When I carried her in my arms, her body fell into a V

This item is from “The Moths” by Helena Maria Viramontes. In this passage a young narrator is transporting the body of Abuelita from the bedroom to the bathroom for a ritual of transformation. It is a sacred ritual, “with the sacredness of a priest preparing his vestment”. The towels become vestments. The water symbolizes purification and the medium for transformation. The symbols of Catholicism are mixed with the symbols of the ritualistic indigenous ceremonies. The body as V represents the eternal feminine. For just a short moment Abuelita represents Mary. But Abuelita’s body reveals a map of a life of a different eternal feminine, “the scars on her back’ and “mapped birthmark on the fold of her buttock”. She is a goddess of nature and when lowered into the bath her soul starts preparing for transmutation, “her hair spread across water like eagle’s wings”. Her soul becomes moths and her body dissolves into nature, “the vines would crawl up her fingers and into the clouds”.

Inna