Bless Me, Ultima (27 page)

“If you die with a venial sin on your soul, where do you go?” he asked.

“To Purgatory,” Rita answered. The girls always knew the exact answers. I knew most of the answers but I never raised my hand, because I often wanted to ask questions and I knew it would displease father if I did. Really, the only one who ever asked any questions was Florence, and today he was doing penance.

“That’s right, Rita,” he smiled. “And what is Purgatory?”

“Purga,” Abel whispered. The boys giggled.

“I know! I know!” Agnes waved enthusiastically and father smiled. “It’s a place where souls are cleaned so they can go to heaven!”

“And if you die with a mortal sin on your soul?” he asked, and his voice was cold. The church seemed to shudder from a blast of wind outside, and when it settled a side door opened and an old lady dressed in black hobbled up the side aisle to the altar of the Virgin. She lighted one of the candles in a red glass and then she knelt to pray.

“Hell!” Ida gasped, sucking in her breath.

The father nodded. “And is there any escape from hell?” he raised his finger. We nodded no in silence. “No!” he shouted and slapped his hands so we all jumped in our seats. “There is no hope in hell! Hell is the place of eternal damnation! The fires of hell burn forever and ever—”

“Forever and ever,” Agnes said thoughtfully.

“For eternity!” Father Byrnes said emphatically. He reached under his frock and pulled out a tattered, well-worn copy of the catechism book. He hardly ever used it because he knew it by heart, but now he fumbled through and pointed. “Look there on page seventeen. Eternity. What does the word eternity mean?”

We turned to page seventeen. “Forever,” Agnes said.

“Without end,” Rita shuddered.

“About twenty years,” Bones growled. He hadn’t raised his hand and he made everyone laugh so he had to go up to Father Byrnes and hold out his hands, palms up. Father Byrnes took the flat board he kept for such occasions and laid into Bones. One swat of the board was enough to blister the palms, but Bones didn’t seem to feel it. He nodded happily and said, “Thank you father,” then came back to sit down. I saw the old woman at the Virgin’s altar turn and nod approvingly when she saw Father Byrnes strike Bones.

“Now I’m going to tell you a story that will teach you how long eternity lasts. Now, keep in mind, this is how long your soul will be burning in hell if you die with the black spots of mortal sins on it. First, try to imagine our whole country is a mountain of sand. A mountain of sand so high that it reaches to the clouds, and so wide that it stretches from one ocean to the other—”

“Gee whiz!” Abel’s eyes opened wide. Horse, sensing something he could not understand, began to get nervous. Bones rolled his eyes. We all waited patiently for father’s story to develop, because we knew he had a way of telling stories that very clearly illustrated the point he wanted to make. I thought of Florence holding his arms outstretched for eternity.

“Now, suppose across the ocean there is a flat country. The ocean is very wide and it takes weeks to cross it, right. But you want to move this huge mountain of sand from here to there—”

“Get a boat!” Horse nodded nervously.

“No, no, Horse,” Father Byrnes groaned, “keep quiet! Listen! Now girls,” he turned to them, “how long do you think it would take to move this mountain of sand, all the way across the ocean, until you have the mountain over there and an empty place here?” Several hands went up, but he only smiled and relished his question. “Ah, ah, ah,” he grinned, “before you answer, let me tell you how you have to move that enormous mountain of sand. And it’s not with a boat like Horse says—” Everyone laughed. “A little bird, a sparrow, is going to move that mountain for you. And the sparrow can only hold one little grain of sand in its beak. It has to pick up only one grain of sand, fly all the way across the wide ocean, put down the grain of sand, then fly all the way back for another grain of sand. It takes the little bird weeks just to fly across the ocean, and each time it carries only one grain of sand—”

“It would never finish,” June shook her head sadly. “Just in a bucket of sand there must be a million grains, and to move that would take thousands of years. But to move the whole mountain of sand—” She ended her sentence in despair. Horse whinnied and began to bolt in his pew, and Bones had latched his teeth to the back of the pew and was viciously tearing at it, his eyes rolling wildly all the time and the white froth came foaming from his mouth. Even Abel and Lloyd, and the girls, seemed nervous with the impending conclusion of the story.

“Is that how long eternity is?” Agnes asked bravely. “Is that how long the souls have to burn?”

“No,” Father Byrnes said softly, and we looked to him for help, but instead he finished by saying, “when the little bird has moved that mountain of sand across the ocean, that is only the first day of eternity!”

We gasped and fell back in our seats, shuddering at the thought of spending eternity in hell. The story made a great impression on us. Nobody moved. The wind whistled around the church, and as the sun sank in the west one penetrating ray of light gathered the colors of the stained glass window and softly laid them, like flowers, around the Virgin’s altar. The old woman who had been praying there was gone. In the dark aisle of the church Florence stood, his numbed arms outstretched, unafraid of eternity.

A
sh Wednesday. There is no other day like Ash Wednesday. The proud and the meek, the arrogant and the humble are all made equal on Ash Wednesday. The healthy and the sick, the assured and the sick in spirit, all make their way to church in the gray morning or in the dusty afternoon. They line up silently, eyes downcast, bony fingers counting the beads of the rosary, lips mumbling prayers. All are repentant, all are preparing themselves for the shock of the laying of the ashes on the forehead and the priest’s agonizing words, “Thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.”

The anointment is done, and the priest moves on, only the dull feeling of helplessness remains. The body is not important. It is made of dust; it is made of ashes. It is food for the worms. The winds and the waters dissolve it and scatter it to the four corners of the earth. In the end, what we care most for lasts only a brief lifetime, then there is eternity. Time forever. Millions of worlds are born, evolve, and pass away into nebulous, unmeasured skies; and there is still eternity. Time always. The body becomes dust and trees and exploding fire, it becomes gaseous and disappears, and still there is eternity. Silent, unopposed, brooding, forever…

But the soul survives. The soul lives on forever. It is the soul that must be saved, because the soul endures. And so when the burden of being nothing lifts from one’s thoughts the idea of the immortality of the soul is like a light in a blinding storm. Dear God! the spirit cries out, my soul will live forever!

And so we hurried to catechism! The trying forty days of Lent lay ahead of us, then the shining goal, Easter Sunday and first holy communion! Very little else mattered in my life. School work was dull and uninspiring compared to the mysteries of religion. Each new question, each new catechism chapter, each new story seemed to open up a thousand facets concerning the salvation of my soul. I saw very little of Ultima, or even of my mother and father. I was concerned with myself. I knew that eternity lasted forever, and a soul because of one mistake could spend that eternity in hell.

The knowledge of this was frightful. I had many dreams in which I saw myself or different people burning in the fires of hell. One person especially continually haunted my nightmares. It was Florence. Inevitably it was he whom I saw burning in the roaring inferno of eternal damnation.

But why? I questioned the hissing fires, Florence knows all the answers!

But he does not accept, the flames lisped back.

“Florence,” I begged him that afternoon, “try to answer.”

He smiled. “And lie to myself,” he answered.

“Don’t lie! Just answer!” I shouted with impatience.

“You mean, when the priest asks where is God, I am to say God is everywhere: He is the worms that await the summer heat to eat Narciso. He shares the bed with Tenorio and his evil daughters—”

“Oh, God!” I cried in despair.

Samuel came up and touched me on the shoulder. “Perhaps things would not be so difficult if he believed in the golden carp,” he said softly.

“Does Florence know?” I asked.

“This summer he shall know,” Samuel answered wisely.

“What’s that all about?” Ernie asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Come on!” Abel shouted, “bell’s ringing—”

It was Friday and we ran to attend the ritual of the Stations of the Cross. The weather was beginning to warm up but the winds still blew, and the whistling of the wind and the mournful coo-rooing of the pigeons and the burning incense made the agony of Christ’s journey very sad. Father Byrnes stood at the first station and prayed to the bulto on the wall that showed Christ being sentenced by Pilate. Two highschool altar boys accompanied the priest, one to hold the lighted candle and the other to hold the incense burner. The hushed journeyers with Christ answered the priest’s prayer. Then there was an interlude of silence while the priest and his attendants moved to the second station, Christ receiving the cross.

Horse sat by me. He was carving his initials into the back of the seat in front of us. Horse never prayed all of the stations, he waited until the priest came near, then he prayed the one he happened to be sitting by. I looked at the wall and saw that today he had picked to sit by the third fall of Christ.

The priest genuflected and prayed at the first fall of Christ. The incense was thick and sweet. Sometimes it made me sick inside and I felt faint. Next Friday would be Good Friday. Lent had gone by fast. There would be no stations on Good Friday, and maybe no catechism. By then we would be ready for confession Saturday and then the receiving of the sacrament on the most holy of days, Easter Sunday.

“What’s Immmm-ack-que-let Con-sep-shion?” Abel asked. And Father Byrnes moved to the station where Christ meets his mother. I tried to concentrate. I felt sympathy for the Virgin.

“Immaculate Conception,” Lloyd whispered.

“Yeah?”

“The Virgin Mary—”

“But what does it mean?”

“Having babies without—”

“What?”

I tried to shut my ears, I tried to hear the priest, but he was moving away, moving to where Simon helped Christ carry the cross. Dear Lord, I will help.

“I don’t know—” Everybody giggled.

“Shhh!” Agnes scowled at us. The girls always prayed with bowed heads throughout the stations.

“A man and a woman, it takes a man and a woman,” Florence nodded.

But the Virgin! I panicked. The Virgin Mary was the mother of God! The priest had said she was a mother through a miracle.

The priest finished the station where Veronica wiped the bloodied face of Christ, and he moved to Christ’s second fall. The face of Christ was imprinted on the cloth. Besides the Virgin’s blue robe, it was the holiest cloth on earth. The cross was heavy, and when He fell the soldiers whipped Him and struck Him with clubs. The people laughed. His agony began to fill the church and the women moaned their prayers, but the kids would not listen.

“The test is Saturday morning—”

Horse left his carving and looked up. The word “test” made him nervous.

“I, I, I’ll pass,” he nodded. Bones growled.

“Everybody will pass,” I said, trying to be reassuring.

“Florence doesn’t believe!” Rita hissed behind us.

“Shhhh! The priest is turning.” Father Byrnes was at the back of the church, the seventh station. Now he would come down this side of the aisle for the remaining seven. Christ was speaking to the women.

Maybe that’s why they prayed so hard, Christ spoke to them.

In the bell tower the pigeons coo-rooing made a mournful sound.

The priest was by us now. I could smell the incense trapped in his frock, like the fragrance of Ultima’s herbs was part of her clothes. I bowed my head. The burning incense was sweet and suffocating; the glowing candle was hypnotizing. Horse had looked at it too long. When the priest moved on Horse leaned on me. His face was white.

“A la chingada,” he whispered, “voy a tirar tripas—”

The priest was at the station of the Crucifixion. The hammer blows were falling on the nails that ripped through the flesh. I could almost hear the murmuring of the crowd as they craned their necks to see. But today I could not feel the agony.

“Tony—” Horse was leaning on me and gagging.

I struggled under his weight. People turned to watch me carrying the limp Horse up the aisle. Florence left his seat to help me and together we dragged Horse outside. He threw up on the steps of the church.

“He watched the candle too long,” Florence said.

“Yes,” I answered.

Horse smiled weakly. He wiped the hot puke from his lips and said, “Ah la veca, I’m going to try that again next Friday—”

We managed to get through the final week of catechism lessons. The depression that comes with fasting and strict penance deepened as Lent drew to its completion. On Good Friday there was no school. I went to church with my mother and Ultima. All of the saints’ statues in the church were covered with purple sheaths. The church was packed with women in black, each one stoically suffering the three hours of the Crucifixion with the tortured Christ. Outside the wind blew and cut off the light of the sun with its dust, and the pigeons cried mournfully in the tower. Inside the prayers were like muffled cries against a storm which seemed to engulf the world. There seemed to be no one to turn to for solace. And when the dying Christ cried, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” the piercing words seemed to drive through to my heart and make me feel alone and lost in a dying universe.

Good Friday was forlorn, heavy and dreary with the death of God’s son and the accompanying sense of utter hopelessness.

But on Saturday morning our spirits lifted. We had been through the agony and now the ecstasy of Easter was just ahead. Then too we had our first confession to look forward to in the afternoon. In the morning my mother took me to town and bought me a white shirt and dark pants and jacket. It was the first suit I ever owned, and I smiled when I saw myself in the store mirror. I even got new shoes. Everything was new, as it should be for the first communion.