My attention is snapped back to María, who is talking about her church book club. It is a small group, she says, five of us from our countries in Centroamérica, a señora from Peru. It was my suggestion we read Death Comes for the Bishop, she says. Our three guatemaltecas wanted to read your book to learn more about the murder of monseñor, our martyr for justice. Then Padre Blackett asked us what we think about a Jewish man writing this book about a Catholic bishop. Frankie, I was so surprised I had to speak. I said, But Padre, in the book Frankie wrote that he is Catholic, too, and was baptized in the same church where Monseñor was murdered. Father Blackett didn’t know this. Frankie, he hadn’t even read your book. And, imagine, he was leading the book club discussion and saying those things.
Well, even if I was only Jewish, María, I say as kindly as I can, that wouldn’t disqualify me from writing a book like that. Though María’s wrong. In the book I didn’t write that I’m “Catholic too,” only about having been baptized in that same church. Half-Catholic, does anyone ever call themselves that, does it even make any sense? I am half-Catholic. I half believe in Jesus Christ, our half savior. Thus this stigmata in only one hand.
Sometimes people are just surprised or jarred by a name like Goldberg in a Latin American context, I tell María.
You know, Frankie, María responds, when I came here, I didn’t know that Goldberg and Markowitz are Jewish names. I thought they are just names that are not like ours, American names like Smith and Brady. In our towns and villages, we never meet Jewish people, you know, and many people have ignorant ideas. So I was disappointed in Father Blackett.
Blackett. He’s Irish? I ask.
Yes, she says. But he is from Boston. But in our church we have priests who are latinoamericano too, like Padre Rolando.
He’s probably just very old-school Boston then, I say. Is he old?
I think around forty, she says.
Well, like I said, it happens all the time, people reacting like that, I tell María. But especially Americans, for some reason. One time in Mexico, after a book presentation, I was standing around talking to a couple of Mexican writers, Federico Campbell and my friend Martín when a gringa, a college student, I think, came and joined our conversation, a pretty girl in a T-shirt and skirt, long skinny legs stuck into a pair of clunky Doc Martens. She’d come to Mexico to take some literature courses, and she knew Martín. Everyone turned toward her, and Martín introduced us. This is Federico Campbell. Oh, mucho gusto, how do you do? And this is Francisco Goldberg. Goldberg!? this gringa squawked right into my face. That isn’t a Mexican name! Like she was accusing me of … accusing me of what, right? Why didn’t she react to Federico Campbell like that? Did she think Campbell is a Mexican name? Federico’s a lot whiter than me, by the way. He looks like Santa Claus without the beard. Oh well, so what. Like I said, I got wise to that sort of thing a long time ago. I try not to let it bother me.
María looks a little disconcerted, she probably hadn’t intended for her remark to set me off like that. Not that I’m even done thinking about it. So why wasn’t that girl’s idea of Mexicanness similarly offended or at least surprised by Federico’s surname? Because to someone like her, Campbell is a white-sounding name and white is the template. White can pass through walls. A Mexican with the surname Campbell won’t be suspected, in what seems a practically instinctual way, of trying to pull something off, of a dishonest or opportunistic appropriation. What could he possibly have to gain? But if my surname had been Olajuwon or even Mohammed, that girl would still have been taken aback, though not in that particular way. Maybe she would have thought Martín was making fun of her gringa gullibility. Oh yeah, Francisco Mohammed, sure, tell me another one. Father Blackett, on the other hand, was calling out what he saw as possibly an unscrupulous infringement. Good for María, standing up to him, almost like Mamita so long ago with Father Doyle.
María suddenly asks, What is Alexandra doing now, Frankie? Is she married? I tell her that Lexi is not married—no reason to mention the policeman—and that she’s living in New Bedford in a big Victorian house that she bought there.
Suddenly María looks alarmed, and she whispers, as if to herself: I almost forgot, and she gets up and walks back behind her counter again. I see Rebeca saying something to her, and María nods, sinks out of view, a moment later straightens up, and now she’s walking toward me with a big smile. When she reaches me, she holds out her hand, and in her palm there’s an arrowhead. It’s that arrowhead, isn’t it? Alright, what is this? What the hell is María doing with it? She puts the arrowhead in my hand. White quartz, flinted, lethally sharp. Of course it would seem a little smaller to me now than when I last held it, relinquishing it as I fell to the ground with my enraged father standing over me, lashing at my thighs with his belt. Well, Bert, it’s hard to hold that one against you, anyway.
A smile flickers at the corner of María’s lips. I say, That’s Lexi’s arrowhead, right? María nods, says, You recognize it. But now she has a slight look of worry, as if she’d expected me to whoop in overjoyed surprise, and she explains that Lexi had asked her to keep it safe, and so she’d put it into her bag where she kept spare buttons and other chunches, and that when she left our house, so distracted and worried, knowing she was already pregnant with Harry, she’d forgotten to
