Free Mundo Cruel by Luis Negron Page B

got tired of beating me, she said to me:
    â€œYou’re the one they’re going to call fag.”
    Once we got there, Mami grabbed her Bible and left me. I went over to sister Evelyn, who was in charge, and signed in. Then I walked toward a place a little farther away, where the church buses were parked. I sat on a rock, still swollen from Mami’s beating. I looked at the sky and told God I needed to talk to him. God spoke to me with a voice that came down from heaven but that I felt right in my ear. “Thou art proud and of a mind that thou canst do whatever thou wouldst.” “But Father,” I said to him, “if I’m a chosen one and I can’t do what I want, what’s the point? Besides, forgive me, as you are God, but I remind you that I also have free will.” He fell silent, but I listened to him think.
    â€œIt’s up to you,” he finally said. “Go thou with my blessing.”
    I was satisfied when the meeting ended. I had made my point. From the rock I saw one of the bus drivers sitting in his driver’s seat, looking at me. He gestured for me to come over. I climbed into the bus and he had already pulled it out of his pants. We continued in the last row. I liked him because he talked dirty and, grabbing my face amid all those dirty words, he said he’d never seen anything like it. I left the bus in a sweat, dying for the baptism to start so I could cool myself off in the water.
    I got in line and they gave me a candle. Papi, who had gone earlier to help the pastor set up, was with Mami. They watched from the riverbank with desperate looks on their faces. They wanted them to put me under the water already to see if the Holy Spirit would enter and change me. I was the third in line and soon it was my turn.
    The pastor looked at me with that prophet-look he knew how to put on. I saw him look at me with anger and then his eyes saw my slutty face. Full of pleasure upon seeing me look at him that way, he revealed his rage to me. I saw his dark thick body through his damp white clothes. I saw the hairs on his wet arms, close to his skin. I saw that he saw that I saw what he saw. I saw through his white pants how inside his white cotton jockey shorts, he grew large. I saw the brothers on the shore fascinated with my beauty, looking at me. I saw Papi’s face in the distance, looking at me look. This boy is a monster, his face said. I saw Mami look at my monstrosity in Papi’s face. I turned my back on my father and my mother and looked again at that thing that was already curving over the preacher’s thigh when he immersed me in the water.
    The sound of the water pressed against my ears. Among the rocks there was a beer can. Some river shrimp clung to an old tennis shoe. I saw the preacher’s feet in his blue rubber flip-flops. Then he took me out of the water and held me for a second in his arms. “You are clean,” he said to me, and winked.
    A while later, when they were taking photos of me with my parents, he announced that I would go back with him, alone to the church, because we had things to talk about. My parents gave me permission.
    He couldn’t wait until we got to a motel: he made me touch him on the way there. I caressed it and looked at it (identical to his son’s).
    â€œI felt something divine,” he confessed still exhausted on the bed. “You’re a mystery to me.”
    He hugged me and cried. He took me in his arms like the day of his prophecy and told me that he loved me. I promised to love him forever and to go live with him in Orlando and to found a church there, but I didn’t want him to take me home in his car. I asked him to leave me near the church. I wanted to be alone for a while and clear my head a little. And feel the cool night air on my face. And why not see besides if I might find some guy on the way home. Then I’d lie down, read a psalm, and fall straight to sleep.

THE VAMPIRE OF