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Losing My Soul

 

The final part of the priesthood ceremony took place a week later in Aunt Maria’s basement. We weren’t allowed to eat from noon onward that day, and the ceremony started at 6 p.m. Excitement pulsed in my veins. By midnight that evening I would belong to Satan, and I would bear the marks on my body to prove it. As I approached the house on foot, I could feel the rhythm of the conga drums vibrating on the night air. The sound of chanting inside told me that those who came to watch the ceremony—seasoned priests of the religion—were beckoning the spirits, setting the spiritual atmosphere for what would take place that night.

The morning after the ceremony, I stepped quietly into the bathroom, leaned into the mirror, and looked at my reflection. My dark eyes glowed with an inner fire that spoke of the contract I had made the night before. The cross-shaped cut on my forehead still oozed, raw and bloody, and the various other cuts on my body stung the way untreated wounds always do—especially after a night of sleeping on a cold concrete floor. I changed into a clean set of clothes, all white, and put on a baseball cap to cover the wound on my forehead. Not wanting to wake the other initiates, who were still asleep on the basement floor, I slipped out the door as silent as a mouse and headed for the nearest diner.


The diner bustled with early-morning business, and as I stood in line at the counter I thought back to everything that had happened the night before.

“Next . . . can I help you?” the counter clerk said.

I turned my eyes toward the woman and she recoiled. Instantly I knew she could sense the evil


in me.

 

 

voice.


 

“I’ll have a chocolate donut and a hot chocolate,” I said, my eyes boring into hers.

The woman’s hand trembled as she rang up my order. “Are you all right?” she asked in a timid

 

I lifted up my hat and showed her the cross carved into my flesh. “I just sold my soul to the


devil last night.”

She went pale. “Oh, my God!”

“Anything else you want to know? Just give me my donut!” I threw my money on the counter and waited for the order to come up. As I waited, I felt a presence of something else in the diner, something I couldn’t put my finger on. I turned to look down the length of booths that lined the wall of the diner. Nothing but customers—regular people out for breakfast and their daily caffeine fix. Years later I learned that a woman sitting at a back booth with a friend saw me dressed all in white and knew that I was a Palero Tata . Unbeknownst to me, she lifted her hands in prayer that day, and her prayers were for me.

 


Date: 2015-01-11; view: 981


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