“But…” Jasmyn paused, unsure how to phrase her question.
The little woman seated in the pew beside her nodded as if she understood. From what Jasmyn had sampled of her wisdom in the past hour or so, she probably did understand.
They had met soon after Sam went into her business meeting, after Jasmyn finished wandering through the small town, which didn’t resemble her small town in the least. There was no library, no pharmacy, and no post office, which were Valley Oaks staples. Few people were about in the middle of a hot weekday.
She had spotted a bell tower through a patch of trees, a white adobe Spanish-looking structure with arches and a tile roof. Next to it was a matching tiny church. A small sign read Mission San Pedro de Lotanzai, 1782. She peeked inside and saw an old woman sweeping the floor. The woman happily greeted her.
“Come, come.” She gestured and propped her broom against the doorjamb. “The church is open.”
As Jasmyn stepped out of the sun, between walls at least two feet thick and into the coolness, she felt transported. The place could have been a movie set for one of her grandfather’s Westerns. It was dusky and had low wooden ceiling beams, simple pews on either side of the aisle, and little else. Several votive candles flickered from a table in a back corner near the door.
The best part, though, was the woman who introduced herself as Nova.
She looked a little bit like a dried apricot trimmed with two silver gray braids, an embroidered white peasant blouse, a brown skirt, and a kind smile. Her voice was low, whispery, fitting for someone who obviously had been talking for many, many years.
Nova gave Jasmyn a tour of the church. It was, she explained, an Assistencia, or extension, part of the church’s thrust inland from the main missions along the coast. For more than two hundred years, itinerant priests had conducted Sunday services, sometimes only once every other month. The one who came nowadays drove a Chevy truck and showed up every other week.
The tour over, they sat now on a hard pew, Nova’s feet dangling above the uneven stone floor. The rough adobe walls were white, stenciled with colorful designs. Sunlight filtered through four stained glass windows, two in each of the side walls. Up front, beyond a rail, was a table, and behind that, high up on the wall, hung a large wooden crucifix.
Jasmyn admired Nova’s ability to relay without bias a history that sounded basically like a long, hostile struggle between cultures and religions. The story upset Jasmyn. Which was why she was confused and could not frame a question tactfully. She gave up and said instead, “I wish I had your wisdom, Nova.”
She chuckled. “I’m only ninety-two.” She raised her arms high above her head and wiggled her fingers. “I’ve scarcely brushed the tips of the wise eagle’s feathers.”
Jasmyn smiled.
“There is time yet for you.” She lowered her arms. “But to gain wisdom, you must ask the difficult questions.”
Okay. Jasmyn nodded. Ask it. “The thing is, the history here is so awful, so tragic. I don’t understand why this place hasn’t been razed. Why would you revere where your ancestors were enslaved and forced to work for foreigners? Forced to claim a faith that had brought so much misery to them?”
Nova’s dark eyes were depthless pools reflecting the candlelight behind Jasmyn. She laid a gnarled hand on Jasmyn’s wrist. “Not everything can be explained. Through the years, many people experienced the reality of the Holy One. The ways of the church spoke to them despite their tragic history.”
Jasmyn frowned.
“Forgiveness is a powerful tool.” Nova spoke softly. “Life is a paradox, Jasmyn. Have you walked the land where your ancestors walked out their story?”
Instantly she saw the farm. Her stomach flip-flopped. The farm’s very first crop had been planted by her great-great-great-grandfather.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“And have you sat in a room where they sat?”
Her heart raced. The farmhouse had been built by her great-great-grandparents. Her attic bedroom had at different times been a sewing room, a great-aunt’s bedroom, and a distant cousin’s temporary home when he came to help with the harvest.
“Mm-hmm.”
“Heartbreak and joy, right? Both together. Never one without the other.”
Jasmyn shut her eyes.
Hers had not been a storybook childhood in the least. And yet what had she known if not pure joy in that tiny room with its dolls and its view of stars and cornfields, where no one disturbed her? Or in the rambling woods? And even on the tractor she learned to drive at age nine?
Nova patted her arm and straightened. “I am an old woman. Someday this place will no longer speak to anyone except the ones who love olden days. And that is all right. These days the church needs air-conditioning and microphones.”
Jasmyn opened her eyes. “It wasn’t my choice to raze it. A tornado destroyed it.”
Nova stared at her.
“My home. Mine and my family’s, all the way back to my great-great-grandparents.”
“Jasmyn, I am sorry.”
“But then I sold the land.”
Nova nodded. “Because it no longer spoke to you.”
Jasmyn shrugged.
“Do you have siblings? Or children?”
“No.”
“And it was a tornado?”
“Yes.”
Nova did not respond for a long moment. “Then you can trust it was time to let it go.” She pulled a handkerchief from a skirt pocket and dabbed Jasmyn’s cheeks. “I haven’t used it.” She smiled.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m crying.”
“You cry because you have a sad story. Don’t worry. Joy will weave its way through it in time. Would you like to pray?”
Jasmyn stifled a sob. Hot tears fell. Her body shook.
Nova knelt on the stone floor. “No air-conditioning, no microphones, no padded kneelers. How in the world do we keep going?” She giggled to herself, made the sign of the cross, and, with arms propped on the pew in front of her, buried her face in her hands.
The quiet enveloped Jasmyn as it had outdoors, at the entrance to the desert, a hush so loud it nearly hurt her ears.
Her tears subsided. Her breathing returned to normal.
She was still working on her Liv-style prayer, walking and talking to God in the courtyard, eyes open. Kneeling on a stone floor with her face buried in her hands seemed an odd way to pray. Maybe a little over-the-top.
The hush pressed in on her again. It pressed away the sad stories, Nova’s and her own. It pressed her to her knees.
And she knelt there in a wordless, nameless embrace.
The scenery whizzed past them as they flew along the freeway. Sam jabbered, excited about her meeting. Jasmyn nodded and smiled.
“Good grief! We’ve switched roles. I’m talking and you’re not,” Sam said. “Tell me what you’ve been doing.”
“Um. Well. I’m not sure exactly.” And then, just like heat lightning that flashed across the sky back home, it came to her.
She had been meeting the Holy One.
And oh, how He loved her!