Rosaries Statues Medals
Incense Candles Talismans
Perfumes Oils Herbs
You know that religious store on Soledad across from Sanitary Tortillas? Next to El Divorcio Lounge. Don’t go in there. The man who owns it is a crab ass. I’m not the only one who says it. He’s famous for being a crab ass.
I know all about him, but I stopped in anyway. Because I needed a Virgen de Guadalupe and the Preciado sisters on South Laredo didn’t have nothing that didn’t look as if someone made it with their feet.
A statue is what I was thinking, or maybe those pretty 3-D pictures, the ones made from strips of cardboard that you look at sideways and you see the Santo Niño de Atocha, and you look at it straight and it’s La Virgen, and you look at it from the other side and it’s Saint Lucy with her eyes on a plate or maybe San Martín Caballero cutting his Roman cape in half with a sword and giving it to a beggar, only I want to know how come he didn’t give that beggar all of his cape if he’s so saintly, right?
Well, that’s what I was looking for. One of those framed pictures with a silver strip of aluminum foil on the bottom and top, the wooden frame painted a happy pink or turquoise. You can buy them cheaper on the other side, but I didn’t have time to go to Nuevo Laredo ’cause I only found out about Tencha Tuesday. They put her right in Santa Rosa Hospital. I had to take a half-day off work and the bus, well, what was I going to do? It’s either Anguiano Religious Articles or Sisters Preciado Botánica.
Then after I walk all the way from Santa Rosa in the heat, guess what? Anguiano’s is closed even though I could see him sitting in there in the dark. I’m knocking and knocking, knocking and knocking on the glass with a quarter. Know what he does before unlocking? Looks me up and down like if I’m one of those ladies from the Cactus Hotel or the Court House Pawnshop or the Western Wear come to rob him.
I was thinking about those framed holy pictures with glitter in the window. But then I saw some Virgen de Guadalupe statues with real hair eyelashes. Well, not real hair, but some stiff black stuff like brushes, only I didn’t like how La Virgen looked with furry eyelashes—bien mean, like los amores de la calle. That’s not right.
I looked at all the Virgen de Guadalupes he had. The statues, the framed pictures, the holy cards, and candles. Because I only got $10. And by then, there was other people had come in. But you know what he says to me—you won’t believe it—he says, I can see you’re not going to buy anything. Loud and in Spanish. I can see you’re not going to buy anything.
Oh, but I am, I says, I just need a little more time to think.
Well, if it’s thinking you want, you just go across the street to the church to think—you’re just wasting my time and yours thinking here.
Honest to God. Real ugly is how he talked to me. Well, go across the street to San Fernando if you want to think—you’re just wasting my time and yours thinking here.
I should’ve told him, You go to hell. But what for? He’s already headed there.