Magnolia City (44 page)

“Pencil wasn’t dark enough,” Cora said when Hetty asked. She described how gloomy the place was except for the floors that the sisters kept so highly polished. The girls weren’t allowed to talk in the hallways, so they were always utterly silent except for the swishing of the nuns’ habits, the nuns who emerged out of the shadows unexpectedly, starched and frowning. The brick walls rose all around, locking them in, the saints keeping watch from their
nichos
.

Hetty lit one of the Luckies and let its smoke rise in the air like incense to ward off evil.

“If we slipped into our secret sisters’ language and spoke a word of Spanish, the nuns would rap our hands with a ruler. It really hurt.”

“You couldn’t speak Spanish!”

“The first thing they do is take your language away. We used to steal toilet paper and write notes to each other in Spanish late at night. Then we’d flush them in the morning.”

“Oh,
Tía,
how sad.” Hetty took a long drag off the cigarette.

“Sad but true. They’d rather minister to rich Anglos, not to us humble devotees of the
Virgen de Guadalupe
. We were sent to All Saints to have the dirty Mexican scrubbed out of us. All Saints was short for All Saints of Ireland Convent and Academy and the nuns were as Irish as you could get. They had us reading Shakespeare and Wordsworth and Yeats. Nella was used to the poetry the Folksinger sang.
‘Como naranja la granada, cuan dulce las gardenias. ’
How orange the pomegranates, how sweet the gardenias. Come to me, oh my love!
El amor,
that’s what was on Nella’s lips—the hot-blooded words, the sunlit words that rolled off her tongue so melodiously. But every relapse brought another stinging slap on the hand and a hiss from one of the sisters: ‘Say it in English!’ ”

“It’s like they cut out your tongue.”

“
Exactamente.
And our eyes. We were taught to see things in a whole new light, a cold Northern, Puritan light.”

Pierce held up a leather strap studded with bells, trying to get Hetty’s attention. She waved her hand back and forth. He imitated her, making the bells ring and drawing a cat out from under the sideboard. Hetty knew she should be down on the floor playing with him, but was too absorbed in what her aunt was telling her. She turned to another drawing in the sketchbook, a schoolgirl floating in the sky above the black walls of the convent. One could see the river in the background with retama trees blooming along its bank. It didn’t look like Nella. This girl was taller and more angular. “Is this you?”

“Yes. My analyst was very interested in that drawing. He saw it as an image of disassociation.”

“I wondered how you coped.”

“That’s how. I think the disassociation saved me. I read a lot of books, went elsewhere in my mind.” Cora sighed.

“But Mamá couldn’t do that, could she?”

Cora shook her head, then rang the bells that Pierce had brought over to her. He began pulling the leather strap across the carpet, playing chase with two cats. Hetty turned back to the sketchbook, to the dark swirls of India ink. She could see the black place where Cora’s story was headed and dreaded going there, but couldn’t resist hearing more. She stubbed out her cigarette. “No floating for Nella?”

“She simply couldn’t do that.” Cora raised her hands into the air. “She lived too much in the moment. Heartsick with love, she withdrew and became sullen. Her personality changed. She rarely said anything in class, until the final block of lessons in the spring.

“Officially they were called ‘political science,’ but really it was just another way for the sisters to inoculate us with their particular strain of Texas history. We only had enough girls to make up a junior and senior group, and we were all together in this final session. The classes were taught by Sister Flanna, a third-generation San Antonian heavily invested in the virtues of the Texas Republic. I can still see her today. She had a flaming Irish temperament, her wimple barely concealing the fire of her red hair. In studying the formation of the Republic, we had to hear about the Battle of San Jacinto and the Fall of the Alamo.

“Sister Flanna laid the hyperbole on thick, how the little band of one hundred and fifty brave souls had held off an army of fifteen hundred until the bitter end—martyrs who had sacrificed their lives in the name of freedom and democracy. Indians and Mexicans were described as bloodthirsty savages.”

“You’re not serious!” Hetty said, nervously lighting another Lucky.

“Perfectly serious. Nella and I looked at each other amazed.”

Hetty sniggered with smoke. “I guess you’d heard a different story from Liliana?”

“
¡Claro que sí!
In fact, when all us girls were taken on a field trip to the old mission, Nella became incensed. Sister Flanna was in her glory, of course, ushering us through the hallowed rooms and describing the events that had taken place on what she described as ‘the saddest day of time.’ We gathered under the north wall, where the attackers had made their first breach and ‘poured in like sheep.’ We stood in the dark sacristy, where even children had been murdered by the Mexicans, then gazed into the small room where Bowie had been slaughtered on his very sickbed as he fought for freedom with his last breath. Something in Nella snapped at all this. She couldn’t sleep that night. The next day in class, she interrupted the lecture and proceeded to recite the Mexican version of the Fall of the Alamo.

“ ‘But, Sister Flanna,’ she said, ‘most of the men at the Alamo weren’t even native Texans. My mother told me.’

“Sister Flanna tried to point out that there weren’t any native Texans back then—that was the whole point, we had to fight for our independence.

“ ‘But the land belonged to Mexico,’ Nella retorted. ‘The Anglos were aliens living in a foreign country. Most of them were recent arrivals. And my mother said they broke every treaty they made with Mexico.’ ”

“Yes!” Hetty raised her cigarette in the Statue of Liberty pose.

“It was gutsy, all right. But that didn’t stop Sister Flanna. A beatific smile dawned on her face. This was exactly the opportunity she’d been looking for to explain the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. She pontificated for a full fifteen minutes, then ended with, ‘It was God’s will, you see.’

“ ‘The Mexicans didn’t think so,’ Nella said, and got a laugh from the whole class.”

“I love my mamá!” Hetty said, lowering the Lucky and taking a furious drag.

“Patiently, Sister Flanna explained how the Mexicans were tyrants and that the Americans were fighting in the name of democracy. She raised her chin high and said, in a ringing voice, ‘They were men of honor!’

“ ‘Oh, really? My mother told me they were the dregs of society. That Travis deserted a wife and two children, then committed homicide. Is that true?’

“Sister Flanna didn’t quite know how to respond to this.

“ ‘And that Davy Crockett also deserted his family to go fortune hunting. And that Bowie was a pirate and slave-runner and had a terrible reputation as a brawler—’

“The sister tried to point out that he’d invented the Bowie knife, but Nella was not to be stopped now. She forged on: ‘And that so many undesirable characters began to pour into Texas seeking quick riches that the Mexicans had to cut off any further immigration. Isn’t that true?’

“The nun’s face grew as red as her hair. What Nella was saying was blasphemy. It was bad enough she was speaking up in class without permission and being the unruly ‘Mexican’—but on top of that she was disputing her teacher, striking at the very roots of Texas history and pride. A third-generation San Antonian couldn’t allow this.”

“What did she do to Mamá?”

“Put her in the crucifix pose.”

“Oh,” Hetty said, looking up at the painting.

“She made Nella stand holding heavy books in her outstretched arms while she recited ten Our Fathers. Most girls never made it, but Nella refused to give in. She finished the ten recitations even though her arms were shaking at the end. This was done in front of the class, of course.”

Hetty couldn’t imagine her mother enduring such trials. “How did she react?”

“Nella was quiet for the rest of the day. She sat at her desk, feeling shamed, hugging herself with her aching arms. I prayed it was over.”

Pierce pulled himself up on the trunk, looking for a new toy. Hetty retrieved the xylophone and handed him the mallets. He started banging away on it.

“Unfortunately, it wasn’t. Word got out to the other teachers. All the girls were talking about it. An epidemic of disobedience swept through the school like measles. The Mother Superior grew alarmed. She and another nun joined Sister Flanna in class the next morning and demanded that Nella recant what she’d said. When she refused, the Mother Superior insisted that Sister Flanna use a more severe form of discipline—the kneeling station.”

Oh, the knees.
Jarring notes from the xylophone scraped at Hetty’s ears as she waited to hear what came next.

“It was a little shrine at the back of the classroom where you were sent to do penance. You were forced to raise your skirt, roll down your stockings, and kneel with bare knees on pebbles while you recited a rosary.”

Hetty remembered the flash of a kimono closing and Nella hiding her knees in shame.
So this is where it started?
“But Mamá didn’t cave in, did she?”

“Wait a minute,
sobrina
. You have to realize that a rosary takes about twenty minutes. Have you ever tried to kneel on rocks?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s very painful. These weren’t smooth pebbles. They were little river rocks the sisters gathered out of Río San Antonio.”

“Oh,” was all Hetty could say, beginning to sense the gravity of the situation.
Still.

“Usually, you only had to recite one or two rosaries, but Sister Flanna wasn’t going to absolve Nella until she recanted. I sat frozen in my seat, horrified. I could hear her voice behind me droning away during lessons—all day long—‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee . . .’”

Cora paused and swallowed hard.
Bang! Bang!
Hetty wanted in the worst way to get up and go take the mallets away from her son. Each jangle hit her nerves with a jolt. But she could only sit there on the sofa appalled, trying to imagine how many days it would take to push someone over the edge. “So,” she finally asked. “How long . . . ?”

When Cora finally turned to Hetty to speak, there were tears in her eyes. “She was there three days.”

“Three days!” Hetty lost her breath for a moment. “That’s torture.”

Cora’s voice thinned out with grief. “Poor thing. I was the one who had to dress her knees at night. They were all cut up. And then to have to kneel again the next day, when the old wounds would start bleeding again. I begged her to give in, but she refused. She simply couldn’t refute what she knew to be the truth. Her very soul was at stake.”

Hetty stood up impatiently, went over, and fished a hand puppet of a witch out of the chest. She knelt, tore the mallets out of Pierce’s hands, and laid the puppet in his lap before he could protest. Hetty lunged back onto the sofa and turned to her aunt, frowning. “Go on.”

“I offered to kneel for her, but Sister Flanna would have none of it. Nella had to atone for her sins. I tried to negotiate a truce. I implored my sister to relent. I offered to write a confession that she wouldn’t even have to read, just sign. I petitioned the Mother Superior, but she only slapped my hand and scolded me for interfering. Each day, I felt I was losing Nella more and more.”

“At least she didn’t back down.” Pierce dropped the puppet, stood at the edge of the coffee table, and reached for the mallets. Hetty shook her head no. She stuffed them into her purse. He whined.

“She held up pretty well until the other students joined in the shaming. Like any girls’ school, All Saints had little cliques. There were lots of Anglo girls, of course, and an especially hateful group of Germans. Because Nella was being made an example, they started picking on her. They called her cunt in three languages. The German girls would walk to the pencil sharpener at the back of the class and whisper
‘Dumme Fotze’
to Nella as they passed. The other Hispanics started shouting
‘Cara de chocha’
at her in the hallways and giggling. That was the one that stuck.
Chocha
became her nickname ever after.”

“Cunt was her nickname?”

Cora nodded. “We would hear girls whispering outside our room at night, with a shouted
‘Me cago en ti’
as they ran down the hall.”

“I shit . . . over you?”

“This on top of the physical pain she was in. We actually found feces in her bed the second night.”

Hetty could only stare at Cora with her mouth open.

“I know. It was dreadful for me. When I escorted her to the kneeling station the third day, I felt so desperate. There was blood on the rocks. By lunch, it was running down her calves. It just got worse and worse, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. That was the hard part”—Cora choked up—“I couldn’t help her!”

The tears turned into weeping as Cora dredged up the old sorrows. Pierce crawled over to her and pulled himself up on her knees. Her sobs upset him, and he started crying, too. She pulled him up into her arms, and they wept together for a while. Hetty took the baby and rocked him until he stopped. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said. “They stole Nella away from you.”

“No . . . it was like she fell into—a deep well.”

“Oh,” Hetty said. “The painting.”

“Yes,” Cora continued in a ragged voice. “I had to watch her sink into that blackness. I could hear her voice changing as she recited the rosaries. Her resolve crumbled, and the words became a crazed whisper. ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners.’ ”

Hetty felt a kind of horror gripping her with a cold hand. The well’s gravitational pull was strong. “Poor Nella. They broke her.”

“Sí.”
Cora nodded. “The next morning, a totally humiliated child stood before the political science class at the All Saints Academy for Girls and read her recantation in a dull, lifeless voice. That was the end of it.”