Read The Mortifications for Free Online Page A

looking as if she might vomit into her lap. Ulises was tempted to go to the nun at one point, but Isabel was summoned to the stand to receive her plaque—the number of her volunteer hours, 944, etched onto the brass plate—and to lead the small audience in a closing prayer.
    However, Isabel did no such thing. Plaque in hand, and speaking clearly into the microphone, Isabel said: I’m wasting my time with those bedpans. It’s the dying who need me, not the lazy candy stripers. I am finished with these chores, which I think is fair, considering the hours on this plaque. From now on, I’ll only visit with the terminally ill or those painfully on the brink. They don’t want fresh pillows or clean floors or to watch TV. They want to die, and it’s my responsibility to help them do so.
    Sister B promptly vomited. Ulises’s shirt tore, and the room drew a collective breath.
    The earth,
Ulises whispered to no one,
was without form and void.
It was a verse he remembered from Genesis that had syntactically troubled him for some time. Was it that Earth was without form
and therefore void
? Or was Earth without form and also—paradoxically—
without void
? But watching Sister B cover her mouth, seeing the old nun stifle the noise of her vomiting, it seemed perfectly clear that the line meant what it said, that in the moment before the universe was born—though to say that itself was also ridiculous, there being supposedly no moments before God’s Universe, before God’s Time—what was there was less than nothing, because nothing was an idea, was a presence, and God had not yet created it through the manifestation of its exact opposite, something.
    And though the moment Ulises endured just then was rife with sounds and somethings—the muffled gurgling of Sister B, the droning soda machines along the cafeteria’s eastern wall, the PA system paging doctor so-and-so, a tapping foot, the legs of a chair scraping linoleum—what was the same was the terrifying threat of a voice disturbing the halted second; the terrible idea that an awful or awesome noise would eventually flood the vacuum, and what followed could not be undone. The idea that the world could not be unmade. Ulises reached for his mother’s hand, but Soledad’s palms were pressed to her neck. She was saying something he could barely make out. Her lips moved in a whisper: Oh, shit.
    It was a community reporter who spoke next, jumping out of her chair and asking, Does the hospital endorse this sort of behavior, Miss Encarnación? Are the hospital and the church now advocating assisted suicide? How many people have you already helped kill themselves?
    The last question inspired the rest of the audience to their feet, and the head of the nursing staff rushed to Isabel’s side, trying in vain to speak through the microphone over the din of the crowd.
    Please take your seats, she said. Please take your seats. Please take your seats.
    The administrator who had organized the event shouted over the head nurse, No one has been killed!, which accomplished nothing. He shouted, That’s not what she meant!
    Naturally someone shouted back, What did she mean? How does she help the dying?
    Who is in charge of the hospital volunteers? the community reporter asked. Who oversees their efforts? Has anyone witnessed what she does with the patients? How many victims are we talking about? Are there other volunteers like her? How many?
    A woman said, My mother is upstairs and has cancer.
    My cousin’s brother-in-law was in a car accident, a man said. He has a tube in his throat in the ICU.
    Someone said, God save us.
    The community reporter cried, Are the nuns trained to kill? Do they have medical backgrounds? How liable is the Church?
    Isabel moved away from the podium, and the hospital administrator reached out to grab her by the arm. Watching, Soledad screamed, and Ulises returned to the world, rushing to his sister’s side. The administrator, perhaps realizing Ulises’s height