KATE HOLGUIN I women of the faith I

by Kate Holguin

The priest in Torreon had always told bisabuelita Lucia Oviedo that if she was a good soul, she would die and go to heaven. Instead, she died and went to 1 What kind of place was this mercado, where i people bought fruta in a can and leche sometimes • came in a solid powder form? • Esevan dolers, the cashier seemed to Santa Ana. There she was, a newlywed at sixteen, in a canvas tent lying supine on a wool blanket underneath a thin cotton sheet. Sweat dripped down her face as she kept screaming out in pain and terror, giving birth to her first child with only another migrant woman sitting by her side (she had said she was a midwife of sorts). Her husband was nowhere to be found—probably off drinking with her brothers, flirting with girls even younger than her, she assumed. She always thought she had been a good soul, but as she entered the final stretches of labor, she remembered how when she had been young, during la revolution, she always disobeyed her parents orders not to leave the church (their new home after the Zapatistas pushed them out) when there was fighting right outside. A sin, to disobey your parents, the priest had said. But sometimes the bullet holes through the adobe brick were too slight for her to see through to the action on the other side. "Dios mioV she pleaded, staring up through the small holes in the canvas tent up to the California sun, "ipor que me haces sufrir tanto? No response. The priest in Acambay had always told mama Clotilde Martinez Cano that if she was a good soul she would die and go to heaven. Instead, she died and went to Marysville. th„ * rrC kneW She WaS already quite old at Wilfredo M uT tW° Wry youn8 children: ~°'M Edie"tWO' She 'tied to conrol her two precocious children in a place she thought everyone kept calling an esupermarket say to her. She stared at him blankly. What did esevan dolers mean? The cashier got impatient and started yelling at her. Edie started crying and Wilfredo hid behind her in fear. Finally some sort of superior came to the register and caked the cashier down. The superior looked at her and held up seven fingers. She scrambled for her wallet and carefully counted out seven bills that had the number one on them. She always thought she had been a good soul, but as she walked home from the esupermarket, she remembered how her parents had always wanted her to go to Toluca and marry a rich doctor or lawyer. Instead, she married a boy from her little town of Acambay, trained as a silversmith and now a bracero, a farm workera farm worker that had taken her from her beloved home. A sin to disobey your parents, the priest had said. But what other boy in Acambay, or even Toluca, didn't drink or smoke and would stay faithful to her? "Dios mio\" she thought, staring down the long dirt road back to the ranch where she now lived, "ipor que me haces sufrir tantoi" No response. The priest in El Paso had always told grandma Rebeca Martinez that if she was a good soul, she would die and go to heaven. Instead, she died and went to Nebraska. And then Virginia. And then Massachusetts. Jose told her he loved her and that the best gift she could give him would be the gift of children. So, because she loved him, she gau him children—first one, then another, and before she was forty, there were seven. She gave him children, and she followed him to wherever the

United States Air Force said they needed him, "a good man like Joe." A good man like Joe, she thought, every time he scolded her for leaving the house without telling him, and every time he hit her for talking to another man, and every time he disappeared for days—"serving his country' he would say, but he was really serving some gringa named Carol in California. She always thought she had been a good soul, but as she stared out the window of their new home in Falls Church, or Sleepy Hollow—whatever this new town was called—and watched her children play in the yard, she remembered how furious she had made her father by eloping with Jose. Un sinvergiienza, her father called him—just a good-looking, sweet-talking faldero. A sin to disobey your parents, the priest had said. But every time Jose looked at her with those bold dark eyes and told her that to kiss her was to see las estrellas, she melted, and told him she would follow him anywhere. And that's just what she did. "Dios mw\" she sofdy sobbed, her head in her hands, "ipor que me haces sufrir tanto?" No response. The priest in Los Angeles had always told me that if I was a good soul, I would die and go to heaven. Instead, I died and went to Russia. Do something different, I told myself, go somewhere no one has gone. No one I knew had gone to Moscow. I sat at my babushkas kitchen table, two months shy of twenty-one, eating the bean and cheese burrito that I had made for dinner. My eyes were glued to the television, in hopes of avoiding the stink-eye my babushka's daughter was giving me and my little burrito. That's not food that real people eat, she had said to me. After quickly eating, I walked to my room, passing the bathroom on the way. I could bet on the door being wide open and seeing my babushka, fully naked, sitting on the toilet, probably about to defecate. This was one of those times. She smiled and waved. I always thought I had been a good soul, but as I sat on my bed, listening to Herb Alpert and peering out my window onto the cold and unfamiliar streets of the city, I remembered how many times I had snuck boyfriends in and out of my house right under my parents' noses. Corey came in through the patio doors, Alex left through the side door off of the laundry room, and Michael once jumped down from my bedroom window onto the balcony below and then took the stairs through the backyard. Once with Tristan I recruited my sister to assist in the escape; she distracted my parents while we tiptoed down the hall and the stairs, and quietly out the front door. A sin to disobey your parents, the priest had said, but like any typical shoddilyraised Catholic eight-year-old, I didn't really understand the concept of sinning. "God," I whispered, "why must I suffer

so?"

No response. "Dios mio?" I whispered apprehensively, "ipor que me haces sufrir tantoV'

"Ha pyccKOM, nepT B03bMn! ToBopM no-pyccKMw!"1

"God? Dios?" "R He noHMMaio Te6n. TBI B POCCMH. Cica>KM Ha pyccKOM, nmKajiyiicTa."2 My babushka stood in the doorway of my bedroom, a scowl on her face. I'd always thought I didn't get religion. It turns out, religion never got us.

1 "In Russian, goddammit! Speak Russian!" (Na russkom, chert vozmi! Govori po-russki!) 2 "I don't understand you. You're in Russia. Speak in Russian, please." (Ya ne ponimayu tebya. Tui v Rossi. Skazhi na russkom, pozhalsta.)