Vigil Read online

  I often wondered how it would be when Carlitos grew up and became a man. Would he be like his philandering father or the other men in the village who beat their wives? It didn’t seem possible that sweet, lovable Carlitos could ever be like that, and it occurred to me that if I ever hoped to get married, I could spare myself quite a bit of suffering by marrying him. I suggested this to Carlitos, who, just as I expected, thought it was a fine idea, and one afternoon after we’d been playing by the river, we approached our local priest and asked him to marry us right then and there.

  “I’ll be honored,” he said. “In about ten years.”

  “We don’t want to wait that long,” I declared, and Carlitos took my hand, which I found very touching.

  The priest laughed, and then considered us more seriously. “You are still too young to get married, but I will give you a premarital blessing,” he said, and placing his hand on our mud-splattered heads, he muttered a quick prayer. That was good enough for the time being, and Carlitos and I ran around for days telling everybody we were husband and wife until we grew tired of it and invented a new game.

  The only man Mama respected was Monsignor Romero. But then again, everybody in our village not only respected but revered him. He was the archbishop of our country, and when civil war broke out many of his own kind turned their backs on him, but he never turned his back on us. He openly condemned the violence that was taking place in villages like ours all over the country. At that time people needed to hear him speak more than they needed to eat, and they gathered around any working radio they could find. Mama told me that listening to him helped her understand that every human being has the right to live with dignity no matter how poor they might be, and that to do this they had to organize themselves.

  As difficult as it was for me to understand the trouble that happened between men and women, it was nearly impossible for me to grasp this bigger problem involving soldiers, presidents, and priests. I hadn’t seen the fighting with my own eyes, but I’d heard about the killings taking place and noticed that more young men were disappearing from the villages. When I asked Mama about it, she told me that because of their physical strength and foolishness, men were the ones who fought in wars.

  Feeling rather like a mystical apprentice, I offered my own philosophical tidbit for her to ponder: “Maybe this is why men are sometimes cruel to women—because they are the ones who must go to war.”

  Mama looked up from her sewing with a start, her eyes still as her mind turned over what I’d said. I felt that I was on the brink of possessing the same illumination that gifted her, but then she dispelled my vision with a quick shake of her head. “You have it backwards, mija. It’s because the men are cruel that we have war in the first place,” she said, turning back to her work.

  If Mama said the war was all around us, then I knew it had to be true, but life in our village appeared relatively unchanged because of it. The adults continued to work on the coffee plantations nearby as the children attended to their chores and went to school. In the evenings the women cooked while the men that were left gathered in the square to drink. Most days it wasn’t unusual to walk into our own small hut and find the table in the center of the room draped with rich fabrics of vibrant purples and blues trimmed with intricate gold embroidery and to hear the gentle rhythmic sound of my mother’s sewing machine. Aside from her philosophical talents, Mama was also the best seamstress around for miles, and the local parish priests always brought their mending to her.

  My father’s only saving grace was that before he disappeared he’d given my mother a magnificent sewing machine complete with a foot pedal and a carved wooden cabinet beneath. I was fascinated by the glossiness of the black machine that my mother regularly polished with a soft cloth, and I often ran my fingers along the pretty floral carvings that decorated the doors of the cabinet below. Ours was the only sewing machine in the village, and my mother said that my father had probably stolen it, but this didn’t seem to bother her too much, and she never attempted to find its rightful owner.

  It was a wonder to see our simple hut contain such magnificent colors that shimmered with their own sacred light, and when I touched the fabrics I imagined that this is how it must be to touch an angel. I felt privileged to get this behind-the-scenes glimpse at God’s glory, and of course I was very proud to have a mother who was deemed worthy of mending such splendor. One of my favorite pastimes was to watch her work at her sewing machine as the needle valiantly marched toward its destination, occasionally holding the fabrics for her when she asked me to help, and learning how to sew myself, although never with her precision and finesse.

  Sitting straight in her chair as she worked so that the tip of her long, black ponytail just swept the dirt floor, she often told me of her dream to one day own a little dress shop. “People will come from all over to buy the pretty clothes I make. Or else, they’ll bring clothes for me to alter when they get too fat or too skinny. They’ll pay me well, and I’ll be able to save enough money to buy a house for just you and me. This house will have running water, electricity, and a tile roof that doesn’t rattle when it rains.”

  These dreams sounded wonderful to me, and when she showed me her excellent work it seemed very likely that they would one day come true.

  “Is this what you see in your future, Mama?” I asked, hoping that her powers of prediction might apply in this as well.

  Mama shook her head sadly. “I can’t see things for myself. If I could, I would never have taken up with your father. Of course,” she said brightening up, and giving me another one of her rare smiles, “without him, I wouldn’t have you.”

  When Mama was finished with her mending I’d help her fold the long robes and put them away, always careful to keep the corners tight and to fold along the seams. This wasn’t easy as we were both small and needed to each stand on a chair to keep the fabrics from touching the floor. Then she would store them in the carved cabinet beneath her sewing machine that she reserved for her best work. She was certain they wouldn’t get dusty in there, and my cousins and I knew that tampering with anything in Mama’s sewing cabinet would lead to swift and certain punishment.

  Regardless of how much our tin roof rattled when it rained, I lived happily beneath it with my mother, my tía Juana, and my four cousins. Life was usually peaceful, but eventually, just as Mama predicted, Tía Juana found out that her husband was cheating on her and she threw him out, saying that she never wanted to see him again and that even if he was the last man left on the planet, she wouldn’t allow him to lay a finger on her. Even so, every once in a while Tío Carlos would show up and sleep with Tía Juana in her hammock until she threw him out again.

  We slept in hammocks behind blankets that we strung up from the ceiling for privacy, and at night when he was with us I sometimes heard him and my tía Juana groaning and breathing heavily from behind their blanket. If the moon was full, I’d peek between the spaces in the blankets and catch glimpses of them with their arms and legs twisted around each other as though they were wrestling.

  “Go to sleep, mija,” Mama whispered when she saw me spying on them. “Do you want cockroaches crawling in your ears and out through your eyes?”

  “No, Mama.”

  “Well that’s what happens to people who spy.”

  I lay back down in my hammock next to her, as worried about Tía Juana as I was about the cockroaches. “This time I think they might kill each other,” I whispered.

  “He won’t kill her,” Mama replied. “This is what men and women do together at night. It’s a private thing.”

  “Why do they do this private thing?”

  “This is how they make babies, and also how they try to forget about them, if only for a few seconds,” she replied with a cynical chuckle.

  “I don’t understand, Mama. Why do they want to forget?”

  “Enough questions for now, mija. Now go to sleep.”

  But sometimes it was impossible to sleep with so much carrying-o
n, and a strange sound that reminded me of the slapping and slurping sounds Carlitos and I made when we played with the wet mud by the riverbank. Private as this business between men and women was, I thought that they should’ve been much quieter about it. And if Tía Juana should explode in a fit of rage and start yelling at the top of her lungs about the new women he had and the other children he’d fathered, then nobody slept, not even Carlitos, who everybody joked could sleep through an earthquake.

  Tío Carlos wasn’t the sort of man who’d beat a woman to control her. Instead, when Tía Juana accused him he hung his head and nodded, as though genuinely ashamed. Then he’d go away to the hills or to the other woman’s house and be gone for weeks. Many people considered him to be weak and not worthy of respect because of the way he tolerated Tía Juana. During festivals, when the men gathered around to drink their aguardiente from small jugs they passed between them, rarely was he invited to join them. Even so, my cousins were always happiest when he was at home, and I have to admit that even though he wasn’t my father, I felt a mysterious sense of completeness when he was home as well—a sense that we’d borrowed a dream from another life and made it our own.

  I secretly envied my cousins for knowing who their father was. And no matter how bitterly my mother and Tía Juana criticized him after he’d gone, when I came home in the afternoon and didn’t find Tío Carlos sitting at the table or napping in the hammock strung up outside the house, I missed him, and imagined that he’d gone to meet my father deep in the mountainous jungle. In my vision they both had guns strapped to their bodies and together they fought off the evil that plagued our land. One day they would return to the village as heroes, redeeming not only themselves but all men, so that even my mother would have no choice but to welcome them home. Of course, this was a bit of wishful thinking I was reluctant to share with her.

  One night I was lying in my hammock when Tía Juana came home, breathless and sobbing so hard she could hardly speak. At first I thought that she’d finally run into Tío Carlos in the company of his other wife and children. During her raging fits I’d often heard her say that if this ever happened she’d hack them up with the machete she carried at all times for just that reason. But as I listened, I soon realized that her upset had nothing at all to do with Tío Carlos, but with the war. Mama and Tía Juana usually spoke softly to each other when we slept, but their horror was too great and our house was too small to keep us from hearing what they had to say.

  Tía Juana’s voice was shaky as she recounted what she’d heard on the radio during her Bible study meeting, that Monsignor Oscar Romero had been gunned down on the altar of his church immediately after giving his homily. The only man who had the courage to stand up to presidents and generals and the entire world and to publicly condemn the murder of the poorest campesinos in our country was now dead, and there was no one left to defend us.

  After Tía Juana finished telling Mama what she’d heard there was only silence. Trembling, I got out of my hammock and peeked behind the blanket. Mama was sitting very still and staring off into space, as though she could see beyond the walls of our hut, through the jungle, and over the hills into the future. Tía Juana lay her head on the table, and the only movement in the room was the flickering flame of the kerosene lamp that created a gruesome pattern of shadows and light in the room—as though the demons of hell were dancing with delight at having heard the news.

  The next day when Mama and I were alone in the house, she emptied out her sewing cabinet with the brass hinges. Then she directed me to get inside. Although I had no idea what she was up to, I did as I was told. It was a tight squeeze but if I brought my knees up to my chest and lowered my head, she was able to close the doors without too much difficulty.

  “Can you breathe?” she asked.

  “Yes, but it’s very uncomfortable,” I replied.

  “That’s okay. As long as you can breathe. That’s all that matters.”

  When I asked her why she had me do this she didn’t answer, but I saw the same fear and resignation in her eyes I’d seen when she heard about Monsignor Romero.

  The pain of the Monsignor’s murder was abated by the presence of a new village priest, who came from San Salvador. He also spoke boldly and made people momentarily forget about their fear, and believe that life could be better if they didn’t give in to it. “Peaceful organization is your right,” he’d say, and the villagers cheered. He’d slam his fist on the pulpit and cry, “Politics should never take precedence over human life!” and the villagers roared their approval.

  Like the other priests, Father Lucas often came to our house with his sewing work for Mama, and although he always had a smile for me, I felt intimidated by him and feared that if I looked into his eyes for too long, he’d be able to see the imperfection of my soul in all its gruesome detail. He and Mama and Tía Juana would talk about many things, and with their help he began to organize community meetings, some lasting until long after my cousins and I had gone to bed. When they returned to the house their spirits were always high, but I wished that these meetings would stop, or at least that Mama wouldn’t attend and would stay home with me. When I asked her to stop going, she scowled at me. “We have to be brave, mija. It’s the only way to survive this war that’s all around us.”

  All this talk of courage and organizing and new order made very little sense to me. I knew that I would never be courageous like my mother. I was a simple coward who didn’t like hearing so many stories about death and martyrdom. They didn’t provoke anything in my heart but fear. For the first time I had difficulty sleeping, and if I should dream at night, it was always about escape. I’d run for miles into the blue-green jungles that blanketed the mountains around us. I’d run through the darkness, beyond the fear and the need for courage and resilience and vigilance, to the place where there is only quiet and peace.

  One night I was awakened by an eerie howling sound. It wasn’t unusual to hear stray dogs in the night, and sometimes even coyotes calling to one another from the mountains, but this howling was different, as though the animals were closing in on us from beyond the jungle. It caused me to sit up in my hammock and listen more carefully. My mother was also awake, her ear tuned to this mysterious sound. She whispered to me so the others wouldn’t hear. “Go to sleep, mija, it’s only the dogs. They must be very hungry tonight.” I did as I was told, but I woke up several more times throughout the night, and when I looked at my mother’s face, her eyes were always open.

  Very early the next morning, before the sun came up, there was a great commotion in the village. A group of National Guard soldiers had arrived and were demanding that everyone report outside to the square. Those who didn’t obey would be shot on the spot. My cousins began to whimper and scamper about as Tía Juana fussed and barked orders of her own. Carlitos shoved my shoulder as he got dressed to get me moving, but I was too frightened to leave my hammock, and I waited for instructions from my own mother.

  Tía Juana corralled her brood and headed out the door. Before she left, she turned to my mother, who still hadn’t made any preparations to leave, and said. “For once, do as you’re told, Maria. Don’t be a fool.”

  I was preparing to get out of my hammock and follow them out the door when my mother stopped me with a hand to my shoulder. Without a word she led me to the sewing cabinet that she’d already emptied in the corner of the room, and I saw the beautiful robes of the priest she’d been mending lying on the dirt floor. I began to quiver with fear.

  “Let’s imagine, mija,” she said. “Let’s imagine that we’re birds and that we’ve found a place to rest. Here you will be safe until I come for you again.”

  As I looked into my mother’s eyes, the commotion outside grew faint, until finally, I couldn't hear it at all. I heard only her voice, speaking gently and calming my fears. I climbed into the cabinet that she held open for me, crouched down, and pulled my knees up to my chest. As she closed the doors, I stuck my hand out to stop her and said, “Mama,
I’m afraid to be alone. I want to be with you and the others. But mostly, I want to be with you.”

  “I will always be with you, mija,” she said. “Now you must be quiet. No matter what you hear, you mustn’t leave your little nest until I come for you.”

  “And when will you come for me?” I asked.

  “Soon,” she said, “very soon.” Then she closed the doors and threw the robes over the sewing machine. I heard her footsteps as she ran out the door of our hut toward the square.

  I don’t know how long I waited, perhaps an hour, maybe two. Soon my back began to ache and I felt the excruciating need to stretch my legs and straighten my neck, but it never occurred to me that I could leave the cabinet. I was to wait for Mama as she had instructed. She would return for me, of that I had no doubt.

  From inside the cabinet, with the robes draped over the top, I could hear very little of what was going on outside. A couple of shots rang out, but that is all, and the frantic commotion seemed to have calmed. Perhaps the soldiers had left and I would soon be allowed to leave my hiding place. I had almost convinced myself that this is what had happened when I felt the ground beneath me vibrating through the cabinet. Someone was approaching the hut, but these were not my mother’s light and agile footsteps. These were the heavy plodding footsteps of an angry soldier.

  All at once, the light wooden door was kicked open with such a force that it crashed against the wall of the hut, causing the roof to rattle and several items to fall off the shelf and shatter on the floor. How many times had my cousin Carlitos done the same? And how many times had Tía Juana spanked him for it?

  I closed my eyes and stopped breathing in an effort to stop trembling. I imagined myself to be even smaller than I was. I was no longer a baby bird waiting for her mother to return, but an egg unable to breathe or move or to make even the slightest sound. Through my shell I heard the intruder’s breath deep in his throat, his grunts as he tore down the blankets one by one from the ceiling. Beyond the hut and through the open door I heard the soldiers outside laughing and jeering like drunken fools throwing stones at a stray dog, and cheering when the stone met its mark. The bleeding hound limped off whimpering as it prepared to die alone. I would never understand how suffering and death could ever be so amusing, and all at once a knowing seeped in from the darkest recesses of my soul and I became aware of the pitiful sounds of women and children, my mother, my aunt, and my cousins weeping, gasping and begging for their lives. I saw them kneeling on the blood-soaked earth, some with their eyes turned toward heaven and others staring straight ahead. One by one the shots rang out, and they fell over one another until nobody was left standing. And then I heard a howling wind blowing through a cold, barren landscape without trees or mountains or valleys. And a river trickled forth from the wound in my heart. It bled through everything I’d ever known, ever hoped for or believed in.