The Temptation of Demetrio Vigil (31 page)

I smiled broadly. “It sounds really nice.”

“Good.” Dr. Bergant stood as if to leave. “I think
Debbie told you about meals, and the rules, and so you’re all set
there. You can eat with the others - but honestly, I’d recommend
against it. The room service is quite good here. If you need
anything, you call her. We have a TV in your room - not all the
girls here get one. You can use the gym, and walk around if you
like. Is there anything else I can help you with for now?”

“I’d like to let my best friend know I’m here,” I
said. “And my art teacher. My mom took my phone.”

“Sure,” said Dr. Bergant. She lowered her voice to a
whisper, as she handed me her own smart phone. “Use mine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course. I’ll step into the hall for a moment to
give you some privacy. We don’t have to tell Debbie or anyone else,
okay?”

“Really?”

“Sure.”

“Wow. Why would you do that for me?”

Debbie sighed, and smiled sadly at
me. “Because, Maria, and I’m going to be completely honest with
you, just like you’ve been honest with me. We get a lot of hard
cases here. Most of them are very serious. Schizophrenics,
sociopaths, suicidals, masochists, severely bipolar. People who
simply cannot function in the world. You name it, we have it. And
I’ve seen enough and done enough to know pretty quickly when I’m
facing someone who has a serious mental illness. That’s what this
institution is for, young people with serious mental
illnesses.”

“I realize that.” I felt guilty because I hadn’t
told the doctor the part about me believing in ghosts. I knew that
if I did tell her, she might change her opinion of me, and
quickly.

“Well, as a doctor and a
professional, I will tell you - and I’d stake my license on what
I’m about to tell you, Maria - you are a normal girl who has some
disagreements with her mother about how to live her life. You don’t
belong here.”

“Then why don’t you just release me?” I asked.

The doctor looked at her feet for a moment before
locking eyes with me. “Because, think of where you’d end up. Back
with your mother. I hope to give you skills in your time here that
will help you cope with her. Sadly, sometimes you have to go
through the motions to assuage the egos of certain people who think
they know everything, just enough to calm them down, in order to
avoid even worse situations.”

“Thank you,” I said, tears filling my eyes
again.

Dr. Bergant smiled warmly. “You remind me a lot of
myself,” she said. “More than you probably realize. Now, I’ll just
be outside for a few minutes. Call or email whomever you need to.
Visiting hours are from four to six in the afternoons.”

I called Kelsey and Yazzie, and told them quickly
where I was. Kelsey was mortified, and after professing her undying
hatred for my mother, promised to fly back from New York early if
her parents would let her, to help get me out of this place. Yazzie
promised to come see me the next afternoon, adding that she’d seen
all of this play out in a dream. “Be very careful,” she said.
“There are shape shifters among you there.” It seemed an
overstatement, considering the vast quantity of crazy people in the
place.

After that charming bit of news, I called Demetrio,
but he didn’t answer. I texted him, to let him know where I was,
and to warn him against texting or calling me on my phone, which
was under my mother’s control.

When Dr. Bergant returned, she had a small paper cup
with two pink pills in it, and a glass of water.

“I know being here can provoke
anxiety,” she said. “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with you
at all, Maria. But if you want to take the edge off, and just relax
a little bit, these should help.”

I took the pills, and looked curiously at them, and
at Dr. Bergant. “I don’t like to take drugs unless I really need
them.”

“Oh, these are harmless. Not addictive or anything
like that. If you don’t want them, don’t take them. I just thought
I’d offer, since we have so many of them lying around.”

She smiled calmly, reclaimed her phone, and told me
when to expect her tomorrow for our next session.

♦

I got through the night, somehow, with the
help of room service (filet mignon with garlic mashed potatoes,
strawberry cheesecake with whipped cream) and cable TV. I was,
however, horrified to see a story on the national cable news
channels, about a local child who was missing - an adorable,
big-eyed four-year-old girl named Nicole Archuleta, from Valencia
County, whom no one could find. I watched in shock for a moment,
and thought about my little half-sisters, who were roughly the same
age. They were so defenseless. Who would kidnap such a tiny child?
I quickly changed the channel, to a romantic comedy, and thought
about Demetrio. I wondered if he was trying to reach me on my
phone, and if he was, what my mother was saying to him when he
called. I hoped he’d gotten my text.

Around eleven o’clock, I readied myself for slumber,
the whole routine with brushing of teeth and tossing of used
clothes into my duffle to take back home. It took about half an
hour after flipping off the light for me to actually drift into
sleep, because I could hear someone crying violently in the next
suite over, but it finally happened. I had the myoclonic jerk of
electricity that was like a kick-start, and off I went, away from
this horrible place.

At first, I suppose, it was a
sleep like any other - blank and sort of numb. But then I felt like
I woke up, yet didn’t; I was still asleep, but I
felt
awake. I have seen
this state described as a night terror. At first, however, there
was nothing terrifying about it. More like uplifting, as I
literally felt myself rising out of my body in the bed.

Before I knew what was happening, I found myself
floating in the room, with my back against on the ceiling, able to
look down and see myself there in the bed. I had no idea I looked
so unattractive when I slept, with my mouth appearing unhinged and
saliva dribbling onto my pillow. Oh well. That didn’t matter. What
mattered was that my soul was out of my body, or at least out of
the version of my body down there; I had another body of my own,
too, and it looked exactly like my other. It was very confusing. I
wasn’t willow and spirit like. I was solid and me-like. Dimensions,
I thought. That’s what it had to have been. I wondered then how
many dimensions there actually were, and whether there were other
versions of me out there right then. If there were, I hoped they
weren’t doing anything too stupid, like dancing the Macarena or
running around with their underwear on their heads.

Honestly, and all joking aside, it
panicked me at first to see myself sleeping below myself, as it
should have, and I drifted down to get a closer look at myself, to
make sure I was still breathing. I was. My hovering self breathed a
sigh of relief, which meant there were two Marias breathing in the
room. This brought me little comfort and much distress.

You ain’t dead, mamita. Quit worrying so much.

I heard his voice, but couldn’t
see him anywhere. I felt him, though, as soon as I heard the words.
I felt light and energy all around me, and a spinning, sort of like
when I’d conveyed with him before, but different this time. The
light and energy were Demetrio. I knew this. I will never know or
understand how I knew it, only that I
did
. It was almost how I felt when I
played piano or danced. I was within him, and he was soaking
through me, and we were mixed and it was truly the most ecstatic
and glorious feeling I’d ever experienced.

I was out, over the top of Rancho la Curación, now,
and then higher, higher into the sky about Pojoaque. The world
moved beneath me, or us, and I watched as it blurred, day and
night, day and night, backwards.

I have something to show you, so you can understand
me better, mamita.

Slowly the spinning stopped, and I floated down
again, toward the earth. The light and energy that had surrounded
me dissolved, and reformed now, into a recognizable human body. His
human body. Demetrio was at my side, his hand in mine, as our feet
gently alighted upon the ground. We were no longer over my the
mental institution. We were landing, noiselessly, in front of a
small, decrepit adobe house in the middle of rural New Mexico, the
typical kind of place you saw but never stopped at when you were
driving on any of the back roads of the state. A blanket with a
cartoon character on it hung over the front window, covering it
instead of a curtain. Trash and broken toys littered the small
front yard. Nothing grew here. Everything was dirt and neglect.

“Listen,” he said.

From inside came the sounds of loud rap music, and
screaming. Plates breaking. Fighting. A woman crying, a man
shouting.

“What is this place?” I asked him.

“My home.” He flinched as he said it, and this was
by far the most vulnerable he had ever appeared to me yet.

I looked at him with sorrow, and he met my gaze with
a sort of pained peace of his own.

“It’s okay,” he told me, though I could tell he
still smarted from whatever this place meant to him. “It’s over
now. Easier for me to show you than tell you, though. Come.”

He walked toward the house, and I followed. Then,
astoundingly, he walked through the wall, and I hesitated.

You can do it too.

I stepped forward, and reached for the wall, but
felt nothing there. It was like a hologram. I stepped forward, and
instantly found myself inside of a filthy living room, with
mismatched, stained furniture and piles of dirty clothes and rotten
food everywhere. He stood to one side, watching as a man beat a
woman in front of two filthy-faced young boys. The boys appeared to
be about the same age, both wearing stained SpongeBob pajamas,
holding onto a chair and looking about himself with deep, sorrowful
eyes that had extremely long lashes. The slightly bigger child, who
had shocking green eyes, huddled in a corner, watching with fear as
the man pounded the woman’s face with his fist, and bloodied the
woman’s nose.

“You can’t do that to my mom!” the green-eyed boy
screamed, finally, as he charged the man, grabbing him around the
knees. “I hate you!”

The man stumbled, and fell, nearly crushing the boy.
The other child began to cry.

The woman appeared to be unconscious.

The man’s fist reared back, his face in a passionate
rage, and he struck the green-eyed child, so hard I could not
watch. The child did not cry, however. His beautiful eyes, so full
of fear and a desire to help his mother in the moments before, took
in the situation with what appeared to be a cool detachment - and
seemed to change, before me. They became cold, hateful, nearly
ruined. It became obvious to me that this brutality was all this
poor child had ever known.

“Come on,” the green-eyed boy said to the other
child, taking him in his arms as well as he could, and running with
him, past the man and woman, who, now that she was conscious again.
were back at each other’s throats, and out the front door.

Demetrio turned toward me, and indicated that we
were to follow the children outside. We walked through the wall,
and watched as the green-eyed boy stumbled under the weight of his
brother, across the yard in his bare feet, over broken beer bottles
and bits of tumbleweeds. He made no sound, but tears flowed from
his eyes, sadness, yes, but also hatred and indignation. I’d never
seen such feelings played across the face of one so young before,
and it frightened me.

My heart broke.

The green-eyed boy walked around the side yard of
the hovel, to where a large splintery wooden doghouse sat abandoned
in the dark, against a broken chain-link fence, illuminated in an
orange glow from a streetlight on the block.

“You’ll be safe here,” he said to the other child.
He put the brown-eyed boy in the doghouse, and, after finding a
large, sharp stick, sat down outside of it, like a sentry. “I’ll
protect you, Demetrio. If he comes back, I will kill him.”

I gasped, horrified. Demetrio, the adult Demetrio,
put an arm around me.

“This is my earliest clear memory of your
dimension,” he told me. “That’s my brother, Hilario.”

“Is that man your father?” I asked, horrified.

“No. My father died the year I was born.”

“Is it your brother’s father?”

“No. We have the same father, different mothers. We
were born two months apart.”

“So the woman there is not your
mother, but his?”

“No. She is my mother. It’s complicated. She raised
us both. Hilario’s mother abandoned him with us. My dad had an
affair, and Hilario’s mom showed up after he died to tell my mom.
She said she’d been protecting him while he was alive, but now that
he was gone she wanted the truth to be known. She was a drug
addict, and left him for my mom to raise. My mom caved under the
stress and depression from knowing that my father, her one true
love, had cheated on her. She turned to alcohol.”

“I’m so sorry,” I told him, collapsing into his
arms.

“It’s why I can’t just write Hilario off, even
though he’s still in the gang and doesn’t want to leave,” he said,
his eyes focused on the furious, brave child sitting on the ground
and facing the night alone. “He always stuck up for me, and my
mom.”

“I understand,” I said.

“The mayordomos, Lupe and Diego - especially Diego -
they agree with your art teacher that my brother might mean me harm
now. But I don’t believe it. It’s just how he comes across. There’s
still hope for his soul. I’m trying to save him. They want me to
challenge him to a duel at the Grand Coliseum, to find out if he’s
good for me or bad.”