Rickie Trujillo by Nicholas Bradley

Author:Nicholas Bradley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Upper Hand Press

SUNDAY MORNING

CHAPTER 14

Berta rises at her usual hour. Sunday. Church day. Today she thinks she might leave a little later so that she can sit alone in the back. It would be insulting to Father Bernal to arrive early and sit there. He would find a way to say something. “Why do you sit so far away, Berta? Do you feel like communing with God on your own today?” he would say and laugh, but she would feel a gentle criticism behind the laugh and the soft words.

Today she will arrive just as the doors are closing. She does not want to sit up front in the crush of ladies with their fans and squirming children and the young boys and girls making eyes at one another. She wants to be by herself. Is that wrong? Will Father tell her it is vanity to want to sit alone and enjoy the dimness at the back of the church and the quiet and the cool air that smells like candles and incense and prayer books, and the breath of a thousand prayers and mournful sighs that smell like Father’s breath when he speaks so close to you? He is a soft man who feels sorry for himself, perhaps because he doubts his faith and calling but cannot find the courage to act. She can see it in his face, in his soft cheeks that sag into jowls, the black stubble of his beard against the pastiness of his skin, in his eyes that bully you with a perpetual squint behind his thick wire-frame glasses.

Berta wants to be apart from everyone else today, she doesn’t know why. She wants to let her eyes roam from one sunlit window to the next without feeling Father’s eyes squinting in accusation at her.

So she will arrive late and sit in the back and allow the dim coolness to envelop her and carry her through the kneeling and standing, praying and responding, her Rosary familiar and comfortable in her hands, in a kind of dream state that will take her drifting on the drone of Father’s words and the music and prayer, oblivious to everything in particular except for the sound of Father’s voice and the responses of the congregation, and cool air and the smooth wood of the back of the pew in front of her, polished by the hands of hundreds of supplicants on the way to or from their knees. And if Father Bernal asks, she will say she rose late, that’s all.

Berta busies herself in the kitchen, making herself a small pot of coffee. There will be enough for another cup after service today. In a few minutes she will brush her hair and wash her face and put on her church dress. She will walk to church slowly.

She looks about the kitchen with its old wooden cabinets painted yellow by Osvaldo years ago, and she does not find anything to straighten or put away. Everything is in order, and she is satisfied.

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