I left you last week waiting to see if Jesus (hey-sus) and his Mariachi band showed up for our second annual Cinco de Mayo party. I’m sure you have been on the edge of your seat ever since. I know I was. 

Again, when you hand a man who doesn’t speak your language a wad of cash and hope that he has understood your directions, there is little inspiration for belief.

“Jesus will come again,” I told our squadron friends the night of the party. “But he can’t get here until 10 o’clock because he’s playing at Los Rancheros first.”

People teased me. “He’s not going to show up,” they said. And by 10:00 that night, they were right. Jesus, who was stuck in a different city (for reasons I could not understand in Spanish), sent a replacement.

The new band was good, but not the same. The year before, Jesus and his guys were some of the last ones to leave our party. They stayed for nearly four hours, even though we had only paid them for one. At midnight, the band and I had played Silent Night together, with me on my piano. I thought that had meant something. We bonded. Sure, some of the squadron guys said it was a major buzz kill, if entirely funny, to hear me playing Silent Night with a four-piece Mariachi band in my living room, but for me and Jesus, it was special. I may even say it was ... spiritual.

“We told you Jesus wouldn’t come,” friends said as they left the party.

When someone doesn’t speak our language, we reflexively assume that they are not smart or that they have bad intentions. But, Jesus and I had broken through that barrier, and until the night of the party, I thought we communicated more deeply and eloquently than do me and some of my English-speaking friends. Now I wondered if it was all a fake.

Jesus called the next morning.

“Muy, muy triste,” I told him, because I had looked that up on the Internet. It means, “very very sad.”

“I play in su casa for una houra free,” he told me, switching seamlessly between what little English he knew and the three or four Spanish words he taught me.

“My dad is coming on Thursday,” I said. “Can you come then?”

“El Jueves, si,” Jesus said.

“Hu-way-vay what?” I asked. 

“Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday ... Jueves,” he said. “Su padre viene el Jueves.”

“Yes, yes; that’s it,” I said. I was jumping up and down now. “So you will come and play for my dad?”

“Si, si,” Jesus said.

All week I told my friends, “Jesus is coming to my house Thursday night,” and again no one believed me. 

“How do you know?” they asked. 

“Because I talked to him and he told me.” 

“Sure, we’ve heard that one before.” 

I invited my pastor to come over to meet Jesus, and I invited Dustin’s commanding officer and his family. When I told Dustin, he looked scared. “You told our pastor that Jesus is coming to our house?” he said. “What makes you think Jesus will come? He didn’t come on Saturday night.” 

Still, I believed. 

At 10 o’clock on Thursday night, my pastor, Dustin’s CO and his family, my dad and our children all sat awkwardly staring at one another while a clock ticked noisily in the kitchen. 

“Jesus isn’t coming,” Dustin said. 

“He is. He is,” I insisted. 

People darted their eyes, trying to avoid mine. What we had here was a room full of believers and non-believers. One by one, they started to go home. They patted Dustin on the back and frowned sympathetically as they left. “Did you ever talk to Jesus?” someone asked Dustin. 

And he said, No.

Everyone nodded in a knowing way. 

At 11 o’clock, my dad went upstairs to read the boys a bedtime story. I cleaned up toys in the playroom. Then the front door opened and I heard Jesus say, “Guadalajara, Guadalajara.” The trumpet sounded and the violin played. I raced downstairs and found four men in el charro standing in my living room. It was almost 11:30 p.m. My dad came down the stairs, a look of apprehension all over his face. At first the boys didn’t even join us. By this point, they had grown accustomed to their mother speaking Spanish on the phone, waiting for Jesus, and hanging out with men dressed in tight black pants with tassels. 

My heart soared with happiness as the band played. I smiled and tapped my foot uncontrollably. Until I realized, with a great sense of dread, that I would not be able to explain this in the morning. I mean, how exactly does one say, “Jesus came just as soon as you left! He was here! I saw him with my own eyes!” without sounding like a freak. I suppose, however, I could have just smiled and explained it in Spanish.