All this time, Salvador had only been grinning, but now he laughed. "Look," he said, turning to the priest, "I know you've never been married, Father, so you don't really understand what's going on. But believe me, to tell any woman, who's alive and breathing, that she must obey is so ridiculous that only men who've never married in one hundred generations would have ever come up with such an ignorant idea! Of course, she doesn't have to obey me! She never has in fifty years, so why in the hell would I be stupid enough to think that it was going to be any different now?"
***
"But mama, Luisa has a point," Salvador was saying with gusto, "if you're so close to God, then why is it that you're so ugly?"
"UGLY, ME?" yelled the old woman, laughing so loud that it even startled Lupe in the next room. "Why, mi hijito, don't you know?" she shouted. "I am the STANDARD from which all beauty is measured! If it wasn't for me, there'd be no beautiful people! Why, coming down the street what do people say - and sometimes even aloud - 'look at that dirty, ugly, little, old woman.' But in truth, they are saying, 'hey, I look pretty good and young compared to her.' I make their day! I put a smile on their face! Why, the rich, arrogant, beautiful people of this world would all be lost without me! I am the BASIS of all BEAUTY!"
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