Thirteen Senses by Victor Villaseñor
And saying this, the old woman made the sign of the cross over herself even once again, then closed the door softly.
And Lupe watched.
Lupe watched, and she could now see that this old woman truly spoke to God as if they were best friends.
Lupe wiped the tears from her eyes. This, too, she wanted for herself— God as her best friend, especially now with a child growing inside her womb. Suddenly she felt like she could feel a little movement inside of herself. But it was so faint that she thought that maybe she was just imagining it. Or maybe not. A miracle was growing inside her.
EARLIER THAT AFTERNOON, Doña Margarita had been praying at the little stone church when two well-dressed Anglo women walked in. But Doña Margarita had given them no importance for she well knew that her struggles with el Diablo were a long ways from over and so she continued to pray aloud with all her heart and soul.
“. . . yes, Maria,” she was saying, “I fully realize Your Most Holy Husband God came through for me with Ten Thousand Angels to save the immortal soul of my son Domingo who’s in prison, and You, Yourself, assisted me so I could be at the hospital to get hold of el Diablo by his long weasel tail, but You and I both know that nuestra struggle is far from over here upon this Tierra Madre. For now my son Salvador—even while he’s on his journey of milk and honey—is still being pursued by el Diablo.
“And this, I will not tolerate! Do you hear me, Maria!” she said, standing up. “Because You and I both know that marriage is difficult enough without the Devil coming to us on our honeymoon when our hearts are open and we are most vulnerable. So You and I, woman-to-woman, have to come up with an even greater plan than last time and turn this whole situation around!”
Then Doña Margarita stopped her praying, figuring that she was maybe getting a little too heavy-handed with Heaven, especially since They kept coming through for her, and so she decided to ease off and tell Our Great Lady, Madre de Jesus, a joke, because she well knew how Maria always liked getting the latest jokes to take up to Heaven to share with Her Two Husbands, Saint Joseph and God.
“And this one, My Dear Lady,” began Doña Margarita, speaking a little more calmly, “is about Don Cacahuate, Mr. Peanuts, and how he came home after being gone for a year. And upon entering his house, he threw down a peso on the table.”
“One peso?!?” yelled his wife, Doña Cacahuate. “After being gone for a year?!?”
“And if I’d been gone a million years,” shouted Don Cacahuate, standing up as tall as the little man could, “it would be a million pesos?’
Saying this, Doña Margarita burst out laughing and laughing. That’s when she noticed that the two Anglo women, who were across the aisle from her on the right side of the church—the side the Anglos used—gave her a dirty look and got up, going out the side door.
Doña Margarita shrugged and just kept talking to the Virgin Mary.
“Don’t You get it, my Lady,” asked Doña Margarita to the statue of the Mother of God who wasn’t laughing, “we, los Mejicanos have so much faith in the eternal goodness of life, that we now all think that we’re on our way to being millionaires; see, it’s only a matter of time!”
“Oh,” said Maria, and now She was laughing, too.
“I tell You, my Lady, every day we, Mejicanos, awake and we’re breathing, we think we’re in the great danger of getting rich because—down deep inside, we are either crazy-locos, or You and Your two Husbands have, indeed, Blessed us with an indestructible faith!
“And now that we’re talking about faith,” continued Doña Margarita, truly enjoying how she’d brought the whole conversation back around to where she’d really been wanting to go all along, “I want to talk to you a little bit, about revisiting the deal that us mortals have with You up in Heaven. Because you see, the way I’ve been thinking lately, faith, la fe, goes two ways. And so it’s not enough for us here on Earth to have faith in You up in Heaven, but the time has come for You People up Here, to also have faith in us. Not just us to You, eh?”
Hearing this, the stone statue of the Virgin Mary burst out laughing with such force that the rocks of the stone walls that surrounded the sacred statue now began vibrating with the laughter of Holy Mother, too. Stone to Stone! Making Holy Music.
This was when two well-dressed Anglo ladies came in with Father Ryan in tow. Father Ryan had been eating and he was still chewing his food and wiping his mouth with his napkin.
Seeing that it was Doña Margarita at her regular pew up near the front on the left-hand side of the church, he almost laughed, but didn’t. After all, he and Doña Margarita were very good friends. It was she who’d gotten her son to deliver whiskey to him and other priests. Also, he’d been the one who’d married Salvador and Lupe. Father Ryan now coughed his best priestly cough, straightened up, and signaled for the two women to stay behind while he handled this situation.
“Buena tardes,” said Father Ryan in Spanish, coming up to Doña Margarita. She was still laughing.
“You should have been here a few minutes ago,” said the old, wrinkled-up woman to the tall, well-dressed man. “Earlier today the Devil and I had one of our best! But in the end I grabbed him with such force, that in his confusion, he almost went back up to Heaven, he was taken by such surprise! Then I came to church to visit with the Blessed Mother and I told her a joke that got her laughing so hard you could feel the walls of the church singing with joy!”
Father Ryan laughed. “So you’re still busy doing the work of the Lord, are you?” he said in perfect Spanish.
“Of course,” said Doña Margarita. “Is there any other work worth doing?”
“Señora,” Father Ryan now said, “I need to speak with you.”
“Good,” said Doña Margarita in a very pensive voice, “because I need to speak to you, too. You see, Father, lately, I’ve found the Devil to be very weary, so I’ve begun to send him my love.”
“You’ve been sending the Devil your love?” asked the priest, taken aback.
“Of course, Father, after all, he was God’s Greatest Angel at one time.”
“Yes, señora, but to love the Devil—”
“Oh, no, I never said that I love the Devil, Father. I said that I send him love, and of course, I send him this love through Our Savior Jesus Christ. You see, it’s time for God and the Devil to make up. I mean, how does God expect us to get along with one another here on Earth, if He’s still angry with the Devil.”
The priest nodded. In the last few years, he and Doña Margarita had spoken in depth about many religious issues. He found it so refreshing how her mind worked.
“You see, Father, lately I’ve been telling Maria that it’s not enough for us to have faith in Heaven anymore. That the time has come for Heaven to start having faith in us, too!”
“And what has Maria said about this?”
“Well, at first She just laughed, humoring me, but then as I continued and She got the full impact of what I was saying, that a day doesn’t pass by that Lucifer doesn’t find himself feeling lonely and lost since he was driven out of Heaven, She has started to agree with me.”
“Very interesting,” said Father Ryan, “but I hope you realize that it wasn’t God who drove Lucifer from Heaven. It was the Devil’s own doings.”
Doña Margarita laughed. “Yes, but who condemned him to Hell for all eternity? God is pretty famous for His wrath, you know.”
“Well, yes, but—oh, I—”
The priest would’ve continued talking, he was so interested in this conversation, but then he suddenly remembered the two women who were still waiting for him to get rid of this old lady. He glanced in their direction again. They were looking quite antsy.
“Look at it this way,” said Doña Margarita, “today when I was praying with the Virgin Mary, I closed my eyes and placed my two hands here on my Heart and I prayed for the salvation of el Diablo through the power of Jesus, and I could just feel it here, deep within myself, that the Devil’s separation from Dios is only
“Then you really do think that the time has come for the Devil to return home to God?” asked Father Ryan.
“Absolutely, Father!” she said, opening her eyes. “When I close my eyes, I then see with my Heart-Eye and I just know that all Life is Round and Whole and Circular; Sacred, in fact, and so the further and further we think that Lucifer is traveling away from God, the closer and closer is he, in Truth, coming around back to Papito Dios once again! Earth was never flat, Father.”
“Is this, then, the Second Coming that you are talking about, señora?”
She smiled a great big smile. “Father, that’s for you and the Pope to say Not me. I’m just a mother and a grandmother who has a lot at stake here on Earth. Don’t you just feel it Here, Father, inside of your bones, that the Love of God is forever Circling about all of us in sheer abundance! Eh, haven’t you ever broken a bone and felt every little change in weather? Bones are instruments of feeling, especially broken bones. It was no accident that they drove those nails in Our Lord God Savior’s wrists. Broken wrists are one of our highest levels of feeling.”
“But how do you know this,” asked the priest, “that the nails were driven through Jesus’s wrists and not his hands?”
Doña Margarita looked at the priest as if something was wrong with him. “His mother told me,” she said.
“His mother, Mary, told you?”
“Yes, of course, Father.”
The priest was staring at Doña Margarita as if he’d never really seen her before. “And all this happened today when you were speaking to the Virgin Mary?” asked the priest, glancing once more in the direction of the two women who were still waiting for him to remove the old Indian woman.
Doña Margarita turned and saw the women, too. “Look,” she said, “I’ve been talking with Our Sacred Lady Maria for years. She’s very well-connected up in Heaven, you know, and so it’s easy for Her to find out anything I want to know. Are you all right, Father,” she added, leaning in a little closer to him.
He glanced in the direction of the two women once again. He could see that they were upset. “Excuse me,” he said to Doña Margarita, “but well, how would you like to do me the honor of joining me for a drink at the back of the church, so we can get deeper into this matter. This is very interesting!”
“Of course,” said Doña Margarita, licking her lips. “But only a short drink. I don’t like walking home drunk with that new little dog down the street. That cabrón,” she added laughing, “bit me last time I went home after drinking a few with you.”
“I’ll have our young priest drive you home today,” he said.
“Then let’s drink!” she said. “And I’ll lay out the whole enchilada for you! Besides, I’ve always found that one or two good belts after tangling with el Diablo, feels pretty damn good!”
With his best priestly smile, Father Ryan nodded to the two well-dressed women as he escorted Doña Margarita down the aisle and into the rectory.
FATHER RYAN AND DOÑA MARGARITA had had quite a few drinks when they first heard the knocking on the door. The young priest was shocked to find Father Ryan laughing uproariously and hugging the old Indian lady.
“I’ve come to drive you home,” he said.
Before leaving, Doña Margarita asked the young priest to help her put Father Ryan to bed. The young priest was outraged that Father Ryan was so drunk, but Doña Margarita just ignored his outrage, and helped the older priest lay down in his bed. Then she slipped off his shoes, massaging the soles of his feet, making sure that the deep crevices of his male mind were opened up to his own female powers. For only in opening up to our own opposite sexual being could single people balance themselves and begin to make use of their full Thirteen Senses.
Vigorously, Doña Margarita massaged the inner part of Father Ryan’s big left toe. Soon she could see that he was moaning, letting go, then traveling through the Tenth Sense back to Heaven as he Dreamed. Visiting Heaven as she slept was what had saved Doña Margarita from losing her mind during those awful days of the Revolution. To sleep with an open mind was to bring the Powers of the Almighty into one’s Heart and Soul.
Going down the front steps of the church, was when Doña Margarita saw the billfold bulging full of money on the bottom step. Picking it up, she turned, and the look that she saw on the young priest’s face shocked her. Why, he was looking at her as if he thought she was going to steal the billfold.
She forgave him, then she remembered the two well-dressed women that Father Ryan had been concerned about in the church.
“Come!” she said, taking charge. “For this is a sign straight from God, giving us the opportunity to do greatness!”
The home—that the young priest drove Doña Margarita to—was all the way over in Santa Ana. It was a huge, imposing farmhouse with a row of towering eucalyptus trees leading up the driveway. The woman who answered the door was the younger of the two women whom Doña Margarita had seen at the church.
“Yes,” said the woman. She was a slender, pretty Anglo in her late twenties. She was shocked to see the little Indian woman at her door. “Can I help you?”
“No,” said Doña Margarita, “you cannot help me. How can you? I come with God so I need no mortal’s help! Here is your billfold that you dropped in church. And yes, all the money is here, but since I can see that you are looking upon me with great distrust, then by all means count the money. For all Doubting Thomases have a difficult road to maneuver inside the dark crevices of their small, frightened minds.”
“Who is it?” yelled an older woman’s voice from inside.
“Doña Margarita a su ordenes!” shouted the short, dark, skinny, little, half-drunk Indian woman. “At your service with daily miracles! Who’s sick and dying! I can smell their stink from here!” she added, sniffing.
Understanding Spanish, the young woman was outraged to hear Doña Margarita speak like this of her uncle, and then she was even more shocked to now have the little Indian woman walk right past her into their home, smelling the air like a bloodhound.
And here was old man Irvine, himself, the most powerful landowner in all California, propped up with a dozen pillows in a bed in the middle of the living room. This was his sister and his niece who’d come by to see him. For weeks he’d been sick, but the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with him.
Doña Margarita walked right up to him and said, “You stink of death! You need to be bathed in herbs and put on a specific diet. I don’t know what you did, but you have poisoned yourself severely.”
“Who are you?” asked the old man.
“She’s the one who was laughing and shouting in church,” said his niece.
“Yes, even God gets bored and needs a little entertaining now and then,” said Doña Margarita, laughing and doing a quick little shuffle.
Just then, Irvine’s sister walked in and when she saw Doña Margarita dancing and laughing as she’d been doing in church, her whole face exploded with rage! But before she could calm down enough to speak, the young priest walked through the door.
Catching herself, Irvine’s sister said, “What is going on? Who brought this woman here?”
“She returned your billfold, mother,” said the daughter.
“Yes,” said the young priest. “I brought her. Doña Margarita is, well, a personal friend of Father Ryan’s and—” He stopped his words. He was totally embarrassed.
The older woman looked like she was going to shit—she was so upset! But old man Irvine was smiling, enjoying the whole mess. Chaos was his forte.
“Are you una doctora?” he asked in Spanish. “Una curandera?”
All the Irvines spoke quite a lot of Spanish.
“Yes,” said Doña Margarita, “I am.”
“Do you think you can help me?” asked the old man.
Refusing to take insult, Doña Margarita simply said, “Dirty I may be, but little with the Spirit of God, I am not! Do you have some whiskey?” she added.
“How dare you! Liquor is illegal!” said Irvine’s sister.
“Oh, pipe down,” said the old man, “and get me my bottle.”
“It’s for your feet and back,” said Doña Margarita, smelling of him, “to rub on you. All this caca-shit is stuck inside of you and poisoning you. I can smell it. You stink very bad,” she added, laughing. “No decent, or even indecent woman would want to sleep with you.”
Irvine started laughing, too.
When the bottle came, Doña Margarita took it, shot down a good-size swig, said it was very good, then she began to massage his feet with the whiskey, working vigorously between the toes and the ball of each foot.
At first it hurt old man Irvine, and he asked her to please stop, but she just squeezed the inside part of his big toe all the more, sending a lightning bolt through his whole body. “Quiet!” she said. “And take it like a woman!”
Little by little the release points below all five toes began to hurt less and less, then soon he began purring like a kitten—it felt so good!
“Oh, now this is wonderful!” he said.
“Yes, because, you see, the five toes are the entrance into our Holy Being. Our five toes, five fingers, five limbs—the head, two legs, two arms—is Our Sacred Human Key of five for getting us into Harmony of the rhythm of this planeta.”
“I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about,” he said.
“Of course you don’t. You’re an ignorant, old man who’s just used to giving orders. Power doesn’t equal knowledge, any more than muscle equals strength. Balance is key to the real power of body, mind and soul. And mind, you have, but very little soul, so you’ve ruined your balance of body like a fool. But you’re beginning to feel pretty good now that I’ve worked on you, eh?” she said, taking another swig of whiskey.