Free Wild Penance by Sandi Ault

interesting.”
    Regan did not respond, but instead stared out the windows at the rio. We sat in silence for a minute or more. She seemed absorbed in her own thoughts. Then a quite unexpected event occurred—one that instantly endeared this nervous, high-strung, somewhat peculiar woman to me. Over this, our first of many cups of poleo, Regan became the first local elder to break the silence and talk to me.
    “I want you to know that I don’t hold to any of their beliefs,” she said, raising the flat of her palm up to me as though she were swearing in at a trial, “but I could tell you a few general things. If it would help with your book, that is.”
    She began by telling me about the processions of Easter week. “Around here, everything stops for La Semana Santa, Holy Week. In many of the small villages, you will see several processions of the Penitentes to and from their moradas. I promise you, it is not for the fainthearted. You see, they flagellate themselves with yucca whips. One of them uses a sharp flint, called a pedernal , to cut the brothers’ backs so they will bleed and not swell.” She mimed the cutting action. “It makes deep, mutilating gashes. Then the ones doing penance scourge these wounds with their own whips. Sometimes they even lash themselves with ropes tied with tiny thorns or nails called la disciplina . Or they press cacti into their bleeding backs and bind it to them with ropes. I’ve seen them lash fence wire together with rope and whip themselves, and even ask others to whip them with this.” She shook her head back and forth and grimaced with displeasure. “They march out of the morada in a procession, whipping themselves. They go back to the morada for nursing and cleansing with rosemary water. Again, they march and whip themselves. Over and over and over. A Penitente will sometimes walk on his bare knees for hundreds of yards in beds of razor-sharp cacti. Others half carry, half drag huge crosses that are half again their weight and height up the side of the mountain to the Calvario—the place where they reenact the crucifixion. In the old days, if one of them died in these rituals, his death was like a sacred event,” she said, raising both palms toward the heavens in a pantomime of praise. “If he survived, his sins were forgiven, and he was absolved from worldly sin, at least until the next season of Lent. They are still extremely superstitious about all this. One day of suffering is supposed to pay for a year of sin.
    “Oh, my, I can still remember it,” she said, her deep voice cracking with an occasional low-pitched squeak. “On Good Friday, when they would make procession from the morada to the church, we would get blood spattered all over us as they passed by whipping themselves! You see, this was supposed to make them pure, even purify the community, or bargain souls out of purgatory—making these brutal penances.”
     
    I called on Regan many times after that. Each time, I brought her a little gift—tamales, fresh bread from the pueblo, candles. It was clear that she looked forward to our visits as much as I did, and we developed a kind of routine. She would always brew the poleo while we made small talk. Then I would take out my book and a pen, and she would have a story ready. Over time, she relaxed more and more in my presence, if one could ever call Regan relaxed. And her fondness for our time together was made evident as she began to prepare for my visits by making notes of her own, so she would not forget to tell me something she felt was important—either some of the local history or more of her own personal experiences.
    Once she told about a time when she was a child, and she and a friend had gone up into the mountains to an old morada. “We couldn’t have been any more than eight or nine years old. We hid behind large boulders, watching as the Penitentes prepared for a crucifixion. This man had a black bag tied over his head with a rope, and he was made