Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

Ramón García
Passion Play
Christ is a teenage Mexican boy in a wig,
thin, unshaven, in a faux crown of thorns.
Surrounding him, the women of Judea
are girls from the church’s youth group;
they wear Technicolor biblical dresses and
turban-like shawls à la Hollywood Mary
Magdalene. Pontius Pilate, in a white bedsheet
toga and Gap sandals, orders Jesus’
death. The parking lot of St. Jude Church
becomes the streets of Jerusalem, the Via
Dolorosa where Roman soldiers—pubertystricken
boys in skirts—flog Jesus with
black leather whips. The Son of God, fake
blood running from fake wounds, falls in
anguish once again as he’s lead to
Golgotha, a mound of dirt beyond the
parking lot. The girls follow, simulating
grief; they kneel to recite New Testament
passages, hiding girlish giggles behind
their colorful shawls of sorrow. Then the
soldiers rope Christ’s wrists to his wooden
cross and hoist him up under the skies of
the suburbs. “Lord, why hast thou
forsaken me?” the boy mutters. Mary,
Martha, and Magdalene lift woeful eyes at
the martyred brown boy in a loosened
loincloth revealing the toned limbs of a
soccer player: Oh, symbol of salvation!
The girls’ theatrics stop and pose into
tableau—the audience claps.
Crab Orchard Review ◆ 69