Chapter 2 - Maria - Part 1

Maria Escalante was not Spanish. She did not even look Spanish, though she had when she was a child. It was recently discovered that her father was a gypsy and her mother was Jewish but Maria, having been raised in no less than thirty-seven foster homes and knowing nothing about her heritage, had always just assumed that she was Spanish. The name had been assigned to her by a state agency when she was two, and she never had any problems with it.

Maria went to Stirring Water Christian Fellowship every Sunday. She had chosen a charismatic church because she enoyed watching excited people screaming and hollering more than the sedate catholic masses she was forced to attend while living in foster home numbers six, seventeen, twenty-four and twenty-eight. She was too shy to actually take part in any of the revelry and if anyone had ever asked her, and she was answering honestly, she would have said that the she thought they were all pretending, but she loved to watch the congregation dancing and waving flags and weeping. To Maria, these services were a wonderful pageant about what God could do to you if you let him.

The other members of the church paid little attention to Maria who always sat in the back and would blush and shake her head if asked a direct question. In the first three years she attended Living Water Christian Fellowship she was only mentioned at a church meeting on one occasion. An elder's wife, who had seven children, expressed the opinion that Maria was a homeless woman who just came in for the coffee and bagels and said if she wasn’t going to participate in The Spirit then someone should ask her to leave. The pastor portested that Maria was not hurting anything and pointed out that, even if she wasn’t all together sane, after years and years of witnessing the power of The Lord, The Spirit might one day fill her and she would be saved. The other church members felt that the Pastor was right and they agreed to leave the matter to God.

Maria’s favorite part of the church occurred about two thirds through the service, after the sermon and before the prophecy, when one of the church ladies would take up prayer requests. Sometimes this woman would call up one of the church members who was having a problem and she would put one hand on his or her shoulder, point the other toward the ceiling and would pray out loud for The Lord to provide a solution. Once Maria had seen the lady pray for a young man who had cancer and the next week the man stood up and said that he did not have cancer anymore. Maria did not think that her problems were important enough to have someone tell God about them so she kept them to herself, but she always prayed earnestly for the other people during the service and each night before she went to bed.

Then one day Maria’s life fell apart. She had gone to the grocery store around the corner because upon starting to make Macaroni and Cheese for her three children she had discovered that they were out of milk. She left her oldest son in charge. He was thirteen years old and trustworthy having watched his younger brothers and sisters on several occasions before without incident.

The trip should have taken less than ten minutes but the man in front of Maria's grocery line made a rude comment to the checkout girl and she called the manager. The rude man got very angry and the manager and two stock boys had to drag him out of the store. All of this took some time and then Maria remembered that she had left the stove on. When she called her son from the pay phone, no one answered.