But he had made those remarks about heaven and purgatory. Was it possible for a saint to be wrong? I didn’t think so. I thought the saints were like the Pope, always right, even if other people didn’t understand their logic.
I tested the waters with my mother. “Do you think saints can be wrong?” I asked her.
“Whaddaya talking about, wrong? Go wash up for supper,” she told me.
When I broached the subject of my confirmation name with her, I knew I had to be well prepared to counter the inevitable argument. “I want to take the name Frederika, after Frederick of Utrecht,” I said. “He was a Bishop who got stabbed to death during Mass in the year 838.”
My mother didn’t even glance away from her mending. “And you want to follow in his footsteps, maybe get stabbed to death on the street?” She finally looked up at me, narrowing her eyes. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to, young lady. María. You’re going to take the name María,” she said in a voice that would brook no further argument.
But I had to try once more. “Sister says that you’re supposed to pick a saint’s name if the saint means something to you personally.”
“And this Frederick of Utrecht is a big idol for you, hmm? I think you didn’t know who he was until you looked him up in a book.” She shook her needle and thread at me. “I know which Frederick you’re interested in, and believe me, he was no saint.” My crush on Freddie Prinze was legendary.
“Maybe he will be one day,” I said stubbornly.
“Oh, I don’t think so, mija,” she said. “No, you’ll take María, like a good girl, and that’s final.”
Sister Mary Claire wasn’t any help, either. When I asked her how to go about proposing someone for canonization, she was immediately suspicious. She wanted to know who I had in mind, but I was cagey enough to pretend I was just asking in general. I don’t think it was an accident that the priest came in right after that and talked to us for a whole day about piety and the Catholic woman’s duty in the home.
I continued to pray for Freddie Prinze’s soul and to say the Rosary twice every January 29, but he didn’t come back the next year, even though I kept my eyes open long after I went to bed. I wracked my brain trying to remember the exact prayers that I had uttered in order to bring him back again. Each anniversary, I tried to repeat the magic formula, but it didn’t work until the year I was eighteen.
I was on my knees in the bedroom saying the Rosary fast because it had become a ritual, but my mind was more on meeting my friends. It was a Friday night, and we were going to a party at a boy’s house. I was thinking about the shoes I’d just bought when I saw Freddie standing against the wall.
This time, the first thing he said was, “Looooking good, mamacita! Whew, you’ve really grown up.” He nodded approvingly.
I was flattered, but still a little mad that he’d ignored me for the last three years. I tried to play it cool. “What took you so long?” I asked.
“Where I am now, time doesn’t work the same way it does here,” he said. “Seems like it’s been just a few weeks. That’s why it’s amazing that you’re all grown up.” He grinned.
I softened. I was thrilled to see him; why let my petty feeling of abandonment get in the way? “What’s up?” I asked. I was dying to find out what he had to tell me this time.
“You still haven’t joined the NYPD,” he said. “I’ve been checking.” He shook his finger at me.
“I’m not old enough yet. You have to be twenty-one.”
“Oh. Right.” He shrugged. “The time thing, you know?”
“You’ve been watching me?”
“Yeah. That’s what I’m supposed to do.”
“Like a guardian angel, you mean?”
He gave me a funny half-smile. “Something like that.”
“So, do you see everything I do?” I worried about whether he observed me in the shower.
“Not everything, don’t worry. But the important things.”
I decided to test him. “Like what?”
He looked up at the ceiling. “Oh, I know about you and Julio Marquez down the block.”
I blushed hard. I had experienced my first French kiss with Julio. I knew it was a sin, but I did it anyway. Then I went to Confession.
“Do you know other things, too?” I asked. “Like what horse is going to win?”
“Sometimes, yeah.” He squirmed. “But don’t ask me to tell you. I’m not supposed to.”
I immediately thought of what I could do with the winnings from OTB. Get my family out of Washington Heights and away from the drug dealers, for one thing. “Please? Could you just tell me the winner for one race? I’d never ask you again, I promise.”
“I’m really not supposed to,” he said.
I rose. “Isn’t there any way I could persuade you?”
He eyed me at chest level. “Um, I suppose just once wouldn’t hurt.” He beckoned me closer. I could feel his hot breath in my ear, but when I reached out to touch him, my hand hit the wall. “Okay, Broken Nose in the seventh at Aqueduct.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you!” I clapped my hands together. I was already spending the money.
“Yeah, well.” He cleared his throat. “You still need to become a police officer, okay?”
“I don’t see why,” I said. “It’s not like it’s what I really want to do or anything.”
“What would you rather do?”
“I want to be an actress. I’m even going to Performing Arts High School, just like you did.” I couldn’t keep the pride from my voice.
“Hey, kid, why do you wanna do that? No, no. It’s not in the cards for you. You join the NYPD like I told you, okay?”
“I guess. But I thought that if I could have a TV show like yours…”
“That’s not what’s right for you, believe me. Now, I got something else to tell you, so listen up, ’cause I gotta go soon,” he said.
“All right.” I was disappointed about the acting. I still wanted to follow in his footsteps.
“Come on, don’t sulk. This is important, so remember it, okay?”
I nodded to assure him that I was all ears.
“You’re gonna meet someone called Jumbo. He’s going to make you an offer, and it’ll sound real good to you. Don’t take it. If you do, you’ll get into really bad trouble. You understand?”
“Don’t accept Jumbo’s offer,” I repeated. “Who’s Jumbo and what’s he going to offer me?”
“No more time now. I gotta go.” He began to fade.
“Wait! Will you come back again?”
“Count on it, mami,” he said as he disappeared.
I broke open my piggy bank and counted the money. Not enough to bet on Broken Nose. On my way to the party, I picked up a copy of the Post, hoping to find the odds. Broken Nose wasn’t listed, but a horse named Jumbo was running in the seventh. It reminded me of Freddie’s warning, and I wondered about it again.
At the party, I tried to talk Julio and a few of my girl-friends into putting some money down on Broken Nose. I’d had a hot tip, I told them. Nobody believed me, especially when I couldn’t tell them when the race was, just that it was the seventh.
I checked the paper the next day. Jumbo was the winner in the seventh race. If I had put down fifty bucks, I would have been so rich… I didn’t even want to think about it. Why did Freddie give me the wrong tip? Maybe it was to keep me from gambling. He wasn’t supposed to tell me, and if he did, I wasn’t supposed to act on his tip. It must have been like a test. But for which one of us?
After I graduated from high school, I went to City College on a partial scholarship. I was so busy with my new life that I hardly ever thought about Freddie anymore. The first two years, I flew through the Rosary on the anniversary of his death, but the third year, I forgot to say it at all. I remembered two weeks later, but I was studying for a chemistry test and I didn’t want to take the time to pray. Besides, I was still a little sore about Jumbo.