The Light of a Cuban Son by Lorenzo Chavez

Author:Lorenzo Chavez
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LGBTQ;Gay;Cuba;Child Abuse;Rape;Teenage Prostitution;Hispanic;Latino
Publisher: Light Messages Publishing
Published: 2022-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

Religion

The little poor people’s church stood at the corner of a restful tree-lined street, a block further away from my school. A wide alley between it and the clergy house ran down its side and led to the auditorium where children and mothers were assembled, waiting for the proceedings to begin. Her nails polished and every hair of her head lacquered into place, Mother paraded me into the hall.

Two motherless butterscotch-colored boys with tight charcoal curls sat by themselves. Several rows away, seven girls and their mothers sat in a group. Looking at the girls, I laughed at their dresses, all oozing with eyelet and lace. The septet looked like a flock of pink Flamingos wading through a pond of meringue.

Being the first child in the family to attend catechism, receive First Communion, and become part of the church seemed particularly important to Mother, even if to no one else. I wanted to be a success. I wanted to be better than everyone else. I wanted to be noticed in the fancy shoes and pants that I had been given two years earlier on my eighth birthday, because I seldom had a chance to show them off. The shoes were so nice that I didn’t tell anyone that my feet had grown a size too big. Instead, I bore the pain. They were worth it.

During my days as a ring bearer, I was being the ideal cherub and worrying about my performance to see beyond the layers of priestly gowns and carved statues atop the gilded altars. I never found God in those pantomimes. I didn’t really know who or what God was.

Ever since Fernando hurt me in the bodega, I’d suffered an indescribable loneliness. A flash of guilt accompanied every stinging memory, and I hadn’t the proper words to describe the sick feeling in my gut that haunted me. I was lost. I’d closed myself off from the world and no longer trusted the adults I once relied on. Still, I desperately wished to belong somewhere—anywhere—that was outside of the chaos inside my house, with Mother constantly painting the walls and pacing back and forth. Perhaps the God living inside this simple little church would welcome me into his house.

A short doughy priest and a towering nun—a ridiculous pair indeed—walked into the hall and a hushed ripple of nervous laughter trickled through the crowd. The priest’s taupe tunic highlighted the redness in his face, and the nun, dressed from head to toe in black except for an overly starched wimple and equally stiff veil spreading wide from side to side, wore enormous black laced-up shoes. Her feet looked like those of clowns when compared to the old priest’s childlike shoes.

I tried to listen. I tried to pay attention and learn the lessons they preached, but they were confusing and filled with nonsensical things that I knew nothing about. I wanted to believe what was being said, but no matter how hard I tried, their words spoken and the passages they read aloud didn’t speak of the gentle, kind deity I wanted God to be.

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