Woman of Light (75)

Luz walked the innards of the church, past the old library, near the children’s room, beneath an archway of roses dedicated to La Virgen. When she finally arrived in the church’s kitchen, she filled a tin pitcher with water from the rusty pipes and made her way through the lobby toward the stairwell. She stopped in the doorway of the sanctuary, peering at the few seats already taken by elderly relatives. The altar was set with lilies and lavender drapes, reminding Luz of Easter Mass. Incense curled in the air and somewhere, from a distant pew, a wet cough echoed over wooden floors. Avel was also seated, his hair obediently parted to one side. At the sight of him, Luz felt happiness, a kind of ease. He turned then, and the lovers shared a look of admiration. Luz stuck her left hand into the holy water beside the door and blessed herself.

“Wow. You look…very covered.” It was David. He grinned and held his hat in his hands, dressed finely in a black suit, his cologne mixing with the musk of his skin.

Luz smiled. “It’s the rules, David. You should be used to that, at your churches.”

“If it wasn’t an ordinance of God, I might think that someone was afraid you’d overshadow them.”

Luz held up the pitcher. “I’m on way to deliver water. Do you need help finding your seats? I assume your date hasn’t arrived yet.”

David was quiet for a beat. He licked the edge of his right thumb as if about to turn the page of a book. “Going stag for this one. Most beautiful girls in town are already here.”

“Oh,” said Luz. “Well, please excuse me. Today, I am a servant of the bride.”



* * *



—

Lizette stood in the hallway outside the chamber with several cousins fanning her while Teresita and Maria Josie adjusted her veil.

“Where,” Lizette said to Luz, “were you?”

Luz held up the pitcher and was quickly dismissed.

Teresita let out a yelp. “You have to stand still,” she said to Lizette. “One of your pins got me.”

The women affixed the mantilla to Lizette’s hair, Maria Josie patting her head a little too hard as some kind of joke. What a sight she was. Lizette inhaled, her wedding gown tightening across her chest. She was beautiful, her hair and makeup impeccable, the scent of jasmine drifting from her body. She was joyous—it spilled from her eyes, her smile, her touch on the back of Luz’s hand. The cousins and aunties had gathered around her, as if Lizette were now a mother hen, leading her own flock. One of the madrinas appeared in the hallway, letting the bridal party know it was time to enter the church.

They marched into the sanctuary in pairs. Luz scanned the craned-necked crowd of Westside Mexicanos and Park Lane Filipinos and some Greeks and a few Italians and a full pew of Natalya’s family—how they all whispered and aahed at the sight of the wedding party. The men were dressed in gossamer barongs that Alfonso had special-ordered from California, the women were brilliant in lilac sheaths. Luz had linked arms with the best man, a cousin of Alfonso’s named Remilio from San Francisco. He had a skimpy mustache over shapely lips, a perpetual smile across his fetching face. As she walked the aisle to the altar, Luz remembered flashes of her childhood—she and Lizette dressed in pillowcases and sheets, young girls in the backyard beneath a peach tree, mimicking a groom’s kiss on their small hands. Now Lizette was a real bride, her father’s property to give away. Luz stood with the wedding party, gazing down the long aisle, awaiting her cousin.

Eduardo appeared first and the entire church seemed to watch as one penetrating eye. Then it was Lizette, her face hidden beneath the intricacies of her mantilla, lace dotting her vision, as if she had been fished from the Platte River and placed in a net. Luz stared at her cousin with wonderment. Was she prepared for what was to come? Were she and Alfonso to live in happiness? Would their friendship diminish? But in some horrible way, Luz knew that it already had. Their lives were diverging.

Lizette stepped forward over waxed floors, prismatic sunlight filtered through a stained glass crucifixion. She seemed to drift rather than walk, as if carried by the invisibility of fate. The crowd gasped in delight. But a peculiar thing happened midway to the altar. Lizette’s veil slipped from her head and rode the length of her curled black hair before falling to the ground. The edge of the mantilla was stuck in the door, and several back-pew guests stood in an instant, attempting to free the flimsy fabric from the clutches of the lock. It was no use, as if someone had tied it there in impossible knots. When Lizette reached the altar, she winked at Luz with a snicker.

That’s my cousin, Luz thought with pride.

They went through the motions of mass, standing and kneeling and standing some more. The priest was a young bald man who had recently left a post at a mission church in the Lost Territory. He spoke of God’s dominion over the universe, the animals, the rivers, the mountains and lakes. He explained that Lizette and Alfonso were coming together in Christ through the act of his death. And as he spoke, Luz tried not to focus on the pain from her heels and instead stared into the pews, briefly watching Avel as he prayed. But Luz was startled. There, beneath the seventh Station of the Cross, Jesus Falls for the Second Time, Luz imagined she saw Diego. She steadied herself and looked again. Her brother was gone.

“What God joins together,” the priest finally said, “let no one pull apart.”

Alfonso and Lizette exchanged rings and then kissed for several heartbeats, their throats pulsing with the movements of their tongues. They soon rushed into the optimistic sunlight of day as their loved ones showered them in rice, hard kernels pelting them in white.