It had been a rough day. My husband and I had spent it in the neurologist’s office, preparing for future tests to help determine the source of his four-years-and-counting physical and cognitive problems.
And so it was, with a heart filled with nagging foxhole prayers, that I drove my new car to the Avenue at five o’clock on a Friday evening.
I was stealing an hour away from my domestic concerns to attend the opening of a fellow female artist. The opening night was being held in a space in which I, too, had held a showing of shrines and altars dedicated to the Divine Feminine and women’s work in the world. This show would also have the Feminine at its center. Entitled “Queer before Queer”, it was celebrating the butch lesbians of the 50s and 60s who put themselves forward in the persona of quasi-male dress and hair and fierceness to demand their rightful space in the world.
All to say that as I drove around the neighborhood searching for a parking space, I was keenly aware of the presence of Our Lady of Guadalupe and Her Divine Feminine Presence. En route to the gallery, Her giant mural is painted on the auto repair shop wall and next door to the tattoo parlor. Twenty-four seven, you can look up and see Her, watching protectively over all who pass beneath her. She has seen it all.
And thus, I found myself directly across the road from Her, where a parking space had opened in front of the carniceria. As I settled into the space I noticed two things: that a bicycle was parked on the sidewalk dangerously close to my new car and that several men were exiting the shop and heading for the car parked in front of me. I decided to wait for them to leave so that I could pull up into that less vulnerable parking space at the entrance to the local car wash.
So, I waited for their car to leave. And waited. And waited. And finally put up my sunscreen, abandoning the idea of confiscating the more attractive space. And as soon as I put up the screen in my window, the car in front of me moved off into traffic and I yanked down my sunscreen and pulled forward into the new spot where my car would have a better chance of remaining unscathed.
Suddenly, another space, wild and sacred, opened.
Out of nowhere a woman appeared. She was an orange blur of missing teeth and one eye, heading straight for my right fender, shouting words like “cancer,” “forty-dollar co-pay,” “medicine,” “I am not homeless! I live across the street from 7-Eleven!,” “Please can you help me,” “Just forty dollars, Mam, please!”
Right then I saw myself as I must have looked from outside my windshield: pearl, gold and aquamarine earrings, handmade sweater coat, cashmere scarf, make-up and bright red lipstick. Inside me, though, I was filled with my own heavy worries, and it was taking a lot of hand waving on this lady’s part to pull me out of myself. And into her.
Well, I finally SAW her, one of Guadalupe’s own, and she was asking for my help. There were other women in the world with big time problems, too. And I was being asked by Guadalupe to be Her hands in this moment.
Steeped in the fatigue of my own situation, I sighed, held up my index finger to the haranguing woman, climbed out of my car and opened the hatch. In reaching for my wallet, I remembered the cash that had been meant for my recent trip to Cornville that still rested untouched. This money had been meant for this moment and for someone else.
I closed my hatch and turned to the desperate woman, and as I handed her the cash, told her that this came with a request that she pray for my husband who was very ill. She looked out her one eye at me and threw her arms around my neck and shouted that she would pray for my husband and for me, and her son and grandfather would pray, too, and God bless me. She sailed down the street shouting and singing.
I stood there, stunned by the realization that Guadalupe had been watching from across the street and had answered my foxhole praying by sending Her sacred emissary to pray for me.
And, this lady, who would not give up haranguing me till she got what she needed, had just taught me that it is okay to repeat the same prayers over and over till I get Somebody’s attention. Nagging would get the job done, and I, too, could be gifted the medicine and co-pay for which I was praying.
Leslie Ann McQuaide
