Pescado Santo

Good Friday has always been a solemn but delicious feast for my family.

I was 18 the first time I was roped in to play a soldier at the public Way of the Cross. My father was playing one of the temple priests. The Porras family, the organizers, must have been short on extras again, and they probably made an announcement after a rehearsal because my father returned home with the request—well, not really a request. 

It was an order. 

He called me into the living room and even lowered the television volume before speaking.

He looked at me and said, “We need young men to play soldiers.”

My response was cowardly and automatic. 

“It’s going to be cold.” 

“Hijo,” he said, shaking his head, disappointed at my excuse. He hit the power button on the remote and turned off the TV. “You have to help. You can wear jeans.”

“That’s going to look weird. Now, think about it. Roman soldier: helmet, shield, breastplate, sword, and jeans! It just doesn’t go.” 

My mom interjected. 

“Look for some white jogging pants and a white sweatshirt. They will blend in with the costume.”

“But, I never rehearsed!” 

“Sigh, you just have to walk along and follow what happens at each station,” my father said. “You know what it’s like.” 

“Do it,” my mother ordered. “It’s once a year, and you’re doing it for God.”

“For God?”  

My parents knew how to guilt their children into doing things with these types of requests. How could you refuse to do something for God? Those last words were often repeated on Good Fridays. My mom usually added, “Just look at the crucifix.” I couldn’t come up with any real excuses, so I drove over to the Army Navy Surplus store in Hammond and picked up the white jogging pants. I already had a white sweatshirt. The people playing the crucial parts, those of Jesus, Pontius Pilate, the apostles, and some priests, had been practicing for weeks. Most of us soldiers could fill in and play our parts without it being too obvious that we had never practiced. 

The Porras were always scrambling to find people to play the parts of extras: crying women, angry men, an extra man or woman for the mob, and soldiers to keep the onlookers at bay and yell at the man playing Jesus to keep moving. I never thought I would be forced into a part, but I showed up in my white sweats the following day. Mrs. Porras quickly slid me into a chest plate, put a huge copper-colored belt around my waist, and gave me a copper helmet with a red brush pasted across the top. Another woman placed a lance in my hands. Some of my friends who were back home from college got roped in, too. We stood off to the side of the Harbor Catholic School gym, waiting for Pontius Pilate to condemn Jesus up on the stage. My father and his fellow priests yelled, “¡Crucifíquenlo! ¡Crucifíquenlo!” A bunch of extras joined in. “He’s not our king!”

 And then we, all the untrained soldiers, gathered around Jesus and walked out to replay the Way of the Cross on the streets of the Harbor section of East Chicago. It was the only such performance in a public space I could ever recall in Northwest Indiana. It brought together the many of the Catholic churches of the city, though most of the work for organizing fell on the shoulders of Juanela and Antonio Porras. It was up to them to keep it running. That day, I only saw her. Mr. Porras had probably been called in to work. Juanela designed and made all of the costumes and maintained them over the years. Both she and Antonio served as the directors with the support of a few other people, but it was mainly their project. I couldn’t blame them for pulling people in or my mom guilting me into the reenactment, but I didn’t have to like it. 

My mother’s Good Friday tradition began on the weekend before Good Friday when she would start shopping for that day's meal. It would continue through the week as she slowly pieced it together. She bought fish and other seafood on Holy Thursday. Another tradition she followed was forbidding us from watching TV or listening to music on Good Friday, but that order softened over time, and Lent never felt like a sacrifice as far as food. No meat on Fridays meant we went through the list of meatless Mexican recipes.

She cooked great food every Friday, but on Good Friday, she made a feast, as all the single dishes she made during the previous weeks became a spread of shrimp ceviche, caldo de mariscos, cheese, and potato cakes in tomato and orégano salsa, chiles rellenos, tortas de camarón con nopalitos, fava bean soup, capirotada, and her usual pound cake. My sister and I were part of her crew, and my father, too, but he usually went out to pick up groceries we had forgotten, be they tomatoes, eggs, lemons, or bolillos. The cooking began in earnest a couple of days before Good Friday, and the banquet would be ready by 2:00 pm that day. She rarely went to the Via Crucis, or she just went to the last part of it, which was over by Our Lady of Guadalupe. 

The spring skies were usually a patchwork of gray and blue, and a frigid drizzle often preceded a sliver of sunlight, which signaled the end of the cold for good. For Juanela, it meant the end of late nights stitching up a cloak or gluing together a chest plate, helmet, or whatever needed her care and attention in her small brick house on Alder Street. For her, Holy Week was a time of working contemplation.

On the day I was first made a soldier, my mother zipped over to the church or somewhere along the route and scooped up Juanela. I didn’t even know she had gone to the Via Crucis until I returned home with a grumbling stomach; I walked in and headed to the basement where, to my surprise, Juanela was sitting at a table cluttered with dirty bowls, crumbs, and bolillos torn in two. Everyone had already eaten. Fish bones were stacked up in a bowl to the side—the holy meal for that holy day. 

“Hola, buenas tardes,” I said. 

“Hola, Juanito. Buenas tardes,” Juanela responded.  

“Hola, mi’jo. Pásate a comer,” my mom called.  

I walked down in my white sweats, ready to warm up from the cold pilgrimage through the streets of the Harbor.

Our basement became—I saw from the tired look on Juanela’s face—a delicious respite. My mom served me a steaming bowl of caldo de mariscos. I tore a piece of bolillo as I took my seat. The late afternoon sunlight waned. It was about 5:00 pm. Juanela yawned, removed her glasses, and rubbed her eyes. My mom served her a piece of cake and some coffee. The earthy perfume filled our small kitchen, covering the salty smell of fish soup.

The lesson, born from their free, bountiful giving during those days, reminded me of the gospel account of Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, pouring an entire bottle of spikenard oil on Jesus’ feet. She held nothing back, giving the best of what she had at that moment to God like Juanela did to the community and my mom did for Juanela on that Good Friday.