Juan Diego and his mom hit the hippie’s head on the hot-water faucet when they were sliding him into the bathtub, but the boy didn’t flinch or open his eyes; his only response was to hold his penis.
“Isn’t that sweet?” Esperanza asked Juan Diego. “He’s a darling guy, isn’t he?”
“ ‘I see, by your outfit, that you are a cowboy,’ ” the sleeping gringo sang.
Lupe wanted to be the one who turned the water on, but when she saw that el gringo bueno was holding his penis, she got upset all over again. “What is he doing to himself? He’s thinking about sex — I know he is!” she said to Juan Diego.
“He’s singing — he’s not thinking about sex, Lupe,” Juan Diego said.
“Sure he is — the gringo kid thinks about sex all the time. That’s why he’s so young-looking,” Esperanza told them, turning on the tub; she opened both faucets all the way.
“Whoa!” cried the good gringo, opening his eyes. He saw the three of them peering down at him in the bathtub. He’d probably not seen Esperanza looking quite this way — in a tight white towel with her damp, tousled hair fallen forward, to either side of her pretty face. She had taken the second towel off her head; the towel for her hair was a little wet, but she wanted to leave it for the hippie boy to use. It would take her a while to get herself dressed, and to bring a couple of clean towels to the kids’ bathroom.
“You drink too much, kid,” Esperanza told the good gringo. “You don’t have a big enough body to handle the alcohol.”
“What are you doing here?” the dear boy asked her; he had a wonderful smile, the Dying Christ on his scrawny chest notwithstanding.
“She’s our mother! You’re fucking our mother!” Lupe yelled.
“Yikes, little sister—” the gringo started to say. Naturally, he hadn’t understood her.
“This is our mother,” Juan Diego told the hippie, as the tub was filling.
“Oh, wow. We’re all friends, right? Amigos, aren’t we?” the boy asked, but Lupe turned away from the bathtub; she went back into the bedroom.
They could all hear Sister Gloria and the kindergartners coming up the stairs from the chapel, because Esperanza had left the door to the hall open, and Lupe had left the bathroom door open. Sister Gloria called the enforced march for the kindergartners their “constitutional”; the children tramped upstairs, chanting the responsive “¡Madre!” prayer. They marched around the hall, praying — they did this daily, not only on saints’ days. Sister Gloria said she made the children march for the “additional benefit” of the good effect this had on Brother Pepe and Edward Bonshaw, who loved to see and hear the kindergartners repeating the “now and forever” business.
But Sister Gloria had a punitive streak in her. Sister Gloria probably wanted to punish Esperanza, catching her — as it usually happened — in the two towels, fresh from her bath. Sister Gloria must have imagined that the endearing holiness of the chanting kindergartners burned in Esperanza’s sinning heart like a heated sword. Possibly, Sister Gloria deluded herself even further: she might have thought that the “you will be my guide” kindergartners had a cleansing effect on the prostitute’s wayward brats, those dump kids who’d been given special privileges at Lost Children. A room of their own and their own bathroom, too! — this was not how Sister Gloria would have treated los niños de la basura. This was no way to run an orphanage — not in Sister Gloria’s opinion. You didn’t give special privileges to smoke-smelling scavengers from the basurero!
But on the morning when Lupe learned that her mother and the good gringo had been lovers, Lupe was not in the mood to hear Sister Gloria and the kindergartners reciting the “¡Madre!” prayer.
“Mother!” Sister Gloria arduously repeated; she had paused at the open door to the dump kids’ bedroom, where the nun could see Lupe sitting on one of the unmade beds. The kindergartners stopped marching ahead in the hall; they stood, shuffling in place, staring into the bedroom. Lupe was sobbing, which was not entirely new.
“Now and forever, you will be my guide,” the children were repeating — for what must have seemed, at least to Lupe, the hundredth (or the thousandth) time.
“Mother Mary is a fake!” Lupe screamed at them. “Let the Virgin Mary show me a miracle — just the tiniest miracle, please! — and I might believe, for a minute, that your Mother Mary has actually done something, except steal Mexico from our Guadalupe. What did the Virgin Mary ever actually do? She didn’t even get herself pregnant!”
But Sister Gloria and the chanting kindergartners were used to incomprehensible outbursts from the presumed-to-be-retarded vagabond. (“La vagabunda,” Sister Gloria called Lupe.)
“¡Madre!” Sister Gloria simply said, again, and the children once more repeated the incessant prayer.
Esperanza’s emergence from the bathroom came as a ghostly apparition to the kindergartners — they halted their responsive praying in midsentence. “Ahora y siempre—” the children were saying when they suddenly stopped, the “now and forever” incantation just ending. Esperanza was wearing only one towel, the one that scantily covered her body. Her wild, freshly shampooed hair momentarily made the kindergartners think she was not the orphanage’s fallen cleaning woman; Esperanza now appeared to the children as a different, more confident being.
“Oh, get over it, Lupe!” Esperanza said. “He’s not the last naked boy who will break your heart!” (This was sufficient to make Sister Gloria stop praying, too.)
“Yes he is — the first and last naked boy!” Lupe cried. (Of course the kindergartners and Sister Gloria didn’t get this last bit.)
“Pay no attention to Lupe, children,” Esperanza told the kindergartners, as she walked barefoot into the hall. “A vision of the Crucified Christ has disturbed her. She thought the Dying Jesus was in her bathtub — the crown of thorns, the excessive bleeding, the whole nailed-to-the-cross thing! Who wouldn’t get upset to wake up to that?” Esperanza asked Sister Gloria, who was speechless. “Good morning to you, too, Sister,” Esperanza said, sashaying her way down the hall — such as it was possible to sashay in a skimpy, tight towel. In fact, the tightness of the towel caused Esperanza to stride ahead with small, mincing steps — yet she managed to walk fairly fast.
“What naked boy?” Sister Gloria asked Lupe. The little vagabond sat stone-faced on the bed; Lupe pointed to the open bathroom door.
“ ‘Come sit down beside me and hear my sad story,’ ” someone was singing. “ ‘Got shot in the breast, and I know I must die.’ ”
Sister Gloria hesitated; upon the cessation of the “¡Madre!” prayer and Esperanza’s scantily covered exit, the hatchet-faced nun could hear what she thought were voices coming from the dump kids’ bathroom. At first, Sister Gloria might have imagined she’d heard Juan Diego talking (or singing) to himself. But now, rising above the splashing sounds and the running water, the nun knew she’d been listening to two voices: that chatterbox of a boy from the Oaxaca basurero, Juan Diego (Brother Pepe’s prize pupil), and what struck Sister Gloria as the voice of a much older boy or young man. What Esperanza had called a naked boy sounded very much to Sister Gloria like a grown man—that was why the nun had hesitated.
The kindergartners, however, had been indoctrinated; the kindergartners were trained to march, and march they did. The kindergartners tramped forward, through the dump kids’ bedroom and into the bathroom.