Thirteen Senses by Victor Villaseñor
“Mama, you are really confusing me!” shouted Salvador. “You mean that the Devil now wants to return to Heaven and be with God?”
“And why not? Don’t we all, including this old Eeeervin?”
“Well, yes, I guess so, mama,” said Salvador.
“Mi hijito, now that you and Lupe are about to have a baby, you must understand that you can no longer live separated from God. You must give your lives over completely to the Holy Spirit of Creation or you will always be suffering Here, in your Hearts and Souls.”
“And how do we do this, mama?”
“You do it with every Holy Breath you and Lupe now breathe in and you breathe out,” she said, making the sign of the cross over herself and kissing her fingertips. “God is the Light, you are the Message. God is the Sea, you are the Wave. God is the Thought, you are the Doing. God is the very Atmosphere you breathe in and out.”
Salvador said nada, nada, nothing. He just sat looking at his mother.
“And don’t worry, mi hijito,” added the old woman, “you don’t need to understand what I’ve just said. You are right on schedule, especially with you not wanting to lie to Lupe anymore. Because, listen closely, lies and love don’t make good companions for very long. By the way, I told this old Eeee-rrrvin that I’d be sending you over with a few goats.”
“Goats?” said Salvador.
“Yes, milk goats, mi hijito. And you can get these milk goats from the Morenos over in Moreno Valley, but now no more of this, I need to get some sleep. Oh, I tell you, doing God’s Work can get very tiring, especially when He sits up Here in Heaven on—”
“—on His lazy Ass?”
In a flash, the old woman was out of bed and in her son’s face. “You will never speak of Papito Dios like that again!” she said angrily. “I, who have been in His service for seventy-six years now, having completed thousands of Miracles, only said this about Nuestro Señor in jest ’cause We’re old Amigos, He and I! But you, who still has so much to learn, will speak of Our Heavenly Father only in deepest respect, or I swear, your children will pay for your actions for thirteen generations!
“Do you understand me, the Forces of Creation are to be respected and honored, and this includes the Devil, too, who of his own freewill volunteered to come into this Tierra Firme to give us choice between Light and Darkness!”
“Okay, mama, okay, I didn’t mean to—”
Just then, the front door burst open and the smell of fresh flowers filled the room. Going to the door, Salvador found a bunch of freshly cut red roses tied with a red bow, but glancing about, he saw no one. He picked up the flowers and brought them inside.
“I found these roses, mama,” said Salvador, coming back to her. “But no one was there.”
“Just put them in some water,” said Doña Margarita, getting back in bed under the covers and pulling them up over herself. “I’ll see you in the morning. Good night, mi hijito.”
“But who would bring you roses, mama, this late at night?”
“An old admirer,” said the old woman. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll talk mañana. Besides, I’m too old to get pregnant,” she added, with a little, happy giggle.
Salvador did as he was told. And the roses were, indeed, the most beautiful he’d ever seen, and so aromatic!
DOWN THE CANYON from Corona some twenty miles away at Lake Elsinore, Epitacio, Luisa’s husband, who took care of Salvador’s distillery for him, awoke with a start. He’d heard something right outside the window. And it was probably just a cat once again, but oh, all these months of working the distillery had finally gotten to his nerves.
He was sweating.
Rubbing his hand across his forehead, Epitacio felt the sweat pouring down his face.
The fire of the stove, on which they did the distilling process, gave an eerie glow to the room where Epitacio slept on a mattress on the floor, watching the stove day and night.
He got up to go to the bathroom. That’s when he saw all these huge eyes staring at him!
He screamed, and he continued screaming! Ever since Domingo had gotten arrested up in Watts and he’d been sent to the penitentiary, Epitacio kept having this recurring dream of the sheriff’s department suddenly rushing in with axes in hand and breaking everything . . . huge uniformed giants with yellow eyes, looking more like a pack of wolves than humans, ripping him to pieces with their teeth!
Epitacio ran out of the house still screaming, leaving the front door wide open! Coyotes howled in the distance. Epitacio kept running. Overhead, the Father Sky was full of stars. It was a glorious, wondrous night!
“CAN’T YOU SLEEP, mi hijito,” said Doña Margarita, waking up and seeing her son Salvador sipping a cup of coffee there alongside the little wood-burning stove.
“No, I can’t,” said Salvador, shaking his head. He looked very pensive.
“You love her very much, eh?”
“Yes,” he said, nodding. “Very much. And I’ve been thinking about what you said.”
“About what?”
“Well, about your new compassion for the Devil. My God, mama, we starved coming north through the Revolution. I saw my brothers and sisters—” Tears came to his eyes. “How can you find compassion for all evil that we’ve been through, mama?”
The old woman breathed deeply. “Listen closely, mi hijito, if we don’t find compassion and love with the twists and turns of life, then we only end up poisoning ourselves with hate and bitterness. What did our Lord Savior do on the cross, He forgave even his tormentors.”
“But mama, you can’t compare us to Christ!”
“And why not? Shouldn’t we strive for the finest that Our Lord God has sent to us here on Earth to witness? Look, you love Lupe very much, right?”
“Yes,” said Salvador.
“And it’s been good between you two, eh?”
“It’s been Heaven, mama.”
“Good. Good. And now you’re afraid to tell her the truth about your business dealings, because you fear it will ruin the love that you and she now have?”
He nodded again. “Yes.”
The old woman breathed. “Mi hijito,” she said, sitting up, “there are lies and there are lies, and the truth is that all people lie—especially the people who protest so loudly to never lie. And so lies are not what destroy a home. It is the lie about love that embitters a woman’s heart. And about your love for Lupe you have never lied, mi hijito.”
“Oh, no, mama, about my love I’ve been completely truthful,” said Salvador. “That’s why I don’t feel good about lying to her anymore.”
The old She-Fox reached out for her son’s hand. “Good, mi hijito,” she said, “this makes perfect sense. For you and Lupe have now passed through the needle’s eye of truelove and have entered into the Light of God.” She breathed. “You have planted your first Sacred Seed of the Thirteen Senses, mi hijito,” she added with gusto. “You are now on your way to giving root to all our God-Gifted Senses and learning how to make your own Miracles Here on Earth.”
“I hope so,” he said.
“Trust me, you are,” she said, smiling. “And this Love you now have is so intoxicating, that you and Lupe are now slipping, sliding into that Sacred Place of God’s Song, the Heartbeat of the Universe, from where all young couples find the wisdom to build their own World.”
She stopped. She breathed. She could see it in her son’s eyes that he was now finally beginning to comprehend what Amor was truly all about— a Human becoming a Spiritual Being.
“Look,” she added, “who do you think was with you running at your side the day you ran after the train back in Mexico? You were only ten years old, and yet you ran without water or food, barefooted through the desert heat further than any grown man could ever hope to run.”
Tears came to Salvador’s eyes. “I was so scared that I’d lost you, mama, and I’d never see you again, so I chased the train.”
“Yes, exactly, fear pushed you from behind, mi hijito; but also, see,” she said
His eyes lit up. “Yes, I can see that now. I was so scared of losing you, mama! And . . . and you are my Love, my Everything! I didn’t want to lose you! So I ran! And ran!”
“Further than any human being can run, you ran! Further than any man on horseback can run, you ran! Further than the Sun held in the sky, you ran! Non-stop, well over a hundred and fifty kilometers, you ran! And you were prepared to keep running forever, for you had Fear and you had Love—in Balance—and when we have Fear and Love in Balance, then we are of the Complete Power of God!”
Salvador’s eyes shot so huge—he didn’t know what to think, then Here he held, not making another sound.
“And what do you have pushing you and pulling you once again?” she asked.
“Oh, mama, mama, mama,” were the sounds to finally come from his mouth, “I have Fear pushing me once more, and Love pulling me. Oh, my God! MY GOD! I hadn’t seen it before, mama.”
“But now you do,” she said.
“Yes, now I do. Both are needed, mama! This is our Power, when both Love and Fear are in Balance within us! Oh, mama, all of Life makes so much more sense for the first time!”
“Exactly, for you can now see that Here, there can be no Light without Darkness, no Sound without Silence, no Good without Evil, and no God without Devil. English is a very interesting languaging that shows us this more readily than any other languaging I know. Tell me, what is ‘live’ spelled backward in English? Yes, that’s right, e-v-i-l, and what’s ‘lived’ spelled backward; that’s right, d-e-v-i-l.”
“Then the Devil is just God going backwards?” asked Salvador.
She nodded. “Yes, Here, there are no accidents, mi hijito,” she said. “But drop ‘the’ before Devil. We don’t use ‘the’ before God, do we? ‘The’ is a treacherous word. None of our Native languaging has it that I know of. In fact, I’m beginning to find out that only European-based linguistics use this ‘the’ form. The rest of the whole world is free from this illusion, see?”
But she could see that he didn’t see. “It’s okay that you don’t understand at this time, mi hijito. The only thing you need to comprehend is this, can you now see why it was so foolish for your father, poor man,” she added, making the sign of the cross over herself, “to ever think that God had abandoned us when we’d lost everything back in Mexico during the Revolution?”
“Well, yes, because if we understand Balance,” he said, “then we see that bad times are needed for good times just like darkness is necessary for having light, so then God can never abandon us. The Devil, I mean ‘Devil’ is just a part of God.”
“Exactly!” she said with gusto. “And how does it feel to know this, eh?”
“Wonderful!” he said. “I feel free!”
“Yes, exactly! And look at this word ‘wonderful’ that you just used. It originally meant being full-of-wonder, and being full-of-wonder IS this Sacred Place of Freedom from where we ARE all Miracle Makers. You see. mi hijito, it’s only been six to seven thousand years, that as a whole, we humans languaged ourselves out of being Daily Miracle Makers with Papito.”
“And that’s when the Bible says we ate of the Forbidden Fruit?”
“Exactly,” she said. “Before that God was no mystery, but instead our Best Amigo. It’s no accident, mi hijito, that we lost our Full Senses and were reduced to five. As it is, the Sense of Feeling has been under attack for nearly four thousand years. If humans could ever be reduced to just sight, smell, taste, and hearing, then we’d be perfectly obedient machines to do whatever the state wished us to do, including the killing of women and babies—for we’d have no feelings. And without feelings, we’d then have no compassion.”
She closed her eyes in concentration. “It’s no accident, mi hijito, that the Sense of Balance wasn’t recorded in Europe and the Sense of Intuition was taken away from women.”
“Oh, mama, I see it all so clearly now! Only with five senses do we then live in fear of Devil!”
She smiled. “You got it. In fact, Father Ryan told me that it wasn’t until the Thirteen Hundreds with the Black Plague in Europe that ‘hell’ was made into the concept that it is today and ‘el’ Devil became so terrifying. Before that, ‘hell’ and ‘devil’ weren’t all horrible and mean, but more like pranksters.
“Imagine whole towns were put to fire with human bodies piled ten high. The Thirteen Hundreds were a Living Hell on Earth. And the Jews, because of their clean, kosher cooking, didn’t get the plague, so they were hated more than ever. Understand, the unknown puts terror into the hearts of people who aren’t using all of their senses. And how can it not, it takes all of our God-Given Senses to face the ‘unknown’ with the Vision de Papito.”
“But mama, why didn’t you tell me all this before?”
“Were you ready to listen?”
Salvador took a deep breath, then shrugged.
“Let’s not play the constipated fool. Mi hijito, you are very headstrong! Wasn’t it me, eh, who first saw Lupe, but you didn’t want to hear anything about it, so you had to go and meet her somewhere else? And you had no idea that she was the one that God and I had already picked out for you?
“Here are no accidents in Life, la Vida, mi hijito, but the constipated pendejadas that we refuse to learn in any other way!”
“Oh, mama, you are tough!”
“Thank you,” she said with a little bow. “And now that you and Lupe have passed through that first needle’s eye and reached this Sacred Place where all couples Dance the Wild Steps of Heaven, you have no more problemas, mi hijito. Now all you have to do is open your eyes and ‘see’ with Eyes of Creation, and understand then all problemas are already solved.” She breathed. “And why is this true, because, simply, All of Life is already Perfect, mi hijito. Tell me, who does Lupe trust and pray to, eh?”
“Well, God, of course.”
“And through which organization does she do this?”
“Well, through the Catholic Church.”
“And on Whom is the Catholic Church founded?”
“On Christ, the Son of God.”
“And what was Jesus Christ’s first miracle?”
Salvador shrugged.
“Come on, it was His Mother who asked Him to do it.”
“Oh,” said Salvador, his eyes suddenly opening wide. “He turned water into wine, mama?’
“Yes, exactly. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, turned water into wine, and not just ordinary wine, but the best of wines!”
“Yes, mama, the best,” said Salvador.
“Yes, mi hijito, and who do you know that’s a member of the Catholic Church, who says that your whiskey is the best?”
“Why, Father Ryan, of course, mama,” said Salvador, suddenly so full of gusto that he leaped up! “He thinks my whiskey is the best he’s had since he left Ireland! Oh, mama, I see it now! I see it! I’ll just take Lupe to see Father Ryan, and have him explain everything to her, because with him, she will have trust!”
“Exactly!” said the old woman. “For what is happening Here, at this Holy Moment, isn’t that you are lying to Lupe; no, you are educating her. You are exposing her to the world you know, and little by little with patience—take that damn grin off your face immediately!
“Don’t you dare think that I am saying that it is for a man to teach his wife! For believe-you-me, mi hijito, the lessons you are going to learn from Lupe, will, in the end, make pale what you have taught her! Thirteen Sacred Seeds you two will plant in the first three years of your marriage— whether you like it or not—and the ones she will put down deep into the soil of your marriage will dwarf yours! For remember men come into a marriage with only six senses, and women come with seven! And the Seventh of Intuition is from which Balance grows WINGS, leaping us into the Arms of Creation, gifting us the Eighth, Ninth, Tenth—all Thirteen! Do you understand?” she added.
??
“Because, mi hijito,” she said with tears suddenly bursting from her old, wrinkled-up, lizard-looking eyes, “this is good-bye. This is good-bye for us. The life that you and I have known together ... is done, gone, completed, and now it is for you and your young wife to leave our Garden of Eden, eat from your own Tree of Knowledge, and go out into your own World. The story of Creation never finished with the Jews of old, but is ongoing, right now, Here, forever. Adam and Eve ARE YOU!”
Tears were streaming down her face. “Te amo con todo mi corazón, mi hijito. You are a good son, a fine man. You are everything I ever hoped for you to be when I took my oath to raise you up like a woman. In you is the future of nuestra gente. For you are the sculpture, the painting, the symphony that I worked so hard to Create, con el FAVOR de DIOS! And you are Perfect, my Love. Perfect with all your faults and contradictions. In fact, these I love best, your imperfections.
“You lied to Lupe,” she said, suddenly laughing, “just like a typical man, and now you’re worried! Oh, I can hardly wait to see how you two will work this out!
“I love you, mi hijito, and I will always be with you, Here, inside,” she said, tapping his chest, “in your Heart, beating like a great drum just like when you were within my womb and you could hear my Heart beat, beat, beating, pounding con amor—you, my Love, will hear me—ALWAYS!”
She started laughing once again.
“But what’s so funny, mama?”
“That luckily the whole world is still all a big beautiful mess and it’s your beautiful mess to deal with, and not mine!”
“You find this funny!”
“Oh, this!” she said. “Hilarious, in fact!”
And she was laughing con carcajadas. “But!” she said. “DON’T you EVER blame Lupe when Papito Dios comes asking you why you ate of the Forbidden Fruit! For you are un Mejicano who was raised by UNA INDIA DE LAS BUENAS! And Mejicanos, God forgive them, have many faults, but believe me, stool-pigeons THEY ARE NOT!