Angel scrunches her face. “Can’t I just see it once? You’re Jesus, aren’t you?”
“Tío Tíve would kill me.”
She’s good-natured in her pleading, all smiles. “Come on.”
“Women can’t go in. And besides . . .” Before he can stop himself, he glances down at her belly. Her face slackens and she turns back to the TV. When Amadeo looks again, she’s crying soundlessly, face blotchy and ugly, mascara running down her cheeks.
It’s not his fault. He didn’t tell her to be a girl. He didn’t tell her to get knocked up. They were doing so well, she was showing interest, he was feeling so good. “It’s just an old gas station. It’s mostly empty anyway.”
But now Angel’s shoulders rock. Her fist presses over her mouth, and she’s still not making a sound.
“Hey. Hey.” He turns awkwardly on the couch, pats the shoulder near him.
When she speaks, it’s with a gasp. “I’m too dirty for your morada. Is that it?”
An image flashes: Angel naked, sweaty and grunting with some boy. “You’re not dirty.”
LATER TONIGHT, the hermanos will gather for the last vigil, but for now the parking lot of the morada is deserted.
Amadeo unlocks the door and steps aside for his daughter. He watches Angel take it all in. On one of the benches is a canvas jacket, left last night by one hermano or another.
She walks the periphery of the room, stopping at various points to consider the man on the cross. His suffering is garish under the buzzing fluorescent bulb: blood flows down his pale neck and torso and knees, every wound deep and effusive. This statue’s pain is personal and cruel, and he’s not bearing it with perfect grace. The figure on the crucifix is a living man, a living witness to Amadeo’s transgressions. Amadeo looks from the statue to Angel, then back, hands trembling.
The artist did not stop at five wounds, but inflicted his brush generously on the thin body. And there are the nails. Three. One in each hand, one skewering the long, pale feet. Amadeo feels his own palms throb.
Angel tips her head, impassive, and Amadeo is disappointed that she isn’t impressed, that for her, it really is just a gas station.
When he hears a creak, he thinks for a moment it comes from outside, but it’s closer, within the morada. Amadeo looks from his daughter to the statue.
“There aren’t any Baby Jesuses here, are there?” Angel observes. No Blessed Mother, either, no audience of saints. Amadeo is alone here with his daughter and the statue. “I guess it’s not a good idea for Baby Jesus to have to see himself later.” Her voice is tired. She taps her belly distractedly, walks a few steps, stops. “I wouldn’t want my baby to know.”
Amadeo waits in dread for the statue to move, to lift his head. To fix Amadeo with his eyes.
Angel makes her slow way around the room again, stopping every few feet, head tilted. She turns to him, face pale, and he is startled when she asks, “So you really want to get whipped? To know what it feels like?” With her finger she traces a trickle of blood down the bound wooden feet. “Why?”
The room waits, but Amadeo doesn’t have an answer. What he thinks about are the years passing blunts and working on cars with old friends now mostly married and supporting families, watching TV at night with his mother. Whole weeks go by without him remembering he has a daughter. Now here she is, standing before him under the eyes of Christ, and he doesn’t know what to tell her. Too much time has passed. He thinks about the shadowy memory of his own father, wonders if the man ever felt this lost for words, this insufficient.
Though he can’t articulate it to Angel, his answer is this: he needs to know if he has it in him to ask for the nails, if he can get up there in front of the whole village and do a performance so convincing he’ll transubstantiate right there on the cross into something real. He needs to know if he can face that pain, straight on and with courage, without dodging it as he did on Ash Wednesday. He looks at the statue. Total redemption in one gesture, if only he can do it right.