The Vigil
By George L. Mills
At dusk I arrived at the small house on the outskirts of town. Flora opened the door. “Buenas noches, Jorge. Am I glad to see you! I’m exhausted!”
In the flickering candlelight I saw the dead infant dressed in a white gown and resting on an alter-like affair in the entryway of the small adobe house. The bloated body lay between two candles on a table covered with a white drape.
“All you have to do is keep the vigil through the night so the mother and her fourteen year old daughter can get some rest. They’re sleeping inside. The only thing I’m worried about is that the body might explode if it isn’t buried soon. Phil will come by to relieve you in the morning. Adios.”
I sat on the tiny Mexican chair across the entryway from the body. I tried to calm myself as I quietly swatted flies. At first I prayed for the infant and her family. Then my thoughts drifted to my arrival earlier that day.
“Hola, Jorge. How was your flight to Mexico City?”
“Bueno. I flew Western Airlines.” Anxieties from traveling alone in Mexico melted away as my fellow volunteers from Amigos Anonymous welcomed me to Tarimoro, a town in a farming valley on a plateau three hours north of Mexico City by bus.
I had arrived at the project a few days late because of final exams at the University of San Francisco and a visit from my sister Ellen and her family from Michigan After spending a few hours with them I left for my adventure in community development. As I waved goodbye to my mother and family, I felt like a knight on a noble quest. Dressed in new working clothes and boots, I tossed my Navy duffel bag into the trunk of Dad’s Ford and drove to the airport.
Jolted back to reality when a rat crawled under the front door, I watched it scuttle along the opposite wall, skimming the bottom of the white drape and disappearing out the back doorway into the field. My senses heightened. Now I heard the hum of flies in the warm June air and the stirrings of life in the field out back.
I stood up and peeked through the doorway next to me. The mother and daughter were lying across the double bed in the only room in the house, their thin bodies covered with worn dresses and rebozos. I sat down again and reflected on the day’s events.
“This is where you can sleep,” said Phil the project’s male leader and a soft-spoken pre-med student from Santa Clara University. I dumped my gear onto one of the cots jammed into the small house. The project’s seven men shared the house while the eleven women were assigned to live with families by our host, a thoughtful, conservative priest.
“Andale, Jorge! We’re meeting Señor Cura at the church in fifteen minutes, “ shouted Elmo, a seminarian and former classmate at St. Patrick’s Seminary.
The whole crew crowded into a small office at the church. Señor Cura, our benefactor, entered the room, a stout man in his early fifties with a gray, scruffy beard, close cropped hair, and a well-worn cassock. He welcomed us to his town in slow, deliberate Spanish. Like a child I strained to understand his words. My Spanish was muy pobre. I watched Phil and Flora for clues to the importance of what was said.
After the meeting we returned to the Amigos’ house to make plans. Flora said an infant had died in the barrio and suggested we help the family. “I can stay with the family until dark, and George can relieve me for the night watch.” I got a kick out of Flora’s use of military terms. My older brother Jim had spent two previous summers with Flora in Tarimoro, and had told me she served in the Navy during World War II. Her knowledge of my time in the Navy and the seminary must have led her to believe I was ready for this night vigil.
Around midnight I began asking myself questions. “How could this infant have died? Where was her father? Why weren’t friends and neighbors here to help? How could this vigil fall to an unknown gringo? What had Flora gotten me into? Would the body explode?”
I disassociated myself from thoughts of the infant and examined the adobe walls and tiled roof of the entryway. Impatiently I watched for the sunrise through the back door. First light meant a new beginning and I wanted this night to end. Just the night before last I had flown into Mexico City. Now I was in another century sitting with a dead infant.
After Phil relieved me, I learned a foal had been born that morning in the field behind the death house. I went to Mass and returned to the Amigos’ house. At breakfast I heard the mother couldn’t afford a box for the body and hadn’t been able to obtain a burial permit because no one was in el Municipio on Saturday mornings. In addition, the mother knew the graves for poor children were often only three feet deep and reused. She wanted the grave four feet deep so her baby’s body would be undisturbed.
Flora rushed off to obtain permission from Señor Cura to bury the infant. Bill Conlin went to buy a box, and I went with another Amigo to dig the grave.
In a slight rain two of us dug through wet clay and decayed bones to deepen the grave. With disgust I crunched through another child’s remains to give the mother some peace of mind. As I dug down the additional foot, my new boots caked with clay. I can’t remember who helped me with the digging. Have I blocked out elements of that horrible scene or was it simply that I hadn’t come to know that project member yet?
We returned to the mother’s home around 11:00 a.m. and found the burial permit was signed. Flora, Phil, a few Amigos and I accompanied the mother and her old daughter to the cemetery. We carried the infant in the wooden box we had bought. After saying a few prayers, we discovered no one had brought a hammer to nail the lid. I used a rock to nail the box shut. Then I helped lay the box into the grave. After the family left, I helped shovel in the dirt. My mind was on hold. I had never been so close to a dead body or a burial.
By noon I was at the Amigos’ house settling in and discussing what projects we could tackle for the summer. My sophisticated ability to compartmentalize life allowed me to move on to the next task and not mourn or dwell on the circumstances of the infant’s death and burial. I would not allow the grotesque reality of the burial to occupy my mind. Like the time one of our pilots crashed into the South China Sea, my mind focused on the tasks at hand. I had carried out my duties dry-eyed while my Junior Officer of the Deck had tears streaming down his face.
The vigil had left me in shock, and I didn’t seek any further contact with that family. I visited people all over town, but didn’t go back to the cemetery or even that street in the barrio.
During our last week in town Flora passed on to me a small blue and white ashtray that the woman had sent as a gift for my efforts. Though I don’t smoke, that ashtray sits on my desk as a remembrance.
Flora told me the woman’s husband had taken out loans to provide for his family and pay his way to California to find work. After the money ran out and she hadn’t heard from her husband, apparently the woman had turned to prostitution. Neighbors shunned the family. The infant died of malnutrition. We amigos filled a need neither the townspeople nor their priest would meet.
Those first twenty-four hours brought met to an elemental awareness of life in Tarimoro. Throughout the summer I was to learn that it was I, the community developer, who was being developed.
By George L. Mills
At dusk I arrived at the small house on the outskirts of town. Flora opened the door. “Buenas noches, Jorge. Am I glad to see you! I’m exhausted!”
In the flickering candlelight I saw the dead infant dressed in a white gown and resting on an alter-like affair in the entryway of the small adobe house. The bloated body lay between two candles on a table covered with a white drape.
“All you have to do is keep the vigil through the night so the mother and her fourteen year old daughter can get some rest. They’re sleeping inside. The only thing I’m worried about is that the body might explode if it isn’t buried soon. Phil will come by to relieve you in the morning. Adios.”
I sat on the tiny Mexican chair across the entryway from the body. I tried to calm myself as I quietly swatted flies. At first I prayed for the infant and her family. Then my thoughts drifted to my arrival earlier that day.
“Hola, Jorge. How was your flight to Mexico City?”
“Bueno. I flew Western Airlines.” Anxieties from traveling alone in Mexico melted away as my fellow volunteers from Amigos Anonymous welcomed me to Tarimoro, a town in a farming valley on a plateau three hours north of Mexico City by bus.
I had arrived at the project a few days late because of final exams at the University of San Francisco and a visit from my sister Ellen and her family from Michigan After spending a few hours with them I left for my adventure in community development. As I waved goodbye to my mother and family, I felt like a knight on a noble quest. Dressed in new working clothes and boots, I tossed my Navy duffel bag into the trunk of Dad’s Ford and drove to the airport.
Jolted back to reality when a rat crawled under the front door, I watched it scuttle along the opposite wall, skimming the bottom of the white drape and disappearing out the back doorway into the field. My senses heightened. Now I heard the hum of flies in the warm June air and the stirrings of life in the field out back.
I stood up and peeked through the doorway next to me. The mother and daughter were lying across the double bed in the only room in the house, their thin bodies covered with worn dresses and rebozos. I sat down again and reflected on the day’s events.
“This is where you can sleep,” said Phil the project’s male leader and a soft-spoken pre-med student from Santa Clara University. I dumped my gear onto one of the cots jammed into the small house. The project’s seven men shared the house while the eleven women were assigned to live with families by our host, a thoughtful, conservative priest.
“Andale, Jorge! We’re meeting Señor Cura at the church in fifteen minutes, “ shouted Elmo, a seminarian and former classmate at St. Patrick’s Seminary.
The whole crew crowded into a small office at the church. Señor Cura, our benefactor, entered the room, a stout man in his early fifties with a gray, scruffy beard, close cropped hair, and a well-worn cassock. He welcomed us to his town in slow, deliberate Spanish. Like a child I strained to understand his words. My Spanish was muy pobre. I watched Phil and Flora for clues to the importance of what was said.
After the meeting we returned to the Amigos’ house to make plans. Flora said an infant had died in the barrio and suggested we help the family. “I can stay with the family until dark, and George can relieve me for the night watch.” I got a kick out of Flora’s use of military terms. My older brother Jim had spent two previous summers with Flora in Tarimoro, and had told me she served in the Navy during World War II. Her knowledge of my time in the Navy and the seminary must have led her to believe I was ready for this night vigil.
Around midnight I began asking myself questions. “How could this infant have died? Where was her father? Why weren’t friends and neighbors here to help? How could this vigil fall to an unknown gringo? What had Flora gotten me into? Would the body explode?”
I disassociated myself from thoughts of the infant and examined the adobe walls and tiled roof of the entryway. Impatiently I watched for the sunrise through the back door. First light meant a new beginning and I wanted this night to end. Just the night before last I had flown into Mexico City. Now I was in another century sitting with a dead infant.
After Phil relieved me, I learned a foal had been born that morning in the field behind the death house. I went to Mass and returned to the Amigos’ house. At breakfast I heard the mother couldn’t afford a box for the body and hadn’t been able to obtain a burial permit because no one was in el Municipio on Saturday mornings. In addition, the mother knew the graves for poor children were often only three feet deep and reused. She wanted the grave four feet deep so her baby’s body would be undisturbed.
Flora rushed off to obtain permission from Señor Cura to bury the infant. Bill Conlin went to buy a box, and I went with another Amigo to dig the grave.
In a slight rain two of us dug through wet clay and decayed bones to deepen the grave. With disgust I crunched through another child’s remains to give the mother some peace of mind. As I dug down the additional foot, my new boots caked with clay. I can’t remember who helped me with the digging. Have I blocked out elements of that horrible scene or was it simply that I hadn’t come to know that project member yet?
We returned to the mother’s home around 11:00 a.m. and found the burial permit was signed. Flora, Phil, a few Amigos and I accompanied the mother and her old daughter to the cemetery. We carried the infant in the wooden box we had bought. After saying a few prayers, we discovered no one had brought a hammer to nail the lid. I used a rock to nail the box shut. Then I helped lay the box into the grave. After the family left, I helped shovel in the dirt. My mind was on hold. I had never been so close to a dead body or a burial.
By noon I was at the Amigos’ house settling in and discussing what projects we could tackle for the summer. My sophisticated ability to compartmentalize life allowed me to move on to the next task and not mourn or dwell on the circumstances of the infant’s death and burial. I would not allow the grotesque reality of the burial to occupy my mind. Like the time one of our pilots crashed into the South China Sea, my mind focused on the tasks at hand. I had carried out my duties dry-eyed while my Junior Officer of the Deck had tears streaming down his face.
The vigil had left me in shock, and I didn’t seek any further contact with that family. I visited people all over town, but didn’t go back to the cemetery or even that street in the barrio.
During our last week in town Flora passed on to me a small blue and white ashtray that the woman had sent as a gift for my efforts. Though I don’t smoke, that ashtray sits on my desk as a remembrance.
Flora told me the woman’s husband had taken out loans to provide for his family and pay his way to California to find work. After the money ran out and she hadn’t heard from her husband, apparently the woman had turned to prostitution. Neighbors shunned the family. The infant died of malnutrition. We amigos filled a need neither the townspeople nor their priest would meet.
Those first twenty-four hours brought met to an elemental awareness of life in Tarimoro. Throughout the summer I was to learn that it was I, the community developer, who was being developed.