“Evangelized,” Michael said finally. “I see. She doesn’t want to be evangelized. Tell her it is my personal opinion that the entire world is an act of evangelization.”
Hernandito looked skeptical. “You want to argue theology with this one? I know this one. She’s crazy. On the day of the flood, she kept saying she was going to go to the roof instead of being evacuated. To protect her property.”
“Her property? I thought she was a Communist.”
“With Señora Gretz, all she means by Communist is that she hates the Pope.”
Senora Gretz was getting restless in her chair. Now she pounded on the arm of it and let loose with another stream of Spanish.
“She says that on the day of the flood she was brought not to the parish on the hill—she means Iggy Loy, Father—not there but to the house of the nuns,” Hernandito said. “She says she was put in a large room where the nuns play games. I think she means the gymnasium. She says that while she was there she was having much trouble with her arthritis.”
“Where does she have arthritis?” Michael asked.
Hernandito asked and the old woman flexed her hands—but her hands weren’t gnarled or stiff. They showed no signs of arthritis at all. Michael pointed this out.
“I told you she was crazy,” Hernandito said.
“Ask her again,” Michael told him. “Maybe she misunderstood you. Ask her where she has her arthritis. For Heaven’s sake, Hernandito, maybe we can get her in to the clinic and give her a little relief.”
Hernandito hesitated, turned back to the woman, and asked the question again. Then he turned back to Michael. Michael wouldn’t have thought that so simple a question would have taken so long to answer, but Señora Gretz had responded with one of her monologues. He was stuck with it.
At least, he thought he was going to be stuck with it. Hernandito was opening his mouth to speak, taking in a big reservoir of air. Michael was resigning himself to another secondhand lecture on the virtues of anti-Papism. Suddenly, Hernandito looked at the ceiling, looked at the floor, wiped his mouth against the back of his hand and coughed.
“Father Michael,” he said, “this is very strange.”
“So tell me.”
“Father Michael,” he said, “she says that while she was there she went walking around, because she will not let the Sisters tell her where she must go or not go, and she went into what she says is a church. It much have been the chapel. And when she went in there she saw near the front a nun—”
“Well, of course she saw a nun,” Michael said in exasperation. The telephone on his desk rang and he picked it up automatically. He was still concentrating on what Hernandito was saying. Nine times out of ten, even on weekends, a ringing phone meant nothing in particular. People in the neighborhood wanted to know what times he was hearing confessions on Saturday, what times he would be available to give instructions to godparents on Thursday, when the church would be free for weddings in June. This time, though, he not only had an emergency, he had just the emergency he wanted.
“This is Sister Marietta,” the phone said in his ear, “there’s a woman down here named Señora Diaz who’s in the middle of delivering what I think is a seventh-month infant. I think you’d better—”
“Call the ambulance,” Michael said. “I’ll be there right away. Are you a midwife?”
“Sister Gabriel is a midwife. I’m just an ordinary nurse. Will you hurry?”
“Yes.” Michael hung up the phone and started to get his things together to go out again. He was going to miss saying Mass again at twelve o’clock, but he knew Señora Diaz. If he didn’t at least go to the hospital with her she would transcend hysteria and enter the realm of the psychotic break.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he told Hernandito. “Hold the fort while I’m gone. Tell—what’s she doing now?”
Michael didn’t know if he’d forgotten about the woman in his office because he didn’t consider her important or because he didn’t want to have to deal with her. In a way, it didn’t matter. He had forgotten her, as soon as he had the chance. Now, turning toward the door and in a hurry to get out, she was blocking his path. If she had been simply sitting in her seat, the way she had been when he’d picked up the phone, he might have gone right past her, blindly. Instead, she was standing up, waving her hands in the air.
“What’s she trying to get at?” Michael demanded.
Hernandito sighed. “She says the nun she saw was no ordinary nun,” he said. “She says this nun was in a long dress with white around her face like in the old days, and you couldn’t see her hair. And this nun came up and touched her.”