Little Miracles

I found Abuela like an accident, when I wasn't really looking.

I'd been in California two years by then - it was already starting to make me jaded. I was working a fish market, packing boxes with a guy named Hector who mentioned that I looked a lot like his cousin Papi. 'Oh?' I said. 'Yeah,' he'd answered, and that had been the end of it. Three months after I quit because I was tired of smelling like bait, I ran into Hector at a party and he mentioned it again. This time , inspired perhaps by the lack of fish and the steady supply of alcohol, I got more information about it. The cousin's last name was Reeves, which had been my mother's maiden name.

A string of inquiries and two day of sobering up, and three weeks of gathering my nerve later, I found myself in Los Angele looking for the home of the woman Hector and his cousin called Abuela. "She'll know for sure," Hector said when he wrote down the address. "She's holy - she knows these things."

The neighborhood looked lived-in, less rundown than most of the placed I'd been staying. The grocery store on the corner had a Spanish name that I couldn't quite pronounce, having never done all that well at rolling my r's in high school language classes. It occurred to me as I passed it that my grandmother might be Spanish - which considering that Hector and Papi both were, shouldn't have been much of a surprise. Maybe it was the drugs to blame, or maybe it was that my mother seemed as generically European ancestrally as my father. Whenever I asked what nationality I was growing up, my father just shrugged and said "Lots of things fucked, and now here you are." He wasn't much into genealogy.

Abuela's yard was in need of a mow, and had a slightly rusty chain link fence that went around it. I wondered if she had a dog, and looked around cautious of my ankles as I opened the gate to go in. There wasn't, though - just an old cat sleeping indifferently in the sun on the porch. Maybe hers, maybe a neighbor's - cats don't care much for boundaries. A statue of the virgin Mary with slightly peeling paint was on the porch on the opposite side of the cat, with a waxy melted candle in front of it like someone had made an offering.

I knocked on the door, causing the cat to look up indignantly at his sleep being disturbed. No answer. I knocked louder.
"Uno momento," Abuela called from inside. The sound of locks turning, and I looked down at my feet trying to not be nervous. The cat had buggered off for a quieter place to sleep by the time the door opened.

I barely had time to register a round-faced olive-skinned woman with graying black hair and glasses perched precariously on her nose before she cried out and swept me up into a bigger hug than I'd ever had.

"Miguel! Mijo!" She began to talk rapidly, words I couldn't entirely comprehend.

"Um... Abuela I... I don't speak Spanish. Well, a few words but... I'm sorry, I don't understand..."

She stopped, and smiled wide. "You sound just like your grandpapi, mijo. You look just like him when he was young. "

Hector hadn't mentioned a grandfather, so I wondered. "Is he.. uh.. are you guys still married?"

Abuela's enthusiasm crumbled, and she crossed herself. "No, he's in heaven - he died when your mama was just little. She didn't tell you?"

"My mother didn't.. no. She didn't tell me much, and I haven't seen her for... well, she left ..."

Abuela clucked her tongue, and ushered me inside. The house looked comfortable, warm and as lived-in as the neighborhood. More real than a lot of the places I'd been staying lately. Pictures of saints and family members mingled comfortably on the walls and counters. "Your madre- she was always a little loco. Porbrecita, from the time she was small- always wild, always running from something or someone."

That sounded like her, alright. I swallowed against the lump in my throat and sat on Abuela's couch, leaning back against a knitted afghan that had been draped over to cover it. The smell of some hearty meat cooking drifted from the kitchen and made my mouth water longingly. The last thing I'd eaten had been an In and Out Burger way too long ago. Yesterday, maybe?

"Is it alright if I stay a while?" I asked.

"Mijo, stay as long as you like. You're family. The virgin has brought you back to me ..."

"Uh... actually, it was Hector..."

"I prayed every night," she continued, coming to settle beside me on the couch and taking my hand in hers. "I pray Dios te salve María, llena eres de gracia, el Señor es contigo, bendita tú eres entre todas las mujeres, y bendito es el fruto de tu vientre, Jesús. Santa María, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros pecadores ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte. Amén, every night. And the virgin, she brought you back to me."

I didn't disagree. Maybe it was a miracle, in a way - the string of coincidences that had brought me here.

She fed me supper of aroz con pollo and talked to me about all these family things - how she'd come from Mexico as a young lady and married my American grandfather, how his family had shunned them and her family had welcomed them. About their eight children, two of whom didn't live past birth, and one who died in the army - and Felicity, the youngest, who'd gone away to college and never returned. She promised to show me the letters my mother had sent home for a while - letters with pictures from her theater shows, from her wedding, from my birth and christening...

"Why did she stop writing?"

Abuela shrugged, but her eyes were moist as we cleaned up from dinner. She didn't have a dishwasher, so I dried the plates she washed. For a long time, she didn't speak. After the last plate had been put away in the cabinet, she turned to me and patted my shoulder. "She wanted a better life... she was always making stories, mijo. Stories that sometimes she started to believe..."

She sighed, and closed the subject along with the cabinet door. "You can sleep in her room - you will be comfortable, there."

The room had a single bed, over which was a cross. There was a desk with a chair, a closet. The most detailed object in the room was a picture of Jesus on the wall, intricately painted on velvet, with his sacred heart covered in a crown of thorns. Abuela saw me looking it over, and smiled.

"Your mama painted that by numbers," she said. "From a kit."

I nodded, trying to picture my mother patient enough to paint all the little folds of Jesus' robe.

"It might still glow in the dark, so if you see it, don't be scared, okay? "

I must have looked a little nervous because she added, "Jesus won't hurt you -he loves you. Trust in the Lord."

She closed the door and left me alone with Him. I stared at the painting some more. It was kind of scary, really, in a way. I shrugged off my shoes and turned out the lights, got in to bed. Jesus glowed in the dark - or at least parts of Him did. Mostly the heart, and a bit around the head. I closed my eyes, but I felt like He was Watching Me. I wondered how my mother ever masturbated or smoked or drank or cheated on homework in this room, with that picture just glowing there like that - and the cross over her head. Trust in Jesus, Abuela had said. I didn't trust Him one bit... He was judging me.

I put the pillow over my head, and the blanket. It didn't help any. If I was to get any sleep, there was only one thing to do. I turned on the light, and got out of bed, intending to put the Dayglo Savior into the closet. I threw open the door, and found that it was empty so there was plenty of room -- and then I looked up. There, on the ceiling, carved in a childish sprawl -

FELICITY WAS HERE!

I left the light on, took up the pillow and blanket and brought them with me into the closet, shutting the door. I slept there under my mother's last testament to childhood, in comfortable darkness.

( Part of a series called Michael's story - for more of this series, click here. )