The Sisterhood (20 page)

August 1527

Though it has been four years, whenever the bell at the gate rings we pause in our work or prayer, hoping that at last it is a messenger bringing a letter from our mission. Instead the bell has rung because the summer has brought a great number of pilgrims and sick people. They say the plague has returned in the cities and we have many penitent pilgrims who fear the illness is God’s punishment for their wickedness. Both the men’s and women’s hostels are overflowing and we pray most will recover before the roads are no longer passable and we have many more mouths to feed for the winter. It is the harvest season and all are hard at work from sunrise. The Abbess works as hard as any of the younger nuns. In addition to nursing in the infirmary, yesterday she was busy gathering onions and garlic to lay in straw in the cellars, and preserving our last under-ripe peaches in honey. But she grew breathless and was persuaded at last to leave this work to others.

June 1530

Hope for our mission is extinguished altogether. Each spring the Abbess has sent village men to inquire among the ships’ captains in the harbor in Seville for what they know of Gran Canaria and a convent there of the Order of the Holy Sisters of Jesus. But though many sailors know Gran Canaria, none have anything to tell our messengers and say that our party have certainly been taken by pirates or drowned in a shipwreck. The whole convent mourns their loss.

October 1538

Yesterday a pilgrim came who claims to be an artist and swears to recompense us for his keep with a painting. This, we know from experience, means that he intends to stay a long time, as these paintings take months. The Abbess groaned that the number of penitent artists donating their work to the convent was truly marvelous—they must all lead very wicked lives. And as the paintings are usually terrible, the penance is usually ours. The Abbess says that most of it would send Salome into fits of laughter. Yet she feels we must hang it all somewhere. A few find their way to the walls of the
sala grande
, but most are hung in the darkest and oldest corridors. The Abbess insists only portraits may hang in the locution parlor and as there are few of these she is spared the worst.

March 1539

The sweet smell of
polvorónes
fills the convent night and day. The court has ordered a great many for
Semana Santa
, and wealthy families follow suit. All the sisters and beatas are taking it in turns to cook them, and the kitchen maids keep busy stoking the oven round the clock. I help in the kitchen as much as I am able. At least it is warm by the ovens, though standing makes my back ache.

September 1539

The swallows have flown away for the winter. My hands grow stiff and I often find it difficult to hold the pen. I think often on my sins, and notice the grayness of everything—the clouds, the weather, the dying light of autumn.

Spring 1540

Easter approaches again, the long dark days of the Lenten fast draw to an end, snow melts, and though it is very cold, in the cloister the sun warms the bones of elderly nuns like me while the convent waits for the warm wind to bring the swallows back from Africa. The Abbess has not been well this winter, and spends most
of her time propped in a chair in front of her
locutio
. I divide my time between the scriptorium in the morning and assisting her in the afternoons with the day-to-day business of the convent. The Abbess’s younger sister, recently widowed, has come to live at the convent as a lay sister. This beata, Sor Emmanuela, has made over all the wealth she inherited from her husband to us, and I have been cataloging her fortune and property.

I am often short of breath and I do not believe it will be long before I join the nuns laid to rest in a cave behind the convent, like the early Christians in the catacombs of Rome. And one of the orphan girls will fill my shoes. I long for a competent assistant.

Las Golondrinas Convent, Spain, Spring 2000

“Girls! So many girls in the convent at once! Girls better then!” Grumbling about modern girls and hobbling surprisingly fast, Sor Teresa led the way back through the convent’s shadowy passages toward Menina’s room where lunch was waiting.

Menina made her offer of help. “Really, Sor Teresa, you can’t keep bringing meals to my room. Let me eat with the nuns. I can help cook and wash dishes. At home I—”

“No!” Sor Teresa shook her head stubbornly, reverting to her combination of English and Spanish. “Pilgrims stay, we must take care of them. Nuns’ custom, we eat always by ourselves, and hear a sister read from a holy book. If we talk, is about convent business, is not for outsiders. In the old days, when pilgrims came, there was a room for the men pilgrims to eat and another for the women, and men and women listened to the holy books at meals, just like the nuns. Now no pilgrims, we put broken furniture in those rooms. Water is coming in, roof will fall down soon.” Sor Teresa shrugged despondently. “But we feed you, don’t worry.”

Menina exclaimed “Men? You allowed men in the convent?”

“Oh, poor men, sick men, dying men, men with penances,
pilgrims
, yes. They are separated from the women, separate refectory, separate door into the chapel, separate infirmary even, with a big
gate. Gate is locked. Same thing in the chapel. So they can worship, pray, hear Mass, not see the women who the nuns nurse in women’s infirmary. Lay sisters, the beatas, nurse the men. If they want to talk to the nuns they do it at the
locutio
, the one you see. Only if priest or friar, the Abbess saw him face-to-face.”

“Sounds kind of crazy…I mean, like a lot of trouble, keeping men and women apart,” said Menina. Though she had to admit, however crazy it sounded, separation of the sexes suited her fine just now.

“Is no men pilgrims now. Bah!” Sor Teresa shook her head emphatically. “Men not so good today as before. Not so good then either, is why so many have to come here and repent. But they repent. These days people very bad, don’t repent. Don’t worry about sins. Don’t think about God, they think God is not watching them. They forget their religion. They forget their duty. Their families. Get big ideas. Then who knows what they do.”

Ahead of Menina, Sor Teresa suddenly stopped in the middle of her diatribe, supporting herself with a frail hand on the wall as if she needed to catch her breath, or something hurt.

“Even Alejandro forget. He was altar boy, carried the images at
Semana Santa
. His father was old Republican, policeman here, had many children, hated the church, would not speak to the priest. But his wife, Alejandro’s mother, she insist the children are baptized, confirmed. She is a good girl even if she marry a man who hates the church. Then children grow up, one, then another, come to the convent to say good-bye to Tia, say is too old-fashioned here, no good jobs. They go to Madrid, to Zaragosa, three go in Salamanca, one girl go to London for university and then is meeting a man, gets married.”

“And Alej…the captain, why didn’t he go?”

“Alejandro, the baby, is the last. He is born when his mother thinks there will be no more children. Ha! She is surprised. But
she die when he is five years old, and when he is eighteen his father comes to me to ask, what to do with Alejandro. He is very clever in school, learn English, he find there is a way he can go to United States to school for one year, live with American policeman family. Then come home. I think this is not good idea but his father does not listen. And when Alejandro goes there is girl in the family, he like her very much. And after one year he tell his father, he will not come home yet, he will study in United States, is scholarship he can get for police college. Alejandro’s father is very proud, says is big chance to study in America. He sit at
locutio
and tell me he will give permission, but I warn him no, do not give last child permission, he will stay in America. But Alejandro’s father does not listen again, and he is sorry.”

Menina thought anyone who refused to listen to Sor Teresa might well be sorry. She wouldn’t waste time telling them why.

“Alejandro is there for five years. He is only coming home two times. Every year, his father thinks, now, he will come home and stay. But when Alejandro finishes the studies, his father is sad. Alejandro will stay in America. He can be policeman there, can marry his American wife. And then his father is dying. Alejandro comes home then and he is ashamed now, that he has left his father for so long. He promise his father he will stay. But when he does this, something is different…Alejandro is policeman, yes, but not policeman like his father. I think maybe, he learned bad things in America.”