Treasure of the World Tara Sullivan (inspirational books for women TXT) 📖

I hadn’t noticed before, but César’s eyes crinkle in the corners when he smiles.

We head out as a family: Mami and Abuelita in their many-layered skirts and bowler hats, César in his slacks and sweater, Belén in a frilly pink disaster of a dress with bows in her hair. I’m in a knee-length skirt I saved from my school days and a pretty blouse with embroidered flowers on it. Even though they make my toes cold, I’m wearing strappy sandals with little heels that were hand-me-downs from Susana because I like the way they look, and a cardigan to keep me warm. The adults walk in front and Belén and I follow half a dozen steps behind.

That’s the way it is here, I think. Girls follow in their mothers’ footsteps; boys in their fathers’. It wasn’t something I had ever really thought about before, like you don’t think about having two hands or one nose. It just always was. But now, with Daniel off in the lowlands instead of in the mines, and Victor swearing to never come back, I wonder if there might be other paths for me too. It’s a surprising thought, like wondering what life would be like with two noses.

When we get to church, we shuffle into a spot—off to the right, toward the back, where no one will give us dirty looks for being miners—and sit down. Mami and Abuelita smile when they see women they know. I’m sandwiched in between Mami and Belén. Abuelita and César sit on the edges.

As the opening song starts, César gives Mami a soft look and she smiles back at him. I know they both entered into this marriage because they felt they had to, but more and more, I catch them in moments like these and I wonder whether they’re starting to like each other too. I feel like a spy and focus on the rounded shoulders of the woman in front of me.

My mind wanders through the opening prayers and the readings, but when we stand to hear Padre Julio read the Gospel, I pay attention again. I’ve always liked Padre Julio. He’s an old man, so old you sometimes wonder how much of anyone’s confession he hears before he absolves them, but he’s kind. For a moment before he starts reading, he lets his rheumy eyes wander around the church.

“A reading,” Padre Julio starts, “from the Gospel According to Matthew.”

We all mumble the response, each one a little faster or slower than everyone else, so that, if you didn’t know the words, it would be an unintelligible murmur.

“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”

Cold washes over me as Padre Julio’s reedy voice begins the passage. Ever since my first day working in El Rosario, I’ve paid a lot more attention to mentions of the devil than I did before. He still stalks my dreams, though most nights I wake and don’t remember what happened in them.

“When he had fasted forty days and forty nights,” Padre Julio goes on, “he was hungry afterward. The tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.’ But he answered, ‘It is written: Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of God’s mouth.’”

An icy trickle of sweat traces its way between my shoulder blades. I went into the mountain with Papi because the price of zinc and tin was high and we needed more money for food. Is God telling me I was wrong to do that?

“Then the devil took him into the holy city. He set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written: He will command his angels concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up, so that you don’t dash your foot against a stone.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Again, it is written: You shall not test the Lord your God.’”

I think of my brother, struck down by stones. When had Daniel ever put God to the test? And if he did, God failed that test: Daniel was so badly hurt he had to leave us. Moments like this, standing in the middle of my new family, make me miss my brother even more than usual.

“Again, the devil took him to an exceedingly high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. He said to him, ‘I will give you all of these things, if you will fall down and worship me.’ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For it is written: You shall worship the Lord your God, and you shall serve him only.’ Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and served him.”

I think about all the times I’ve gazed down at Potosí and wished for all it contained, and I cringe. What is the passage trying to say? Why is it so bad to want better things? Religion is confusing.

Padre Julio looks up from the book in front of him. “The word of the Lord,” he proclaims, and his voice has lost all its weakness.

“Glory to you, Lord Jesus,” I manage, then I collapse into the pew, relieved that the reading is over. It feels too close to home.

I try to focus on Padre Julio’s homily, but my thoughts are like the dust motes swirling in the colored light coming through the stained-glass windows—directionless, spinning.

It’s time for the presentation of the gifts, and I think about how the same men who bring up the bread and the wine to the priest will bring coca and cigarettes to the devil in just a few hours, when the feast day is over and they head back to the mine.

We shuffle up to Padre Julio in a line for communion, like miners shuffling into the mouth of the