Abuela's Altar

`I WAS NOT THE FIRST CHILD TO COME FROM A FAMILY THAT HID ITS WORSHIP OF AFRICAN GODS AND GODDESSES AND PRACTICED ITS RELIGION IN SECRET.'

I did not know I was born into a family that practiced Espiritismo and Santeria until I was an adult and had children of my own. When I was growing up, my mother, father and grandmother kept their prayers to their ancestors and the worship of their divinities behind doors that were closed to me. Still, evidence of Santeria divinities filled our home. My mother prayed to the orishas, the gods and goddesses of creation, almost every day. My father called upon the powers of the spirits when my mother fell ill. And my grandmother, mi abuela, maintained one of the most beautiful altars to an orisha I have ever seen.

I was not the first child to come from a family that disguised its worship of African gods and goddesses and practiced its religion in secret. The Moreno family was one of thousands, all of whom were born to generations of Africans in the Americas who hid their beliefs behind images of the captors' religions, masking their orishas with the Faces of their enslavers' saints. For this reason, my ancestors' religion came to be known as Santeria, the Way of the Saints.

My family lived in a two-bedroom apartment in a drab gray-brick tenement building on East 102nd Street in New York City. Although it was a modest apartment, our few rooms glowed with the warm colors of the tropics and brilliant portraits of Catholic saints. For a long time we were the only Puerto Ricans in the building, but later other Puerto Rican and African-American families joined the Italian families already living there. Three of the apartments in the building were rented by my family members: We lived in number seven, my mother's sister and her Family lived in number two, and my abuela lived in apartment number three.

My abuela's apartment had a calm, peaceful feeling to it. I was only 7 years old and could not explain what I felt, but each time I walked through my grandmother's door, I seemed to be entering a curious, mysterious world. The walls were painted in soft shades of white, the curtains were the deep blue of the ocean, and the rooms were filled with a lingering scent of Florida water, the poignant smell of cigars and the smoke of burning sandalwood incense. There was a tranquil quality that radiated from my grandmother as well. Luisa Correa Perez was a slightly built woman who was born in Puerto Rico in 1884, 11 years after the abolition of slavery. She dressed in loose-fitting white cotton dresses and kept her head covered with a white cotton kerchief, her hair in two braids that dangled to her shoulders. Peeking out from the collar of her dress were five beautifully colored necklaces that sparkled against her rich dark skin.

Every day when I returned home from public school, I would knock on Abuela's door. She would lovingly usher me in to taste her homemade Puerto Rican candies, then she would take me into her sacred room. Within it was a towering image of St. Michael the Archangel; the mural dominated the room. Below was an altar laden with statues of other Catholic saints, an Indian chief, a Gypsy woman and African men and women. I was intrigued by the lifelike miniature features of the figurines. In the dimly lit room, they appeared to breathe and move ever so slightly as they acknowledged my presence.

On those afternoons, as Abuela tended her altar, I watched from the corner. Abuela's white cotton dress seemed to disappear into the white of the walls, and her dark skin appeared to be floating as she lit candles and arranged flowers on the long rectangular table before the mural of the archangel. How carefully she refilled seven glasses with cool water, placing them on yet another table covered with an immaculate white lace cloth. The colorful flowers and statues held a gentle radiance. The candlelight flickered on the water glasses, creating a jeweled, stained-glass luster. The whole room was a dance of swirling, inviting colors, the altar vibrating with an energy I could not quite understand.

Many years later, while attending spiritual sessions in Cuba, I would discover that these were Abuela's ancestor tables--her homage to our family's ancestral spirits and her religion's orishas. Her statues disguised the images of Yoruba spirits who had survived the terrible experience of the Middle Passage and entered the Americas in the hearts and souls of enslaved Africans. Our elders ingeniously hid the spirits and orishas behind Catholic images, imbuing them with characteristics similar to their own African gods and goddesses. I have since understood that Abuela, born in a period when practitioners of African religions were imprisoned and persecuted for their beliefs, continued to camouflage her African religion with Catholic images to protect her divinities from hostile prying eyes. But if she did not speak explicitly of her beliefs to me, Abuela took advantage of my afternoon visits to perform basic rituals, and these began my instruction in the religion she loved.

It took me more than 22 years of exploration to reconnect with the sacred practices of my abuela. Even now I am often questioned about my decision to become an initiate of Santeria, a religion that has been misrepresented and maligned by mainstream religions and the media. People of African origin, influenced by negative views of Santeria, approach me cautiously, fearing I may cast a brujo, a spell, on them. While they admire my cultural pride in my Afro-Puerto Rican heritage and my courage in defying the popular misconceptions about Santeria, deep in their hearts they still doubt the benign beauty of their own sacred traditions. To them, I can only repeat what a wise woman once told me: "No one knows how water gets into a coconut. Yet we know it is there. Accept that you have an inner spirit that is the voice of the Almighty who will guide and protect you." And I also say to them: There are many spiritual paths to be taken. Santeria is only one of them. But Santeria was my abuela's path. And Santeria is mine.

Marta Moreno Vega, Ph.D., is the founder of the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute and Amigos del Museo del Barrio.

ESSENCE BEST-SELLERS

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. Not a Day Goes By by E. Lynn Harris (Doubleday, $19.95)

2. For the Love of Money by Omar R. Tyree (Simon & Schuster, $24)

3. Far From the Tree by Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant (St. Martin's Press, $24.95)

4. Blind Ambitions by Lolita Files (Simon & Schuster, $23)

5. Liar's Game by Eric Jerome Dickey (Dutton, $23.95)

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. The Debt: What America Owes Blacks by Randall Robinson (Dutton, $23.95)

2. Take Me to the River by Al Green and Davin Seay (HarperEntertainment, $25)

3. The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography by Sidney Poitier (HarperCollins, $26)

4. Maximize the Moment by T.D. Jakes (Putnam, $19.95)

5. Whatever Happened to Daddy's Little Girl? by Jonetta Baras (One World/Ballantine, $25)

PAPERBACK FICTION

1. The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah (Pocket Books, $6.99)

2. The Maintenance Man by Michael Baisden (Fireside, $13)

3. Always and Forever by Beverly E. Jenkins (Signet, $5.99)

4. Cheaters by Eric Jerome Dickey (Signet, $6.99)

5. Lookin' for Luv by Carl Weber (Kensington, $14)

PAPERBACK NONFICTION

1. Teens Can Make It Happen by Stedman Graham (Simon & Schuster, $14)

2. The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson with introduction by Jawanza Kunjufu (African-American Images, $9.50)

3. African-American Males in School by Vernon C. Polite and James Earl Davis (Teachers College, $23.95)

4. Yesterday, I Cried by Iyanla Vanzant (Fireside, $13)

5. In the Meantime by Iyanla Vanzant (Fireside, $13)

ABOUT THIS LIST: ESSENCE Best-sellers are based on reports of retail sales nationwide. Respondents are at Black bookstores that will be listed here through April 2001.

REPORTING STORES: Haneef's Bookstore (Wilmington, DE), Afro-American Book Stop (New Orleans), Brownstone Books (Brooklyn), Alkebulan Images (Nashville), Jokae's African-American Books (Dallas), The Black Bookworm (Fort Worth, TX), Ourstory (Plainfield, NJ), Apple Book Center (Detroit), Karibu Books (Hyattsville, MD), Black Images Book Bazaar (Dallas), The Hue-Man Experience (Denver), A Different Booklist (Toronto), Medu Bookstore (Atlanta), Books for Thoughts (Tampa), Afrocentric Bookstore (Chicago), X-pression Bookstore & Gallery (Indianapolis), Roots & Wings (Montgomery, AL), Black Classics (Mobile, AL), Truth Bookstore (Southfield, MI), Nu-World of Books (Beaumont, TX).

From The Altar of My Soul by Marta Moreno Vega. Copyright [C] 2000 by Marta Moreno Vega, Ph.D. Published by arrangement with The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Essence Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group