Pastorela
From my bedroom window I can see Abuelita's house on Lluvia Street. In the summer her rusting tin roof disappears into the leaves of our pecan tree, but now the branches are bare. My uncle Leo has decorated her roof with colored lights for Navidad. The lights sag in places where the gutters are falling away from the roof. The whole thing looks kind of sad and lame, like the duct-taped nativity set she puts out on the lawn.
Three years ago someone stole the baby Jesus, and since then the plastic manger stays empty even after the three Kings come in January. My mama offered to bring her a new figure from Monterrey, one of the plaster ones with green glass eyes and real eyelashes, but Granny said she wanted her own baby Jesus back, and eventually the sorry fulano who took him will return him. I doubt it. He probably already sold it at the flea market.
Tonight is the Christmas Eve Mass at Saint Ignacious. We go every year and then come back to my Abuelita's for tamales and champurrado. The rest of the family piles in the minivan to roll six blocks to the church in style, but Granny always walks. She likes to look at the lighted houses, and show off her beaded Christmas sweater. Even though she has changed out of her apron for church, my Granny still smells like corn masa and chocolate. When I was a little kid she'd hold my hand all the way to church, smack me on the head with a hymnal if I fidgeted during Mass, and give me caramelos from her pocketbook if I sat still. Now I am taller than she is, and she takes my arm for the three-block walk to the church. I take short steps so she can keep up and find us seats on the aisle in case she wants to leave after communion. Father Mike keeps the sermon short. He knows everyone is waiting to see the play, then rush home to tear open their presents at midnight.
After church we shuffle into the school cafeteria and settle into our folding chairs to watch the pastorela...I've been watching this play since I was a little kid. Every year the same dusty devils tempt the same sorry shepherds. In the end the devils are defeated and everyone gets amazed at the baby Jesus in his grocery box lined with straw. Mary wears a pink bathrobe. Joseph is the same cuckold as always, and the baby is a doll wrapped in a dishtowel.
This year it's gone very high tech, muy Sabado Gigante. Satan wears a body mike. Lucifer is decked out in silver spats, has a pitchfork with rubies glued on like drops of sinner's blood. There is even a she-devil prowling the stage, tricked up in fishnets and thigh high boots. She looks a lot like Angelica Solis, and before I know it I'm thinking . . . Hey mama, bend over just a little more. Let me see under your red leather mini skirt. I peek to see if Granny hears my thoughts but she is sitting quietly. She's taken her handkerchief out of her pocketbook, and when a devil says something really outrageous she presses it to her mouth. I can't tell whether she is laughing or not. Everyone cheers for the devils. When the story shifts to Mary and Joseph, things quiet down. Folks shift in their seats waiting for Lucifer to peek around the plastic palm tree and get things lively again.
We are just beginning the third round of temptations when she taps me on the shoulder and says, "Vamanos hijo."
On the walk home Granny is quiet. I'm really aware of her hand perched like a skinny bird in the crook of my arm. The fog has settled in. It's chilly, and Granny turns up the collar on her sweater.
"Sabes que hijo?" she says after a while. "You know what? The last few years I want to yell at those shepherds. I want to say, Oye pastores! Don't follow that damned star. Life is short. Death is dark and permanent. They say the devil has a thousand temptations. Y la verdad? The truth is, at least eight hundred of them are worth going straight to hell for."
She's dabbing at her face with her handkerchief.
"Ay hijo. I really miss your grandfather tonight."
I feel bad. I don't know what to say. Lucky for me, just then we round the corner to Lluvia Street. My Abuelita's house looks beautiful. The pastel lights are hazy globes edging a rooftop that is melting and soft. The white plastic figures in the nativity have misty haloes around them. Mary is gazing down at the manger, where the baby Jesus has reappeared, with his arms outstretched. It's the same baby, too. There's a dark shadow of duct tape on his left foot where the plastic split.
Granny stops right in her tracks, takes a long breath and sighs.
"Ya vez? You see?" she says as if that answers everything.
Then she opens her pocketbook and starts rummaging around. I think she's putting her hanky away, but instead she presses a folded twenty-dollar bill into my hand.
"Here. Take some nice girl to the movies, hmmm?"
Coming up the walk, I see my Uncle Leo sitting on the porch rocker, his head wreathed in cigar smoke and a big smile on his face.
I wonder where he found the baby.
"Feliz Navidad, Mama," he says and gets up to open the front door for her. A wedge of yellow light spills out onto the porch. Behind us, cars begin to move slowly on the foggy streets. The pastorela is over. Soon the rest of family will arrive for tamales and other holiday miracles. We go in to set the table and my uncle closes the door to keep the warmth inside.
Copyright 2006 by Mary Estrada
