Prayers

WITH A GRANDMOTHER LIKE MINE, who quite early instilled in me the idea that the world is magic, and that all the rest is man’s delusion of greatness, given that we control almost nothing, know very little, and have only to take a quick look at history to understand the limits of the rational, it isn’t strange that all things seem possible to me. Thousands of years ago, when she was still alive and I was a frightened little girl, my grandmother and her friends invited me to their spiritist sessions, surely behind my mother’s back. They would place two cushions on a chair so I could reach the tabletop, the same lion-footed oak table I have in my house today. Although I was very young and have no memory of it, only fantasy, I see the table jumping, moved by the spirits invoked by those ladies. The table, nonetheless, has never moved in my house; it sits in place, as heavy and categorical as a dead ox, fulfilling the modest duties of ordinary tables. Mystery is not a literary device, the salt and pepper for my books, as my enemies have accused; it is a part of life itself. Profound mysteries like the one my Sister of Disorder Jean recounted about walking barefoot over red-hot coals are transforming experiences, because they have no rational or scientific explanation. “At that moment, I knew that we have incredible capacities just as we know how to be born, to give birth, and to die,” Jean said. “So, too, we know how to respond to the red-hot coals that lie in our path. After that experience, I am calm about the future. I can face the worst crises if I relax and let the spirit guide me.” And that was what Jean did when her son died in her arms: she walked over fire without being burned.

Nico has asked me why I believe in miracles, spirits, and other dubious phenomena. His pragmatic mind requires proof more convincing than the anecdotes of a great-grandmother buried more than half a century ago, but to me the immensity of what I cannot explain inclines me toward magical thought. Miracles? It seems to me that they happen all the time, like the fact that our tribe keeps paddling along in the same boat, but according to your brother, they are a mixture of perception, opportunity, and a desire to believe. You, on the other hand, had my grandmother’s spirituality, and you sought the answer to everyday miracles in the Catholic faith, since you were brought up in it. You were harassed by many doubts. The last thing you told me before you sank into a coma was, “I’m looking for God and I can’t find him. I love you, Mamá.” I want to think that you have found him, daughter, and that perhaps you were surprised since he wasn’t what you expected.

Here in this world you left behind, men have kidnapped God. They have created absurd religions that have survived for centuries—I can’t understand how—and continue to grow. They are implacable; they preach love, justice, and charity, and commit atrocities to impose their tenets. The illustrious gentlemen who propagate these religions judge, punish, and frown at happiness, pleasure, curiosity, and imagination. Many women of my generation have had to invent a spirituality that fits us, and if you had lived longer, maybe you would have done the same, for the patriarchal gods are definitely not suitable for us: they make us pay for the temptations and sins of men. Why are they so afraid of us? I like the idea of an inclusive and maternal divinity connected with nature, synonymous with life, an eternal process of renovation and evolution. My Goddess is an ocean and we are drops of water, but the ocean exists because of the drops of water that form it.

My friend Miki Shima practices the ancient Shinto religion of Japan, which proclaims that we are perfect creatures created by the Goddess-Mother to live in happiness; none of that guilt, punishment, penitence, hell, sin, karma; no need for sacrifices. Life is to be celebrated. A few months ago Miki went to Osaka for a Shinto ten-day training along with a hundred Japanese and five hundred Brazilians who arrived with the exuberance of Carnival. Practice began at four in the morning with chanting. When the male and female spiritual masters told the crowd gathered in that enormous, simple wood temple that each of them was perfect, the Japanese bowed and thanked them, while the Brazilians howled and danced with elation, as they would if Brazil scored a goal in the world soccer championship. Every morning at dawn Miki goes out to the garden, bows, and with a chant greets the new day and the millions of spirits that inhabit it. Then, after sushi and herbal soup for breakfast, he goes to his office, laughing in his car. Once he was stopped by a patrol car because the officers thought he was drunk. “I’m not drunk, I am doing my spiritual practice,” Miki explained. The policemen thought he was mocking them. Happiness is suspicious.

Only recently we went with Lori to hear an Irish Christian theologian. Despite the obstacles of his accent and my ignorance, I did take something away from his talk, which began with a brief meditation. He asked the audience to close their eyes, relax, be aware of our breathing, in short, the usual directions in these situations, and then for us to think of our favorite place—I chose a tree trunk in your forest—and of a figure that comes to us and sits facing us. We were to sink into the bottomless gaze of that being that loved us just as we were, with our defects and virtues, without judging us. That, said the theologian, was the face of God. The person who came to me was a woman about sixty, a rotund African woman with firm flesh and a pure smile, mischievous eyes, skin as gleaming and smooth as polished mahogany, smelling of smoke and honey, a being so powerful that even the trees bowed in a sign of respect. She looked at me as I looked at you and Nico and my grandchildren when you were little, with total acceptance. You were perfect, from your transparent ears to your wet diaper odor. I wanted you to stay forever faithful to your essence, to protect you from all evil, take you by the hand and lead you until you learned to walk on your own. That love was pure happiness and celebration, although it contained the anguish of knowing that each instant that went by changed you a little and distanced you from me.

FINALLY WE COULD DO THE TESTS to learn if my grandchildren carried porphyria. The Sisters of Disorder in California, and Pía and my mother in Chile, had for years been praying for my family, and I have asked myself if the prayers had done any good. The most rigorous tests have been made with ambiguous conclusions; there is no certainty that prayer has an effect. This must be a blow for the religious people who dedicate their lives to praying for the good of humankind, but it has done little to discourage either my Sisters of Disorder, or me. We do it just in case. Lucille, Lori’s mother, had been diagnosed with breast cancer while I was on a book tour in the land of Christian extremism, the Deep South of the United States. At that same moment, Willie was flying the length of Latin America with a friend in a plane no bigger than a tin dragonfly, a demented trip from California to Chile.

Forty million Americans define themselves as born-again Christians, and most of them live in the center and south of the country. Minutes before my lecture, a girl came up to me and offered to pray for me. I asked her if instead of doing it for me, she would pray for Lucille, who was in the hospital that day, and for Willie, my husband, who could lose his life in some crevasse in the Andes. She took my hands, closed her eyes, and began a loud litany, attracting other people, who joined the circle, invoking Jesus, filled with faith and with the names of Lucille and Willie in every sentence. After my speech I called Lori to ask how her mother was doing and she told me that there hadn’t been any operation; they examined her before taking her into the operating room and could not locate the tumor. That morning they had done eight mammograms and a sonogram. Nothing. The surgeon, who already had his gloves on, decided to postpone the intervention till the following day, and sent Lucille to another hospital where there was a scanner. They found nothing there, either. They couldn’t explain it, because only days before a biopsy had confirmed the diagnosis. This would have been a verifiable miracle of prayer if only two weeks later the tumor hadn’t reappeared. Lucille had her surgery anyway. However, that same day, when Willie was flying over Panama, there was a sharp change of pressure and the plane dropped two thousand meters in a few seconds’ time. The skill of Willie’s friend, who was piloting that big fragile insect, saved them by a hair from a spectacular death. Or was it the good thoughts of those Christians?

In spite of the prayers of my friends, and of all I asked of you, Paula, the results of the porphyria texts for Andrea and Nicole came as bad news. The condition is more serious in women than in men, since inevitable hormonal changes can trigger a crisis. We would have to live with the fear of another tragedy in the family. Nico reminded me that porphyria is not debilitating, nor does it affect normal life; the risk is increased only by certain stimuli, which can be avoided. Your case, Paula, was a combination of circumstances and error, incredibly bad luck. “We will take precautions without overdoing it,” your brother said. “This is an inconvenience, but there is something positive about it: the girls will learn to take care of themselves, and it will be a good excuse for not letting them get too far away. The threat will bring us closer together.” He assured me that with all the advances in medicine, the girls would have good health, children, and a long life; research in genetic engineering promises to prevent porphyria from passing to the next generation. “It’s much less serious than diabetes, and other hereditary conditions,” he concluded.

By then my relations with Nico had got past the reefs of previous years. We maintained the same close contact, but I had learned to respect him and honestly tried not to irritate him. My love for my three grandchildren was a true obsession, and it cost me many years to accept the fact that they weren’t mine, they belong to Nico and Celia. I don’t know why it took me so long to learn something obvious, something all the grandmothers in the world know without needing to be taught by a psychiatrist. Your brother and I went together to therapy for a while and even drew up written contracts establishing boundaries and rules for a peaceful coexistence, though we couldn’t be too strict. Life isn’t a photo in which we arrange things to their best advantage and then fix that image for posterity; it’s a dirty, disorderly, quick process filled with unforeseen events. The one certainty is that everything changes. Despite our contracts, problems inevitably arose, so it was futile to worry, talk things over too thoroughly, or try to control every last detail; we had to let ourselves be carried in the flow of everyday life, counting on luck and our good hearts, because neither of us would deliberately hurt the other. If I failed—and I often did—Nico reminded me of it with his characteristic gentleness, and we didn’t let it come between us. For years we’ve seen each other almost every day, but I am always amazed by that tall, muscular man with touches of gray hair and a peaceful air. If it hadn’t been for his undeniable resemblance to his paternal grandfather, I would seriously suspect that there had been a switch in the hospital when he was born, and that somewhere there was a family with a short, explosive male who carried my genes. Nico’s life improved greatly when he left the job he’d held for years. The corporation decided to outsource their work to India, where costs were much cheaper, and dismissed their employees, with the exception of Nico, who was to stay on and coordinate the programs with the office in New Delhi. He chose, however, to leave out of solidarity with his fellows. He was hired by a bank in San Francisco and also began to make transactions on the stock market, quite successfully. He has the instinct and cool head for that work, just as Lori and I had suggested some time before, but we didn’t drag that up; just the opposite; we asked him where on earth he’d got such a good idea. He scorched us with a look that would shatter glass.