The Woman in White

It all started with what was already customary on weekends for José María, Bárbara and their children, siblings, in-laws, nieces and nephews: One Sunday morning, a week before Christmas 1966, they phoned each other to go on a picnic, this time to some picturesque spot in the cedar and pine forests edging the old road from Mexico City to Cuernavaca, near Parres, the village that marks the highest point along the road.

“Let’s see, Eloísa,” Bárbara said on the phone to her sister. “I’m bringing chicken broth; tuna fish and vegetables in aspic; rum and Coke for the men to drink; and, for dessert, my popular fruit cake.”

“Fine, Bárbara,” said Eloísa, whose voice could be heard from afar through the handset, which Bárbara could still afford to keep at a span from her ear. “I’m preparing a thick Spanish potato omelet with chorizo, but no onion, because you know how fussy Catalina’s daughters are. They turn up their noses even at canned sardines, which you’re supposed to eat whole, with spines and all, to avoid getting decalcified after giving birth to so many children.

“Anyway, since I don’t like that mock tomato juice slovenly made by watering down canned tomato purée, I’m going to mash fresh tomatoes in the blender and pour the juice through a colander to remove the seeds and skins. Add a pinch of salt and it’s heaven.

“For goodness sake, can you hear the racket the boys are making? They’re in a fever about Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite and they play it full up in Iván’s stereo day and night. To me, it doesn’t sound Christmassy at all, but rather like circus music.

“By the way, Alfonso is telling me he’d like to introduce a Law School mate to Sofía. He’s a well-to-do young man, and an unbeatable match…”

They met at noon where the old road to Cuernavaca started and set out in convoy in the three fifty-odd Chevrolets belonging to the families of the Oliveira sisters, Catalina, Eloísa and Bárbara (“The Three Graces,” their husbands called them in jest, not without a certain literary pretentiousness), their brother Justino’s Land Rover and Raimundo Rionegro’s black and red Ford 200.

They ate in a placid, sunny clearing dotted with cool shades, on the slopes of a steep hill, over a blanket of green grass and fallen tufts of long reddish brown pine needles. After dessert, Román Rionegro, Raimundo’s eldest son, a medical student, invited his younger cousins to perform “a scientific experiment.” To every one of those who joined in, he handed a magnet roughly in the shape of a horseshoe. He took them to a trickling stream whose sandy bed was covered with black veins he called “dough” (they were in fact alluvial deposits of an iron ore in minute particles that resembled filings) and taught them how to collect the mineral using the magnets to lift it up from the ground, then their fingers to pour it into empty glass jars of baby food.

The children gathered the ore avidly and played at creating an infinite variety of black, ever changing shapes that looked as though they were bristled with wiry fur, by slowly moving the magnets from outside the glass. Then they put the jars away in their pockets with other prized treasures, including pine cones and more jars with tadpoles in muddy water. Uncle Justino’s children called the tadpoles “axolotls”, but Rodrigo had read in a children’s encyclopedia that this name actually designates an unusual salamander endemic to Mexico, which does not undergo metamorphosis; instead of taking to land, adults remain aquatic and gilled. However, the boy did not dare correct his cousins for fear of being branded as a know-it-all. Another older cousin had taught the kids how to fish the tadpoles by hand in the stream puddles. The contents of these jars closely resembled latte with small lumps of brown loaf sugar swimming around.

In the meantime, some grown-ups and youths decided to climb to the top of the hill. Later, in an attempt to understand what was about to happen, they speculated that, when they were already at some distance along the trail, Sandra, who was eight years old but had a lesser mental age, must have started following them without telling Bárbara, her mom. No doubt because she was lagging quite behind them, nobody noticed the girl and it never crossed their minds to look after her or make sure she returned safe and sound with them. Shortly before dusk, once the excursionists were back in the clearing where the family had eaten, the adults started clearing away dishes and blankets and getting on the cars to return to the city. It was then when Bárbara realized Sandra was missing.

“What do you mean, she isn’t here? Might she have gotten on the wrong car…? Good God! How are we going to find her in this deserted place when daylight is almost gone?”

After finding out which route the excursionists had taken, José María began a frenzied run toward the hilltop, followed by some elder nephews, but these soon gave up when their uncle disappeared, already half groping his way, into a patch of prickly shrubs which started tearing his trousers and scratching his shins.

José María struggled forward for a long while and, at some point along the trail, he ran into a shepherd who agreed to guide him after learning of the lost girl. Meanwhile, some uncles and elder cousins drove to Cuernavaca, closer to Parres than Mexico City, in order to look for rescuers or firefighters willing to search the area, and Bárbara waited, on the brink of madness, next to the cars in the field where they had eaten, with the other women and the children, who kept her company and tried to comfort her by singing cheerful carols.

Toward the hilltop, after a strenuous climb in near darkness, José María and his guide came up to a barren rocky ridge. It was a moonlit night and at that height they could see much better than along the gloomy trails, with trees looming overhead, which they had left behind. José María could not believe his eyes when, in the moonlight, he saw Sandra peacefully sitting near the summit, on the edge of a precipitous cliff. Inwardly he thanked the Christ-child for listening to his silent prayers.

“Sandra, my darling kid, at last I’ve found you!” he said. “We were so worried! What are you doing here?”

“I got lost,” the girl answered in a soft calm voice, though her teeth were chattering. “Then I saw a beautiful lady, dressed all in white, with her robe going down to her feet, and she told me to sit here and wait without moving because I could fall down. She said they would find me here.”

Not until he heard his daughter’s teeth chattering did José María realize how freezing the night was. He was hot and sweating because of the exertion and the adrenalin rush, and halfway up the trail he had taken off his suede jacket, which he immediately put on his daughter’s shoulders.

By the time the rescuers arrived at the picnic site, José María and Sandra were already back. The aunts and younger cousins had waited, rather skeptically, next to Bárbara, some in the open around a fire and others in the cars to shelter from the cold, until they saw, incredulous but relieved, Sandra hopping about cheerfully towards them while her father led her by the hand.

The distressing episode on the Sunday before Christmas 1966 left in the Rionegro Oliveiras’ memories an impression so indelible as the myriad scratch scars on José María’s shins. He and Bárbara were convinced that the mysterious woman in white, to them an intercessor undeniably sent by Providence to work the miraculous find of Sandra against all odds, could be no other than the Blessed Virgin Mary, whom they had been praying to for their child’s safety. Although Bárbara’s affliction reached such an extreme that ever since she could not sleep without sleeping pills, she and José María instilled their conviction of the Marian apparition in their children (including those who would later renounce their faith), and they came to believe it too, at least in the beginning, all the more so when, on subsequent times they went by car past the place where Sandra had been lost and found (never more for a picnic; just on their way to Cuernavaca), they discovered a roadside notice that read “Mary’s Field.”