AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"About what?" Juan Diego asked her.
"About the miracle business--there are two schools of thought," Lupe told him. "We scattered the old nose's ashes--now the Mary Monster has a new nose. Is it a miracle, or is it just a nose job? As you might imagine, Father Alfonso and Father Octavio don't like to hear the milagro word used loosely," Lupe reported. Naturally, Senor Eduardo had heard and understood the milagro word.
"Does Lupe say it's a miracle?" the Iowan asked Juan Diego.
"Lupe says that's one school of thought," Juan Diego told him.
"And what does Lupe say about the change in the Virgin Mary's color?" Brother Pepe asked. "Rivera cleaned up the ashes, but the statue is much darker-skinned than she used to be."
"Father Alfonso and Father Octavio say she's not our old Mary, with the white-as-chalk skin," Lupe reported. "The priests think the Mary Monster looks more like Guadalupe than like Mary--Father Alfonso and Father Octavio think the Virgin Mary has become a giant dark-skinned virgin."
But when Juan Diego translated this, Edward Bonshaw became quite animated--or as animated as he dared to be, with Alemania growling at him. "Aren't we--I mean we, the Church--always claiming that, in a sense, the Virgin Mary and Our Lady of Guadalupe are one and the same?" the Iowan asked. "Well, if the virgins are one, surely the color of this one's skin doesn't matter, right?"
"That's one school of thought," Lupe pointed out to Juan Diego. "The color of the Mary Monster's skin is also a matter of debate."
"Rivera was alone with the statue--he asked to be alone with her," Brother Pepe reminded the dump kids. "You ninos don't suppose the dump boss did anything, do you?"
As you might imagine, the issue of whether or not Rivera did anything had already been a matter of debate.
"El jefe said the object he was working on didn't lie flat, and it was hard to hold at the base--the dump boss said the object didn't really have a base," Lupe pointed out. "Sounds like a nose," she said.
"Think of a doorknob--or the latch to a door, or to a window. Kind of like that," el jefe had said. (Kind of like a nose, Juan Diego was thinking.)
"Tricky business," Lupe had called what the dump boss was working on. But Lupe would never say if she knew Rivera had made a new nose for the Mary Monster, and--long before the dump kids drove back to the Temple of the Society of Jesus, with Brother Pepe and Senor Eduardo in the VW Beetle--Lupe and Juan Diego had adequate experience to know that el jefe had harbored secrets before.
From Cinco Senores into the center of Oaxaca, they were driving with the rush-hour traffic. They got to the Jesuit temple after the Mass. Some of the new-nose devotees were still hanging around, gawking at the darker-skinned Mary Monster; in cleaning up the statue, Rivera had managed to remove some of the staining elements from the chemical contents of the ash assault on the Virgin Mary. (It appeared that the giant virgin's clothes hadn't been darkened--at least her clothes weren't as noticeably darkened as her skin.)
Rivera had attended the Mass, but he'd separated himself from the nose-gawkers; the dump boss was quietly praying to himself on a kneeling pad, at some distance from the front rows of pews. El jefe's stolid temperament had been an impenetrable barrier against the insinuations of the two old priests.
As for the new darkness of the Virgin Mary's skin, Rivera spoke only of paint and turpentine--or of "some kind of paint thinner" and "stuff for staining wood." Naturally, the dump boss also mentioned the possibly harsh effects of gasoline, his favorite fire starter.
As for the new nose, Rivera claimed that the statue had still been noseless when he had finished the cleaning job. (Pepe said he hadn't noticed the new nose when he locked up for the night.)
Lupe was smiling at the darker-skinned Mary Monster--the giant Virgin Mary was definitely more indigenous-looking. Lupe liked the new nose, too. "It's less perfect, more human," Lupe said. Father Alfonso and Father Octavio, who were unused to seeing Lupe smile, asked Juan Diego for a translation.
"It looks like a boxer's nose," Father Alfonso said, in response to Lupe's assessment.
"One that's been broken, certainly," Father Octavio said, staring at Lupe. (No doubt he believed that less perfect, more human was an inappropriate look for the Virgin Mary.)
The two old priests had asked Dr. Vargas to come and give them his scientific opinion. It wasn't that they liked (or believed in) science, Brother Pepe knew, but Vargas was not one to use the milagro word loosely; Vargas wasn't inclined to use the miracle word at all, and Father Alfonso and Father Octavio were very much in favor of downplaying the miraculous interpretation of the Mary Monster's darker skin and new nose. (The two old priests must have known they were taking a risk in seeking Vargas's opinion.)
Edward Bonshaw's beliefs had been newly shaken, his vows, not to mention his "yielding-under-no-winds" resolve, having been broken; he had his own reasons for seeking a liberal acceptance of the altered but no less all-important Virgin Mary before them.
As for Brother Pepe, he was ever the one to embrace change--and tolerance, always tolerance. Pepe's English had been much improved by his contact with Juan Diego and the Iowan. But in his enthusiasm to accept the darker-skinned virgin with her different nose, Pepe declared that the transformed Mary Monster was a "mixed blessing."
Pepe must not have realized that the mixed word carried pro and con meanings, and Father Alfonso and Father Octavio failed to see how a
n indigenous-looking Virgin Mary (with a fighter's nose) could be anything resembling a "blessing."
"I think you mean a 'mixed bag,' Pepe," Senor Eduardo helpfully said, but this was not well received by the two old priests, either.
Father Alfonso and Father Octavio did not want to think of the Virgin Mary as anything resembling a "bag."
"This Mary is what she is," Lupe said. "She's already done more than I expected her to do," Lupe told them. "At least she's done something, hasn't she?" Lupe asked the two old priests. "Who cares where her nose came from? Why does her nose have to be a miracle? Or why can't it be a miracle? Why do you have to interpret everything?" she asked the two old priests. "Does anyone know what the real Virgin Mary looked like?" Lupe asked all of them. "Do we know the color of the real virgin's skin, or what kind of nose she had?" Lupe asked; she was on a roll. Juan Diego translated every word she said.
Even the new-nose devotees had stopped gawking at the Mary Monster; they'd turned their attention to the babbling girl. The dump boss had looked up from his silent prayers. And they all saw that Vargas had been there the whole time. Dr. Vargas was standing at some distance from the towering statue. He'd been looking at the Virgin Mary's new nose through a pair of binoculars; Vargas had already asked the new cleaning woman to bring him the long ladder.
"I would like to add one thing Shakespeare wrote," Edward Bonshaw--ever the teacher--said. (It was that familiar passage from the Iowan's beloved Romeo and Juliet.) " 'What's in a name?' " Senor Eduardo recited to them--the scholastic changed the rose word to nose, naturally. " 'That which we call a nose / By any other word would smell as sweet,' " Edward Bonshaw orated in a booming voice.
