Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [271]
She wanted to pray but her mind would not produce the appropriate words that could effect a miracle. Instead, what it produced were images, and central to them was Santiago Vasquez y del Torres, thirteen years old, a runaway only as far as the closest city to Santa Maria de la Cruz, de los Angeles, y de los Santos. There in a church he had stowed himself for refuge, dressed in Elena Maria’s clothing, face painted with Elena Maria’s cosmetics, a shoulder bag containing some little money and a change of clothing and three tubes of lipstick, and a scarf covering hair that was too long for a boy and too short for a girl.
When the priest found her, he called her my child and daughter of our Heavenly Father and he asked her if she was there to confess. And confession seemed like the path she should take— “Go, Santiago. Go where God points,” Elena Maria had whispered— so Santiago Vasquez y del Torres had confessed. Not to sin but to his need for help because if he could not be what he needed to be, he knew he would end his life.
The priest listened. He spoke gently of the grave sin of despair. He said that God did not create mistakes. Then he said, “Come with me, child,” and together they walked to the rectory, where Santiago was given absolution for whatever sin he had committed in running from his home and a meal of beef and boiled potatoes, which he ate slowly as he looked round the simple kitchen, where the priest’s housekeeper eyed him with thick black eyebrows drawn together and a furrowed brow. When he was finished with his meal, he was led to a parlour to rest, my dear child, for your journey has been a long and difficult one, has it not? And yes it had, oh it had. So he lay on a sofa covered in corduroy and he fell asleep.
His father awakened him. Face like a stone mask, he’d said, “Thank you, Padre,” and he’d taken his wayward son by the arm. “Thank you for everything,” and he’d made a hefty donation to the church or perhaps to the betraying priest himself, and home they had gone.
A beating would change him, his father decided. So would being locked into a room until he saw clearly the crime he had committed not only against God’s law but also against his family and their good name. And nothing would change about his situation— “Do you understand me, Santiago?”— until he agreed to stop this mad behaviour.
So Santiago had tried on manhood, for all the ill-fitting suit of clothes it was. But pictures of naked ladies shared in secret with his brothers only made him want to be like the ladies, not to have them, and when his brothers touched themselves in guilty pleasure at the sight of these women, the thought of touching himself in a similar way made him both nauseous and faint.
He did not develop as a boy: hairy of arm and leg and chest, bearded and needing to shave. It was so clear that something was wrong with him, but the only answer seemed to be toughening him up with contact sports, with hunting, with rock climbing, with daredevil skiing, with anything, in short, that his father could think of to make him into the man he was intended by God to be.
For two long years Santiago made the attempt. For two long years Santiago saved every bit of money he could. At fifteen, then, he ran for the final time, and he made it by train to Buenos Aires, where no one knew he was not a female unless he wished to make the fact known to them.
Alatea recalled the train ride: the sound of the engine and the scenery passing. She recalled her head against the cool glass of the window. She recalled her feet upon her suitcase. She remembered her ticket being punched and the man saying, Gracias, señorita, and being señorita from that time forward as the train carried her away from her home.
She could almost hear the train at this moment, so vivid was the memory of that time and that place. It rumbled and roared. It gushed and it thundered. It took her relentlessly into her future and even now she was on it, escaping her past.
When the first of the water hit her, she understood that what she’d been hearing was the tide. She