I offered to take them home and after driving more than a few blocks, terrified, I found myself going in circles in the south of the city and it was like being in another geography. She guided me to her house, made me come in, and her mom made us coffee. Dawn was breaking and the mother said it’s Sunday, let’s go to 7 a.m. mass, and I accepted, thinking I’d find a little peace in the spacious architecture of the church or by visiting the memory of the prayers my grandmother repeated day and night. The woman gave me a look of compassion that was also complicity. Having arrived at the church, among so many people, I got lost and listened to the mass sitting on a pew next to strangers. During communion, I stood up to take it, the wafer and the wine, how tasty, and I felt it melt and the taste of the wine somewhat returned to me the lost drunkenness, but I realized I couldn’t stay there. After communion, I left the church without saying goodbye to the woman, I wanted to stay, follow her all day, every day, but I had to go home, didn’t I? I got lost driving once again but managed to leave the south. I took the highway up the valley and started to feel like I wasn’t moving forward, like the road extended and I was getting lost again, like the house of cards was falling in slow motion, all the houses built on gorges. What’s going on, I asked out loud, and thought about the woman, her son, her room, my cat, the dead old man, my husband, the man from the cave’s voice singing to his daughter, my own house awaiting me with the silence of the white walls, and I began to tremble. I stopped, grabbed the phone, and called María, who was still with Ta. I asked her where I should go and she said to my house, but I couldn’t get there and after minutes or hours or who knows how long, who knows the course time took then, she picked me up and drove my car. After that were days of trembling from the shock, in my house, popping the little emergency pills a psychiatrist had prescribed me long ago and hoping this prolonged attack would pass. But nothing passed and, one of those mornings, María came over and said let’s go and told me about a retreat, and I said OK, I’ll go, and I packed a suitcase with rubber boots and mosquito repellent, following the instructions on a little piece of paper that reminded me of the field trip notices from the last year of high school.