When doña Felicia was a child of about eight years of age in Méjico Viejo, near Veracruz, just before she lost her mother to malnourishment and disease gone untreated, she accompanied her mother to a woman’s “home” (really just a room in their vecindad) where her mother went to have her cards read. The woman, a mother herself of who knew how many little children all running in and out, eyed the little girl suspiciously from the moment they entered the room.

Finally she said, “Señora, I must ask you to have your little girl wait outside. She is obstructing my ability to see anything in your spread. Her presence is too powerful—I think she is a non-believer and I can’t concentrate!” doña Felicia’s mother did not understand what the fortune-teller meant by “non-believer,” but she did not want to offend the woman so she sent her only child out to play.

That woman, whom doña Felicia never forgot because on their way home her mother told her that the woman had predicted that she was going to die soon and then she did, was right about her. Felicia was a non-believer of sorts and remained that way, suspicious of the religion that did not help the destitute all around her despite their devotion. Then her first husband, Juan, died in Zapata’s army and she was left to find her way home with their two infants, and finally, she did develop faith, based not on an institution but on the bits and pieces of the souls and knowledge of the wise teachers that she met along the way.

But as the decades wore on, doña Felicia came full circle, reaching a compromise with the religion of her people when she became caretaker of the House of God in Tome. And finally, she came to see her God not only as Lord but as a guiding light, with His retinue of saints, His army, and her as a lowly foot soldier. And she was content to do His work and bidding.

She had been a young mother, illiterate, the orphaned daughter of mestizos who had both died without leaving her, to put it in a few vulgar words, so much as a pot to piss in. Many years would pass, and eventually doña Felicia not only learned to read and write in her native Spanish, but also in French during the Second World War and English as well. She usually mixed two or even three of the languages, still making herself somehow quite understood by all.