Candle, Candle Burning Bright

“No hay una enfermedad que queda cien anos, no una cuerpo para resistarlo.”
(There is not a disease that can last a hundred years, nor a body that can resist it.), Fernando said matter of factly as I recounted my day. The trials and suffering of others dwarf this small and silly problem of mine that saps and drains me like a tapeworm. I am embarrassed and ashamed to have it, of the way I let it ravage me, and the fact I cannot control it.

“We will see you in a little while, Mama” he said.

Mis Gran Hermanas (My Big Sisters: my fabulous and overly protective gay Latino cohorts, now hovering between 45 and 55, but never looking a day over 38), had the displeasure of meeting March a couple weeks earlier.

“Who left the toilet seat up?” she demanded as she swaggered towards them John Wayne-like. It was truly the most cordial introduction March could muster. Mis Gran Hermanas quickly pegged her as a closeted, repressed Lesbian with an axe to grind, and began treating her accordingly. In her previous drunken tirades, she had mentioned she had a problem sharing a bathroom with a man (clearly), especially a straight one, though she doesn’t want to live with a “Faggot,” either.

Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire. As part of Operation “It’s Raining Men,” Fernando and Charles planned to drop by and fag out anyway, and would now quadruple their normal level of faggottiness based on last night’s rant. (We want March to leave on her own so I don’t have to pay a lawyer a $1000 to formally evict her.)

As they began to make their grand exit from the humble home I unfortunately now share with March, they said, “Mija, please get in the car with us and take a ride around the block.” They wanted an update on what the lawyer could do. I told them it would cost at least $1000 and may not work, but I could no longer stand the negative energy of March, and worried she may kidnap SHJ.”

“Sweetie, I think it’s time we put her on a candle,” Fernando said. “It’s totally white magic, you just wish her to leave with the least complication, because you don’t want the karma of black magic.”

“You just get a white candle, and write her full name in pencil on a piece of white paper, and then you cover it with honey, and put the candle on top of it. Every day for nine days, you keep that candle burning as much as possible, and you pray to the Saint in which you have the most faith for her to leave.”

“Can I use the Dalai Lama, since I’m a WASP?”

“Of course you can, Sweetie, use the Dalai Lama, and every time you think of her, you imagine her leaving. And go to a Botanica, and buy some pimenta voladora, and very discretely sprinkle it on her chankletas and purse every day. That will take care of her right away. There’s nothing black about this. This is totally white magic, but you need to get her out of your house.”

Since they were already prescribing a program of Santaria on their second meeting with March, I could only imagine what Mis Gran Hermanas would do if she irritated them further. I focused on the image of her loading a U-Haul as we looked on from the courtyard, gleefully sipping sangria and stroking our real and imaginary lapdogs.