Mamá Asunción

Mama taught me to speak with the spirits that appear to the people in our family. They were real and sentient. Once a week she took me to my Aunt Nina’s for a spiritual cleansing. Fransico and Asunción were the two spirits that used Nina to speak. They were my godparents and they were kind creatures and I enjoyed their presence in her body. I was blessed once a week by their old energies. As Nina prepared to open her body and mind to the spirit world by dimming lights, lighting candles and scattering petals, I would prepare in the bathroom: sometimes I would take off my clothes and be naked for the ritual. Other times I would put on special symbolically colored fabrics or stone ornaments. My favorite was the Florida water that I got to rub all over my hair. It’s hard to remember more details because worship in this religion was like dreaming.

I was to wait in the bathroom until mama called me out and then I’d go to Asunción in my aunt’s living room. The lights were dim. The heavy, tan shades were drawn. I was anointed with scented oils. My body—an offering of color and scent.

Asunción would administer my physical, spiritual and mental health. She’d been an African Queen and then an African Goddess and she was my godmother and spirit healer—kind, gentle hands that would cup my face and a penetrating voice that told me my future and revealed to me the intricacies of my life path. I was always supposed to come ready to ask a question. Mine usually had to do with school, with wanting to do better in school or with wondering how I would do in school. Asunción was joy. I felt loved and cared for and as if all of nature—its trees and plants, every leaf, and all the animals around—and the air and the candles and the scents in Nina’s living room all loved me because Asunción loved me. I was nurtured by gods in the cradle of the universe until one day Jesus spoke to mama and said to her enough. That’s what she says, she says he came into her head and said in a voice clear as day no more, enough.

So she stopped speaking to Francisco and Asunción and we saw a lot less of my aunt as well. That’s when all of our idols at home disappeared. The sculpture of Asunción, the coral beads, the cat’s eyes. In the name of Jesus, mama broke them and burned them in the backyard with the same fire we used to burn our trash mama’s hair would blow witch-like before the crackling flames. I wasn’t even supposed to say my godmother’s name from then on because it would draw spirits to me. I was supposed to pray only to Jesus.

That’s also when we started to go to Methodist church. The first things I learned at Methodist church were what not to do, what was wrong and evil and looked down upon by god. Something inside me was evil—that was the lesson, it’s always the lesson—and always would be evil and all I could do to lessen its effect was cry and pray. I felt horribly alone, carrying this heavy malignant stone inside my chest never able to fully rid myself of it.

There were no flowers in Methodist church. A few candles, and a wash of sunlight through the windows. But no incense. No oils. Empty. Except for wooden seats, bibles made of thinnest paper, strangers who never touched one another with love, and an angry cross pressing its weight onto our souls.