John Irving - Avenue of Mysteries

“What did she say?” Edward Bonshaw asked the injured boy.

“The Virgin Mary is a fraud,” the boy replied; instantly, he felt his pain returning.

“A fraud —not our Mary!” Edward Bonshaw exclaimed.

“This is the dump kid I was telling you about, un niño de la basura,” Brother Pepe was trying to explain. “He’s a smart one—”

“Who are you? What do you want?” Juan Diego asked the gringo in the funny-looking Hawaiian shirt.

“He’s our new teacher, Juan Diego — be nice, ” Brother Pepe warned the boy. “He’s one of us, Mr. Edward Bon—”

“Eduardo,” the Iowan insisted, interrupting Pepe.

“Father Eduardo? Brother Eduardo?” Juan Diego asked.

“ Señor Eduardo,” Lupe suddenly said. Even the Iowan had understood her.

“Actually, just Eduardo is okay,” Edward modestly said.

“Señor Eduardo,” Juan Diego repeated; for no known reason, the injured dump reader liked the sound of this. The boy looked for the two women mourners in the foremost pew, not finding them. How they could have just disappeared struck Juan Diego as unlikely as the fluctuations in his pain; it had briefly relented but was now (once again) relentless. As for those two women, well — maybe those two were always just appearing, or disappearing. Who knows what just appears, or disappears, to a boy in this much pain?

“Why is the Virgin Mary a fraud?” Edward Bonshaw asked the boy, who lay unmoving at the Holy Mother’s feet.

“Don’t ask — not now. There isn’t time,” Brother Pepe started to say, but Lupe was already babbling unintelligibly — pointing first to Mother Mary, then to the smaller, dark-skinned virgin, who was often unnoticed in her more modest shrine.

“Is that Our Lady of Guadalupe?” the new missionary asked. From where they were, at the Mary Monster altar, the Guadalupe portrait was small and off to one side of the temple — almost out of sight, purposely tucked away.

“¡Sí!” Lupe cried, stamping her foot; she suddenly spat on the floor, almost perfectly between the two virgins.

“Another probable fraud,” Juan Diego said, to explain his sister’s spontaneous spitting. “But Guadalupe isn’t entirely bad; she’s just a little corrupted.”

“Is the girl—” Edward Bonshaw started to say, but Brother Pepe put a cautionary hand on the Iowan’s shoulder.

“Don’t say it,” Pepe warned the young American.

“No, she’s not, ” Juan Diego answered. The unspoken retarded word hovered there in the temple, as if one of the miraculous virgins had communicated it. (Naturally, Lupe had read the new missionary’s mind; she knew what he’d been thinking.)

“The boy’s foot isn’t right — it’s flattened, and it’s pointing the wrong way,” Edward said to Brother Pepe. “Shouldn’t he see a doctor ?”

“¡Sí!” Juan Diego cried. “Take me to Dr. Vargas. Only the boss man was hoping for a miracle.”

“The boss man?” Señor Eduardo asked, as if this were a religious reference to the Almighty.

“Not that boss man,” Brother Pepe said.

“ What boss man?” the Iowan asked.

“El jefe,” Juan Diego said, pointing to the anxious, guilt-stricken Rivera.

“ Aha! The boy’s father?” Edward asked Pepe.

“No, probably not — he’s the dump boss,” Brother Pepe said.

“He was driving the truck! He’s too lazy to get his side-view mirror fixed! And look at his stupid mustache! No woman who isn’t a prostitute will ever want him with that hairy caterpillar on his lip!” Lupe raved.

“Goodness — she has her own language, doesn’t she?” Edward Bonshaw asked Brother Pepe.

“This is Rivera. He was driving the truck that backed over me, but he’s like a father to us —better than a father. He doesn’t leave,” Juan Diego told the new missionary. “And he never beats us.”

“Aha,” Edward said, with uncharacteristic caution. “And your mother ? Where is—”

As if summoned by those do-nothing virgins, who were taking the day off, Esperanza rushed to her son at the altar; she was a ravishingly beautiful young woman who made an entrance of herself wherever and whenever she appeared. Not only did she not look like a cleaning woman for the Jesuits; to the Iowan, she most certainly didn’t look like anyone’s mother .

What is it about women with chests like that? Brother Pepe was wondering to himself. Why are their chests always heaving ?

“Always late, usually hysterical,” Lupe said sullenly. The girl’s looks at the Virgin Mary and Our Lady of Guadalupe had been disbelieving — in her mother’s case, Lupe simply looked away.

“Surely she isn’t the boy’s—” Señor Eduardo began.

“Yes, she is — the girl’s, too,” was all Pepe said.

Esperanza was raving incoherently; it seemed she was beseeching the Virgin Mary, rather than be so mundane as to ask Juan Diego what had happened to him. Her incantations sounded to Brother Pepe like Lupe’s gibberish — possibly genetic, Pepe thought — and Lupe (of course) chimed in, adding her incoherence to the babble. Naturally, Lupe was pointing to the dump boss as she reenacted the saga of the multifaceted mirror and the foot-flattening truck in reverse; there was no pity for the caterpillar-lipped Rivera, who seemed ready to throw himself at the Virgin Mary’s feet — or repeatedly bash his head against the pedestal where the Holy Mother so dispassionately stood. But was she dispassionate?

It was then that Juan Diego looked upward at the Virgin Mary’s usually unemotional face. Did the boy’s pain affect his vision, or did Mother Mary indeed glower at Esperanza — she who’d brought so little hope, her name notwithstanding, into her son’s life? And what exactly did the Holy Mother disapprove of? What had made the Virgin Mary glare so angrily at the children’s mother?

The low-cut neckline of Esperanza’s revealing blouse certainly showed a lot of the implausible cleaning woman’s cleavage, and from the Virgin Mary’s elevated position on her pedestal, the Holy Mother looked down upon Esperanza’s décolletage from an all-encompassing height.

Esperanza herself was oblivious to the towering statue’s implacable disapproval. Juan Diego was surprised that his mom understood what her vehement daughter was babbling about. Juan Diego was used to being Lupe’s interpreter — even for Esperanza — but not this time.

Esperanza had stopped wringing her hands imploringly in the area of the Virgin Mary’s toes; the sensual-looking cleaning woman was no longer beseeching the unresponsive statue. Juan Diego always underestimated his mother’s capacity for blame — that is, for blaming others. In this case, Rivera — el jefe, with his unrepaired side-view mirror, he who slept in the cab of his truck with his gear shift in reverse — was the recipient of Esperanza’s animated blame. She beat the dump boss with both her hands, in tightly clenched fists; she kicked his shins; she yanked his hair, her bracelets scratching his face.

“You have to help Rivera,” Juan Diego said to Brother Pepe, “or he’ll need to see Dr. Vargas, too.” The injured boy then spoke to his sister: “Did you see how the Virgin Mary looked at our mother?” But the seemingly all-knowing child simply shrugged.

“The Virgin Mary disapproves of everyone,” Lupe said. “No one is good enough for that big bitch.”

“What did she say?” Edward Bonshaw asked.

“God knows,” Brother Pepe said. (Juan Diego didn’t offer a translation.)

“If you want to worry about something,” Lupe said to her brother, “you ought to worry about how Guadalupe was looking at you. ”