So Far from God

This chapter focuses on the early life of Francisco, who goes to stay with his godmother,doña Felicia, after his mother dies. He serves in the Army during the Vietnam War, and, when he returns home, he briefly attends college and becomesinvolved with a white girl. He is barely present emotionally, and spends a lot of time wandering, smoking pot, and generally existing “in a kind of mummified state” (99).During this time, Francisco asks his tío, Pedro, to train him in the role of a santero, a priest who practices the Afro-American religion of Santeria, which has been in Francisco’s family for 200 years. Practice of Santeria varies widely across the world, but in this part of U.S., the role of the santeroconsists solely of carving statues, known as bultos. These are images of the saints, who in turn divinely guide the hand of the santero as they carve.Francisco chooses to carve his namesake, St. Francis of Assisi, as his first project. 

Ten years after learning the ways of the santero,Francisco becomes a penitente at the age of thirty-three. Penitentes are part of a lay Roman Catholic brotherhood in New Mexico, and they maintain religious meeting buildings, called moradas.  

These pageschart the trajectory of Sofi and Domingo’s relationship. At fourteen years old, Sofi encounters Domingo at a dance: “He—who was to become the lifelong source for both her heart’s misery and joy—was standing with some other young men looking as wily, as tirili, as he” (106). Sofi is enraptured by Domingo’s bold attitude, good looks and “dark, sinful eyes” (106). Though Sofi does not make a connection with Domingo at that particular dance, he shows up six months later at her quinciñera (a girl’s 15th birthday, which marks the beginning of womanhood in Latino cultures). From that point on, they begin dating and engage in a passionate relationship. They elope three years later, when Sofi turns eighteen. Throughout their courtship, Sofi’s family distrusts Domingo and asserts he “was just plain not good enough for their sweet Sofi” (109). 

The text tells us that Domingo leaves Sofi a year and a half after the birth of La Loca, only to return twenty years later without any explanation. We later learn that it was Sofi who rejected Domingo, and not vice versa, but she and the community operate under the illusion that it is the other way around. Upon Domingo’s return, Sofi and he, “acted like a couple who had actually been together of the better part of their nearly thirty-five-year marriage and had become so used to each other that they didn’t even notice one another no more” (109). Sofi reflects on the fact that she has not gone out in years and convinces Domingo to take her dancing at Our Lady of Belen Fiesta.