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TIO’S STORY

Tio had always enjoyed a lot of luck.

In fact, those in the village said he was blessed by the Virgin Mary. As a boy, he walked into the church late one night. Why he wandered from his bed, he later told his parents, Juan and Mariel, he didn’t know. He just said a voice called to him, a woman. Her words so sweet he could not deny her, even though he knew it was wrong to leave his bed.

Tio has been to the church many times, of course, but never by himself. As his sandal-clad feet padded quietly down the cobblestones, maneuvering past the bigger ones and the pot holes full of rainwater, he felt strangely as if he was dreaming. How can this be true? he asked. If I were dreaming, I’d be in my bed, but here I am walking by themoon’s half-glow.

Paco, a spotted dog, jumped out at him from behind a stone fence. But Tio already knew him. And they were friends in the daylight. He continued on his way, keeping the same steady pace. Yet, Tio wondered what he was doing out here, with the chill going down his back? And he wondered what his parents would do when they found he wasn’t asleep in his bed. For Tio was the only child born to Juan and Mariel and for that alone, they said he was special.

When saw the church, things became alarming for the four-year-old. He squinted his eyes, and then rubbed them with his sleepy hands, back and forth, just to make sure. Was there a glow from the cupola, from its very top? Yes! He had never answered himself out loud before. His tiny voice was all the more startling.

“Si,” Tio whispered again. “It’s true. There is a light.”

The honey glow caught his gaze, so he stopped and fell down on a swept concrete stair, twice as wide as his small body. What was that voice again?

“Where are you?” he asked out loud, more in a scared whisper than anything else. Could it be coming from the graveyard, so close to the church? That was what the bigger kids said, that there were dead babies in the graves who came out of the ground at night to look for their mothers. Tio let out a shiver. Those were just stories meant to frighten a little boy, he knew, but still ... .

The voice didn’t so much answer him as draw his feeling, his attention, back up toward the huge double door. He noticed the inset smaller door already lie half open. Tio crept up the remaining stairs on all fours, like a curious monkey. And when he reached the open ground between the last stair and the small door, he darted inside, before his courage left him completely.

***

By after breakfast, most of La Tlapa was in an uproar. So many children had disappeared during the past few years, the years of the revolution. There were stories, many bad stories, about the soldados coming in the night and whisking away a child, sleeping in bed. Or right from the arms of her mother. So, to have beloved Tio missing, Mariel could only contemplate the worst. She called on all of her neighbors, and no one had heard a thing, much less seen him in the courtyard. Or by the well. Or playing with the dog, although Pepe remembered a commotion very early in the morning. But that damned dog was crazy and barked at every leaf that shook in the jungle. It couldn’t have been much of anything.

And then a strange thing happened to Mariel as well: a mighty intention. She roughly grabbed Juan, who she didn’t think was doing enough to find Tio.

“Nos Vamos a la iglesia, let’s go to the church.”

Juan responded that since they’d only searched for fifteen minutes it was too early to assume their only child was dead.

“Aiieeee,” cried Mariel, what a stupid cabron her husband could be. Didn’t she have to check the well herself?

She left the house without putting on her sandals, scolding him all the way down the little dirt road that joined about a mile away with the cobblestones.

She cried, “Aiiieee, Aiiieee, my baby, my hijo,” every few steps, between cursing Juan, and her plaintive howling, which drew many from their homes.

“What is it? Has another disappeared in our midst while we were asleep?”

In this way, Mariel and Juan swelled into a flowing current of humanity, full of doubt and unknown horror. Grief and sickness ached in their belly, when they washed up the church steps, and pour through the big doors, startling Father Diego. Quickly, he threw his hands up.

“Silencio, Silence! Behold the child! Behold the child!?

They squinted in the near-darkness, and stared. It was true.

There nestled in the lap and in the folded arms of the Virgin lie little Tio, asleep, without a care in his new world. Tiny Golita laughed because she saw Tio had his thumb in his mouth, something she would never do because she wasn’t a baby like him.

Mariel let out a cry so loud that before Diego could place a muffling hand over the woman’s mouth he thought they would be joined by some friends from the cemetery. Everyone looked on now, as Tio stirred, recognizing the reverberating cry of his mother, as it echoed from the nave, to the altar, and back again. Mariel cried relief, joy, faith. Tio was safe from the world, from all of the ugly things people do to one another.

When the little boy saw his mother and father, and the priest, and his friends, and even stupid, mocking Golita, he tried to cover his face with his hands. Still, he peeked between his small fingers. Was he dreaming again?

No, Tio was sure he was in trouble.

”She made me do it! he cried out to them. “She made me!”

He pointed his little brown finger upward, toward the Virgin.

The little boy could still just make out the faintest of lights streaming out from her eyes, cascading down her cheeks, like bright individual stars, perfectly formed tears.

Tio wondered if the others saw them as well. But now he was in his real mother’s arms, and she smelled so safe, like bread and salt. And her arms and her breasts were so warm all he could do was hold on to her woolen shawl. Hold on for the long ride home.