Thirteen Senses (27 page)

“What would they talk about?”

He breathed deeply once again. “The Spirit World and that we humans aren't who we've been taught we are. We are much greater. We're Angels, Lupe. We're Walking Stars.”

“Oh, this we were told, too!” she said excitedly. “Back home in our canyon our story tellers would point to the sky, telling us what stars we'd come walking from.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Then you'll understand why my mother always explained to us—that we don't have five senses as we were told by all that flat, world-thinking that came from Europe. The Mother Earth is Round, we were told, and the Universe is Alive and Whole and always Growing and Changing in Sacred Cycles. Men have six senses, and women have seven, and when a man and woman come together, they then have all Thirteen. This is what love is really all about, a man and a woman coming to their full senses when they Unite their Love with the Holy Creator.”

“I'd never heard it quite said like that,” said Lupe, smiling.

“In
nuestro amor”
said Salvador, “is where we will learn of God's Power through the Thirteen Senses.”

“I see,” said Lupe. “Well, then, Salvador, tell me, what are the Thirteen Senses?”

“You should really ask
mi mama”
he said. “She knows how to explain all this really good. But I can tell you, that the sixth sense, she has always told us, is the key to all of the other senses.”

“So, then, what is the sixth?” asked Lupe.

“The sixth is balance,” said Salvador.

“Balance? Plain old balance so you don't fall over?”

“Exactly. And can you believe that the Europeans left this one out?” said Salvador, laughing. “Incredible, eh? But they also thought that the earth was flat.”

Lupe nodded.

“Balance is everything, Lupe,” Salvador continued. “All living life has it equally. Trees, animals, water, and even rocks, everything must anchor itself to the Mother Earth and reach for the Father Sky. Look at a tree growing out of a cliff; out it goes, but then turns upward to find its own balance as it reaches skyward.

“Where balance was known, it was considered the key to all our other senses, my mother told us. In fact, it was used for measuring our intelligence. Thinking didn't measure a person's intelligence. Balance was the measure. Half the people I know who think they're so smart are always getting in hot water because they have no sense of balance.”

Lupe nodded. “Yes, I can see that. So, then, what's the seventh sense?”

“Oh, the seventh is really good,” said Salvador. “It's our intuition, which women automatically have more than men, and so this is why my mother tells me that women were always the leaders back when the world lived in harmony.”

“When was that?” asked Lupe.

“In the Garden of Eden,” said Salvador.

“But that was only near the Holy Land, wasn't it?”

“Lupe,” he said, “every piece of Mother Earth is Holy in the Eyes of God. The Garden was everywhere and still is. Truly, talk with my mother, then you'll see. And you better do it soon, Lupe, because we're married and when a woman marries and starts making her nest and preparing for children,” continued Salvador, “she gains her strongest sense of intuition, this little secret feeling, this little quiet voice from deep inside of her that tells a woman how to pick her mate, where to build her nest, and then gives her this feeling of knowing when all is safe in her home or not.”

“Yes, this is exactly how I knew you were in danger, Salvador,” said Lupe, excitedly. “I had this secret little feeling here in my heart, and it moved down to my stomach and exploded! Then I could hear a quiet voice inside of me telling me to start praying for your safety.”

“Yes, to pray, my mother always says, is to join in with the Holy Force of Creation,” said Salvador. “And once you have the sixth and seventh senses going, you can get into the eighth sense real easy. It's only with the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth that we need help, says my mother.”

“What is the eighth, Salvador?”

“The eighth is simple,” he said, smiling. “You take balance, the key to all the senses, and combine it with feeling, hearing, and intuition and you enter into the sense of harmony with all of Creation. And this eighth sense of harmony is where here, in your heart, you find the Music of God. Everything is music, see, everything is of the Holy Voice of the Heartbeat of Creation.”

Tears came to Lupe's eyes. Ever since she was a child, she'd loved music and how it seemed to touch her very soul. “Then with the eighth sense we can actually hear God's Heartbeat?” she asked.

“Hear, feel, and even know. You see, Lupe, we learn to do this as infants inside of our mother's womb, hearing our mother's heart beat, beat, beating, giving us reassurance. It's the same thing out here after we're born, if we use all of our senses. God is real, Lupe, and with us with every breath we take, with every beat of our hearts. Talk to my mother, she'll explain all this to you. You see, when God created the Universe, He created One Song, Lupe. That's what the word ‘universe' means. ‘Uni' is ‘one,' and ‘verse' is ‘song,' so everything is alive with God's Music,” he said, smiling
with gusto.
“Which is, of course, the Universe's Heartbeat.”

Lupe's eyes were bright with excitement. “Yes,” she said, “this my mother taught us, too! That the plants, the trees, the stones, everything sings to us with the Love of God when we close our eyes and listen with Open Hearts!

“The other day I was drinking coffee on my parents' porch with the Sun just coming up—Salvador, I swear I could hear the plants whispering to me and giving me their love, just like back in Mexico when I was a child,” she said, wiping her eyes—she was so happy.

Salvador took her hand in his. “Exactly,” he said. “The whole world is beautiful when we can feel the Heartbeat of God singing to us here inside. The hills, the flowers, the birds, the trees, all become so beautiful. This is how our mothers—God bless them—were able to get us through all that starvation and killing of the Revolution, by keeping us strong in the Beauty of the Song of God.”

They stopped their words. They just held, looking at each other in the eyes. Time stood still. All was Wonderful. All was Blessed.

“You know, Salvador,” she finally said, “my mother told us all this too, but in her own way. I don't think that she ever made mention of us having so many senses, though.”

“Well, maybe she'd also never been told that we only had five,” he said. “My mother told me that she never realized that all our senses were in question until they came to the capital, Mexico City, with Benito Juarez's people, and she was put in the academy of the arts, and they told her that we only had five.”

“Oh, your mother went to that grand school?” said Lupe. The whole thing was finally beginning to make sense to her. She'd never realized that Salvador's
familia
had known Benito Juarez, the Greatest President of Mexico, or that they'd traveled with him to Mexico City.

“Then your mother's father, Don Pio, didn't just fight alongside Benito Juarez, but he knew him, too?”

“Yes, of course, they came from the same village, and were cousins, in fact.”

“I see. But it wasn't until your mother was told that we have five senses—as they teach in school—that she realized that our thirteen were in question?” He nodded. “Well, then, tell me, what's the ninth,” she asked, “and what does this sense do?”

“The ninth is really juicy,” he said. “You take balance again, the key, and combine it with feeling and smell and seeing—but here you close your eyes so that your Heart-eye can open, and suddenly your seventh sense of intuition explodes into the psychic sense. This one you should really talk about with my mother, because with the ninth, then you're on your way to understanding everything, especially God,” he said excitedly. “See, God is only a mystery and not understandable when you have five senses and see the world flat.”

Salvador then asked Lupe if she ever had dreams of flying.

“Yes, of course,” she said. “Especially when we lived in Mexico and the soldiers would strike our village, then at night I'd often dream of flying away like an eagle and being all safe and good, soaring above the treetops.”

“Exactly,” said Salvador smiling. “This is the tenth sense, having the ability to leave our earth-body and travel to the Heavens and gain rest in
Papito's
arms. We all do this a little bit, but the ninth and tenth are really for healers,
curanderos,
my mother tells me, so they can travel in their dreams and help heal people and the world.

“You know, I should have asked the Chinese doctor I smuggled if he uses more than five senses,” added Salvador. “I bet he does, because my mother has always explained to us that all healing ultimately comes from the Grace of God.

“Lupe, dozens of times I've seen
mi mama
put her hands on a sick person, close her eyes, then start feeling and smelling the person's body, and then boom—that person's body will start speaking to her, telling her where it's sick and what it needs in order to get well. Then she'll go outside, turn in each of the Four Sacred Directions, palms out, smell the air, and walk off into God's Garden and find the exact herbs and clay to heal the person. Talk to my mother, she'll tell you that there's
un arreglo,
a deal, between all living-life to help one another within the Sacred Circle of Life. It's only when we step out of the Sacred Circle that all of
our problemas
start,” he added.

Hearing this, Lupe nodded. Yes, of course, this made sense. She'd heard so much of this from her own mother and that foul-mouth old midwife from their village back home. She rubbed her forehead. She felt a little bit overwhelmed.

Salvador soothed her hand with both of his. “It's okay if you don't understand all this,” said Salvador, seeing her eyes go sleepy.
“Mi mama
always told us, ‘Does the newly hatched chick need to know why she just starts scratching the ground and searching for seeds and bugs? Does the child need to understand why she immediately starts looking for a breast to suck on when she comes into the world?' No, the child and chicken don't need to know any more than a human needs to know—until that Holy Sacred Circle is broken and our natural powers are taken from us. Then yes, we immediately need to examine and understand so we can reclaim our full Human Being Powers. We are Angels, Lupe. We are all Walking Stars of pure magic.”

She nodded.

He breathed deeply. “And this I truly needed to know, Lupe, because believe me, there wasn't a day that passed that my father—a big, handsome European—didn't hit me on the head, calling me a big-headed, stupid Indian without reason, yelling at me that my beloved mother wasn't nothing but an ignorant. . .” He stopped. His eyes were running with tears. “. . . and yet who had the power to go on when everything got destroyed!” he added. “It was
mi mama!
That short little Indian woman! KNOWLEDGE is POWER, Lupe! And Knowledge with the VISION of our full Thirteen Senses is GOD! And God IS my Mother, because,” he added, “with my own two eyes I saw her perform miracles day after day—
CON EL FAVOR DE DIOS!
”

Salvador stopped. He could say
nada, nada,
nothing more.

And Lupe, she just held, looking at Salvador, at his eyes, his face, his whole being. Yes, at first, it had truly frightened her when Salvador had said that his mother was God . . . but then, well, she remembered that the same thing had happened in her home.

Her father, mostly European, had also fallen apart, when everything had gotten destroyed, and it had been her mother, a Yaqui, who'd held their
familia
together. But she'd never realized it until now, that this extra strength of her mother's had come from her Indian heritage of knowing all of our Thirteen Senses.

Lupe breathed, and breathed again. Then it was true, she could now see so clearly, that all mothers who took up ground, putting their two hands on their hips, declaring the piece of Mother Earth on which they stood Sacred, did, indeed, become God—for they were then living in the Holy Grace of Creation, which was the exact meaning of the Mexican saying—
con el favor de Dios!

Lupe made the sign of the cross over herself.

Oh, she loved this man, her husband, who was standing before her! They were BLESSED—
gracias a Dios!

AND AT THIS VERY SAME INSTANT
, Doña Margarita was going inside the stone church in Corona and making the sign of the cross over herself with holy water. She walked up the left aisle toward the front of the church. In the third pew from the front, Doña Margarita sat down by the statue of Mary.

“Good morning, my dear Lady,” she said to the Blessed Virgin. “How have You and Your Family been? Good, I hope. Because I need Your help once more. You see, last night the Devil came to me in a dream, and in no uncertain terms he let me know that if he couldn't get one of my sons, he'd get the other. So here, in the safety of your church, where no evil can come to overhear what we are talking about, I'd like for you and me to work out a plan—woman-to-woman—so we can outmaneuver the Devil and send him back to Hell once and for all!

“Eh, what do you say,
Maria?
” said Doña Margarita, smiling to her good old friend who'd been guiding her all these years. “Are you ready for us to give the Devil a good
chingaso a las todas!
”

FIVE HUNDRED MILES
to the north, Domingo, Salvador's great big, tall, handsome brother, could see that the six White prisoners were up to no good as they came walking across the yard. But Domingo didn't really give a good goddamn. All his life, trouble had come searching for him, and so if these six prisoners were looking for trouble, then they'd have no
problema
finding trouble with him!