A Face on the Blue Stucco Wall

The last appearance of the Virgin Mary in Los Angeles turned out to be a fungus disease.

An image of the weeping lady materialized on a Chinese elm tree in North Hollywood a year ago, and it was seen by hundreds of believers until an arborist came up with the disease explanation.

Specifically, he said the face of the Virgin was a discoloration of the bark and the weeping was sap caused by the tree’s ailment.

Those who had been lining up for days to get a glimpse of the apparition grumbled their resentment, pocketed their rosary beads and went home to await another vision of the Virgin on something other than a diseased tree.

Well, I have good news for them today. She’s back.

Mary is currently appearing on the exterior stucco wall of a modest duplex apartment on 103rd Street in Inglewood. It is not far from Hollywood Park racetrack, where miracles hardly ever occur, especially at the $2 window.

She has been there since mid-February and is attracting a growing number of devotees who gather to pray, leave flowers, light candles and gaze reverently at the blue stucco wall.

They see the Virgin Mary with a star-spangled shawl over her head. I see only dark smudges, possibly caused by water stains from recent storms.

“You don’t see Mary?” a woman said to me in a tone of utter amazement when I dropped by the other day.

I shook my head no. I often don’t see or hear what others do. It drives my wife crazy. “You can’t hear that clatter?” she says, waking me at night. “Go check.”

I get out of bed and drag myself downstairs, where the cat has just tipped over the stove. “I found it,” I say. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s right there in the middle of the wall,” the lady in Inglewood said. Her name was May Magama. “Stand over here and look at it from this angle.”

The occupants of the house have turned their front yard into a shrine, with a wooden cross and tables filled with flowers and votive candles.

Magama led me to a corner of the yard, where I could view the image of the Virgin at an oblique angle. I still couldn’t see anything but dark smudges.

“She’s so clear,” Magama said incredulously. “Another image is beginning to appear. It could be a child. Can you see that?”

A small crowd was gathering around me. Two young men looked like gangbangers. One of them had been kneeling before the wall a few minutes earlier, praying. Now both of them were staring at me in a hostile manner, waiting for my answer.

I squinted at the wall, shaded my eyes, cocked my head and nodded solemnly, keeping the gang members in sight. “Now that’s really something,” I said. They took that to mean I had seen the Virgin Mary. That satisfied them. They crossed themselves and left. There was shooting to be done after prayer.

A man named Johnny Turner wasn’t fooled. He’d been watching me and said, “You still can’t see it.” It was a statement, not a question. I said no. “Come back after 6:30,” he said. “That’s when it’s the clearest.”

“Four in the morning is the best time,” Magama added. “I saw the Virgin at Mojave once at four in the morning. Her face was in the sky. Flowers fell all around me.”

“Is my name going to be in the paper?” Turner asked. I said yes. “I’ve never had my name in the paper before,” he said. It was another miracle.

I have been following reports of religious sightings since I was a young reporter in Oakland. The first time was a man who had seen the face of Jesus in a banana squash.

I couldn’t see anything then either, but I came away with new respect for banana squash.

In Inglewood, I asked May Magama and Johnny Turner what they thought an appearance of the Virgin means. Personally, I feel it has something to do with the Academy Awards presentation.

“It means peace and an end to fighting everywhere,” Magama said.

“It means the end of the world is coming,” Turner said.

I knocked on the door of the house, but no one was home. Magama, who is a neighbor, explained that they never answer the door anymore. A sign in the window says, “We do not accept money.”

In other sightings, vendors have cashed in by selling Lady of Light T-shirts. Crowds have been so huge that police have been called in to direct traffic. Outdoor toilets had to be set up.

No such problem exists on 103rd Street. I called the LAPD and they don’t know nothing about no virgins in Inglewood.

With Easter just around the corner, I suspect the crowds will grow. That’s all right. Everyone needs something. They have Mary. I have banana squash.

I went back to 103rd Street after dark. They still looked like smudges to me.