What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez by Claire Jimenez

Author:Claire Jimenez
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2023-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

The church was not really a church. It was a gym that had formerly belonged to a community center. Every Sunday they put the teenagers to work dragging hundreds of metal chairs to the floor and rolling a dusty blue runner between the aisles up to the podium, where the musicians were already testing the timbales. Banners with proverbs written in Spanish and decorated with hearts and Jesus fish hung from the metal rafters like boughs of flowers. But you could still see a basketball hoop hanging behind the altar, where Pastor Richie (this twenty-eight-year-old green-eyed Puerto Rican, who I knew was definitely cheating on his wife, because I saw him once palming his side chick’s ass in the cereal aisle at a CVS) was standing, his arms stretched to the sides, singing, “Querido Dios, gracias por tus bendiciones,” as if he were Marc Anthony. Outside the building you could hear his voice—so loud that it reached the parking lot of the Western Beef across the street, rattling against a row of shopping carts locked into each other.

Service, obviously, had already started.

As soon as Irene and my mother pushed through those double doors, they put up praise hands like a couple of scarecrows, which made them look even guiltier as they squeezed themselves down the aisle searching for three empty chairs. I followed them, holding Julie in her car seat, trying not to hit anyone in the head. When Mom and Irene finally found their seats, they closed their eyes and moved from side to side with the music, multiplying the energy of their worship by how many minutes they’d showed up late. The lights and the thumping bass had stirred Julie awake and she was twisting in the car seat, trying to look away from me to the front of the church, where Richie was singing, “Con brazos abiertos, Señor.” My mother picked Julie up and started swaying with her, one arm in the air.

In the front, by the altar and the microphones, Mr. Rafael was killing it on the congas, slapping the edges of the drums and ending with a resounding echo from the note he struck with the heel of his hand, while the pastor lifted his voice, chanting a prayer in Spanish: Señor: Sin ti, nada podemos hacer. And a viejito on the guitar was strumming and rotating his head, the sweat trickling into his collar, the top of his bald head glistening underneath the fluorescent lights—Mr. Ruiz. During the week he delivered pizza for Little Caesars. On Sundays he made hundreds of people bend at the waist with one hand raised towards the ceiling, their hearts softened by the sounds he conjured with his guitar.

I’m telling you, some of these old Spanish dudes could really play, and I wondered if they were so good because of God, or if they played at church because it’s where the most people showed up. At one point the combination of congas and the guitar and the drums and

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