The Temptation Of Demetrio Vigil Part 23

"I married him," she said with a smile. She took her wallet out of the designer handbag next to her and opened it to show me photos of herself and her husband, and their two children.

"Wow," I said.

Dr. Bergant put her hand on my arm and said, "Sometimes, you have to follow your heart, and not your mother's heart. I'm sure your mom wouldn't like to hear me telling you this, so here's what we're going to do, okay?"

I nodded, feeling an incredible sense of relief that I wasn't in the clutches of someone who agreed with my mom, or even respected her having brought me here.

"You and I," said Dr. Bergant, "are going to have a few sessions like this, and I'm going to chat with you about life and love, and we're going to come up with some positive strategies for finding ways to coexist in your mother's world for the remaining time you have in it, so that she never forces you into anything like this again, and then we'll call her, and you'll go back, and everyone will be happy. How does that sound?"

I smiled broadly. "It sounds really nice."

"Good." Dr. Bergant stood as if to leave. "I think Debbie told you about meals, and the rules, and so you're all set there. You can eat with the others - but honestly, I'd recommend against it. The room service is quite good here. If you need anything, you call her. We have a TV in your room - not all the girls here get one. You can use the gym, and walk around if you like. Is there anything else I can help you with for now?"

"I'd like to let my best friend know I'm here," I said. "And my art teacher. My mom took my phone."

"Sure," said Dr. Bergant. She lowered her voice to a whisper, as she handed me her own smart phone. "Use mine."

"Are you sure?"

"Of course. I'll step into the hall for a moment to give you some privacy. We don't have to tell Debbie or anyone else, okay?"

"Really?"

"Sure."

"Wow. Why would you do that for me?"

Debbie sighed, and smiled sadly at me. "Because, Maria, and I'm going to be completely honest with you, just like you've been honest with me. We get a lot of hard cases here. Most of them are very serious. Schizophrenics, sociopaths, suicidals, m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.ts, severely bipolar. People who simply cannot function in the world. You name it, we have it. And I've seen enough and done enough to know pretty quickly when I'm facing someone who has a serious mental illness. That's what this inst.i.tution is for, young people with serious mental illnesses."

"I realize that." I felt guilty because I hadn't told the doctor the part about me believing in ghosts. I knew that if I did tell her, she might change her opinion of me, and quickly.

"Well, as a doctor and a professional, I will tell you - and I'd stake my license on what I'm about to tell you, Maria - you are a normal girl who has some disagreements with her mother about how to live her life. You don't belong here."

"Then why don't you just release me?" I asked.

The doctor looked at her feet for a moment before locking eyes with me. "Because, think of where you'd end up. Back with your mother. I hope to give you skills in your time here that will help you cope with her. Sadly, sometimes you have to go through the motions to a.s.suage the egos of certain people who think they know everything, just enough to calm them down, in order to avoid even worse situations."

"Thank you," I said, tears filling my eyes again.

Dr. Bergant smiled warmly. "You remind me a lot of myself," she said. "More than you probably realize. Now, I'll just be outside for a few minutes. Call or email whomever you need to. Visiting hours are from four to six in the afternoons."

I called Kelsey and Yazzie, and told them quickly where I was. Kelsey was mortified, and after professing her undying hatred for my mother, promised to fly back from New York early if her parents would let her, to help get me out of this place. Yazzie promised to come see me the next afternoon, adding that she'd seen all of this play out in a dream. "Be very careful," she said. "There are shape s.h.i.+fters among you there." It seemed an overstatement, considering the vast quant.i.ty of crazy people in the place.

After that charming bit of news, I called Demetrio, but he didn't answer. I texted him, to let him know where I was, and to warn him against texting or calling me on my phone, which was under my mother's control.

When Dr. Bergant returned, she had a small paper cup with two pink pills in it, and a gla.s.s of water.

"I know being here can provoke anxiety," she said. "I'm not saying there's anything wrong with you at all, Maria. But if you want to take the edge off, and just relax a little bit, these should help."

I took the pills, and looked curiously at them, and at Dr. Bergant. "I don't like to take drugs unless I really need them."

"Oh, these are harmless. Not addictive or anything like that. If you don't want them, don't take them. I just thought I'd offer, since we have so many of them lying around."

She smiled calmly, reclaimed her phone, and told me when to expect her tomorrow for our next session.

I got through the night, somehow, with the help of room service (filet mignon with garlic mashed potatoes, strawberry cheesecake with whipped cream) and cable TV. I was, however, horrified to see a story on the national cable news channels, about a local child who was missing - an adorable, big-eyed four-year-old girl named Nicole Archuleta, from Valencia County, whom no one could find. I watched in shock for a moment, and thought about my little half-sisters, who were roughly the same age. They were so defenseless. Who would kidnap such a tiny child? I quickly changed the channel, to a romantic comedy, and thought about Demetrio. I wondered if he was trying to reach me on my phone, and if he was, what my mother was saying to him when he called. I hoped he'd gotten my text.

Around eleven o'clock, I readied myself for slumber, the whole routine with brus.h.i.+ng of teeth and tossing of used clothes into my duffle to take back home. It took about half an hour after flipping off the light for me to actually drift into sleep, because I could hear someone crying violently in the next suite over, but it finally happened. I had the myoclonic jerk of electricity that was like a kick-start, and off I went, away from this horrible place.

At first, I suppose, it was a sleep like any other - blank and sort of numb. But then I felt like I woke up, yet didn't; I was still asleep, but I felt awake. I have seen this state described as a night terror. At first, however, there was nothing terrifying about it. More like uplifting, as I literally felt myself rising out of my body in the bed.

Before I knew what was happening, I found myself floating in the room, with my back against on the ceiling, able to look down and see myself there in the bed. I had no idea I looked so unattractive when I slept, with my mouth appearing unhinged and saliva dribbling onto my pillow. Oh well. That didn't matter. What mattered was that my soul was out of my body, or at least out of the version of my body down there; I had another body of my own, too, and it looked exactly like my other. It was very confusing. I wasn't willow and spirit like. I was solid and me-like. Dimensions, I thought. That's what it had to have been. I wondered then how many dimensions there actually were, and whether there were other versions of me out there right then. If there were, I hoped they weren't doing anything too stupid, like dancing the Macarena or running around with their underwear on their heads.

Honestly, and all joking aside, it panicked me at first to see myself sleeping below myself, as it should have, and I drifted down to get a closer look at myself, to make sure I was still breathing. I was. My hovering self breathed a sigh of relief, which meant there were two Marias breathing in the room. This brought me little comfort and much distress.

You ain't dead, mamita. Quit worrying so much.

I heard his voice, but couldn't see him anywhere. I felt him, though, as soon as I heard the words. I felt light and energy all around me, and a spinning, sort of like when I'd conveyed with him before, but different this time. The light and energy were Demetrio. I knew this. I will never know or understand how I knew it, only that I did. It was almost how I felt when I played piano or danced. I was within him, and he was soaking through me, and we were mixed and it was truly the most ecstatic and glorious feeling I'd ever experienced.

I was out, over the top of Rancho la Curacion, now, and then higher, higher into the sky about Pojoaque. The world moved beneath me, or us, and I watched as it blurred, day and night, day and night, backwards.

I have something to show you, so you can understand me better, mamita.

Slowly the spinning stopped, and I floated down again, toward the earth. The light and energy that had surrounded me dissolved, and reformed now, into a recognizable human body. His human body. Demetrio was at my side, his hand in mine, as our feet gently alighted upon the ground. We were no longer over my the mental inst.i.tution. We were landing, noiselessly, in front of a small, decrepit adobe house in the middle of rural New Mexico, the typical kind of place you saw but never stopped at when you were driving on any of the back roads of the state. A blanket with a cartoon character on it hung over the front window, covering it instead of a curtain. Trash and broken toys littered the small front yard. Nothing grew here. Everything was dirt and neglect.

"Listen," he said.

From inside came the sounds of loud rap music, and screaming. Plates breaking. Fighting. A woman crying, a man shouting.

"What is this place?" I asked him.

"My home." He flinched as he said it, and this was by far the most vulnerable he had ever appeared to me yet.

I looked at him with sorrow, and he met my gaze with a sort of pained peace of his own.

"It's okay," he told me, though I could tell he still smarted from whatever this place meant to him. "It's over now. Easier for me to show you than tell you, though. Come."

He walked toward the house, and I followed. Then, astoundingly, he walked through the wall, and I hesitated.

You can do it too.

I stepped forward, and reached for the wall, but felt nothing there. It was like a hologram. I stepped forward, and instantly found myself inside of a filthy living room, with mismatched, stained furniture and piles of dirty clothes and rotten food everywhere. He stood to one side, watching as a man beat a woman in front of two filthy-faced young boys. The boys appeared to be about the same age, both wearing stained SpongeBob pajamas, holding onto a chair and looking about himself with deep, sorrowful eyes that had extremely long lashes. The slightly bigger child, who had shocking green eyes, huddled in a corner, watching with fear as the man pounded the woman's face with his fist, and bloodied the woman's nose.

"You can't do that to my mom!" the green-eyed boy screamed, finally, as he charged the man, grabbing him around the knees. "I hate you!"

The man stumbled, and fell, nearly crus.h.i.+ng the boy. The other child began to cry.

The woman appeared to be unconscious.

The man's fist reared back, his face in a pa.s.sionate rage, and he struck the green-eyed child, so hard I could not watch. The child did not cry, however. His beautiful eyes, so full of fear and a desire to help his mother in the moments before, took in the situation with what appeared to be a cool detachment - and seemed to change, before me. They became cold, hateful, nearly ruined. It became obvious to me that this brutality was all this poor child had ever known.

"Come on," the green-eyed boy said to the other child, taking him in his arms as well as he could, and running with him, past the man and woman, who, now that she was conscious again. were back at each other's throats, and out the front door.

Demetrio turned toward me, and indicated that we were to follow the children outside. We walked through the wall, and watched as the green-eyed boy stumbled under the weight of his brother, across the yard in his bare feet, over broken beer bottles and bits of tumbleweeds. He made no sound, but tears flowed from his eyes, sadness, yes, but also hatred and indignation. I'd never seen such feelings played across the face of one so young before, and it frightened me.

My heart broke.

The green-eyed boy walked around the side yard of the hovel, to where a large splintery wooden doghouse sat abandoned in the dark, against a broken chain-link fence, illuminated in an orange glow from a streetlight on the block.

"You'll be safe here," he said to the other child. He put the brown-eyed boy in the doghouse, and, after finding a large, sharp stick, sat down outside of it, like a sentry. "I'll protect you, Demetrio. If he comes back, I will kill him."

I gasped, horrified. Demetrio, the adult Demetrio, put an arm around me.

"This is my earliest clear memory of your dimension," he told me. "That's my brother, Hilario."

"Is that man your father?" I asked, horrified.

"No. My father died the year I was born."

"Is it your brother's father?"

"No. We have the same father, different mothers. We were born two months apart."

"So the woman there is not your mother, but his?"

"No. She is my mother. It's complicated. She raised us both. Hilario's mother abandoned him with us. My dad had an affair, and Hilario's mom showed up after he died to tell my mom. She said she'd been protecting him while he was alive, but now that he was gone she wanted the truth to be known. She was a drug addict, and left him for my mom to raise. My mom caved under the stress and depression from knowing that my father, her one true love, had cheated on her. She turned to alcohol."

"I'm so sorry," I told him, collapsing into his arms.

"It's why I can't just write Hilario off, even though he's still in the gang and doesn't want to leave," he said, his eyes focused on the furious, brave child sitting on the ground and facing the night alone. "He always stuck up for me, and my mom."

"I understand," I said.

"The mayordomos, Lupe and Diego - especially Diego - they agree with your art teacher that my brother might mean me harm now. But I don't believe it. It's just how he comes across. There's still hope for his soul. I'm trying to save him. They want me to challenge him to a duel at the Grand Coliseum, to find out if he's good for me or bad."

"A duel?"

"A test of skill and talent, probably dance and soccer combined."

"Why don't you?" I asked, though I was unsure what a final duel was, or the coliseum. I'd ask him later.

"Because he saved my life that night. I'm in debt to him."

I began to sob for the child Hilario had been. I ran to him, wanting to scoop the little boy with the quivering lower lip, bruised face, and false bravery up into my arms, to kiss him, to tell him it was all going to be okay, but the child had no awareness of me.

"It has already happened," Demetrio reminded me. "There's nothing to be done from here. We should go."

"But we can't just leave him there!" I wailed. "Both of them. What if the man comes out?"

"He did come out. My mom's boyfriend broke Hilario's leg that night. The neighbors found me wandering in the road the next morning. My mother was unconscious, beaten nearly to death."

"Oh, G.o.d! No!"

"Mamita," he said, patiently. "The man went to prison for a while. It's over. There's nothing we can do."

I collapsed to the earth, and Demetrio lifted me easily into his arms. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and buried my head in his shoulder.

"I am so sorry," I cried. "I had no idea."

"There are millions just like me," he said. "We can't help the boys we see here now, but you can go back to your world and help the ones living this human h.e.l.l right now. That's what I do all day long, Maria, when I can't see you. We should leave here."

I knew the child in the doghouse was him, that he was also here now, solid, grown, and holding me, that somehow he had survived this horror and gone on to graduate from high school, to have learned to sing and dance in spite of all this, and to have been accepted to college. But I also knew that Hilario had escaped into drugs and alcohol, and that, in the end, both of them had died for the sins of their parents. If this scene I'd just witnessed had never happened, what might have changed? What might have been different for those children? Might they still have been alive?

"I'm so sorry," I cried, heavy and weak with misery.

"Don't be," he said. "Just love me now, as I am, accept me."

I clung harder to him now. "I do. I do! I love you. I accept you."

His chin turned up, toward the moon.

"I need you to trust me, Maria," he said.

"I will. I do."

"I can't visit you anymore. Not in human form."

"What?" I asked, shocked and horrified. "But why?"

"Look what's happening. It's too risky. Your life, your mom. It's going to ruin you."

"No, it won't!"

"Maria, I've seen what Logan did to you online, and how the kids at school turned against you. And now this, with your mom. Our time will come, but it cannot be now."

"It can!" I insisted. "I can't lose you! I'll die without you."

"Delectation, mamita."

"What does that even mean?"

"The pleasure that comes from surviving something, or from getting what you want after a n.o.ble and necessary wait. It's why the pain of unrequited love is different from all other pain."

"I don't want to wait. I don't want pain of any kind."

"And I won't do this to you anymore, not without a protection ceremony for you. We'll do that in the spring. Three months. When the time comes, I'll find you."