But here Dina was now, sitting on a flat, white wooden chair, hands on his lap, his lace veil over his waves of dark hair as stained as his tunic, his face turned toward a television.
“According to the Gospels,” Tadeo was saying, voice uneven, trembling, “Jesus said something as he was dying on the cross.”His hands were over the table, over the mantle, with his fingers scratching at each other.“In Luke,Jesus said that he hands over his spirit to God.But in John, Jesus says, ‘It is finished.’But, then, in the books of Matthew and Mark, Jesus says, ‘My God, why have you forsaken me?’I don’t understand.”He lifted his gaze, tepidly.“So, if it’s okay to ask, angel, I want to know… What were Jesus’ final words?”
Dina blinked, but his head was still facing away, his attention on the television in the living area at the other end of the room.“Hm?”His lips had been parted, eyes wide, as he reeled in every flash and static from the talk show that was playing.“Jesus…?”Slow, he turned back to the human.His wings were folded behind him, pulled close but perfectly visible.
“Yes.”Tadeo cleared his throat, nodding.“Yes.Jesus.Did you hear me?”He frowned a bit.“I asked about Jesus’ final words.”
Dina’s gaze began wandering again back to the television.“Oh, I don’t know.”
Sincere and oddly childish, Tadeo called, “What?”Dina’s accent was strange, every syllable inflected wrong yet somehow still understandable.There was also something very familiar about it, but not in the sense that Tadeo had ever heard it before, rather like stepping into the room you’d been born in.‘Maybe,’ Tadeo had been wondering, ‘the angels speak in the language that we humans long forgot.’“You don’t know?”
“I wasn’t there when he died,” replied Dina simply, then startled when the door thudded open, the hard stomps of someone staggering inside following.“Hm?”He twisted around, one hand going over the top of the chair, whereas Tadeo instantly shot to his feet, swearing to himself.
Just as she was shutting the door behind her, Joana swung a yellow plastic bag by her head and said, “They were having a two-for-one sale at thepanadería, so I got as much as I could.”Though Tadeo was moving, attempting to get in the line of sight between her and the angel, he was too late.Dina stared, his shining eyes meeting deep brown irises embracing large pupils that reflected the angel’s face in all its perfect, speckled smoothness.
“Joana,” Tadeo said.
“Joana,” Dina echoed softly.
“Who the fuck are you?”Joana asked calmly, a sharp wail sounding nearby, though she didn’t turn her head even when Dina did; Tadeo’s cousin was in the kitchen with her infant child.Taking some steps, Joana moved away from the door to set the bag of bread at a coffee table in the living room before heading straight toward the angel and Tadeo.
Tadeo answered: “He says his name is Dina.He’s an angel from Heaven.”
“Oh?”Joana laughed, then turned her face to the kitchen.“Hey!”she called.“Did you all hear me?!I brought some bread!”
“My granddad’s out,” Tadeo sighed, hearing his cousin’s baby cry again.“He went on a walk with my mother.”Or rather, he was walking as he pushed along her wheelchair.“My grandmother’s out in the back, in the garden.Most of my cousins haven’t seen him yet.”
“Mm, so what were you planning?”Joana laughed again, but it seemed somewhere between sincere and bitter.“Acarne asadato introduce him to everyone?”A barbecue.“Or what?”Finally, she reached them, pulling out a chair beside Dina and now speaking directly at him, “So, you.Angel.You told my friend that you’re an angel.”
Dina blinked, then nodded.“That is what I am.Your name… is Joana?”
“You talk weird,” Joana commented, but not cruelly.“But yeah.Joana Hernandez.What’s an angel doing in this shithole?”Tadeo almost sighed again.
Tilting his head, Dina answered slowly, “I’m here because the world will end soon.”
Joana hesitated, but not in shock, then said, “And?Are you here to stop it?”
Tadeo huffed, then said, “Of course he is.What are you so mad about?I have an angel in this house, and you’re mad?”
Ignoring him, Joana nodded her head at Dina again.“I want you to answer me.How are you going to stop the end of the world?”The angel parted his lips but hesitated.“How are you planning to do that?Is the devil here?”
“The devil—” Tadeo had repeated with the intention to scold Joana again before he realized the weight of the question; he turned back to Dina.“Is that true?”
Jolting, flushing, Dina shook his head.“No.I don’t believe so— Though… he could be.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” said Tadeo, leaning back against the table, reaching for a plastic cactus-shaped salt shaker and fiddling with it anxiously.“The awful things that have happened here can only be the work of the devil.”
Dina said, “I don’t understand what’s happening here.In this place.”
“Hasn’t God told you?”Joana asked, and Tadeo realized how calm Joana was — she had never been one to shriek in shock, but there wasn’t as many questions as he expected, not even a flicker of surprise that Tadeo had been right that the miracle of his resurrection was God-granted or that the angels were watching over them.‘Maybe that’s why you’re so quiet,’ Tadeo wondered, ‘you don’t want to admit that you were wrong that God has abandoned us.’Or admit that God was real, after all.Because an angel in the room didn’t only mean that an angel existed but that God did, that Jesus did.The Messiah.And Heaven.Paradise.Confirmation of your religion didn’t feel as triumphant as one might’ve expected.
Before Dina might’ve answered, the front door opened again, and it was an old woman, leaning on the arm of a middle-aged man, one of Tadeo’s uncles in jeans, a polo shirt, and a whitetejanahat.“Ah, Joana, good afternoon.And you?—”
“It’s the angel,” the grandmother answered.“Tadeo said he found him.”Fondly, she laughed when the uncle let go of her and scrambled over.
“Angel—” he said in awe, putting his hands together, trying to lower himself onto one knee but taking awkwardly long to do so.“Oh, it can’t be.Dear Father, how blessed we are.”
Joana smiled at Tadeo’s grandmother and announced that she’d brought them bread from the bakery, not paying any mind to what the uncle was doing.When the grandmother neared her, she kissed Joana’s cheeks in greeting.But, after this, Joana looked gravely at Tadeo, nodded toward the kitchen — where there would be a way into the yard, where she most preferred to talk with him.Tadeo shook his head warily, murmuring that he wanted to go out and find his mother, and Joana paused, before sighing.
