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.”
“How?” Juan Diego asked the girl. It hurt his foot to turn his head to look at the less noticed of the two virgins.
“Like she’s still making up her mind about you,” Lupe said. “Guadalupe hasn’t decided about you,” the clairvoyant child told him.
“Get me out of here,” Juan Diego said to Brother Pepe. “Señor Eduardo, you have to help me,” the injured boy added, grasping the new missionary’s hand. “Rivera can carry me,” Juan Diego continued. “You just have to rescue Rivera first.”
“Esperanza, please,” Brother Pepe said to the cleaning woman; he had reached out and caught her slender wrists. “We have to take Juan Diego to Dr. Vargas — we need Rivera, and his truck.”
“His truck!” the histrionic mother cried.
“You should pray,” Edward Bonshaw said to Esperanza; inexplicably, he knew how to say this in Spanish — he said it perfectly.
“Pray?” Esperanza asked him. “Who is he?” she suddenly asked Pepe, who was staring at his bleeding thumb; one of Esperanza’s bracelets had cut him.
“Our new teacher — the one we’ve all been waiting for,” Brother Pepe said, as if suddenly inspired. “Señor Eduardo is from Iowa,” Pepe intoned. He made Iowa sound as if it were Rome.
“Iowa,” Esperanza repeated, in her enthralled way — her chest heaving. “Señor Eduardo,” she repeated, bowing to the Iowan with an awkward but cleavage-revealing curtsy. “Pray where? Pray here? Pray now?” she asked the new missionary in the riotous, parrot-covered shirt.
“Sí,” Señor Eduardo told her; he was trying to look everywhere except at her breasts.
You have to hand it to this guy; he’s got a way about him, Brother Pepe was thinking.
Rivera had already lifted Juan Diego from the altar where the Virgin Mary imposingly stood. The boy had cried out in pain, albeit briefly — just enough to quiet the murmuring crowd.
“Look at him,” Lupe was telling her brother.
“Look at—” Juan Diego started to ask her.
“At him, at the gringo — the parrot man!” Lupe said. “He’s the miracle man. Don’t you see? It’s him. He came for us — for you, anyway,” Lupe said.
“What do you mean: ‘He came for us’—what’s that supposed to mean?” Juan Diego asked his sister.
“For you, anyway,” Lupe said again, turning away; she was almost indifferent, as if she’d lost interest in what she was saying or she no longer believed in herself. “Now that I think of it, I guess the gringo isn’t my miracle — just yours,” the girl said, disheartened.
“The parrot man!” Juan Diego repeated, laughing; yet, as Rivera carried him, the boy could see that Lupe wasn’t smiling. Serious as ever, she appeared to be scanning the crowd, as if looking for who her miracle might be, and not finding him.
“You Catholics,” Juan Diego said, wincing as Rivera shouldered his way through the congested entranceway to the Jesuit temple; it was unclear to Brother Pepe and Edward Bonshaw if the boy had spoken to them. “You Catholics” could have meant the gawking crowd, including the shrill but unsuccessful praying of the dump kids’ mother — Esperanza always prayed out loud, like Lupe, and in Lupe’s language. And now, also like Lupe, Esperanza had stopped beseeching the Virgin Mary; it was the smaller, dark-skinned virgin who received the pretty cleaning woman’s earnest attention.
“Oh, you who were once disbelieved — you who were doubted, you who were asked to prove who you were,” Esperanza was praying to the child-size portrait of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
“You Catholics,” Juan Diego began again. Diablo saw the dump kids coming and began to wag his tail, but this time the injured boy had clutched a handful of parrots on the new missionary’s overlarge Hawaiian shirt. “You Catholics stole our virgin,” Juan Diego said to Edward Bonshaw. “Guadalupe was ours, and you took her — you used her, you made her merely an acolyte to your Virgin Mary.”