The Thirteenth Step

Gold, silver, death, gold, silver, death…

“Oro, plata, mata, oro, plata...,” my mother’s voice, counting the steps of our neighbour’s staircase in Spanish. “Each stairs must end in oro, you know,” she stressed with a knowing look at Mrs Betty, the owner of the house. The other woman’s air of concern smacked all over her knitted brows; her face contorted in fear as my mother ended her count with a mata, shaking her head.

“That’s not thirteen, Betty—do you want to repair this one?” she said, her expression, anxious. “No wonder—there’s always someone sick in your family.” My mother glanced at me and quickly led the other woman away not wanting me to hear anymore, patting her shoulder, whispering, consoling her.

The way I remembered it, the woman’s husband had been very sick at the time. He was released from the hospital and brought home by some policemen a few days before our visit. “He needed to go, or else the family suffers more bills...,” my mother explained then, winking at my father during breakfast, “they can take care of him at home, anyway.” And before we left that day, I saw Mrs Betty had slipped some money in Mama’s hand.

I can still recall my mother counting every step of the stairs whenever we went inside a house, or even in school or at the malls. I was only six; I never bothered to ask why. Yet, I found the tone of the Spanish words—ringing like some bad prayers from the witches’ mouths as they dance encircling and weaving around their big pot blazing with a great fire, boiling lizards, spiders and frogs—something to like.

As a kid, I was put to sleep with Grimm’s and some Hans Christian Andersen’s tales. My mama read it to me, of course, for my afternoon nap, waking me up later at four, to play outside.

When you were a kid, only three things mattered most: food, play, and sleep. And I loved all three, especially, sleep. I had colourful dreams, not much nightmares unless I had a fever, but fantastic dreams that stayed with me, and which I still remembered in my adulthood. A knight, a prince, or a bounty hunter with my bow, always in search to rescue the beautiful princess from the monster in the cave, the dragon in the cliff, or from the witches’ boiling brew.

But thinking about it later, counting steps on stairs was stupid. "It was a superstitious belief," our parish priest once said in one of his Sunday sermons; the same as losing a finger if you point at a rainbow, or women dropping forks to expect male visitors. "The senseless things parents will do to frighten their children to behave and stay obedient, to place them under control," the priest explained.

Yet, for my brothers and sister and I, my mother’s cutting glare was enough to shut our mouths when we were all boisterous and loud. Or else suffered my father’s wide belt, or Mama’s leather slipper across our butts.

My memories of my mother remained clear and memorable for me, as I always tagged along wherever she went. The habit never changed, even if I felt embarrassed and already ashamed of myself, especially, with my friends. “You’re a damn mama’s boy!” my elder brothers would always tease me, provoking a fight.

For how could I avoid their humiliating bullying when Mama would prepare my food, clothes and bath each morning as I woke up? Or how she would not eat lunch until I got home from playing, sharing her delicious cooking with my long stories each time? Or would read me stories for my afternoon nap and prepare my snack before she allowed me to play? I guess those were my privileges as the youngest child in a family of six brothers and a sister.

Oro, plata, mata...The words whirled then in my head each time I played in a neighbour’s house, unaware that I was actually counting the steps of their stairs. And yet, I never found a house with a mata at the landing or end of the stairs. Only that of Mrs Betty, which remained embedded in my memory.

Because several days after that visit to Mrs Betty, her husband died.

“See? I told you,” I recalled my mother talking to Mrs Betty at the wake, hushed, so the other kids or some consoling neighbours and relatives would not hear, both of them giggling.

Without any intention to stray or show off I wasn't afraid during the wake—the house was gloomy and filled with funeral flowers and sad-looking people, some wore black while others in tears—I had wandered on my own at the steps of the stair that stayed without repair.

Mama was the centre of the gossips with stories repeatedly told, while cautions and condolences mingled with a few suppressed laughter, scattering like dust of the dead among the curious and concerned sympathizers of the widow, all eager to hear my mother’s superstitious beliefs. “Oro, plata...,” I heard her say again, unaware I left her side.

The house, though brightly lit with the addition of funeral lamps, remained sober, suffocating and grim. At the foot of the narrow stairs, the same one we counted before the husband of Mrs Betty died, I looked up. For a boy of six, the steps seemed too many, the stairs too high, towering and daunting in its precarious incline.

The top of the stairs was dark, although a flickering votive candle lighted the small altar at the side wall. I could see the statues of saints on the altar decked with rosaries and other religious icons and some fresh flowers clipped from the funeral bouquets downstairs.

I was bored, so I started to play on my own. The other kids in the house were asleep or eating, or were too tired—still crying, I think, for their father. Not one among the visitors’ kids had been in the mood to play or accompany me by the stairs. Their eyes darted past me, seeming shy or scared to sit with me. They held on tight to their mothers’ skirt or their guardian’s hand. But I was brave, confident with my mama around, her voice echoing where I sat, comforting me.

Unaware, I began to mutter the rhyming words in my head. I rolled them in my tongue...oro, plata, mata, oro—I was already saying it, almost singing the beat of the words. I was enjoying myself with the game of my own invention, preoccupied with playing the three words, reciting it over and over again.

“What are you playing?” I heard a male voice asked me from behind. The man smiled at me when I looked up, as I closed my hands to hide my fingers, counting, playing like piano keys the steps in mind. “Are you alone or with a relative?” the man asked, still smiling and stood by my side on the steps.

“I’m with my mama—who’re you?” I asked. Mama said never talk to strangers, so I immediately shut up, alert and ready to run. Still, the man smiled and put his hands in his pockets, his face creased looking disappointed or something, annoyed as if he was in a hurry and there was no bus.

“I know your mama...She’s good,” the man said. “Do you love your mama, little man?” he asked, this time sitting beside me as I stood up. His cologne smelled bad, bitter—dry like hospital tiles—irritating my nose and throat.

For a moment, I hesitated to run. He looked like a priest and I was afraid of priests. My friends told me priests would beat you up with their sticks if you don’t confess and receive communion on Sundays. In a huff, I said “yes!” and run to my mother, by then already settled in a chair eating some cakes with a glass of lemonade.

“Where have you been?” she said, her eyes wide and questioning, not of anger but of concern. “Do you know that it’s impolite to run around a house where there’s a wake?” she glared then, but gave me her glass.

“I was, uh—talking to a man,” I said, gulping the cool lemonade while I reached out for one of the pastries in her plate. “He knows you—said you’re a good woman.”

“Ha-ha, that’s new…What man?” she asked, her hand suddenly on my arm, a little sweaty, cold. Her face turned serious, as if something was wrong; a stove we left open or she misplaced her purse again.

“Uh, he’s gone,” I said, looking around but not finding the man; I was no longer interested or scared. I felt comfortable and secure, seated beside my mother.

Before we left the wake, as I finished my pastries, my mother told me that we have to look at the dead man on the coffin one last time to show our respects. She carried me this time, and with Mrs Betty on the other side to catch me, lifted me over the dead man's coffin.

On our way home, I asked her why I have to be carried that way. She said, “For protection, so the dead will know you,” and without looking at me, patted me on the head. “Sleepy, honey? You can sleep in your bed, right?”

“Of course I can...Why?” I asked at the end of a long tired yawn. I hated it when my brothers and sister would tease me then that I cannot sleep alone in my room. Often, to stop me from crying, Mama would carry me to sleep in her bed.

“Oh, nothing, honey...You can stay with me if you like,” she said, as we arrived and prepared for bed. The house was already quiet, my siblings and Papa were all asleep. They would wake up early for school, and Papa, to his work at the newspaper factory. Mama and I often stayed home, unless there were calls for her assistance. It was only later in my adult life I found out my mother was a spiritual medium.

In my bed that night, I was woken by a murmuring sound. I heard myself reciting my game, repeating the rhythmic incantation of the words…“oro, plata, mata...oro, plata, mata…oro, argento, morte...oro, argento, mort—”

It wasn't me! It was coming above me!

The man I met at the wake stood still, fully clothed like a priest, a shadow in black robes, chanting the words again and again, smiling at me.

And then he said: “Crossing over the dead did not save you from my visit, little man,” and he grinned and touched me; his hand, clammy and slippery as a fish. “Your mother does not speak Italian.” And he laughed, his teeth stained and black; his cologne smelled like alcohol from my sister’s Science class…and I screamed and screamed as loud as I could.

Forty three years later, I was released from the asylum. I don’t know what happened to me. My sister said I went into shock and was comatose, and when I woke up, can only utter three words in Spanish: Oro, plata, mata. Yet, on my thirty sixth birthdate, my sister said, I was reciting it in Italian. Oro, argento, morte. No spiritualist or faith healer was able to save me from my condition, which many believed, was meant for my mother. Mama died that same night of heart failure, I was told.

Did I not sleep in her bed that night? Didn’t she carry me to her room, waking me up, afraid the ghost of the restless would come for me? Like it did, she said, when it talked to me at the stairs during the wake?

Mama knew all along the dead would come and visit, that was why she did the ritual of crossing over the coffin to protect me. And yet, it was a sinful soul—the man, a foreigner, often drunk, beat up his wife and children, abusing them each time. He died a condemned soul wanting revenge for his untimely death.

Didn't Mama, together with Mrs Betty, plan his fatal poisoning? Didn’t the stairs with a mata—meaning "kill" also in Spanish—gave Mrs Betty with Mama’s assurance, the strength to do the deed? The dead man wanted a guide, a companion in his haunt of the living, but my mother stopped him that night and died for me. All these, my loving sister who took care of me, narrated in secrecy.

Now, crumpled and old in my senior years, I am not allowed to go near or climb any stairs lest I begin to blabber again, reverting to my childhood. I seemed comforted by those little words, alternating them from Spanish to Italian, preoccupied with the chant as if my life—no, my own soul!—hang on the echoes of its repeated recitation.

Yet, something I know Mama can cure, make it go away with a simple kiss, like she always did before.