When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [37]
“We’re going to Mass,” she said, pulling out a small white mantilla, which I was to wear during the service.
“Can we have breakfast first, Abuela. I’m hungry.”
“No. We have to fast before church. Don’t ask why. It’s too complicated to explain.”
I dressed and combed my hair, and she helped me pin the mantilla to the top of my head.
“All the way there and back,” she said, “you should have nothing but good thoughts, because we’re going to the house of God.”
I’d never been to church and had never stopped to classify my thoughts into good ones and bad ones. But when she said that, I knew what she meant and also knew bad thoughts would be the only things on my mind all the way there and back.
I tried to look as holy as possible, but the white mantilla tickled my neck and the sides of my face. I wished I didn’t have to wear it, and that was a bad thought, since all the women and girls walking in front of us wore theirs without any complaints.
I love my mother, my father, all my sisters and brothers, my abuela and abuelo, all my cousins, the governor of Puerto
Rico, Doña Lola, my teacher. A boy went by too fast and bumped into me, so I bumped him back, and that was bad, because Jesus said we should turn the other cheek, which seemed stupid, and there went another bad thought.
I counted all the squares on the sidewalk up to the steps of the church, then I counted the steps, twenty-seven. No bad thoughts.
The church was cool, dark, and sweet smelling. Abuela dipped her fingers into a bowl at the entrance and crossed herself. I dipped my fingers, and there was nothing but water. I tasted it, and she gave me a horrified look and crossed herself. She took my hand and walked me down the aisle lined with pews. When we came to the front, she half knelt, looking up to the altar, and crossed herself again before sliding in to take her seat. I did the same thing.
We were early. Music came from somewhere behind us. When I turned around to see, Abuela leaned down and whispered, “Face forward. You should never look behind you in church.” I was about to ask why, but Abuela put her fingers to her lips and shushed me as everyone stood up. I couldn’t see anything except the back of the man in front of me. He wore a wrinkled brown suit that stretched into folds around his waist because he was so fat. That must have been a bad thought.
The church’s windows were of colored glass, each window a scene with Jesus and his cross. The two I could see without turning my head were beautiful, even though Jesus looked like He was in a lot of pain. The priest said something, and everyone knelt. The altar had an enormous Jesus on his cross at the center, the disciples at his feet. Tall candles burned in steps from the rear of the altar to the front, where the priest, dressed in purple and yellow robes, moved his hands up and down and recited poetry that everyone in the church repeated after him. Two boys wearing white lace tunics helped him, and I was jealous, because their job seemed very important. Envy, I knew, was a bad thought.
I counted the times people stood up, knelt down, stood up. That didn’t seem right. I shouldn’t be in church counting things. I should feel holy, blessed. But I got an itch in the space between my little toe and the sole of my foot. I scraped my shoe against the kneeling bench on the floor. The itch got worse. We knelt again, so I leaned back and took the shoe off to scratch my foot. But I had to get up, because the person next to me wanted to get through. And other people in the same pew got up and squeezed past me, kicking my shoe toward the aisle in the process. Abuela leaned down. “I’m going to take communion. You wait right here.”
As soon as she was gone, I slid over to the end of the pew and looked up the aisle. No shoe. I felt for it with my foot all along under the pew but couldn’t find it. It was wrong to look back in church, so it seemed that it would be worse to look down. But I didn’t want Abuela to come back and find me with one shoe missing.
The people