Marina Ramil

Santo Malo, or Patronage of the Lost

When Constanza is under the covers, scenes of fowl being plucked alive play out behind her eyes. It’s not carnivore’s guilt; she had been a vegetarian for some time because Mother had been one longer, except for Fridays during Lent when they eat sardines in oil from their tins and on Mother’s birthday when they each eat a Cornish hen whole. No, the bloody squawks are an intentional distraction. She conjures them nightly to avoid thoughts of Jessica Argyros. Constanza Greco hates Jessica Argyros.

Jessica Argyros’ mother is a teacher at their school, Santo Malo All Girls Middle/High, and Mother says that makes her feel superior. Mother is a bank teller at MarshTrust, a bank small enough that she’s able to smoke with one hand and handle transactions with the other. The owner of MarshTrust is Mr. Mineaux, whose name the Greco girls, Mother and Constanza alone, are told they cannot pronounce even though the difference in how they say it to how he says it is imperceptible. Mr. Mineaux is a nervous man and Mother says it’s because he has deep pockets. Constanza knows Mother’s pockets are shallow yet she’s nervous in disposition too. This concerns Constanza.

A lot concerns Constanza. She watches anti-smoking ads that inform her that lifelong smokers are at risk of colorectal cancer. She cannot imagine, even with her big imagination, a worse fate. She stands at Mother’s bedside on a stack of mail order catalogues and knitting patterns with hot, fat tears running down her face.

“Virginia Slims support women’s tennis. Don’t you want women to be able to play tennis?”

Constanza wails.

In the plush of her twin bed, she can’t help but allow for a brief thought of Jessica to surface:

Mrs. Argyros doesn’t smoke Virginia Slims. Mrs. Argyros never smells like cigarettes. Mrs. Argyros smells just like Jessica: burnt hair. They straighten their curls daily. Jessica also smells like something Mrs. Argyros doesn’t: strawberries and cream scented heat protectant spray. I know this because of the time I hugged Jessica behind the trunk of the big, old Magnolia tree where the nuns couldn’t see us. I could smell her hair.

Another imagined bird must die for Constanza’s sins.

Mother is in mourning and has been since mid-2007 when her husband’s body was found, prostrate in the underbrush covered in crepe myrtle petals and dog bites. When the moon is waxing and the neighbor’s bloodhound howls, the Greco girls share weary glances. Mother wears only black in different intensities, combining slacks the color of an overripe banana past saving with cashmere sweaters like the ink stains on hands from a broken pen. Constanza would wear only black with her if not for the green and blue plaid of her uniform pinafore. The Girls at Santo Malo often talk about what color Jessica’s eyes are, green or blue, under the fluorescent light in the mirror-less bathrooms. Constanza knows the answer but keeps it to herself.

The only remaining nun on staff at the school, Sister Mary Antoine, calls her Constance and she never corrects her. Mother has a name like this too; always Grace, never Grazia. The Girls often call Sister Mary Antoine things like “ancient” or “decrepit,” words they learned for vocabulary tests. Constanza pipes up, “Aging is how you get wise.” The Girls look at her like she has three heads.

“Sister Mary Antoine isn’t wise. She’s a nun.”

“Yeah, she’s a sheep.”

“She’s totally chickenshit.”

She does not argue against this but feels a need to defend her anytime it comes up again. She isn’t that bad. She isn’t particularly stern or boring. She often pauses in her curriculum to give impromptu lectures on Pope Francis in Manila or Havana, the sex abuse crisis and the Church’s triumphant response to it, and pop culture, denouncing the traitor to Faith who performed the Super Bowl Halftime show this year. The Girls snicker when she harps on the now seven year old proof of her fall from grace, “I Kissed A Girl.” Constanza listens, enraptured.

Mother listens to Andrea Bocelli during the car rides to and from school. A live recording of an Elvis song cover distracts her from the worksheet she’s completing on the Parables of Jesus. What wise men say about fools rushing in blends together with what the five wise virgins say to the foolish ones. On that day, she learns that sometimes you can’t help falling in love and that you must always keep watch because you do not know the day or the hour. How one might hold space for it all eludes her.

In the Christmas pageant, Jessica is cast as the Virgin Mary. Constanza is cast as Melchior, the wise man who brings gold. They rehearse in their uniforms but are shown the musty, humid back room of the cafetorium in which they’ll put on the surely decades-old costumes the day of the show. Jessica turns to Constanza and whispers, “The high school girls told me it’s, like, totally haunted in here.” She’s smiling wide.

“That’s creepy,” Constanza says, grimacing.

“Oh,” Jessica says with a pout, turning back to Sister Mary Antoine who is speaking about the importance of never losing your script.

When Constanza comes home from school, she finds her pageant script trapped underneath a metal safe. She tries to pick it up but it’s far too heavy.

“Careful, Connie,” Mother says, “I’ve got a special job.” She lights that thin, white appendage of hers. “Mr. Mineaux is having me design a false bottom for the safes.” He had been very impressed by the mauve angora wool scarf she knitted him for his recent birthday, that was how he knew she was crafty. And she is. Mother could have been a great artist in another life, but Constanza didn’t like to think that way.

For Constanza’s birthday, Mother got her a diary with a lock and a pair of pink magnolias on the cover. She writes in it at night:

Lord, protect Mother and her special work. Let it make her happy. Keep Daddy company up in heaven. Let it be that Jessica Argyros stops ironing her hair for I fear it’ll fall right out of her head if she’s not careful. Nothing smelling like strawberries and cream can protect anyone from anything. I know the only true protection comes from you. Deliver me from evil, Lord.

She checks the lock three times, three times, three times before getting into bed.

When the winter report cards come out, Sister Mary Antoine holds Constanza back from dismissal.

“Constance, will your parents wait for you for a moment so we can speak?”

She likes the way plural “parents” sounds so she doesn’t correct her, just nods her head affirmatively.

“This isn’t about your grades, we’re all very proud of what a good student you are.” Constanza pictures Sister Mary Antoine and Mrs. Argyros sitting together in the teachers’ lounge gushing about her science test results. “I need to talk to you about the essay you wrote for me, Constance, with reference to Luke 17:32. I was somewhat concerned with your implication.”

“Oh?” Constanza holds her body very still, as if doing so will make this conversation easier somehow.

“It might help to remind you of what you said,” and she pulls it from a pile of papers. “‘It does the faithful good to remember Lot’s wife, as Jesus said. She stands as a pillar of salt reminding us all that wanting outside of what God wills can only be relieved by punishment.’”

Very, very, very still.

“I’m perplexed, Constance. Did you mean to use the word relief here? Is that what you believe Lot’s wife feels?”

She shakes her head no.

“No? You mean you misstated your point?”

She shakes her head yes.

“Constance,” Sister Mary Antoine regards her carefully over half-moon lenses, “I will see you tomorrow.”

Mother is leaning on the horn, drawing stares and giggles from the Girls, when Constanza gets to the roundabout. She feels her breath caught in her throat.

Jessica Argyros has a birthday too close to Christmas so she never gets a party, just cupcakes at school. The Girls get birthday parties with cake from Winn-Dixie, gaudy frosting over equal amounts of chocolate and vanilla slices. Jessica’s mother brings homemade cupcakes flavored with rosewater, honey, pistachios, citrus. She emerges from her classroom smiling with cloched cake stands in both hands.

Jessica carefully picks one for each of her classmates. Constanza can’t make sense of the reasoning behind these choices, but everyone seems happy with what they get. One with candied orange peel for Emilie B. One with a square of waxy honeycomb for Chloe. One with verdant pistachio dotted throughout for Destinee. Constanza and Jessica get the rose ones, decorated with pink piped flowers. Even though she thinks florals in sweets always taste like soap, Constanza takes a large bite when Jessica looks her way. That night, a chicken loses its brown feathers in her mind. Only Jessica would manage to give Constanza the one flavor she detests.

In the afternoon before the pageant, Mother stops at MarshTrust on the way to Santo Malo. She instructs Constanza to be quiet in the waiting area and shuffles through the employee door. Mr. Mineaux comes into the waiting room shortly after. He’s a portly man who moves like he was strong once. He brings her a strawberry lollipop and kneels before her to speak as if she’s much younger than 12.

“Did you know I have 14 children? Can you believe that?”

She couldn’t but nodded yes.

“I can’t imagine what it must be like for you as an only child.”

She doesn’t know anything else.

“Well, you know I’ve always got you and your mother’s backs. Always, hon.” He pats her on the shoulder.

Mother comes rushing in with wide eyes and cigarette in hand. Mr. Mineaux regards her and Constanza can’t place the expression. She feels uncomfortably childlike. They go on their way.

It doesn’t get cold in these marshlands, but Mother brings her best coat, mink in all black, to wear while watching the pageant.

“O night star,” Mother enunciates in the idling car as they wait, having arrived far too early, “guide us with thy shining light.”

Constanza is watching Mrs. Argyros fuss with Jessica’s hair in the quad.

“Connie, I’m not reciting your lines for my health,” Mother says, but Constanza isn’t looking at her.

“O night star,” Constanza goes on drolly, dutifully.

“Well, what’s the point if you’re not going to care?” Mother is staring at her and gripping the steering wheel, nails lacquered red leaving indentations in the pleather. She throws the car door open and unlatches the hatchback trunk, digging around in there. She produces a pair of white wings and brings them up to Constanza in the front seat. “Here!”

“What’s this, Mother?”

“You know I hate that. Mom, Mommy, Mamma, anything but that. There’s no love in Mother. It’s bizarre,” she says curtly and shakes out the wings. “This is for your costume.”

“I don’t understand.”

“This,” she raises her voice and shakes the wings at Constanza, “is for your costume.”

“I’m Melchior. The Magi.”

“So what? Gabriel gets wings.”

“Gabriel is an angel.”

“Constanza,” Mother clasps her wrist tight, “I want you to look good, baby. I want you to look good up there next to all those snot-faced girls. I want us both to look good tonight.”

Constanza begins prying Mother’s hand off finger by finger.

“We only have each other and the bank, baby, always the bank and the two of us. So, we’ve gotta look good where we can. You wear the wings and that gives me wings too, you see.”

Constanza takes the wings from her mother and touches the white feathers softly. She’ll wear them. She can’t figure how the bank fits in but yes, always the two of them.

“Not too good though, Con,” she pinches Constanza’s arm and gawks at Mrs. Argyros in the quad applying pink blush to the apples of Jessica’s cheeks, “It’s a Christmas pageant, not the club.”

Sister Mary Antoine ushers the Girls behind the curtain when the time comes for them to costume themselves. They get swallowed up by moth-eaten robes and giggle at one another, tipping styrofoam cups of soda from the modest spread Sister left for them as a treat.

“I look like a dude. I mean, I guess we’re mostly playing dudes.”

“Yeah, but some of us look extra dudely.”

“Some of us look extra,” she searches for a vocabulary test word, “bizarre tonight.”

The Girls make bird calls at one another. They shuffle out of the room single file while Constanza is still adjusting her smock, staring at her winged form in the mirror. The robe does not swallow her up like it does on the Girls. “Bizarre, bizarre, bizarre,” she whispers under her breath. She’s lost her nerve now that the Girls have weighed in. What does Mother need wings for anyway? What is there to fly away from? She feels her face getting hot with frustration when sparkly pink nails dig into the hem of the fabric and adjust it.

“It’s the ghost!” the pair of hands say.

Constanza turns to face Jessica, whose dark hair is covered by blue and white shrouds. She’s careful not to hit the other girl with her wings. Jessica’s expression goes from a wry smile to something softer, bordering on concern. Constanza wonders what she must look like to her now, standing so close. All at once, Jessica reaches out to touch the white feathers softly then hard, holding a fistful and pulling.

“Oh, someone clipped your wings…. Can’t wear them like that.”

Constanza can smell strawberries and cream from this close, this time mingling with the strawberry-flavored Crush which has left her lips red in the center. She says a silent prayer, remorseful because she knows this to be a sinful thought, but she has changed her mind about things smelling of strawberries and cream. The two girls can feel each other’s breath. The only bird being plucked is Constanza.

Jessica Argyros’ eyes aren’t blue or green. They’re not quite grey. They’re silver, like the quill of a feather or cloudlines in the sun.

Marina Ramil is a writer and student from Miami, FL with the alligators and strangler figs. They have had work published in Astrolabe, scaffold, OxMag, and elsewhere. They believe in liberation for Palestine, DRC, Sudan, and oppressed and occupied peoples everywhere. You can find more of their work at marinaramil.com.