The Replacement Child - By Christine Barber Page 0,14

The once brightly colored santos and retables behind the altar were faded. The crucifix, grisly with painted blood dripping from Jesus’ head and hands, was chipped and worn. Everything was shabby, ancient, and smelled of prayers and hopes and candle wax.

Someone behind her was praying the rosary in Spanish. She couldn’t understand the words; the quiet mantra was a murmur. A family came down the aisle, five in all, with the youngest, who looked about twelve, supporting the grandmother. They all genuflected in front of the altar before slipping into the back room, where the dirt was.

The santuario was famous for its healing dirt. During Holy Week, thousands of Catholics from Northern New Mexico made a pilgrimage to the church. Last year, the newspaper had interviewed an eighty-four-year-old man who had walked the thirty miles from Santa Fe carrying a twenty-pound cross over his shoulder. It took him twenty-seven hours. He made the walk for his wife, who was dying of cancer. He said that if he brought her some of the healing dirt, she would survive. Before that, Lucy had never heard a good explanation of faith.

The family was quiet. She could see them through the doorway as they scooped up the dirt from a hole in the ground and put it in little plastic bags. The hole didn’t magically refill itself, as some legends claimed. When the dirt got low, the priests replaced it with earth dug up from the neighboring hillside. Lucy wondered if the family knew that. Would it make them believe in the powers of the dirt any less?

Lucy never took any of the dirt. She felt that she had no right. It was a Catholic custom, and she was an intruder, an observer who watched the faithful but was not one of them. She had been to a Mass only once, with her college roommate at Easter. It was all standing, sitting, kneeling—confusing Catholic aerobics that had made her feel alien and alone.

But the little mission church was different. The faith of those who visited was plain and uncomplicated. She saw it in their faces—they simply believed.

The santuario had been her and Del’s favorite place to bring visiting relatives, who always used words like quaint and rustic to describe it. They would giggle as they scooped up handfuls of the dirt. At first, she had laughed along with them, joking that they could use the dirt and some holy water to make a divine mud mask—it would tighten pores and keep Satan away. But by the time Del’s dad had come to town about seven months ago, she’d had enough. She’d begged off the trip, claiming that she had to work. It had been her day off, which Del knew, but he never pointed it out.

It hadn’t dawned on her until later that Del hadn’t actually invited her along. That should have been a clue.

Patsy Burke sat in her jewelry-making class, trying to thread a bead onto a piece of string. Next to her, Claire Schoen was swearing up a blue streak. Patsy had never met a woman her age who swore as much as Claire did. She and Claire were taking another continuing-education course at the community college. Claire called it “classes for crones.” And Pasty could see why. More than half of the class were women her age, their gray heads bent down over their worktables.

Patsy was making a necklace for Brittany. It was her third try. The first two had come out wrong, with extra beads in silly places. Claire interrupted her with a, “Here, Pat, do this.” Patsy smiled and took the thread from Claire; after a few tries, she slipped the bead into place, then handed it back to Claire. Claire had insisted that they take the class despite her arthritis. “My joints might be stiff but they still work,” Claire had said in her heavy New York accent. Patsy spent most of her time in class doing both her and Claire’s work. But she didn’t mind.

For months after John’s fatal stroke, Patsy had spent long hours staring at nothing, trying to remember what it had felt like to be Mrs. John Burke. John Junior tried to get her to make plans. Did she want to move back to Kansas to be with her sisters? Did she want to move to Phoenix to be near Harold? John Junior yelled at her, thinking that her hearing aid was broken. What he didn’t understand was that she didn’t care. What did