tHe confession of Maria luZ Miguel saucedo

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tHe confession of Maria luZ
Miguel saucedo
Paradise Valley Community College
Honorable Mention, Fiction
…One would need to know the secret of the strings in order to peel her apart
like a sweet little onion, he thought—what frustration and joy, to be the first; to pillage
with such vigorous intent in defiance of divine law, to rightly open without damaging the
ripe fruit nestled deep inside such a difficult bloom. And he often wondered about
such things as he walked the back roads of town smoking on a panatela,
thinking of hapless love…
Guanajuato, 1938
On March 17th of this year, at approximately 5:36 in the afternoon
in the heart of a magnificent city, a very young girl was overcome by the
paradoxical illusion of eternal love, when in the light of her sainthood, the
miracle of Saint Michael transpired in the bedroom of a quaint downtown
hotel room.
Father Enrico Dante briskly walked towards the Gran Hotel where
he and his entourage of young saints had been staying. He was thinking of
apathetically soaking in the porcelain chalice of the Roman tub upstairs,
relishing his delicious red wine, while the saints were out for the day. It was
the perfect setting to reflect with one final toast before opening his veins into
the pool of his aquatic tomb.
His favorite wine–a scarlet red Brunello, and the life-blood of
Montalcino, one last drink, he thought, from the good vines of the old country.
It was this Eden, in the heart of an Italian landscape, where he
had fallen in love with the taste of sacramental wine and other wholesome
forbidden pleasures. His birthplace was a panorama of soft rolling hills and
marching cypress trees, and the place where he almost ended his studies
before they began, when the disciplinarian of the seminary found him
bartering with his affection with the daughter of the viticoltore behind the
fermenting casks in the basement of a neighboring vineyard.
The revelation occurred, when Father Dante of Italy, now living
in Sonora, Mexico, traveled by train to San Miguel De Allende with a small
contingent of very noble, young virgins, otherwise known as The Saints of the
Holy Mary fellowship of the Immaculate Conception, to celebrate Holy Week, and
to honor Father Dante’s most beloved paragon, the benevolent Saint Patrick
of Ireland.
fiction: The Confession of Mariz Luz
Before his final farewell, Father Dante would sit in the Plaza
Parroquial in front of the Parroquia de San Miguel Arcangel Cathedral to drink
his cheap imported wine from the sleeve of a brown paper sack, upset he
didn’t find the Brunello of his heart in the market. He contemplated his life
in a single gulp, and rewrote verses of the Book of Revelation in his head as he
fed the birds.
The cool liquid of the wine slid softly down the cavern of his dry
parched throat, making him feel proudly Italian again. And his legs became
numb and transparent, making him paralyzed and sleepy.
The air was warm and tropic, so he untied his collar and slid carelessly
onto the arch of his aching back, facing the sky. A cool breeze flowed
under his robe, calling him to refresh with the ambient wine. There was moisture
in the air, and it was good, since he always believed good people died
when it rained.
In front of him, children ran around trees, and jumped on benches.
They seemed to be playing with his eyes, avoiding the presence of his reverence.
They were loud and obnoxious, and he hated that. In fact, years ago, he
had asked God why he had chosen such a petulant profession; since he could
remember, he detested the senseless antics of little children.
Two lovers sat prone facing each other on the grass next to the
fountain. The young man held his lover captive with the power of his legs
entwined around her waist. And he took a morsel of sweet bread and placed
it gently in her mouth. One of the children kicked a red rubber ball next to
them, while a demented dog slapped the stickiness of his infected saliva on
the grass; but the children weren’t afraid, they were rabid also, calling each
other vulgar names.
The dog drooled with the misery in his blood. Then, suddenly, with
the strangeness of his barbaric savagery, he clutched the ball between his
burning fangs, and ran towards the far end of the park disappearing into a
side street. Father Dante sensed the dog’s sadistic lust for death.
The park was a sanctuary for lovers and demons, and he imagined
himself the devil. Vagrant women, young, and old, had been standing next
to the fountain, and had now moved towards the south side of the street in
front of the hotel. Most of them wore colorful, short skirts, with white stockings
sharply lined with black eye-liner the entire length of their plumped,
experienced legs.
They puffed on cheap cigarettes and spoke in quick, precise dialects,
as white smoke curled into the crevices of their exuberant hair-dos, and their
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candied lips, traced with fuchsia dazzle, puckered laboriously at the ensuing
crowd, while the most mature of the bunch boldly solicited her bosom for
such a bargain price.
Beyond the fountain, the spires of the Cathedral rose above the forest
of the park, harnessing the setting sun in its glistening plaster high above the
street. He watched as the nuns waddled like penguins out for their evening
stroll from the conservatory; black, white, black, white, black, white. He hid
the bottle underneath his robe thinking of his mother. Suddenly, his mouth
filled with the taste of barbed wire, as he contemplated his wrists.
He was drowsy because of the cheap wine, and he saw himself in
a ludicrous dream; he was kissing Pope Pius XI’s hand, while nude lovers
groped each other at the base of His Eminence’s holy feet. Then, another
spark of memory startled him; only this time, he felt a soothing weakness in
his legs. He was thinking of his young virgin saints, those seven young beautiful
maidens that had sworn their loyalty to him, and to God.
And he savored the sweetness of the wine on his lips, with raw images
of young nude girls, squatting lavishly on his lap, telling him how much they
loved him.
And he remembered how he’d line them up in the mornings, with
their backs against the wall according to their age and other things known
only to him, inspecting them before the morning departure, by caressing
them furtively, one at a time.
The girls dressed modestly identical in long blue and white gabardine
uniforms, mimicking the luminous starlight robe of the Virgin Mary.
The cassocks, designed by the nuns of St. Nicholas, were reminiscent of the
layered chastity robes of the 15th century. The unique ruse robes with secret
buttons and pull strings, known only to the kings and governors of that
time, had now become holy secrets to the nuns, and to the tiny fingers of his
most sacred virgin saints…
His thoughts returned to the lovers sitting in front of him, and a
cruel memory dragged him to the past.—A girl was waving from the train station;
she did not want him to go, but it was his calling, he said it so many times, with so much
conviction.—And to think that it was only yesterday she was about to rob him of his
virginity. He waved good-bye, knowing he would never see her again.
He blew smoke rings into the stagnant, liquid air of the park, suffocating
a thin cigar between his lips. He was nearly finished with the wine,
when he remembered the girl waiting for him at the hotel.
fiction: The Confession of Mariz Luz
He poured the last of the wine down his mouth and chanted as he
walked away,—You are the Alpha and the Omega,—My life is but a grain of sand.
And the prostitutes parted the sidewalk, and they touched him, begging for
his grace and forgiveness.
He fumbled into the lobby, and went up the staircase, when he
finally swaggered into the silent room; he was surprised she hadn’t left to be
with the other saints.
She was sitting quietly in the living room of the suite, brushing her
long flowing hair in front of the mirror. The little butterfly he had fantasized in
his long walks back home had finally escaped the captivity of her pious cocoon.
The girl who would rise at 4:30 every morning to make his large pot
of rustic black coffee, continually sat next to him at the festival, while his
hand roamed freely under the table redeeming those things he believed he
had lost. The task of serving became her calling. And because she did it with
so much enthusiasm and pride, she had become his favorite saint.
She also acquired the practice of nursemaid, especially when he’d
return late at night trying to secretly pass by the shadow of the saint’s
bedroom, stumbling on his way towards his room. Of course, he would offer
an excuse with the sign of the cross, and they would do the same, and then he
would vow to the effects of the wine, and he’d forget his pretense, and walk
right into the bedroom of half-naked young girls.
His eyes would cringe with glee to see them without robes, and
he would kiss them, each on their small virgin lips, saying they were small
tokens of God’s eternal love for them. Then he’d stumble to his room, and
fall intoxicated into bed.
The girl would follow him, as if tied with an invisible string to his
dire urgency; first untying his enormous black leather shoes, then removing
his robe and pants. And trying with so much defeat, to ignore those things
not meant for young virgin saints.
And she would try to decipher the mumbling stream of words
spilling from the side of his mouth, as the suggestive hand of his drunkenness
roamed underneath the locked layers of her sacred virgin garment. She
was thinking solely of the dignity of such a great man.
She would soak him gently from top to bottom, exfoliating his
steaming pink marble-like body with the coolness of a damp cloth, and
praying over his comatose flesh, turning his face downward, so if he
happened to vomit because of his consumption of holy wine. He would not
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drown in the stench of such a sacred sacrament without some kind of confessional,
or arbitrary and necessary benediction.
In the end, she would go into the living room, look out into the
shimmering lights of the vibrant city below, and polish his patented leather
shoes with the juice of her own sweet spit, while humming poetic songs out
the open windows.
He stared at her for a moment, rocking slightly forward and backward
like a lost ship at sea, trying to keep his solid frame steady on his heels.
It was the 5:26 hour of his saint’s jubilee.
He had another vision, and just enough to remember in the young
girl’s reflection, someone else—“Don’t leave!” said, a lover, a friend, who knows?
It was too damn long to remember now. Then the vision left him.
She was waiting patiently to give her confession. It was something
toiling in her head as she prayed to St. Michael, her guardian angel back home.
Father Dante promised he would hear her confession immediately
following his final speech at the parroqial celebration, so that none of her
sins could possibly be carried back home by the contemptible lack of Divine
Providence.
He noticed immediately she was not trapped underneath the layers
of the canvas-like robe that constantly protected the innocence of her sacred
virtues. She was short and delicate like a flower. And she wore forbidden
attire, a silk crimson dress that sweetened her deeply, making her ecclesiastically
distant and incorrect.
The lamp on the dresser cascaded a stream of light on the surface of
her delightful olive skin, exposing the softness of her narrow shoulders and
face. His eyes fumbled inside his head, and he lost his will to live when the
warm curvature of her voluptuous caramel legs crossed gently in front of his
unfortunate life.
And he noticed the burst of her single weaved rope of hair that
she constantly nurtured - disappeared, and was now flowing with so much
freedom and reparation in the breezes of the open windows, that it made her
seemingly more divine than ever before.
And it was after the silence and salaciousness of her fervent smile
that she had openly confessed, and Father Dante surrendered to the temptation
that burned deep inside his loins after hearing her amorous confession,
and a savage thing, overcame his troubled spirit.
fiction: The Confession of Mariz Luz
And the thing growing inside him devoured his goodness, shredding
his great soul into a thousand pieces, making him want to jump out the
open window to exercise the relentless demon. And the guilt whipped him
violently into opposing directions like a ragged doll, that he instantly lost his
mind after hearing the candor of her secret proclamation.
He wanted to possess her immediately, to command her, and do as
he pleased with her. More so, how could he have ever predicted, that his little
flower, entrapped in her faith driven spirit, would ever sprout the wonderful
wings of something so turbulent and untamed. So, he looked up to Heaven,
and tears fell to his face as he took her small delicate hand, and led her into the
grotto of his bedroom, believing in the blinding foil of his drunkenness, that
she truly was, the only lover embedded in the cracks of his now breaking heart.
When the group of young saints finally arrived at the hotel, they
whispered with joyous praises that the marketeers hadn’t duped them. The
last girl locked the door and looked around for her best friend. She was
curious. It was never this quiet. She first looked inside the saint’s bedroom,
then in the morning room, and she was not there. So she walked out to the
hallway, and looked inside the only bathroom on that floor, and it was empty.
When she returned to the room, a mysterious cold shiver crawled
on the surface of her arms and face. She heard strange sounds coming from
Father Dante’s bedroom. She held back a moment, trying to recall her best
friend’s soft-spoken voice, but she could not remember. The sounds were of
heaving desperate lungs, muffled with the terror of desperate pleading.
The groaning deepened with so much intention and force that it
made her jump back, her ear pressed against the door. She paused, turned
the doorknob, and pushed the door open wide. The room was cold and dark
and the sounds did not stop; when suddenly, a terrible crack of lightning
exploded through the pane of the window, and for a second, she saw the
towers of the Cathedral across the park light up with the intensity of the
sun. People would talk about it for months and even years. Some even swore
it was the wrath of Heaven that had shaken the earth, but who knows? And a
cruel memory instantly photographed in the back of the young girl’s mind
forever. And her chest ached, because she had sucked in so much air with one
single breath, and when she released it, the awful sound completely deadened
her hearing.
The other girls quickly ran into the bedroom, and they saw her
standing motionless, aloof with her hands over her face, still standing in the
center of the room. They also screamed, at the atrocity before them. And they
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ran out at the same time and sat around in a circle, huddled near the open
windows, trying to siphon the fresh air back into their babbling gasping lungs.
The youngest girl, who was only nine, and was only there to experience
the grace and goodness of The Saints of the Holy Mary fellowship of the
Immaculate Conception, urinated on the threshold of the open door, because
of what her virgin doe eyes had seen.
In the morning, the best friend of the most efficient saint, and the
one that was the first to see the shocking exploitation, begged the older
saints that she wanted to stay—wait for another train, she said, so that she
would not have to endure the uncertainty and fear of such a long trip, saying
that her nerves were not used to such things. And that God would probably
punish her, saying, “God will make me go blind someday, because I was the
first to see.”
At last, when they were on the train, the oldest of the saints filled
them all with constant doses of sedatives and other natural remedies that
made them sleep more than what they needed.
The day they arrived in Oquitoa, the saints were summoned to come
to the church of San Antonio on top of the hill, where they sat in a locked
sanctuary listening to Father Dante’s reprieve, all except for Lucia, who was
the first to see, and Maria Luz, the most favorite saint.
Father Dante had pleaded, telling them not to hold any rancor or
memory of what they had seen in the bedroom of the hotel room. And that
love, was all forgiving, and gracious. But due to the fact, of God’s mysterious
ways, and interference with the human heart, he truly believed, in his now
poisoned and wretched soul, that it was the confession of Maria Luz that
made him do it.
The following day, Father Enrico Dante of Italy was dead at the foot
of the main altar of the church. The gossip revealed a single gunshot, and the
miraculous destruction of a human heart that completely vanished into thin
air. Father Dante laid on the floor of the church without his heart, clutching
a golden cross in one hand, and a crimson red dress in the other.