“Sonia!”
Everyone stopped to look at him. A hundred eyes all staring. All eyes but two. Those remained transfixed on the altar.
“Sonia! Where is he? Where is Eli?”
The kneeling woman did not answer, did not turn. A shadow from the door spread across the room, and Noah saw Manillo standing there, filling the frame. The priest slowly wiped his hands on the cloth hanging from his belt. The church shrank to half its size. Muñoz stepped back, but Noah did not. He would not back down until he found Eli. He had come too far, travelled too long.
“Sonia! Where?”
The crowd became agitated as Noah’s anger intensified. Manillo took a few steps forward, and Noah glared at him in warning. Manillo paused, but the smirk on his face was disconcerting. The shirtless old man looked more than capable of snapping Noah in two. Nevertheless, Noah carried on undeterred, his voice increasing in volume with every step he took toward his ex-wife.
“Sonia!”
She stood slowly as he stalked toward her, and her expression looked both irritated and bored.
“Hello, Noah.”
He was momentarily startled. Her eyes—her eyes were bloodshot and circled with red, as though she’d been crying, but it was clear she hadn’t. It had only been a few years, but the changes were immense. She’d been beaten by the sun until her face creased, and by something else that had bruised her across the side of her body.
“What are they doing to you here? Are they keeping you here? Are they keeping Eli here?”
“Of course not. Nobody’s being ‘kept’ anywhere. I need you to calm down. I have to talk to you.”
“Calm down? Calm down? You kidnap my son from me, take him to another country where you hide in case I come looking, and when after three years I find you, all you can tell me to do is ‘calm down’? I ought to—” Flustered, the anger welled up inside of him, like a geyser of flame waiting to erupt. His muscles twitched; he was desperate to throttle her, but before he could act Manillo was there, chest glistening with sweat, jaw set with concrete. He stared into Noah’s eyes until the younger man grudgingly backed down.
Noah sighed.
“I just want to know where Eli is, Sonia. I just want to take him home. He has no place here.”
Sonia sat in an empty pew, pushing aside a crude elephant-shaped piñata, and looked down at her plastered and wrinkled hands. Noah felt a twinge of confusion, then he saw the flicker of a smile. It re-ignited his rage, but Manillo would not tolerate it.
“If you cannot control your emotions, Noah,” he said, “I will have to control them. You are a guest under this roof. Act that way.”
Noah did not care.
“I want Eli. I want to know where he is right now.”
“He’s fine. He’s safe. Ask his teacher.”
Noah looked at Muñoz, but the man would not lift his head to meet the gaze. He seemed smaller than before.
“You see, Noah,” Manillo said, resting a burning hand on the back of Noah’s neck that couldn’t be shaken, “Eli’s fine. You can calm down.”
“Yes, calm down, Noah,” Sonia said, a hint of mockery so slight Noah suspected only he could notice. “There’s nothing wrong with Eli. He likes it down here.”
“I don’t care if he likes it or not. He shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t have taken him. He doesn’t belong to you.”
“He’s a boy, Noah; not a car. He doesn’t belong to anyone.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Do I?” She glanced at Muñoz. “Haven’t you even wondered why, Noah?”
“Why what? You took my son? No, I just want him back.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Make me understand.”
She looked at Manillo, who only nodded in response. Then the priest put his sweating hand on Noah’s shoulder and glared at him. The message was clear.
“Muñoz,” he barked at the shrinking teacher. “Venga conmigo.“
The two men retreated, leaving Noah and his ex-wife alone. The rest of the spectators resumed their crafts.
Sonia’s head was in her hands, the greasy wisps of hair falling over her unwashed arms. She did not seem capable of being awake, let alone taking care of their son.
“After we—after the divorce, I can’t explain to you how lost I felt. I was doing what I could to keep up appearances, but inside I was broken. I think if I’m being fair, I was always broken; you just had the bad luck to come across me when I was hiding it better. There’s always been something missing, some piece of me left empty, unfilled. I’ve always felt hollow, but I’d been that way for so long I thought that was how everybody felt. Do you feel that way, Noah? Do you feel hollow?”
“I can’t say I do.”
She looked up at him, her sunken eyes bloodshot and pleading. He’d never seen her like that before; it unnerved him. “Seriously. Think about it. Don’t you feel like something is missing?”
“I do, Sonia. I’ve felt it ever since you took Eli from me.”
She looked down again with what he hoped was a grimace, but might have been something worse.
“I had to take him. You won’t understand.”
“Probably not.”
She stood and paced, rubbing her hands along the legs of her jeans. She moved back and forth between pews, fidgeting with one of the large papier-mâché creatures that were perched on them. She tenderly ran her fingers across the coloured tissue paper.
“I needed something to fill the hole, Noah, and I found it, of all places, in the Coniston Public Library. Or at least in the newspapers there. It was a tiny article, no bigger than a column, and it laid out the plight of the Tletliztlii and their worship of Ometéotlitztl. Something about it spoke to me. Maybe because of the way they described the country, vast but lonesome, or maybe I just felt the need to fill the hole with experience. Anything to recharge my battery. By that point, there was nothing left for me anywhere.”
“And some cult saying God was born from the other Mexican gods was the best place for you?”
“It’s not a cult, Noah. And who told you about the child?”
“Your friend Father Manillo did. If he’s even a priest.”
“Oh, he is. But he didn’t tell you the whole story.
“Even if I understood why you’d want to join a cult—”
“I told you: it’s not a cult.”
“Even if I understood why,” he continued, “I don’t understand why you’d want to steal Eli from me, too. Why did you have to take him? What good could have come from that, other than to hurt me?”
She put her hand on his, and though his skin instinctively curled away from her touch, he did not move.
“Noah,” she said. “I didn’t want to hurt you. Honestly, you didn’t cross my mind at all.”
Noah felt the baking heat multiplied tenfold across his skin, igniting the fire in his brain. He thought he might burst into flame. Manillo’s warnings echoed in his clouded mind, the only thing keeping him from unleashing his fury. That, and the number of Tletliztlii around him and Sonia.
“There was something about the Tletliztlii that spoke to me as soon as I read about it. People from all walks of life came on a pilgrimage, all needing to fill the hole in their lives. Ometéotlitztl offered something nothing else did. Ometéot-litztl offered fire. But when I got here I realised it was much more than that. So much more. I don’t know if I can explain it. I don’t know how to make you understand what my sisters and brothers and I understand. I came down to Mexico an empty shell and found myself transformed by what filled me. I’m so much more than I once was. I like this feeling, Noah. I want to keep hold of it.”