The Star That Followed El Niño

SOUTH PHOENIX The Star That Followed El Niño

Christmas lights twinkled on chicken-wire fences and stars of Bethlehem shone over ragged front porches in my old Phoenix neighborhood, La Sonorita Barrio. The multicolored lights cast a warm glow over the harsh surroundings, making everything appear dreamlike and transforming the neighborhood into a fantasy world. It was Christmas Eve, and we were headed for St. Anthony's Church on the corner of First Avenue and Central in my father's old Nash sedan.

My sister, Lupe, and I jumped out of the car as soon as my father found a place to park along the curb and climbed the stone steps in front of the red-brick church.

We took two footsteps for each wide concrete step, swishing our red-velvet Christmas dresses and showing off the shoes my mother had bought for us on special at Kress. Flickering candles, fragrant incense and Christmas trees set up next to huge statues of angels greeted us as we made our way over the church's creaky wooden floor. The big statue of St. Anthony at the altar, holding the "Christ Child" in his arms, held a new significance at Christmas, as usually he was known for finding lost items or securing a sweetheart for an ardent suitor.

To the right of the altar stood the manger, hewn of rough pine and filled with real hay, sheltering a doll dressed in a white garment, El Niño Cristo-"the Christ Child." Next to the Child was a statute of His mother, La Virgen, and her spouse, St. Joseph. Gathered all around them were angels, shepherds and farm animals, with the beaming white light of the star of Bethlehem overhead. It was the same Nativity scene year after year, but still it held us in awe as we knelt to pay our respects to El Niño.

The services started solemnly. The priests and altar boys dressed in red and white robes processed in, as the choir sang from the balcony, and the huge organ with its shiny brass pipes filled the church with rich, vibrant sounds. "En Belén a media noche un niñito nacerá," (in Bethlehem, at midnight, a child is to be born). We stared at people across the aisle, and they looked back at us. Together we created a small sea of brown faces, dressed in our Christmas finery, ready to greet El Niño.

My sister and I sat next to my mother on a wooden pew my father had helped build, the wood, smooth and shiny. My mother arranged us-one on her right side, the other on her left. "So you won't talk," she said, "and don't you dare laugh-look there's El Niño, trying to get some rest."

"How can He sleep with all this noise?" I said. "Never mind about that. He's God, He can do anything." All through the services, Lupe and I struggled not to laugh when a baby burped too loud or someone fell to their knees on the wooden floor with a plop because they'd forgotten to pull out the kneeler. All the while, El Niño slept under the holy gaze of La Virgen, known to all the women at St. Anthony's as the perfect model of motherhood. At the end of the services, men, women and children moved in procession down the center aisle, waiting their turn to kneel before the simple manger and tell El Niño how happy we were to have him at St. Anthony's. We thanked him for being like one of us, not rich and bossy and disappointed with our failures, but an infant happy with a lowly manger who needed only to be fed and changed and carried about. No one could argue with a baby born in poverty nor demand anything in return except goo-goos, ga-gas and slurpy smiles. Being poor ourselves, we understood His plight. But unlike the wise men, we had nothing to offer except ourselves.

After Mass, we crowded into the basement around makeshift tables set with plastic Christmas tablecloths. My father bought us menudo, soup made of tripe and corn, which we spiced up with green onions, chile sauce, cilantro and a squirt of lemon juice. Then we ate red tamales, warm and tucked in moist cornhusks, and pan dulce-"sweet bread," soft and sugary. He bought us cups of hot chocolate warning, "Be care-ful. It's hot." And he looked at us, his brown eyes cautioning, but already I had spilled a few drops on the white bib of my red-velvet dress. By the time it was all over, my parents had spoken to everybody in the place, and Lupe and I had run up and down the steps of St. Anthony's Church with other Kids until our cheeks were bright red, sweating although the night was cold. At the top of the stairs, I peered through the big, wooden doors to the altar, admiring the star with its white light beaming over the manger. I wondered about all the trouble El Niño had encountered being born in a stable. Now the church was his home, old, wondrous and filled with flickering candles and statues of saints decked out in their bright Christmas robes. The church bell rang as we made our way back to the car. I looked up at the dark sky, and pointed to the bright North Star overhead.

"Look," I said to Lupe, "there's the star of Bethlehem!" And she believed me because she was younger than I and it was Christmas, and we had seen El Niño resting peacefully in His humble manger. It was only right that the star of Bethlehem had followed Him to St. Anthony's Church.

Stella Pope Duarte is an author and educator, born and raised in South Phoenix. She wrote Let Their Spirits Dance, a novel portraying an Arizona family's transformational journey to the Vietnam Memorial Wall. Duarte's literary career began in 1995 after she had a dream in which her deceased father related to her that her destiny was to become a writer. One year after the dream, she signed her first book contract for Fragile Night, a collection of short stories.