Thirteen Senses (2 page)

Such a man and woman aren't measured from their heads to their feet, but from their heads to the sky, for these people are giants—who know the Thirteen Senses of Creation!

W
AS IT LOVE?

Had it ever really been love?

For fifty years they'd been husband and wife. For fifty years the Father Sun had come and gone. For fifty years the Mother Moon had risen and disappeared. For fifty years they'd loved, fought, and lived together, and now, here they were standing before the priest once again, ready to renew their wedding vows.

Juan Salvador Villaseñor, the nineteenth child of his family, was seventy-five years old. Maria Guadalupe Gomez, the eighth child of her family, was sixty-eight years old. Salvador now turned and took the hand of the woman standing beside him. Lupe turned and looked into Salvador's eyes.

The priest began his words, and Salvador and Lupe's children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren looked on with love, respect, and
gusto.
It was a small wedding this time with just family and a few friends, being done in the living room of the great house that Salvador and Lupe had designed and built nearly thirty-five years before.

Sunlight streamed in through the large windows behind Salvador and Lupe as the priest continued his words. People's eyes filled with tears. This was a magic moment, where everyone in the room just knew that God's blessing was with them.

The groom was dressed in his favorite dark maroon suit with a striped tie of silver and gold. The bride was wearing a beautiful three-quarter-length white dress with intricate lace and interwoven ribbon of yellow gold. Salvador's hair was white and full and still curly. Lupe's hair was mostly gray, too, yet sprinkled with beautiful long strands of black.

The priest continued, and the small gathering of family and friends listened to every word. This time, different from last time, the priest was much younger than the couple getting married. “Juan Salvador Villaseñor,” the young priest was now saying, “do you take Maria Guadalupe Gomez to be your wife? Do you promise to be true to her in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love and honor all the days of your life?”

Lupe turned and stared at Salvador's lion mane of hair and the huge, long, white moustache on his upper lip. It moved like a fat worm as he spoke. “Yes, I do,” he said.

Hearing this, she realized how different these words now felt compared to last time. When she'd heard these words fifty years before, she'd been so young and naïve that she'd taken his “Yes, I do” to mean so much more than she did this time. Last time, she'd thought these words meant that she would have someone with her through good times, bad times, sickness, health, and there would always be love and honor. What a fool she'd been! If the truth were known, sometimes she would've been better off without him.

Then, she realized that the young priest was speaking to her. “And you, Maria Guadalupe Gomez,” said the young man of God, “do you take Juan Salvador Villaseñor to be your husband? Do you promise to be true to him in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love him and honor him all the days of your life?”

At first Lupe didn't answer. My God, this was exactly what she'd done for all these years. But had he? Had Salvador been true to her and honored her? Or, had he ever really even loved her?

Then she suddenly remembered how these words “in bad times” had almost stopped her last time. Even back then, when she'd been eighteen years old, she'd wondered if it was wise for any woman to agree to this statement.

“Say, ‘yes, I do,'” said the young priest, leaning in close to Lupe.

Lupe almost laughed. This was exactly what the priest had done last time. Only then the priest had been old, and he'd looked so full of authority that she'd been intimidated. But she wasn't intimidated in the least this time, and so she just looked at this young priest and smiled.

Juan Salvador saw her smile, that little smile of hers that was so full of mischief. He grinned, squeezing her hand.

Feeling her hand being squeezed, Lupe turned and looked at this gray-haired, old man standing beside her, and she saw his grin. She grinned, too.

“Okay,” she said, squeezing his hand in return. “Yes, I do.”

Everyone in the room looked greatly relieved, except Salvador. He'd never had any doubt.

Then it was Lupe's turn to repeat the words of holy acceptance, but when she came to the passage, “To have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part,” tears came to her eyes. After fifty years of marriage, she could now see that these were the very words that had given her the power to endure all the hardships of the years.

Why, these words “until death do us part” were the very foundation of every marriage. And she could also see that yes, even back then, fifty years ago, she'd had the wisdom to see that these were the words that had given her beloved mother, Doña Guadalupe, the strength to rise up like a mighty star and bring her
familia
back from the dead, time and again during that awful Mexican Revolution!

She could now see so clearly that these words “until death do us part” were the words that gave each and every woman the power, the vision to accept the Grace of God and gain the absolute conviction of mind that she and her family would survive—no matter what—just as her beloved mother-in-law, Doña Margarita, had so well explained to her only days before their first wedding back in 1929.

Lupe now understood very clearly that these words were the secret with which every ordinary woman became extraordinary, giving her the wisdom and confidence within herself to rise up like a mighty eagle and see her family through their darkest of hours of life,
la vida.

Tears streamed down Lupe's face just as they'd streamed down her face fifty years ago at their first wedding, which had taken place up the coast in Santa Ana, California, at the Holy Catholic Church
of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe
on Third Street and Grand. The whole
barrios
of Corona and Santa Ana had attended that wedding. Archie Freeman had barbecued a whole steer. Fifty chickens had been cooked in
salsa de mole
by Lupe's
familia.
Salvador had paid for Lupe's wedding dress, her sister Carlota's maid of honor dress, and the yards and yards of material for other maids' of honor dresses, too. It had been a celebration that had lasted for three days. People had come from Mexico and all over the Southland.

Lupe couldn't stop crying. She and this gray-haired old man standing beside her had seen so much life together, so much suffering and turmoil, and, also, so much joy and wild adventure.

A big part of her now loved Salvador more than ever before, because she'd been with him for more years than she'd been with anyone. Why, she'd only been with her own parents the first eighteen years of her life.

And yet, even though this was true, there was still another part of her that despised him. He'd broken her heart time and again. It was sometimes hard for her to even just look at him, if she let her mind go racing off into all the terrible situations that he'd put her through.

Then it was time for them to exchange rings, but this time they were only adding a simple gold band to their original wedding rings.

And once more—she couldn't believe it—the priest had Salvador say “to love and cherish for the rest of their lives,” but then, when he turned to her, he said for her to say “to love, cherish, and obey.”

Lupe's heart stopped. “Oh, no,” said Lupe, startling the young priest. “I will not say obey! How dare you!”

“But you must, if you want to—”

“I must,” she said. “I must! And he doesn't have to! Oh, no, you don't! You don't talk to me like this after fifty years of marriage, and I now knowing what I know!”

“Good for you, Lupe!” said Carlota, Lupe's older sister, who was sitting with Lupe's children and grandchildren. “He was no good when you married him the first time, and he's still no good today!”

“Keep quiet, Carlota!” said Lupe, turning on her sister, who was wearing a black lace dress and a large blond wig and white powder on her dark, wide Indian face. “This is my wedding, not yours, and I will speak for myself.”

“I was only trying to help,” said Carlota, who had been married to Archie Freeman, but they'd never had any kids, and so she considered Lupe's children like her own.

Lupe turned back to her husband. Smiling, she soothed Salvador's hand, reassuring him that everything was all right. Then she turned to the priest and said, “Father, I will not say ‘obey' and not have him say ‘obey', too.” She spoke calmly. “What do you think marriage is, a beautiful little ceremony and then everything is wonderful thereafter? Marriage is—”

“Hell!” shouted Carlota, cutting in once again.

“Carrrrr-lota!” said Lupe, rolling the “r” of her sister's name with its full Spanish sounding power. “You will leave the room if you can't keep still.”

Carlota began to cry. “Oh, I'm sorry, Lupe,” she said. “It's just that all his life, Salvador has been a no-good, lying—”

“Carlota, ‘quiet,' means ‘quiet!'” snapped Lupe. “In the name of God please keep quiet! And you,” she said, now turning back to the priest once again, “as I said, I will not say ‘obey' and you will not tell me what I must or mustn't do, do you hear me?”

The young priest didn't know what to do.

“I will say ‘love and cherish,' just like my husband said,” continued Lupe, “but I will not say another word.”

“Well, yes,” said the priest, trying to accommodate, “but I don't know if this is acceptable, unless Salvador is in agreement to this.”

“Oh,” said Lupe, “then you are telling me that I need a man's approval for what I can say or not say!”

She was really angry now. Everyone in the room could see it.

“No,” said the priest, “I didn't mean that.” He was beginning to sweat. Never had he had a simple marriage ceremony turn into a situation like this. And these two people had looked so old and nice and decent before they'd started the ceremony. “Look, what I'm trying to say,” he now said, pulling at his collar, coughing, and clearing his throat, “is that, well, in any agreement between two people—men or women—they both need to be in agreement if a change in normal procedure is going to be made.”

“Oh,” said Lupe, calming right down, “this I can understand.” She turned to Salvador. “Okay,” she said, “so do you agree with me, Salvador, that I don't have to say ‘obey' if you didn't have to say it?”

All this time, Salvador had only been grinning, but now he laughed. “Look,” he said, turning to the priest, “I know you've never been married, Father, so you don't really understand what's going on. But believe me, to tell any woman, who's alive and breathing, that she must obey is so ridiculous that only men who've never married in one hundred generations would have ever come up with such an ignorant idea! Of course, she doesn't have to obey me! She never has in fifty years, so why in the hell would I be stupid enough to think that it was going to be any different now?”

“All right,” said the priest, taking out a white handkerchief to wipe his forehead. “Then Maria Guadalupe, will you love and cherish for the rest of your lives?”

“Why, sure,” she said, “of course.” And her eyes danced with merriment. Oh, she'd truly come a long ways in the last fifty years.

“Say, ‘I do,'” whispered the priest, but very cautiously this time.

“I do,” said Lupe.

Salvador now slipped the wedding band on Lupe's finger, and then licking his lips, he suddenly grabbed his bride and gave her a big, wet kiss. At first Lupe resisted, trying to push him away, but when he wouldn't be pushed away, she began kissing him, too.

Cameras flashed, and everyone applauded! Champagne bottles exploded open, and people were laughing and yelling.

THE FATHER SUN
, the blanket of the poor, was going down. The whole tribe of the Villaseñors went outside to have their picture taken.

Carlota, “
Tia Tota,
” as all the children called her, moved quickly with her cane in hand and took the main chair in the middle of the picture, sitting to Salvador's right and forcing her sister Lupe to sit on Salvador's left. And so this was how Salvador and Lupe's golden anniversary picture was taken, with
Tia Tota
sitting proudly in the center with her five-foot-two frame looking so large and tall and imposing as she faced straight into the camera.

Tia Tota
really thought that she was the queen of the whole show, with her large, blond wig, white-powdered face, and a huge white flower pinned above her heart area, wanting so desperately to hide her dark Indian blood and look All-American White.

Salvador was looking off into the distance toward his right, holding his black, thick-rim glasses on his lap with both of his hands. Lupe had one grandchild and one great-grandchild on her lap. She was completely oblivious to their picture being taken—she was so happy playing with these newest additions
la familia.

And standing behind Salvador and Lupe were their four children, Ten-cha, Victor, Linda, and Teresita, and their families.

It was a telling picture.

THE FATHER SUN WAS NOW GONE,
and the Mother Moon was coming up, and the Child Earth was cooling. Everyone was done eating, and they were now talking and drinking and visiting.

The women were gathered in the living room next to the grand piano. The men were in the long formal dining room, right off the living room where Salvador was in the process of lighting up a big, fat cigar, a ritual that he did very slowly with long, wooden matches.

Gorjenna, Salvador and Lupe's second oldest granddaughter, was loud and tipsy. Ever since she was a child, Gorjenna had loved horses and riding. She'd never gone in for dresses and stuffed dolls like her sister RoseAna, who was two years older than she.