Deus ex Machina
I had heard the garage door open, the clunking of its chains pulling me from under the duvet, heavy and dampened by my sweat. This sound, the usual cue telling me my parents were off to their weekly bridge game, three houses down our street.Â
Friday night freedom, I called it, the end of my workweek at the miso plant. Just like punctuation quiets the pulse of a text, the noise silenced me, allowing me to breathe again.
My parents, Georges and Mary, had become trusting of my behaviors; my words, the way I hummed to Rachmaninoff’s evening vespers when I felt alone, and yet, more alive. They kept me by their side because I had been damaged, pushed into some sort of dysfunctional mode the way some are pushed into drugs. Because, yes, one can become addicted to abnormality. I knew they believed I had landed back into some form of normalcy, and one would have thought that, yes, it’s been thirteen years, she should be back. And there were days when I did feel normal, just not as normal as they thought me to be.
My mind is something I have learned to conceal, you see. It is a bastion inside which I can retreat, a place where I can fully be, where my quirks—my fantasies, and my truths, co-exist. This time, since then, I hold it, like I hold a dead leaf crinkled by the rain and the sun and the wind––fodder for new life yet to be sown, like poking my finger into blood-pricked skin. This time, here, since then, yes, I smell it. Do you know what time smells like? It smells of mildew, black and slimy; it smells of sweat; it smells of cinnamon––it smells of feculence.
I got up from my nap wearing black jeans and a T, but mostly, still wearing the smell of umami. And I remember the scent, another one.
Salt.
Sugar.
Fruit.
A kind of earth we all crave, in our mouths as much as in our hearts.
This savoury me.
I went to the kitchen, an avocado-colored thing they didn’t care to update, opened the refrigerator door, took the beer can, snapped it open, and stared at the pasta, crusty and unappealing. Still, I grabbed the cover-less Tupperware, sat at the kitchen table, and dug in. Once done, I placed the container inside the dishwasher and made my way through the house.
Those nights, when alone, I alternated between Chet Baker and Rachmaninoff, more of it. And that night was no different, except I ached for loudness, more absolutes— treble that makes the ear shriek, bass that makes the body shake—to flood my ears. I wandered a little more, stopped on the second floor, and decided to enter my parents’ bedroom, something I had never done since they had brought me back from that dead place, thirteen years before.
Why did I do that?
Because the steel bolt had been removed, something to this day I’ve never understood. I still wonder. What had pushed this new nonchalance onto them and made them forget about their own rules? For my protection. But they had, and that was good enough for me, and in I went.Â
The crocheted bedspread had wrinkled over a queen size mattress that had sunk in its center. Over it, two Diane Furstenberg wraparound dresses my mother had tried on before deciding on a simple jean A-line skirt and black jersey blouse. I knew because I had heard my father insisting on her wearing her usual good luck attire. Diane Furstenberg. I brushed the top of the cover with my hand knowing the elevated patterns—series of daisy chains, interconnected garlands—would tickle my fingertips. And I remembered my feet sinking into the carpet as I would sneak into their bed and stay there, little me, little moon they called me. Little moon. That was me.Â
I saw the door to the walk-in closet was unlocked, too. I saw there had been a bolt there as well, the space where it had been––a white imprint on a beige-colored door.
I entered and spotted it right away, the pile of newspapers at the end of the closet beside my mother’s shoe rack. Before fanning through them, I slipped them on, slowly. Kitty heels. Ballerina flats. Slutty heights, too. Twenty-two pairs of size 9 shoes. I wear a narrow 6 ½. Mirrors furnished two of the walls, and I had been avoiding them, but even so, I strutted into the cool leather of the shoes, pretending I was on a runway somewhere inside the walls of a posh Parisian venue. Maxime’s, maybe. Harry’s bar. Stolly’s.
I came back from my imaginary travels, quickly placing the Louboutin’s in their place and sat down. It took me some time to realize what they contained. I read the articles, all the ones highlighted in fluorescent green, some translations mostly. I scrutinized the images, the pictures of people––especially ... that one. I felt the inside of my brain freeze, my pulse quickening. Inside the New York Times the killer’s hands were mentioned. And there, inside Nicaragua’s newspapers, The Jornada and El Nuevo Diario, I read and saw more of what I thought I had never known. Agile, they had written. His hands. Artfully scalping squares of missing skin. Just then, flashes poked at my mind, imaginations, of Rachmaninoff’s own large hands. They had to have been pure to create, I thought. How can you create without purity floating somewhere in your body? Had the heart been pure, too?
No no no. No heart. Only the mind. And the thought of his, what it had told him, sent a cold over my skin.
Still seated on the carpet, feeling dizzy, I started to remember.Â
The sea, its turquoise set against the lead of the sky.
Sheets of rain falling on my body stretched out on the sand.
The coming of storms smelling of sewage.Â
Promises hidden inside the goodness of the world.
And the sweat, the sweetness of my own, dripping everywhere it shouldn’t have been. And I thought of her, and I thought of me, and I thought, why not me?
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***
These men chose their prey carefully, their words cloaked and masked and wrapped in dogmatic charm, and he was one of them––a cove of God who battled a land aching to remove the bowels of popery the way grandmothers yanked teeth out––riding high under a full sun. Father Antonio Ruiz tightened the Cordovan’s string below his chin and smiled, his face reddened by the dusty winds sweeping the earth. Look, he said, pointing ahead, our grounds, more of Spain. AndalucĂa. A blow, short and loud, coming from the horse’s nostrils, as if in agreement. The tall man squeezed his thighs against the animal’s sides, and bending over its neck, pressed a finger along the vein bulging from underneath its taunt coat. The horse trotted, faster, ears straight and twitching forward, tail up, its pace now constant.
As if entering his own home, the priest walked inside the Munduyas’ small house, a hovel smelling of wine that would never age, lavender that would never heal, candles that could only burn––where confusion, contrived and well fed, reigned.
And while this southern land rebelled against the Church’s quests to dominate loam as much as ether––the family patriarch tried to remain faithful to it, clenching to all its veiled illusions. The man hoped, and struggled in doing so, pulled by the quelling of holy uncertainties; life’s in-betweens––lethal, and always so, and it seemed to him, a victor.
Those were Romero’s Munduya’s battles. This man, a descendant of Moors, a proud lineage—a lifeline, long ago pushed by the rulings of ruthless monarchies to convert to Christianity in order to save themselves, becoming Moriscos.
Señora Raquel, Father Antonio said, moving toward the small kitchen table, I haven’t seen you this week at confession.Â
Romero’s wife repressed a smile. You’ve just been assigned to the village of Ronda, young man. For one year you’ve been knocking on our door––reminding us. Have we ever let you down?
Father Antonio pulled a white handkerchief from his inside coat pocket, removing dust from around his face. The Lord can never go hungry, you know that, he started. And
I was worried, too, Raquel. Your last absence … you were sick, weren’t you? A fever, I recall. I came to see if all was well. He looked around, his eyes lingering. So much disease around us, you know that as well as I do. So much death.
Of course, Padre. Gracias. She paused, looking at her hands where she saw the faces of loved ones passing, lost to war’s lotteries; lost to plagues—of the flesh, and of the mind. She turned to Romero and smiled. I need you, her dark eyes said. Still. We all do. She turned to the priest. The grapes have kept us very busy this time of year, more than last year’s sad crop. And that is all. Join us, won’t you? She pointed to the wine carafe placed in the middle of the table, and to the empty glasses, as she searched for her eldest daughter’s eyes. Dolores, Amorita, por favor, pour Father Antonio a glass? All of us, in fact, if you will. The taste of our earth, she said, and she smiled, and she raised her head to him, eyes knowing. She took the man’s soft hand in hers, pulling his body to the chair next to hers. Come and sit Padre. Eso.
The wooden table, long and narrow, around which everyone sat, Romero at its place of honor, observing his ten-year-old twin girls, Marisol and Luna. With cheeks rotund and plump, with faces around which thick and curly hair ruled from above like an aura, they smiled back at him, huddled inside the picos Raquel had sown for them the week before. One day, she had said to her daughters, while bent over her late mother’s old sewing machine, one day I will make them with silk, the best kind of silk, and then you will know the true levity at the heart of our sevillanas.
In the soft, cool wind, the purple-colored curtains swayed, brushing against Father
Antonio's shoulders. Delicately, he shooed them away, his eyes narrowing on MatĂas, his tone grave. I come here almost every month, yet, you my son, are rarely to be seen.
 Upon hearing these words, MatĂas felt his lanky body stiffen, his hairless face flush. He turned to the priest and tightened his lips.
You come here to teach the twins, not him, not Dolores, either, Romero said, ignorant of his son’s discomfort.
MatĂas Munduya looked at the priest, this mouth always half-opened; always telling; of things to be done and not be done. And he knew, when this man, said to be of God, visited his family, each time, another moment came when everything that mattered was not named. We have remained dark-skinned Spaniards to you and your kind, he thought. Morenos. And that is why you teach my sisters, because you fear their skin, darker than most, darker than mine, will deny them entry to paradise. That’s what you told them, that a better understanding of the Bible will make them acceptable to God. Worthy of Him. His eyes to the floor, he spoke. Papi, todo esta bien.
Below the table, quieting his anger, a foot dropped onto his, her signal, maybe. MatĂas moved his fingers next to his sister’s. So warm, he thought, so you. And looking at her pushing the now emptied carafe back to the middle of the table, he moved his fingers farther inside her hand. No one noticed, the young woman remaining silent, observant. Dolores, beautiful sister, he thought, mi alborada. My beloved dawn. He turned again to the priest. I fear God’s wrath as much as anyone, but what good are the texts, Father, if the Reds kill us? 1927, and Spain’s monarchy will die soon. Give it two years. I can feel it. The country feels it. He paused. Then, Father, your life’s work as a man of the Church will have been for what? He leaned forward, whispered, hell, more of it, will be here soon enough.Â
Romero raised his hand, considered his son. No more, MatĂas. We know about the fear. We’ve inhaled its fumes since the beginning of time, MatĂas. Our ancestors’ fear has been walking in our blood for so long. Hijo, he said, por favor, no more. We all know.
Behind the twins, a window from which another gust of wind came, the fringe of the mantòn dancing and tickling their skin. The girls stilled, their arms hanging side-by-side, their hands meeting, and sifting their unease from the moment they searched for Romero. For something. Their father was still holding the priest’s eyes.
This smell, Romero, the priest said, as he fanned the air, such rancid sweetness, no?
We live inside this scent, Father, Raquel said, impatience in her voice. And it doesn’t leave us, either. Her head still, her eyes wandered beyond her husband. She brought a hand to the back of her neck, grabbing large portions of the curly mane that had escaped the Kanzashi pin’s grip. Delicately, she collected the rogue thickets of hair in her fingers and pushing the hairpin farther toward the top of her head, secured the chignon made that morning before preparing the workers’ breakfast. I know too much, she thought, of this gaze that weighs on me; on them; of the heat tingling across my shoulders because of it. I think the harvest will be a good one, she finally said, her mind absent. Better than last year’s.
One’s house usually smells of one’s earth, I would think, Father, Romero continued. I would expect the scent of holy wine in yours, no? Just as sweet, if not more. The father of four lowered his head, and with eyes half shut, and trembling lids, he let his imagination fill voids––all the spaces he felt, wanting to fill them, too, with what he saw, what he was certain was there, on his soil––sweat starting to drip from his temples. His eyes now open, his gaze became caught between two of the floor’s wooden planks as he listened to the words coming from his wife’s mouth. His vacancies staying.Â
I will come to you, Father, of course, and Raquel stood and let her hand slide along her son’s back. There were notes mingling inside her head, lyrical and staccato, their essence known to her bones; to her mind––the sound of fandangos beating between her temples, and she walked the short distance separating the table from the entrance door, changed by them. Tonight will be filled with dancing, she told them, more Flamenco, for it quietly lures our feet into the present only––hopeful escapes, palatable deceptions, she thought. She stilled at the entrance, pushed the door open, and looked to the vineyard. The breeze had gone, and the cold, poked by the absence of the breeze, became quiet.Â
For almost two years, fourteen-year-old Dolores had witnessed these scenes unfold. The actors; the words; the tone, an immovable script––usually. Today is different, she thought, looking at her sisters. They were wriggling on their chairs, as if a long ripple was unfolding beneath their muscles. They always do, she thought, trying to dismiss her unrest––move. They rarely stopped, she thought more, scurrying through the maze-like vineyard, morning to night, draped in laughter so crisp and generous the laborers nicknamed them pequeñas diosas de la tierra––little goddesses of the earth. But this wasn’t movement. No. This was agitation. Dolores mouthed to them to stop fidgeting and listen. The girls obeyed.
Inside the long silence, a space where the world around them continued, the workers sang of love and loss, off pitch and low, their voices reaching them from the fields, and as it did, a barn cat landed on the windowsill, an orange feather-like particle hanging from its mouth.
He keeps doing that, Luna said, as she stood. He catches all the butterflies and brings them back here. Siempre. Amused by the interlude, they watched the young girl walk to the window, and with her small hands, delicately remove the butterfly from the cat's soft bite. Gato malo. Malo malo malo. The insect was still alive and when she saw that it was, she placed it atop her hand, watching the wings slowly stroking the air. Come with me, she said, and she walked back to her chair and sat. I will take care of you.
It’s time for me to go, the priest said, pushing away the emptied glass in front of him. Hasta mañana, Dolores, he said. Y Recuerda que Dios es grandioso. He stood, feeling restlessness gripping his thighs, and meticulously replaced his hat on his coiffed head. Remember, Luna, that butterflies carry the beauty of struggles with them, and the certainty of new beginnings, too. Just like the Bible does.Â
Luna turned to her father––the moment escaped his grasp.
Raquel held the door for the tall man, her knee pointing into its broken panel, below the hem of a skirt, circular and long. Her eyes fled, not wanting to meet his, not there.
Not now.
The priest stepped over the sill and turned back. I’ll be waiting, Señora Raquel. Mañana.
Squinting, she looked away, Dolores in her sights. Si Dios quiere, Padre. Mañana.
Dolores’s gaze followed that of Romero’s, to where the priest was, at the door, his silhouette, broad and menacing. God’s spy, she thought, as she walked to where her sisters stood, her hand searching for theirs. That or it’s the Devil’s. Stay with me, she told them.
Standing on the porch, they watched the priest saunter to the makeshift enclosure surrounding the house. They watched as the light waved onto the weak-tea colored coat of the Lusitano, the sun dappling flank to neck. Sensing his master approaching, the sixteen-hand horse grew even larger, and stomping the ground, neighed. Once by his side, Father Antonio spoke to the animal, a jargon drenched in softness––hypnotic and lulling––and as he did, he cinched the girth strap, pulling twice on the latigo. Still talking, the man slid his hand across the horse’s mane, and grabbing the black stock of bristly hairs, climbed onto the saddle.
With the weight of eyes pushing on his back, the priest left Romero Munduya’s propriety knowing what he was leaving behind; what he had continued to feed––suspended specks of dust in lieu of brightness––porous ignorance.
And seated behind the girls, unseen, the cat slowly swallowed the butterfly.
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The fire was not completely out, the priest opened the door to the cast oven, tossing more lumber inside the small space. Pensive, and waiting for the flames to grow taller, Antonio brought a stool next to the stove and sat, his hands hovering above the burgeoning heat. Outside, the smell of war, of collective indigence, voices about to fall from an edge, about to burst and bounce off the neighborhood’s walls.
In this modest dwelling, adjacent to this modest church, a backdoor led to a yard. As he walked out, he nodded to the horse standing in the middle of it. This horse, he thought, the only thing I truly own. Folding his naked body into a large basin, oblivious to the world, he felt the water, brown and smelling of iron, wrap him with tepid warmth. He brought his knees to his chest and thought––about his ending, unavoidable. Hide and hide well, the archbishop had said, stay alive as long as you can, keep the faith alive where you can. And be happy Madrid is your friend.Â
He looked up, the sound of them impossible to ignore––bombers like flies appearing from below the clouds, engines never hushing, and he thought, until this carmine fed ideology sends me to my death—and it will, he knew––I will continue to live, as I know how. And no other way.
Stepping out of the basin, he stood, wet and dripping, and he walked to his horse. Water running over his body, the cold wind pulling shivers from his skin. What would I do without you? he asked, in whispers. The horse’s head pushing against his and their eyes synchronized. I’ll see you tomorrow, he said, as he caressed the horse’s mane. Mañana. He turned toward the door, sauntered inside the house, directing his attention to the mattress facing the small wooden table. Slumping, naked, underneath the bedcover, Antonio thought more, about them, this family––the girls.Â
From the floor he brought a bottle of wine to his lips and closed his eyes: He would need to travel to that space where he quarreled with God. In there, Antonio stood at times, unbent and pious, but remaining––a Father burdened by a mind, ductile, slave to the baseness of an unstable core.Â
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 On the porch of the white two-storied house standing in the middle of a field, three scantily dressed women, content in their waiting, smoked their pipes. Romero stood, facing them, a foot resting on the bottom step, and listening to the music coming from the gramophone’s sound horn. A gift, one of the girls had once explained, from a wealthy client.
Romero had walked the following night to where men go when wanting to grasp the nature of their own, because inside the walls of a house made of women only, something other than flesh could bloom.
Sometimes.
A shift occurred, that night, within him, the settling of truths he had not been prepared––wanted?––to see. Torments were forming inside his heart, and he wanted them unleashed. A cleansing, and penetrating her small body, he surrendered, softly speaking to her, about women, of how they understood what a man must do. To be more.
Yes, a woman always knows, she responded, a hand on his chest, and slowing his thrusting. A woman always knows. The question, she added with mischief, is how much does she really cares?Â
Romero paused, pushing the girl away from him, this contrived verse, like a man-made virus inside his mind, replaying: All the secrets that never are, they roam, and then they land, somewhere, don’t they, in the coldness of a touch; in the absence of a gaze, inside the desertion of what had been, in its place, the skiving of a lover unable to look at you in the eye while penetrating you like a truant. When does one know, one cares? he asked, thinking of his wife.
PregĂşntale a Dios, Romero, no a mĂ.
ÂżDios?
SĂ.
God is elusive to me. Not to you? And I don’t know anymore, isn’t He a clear illusion fed by the fascists, the monarchs, and the tyrants? And can’t He be but an opaque one fueled by the commies, too, and so maybe––what am I really?––unreal to Him, just as opaque, just as unclear—an illusion still, and yet, a real one? As volatile as Him. But what if He was? Is?
What if.
The small girl kissed his lips, left her bed, and picked her clothes off the floor, dirty and damp. If God was here, my Romero, with me, looking over me and my baby, you wouldn’t be.
And those waves brimming with dissonances haunted and trashed in his mind.Â
So slippery, this thinking where not much holds.Â
The man stood and dressed himself, the movements, slow, hindered by images of his family; his vines––Father Antonio’s last visit.
Numbness, as sudden as unexpected, blanketed his heart, and he walked to the girl. Seated on the bed, a stained blouse, loose and unbuttoned, floating around her small shoulders and breasts, with hair carefully undone, she looked as though she was waiting for something. Someone. Her next client, he thought. Of course. He looked at her face, this fading of a youth, and for the first time, he thought of his daughters.
See you next week, Romero.
With tears in his eyes, he picked his hat from the coat hook, and not turning to the voice, vowed to never come back.
The morning’s shadow lay on half his body, the half she wasn’t looking at. She smiled. Your face was barely leathered and carved by the sun when I married you, she thought, you, a man twenty years older than me. And yet her own features, the mapping of harshness, her life, her down turned mouth framed by lines never having been carved by laughter. Romero’s face had almost remained, and over time, only his cheeks, wine-puffed flesh that gave his angular shape a soft roundness, and his curly hair, now white and sparse, betrayed the truth of his age. Approaching his sixtieth birthday, the man, his stature, was as imposing as a young bull’s shadow.Â
Romero, Raquel whispered, as she placed a thin lock of hair behind his ear, do you remember the day before we married, the question you asked me? It still lives with me, you know. Raquel closed her eyes. If I give you a moment no longer belonging to this time, our time, you asked, will I be able to care still for us? And not waiting for his answer, she said, it’s time to go. Listo. Â
She threw her legs to the floor, walked to the closet, and picking up the day’s attire– –a flower patterned dress, she looked once more at Romero, his back still to the mattress, his torso a constant seesaw. ¿Me pregunto, mi Romero, si le pidiera lo mismo, me dirìas que s� If I asked you the same thing, would you say, yes? That you still care for what once was, and still could be? With us?
Again, Amor, por favor.
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Reddish dust surrounded her as she walked the road to Ronda. And cacti so many, dispersed, too. The devil, she smiled. That is what you all are. Above her, the sky, a brighter blue, the sight of it almost blinding her. And all around, the mountains burned a little less. Raquel lifted her head, her loose black hair swept by the morning winds, and smiled––the summer not lost yet, at the end of its course.
On the road carving into the lowland, buggies loaded with grain, grapes, and nuts, and all the land would gift, passed her. Singing and smoking and spitting life from their mouths, the men drove, young and old, sometimes nodding at her, sometimes not. As she followed the queue of women heading like her to the city’s market, Raquel scanned the surrounding hills. This land was the land she was born from, the one she would be buried in. Like all of them.
Thrust underneath her arm, a large straw bag and inside the bag, carefully folded, shawls and dresses, piled up, ones she had sown the month before. She was heading to Lucia’s shop to collect the money for the previous month's sales and drop her new confections as well.
Then, the church.
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The small confessional seen from the entrance pulled Raquel as it always had and she walked to it, ignoring the flock praying and weeping and asking for the impossible. To this man, waiting, dressed in black, hair slicked to the side with a mouth wet and eager.Â
She walked farther to the back, hoping to be unseen. She opened the door, sat on the narrow pew, and crossed herself. Why do I come? she asked herself. Why am I really here? Staring into the wall of the confessional booth––flashes of words coming from his mouth. I am God, he would say. I am always with God. Through me, so many gates. Soy
Dios. A golden ticket.
His voice, filtered by the wooden mesh, soft and heavy. You came, Raquel.Â
Bless me, Father.
Te necesito, he said, aquĂ.Â
She drew inside herself a little more and did what she always had done when confronted with this choice that shouldn’t be one, staring at her––his Heaven, her Earth–– with this slow and abysmal-filled voice—thought of Romero, of all he was, and wasn’t. Of
the girls. Of MatĂas. Of malaises hovering over her family.
My heart seeks, the priest said to her, of what lies underneath your own. What leans beneath your skin, too, Raquel.Â
And failure, she thought, a sad certainty––staying.
He flicked the locket, the sound of metal on wood warning of more to come. Walking around the booth, scanning the church, he saw women, men, and children, eyes closed, some weeping, all surviving inside a prayer. He opened the door, reached for her, pulling her to him. Ven aca.
Her head could have fallen, her body soft, almost unwilling, but not completely. To him. Into him. God. But who is he, anyways, she asked herself. And why us? A year of him, this pressure. And her eyes, black and deep not obscuring anymore what she saw––in him. She stared. I am sorry for all of this and all that could follow, she could have almost sobbed, her hand wanting to push against his chest—a new signing of the cross, dirty, in that place reddened by man’s shallowness, much like the words he thought to himself now, like a penance of their own, and only for her: How beautiful are your sandaled feet, princess. The curves of your thighs, like jewelry, the handiwork of a master. Your navel, a rounded bowl, never lacking mixed wine. Your waist, a mound of wheat surrounded by lilies. Your breasts, two fawns–the twins of a gazelle. And he repeated, these whispers, to her, the Bible’s Song of Songs, and he took her hand, told her to stand, and follow him.
Her face, the skin of it darkened by the rays of many unforgiving suns, remained–
–still like death swimming in a swamp.Â
Her head held straight, she said nothing, and left.
