Every morning Mrs. Ema went out to the garden of her housetook a deep breath of air to water the Lilies of All Saints that adorned his garden in the months of October and November. The first time I saw her standing among the large white, pink, and purple-purple flowers, I thought it was a heavenly revelation, because her white hair and the morning sun illuminated her face deeply in the flowery scene.
That day she hid from my gaze, but once I met her, she allowed me to enter her garden just a few steps, she told me that her husband brought her these orchids from the Tepeapulco hill, a strange placefamous for the sighting of UFOs and that day he came running to have a drink of “crucetillo” with brandy, because he had been bitten by a snake. He did not survive. Since then, when the orchid bloomed, she would bring a bouquet to his grave and other bouquets to the Virgin of the temple, because she was sure that the devil had attacked her husband.
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Why did Doña Ema take refuge in her plants and in her saints?
Since then, with the shadow of loneliness, Doña Ema distanced herself from everyone and took refuge in her saintsin their candlelights, in the Sunday mass and in the orchid garden of the Lilies of All Saints that became an emblematic site.
At that time the whole common became famous. People came either to see the flowers that adorned houses, plantations, hills and ravines or to see the aliens. —Yes, even the Japanese came looking for the UFOs, because the ships reached the top of the hill over and over again, Roberto, one of Doña Ema’s gardeners, told me.
—No, don’t listen to those stories, Doña Ema told me one day, seriously. That is a lie. Who lives on the hill is the devil himself. He is there, he attacked my husband and tried to take him away, but I pray for him every day and offer these flowers to the Virgin to save him from the clutches of the evil one, she told me vehemently, agitated, with deep concern.
Also, he told me, take care of the people of this town, they are bad, they are full of hatred, selfishness, lust, and vanity. God punishes all of this with hell, with death, with disease. I, who was young and optimistic, who believed in “the people”, listened to her attentively, but did not share her ideas. For many she was a “saint” but for others a “devil”.
I checked everything until one morning when people went to the town vet worried because their cats began to die. Nobody knew what had happened. They thought that a cat plague had reached the community.
The diagnosis was blunt: they were poisoned, the doctor said. Who could have done something so terrible? they wondered. Mrs. Ema’s gardener verified it for me and with it I realized the pain or evil?, that she kept in her heart.
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The next morning I saw her leave for the temple with a bouquet of flowers. The parishioners who heard her pray knew how she always began: “I thank you Lord because I am not like the others.” Since then, every time she passed through her garden, I felt something strange inside. On one hand, she was trying to understand her pain and on the other her anger and hatred, brooded over years in the solitude of her prayers.
Doña Ema, a lady with great spirituality and love for her garden; Story