Salsa Madre

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Come on in, don’t be shy. My name is Bernadette. And you are? Jan. So pleased to meet you, Jan. Father René told me that you would stop by. Yes, I always work here, out under the car­port. I like the sound of rain falling on the roof. You’re from Montreal? Toronto. Ah. That’s a long way. I have a niece who lives there, on Yonge Street. Twins in a stroller, maybe you have seen her? They’re a hand­ful of trou­ble. Well, this is my sum­mer project — should be fin­ished in the next day or two. Sure, pho­tos are fine. You might find the ground more sta­ble for your tri­pod over on the path. 

These are my tiles and pots and cups, arranged by colour. I do the actual smash­ing on the con­crete, and I shape the pieces after­wards with nip­pers. I use an out­doors glue to fix the ceramic to the bath­tub. Here’s a nice piece of Limoges that Madame Benoit passed on to me. Look at the pink dress on that courtly lady, but see how it’s cracked under­neath? There’s gold paint on it. I’ll be using it some­where special.

Today I prayed that the paint inside my shrine would stay put. I will not be ashamed to ask for that in the church, since my work is to glo­rify the Mother of Our Lord, so the paint should not flake no mat­ter what I do. Not to say you shouldn’t prime care­fully. After all, our God is a busy God. I’ve seen shrines where the sun gets in and the paint hangs down in sheets around the head of the Holy Mother. She stands there as if she’d got her head up under a string of wash­ing. Shame. 

Mind you, not many peo­ple bother to keep up their shrines any more, and I don’t know that you’re going to find any­thing other than empty ones around here. These days peo­ple pre­fer deer on their lawns, or roost­ers or kids fish­ing. Down on Rue Bonaventure some­one has a Montreal Stadium being attacked by a giant polar bear. Not many peo­ple feel that much faith any more, or if they do, they keep it up their sleeves and not in their gar­dens, except at Christmas, and then it’s the plas­tic stat­ues. Violette La Caisse bought an entire set on sale at the hard­ware store and they faded after two years. You can’t make holy things out of plastic. 

I’ve been doing mosaic stars on my bath­tub, rays or petals of one colour and cen­tres of another. I stick them on first, and then I fill in the gaps after with lit­tle bits left over. Mother Mary approves of recy­cling. She gave birth in a barn, after all, even though where she is now she prob­a­bly has most things in gold and jasper. I gave her statue a clean this morn­ing. She looks nice lying on the grass, doesn’t She? Resting. Just like my mother used to have a lie-down after lunch.

I expect Father René told you that I was once a novice. I was about to take my vows when God came to me in a dream. He said go to the gen­eral store, so I did. I was so shy! The store was noth­ing like the super­mar­kets we have now. You could get any­thing there. Violette La Caisse was work­ing the till that day. Urgel Beauregard from up Lac des Tortues way came in. I didn’t know him from Adam, but I heard him say to Violette that his wife had died and would she have him, because he had six chil­dren and didn’t know what he would do. And Violette said thanks for offer­ing, but she had enough on her hands with the rush on sugar pie orders, and she turned to serve me and I looked up at Urgel’s big empty eyes. He drove a truck for the paper mill, and I brought up all those chil­dren in this house and we had two more of our own. Good kids. They all pitched in.

Now I’m going to tell you what hap­pened to my son Henri. It’s noth­ing you won’t hear from down the road. Still, I’d rather tell you in my own words. People say that divorce is the worst thing that can hap­pen to a fam­ily, but there are worse things. It’s the same with fam­i­lies as it is with ceramic. You don’t know quite how the tile will crack, even if you think you have a rough idea. I’m talk­ing hair­line cracks, places where it’s ready to break and we can’t tell until the ham­mer comes down. Well, what­ever went on used to hap­pen in the vestry. And in the end my boy Henri got so quiet I knew some­thing was up. He was not the only one. And next thing they sent that priest to the south of France so that he could do it all over again in the sun. 

When Henri turned six­teen he went to work in his uncle’s fish shop in Montreal. Plenty of boys do it. I sup­pose they think there’s more to life down there. Hard to imag­ine, isn’t it? When we have all this sky up here. But at least he told me he was going — he could have gone to do squeegee like that kid down the road. I left him alone. You have to let peo­ple work things out, but I never stopped won­der­ing how he was, and I never stopped pray­ing for him. He was a good kid. 

You know, about this time last year the Virgin Mary appeared to me behind the barn. I was spray­ing the let­tuces with a slug killer that I make by boil­ing up cig­a­rette butts. It works a charm. Well all of a sud­den I had this feel­ing that there was a mys­tery hap­pen­ing beyond the edge of the veg­etable patch. And I came around the cor­ner of the barn, and there She was, hov­er­ing over the light­ning weed. Just small, like a statue, but shim­mer­ing. And she said to me in a voice as low as a mourn­ing dove’s, Find what was lost, renew what has been bro­ken, give the thanks that is due. I fell down to my knees and I cried and I cried.

Well, what can you do when the Holy Mother calls? I went to Montreal on the bus and stayed with my cousin’s friend Rosalia. She lives near the Jean Talon mar­ket. So beau­ti­ful this mar­ket, with the fruit laid out in the shops — pink car­rots, pink! You’ve got organic bananas spoon­ing to the left, aubergines spoon­ing to the right, and prickly fruits from Asian coun­tries that I don’t even know the name of. I bought a lot of toma­toes for only five dol­lars, and Rosalia and I spent all after­noon mak­ing a sauce called salsa madre, which is very good and has more gar­lic in it than Urgel would ever let me use at home. I had no trou­ble dis­cov­er­ing where Henri was liv­ing. He has an apart­ment in the Church of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, only now it’s con­dos. Early in the morn­ing I sat in the band rotunda in the park, and I saw them come out of the door, my Henri, and a lit­tle boy, and another man. 

The boy sat on Henri’s shoul­ders and held onto his ears for bal­ance. Henri’s friend held the door open for them, shut it care­fully behind them. I can tell you, I was alight with joy in my veins. The urge to get up and run to them, God help me, it was so strong. But I screwed my feet to the floor. I watched them walk all the way down the street to the car, a nice car. Then I went back to Rosalia’s and got the jars of salsa madre, and then I returned to the church that is now con­dos. A young man with a pony­tail let me into the build­ing. He had a T-shirt on that said “Don’t shut me in.” I looked at him and said with my eyes, “Don’t shut me out,” and he opened the door, just like that. 

Inside, you have no idea what they have done to the Church of Our Lady. They have built a hotel in there, and left one pew to sit on while you wait for the ele­va­tor. Where there should be a stoup, just inside the door, there is a water cooler. And where the Cardinal walked on mar­ble flag­stones in 1961, there is car­pet and a cor­ri­dor. Well I’ve done the same thing in the other direc­tion, me out here turn­ing my bath­tub into a sacred place. We’re all going in one direc­tion or another, and who’s to say it won’t become a church again in a hun­dred years? Likewise, if you needed a bath­tub, you could come and dig up one of those empty shrines from down the road. 

From Henri’s apart­ment on the fifth floor you can see the whole city. A young woman was there, doing the clean­ing. Such a tiny wee thing from some Asian coun­try. She could see I was his mother, and she showed me right in. Oh, such an apart­ment you have never seen! So tidy, so calm, like a monastery, with slanted win­dows high in the ceil­ing, and a shin­ing alu­minum refrig­er­a­tor, and a bed­room up a spi­ral stair­case. Like apart­ments in New York, I am sure. I deliv­ered my jars of salsa madre, and the girl stood on a chair and put them in an empty cup­board high up, and we lined up the jars just so and closed the doors. Henri will find them on a hun­gry day, a day when he can­not think what to cook, and he can use that sauce with the veg­eta­bles that he might already have. So that was it. I came home. I don’t like Montreal. Too much con­crete. But at least I know that he is liv­ing in the house and heart of Our Lady, and he is safe. And I am glad, and grate­ful for Prayers Answered. And so I wait, in case Henri wants to bring that child home to meet his grand­mother, because that is the next thing that I will pray for, as I pray for the man who held the door open, and the mother of the child, too, who­ever she is. I will wait and watch for Henri to come in his own time, same as I wait for the deer to come out of the for­est to eat the new shoots on the field. And then, what a feast we will have.

Look, Jan — I am ready for the coulis. How do you call coulis in English? Yes, grout. The colour of this grout is called paprika, which will spice up all that blue and make the yel­low bright even in the rain. So we mix up the coulis with water, until it’s thick and sloppy like icing, and then we work it on with a spat­ula, like this, into the cracks, and then scrap­ing off the excess, and then doing it again. Here we go. And now we give a good pol­ish with our cloth, et voilà, the colours come together and my bath becomes a shrine fit for Our Lady of Lowing Cows, Our Lady of Meltwater, Our Lady of Lightning Weed, Our Lady of Blackened Shingles, Our Lady of the Smelter, Our Lady of Everywhere.

Without the coulis, the bro­ken cups and saucers are just that, bro­ken. And with­out the ceramic, the coulis is just wet earth. But put both together, and they glow. The coulis is love. We can­not do with­out it. You have kids, Jan? Just your books of pho­tographs? Well, it’s all for the glory. Will you lis­ten to that black­bird? He’s up there every evening. Let me wash my hands and I’ll fix you some cof­fee. You won’t find a bet­ter cup down the road.