She Walks in Shadows(63)
Rodopi Sisamis
ROSA COMES BACK from the hospital and takes a bat to Jimmy’s windshield. I miss the entire thing because I’m working in my mom’s bodega on a Saturday morning. I’m pricing bottles of Head and Shoulders with a permanent marker when the air around me turns into an electric current. I hear the muted screaming and car alarms seconds later. I throw down the bottles and marker, running to the front of the store, before I hear my mom telling me to get away and get back to work. I miss the whole thing. I’ll always remember that Rosa came back from the hospital and destroyed Jimmy’s windshield with a bat, but I’ll never remember the look on her face, the rage on Jimmy’s, or the way his windshield went from solid to gummy as it sagged into the driver’s seat.
I curse not being able to enjoy my weekends the way my friends do. I could rebel more. I could put my foot down and demand to be allowed to have a social life. Even though I’m an only child, I have somehow disappointed my parents so deeply that nothing I do is right. If I can’t be what my parents want me to be, the least I can do is be obedient. Even my looks seem to offend them. My hair radiates from my scalp like a froth of brown curls, some days simply reaching for madness. My front teeth have a gap and instead of lateral incisors, I have short, chubby fangs. For all these reasons, I don’t really get away with anything. I don’t even try. When my mom wakes me up to go work in the bodega with her, I go. I stay there all day, even though I want to be anywhere else. I envy the customers who walk in to buy things, then head happily into the sunny, warm afternoons, the rest of their days filled with unknown possibility. When I bring this up to my mother, she mentions that I enjoy food and shelter, and this is what it means to work.
“But don’t people who work get paid and have days off?” I ask, a limp rag hanging from my hand. I have been cleaning coagulated soda from the bottom of a refrigerator. She gives me a dangerous look then goes back to the mail she’s beens sorting through.
“La nevera con los galones de leche necesita limpieza.”
I hate cleaning the milk fridge. There’s always some weird, slimy, black stuff that covers the gallons of milk when they’re delivered that makes me wonder if they’re stored in some kind of factory filled with rats that like to shit on the plastic gallons. I wipe them down, anyway. I organize them by expiration dates, The fresh gallons of milk in the back of the fridge and the older ones in the front.
I look at the clock and calculate another eight hours to go before we close. Even then, I’ll have to go home and do nothing. My entire life feels like a prison sentence. The next morning, my mom stands over my bed as I’m sleeping and asks me if I’m going to church with her. Whether I say yes or no makes no difference: Either way, I have to go with her. I sit up in bed and, without waiting for an answer, she makes her way to the kitchen to make my father breakfast.
As we head out, my mother frowns at my hair and starts muttering under her breath, so I walk ahead, waiting for her in the apartment building’s hallway until she’s ready. The entire walk is a litany of criticisms. I’m relieved when we make it to the church. The large sandstone cathedral has two bell towers and a center tower with a rose-stained glass window in its center. The towers spiral toward the sky like daggers, overlooking the neighborhood, standing in judgment over its people. The cathedral has stood for as long as I’ve been alive and stood before I was even conceived. It’s one of the most successful dioceses in the city, in part because of its flexibility and its acknowledgment of its changing flock. As the people who lived in the neighborhood changed, so did the faces of the gods and goddesses.
The singing from inside is soft, growing louder as we walk up the marble front steps. As I step through the first set of double doors, awe and humility rise inside of me almost immediately. I buy a thin, white candle and light it at the feet of the Mother as she rises in the dark foyer, sucking all the light to her body, her lily-white arms extended, her face peaceful, smiling, as she steps on the head of a man who is in the process of turning into a snake.
“Save us from the patriarchy,” a woman nearby whispers in prayer.
I look at the face of the man: battered, bruised, his face twisted in humiliation. I don’t feel sorry for him. My grandmother told me about those men. The things they did, the violence and the horror that they spread upon the world.
“They thought they would get away with it forever. And for a little while, they did. A long time, they buried our mothers, our daughters, our sons, and husbands. But we bided our time. We bided our time and we came back.”
She puffed on her cigar and closed her eyes, her face smooth.
We enter through the heavy, wooden double doors. The floor stretches in front of us, a green, marble lake flecked with spots of white and black. The pillars are giant gods of marble, leading the eyes to the ceiling, which is filled with frescoes of the rich history of our faith. Saints at writing desks; angels leaning over their shoulders, whispering secrets. Saints in long, red robes, radiant suns around their heads, their lips crimson smiles, eyes cast upward.
My mother’s auburn hair shines in the soft light as she leads the way down the rows of pews. The fourth pew from the front is our place. We slide in and I pick out the program for the weekly mass from the hymn book rack. We both kneel and pray quietly. I ease off the kneeler and sit back in the pew, the program in my lap. The altar is being quietly set up by all the volunteers.