Story – Silence of Angels

The Silence of Angels

1982 –Zuleika walked towards her mother’s bedroom following the singsong voices of the women on the television. Her mother, Tati whom everyone called Tati was sitting on her bed, hunched and intent on the drama unfolding on the small set. Zuleika walked towards her mother, kissed her sweaty forehead and asked for common blessings, “Bendicion, Mami,” Zuleika said and excused her lateness without a warning or a call.

            “Dios te bendiga,” her mother responded with a voice that forgave her for everything and she continued to watch the tele-novela, the Spanish soap opera on Channel 47.   

            Zuleika glanced at the tele, staring at the dirty blonde woman in the novela, with her pretty light eyes and her Caucasian features; her heart shaped face and her thin little chin. Beautiful.   The woman spoke in a soft, musical Spanish as her small succulent lips quivered in distress.   She seemed to be on the verge, yes, on the verge of some pivotal decision that would either salvage or doom her life.  

Zuleika watched in amazement as her mother began a heated discussion with the pretty woman. Tati’s hand swayed like a conductors, and she mumbled curses, imploring the woman to take the right path, “No, por favor, no, lo hagas,” her mother begged the woman in the tele, to please not do whatever it was that she was planning to do. “Deja ese malvado,” she continued. Her mother grew somewhat somber as she pointed at the screen with her index fingers. She told the actress the truth, her truth that happiness did not depend on a man, at least not this “sin verguenza”, this man without shame, or integrity, this man sin corazon. It was better to be alone than to make the wrong choice, Tati felt. Better to pass lonely nights then to loose dignity, self-respect, and amor propio.

            “Hay, Mami, por Dios” Zuleika said, laughing at her mother’ seriousness. “These are just actors playing a part, just actors,” she added.   Tati stared at her and responded by using a commercial break to enlighten Zuleika as to the events in the novela, and why her counsel to the actress was best and then she returned back to the tele-novela.  

            Zuleika laughed.  She was like a guardian angel, her mother; really she was.   These thoughts reminded her of kitchen dialogues between them from years ago, when her mother seriously claimed it was harder to be an angel than it was to be a human being.   Angels, she would say, had to watch over you while you messed up your life, unable, and unwilling to stop you.   Her mother spoke with such conviction it almost seemed as if she owned a manual of heavenly rules and angelic regulations.   She knew the ethics and protocols, the do’s and don’ts of angels. She would elaborate on them at great length certain she would impress her educated daughter with her celestial scholarship.   Directly interfering with human life was against heavenly rules, her mother would say.   It was unfortunate, but the angel couldn’t say, “Stop! he is bad for you” or  “don’t take that job, take the other one”.   

            Zuleika once asked her mother “Then what’s the use of having a guardian angel if the angel can’t intercede on your behalf? and her mother said “You must listen to the silenceof angels,” as if she knew the structure of their silence, the intricate details of their way of being in existence in the human world.   If you listened to their silence, you will hear their messages, her mother explained, but you had to be open.

            Her mother occasionally reminded her that angels also sent messages in dreams, in the synchronicities, the coincidences of life, or in those unexpected stories you hear from someone as they pass you by.   You could even smell angels, her mother said, they had the dusty scent of withered roses like the ones Zuleika once found pressed in one of her grandmother’s bible back in Santo Domingo.   And, their wings, she said, exuded the smoky scent of church incense. Listen.  Look.  Be open her mother said.   “With angels everything is indirectas, “she added.