A waitress plunks down a basket of deep-fried tortilla strips and a cup of salsa. We devour three rounds and two bucket-size teas before Berta calls to say they are running un poco late. By the time they arrive, the lunch crowd has emptied and the jukebox is blasting Los Tigres. Berta looks straight out of a Botero painting: soft and round with long hair and feathered-back bangs. Gilbert has a moustache and ruddy cheeks and wears two large religious medallions around his neck. Setting down a wooden box secured with cables, they apologize for making us wait, pero every time they climbed inside their car, they remembered another miracle to show us and ran back inside to get it.
The first miracle they witnessed was La Virgen-Beneath-the-Carpet at St. Anthony’s. Gilbert spent the whole day—“October tenth in the year 2000”—in bed. He had worked in the oil refineries until arthritis disabled him, then underwent two hip replacements in a row. He was preparing for his third and couldn’t walk without a cane—two, for a fair distance. Berta had just tuned in to the five o’clock news when someone called to say that La Virgen was down at the church and could they come take pictures? By the time they arrived at St. Anthony’s with their camera bag, a crowd had assembled on the sidewalk. The church had already closed for the night, but Father Bob promised to hang La Virgen in the sacristy in the morning. The people were waiting for sunrise. Berta and Gilbert milled about the rosary-chanters until Gilbert started feeling emotional. “Berta, we have to go, I am going to start crying, I don’t want nobody to see me crying,” he whispered.
They barely made it to the car before his eyes dribbled. “And then he started repeating, ‘Rosas, rosas, rosas.’ Me and my son just looked at each other, wondering what to do, and finally Gilbert said, ‘She is asking me to bring roses.’”
Which La Virgen is wont to do. The heady perfume of roses has accompanied her sightings for five centuries now. But none could be found in Robstown at that hour, so they drove all the way to the H-E-B in Annaville. “By that point, Gilbert was just soaking wet with his tears and I ran inside and came back with pink roses and he said ‘Why didn’t you get the red ones?’ but that’s all they had so we said let’s go and by the time we got to the church there were fifty or seventy people just walking around the sidewalk and we see Father Bob coming outside and Gilbert went up and said, ‘Father, Father, can you please give these to our Blessed Mother?’ and he said, ‘No Gilbert, you need to do it, I feel a miracle’s about to happen.’”
Gilbert, Berta, and their son entered the church with the not-red roses. Approaching the pulpit, Gilbert cast aside his cane and sank to his knees. He cried with so much love, so much fervor, he started bouncing on his knees, this man who could barely walk. He started receiving messages and repeating them in Spanish. “And not in Tex-Mex but in real correct Spanish!” Berta says.3
“And I didn’t even speak Spanish before,” Gilbert says.
“And the priest was running back and forth completely freaking out saying, ‘Can he see her? Can he see her?’ and Gilbert’s words were just coming out in a blur but I could understand everything and I said, ‘You’re scaring Father’ and he turned and looked at me and they weren’t regular tears, they were big big tears, like rain.”
Father Bob knelt beside Gilbert and, when Gilbert calmed, murmured a blessing. Then the men rose, Gilbert without his cane, and headed back to the sacristy. “Only I wasn’t walking. I was floating. It was an out-of-body experience. It was the Holy Spirit.”
When the crowd saw Gilbert walking free of cane, they shouted his name and tugged at his shirtsleeves. Gilbert patiently answered their questions—“She said to pray the rosary every single day”—before granting Channel 3 News an exclusive.
“He told them everything but they didn’t use anything except ‘I haven’t cried like that since I was a little boy,’” Berta says.
“I didn’t want people to see me crying and then the whole world saw me crying. After that, people would come up and say, ‘Hey, were you that guy crying on TV?’” Gilbert says.
Opening a folder, Berta removes a laminated photograph of the wood panel inscribed with La Virgen. “Once you focus, you will see a baby in her stomach. See? It is like a sonogram,” she says, pointing to a blip of darkness in the belly-shaped mound of La Virgen–shaped image.
They say they have processed more than 20,000 copies of this photo. For years, Gilbert drove to the church each morning to parcel them out to passersby. “And I would go to write a check to pay for the photos but my bank account never decreased, it only went down if I used it for my business,” Berta says. “Or other times, the workers at the photo shop would say this stack didn’t come out right and they would give us the whole stack for free.”
“And sometimes the photos would smell like roses,” Gilbert adds.
Before, Berta says, they were the kind of people who listened to Ozzy Osbourne. Gilbert didn’t even like church. She struggled to rile him out of bed. “And now, he pushes me to go. He tells me, hurry up! We used to sit in the third-to-last row at church. Now we sit up in the very front. Before we were into none of this stuff. Now, I do all the driving in case Gilbert receives the Holy Spirit.”
I have to ask. “What’s it like, receiving the Holy Spirit?”
“You feel full of vibrance, like you’re full of glitter,” Gilbert says. “It always hits me in my mouth. It’s like a gush of wind going right through my mouth.”
I ask about the other miracles they’ve witnessed, and they unearth them one by one—from their pockets, from their wallets, from their wooden box wrapped in cables. Rosaries. Medallions. Copper lockets. An old stole blessed by the pope. A sliver of a bone of St. Teresa of Avila and the fringes of a frock worn by Padre Pio of the Giovanni Rotunda of Italy, fresh off the Internet. And photos, piles of photos, nearly all of clouds, only they don’t see clouds but crosses and chalices. And maybe this is when I lose focus, where I start writing “donuts” instead of “doves,” where my neck goes slack and my head swivels back as they keep spinning stories—stories like the one about the old lady in Sinton who keeps a rock in her yard with La Virgen etched on one side that grows bigger every year and was the size of a pineapple last they checked; stories like the one about the church in Laredo where an image of La Virgen “sprays glitter out of her head” and a little girl sprinkled some on the tongue of a dog lying dead in the street and he started barking and wagging his tail. And while something inside me will never allow for such suspension of disbelief—the journalist?—I can’t help but think about the month I once spent at an art colony near Barcelona, where I befriended a photographer who invited me to visit the shrine of La Virgen de Montserrat, the patron saint of Catalonia. We waited in line for more than an hour to see her, during which I prepared myself for the inevitable I fought all those crowds to see the Mona Lisa and this is what I get? disappointment, but when I entered La Virgen’s chamber, I got swept up in the rush of cool air and the perfume of stargazer lilies and the glow of lamps and the gleam of the gold altar, and when I leaned in close to examine La Virgen’s face, I was surprised to find a smile upon it. Catholic virgins usually look so dour, but this one appeared on the verge of laughter. I smiled back at her, then exited a series of darkened doorways until I was back in the sunlight where my friend awaited. When I remarked how nice it was to see a happy virgin, she said, “What do you mean? She was frowning.”
We argued about this until we entered the gift shop, where every pendant, bracelet, candle, spoon, coffee mug, snow globe, shower gel, and bottle of Liquor Crema Catalana depicted La Virgen de Montserrat the exact same way: serene but severe. “Well,” my friend said, tilting her head, “maybe she smiled at you.”
And that is why, when Gilbert and Berta ask—after two and a half hours of narcotizing us with miracles—if we’d like to attend a healing mass next Wednesday, I exchange glances with Greg and say we do.
GREG PARKS ON TEX-MEX STREET and we weave through a jumble of trucks toward St. Anthony’s, dodging a thicket of signs reading
ABORTION KILLS BABIES as we do. The door swings open and the merriment of an accordion jingles out. Parishioners fill the vestibule and nearly every pew, and all eyes are fixed upon the man in the sanctuary. Very tall and very black, he wears a white robe and wields an enormous gold monstrance.4
“Where’s he from?” I ask quietly.
“Africa,” an elder whispers.
“Ethiopia, I think,” says another.
“Ghana,” pipes a third. “Or Kenya. One of those.”
Wherever he’s from, he towers over the Tejanos beside him. His hair is shorn close, and the cloak around his shoulders is embroidered scarlet and gold. Raising the monstrance high above his head, he speaks in a rumble that evolves into a roar.
Lord, heal us:
for the sin of idolatry,
for the loss of faith in God,
for sinful addictions,
for those who use drugs and narcotics and are addicted to pornography,
for those who are addicted to masturbation,
to homosexual activity and to lesbianism,
for those who engage in child abuse,
in prostitution,
for those who are addicted to gossip,
for those who conduct wicked acts,
who steal,
who don’t respect others,
for those who have sex before marriage,
for the sin of divorce,
for murderers,
for impure thoughts and impure actions,
for those who abuse their spouse,
for those who abuse their children,
for sexual abuse,
for emotional abuse,
for psychological abuse,
for those who find it hard to forgive,
for those who practice witchcraft,
who practice sorcery,
who have excessive anger, excessive hatred,
who have alcoholic parents or drugs in their family,
for the sin of contraception,
for the sin of abortion,
for those who practice birth control,
for those who are completely burned out in life,
who think themselves unworthy,
who have lost their job,
who have anxiety attacks,
for those who need healing of their whole entire body,
we take this blessed sacrament, Amen.
Greg nudges me. That’s us.
A hunched-over man in the first pew shuffles up to the crossing. The priest descends a few steps to greet him and lowers the monstrance against his forehead. Seconds later, the man is gone. I no longer see the back of his head. A middle-aged woman in a floral dress is next. She too receives the blessing from the priest—and vanishes. One by one, a row of parishioners disappears.
I steal up the gospel side of the nave, past the confessionals marked privado and cara a cara, past the Stations of the Cross, past the stained glass windows, past hundreds of parishioners bent in prayer. Up in the transept near the statue of Mary stands Gilbert, wearing multiple rosaries wrapped around his wrists. Filing in behind him, I gaze out into the crossing. Three bodies stretch in dead-man poses upon the floor. They strike me as the kind of people who wouldn’t lie on the floor unless the paramedics were on the way, yet there they are, covered with blankets featuring the trinity of South Texas: La Virgen de Guadalupe, the Mexican flag, and the Dallas Cowboys.
The priest is tending to a young woman now. She bows her head as a man in a maroon shirt that says 100% ROSARY PRAYING JESUS LOVING CATHOLIC takes position behind her, his hands above her shoulders. The priest slowly lowers the monstrance, and the instant it graces her forehead, she collapses into the arms behind her. It is an effortless fall. Graceful, even. She doesn’t step back or look back; she simply falls back from 90 degrees to 120 degrees, where she is caught and lowered to the floor. Another 100% ROSARY PRAYING JESUS LOVING CATHOLIC covers her with a blanket, as if she were sleeping. The priest gravitates to the next parishioner, and the next.
Nuns fall the fastest—so fast, you can’t help wondering if it’s a contest. One plummets before the priest even raises the monstrance. There’s barely enough time to catch her. An alarmingly thin nun keels forward instead of backward and lands in child’s pose at the priest’s feet. He moves on within a beat.
By the time he has worked his way to the gospel side of the crossing, the priest’s vestments are slick with sweat. He mops off with a towel and drains an entire bottle of water in a single gulp. His hands tend to quiver, particularly when worshippers don’t immediately drop. He takes his shaking hand and clamps it atop their skull, as if squeezing a cantaloupe for ripeness. This generally does the trick, but one or two parishioners hold their stance, including a six-year-old in a purple dress. She bends beneath the weight of the monstrance and further still beneath the priest’s grip but doesn’t surrender until her mother marches over. Then she topples.
But for the most part, the parishioners fall with ease, even the ones whose bodies swell with diabetes or shrivel with age. They fall with abandon, never once looking back to ensure someone is there. They fall trusting they will not be dropped or stepped on; they fall trusting they will make it safely to the floor. And once they do, they shut their eyes and still their bodies, though sometimes their stomachs quake. When they wake, they seem disoriented. They struggle to their knees. So easy to fall; so hard to rise.
Two hours later, Greg taps me on the shoulder. I follow him outside, where the sidewalk swarms with crickets.
“What do you think?” he asks. “Should we do it?”
As usual, I feel torn in two. The half of me who has spent half her life outside the borderlands looks at everyone strewn across the floor and thinks, This is how Jim Jones5 came to be. Let us run, while we still can.
The half who was raised here and returned here, however, is impressed by the parishioners’ courage. Even if they fall out of unexamined ardor (or worse: a lack of alternatives), they are willing to open themselves up to possibility. This is what I’ve come to admire most about the Tejanos I’ve met these last few years, from the activists and artists to the law enforcers, nuns, and dealers. When they sense something is lacking, whether in their own lives or in others’, they risk everything to fill it, no matter what border they must cross—internal, international, or preternatural.
A cricket is hopping toward Greg’s foot. A cricket is hopping toward my foot. We are about to get covered in crickets. Skepticism seems too easy an out. Something profoundly spiritual could be taking place here. Even if I’m not aware enough to fully experience it, shouldn’t I at least try?
As soon as we enter the doorway, someone beckons us into the crossing. I am three parishioners away from healing. Weirdly nervous, I lift my palms and recite those desert songs of long ago. I Believe In One God The Father Almighty. Someone falls. Creator Of Heaven And Earth. Another one goes. And In Jesus Christ His Only Son Our Lord. And then the third. I sense someone taking position behind me, but before I can check, the priest appears before me. For a moment, there is only white robe and black skin—and then the monstrance descends upon me, brilliantly gold and shaped like a cross and diving straight toward my head. I follow it with my chin until I am in the throws of a backbend and the man behind me hisses, “Open your heart. Give it up to the Lord.”
My right foot steps back.
“Praise be Jesus,” the priest stage-whispers above me. “Praise be the Lord Jesus Christ.”
“Give it up. Give it up to the Lord.”
“Jesus. Praise be Jesus.”
My left foot joins my right as I bend even further.
The priest’s free hand begins to shake. His long bony fingers reach for my skull. I am being pressured, spiritually pressured, and in the panic that ensues, I transport back to the healing center I once visited in Cuernavaca where I stripped to my bathing suit and crawled inside a temazcal6 that was hot and dark and moist, and the temazcalero led us in rounds of Spanish prayer as he doused eucalyptus tea
on the volcanic stones so that fragrant smoke spiked the air. Then he demanded I lay face-down in the dirt so he could thrash aceite leaves against my body—a sensation that reminded me of driving through the carwash with my childhood friends and clapping with delight as the sudsy strips danced around us—but when the temazcalero flipped me on my back, he announced he would now clean out my heart, and I could scream or kick or cry as needed. Before I could digest this, he thrust his knuckles against my chest and began to twist the skin above my heart. While it wasn’t exactly pleasant, it didn’t exactly hurt, so I neither screamed nor kicked nor cried because I figured it would only get worse and I should show some reserve and be a brave gringuita, and sure enough the temazcalero pulled back his knuckles and gasped for breath and dove back in, more forcefully this time, and reminded me to scream if I needed to, to scream or kick or cry, but the pain still didn’t warrant so dramatic a reaction, so he did it a third time, plunged deep inside my chest, and it occurred to me that this could continue indefinitely so I scissor-kicked and groaned a bit, at which point he collapsed on the dirt in a fit of coughing and wheezing and I scooted back to my spot against the wall thinking I cannot wait to write about this! But then the temazcalero asked in a gravelly voice how I felt, how I felt when he cleaned out my heart. Truthfully, I felt nothing when he cleaned out my heart save some soreness inside my chest. “Bueno!” I chirped. This was clearly insufficient. He then asked what color I saw, what color I saw when he cleaned out my heart, but color didn’t occur to me when he cleaned out my heart, nothing occurred to me when he cleaned out my heart except what a great story I now had, but because I had already disappointed the temazcalero enough for one day, I said rojo, as it’s my favorite color. When he shouted “¿Rojo?” I realized I should have said any color but rojo, but of course it was too late to say “Azul, I mean!” because he was already raging about how rojo signified anger and hatred and bloodshed and how no one in his history of heart-cleanings had ever said rojo except maybe psychopaths. Again he asked, “¿Cómo te sientes? ¿Cómo te sientes?” but I was not feeling anything so I said, “Liberated. I feel liberated,” as if I had been freed from all that sullied my heart. And of course he knew I was lying. He probably even knew I knew he knew I was lying, but he let it go until the end of the temazcal, when we all crawled out into the sunlight and poured buckets of water over each other’s heads. He pulled me aside and said, “Listen, mija. You need to relax. You’re too much like a gringa. You just work work work like a stiff little broom when what you really must do is release.”
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