The Exquisite and Immaculate Grace of Carmen Espinoza Read online

  Contents

  Dedication

  Part One:

  Chapter One Goodbye

  Chapter Two Virgin of Solitude

  Chapter Three Day of the Dead

  Chapter Four Into the Desert

  Chapter Five The Between

  Part Two:

  Chapter Six The Forest

  Chapter Seven Through the Gate

  Chapter Eight Slander

  Chapter Nine Gluttony

  Chapter Ten Sloth

  Chapter Eleven Up the Mountain

  Chapter Twelve The Great Balancer

  Part Three:

  Chapter Thirteen The Edge

  Chapter Fourteen The Eternally Damned

  Chapter Fifteen Lust

  Chapter Sixteen Rage

  Chapter Seventeen Trapped

  Chapter Eighteen Epiphany

  Chapter Nineteen The Truth

  Chapter Twenty A Promise

  Part Four:

  Chapter Twenty-One Caught

  Chapter Twenty-Two Death

  Chapter Twenty-Three Saving Yourself

  Chapter Twenty-Four Sacrafice

  Chapter Twenty-Five Exquisite and Immaculate Horror

  Chapter Twenty-Six Goodbye

  Chapter Twenty-Seven Balance

  About the Author

  ASCENDANT

  For my family.

  Part One:

  Chapter One

  Goodbye

  I watched my mother, silent, the white sheets whipping violently in afternoon wind. It is a scene framed through our kitchen window. Her brown feet naked in the bright green grass. She struggled to straighten the wet ghosts and pin them to the line.

  She felt my eyes, watching, and when she turned, I looked down and twisted on the kitchen faucet, ran my hands under the water, hot from pipes broiling in the August heat. She turned back to the laundry and I dared to look again. Permitted myself to stare. Her round calves, wide frame, soft arms reached, stretched. Tendrils of loose black hair had worked loose from her sloppy bun and hung around her neck.

  I am, finally, leaving her today.

  The thought of negotiating our goodbye in a few hours brought a wave of discomfort. An awkward hug, strained well wishes, promises to call that sounded like lies. I wondered, as I had at every major event in my life, what it felt like for other girls. Those mothers who gush, hold, and paw their children. Cry when they walk across every stage. Manage expressions of pride and loss while their children grow further and further away. My mother always came, always filled her folded chair or bleacher seat. Every conference and commencement there she sat, blank, emotionless, dutiful.

  She finished placing her last pin, picked up her basket and headed for the backdoor. I could tell by the way her eyes avoided the kitchen window—she knew I was still here. Shaking drops off my hands into the sink, I turned and left, wiping the rest of the water across the butt of my shorts.

  Our back door sticks in the heat-swollen frame and then cracks a release when my mother forces it with her shoulder. By the time she is placing her basket on the kitchen table, I am halfway down the stairs to my own room. Retreat. I am not yet prepared for what I have planned, not quite sure how the words for her will form and roll like a wrecking ball from my lips. In my mind, these words will deconstruct the foundations of the facade between us. Collapse the beams holding the rickety walls of the non-life around us. Force her to look me in the eye and say something. Anything. Acknowledge that this life suffocating us is not the only reality we have ever known.

  In my mind, my words force her to tell me what happened. In my mind, she will break and finally tell me the truth.

  The thought makes me shake. The very notion of ripping back the curtains on our past, so blatantly disregarding the unspoken rules of our existence together makes my legs feel weak. I am not ready, not yet.

  On the way down to my room, my eyes meet Jesus—again. His hands tied by cords, his legs failing beneath him as men whip his iridescent flesh. The Flagellation of Our Lord Jesus Christ by William Adolphe Bouguereau had hung on the wall over the stairs to the basement since I could remember. This last image before bed every night of my life had terrified my dreams when I was younger. While I slept, men would come and tie my small wrists. Their faces angry with hatred, they hung me from a tree. My arms stretched until I felt my shoulders pull from their sockets while crowds gathered to watch and judge in silence as the men with knotted whips raised their arms to strike. I always woke just as the first blow whispered across my flesh.

  When I was nine, I asked her to take it down.

  She was sitting at the kitchen table, the low light from the overhead fixture illuminating the passages of the worn bible she read from. The aroma from our already eaten and cleared dinner still hung in the air. She pointed her finger to mark her place among the field of words and raised her eyes to meet mine. “Fear should be kept ever in your heart. It is God’s love and will guide you away from temptation.” She turned her head from me, removed her finger, and continued her silent progress through the words.

  Fear had lived in my heart. It was the ever present shadow, the specter of doubt that shrouded my choices. Fear kept me from friends. Fear kept me from boys. Fear kept me from sports, clubs, and dances. Fear kept me from the mall and from the pool. It surrounded me, wove through my existence and infiltrated my heart.

  Fear kept me from her.

  I considered grabbing the gold frame and yanking down The Flagellation of Our Lord Jesus Christ. I imagined storming back up stairs, raising the picture high over my head and puncturing the canvas on the back of a kitchen chair. The chair she sat in every night to read The Lord’s Word.

  I took a deep breath and the next step down into my room. Mother was right, fear in your heart did keep you from temptation.

  My bags sat, packed and waiting, on the cream and blue hand stitched quilt that lay taut and tidy across my single bed. Everything I owned was stuffed into the three mismatched suitcases. Every T-shirt, sock and pair of jeans was folded and ready to move to Mexico with me where I would, in two weeks, begin my junior year in high school.

  Sol Abroad!, this was my escape. Away from her, this house, and all the secrets they kept between them. Sol Abroad—Mexico! was the beginning of my normal life. A life that didn’t include nightly bible readings, The Flagellation of Our Lord Jesus Christ, or the seventeen crucifixes, one for every birthday, that hung on the wall over my bed. I stared at the bags waiting on my bed and realized I was never coming back. Today was my last day in this house.

  I just needed one more thing.

  I swung the strap of the smaller bag over my shoulder and then picked up the other two bags by their handles. The weight of them made my breath short and my heart pump hard in my head. When I had struggled up the last step, I resisted the urge to let them all fall off in a loud thump and instead lowered each one, silent, onto the hardwood floor near the front door. My cab was scheduled to arrive in half an hour.

  The sounds of her came from the kitchen, cupboard doors closing, dishes stacking. She would be starting to make dinner, dinner for one, very soon. Now was my chance. With careful, quiet feet, I headed for the stairs that led up this time. Up to her room…his room. Up to the drawer with the only photographic evidence that our lives had once been very different.

  At the top of the stairs, I stopped and listened. When I heard the kitchen faucet turn on, I continued down the hall and slipped into her bedroom. What I was after, what I was taking with me was the “before” photo. The drawer in her bedside table had a broken runner underneath and meant I had to be careful not t
o pull it out too far or else the whole compartment, and its contents, tipped forward and came crashing onto the floor. I held it carefully with one hand while I shifted past her bible, old copies of American Catholic magazine, pens, a pair of scissors, nail files and clippers—what I was after was at the very bottom.

  There it was, a thin brown leather billfold. The material was soft and worn. Stretched out from contents it no longer contained. Someone had once used this wallet. I unfolded it, removed its only surviving article, the picture of us, and placed it back in the drawer. The picture was thirteen years old, taken on my fourth birthday. We are, all of us, standing together and smiling, an amusement park photo, a gleaming princess castle towers above us in the background.

  The tall man with blonde hair is my father, the father who disappeared from our lives shortly after the photo was taken. My mother is young, beautiful with her dark brown skin and full head of thick black hair. It is styled in a way I have never seen in real life, like a model from a fashion magazine or a Latin movie star. Unbelievably, she is wearing red lipstick. And in her arms, she is holding him, the small boy I can barely remember ever existed. He is, was, my baby brother Daniel.

  Daniel who, despite my mother’s genes, is white like my father with his same shocking blonde hair. He is smiling for the camera with big, round, two year old cheeks. Everyone is smiling—except me. For some reason that I can’t remember, I have a sullen and serious pout. But we were a family. With happy parents and kids who had birthday parties and went to Disneyland.

  A normal family, until Daniel died.

  I heard her steps and spun around fast. Her expression was shock then anger at finding me in her room, “What are you doing in here?” She stood frozen, her eyes darting around the room trying to figure out what I had done, what was changed, ruined or missing. Her eyes eventually landed at my hands and the photo they held. She stared at it, her breaths filled her chest faster, “Give that to me,” she whispered. “Where did you find that?” Her eyes rose to meet mine but she made no move to take the photo from me.

  My heart was a wild animal in my chest. Desperate for escape but also realizing this was it. This was the time. Now she was going to tell me what happened. Why everything changed. What happened to Daniel and why did dad leave us.

  “You have no right—” she started.

  “I have every right!” My shout surprised us both. She took a step back, her hand flying instinctively to the crucifix at her neck. I felt the shift in power between us and pressed forward, “I want to know. Before I leave this house, probably forever, what happened to Daniel?”

  At the mention of his name her mouth and face began to quiver. “Don’t you…” Her eyes squeezed shut until the deep wrinkles around her eyes and forehead mapped out the grief, the suffering his memory, his name, had caused her over the years. Unable to finish her sentence, tears ran down her face and she only shook her head.

  I looked again at the image in my hand. How had that woman, smiling, beautiful, confident, become the one in front of me. Aged beyond her years, trembling, distant, so maniacal in her faith that even the Catholic church we once attended was too, “permissive” for her to continue attending. I watched as she removed her rosary from her apron pocket and began, with fumbling fingers and for probably the hundredth time today, The Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in God, the father almighty, creator of heaven and earth…” her voice was a frightened bird, quivering in her throat. “And in Jesus Christ, His only son, our Lord.”

  I closed my eyes, “Stop it,” I said.

  “Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit.”

  “Stop it,” my voice rose over hers.

  “Born of the Virgin Mary.”

  Rage surged through me. My eyes flew open and I smacked the beads from her hands. “God damn it! I said stop it! You tell me, right now. What happened to Daniel? How did he die? And why did daddy leave us after?”

  She began crossing herself over and over, shaking and mumbling incomprehensible prayers under her breath.

  The words, derived from the secret thoughts I had always held, fell from my lips, “You did it,” I said.

  Her eyes flew open and met mine.

  “You did it, didn’t you? You killed Daniel and daddy left.”

  Her entire body began to quake but her eyes remained locked on mine.

  “Say it! Say it! You killed him. You killed Daniel, your only son, my baby brother. You killed him!”

  Her back arched spastically and she remained frozen before my eyes in this contorted form for seconds before collapsing to her knees. “The devil,” she sobbed to the floor. “The devil stole my baby, took him from me.” Her eyes turned back to me, filled with all the grief and hatred that had sculpted the beautiful happy woman in the picture I still held into the raving mess on the floor before me.

  My mother was crazy.

  I took a step towards the door, there could be no rational goodbyes between us. This would be the ugly end to the strained existence we had shared. “My car will be here any minute,” I explained as I moved past her and for the door.

  “Carmen,” she hissed and grabbed my sleeve.

  Stopped, I looked down at her. Suddenly afraid I had said too much. That she might, now that she knew I suspected her, try to stop me from leaving. Keep me close. But she dropped her arm back to the floor, as if the strain of hanging on to me for even another second was too much to bear.

  “Out there,” she said softly. “You will not be safe. I have tried, Lord knows, I have tried,” she began to sob again. “But if there can be no forgiveness for me…”

  “You don’t need my forgiveness, mother.” I bent down and picked up her rosary, gently cupped one of her hands and let the beads pool into her palm. “It is only God you should ask.”

  She closed her hand over the beads and shook her head gently. “There are some sins, Carmen,” she whispered. “Not even God will forgive.”

  Chapter Two

  Virgin of Solitude

  Eight weeks after arriving in Oaxaca—“It’s pronounced Wa-hawk-a,” mentor Vicky explained—I realized I had made a terrible mistake. Standing, alone, in the Basilica de la Soledad with its gilded interior and Baroque facade, I stared up at the Virgin of Solitude. She was Oaxaca’s patron saint and as such, was draped in a cloak of black velvet and, according to my guidebook, encrusted with six hundred diamonds. Atop her head sat an apple shaped, four pound gold crown.

  “My new best friend,” I whispered. It was my third visit to her this week. Sol Abroad! was not living up the to the “escape from my life” expectations I had been counting on. The belief that once I was free, once I was thousands of miles away from my mother, my life would begin to morph into some semblance of normal had not exactly worked out. In fact, I felt more alone than I ever had.

  The couple standing near me commented in hushed French tones while snapping photos on their phones. Other tourists, paired and grouped, were doing the same all around me. Only The Virgin and I appeared to be alone.

  I shrugged one arm from my backpack until it fell to the side in front of me and removed my camera and the photo from the front zippered pocket. I didn’t need any more pictures of The Basilica de la Soledad or the bejeweled lady of solitude but holding the camera and acting as if I were just like everyone else here helped to quiet the sense of alienation that had been growing in me, larger everyday, since my arrival in Oaxaca. Frozen in form, The Virgin had to helplessly endure the stares—at least I could move around.

  Snapping two quick, out of focus photos, I let the camera dangle from its strap around my wrist while I permitted myself to stare at the family photo I had taken from my mother’s bedside table. It was a dangerous activity in public, every time I looked at the image of that happy family, together, it weakened the facade that kept the river of sadness in check. When I was alone in my room, the sounds of my host family’s routines always just outside my door, holding back the rising flood became impossible. The sobs that rolled up and out o
f me were so great I had to stifle the sounds with my pillow.

  I think Graciana, my host mother, suspected. “You go out, like other students. Have fun.” She was forced to come to me with English because my Spanish remained as bad as it was when I first arrived. Like always, she received my tight smile and a silent nod. The problem was that it wasn’t as easy as, “like other students.” The primary reason why my escape had failed to produced the normal I wanted was because I wasn’t, “like other students.”

  Something was fundamentally wrong with me.

  The other students who had traveled here for Sol Abroad! were adjusting. They were exploring together, studying together, practicing their Spanish together, they were becoming friends. All the things that, it turns out, I didn’t know how to do. Always out of step, it felt as if they were all dancing to a similar rhythm while I couldn’t even hear the music. It was weeks before I could figure it out.

  Debbie, an earnest girl with long brown hair from Nebraska, had opened up during one of our mandatory “group building” sessions. “I never even considered how hard it would be,” she had choked and swallowed big while fat tears ran down her face. “I miss my family so much…all my friends. I keep thinking about all the fun things they are probably doing…without me…I sometimes just want to go home,” she finished in a whisper. Like she was admitting to some dirty and terrible secret. All the while, everyone else was nodding in support, agreement, and mutual understanding. Three of the girls and one guy got up from their chairs to hug her and whisper words of encouragement in her ear.

  I alone sat stony, unrelating. It wasn’t that I didn’t know sadness, it was that my sadness flowed from a different well altogether. I didn’t miss my mother, I was relieved to be away from her intense brand of religious crazy. Hardly something I could share out loud with a group of people who, small parental annoyances aside, all seemed to have really great parents. My sadness was a different animal residing in an entirely different country. All of them would eventually go back to their families, their friends. Their sadness was temporary, but mine, mine flowed from the inexhaustible source, it was the realization that you had no family to ever go back to.