shame
The anxiety lit up.
We were in a backyard, forming a circle. Another one of those home-style rituals, handmade offerings, a day-long workshop for preteens hosted by the Catholic youth group in Tijuana.
I was 12 years old, my braces were chattering. The morning gloom had never cleared, casting a haze on the final ritual of the day’s events. I held a red carnation in my hand and a note on a purple slip of paper, giving thanks for my family and asking forgiveness for something or the other.
“No me da verguenza proclamar mi amor a Dios.” Everyone was saying.
We were standing in a messy circle, shifting as our turn came to step forward with our handwritten offerings, and place them into the pile of picked flowers that surrounded an underwhelming statue of Jesus Christ cradled by his mother Mary.
Despite the chill, my hands were sweating beyond normal. I despised public speaking, much worse in front of Tijuana society families (because I knew there were people in the crowd that I didn’t recognize at all, but then a middle aged woman wearing too many rings would approach me, give me a kiss on the cheek, and call me by name and ask how my abuelos were doing. Thank God for the social standard of being able to call everyone tia).
I was anxious. I was anxious because I didn’t know the word everyone was saying.
Verguenza.
Werwenza? Verwenza?
I got the jist of what we were all doing and saying, and it wasn’t even the fact I didn’t know the meaning of the word that peaked my anxiety. It was that I had never pronounced it, never myself tried to utter it from my lips, and I was doubting my ability to do it on the spot, unrehearsed, in front of 100 or so praying people.
Vanessa Moreno stepped forward. A year older than me, blue jeans and her curly hair pulled tight back into a ponytail. Her big eyes were closed, and she opened them to meet the painted eyes of baby Jesus. She opened her mouth to say the mantra:
“No me da pena proclomar mi amor a Dios.”
Relief flooded my body. Pena. There’s a word I recognize. No me da pena, I’d heard the word pena used many times before.
Ari in response to Marce’s uncontrollable laughing fits in public: Que pena, she would say nervously, her eyes shifting to see who around us was disapprovingly watching.
Que pena me dan, my mom said in response to mine and my sister’s prank of throwing eggs off the balcony of our condo in San Felipe one Easter beach vacation. My sister and I were the ones who had to scrub the eggs off the concrete.
Verguenza.
My heart seized up in gratitude to Vanessa Moreno for using a word I recognized. Whether it was God’s doing or Vanessa Moreno’s doing, I felt an irony or a synchronicity in the exact word I was blindsided by
to be the exact feeling that was gnawing at my gut and manifesting as sweat in my palms.
Shame.
This prose piece was originally perfomed at San Diego Writers Ink, Dime Stories.