mass, and afterward Graciela realized that in all of her life she had never seen the old man inside a church before, and she asked him why.

"There are those among these"—he took a breath as he chose an appropriate word—"women ... who are uncomfortable sharing their God with an old
curandero
like me. At least, until they have a boil on their backside or an unfaithful husband. Then they come and see me after dark when they think no one is watching." He had winked and nudged Graciela playfully and rolled his eyes up to heaven. "But I think He knows!" The old man crooked his finger, drawing Graciela into whispering range. "Even Father Gutiérrez visited me from time to time, when his back was acting up."

The old priest's replacement, Father Contreras, although he was fifty years younger and ostensibly more progressive, was nowhere near as open-minded when it came to spiritual matters. Her grandfather had dismissed him as a
sacerdote mundano,
a "worldly priest" more concerned with canon than creed but harmless. For his part, the new pastor, after canvassing the local gossips, had wasted no time in focusing his attention on the old man's occupation. He preached sermon after sermon on the evils of superstition and the practice of all manner of unholy rite and ritual, no matter how mundane. "Satan," the new priest exhorted, "is subtle and cunning and comes to us cloaked in familiarity."

Of course, the new priest found no duplicity in the long-established practice of co-opting indigenous tradition and mythology whenever there were souls at stake. He even told his own version the tale of La Llorona, clearly targeting the young women in his congregation, and Graciela's older sisters stared at the floor and fingered their rosaries whenever the priest preached on chastity or the sanctity of life.

But Graciela, even at her tender age, knew hypocrisy when she encountered it, and she avoided Father Contreras whenever possible. Still, he cornered her at every opportunity and submitted her to barrages of questions about her grandfather and the comings and goings at the family's house—especially those that transpired after dark. Why was her grandfather never at Mass? Graciela answered the questions vaguely or not at all. One day the priest, in his frustration, lost his temper. Graciela would follow her grandfather into hell if she wasn't careful, the zealot warned her, and his long fingernails had left a mark on her arm when she wrenched it from his grasp and ran away. From that occasion forward she had never set foot in the little church again. She traveled by bus to San Miguel Allende to take Communion and give her confessions.

Bang! Rattle! Bang! Rattle! Bang! Rattle!

"Marge! Open the goddamn door!"

It was Doc. Graciela dropped the herbs in the water and inhaled the cloud of vapor that arose in one long deep breath before racing down the stairs.

Bang! Rattle! Bang! Rattle! Bang! Rattle!

"Goddamn it, Marge! We got a client comin'!"

He was just about to rip through the screen when Graciela opened the door.