Toward That Which is Beautiful

by Marian O'Shea Wernicke

  “Well, I see it’s Sister Mary Katherine again,” she whispers.

  They both glance at Diane, sprawled on her stomach next to Sheila, her mouth open as she sleeps on.

  “Sheila, I need to leave. You’ve been wonderful to me. I don’t know how to thank you.” Kate walks over to the side of the bed and stands looking down at her.

  “God, you scare the hell out of me in that outfit. I feel as if I’m back in third grade.” Sheila swings her legs out of bed and motions Kate to the far side of the room near the windows overlooking the street. “Do you have any money?” Her eyes fix on Kate’s intently.

  “I have enough to get me to Lima. It’s time to give myself up, I guess.” She is trying for a light tone. “Tell Diane I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye.” She stops, afraid she will cry if she says any more. She wants to seem to be in control of herself.

  Sheila presses a card into her hand. When she glances at it, Kate sees that it is the address of the Peace Corps office in La Paz. Sheila looks embarrassed as she says, “I never really knew a nun before, Kate. You seem very human, maybe too human to be a nun. I wish you luck, whatever you decide.”

  Kate hugs her then, and Sheila puts her arms around her gingerly, as if afraid she will break. Kate grabs the jacket she took from Peter’s car and slips out of the room without a sound.

  Downstairs the lobby is still dark. But as she reaches the wide front doors, a figure emerges from the gloom. It is Pepe, and his eyes gleam as he sees her dressed again in the habit. She whispers to him, “Pepe, I’m going to need to catch a bus to town. Do you know when the next bus today will be passing?”

  Pepe nods his head sadly. “Que pena, madrecita, there will be no buses for another hour or so. It is not yet six o’clock.” Then he stops and turns to her with a grin. “The señora isn’t even up. I don’t think she’d mind if I ran you into town. I’ll bring the car around to the front. You wait outside on the steps, madrecita.” Before she can object he has disappeared down the hall. His sandals make no noise on the stone floor.

  Kate unlocks the door, pulling back the great iron bolts, one by one. The morning is fresh and clear. The sun has not risen yet, but the sky is reddening in the east. Soon Kate hears the crunch of tires on the gravel, and a red Chevrolet pulls up to the porch. Pepe is dwarfed behind the wheel. Kate hopes he can see over the steering wheel to drive. She peers in at him. “Pepe, are you sure la señora won’t be angry?” She is worried about the señora. She did not seem very friendly, and Kate suspects that Pepe is taking a big risk.

  “Don’t worry, madre.” He motions for her to get in.

  Pepe drives fast. Kate sees he loves handling the great powerful car. He speeds by the other cars and trucks on the road at a terrifying pace, and Kate worries that they will be stopped by any police out at this hour. How will it look? A runaway nun and a servant in the borrowed car of his employer. She seems to have a knack lately for getting into dangerous situations. In fifteen minutes, Pepe is pulling up in front of the bus station in the central square in Ica. The wheels screech, and people look curiously as he runs around and hands her out as if she is royalty.

  Kate presses a few soles into Pepe’s hand, and he looks down in surprise. He shakes his head and hands them back to her without a word. His head is held high, and the stern look on his face say it would be useless to insist.

  “Thank you, Pepe.” Kate shakes his hardened brown hand. “And thank you especially for telling us about the Achirana canal. It is a beautiful place.”

  He bows to her then, and Kate feels him watching her until she enters the bus station. She says a prayer that he’ll get the car back in one piece and that the señora won’t fire him.

  There is already a line at the window with the faded gray sign: “Pisco. Lima. Chimbote.” She waits her turn nervously, counting her money twice. A ticket to Lima is 135 soles. That leaves her only fifty soles from the money Peter had slipped in the jacket. She has to go somewhere tonight in Lima. It’s the end of the road.

  The ticket agent does not even look up when she asks for a ticket to Lima.

  “Ida y vuelta?” he inquired automatically.

  “Ida, no más,” she replies. She will not be needing a return ticket. What has she done? Up until now her flight has been an adventure, a dream. Luck has been with her, as the condor she’d seen that first night promised. In Ica especially, she had been lulled into a false sense of ease. Now she is more confused and afraid than she’s been since the day she left the convent in Juliaca. Lima is a big city; she can no longer count on the “kindness of strangers,” as Blanche Dubois would say.

  What is she doing in Peru anyway? She hadn’t been prepared for this country; learning Spanish wasn’t enough. She doesn’t understand the politics. Her work in the Altiplano seems trivial in the face of great poverty. She remembers Lt. Vargas: “We alone will change Peru.”

  She buys a ticket for Lima. By seven o’clock that morning Kate is on the bus headed toward Pisco and the Pacific Ocean. They are leaving the green oasis of the valley. But as the highway heads north and west, the green gives way to great white sand dunes and she is in a desert. The landscape is moonlike, and the fine powdered rocks of desert sand blow against the windows of the bus, making sharp pinging sounds like hail. Through the dust a white chapel with two towers appears. The small crossing is marked “Pozo Santo,” Holy Well.

  By eight-thirty the bus pulls into the first stop, the station in Pisco. Kate looks out at a statue in the center of the plaza, shaded by dusty ficus trees. The station is crowded as people mill around between the buses and colectivos parked everywhere. Here the roads to Cuzco, Lima, and the South converge. Kate has never seen Cuzco and the ruins at Machu Picchu, and for a crazy moment wonders if she has enough money for a ticket there..

  She gets off the bus and follows the other passengers into the wide-roofed station. Tourists, many of them American it seems, wait in line for tours by boat and bus of the Ballestas Islands. Josepha and Jeanne had stopped here once, and they had gone out to the islands covered with guano. They told her of the terns, cormorants, penguins, and the strange blue birds called boobies. The sea around the islands was black with seals and sea lions.

  But she isn’t a tourist. She is a poor runaway who is starving. She stares at a little boy who walks by chewing a roll. She can smell coffee and feels in her pocket for the few bills she has left. She walks back outside where the vendors are squatting on the ground in front of the bus station. She buys a roll and tries to buy a single banana. An old woman squints up at her, shading her eyes from the sun.

  “Buy the whole bunch,” she urges. Her smile reveals a gap where her front teeth should have been.

  “No, gracias, señora,” said Kate. “Only one.”

  The woman’s smile fades and she looks away. “I do not sell them like that. The whole bunch or nothing.”

  Kate knows this isn’t true. Many people buy a single piece of fruit. The woman can see she is a foreigner. The fact that she is also a nun means nothing to the woman. Kate stands still a minute, trying to decide which is more important, her hunger or her desire to call the woman’s bluff. She feels a flush of anger.

  “Señora, I will buy the whole bunch. How much is it?”

  “For you, madrecita, I will only charge five soles.” Her smile has returned, and she quickly wraps the fruit in a small piece of paper. Kate murmurs her thanks, and, slowly, knowing that the woman is watching her, tears off one banana and offers the rest to a woman nearby who is nursing her baby. The young mother accepts the gift stoically, with no motion of surprise or gratitude. Kate feels a twinge of shame at her gesture of charity, which was done to spite the vendor who angered her. Well, the mother probably needs the nourishment. Or maybe she will sell the fruit for something else.

  She looks around for a place to sit and eat, when she notices the bus driver herding his passengers back in for the final push on to Lima. She runs across the street, stuffing her breakfast into the jacket. She ha
d meant to buy some coffee, but now it’s too late.

  She boards the bus and takes a seat next to a window on the left side, so she can see the ocean. Then she sees a girl walking up and down beside the bus selling sodas, passing them up to the passengers seated on the bus. She stands up and leans her head out of the window to ask for a Coke. The girl’s eyes are bright. Kate clasps her hand through the open window.

  By now the bus is full, yet the driver lets more and more people on. They crowd the aisles, leaning over the seated passengers, reading their newspapers or stooping to look out the window. Kate is starving. She turns toward the window as far as she can and tears off a piece of bread under the jacket. It is delicious, and she tries to eat slowly. The bus winds through the narrow road out of Pisco, and soon they are back on the highway. Now Kate gives in to her hunger and devours the bread and fruit, not caring who is watching her. She drinks the warm Coke slowly, forcing herself to make it last. She is so thirsty. Bodies press in on her, smells of sweat and urine, even of manure. Someone in back has live chickens in a basket. Next to her sits an older man in a shiny navy blue suit. He is thin, and holds his newspaper close to his face, once in a while peering past her out the window.

  Kate watches the gray swirling sea as it crashes into the coast. For miles she sees no one, just the restless movement of the waves. Later the sun disappears, and a gray mist covers the road and the surrounding dunes. The bus hurtles on through the fog, while the people sigh and sleep or speak in muffled tones, conversations that Kate cannot make out. She feels heavy, oppressed, and realizes that she misses the cold clarity of the high plains. There the air was clear, the mountains sharply defined making her feel buoyant, as if at any moment she could rise up off the ground and float away.

  The traffic picks up as they reach the outskirts of Lima. Trucks pass them, loaded with bags of grain and corn, the workers piled on top. Sleek American cars, long and heavy, cruise by the bus, their dark windows faceless, menacing.

  Through the bus’s misted windows, she can make out huts in clumps along the road. Soon whole stretches of flimsy straw and mud hovels appear off to the right, clinging to the sandy hills like huge beehives. Smoke rises from the makeshift villages, and the stench of fire and rot fill the bus. Now they are passing men on bicycles, farmers driving their herds of sheep and a few scraggly, lean cows. She catches a glimpse of two women in the full skirts and brown derby hats of the sierra. She turns around in her seat, but she cannot see their faces as the bus leaves them behind.

  She thinks now of Pilar, Rosario, Mercedes, the women in her afternoon group. Who had told them that the class would be canceled? How disappointed in her they must have been, after the long walk they’d had to get there. She can picture Josepha, trying to cover Kate’s work, too, left all alone in the house until Jeanne Marie’s return from Coroico. She cannot stand to think about the children, their eyes shining expectantly, waiting for her. She has been utterly selfish in her flight, wrapped in a cocoon of her troubles.

  Now it is darker, and she looks up to see that the bus is winding through clogged streets, with tall buildings blocking out the light. Lima is gray and dirty in the late afternoon. Faded posters, half ripped from the walls, are everywhere. She sees APRA in red and black letters scrawled on buildings and buses. She isn’t very clear on what APRA stands for; she knows that it is the party of the workers. Its opponents call it communist, but Tom told her it is simply the party of the disaffected, those with no power.

  Now they are in the center of Lima, heading toward the Plaza de Armas. Well-dressed women stride by in high heels and short skirts, sometimes arm in arm. She sees students and businessmen in dark suits, and everywhere, quiet and small, there are the highland people, looking forlorn in the capital.

  Before the bus comes to a stop, people stir, gather their packages and stand to stretch after the long ride. For the first time on her journey, she feels fear, heavy and real. A vague plan is forming in her mind, but she dreads the explanations she will have to give if she goes there. Somehow she has to get to the convent in Balconcillo. There is a Maryknoll parish there, and it is staffed by the Precious Blood Sisters from O’Fallon, Missouri, a small town not far from the Dominican Motherhouse in Chesterfield. Sister Josepha and Kate had stayed with the sisters from St. Louis for a few weeks when Kate arrived from the States. Has it only been six months ago? It seems a lifetime away now. Kate had liked the superior, Sister Domitia, a short, plump little nun. She was relaxed and kind, and her laughter rang out all over the house, most often at herself. If Kate showed up on her doorstep, Sister would not turn her away.

  The trouble is that she has no idea how to get to the parish. She’s pretty sure that they had taken two buses from the convent to go downtown to see about her visa, and Kate vaguely remembers that when they went back in the late afternoon, they had traveled east, away from the setting sun. Well, she would ask. Someone would help her.

  Clutching the jacket to her, Kate gets off the bus, joining the throng of people jostling on the sidewalk. As she steps down, people shove past her, trying to get on. The driver is shouting, “Despacio, slow down; take it easy.”

  The noise of the city confuses her. Buses and taxis blares their horns routinely, and cars screech around corners. Many cars don’t have mufflers, and Kate flinches as an old Plymouth belches smoke in her face. She walks blindly, hoping to see a street sign or someone she can ask for help. No one looks at her; she is invisible.

  The sidewalk is lined with ambulantes, vendors selling everything from apples and shoelaces to cheap watches and polyester shirts. Many of the vendors are from the sierra. Amid all the noise, the laughing, animated Limeños, they are impassive and stoic. Women with babies in their laps gaze at the passing throngs. The gray mist of Lima casts a pall.

  Kate crosses a bridge over red and gray stone cliffs. A trickle of water seeps through the dried up river bed. On the other side she stops to read the stone marker: Puente de Piedra. She walks on, knowing that she is lost, not thinking anymore, just moving. The neighborhood is rough. Men stand around in clumps, smoking and drinking, calling out to women as they pass. A young man, swaying, steps out of a doorway and stands directly in front of her. He looks at her for a moment, then steps aside with an exaggerated bow. “God bless the breasts that nourished you,” he mumbles, so close to her that Kate can smell the chicha on his breath. She crosses to the other side of the street where music blares from the doorways of restaurants and bars. Although it is only late afternoon, the street lamps have come on, the mist swirling in their yellow glow.

  After a few blocks she comes to a ruined garden. Between crumbling marble statues, a double avenue of old trees stretches before her. As she enters the park, the noise from the street diminishes. She walks down the middle of the avenue, her steps crunching the gravel. There are couples in the garden, lying entwined under the shade of the trees on the edge of a deep woods. She tries to make out the statues, but they have decayed into unrecognizable shapes. Finally, she comes to the end of the walk where a large gate rises up in the gloom. “Convento de los Descalzos,” the sign says. “Diez soles. Cerrado los martes.” She has come to an abandoned monastery, of Franciscans, she guesses, the shoeless ones. She doesn’t have ten soles for the tour, and she starts to laugh. Now she’s locked out of a convent, wanting to get in. The monastery is closed Tuesdays, but what day is this? She can’t remember. She passes her hand over the stone gate and feels its roughness, solid and cold. The single step in front of the gate is worn smooth. The gate is closed to her now, the monastery empty, locked shut.

  She turns away, retracing her steps through the park. Dusk is coming on quickly now, and she feels a damp chill rising from the grass. The leaves rustle in the wind, and she thinks she hears footsteps behind her. She walks faster, anxious now, toward light, people.

  The blow comes from behind. Stunned, Kate drops to her knees as an arm circles her head and a rough hand clamps her mouth shut. She does not try to scream. Hot anger
rises in her, and she scratches and claws at the hand that is gagging her.

  “Hija de la gran puta,” a voice, low and musical, his breath hot on her face. Daughter of the great whore.

  “No, Mother, Mother,” she cries out. Then she feels a sharp, slicing sting on her arm, and looks down to see fresh blood blooming like so many roses on the white field of her habit. She kneels, motionless, her eyes closed as the man searches her clothes, running his hands over her body. He finds the envelope with the few soles she has left and yanks off a small silver cross she wears under the habit. Her grandmother had given it to her when she made her first communion at St. Roch’s.

  Suddenly an image appears of herself on that day, small and blond, brushing back her hair, squinting into the sun. Her mother stands beside her, tall, in a long skirt and a hat. Her grandmother is on the other side. She, too, wears a hat with a veil and her shoes are heavy and black. Kate is surrounded by their love, as warm and real as the spring sun that casts sharp shadows on the grass. Her father must have been taking the picture. She sees it all so clearly.

  When she opens her eyes, the man is gone. Her arm stings, the blood seeping through her sleeve. She pulls back the sleeve to see the cut which is wide but not deep, and then looks around for the jacket to wrap it around her arm to stop the bleeding. It’s gone, and for some reason this loss seems unbearable.

  Kate staggers to her feet, trying to steady herself. Her knees are trembling. It’s very dark in the garden now, but she can see the street in the distance. She walks stiffly, holding her arm with her hand, pressing down hard on the wound. As she emerges from the avenue of trees into the street, she feels dizzy. A voice, young and familiar, calls to her.