“Padrecito, are you asleep? I need to speak some more. But… maybe you need to sleep…I’m sorry.”
Father Hugh was not sleeping. He was lost in the gloom of his memories, and his eyes shut tight against the sentiments he was experiencing. The night seemed eternal to him, refusing to end. Outside, on the streets of San Salvador, the blasting and explosions went on without interruption. Luz spoke rapidly, rambling from one word to another in a shaky attempt to gather her ideas.
“I’m a Delcano. Do you know what that means Padre Hugo? It means that I should be over there in Escalón, safe and secure with the rich people. It means that my sons should be with me, that we should all be sheltered and not lost in this world. I should not be here in this rat hole.”
Father Hugh felt uneasy wit Luz’s words because he was unable to decipher their meaning. She didn’t look as if she were a member of the Salvadoran wealthy or of a family such as the Delcanos. He had done business with a Colonel Delcano, but Hugh felt certain that it couldn’t have been the same family.
Luz seemed to know his thoughts.
“Padre, you’re criticizing me, aren’t you? I know that you don’t believe what I’m saying, but I have reason to speak this way. I’m a member of a very wealthy family. Now, you’re staring at me as if I were crazy! ¡Una loca! I just told you in my confession that my grandfather was Lucio Delcano, and that he was very rich, very powerful. I’m part of that family. Is it my fault that he never married my grandmother? Is it my fault that I was forced off the Delcano land as soon as the old grandfather died?”
Father Hugh’s attention latched on to what the woman was saying about the family name and about her sons.
“Sons? Did you say sons, Señora? I thought you had only one son. Bernabé.”
“Sí. I said sons.”
She emphasized her last word, and to make sure that the priest understood, Luz repeated it several times. “¡Hijos, hijos, hijos! I had a son before Bernabé. He was a child that I had from what I told you I did with my grandfather. You’re surprised, I see. Well, it’s true. My son was born some months after my grandfather died. The old man died without knowing that I was going to have his baby. “
Luz ‘s words came to her with difficulty, and she spoke in short, terse phrases. “But the rest of his family knew,” she said. “They were afraid of what my son might become if he remained with those of us who were poor. So the boy was taken away from me. I’ve never seen him since the day Damián Delcano came to our hut. He was one of the old grandfather’s sons, and also the one who stole my son. I was just a girl myself, but don’t think that it was easy for him. No, Señor, no fue fácil para él. I ran after him as he walked away with my baby in his arms. I screamed and pulled at Damián’s sleeves. I was even able to scratch at his face, and once I bit him on his hand. I begged but he did it anyway.”
Luz stopped talking. Her chest heaved up and down. When she spoke again, she whispered, “My son must be your age. How old are you?”
“I’m forty-six.”
“Almost the same. He’s forty-seven, this year.”
Father Hugh’s interest grew as the woman spoke. “Are you certain that he’s alive?” he questioned. “What do you know of him?”
“Well, I know the name the family gave him when he was baptized, nothing else. Someone told me that the little boy had been named after Don Lucio, his father. I know also that my son is now a powerful man.
“Powerful? What do you mean?”
“He’s in the military, Padre Hugo.”
Father Hugh closed his eyes for a moment. The figure of the tall, slender man dressed in the uniform of a Salvadoran colonel appeared. His face was very white, his hair blond, and his eyes were blue. As he sat at his desk he held his hands in front of him, fingertips pressed together, like an angel in prayer.
“Well, what do you know, Hughie? What a small world! That’s the son of a bitch colonel who did business with you all those times you came down here to peddle our hardware. His name was Lucio Delcano. Everyone called him el Angel. Remember?”
Father Hugh silenced the whining voice.
“Señora, do you know what he looks like now?” he asked.
“¡Seguro que no! How could I know? That kind of person is up there, you know, in the clouds. People like me don’t mix with his kind.” She pointed her finger straight up. “But, I can tell you what he looked like when he was born. He was all Delcano. White, very white, and his eyes were blue. Can you believe me? Maybe not, because you’re looking at me and all you see is my brown face. You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to, but it’s the truth.”
The helicopters whirled overhead searching for the guerrillas who were escalating their attacks on the government forces. A blast from a missile made the shelter tremble, causing a flurry among those hiding inside. Luz, oblivious to what was happening outside, looked at the priest. Although it was dark, he could see her intense gaze.
He kept quiet as his breath came in short spurts. Even though he didn’t want to know more about the woman, he didn’t want to hear Augie’s sarcastic voice either.
“Do you want to rest, Padre?”
“No. Not now. Tell me more about yourself. What about your mother and father? Where were they when all of this was happening to you?”
The woman sighed. After a while, she said softly, “I was alone when these things were happening. You see, I’ve been alone since I was a very little girl, and I’ve forgotten most things. I remember only that my father worked when the coffee beans were ready for harvesting, and that he traveled to different plantations where he stayed for months. I remember also that he used to come and go, and that one day he didn’t return. I think that it wasn’t too long afterwards that my mother became very sick, I don’t know of what, I just know that she died. That left me with only one brother. He looked after himself and me.”
“Señora, didn’t he help you when he realized what your grandfather had done?”
“No. No. He felt ashamed of me. After Damián took my baby away, my brother forced me out of the hut where we lived, and because I didn’t have anywhere else to go to, I came here to San Salvador. I never returned, so I have never seen my brother again. But I was happy to have come here because no one knew me or what I had done with the old man.”
“Why do you call yourself a Delcano? Do you think others consider you part of that family? What I mean is….”
Luz was amused, and she teased the priest, almost forcing him to end his thought.
“Well, Padrecito?” Her face relaxed, and she smiled. When he didn’t respond, she continued, “If you stop to consider, Padre, I know that you’ll agree that no matter what anybody says, I am twice a Delcano. First, I’m a granddaughter of old Don Lucio and second, I’m his wife.”
She paused for a moment, then added, “Padre, what do you think I am to Lucio my son? I know that I’m his mother. But am I also his great-grandmother, or maybe his sister? And what about me? What do you think I am to myself? Maybe I’m my own grandmother.”
The priest could not be sure of what he thought he was seeing. Luz was resting her head against the wall, and her face was shrouded in shadows, but he felt that the woman was giggling quietly. Suddenly he felt depressed and sick. He thought she was lying to him, and laughing at him.
Luz became serious again. “When I came to San Salvador I was barely fourteen but I knew how to clean a house and how to wash clothes, so I found work and shelter in one of the grand homes over there.” Luz’s round chin pointed in the direction of the wealthy Escalón district.
“I liked it there from the beginning, and even though I was nothing but a homeless girl, the lady of the house was good to me. It’s true, Padre. There’s good and bad everywhere. Doña Blanca—that was her name—was a wealthy woman, one of the Grijalva family. She was beautiful, and she could have been arrogant and proud. But she wasn’t. I remember her clearly. She was older than I was, but not too much older. I suppose she must have been twenty-five or so when I first began to work for her. She had two young daughters, and one of my obligations was to play with them when they weren’t in school.
“Doña Blanca’s husband was a lawyer and an important man who worked for the government. He, too, was not old. When he found out that I didn’t know how to read or write, he told his wife that he would teach me, even though they knew that to teach someone like me to read was not approved of by most people of their station.”
“How long were you with the Grijalva family?”
“Many years. I told you that when I began working with them I was fourteen years old, and when I left, I was thirty-one. During those years I learned to read and write, and how to speak, just as you now hear me. As I grew older, Doña Blanca placed more trust in me, and she made me the head of all the servants, both men and women. I was very happy.
“But there’s something in me, Padre,” Luz ‘s voice became a hoarse whisper, “there’s a devil in me that makes me do bad things. Just like a cat that waits for a bird in silence, without the slightest motion, that’s the way the shadow waits for me. I don’t know when it will jump on me but it does.”
The priest turned and gazed into the woman’s eyes. In the gloom, they looked flinty black.
“During the first years, Doña Blanca’s husband and I met for an hour every day for my lessons. I learned rapidly, and he seemed pleased. But after several years, when we no longer met for lessons, we began to do other things. Do you understand me, Padre?”
Wondering why Luz had not mentioned this part of her life during her confession, the priest blurted out, “Yes, I understand, and you need not continue. Perhaps you’d like to rest.”
“But I must tell you now that I’ve begun. I was no longer a little girl. In fact, I was considered old. I was past my youth, and I was considered a vieja quedada. Do you remember what that means, Padre? In your language it means a woman who’s lost her chance of marrying. It means…how do you say….an Old Bag.
“I admit that I longed for his visits to my room when we’d go to my bed, and there do it…things…you know what I mean…many times over. Even though I cared for Doña Blanca, still that cat that I was telling you about, the shadow that makes me do things, was more powerful.
“The day came when Doña Blanca began to suspect. One day she walked to the door of my room, opened it and saw her husband in bed with me. She remained calm. She neither shouted nor cried, as anyone would expect. She only closed the door and walked away. But I knew that I had to leave her house, and I did. I took only my clothes, and Bernabé, who by that time was in my belly.”
Father Hugh kept quiet.
“Padrecito, you’re angry with me, I can tell. Please forgive me for speaking of these things. Would you prefer to hear what happened to me after I lost Bernabé in front of the Cathedral?”
Hugh realized that Luz was expecting the admonitions a priest should give a woman in her situation, but he was fatigued and uncertain. He couldn’t formulate the platitudes that usually were on the tip of his tongue. He didn’t care if she had fornicated, then had no shame about it. Unable to say what he felt, he asked, “How did you make a living after you left the Grijalvas?”
“Not the way you’re thinking, Padre Hugo!”
Luz ‘s head snapped in the priest’s direction as she turned to look into his eyes. Her voice was dry as she said, “I left this city and went north. I got as far as a little town on the border, a small place called Carasucia. Ah, I see by your smile that you know what it means.”
“Dirty Face? Is that what the town is called?”
Hugh wondered about the woman’s strange sense of humor.
“Sí. Carasucia. There I decided to begin a new life cleaning houses and washing clothes. After some time I put up a small puesto—I don’t know how to say that word in English—where I made a good living selling fruit and food.”
Luz demonstrated her selling style to the priest. She opened her mouth, forming a black rectangle that framed her quivering tongue. “¡Pupusaaaaas! Melonesss…Sandiaaaas….Pepinoooos!”
Several voices shot out of the darkness telling her to keep quiet, that there were children trying to sleep, that the bombs were enough noise. She continued, oblivious to the shushing.
“For years I was able to make a living for me and my boy by working on street corners, and in the houses of Carasucia. I worked every day so that Bernabé could have a good education. I taught him what I knew of writing, and how to make his letters and I did this for him before he went to school. Bernabé was…is…very intelligent.
“When he was about fourteen years old, I decided that it would be better for him if we returned to the capital. You understand, the schools are better here, and he would be able to do something with his life. So we came. A woman like me, Padrecito, makes a life one way or another. Anyway, Escalón is there, and the rich ladies that live in those beautiful houses need someone to clean and wash their dirty underwear. I packed our few things, and returned to this city. That’s when Bernabé and I moved into Barrio Santa Marta.
“But soon Bernabé began to ask me about his father, about where he came from. He wanted to know where he was born. I told him very little, Padre Hugo, and what I did tell him were mostly lies. I admit it. I didn’t want him to know the truth about what I did with his father. I don’t know why I kept this a secret. Do you think it was a mistake?”
Luz turned to Father Hugh. He was holding his knees in his arms, rocking back and forth.
“Padre, does your stomach hurt?” she asked.
“No!”
She was silent for a long time while the priest grappled with increasing crankiness. Her prattle was getting on his nerves.
“Did you ever tell Bernabé about your other son?” Hugh questioned.
“No!” Luz snapped out the word. “Why would I have told him? What good…?”
“It would have been better than all the lies, that’s for sure! Maybe some good might have come from it, Señora. Did it ever occur to you that the two brothers might one day meet? Also, you’ve given Bernabé the Delcano name. Maybe that was a mistake. Maybe, just maybe, the family might find out and resent that you’ve taken that name. I mean…this place is small. Everyone seems to know one another.”
Luz felt a rush of anger.
“Maybe, maybe! What do you know of these things? You know nothing! Nothing! I gave my son the only name he deserved. The name he received from the blood that fills his veins!”
Frustrated with the priest’s questions, Luz mumbled under her breath, “¿Éste qué sabe? ¡Pendejo!”
Hugh heard the mumbling and understood her words. He resented the insult but sensed that both of them were on the verge of an argument. He murmured softly, “I do know, Señora. Believe me, I do.”