The Staircase

by Ann Rinaldi

  The Staircase

  Ann Rinaldi

  * * *

  Gulliver Books • Harcourt, Inc.

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  * * *

  Copyright © 2000 by Ann Rinaldi

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Rinaldi, Ann.

  The staircase/by Ann Rinaldi.

  p. cm.

  Summary: In 1878, after her mother's death on the way west,

  thirteen-year-old Lizzy Enders is left by her father at a convent school

  in Sante Fe, where she must deal with being the only non-Catholic student

  and where she plays a part in what some consider a miracle.

  [1. Catholic schools—Fiction. 2. Schools—Fiction.

  3. Fathers and daughters—Fiction. 4. Sante Fe (N.M.)—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.R459Sp 2000

  [Fic]—dc21 00-8854

  ISBN 0-15-202430-1

  Text set in Simoncini Garamond

  Designed by Lori McThomas Buley

  C E G H F D

  Printed in the United States of America

  * * *

  In memory of my mother

  1902-1934

  1

  MY FATHER WAS digging the grave, with one arm. I watched his labors. We all did, especially Elinora, who stood beside me.

  "He ought to hang your mother between tree branches, like the Indian skeleton we saw back a ways," she said. "So the wolves don't get her."

  "My mama's not going to hang between any trees. So hush your mouth, Elinora."

  "He could bring her on with us. My uncle would give her a proper burial."

  "Santa Fe is days away yet." I wished we could bring Mama along, too, and not leave her in this godforsaken place. But I knew better than to say anything to Daddy right then. And I wasn't about to let Elinora know I agreed with her. Or hear any more about her stupid uncle, the Bishop.

  My father was breathing heavily from his efforts. Every so often he'd stop, mop his face with his dirty handkerchief, and go on. Was he wiping away tears? I tried to see but couldn't.

  I had no tears myself. We'd had a burial ceremony less than an hour ago. We'd sung Mama's favorite hymn. But the sound was weak against the rising wind, which carried it away in the vastness like a ball of tumbleweed. We'd be here forever, the way Daddy was proceeding. The indifferent reddish earth was slipping right back into the hole even as he dug.

  "Mr. Enders, you must let me help." It was Mr. French. He stepped forward. He and his wife, Ida, and their twin boys were traveling with us in their own wagon, where the boys now slept. In a third wagon were the Wades. His wife, Nancy, was only sixteen, three years older than me. And she with a baby.

  "Poco a poco," Daddy said. Little by little. He knew Spanish. He handed his shovel to Mr. French. "Damned ground is full of the dust of old bones," he said.

  Mr. French dug and dug and dug. The ground seemed to resist his efforts, as if it did not want my mother. As if it knew her time had come too soon. The sound he made digging was a soft thud. It was useless here—all sound was, even our voices. There was nothing to measure them against.

  We were insignificant in this endless country that seemed to go on forever. Only the distant mountains gave us an idea of our size. Now they were trimmed in the gold of aspens, the sky darkening behind them.

  It was the starkness of the country that had bothered Mama so much. She'd told me that in her last days as she lay feverish on her bed in the wagon as we jogged along. "There is no end to it, Lizzy," she said. "It is eternity."

  For her it was. I heard her whimpering at night when a coyote howled. Once, when we passed an old Indian wrapped and unmoving in a blanket while sitting in front of a pueblo, she clutched my hand. "He's waiting for me, Lizzy," she said.

  She died the next day, of the putrid fever. She who came from Georgia, where the days make you feel as if you are being bathed in milk. And then later, after all that Georgia business-after the war that took Daddy's arm in the Battle of Buzzard Roost Gap, after the milk turned sour for her—it was to Independence, Missouri. To the arms of her family that sheltered her so. And nearly squeezed the life out of Daddy.

  "Mr. Wade should help," Elinora whispered savagely. "Rain is coming. And you know how fast night falls."

  I knew she was wishing the whole thing over and done with for herself. She wanted supper; she wanted to get into her soft nightdress and get the best place in the wagon. She did not wish to forgo her comforts. Each night as darkness came on, she scuttled into our wagon, frightened of every shadow.

  "Hush your mouth, or I'll put a scorpion in your gravy tonight," I threatened.

  She gasped. "You would, too, you ... you—oh, if your mother hadn't just died! And here at her holy grave site you make threats!"

  "There's nothing holy about any of this," I told her.

  "For shame! Your mother's grave is holy!"

  "It's nothing of the kind. No grave is."

  "Oh, and you're such a heathen. Not even to grieve her! You need to come to school with me, Lizzy Enders. You need the Sisters of Loretto. I'm going to tell your father!"

  "You do and I'll make you sorry you ever drew breath!"

  All this went on in whispers, but Daddy must have heard some of it. He gripped my shoulder, thinking I was taken with grief. I did not yet know what grief was. That would come later. "I'm all right, Daddy," I said. He let go.

  I looked up at him, at the sharp outline of his face that had once been handsome. And at the eyes, which Mama said had once seen hell in the war and still recollected what it looked like and that's why they were so sad. I looked at the empty shirtsleeve, pinned up.

  I felt some of my old love for him rising in my breast. I had covered it over with anger when we left Independence, anger for taking me and Mama away. On different days coming west, I had tried to keep that anger, like a fire in the wind. Because it was safer than feeling anything else. Uncle William, one of grandfather's half-Indian sons, had once told me that.

  "Keep your anger if you can keep nothing else, Lizzy," he had said. "People will respect you more for anger than for tears."

  So, I was trying to keep it.

  But most of the time all I felt was confusion. How could you love and hate somebody at the same time? I did not know what I felt about my father anymore. But I knew you shouldn't be halfway in your feelings. Uncle William had said so. And you couldn't be halfway in such country as this. The shapes and colors, the unforgiving earth, the sky, the rocks, the flowering cactus, the dust storms, the sudden appearance of knee-high lilacs in the middle of all the deadness, the howling wind at night, wouldn't let you be halfway about anything.

  You had to feel something. One way or the other. It was demanded of you.

  The land changes all the time, right in front of your eyes. It's the light that changes things. You learn not to trust the light. One minute you are seeing heights and depths that are ragged and harsh and jutting out in threatening lines, and the next, everything is bathed in pink and purple
and gray, soft and innocent and pulling you in.

  Mr. French was finished digging. Darkness was coming on fast, though over some mountain peaks in the west there was light, like midday. I moved closer as Mr. French helped Daddy pick up the buffalo robe with Mama in it and set it into the grave. In the distance I heard a coyote wail.

  "Say good-bye to your mama, Lizzy," Daddy directed. He was standing over the buffalo robe. Elinora was reading something from her Bible. I wished she would shut up. I liked the howling of the coyote better. It was more fitting.

  I stood respectfully for a minute, but it had nothing to do with Mama. I did not feel her presence inside that buffalo robe. She was gone already, away from this place. I wished I could be.

  But I turned as I knew I must and went to help Mrs. French and Mrs. Wade with the supper.

  2

  I COULDN'T EAT SUPPER that night. It didn't seem right, with Mama lying in her grave just a bit away from us. Nobody pushed me, though Mrs. French did say, "Lizzy, on the Trail you eat and partake of water when you can, dear. It has nothing to do with wanting to. It has to do with staying alive."

  I wasn't so sure just then that I wanted to stay alive. Then I looked at Daddy bent over the fire, staring into it, not eating, either, and I thought, I have to stay alive for him. Mama would want it. Can't let him go on his own. He himself forgets to eat sometimes.

  "Leave her be," Daddy said. And, for the moment, I felt my old love for him.

  Left be, I just sat there and gazed out, past the fire in the pit, at Mama's grave and wondered what her family would think of her lying here in the shadow of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, when she'd been so alive and lovely back in Independence, growing her roses in the garden, starting the women's literary guild, and baking all those cakes for the church fairs.

  "Will you write Uncle William and tell him she's dead?" I asked Daddy. He said he would, soon's we got to Santa Fe.

  I wondered what Uncle William would say. Mama was his favorite sibling. Yet he'd approved of our trip. But then, he was an adventurer. For the most part he ran Bent's New Fort on the Mountain Branch of the Santa Fe Trail. But the house in Independence had been his; Mama had run it for him. And when he came home it had been so exciting. He'd sometimes bring friends from Fort Bent. And gifts. He had brought my pony, Ben.

  Mama was a Bent. Her family was of consequence in Independence. Her father had been a fur trapper, who'd become rich and had three Indian wives. I'd once met the last one, Grandma Adalina, a Blackfoot, at the time of Grandpa William's death.

  I have Cheyenne and Blackfoot cousins that I don't even know. And I'm thirteen already.

  I have some Blackfoot in me. Mama always said it was the part that didn't cry when other girls did. But by the time I came along I think it was probably washed clear out of my blood. By the time I came along the family had lost most of its wealth, though they still owned the largest mercantile business in Independence. Mama's brothers still traded in furs, sold blankets from New Mexico, drove New Mexican sheep to Missouri, and traded horses and mules.

  After the war General William Tecumseh Sherman wanted to give Negro families forty acres of land each, on the coast and riverbanks from Charleston, South Carolina, to Jacksonville, Florida. So he issued General Order Number 15. I was just born. Mama and Daddy told me how he took our plantation, which he'd ruined, anyway, and gave it to the Negroes. So Daddy and Mama went to Independence. Mama's family gave Daddy a job in their mercantile. We lived in their large house, with the porch that went all the way around. Uncle William was always off somewhere having adventures, so the house was mostly ours. But Daddy went about with his spirit cast down because he could no longer keep a roof over his family's heads.

  One day a gunman came to the store and held Daddy up. Daddy had refused to use a gun since the war. The man got away with the robbery. Uncle William was disappointed that Daddy couldn't hold the robber off. And I was disappointed that the robber wasn't Jesse James. I would have been the envy of every girl in Independence if he had been. And somehow it was never the same in the house in Independence again.

  Finally Daddy said there was nothing for it, we must go west. To seek gold in Colorado's hills. Mama wanted to stay in Independence. She didn't want to leave her brother's home, her church, her friends, her literary ladies. How she cried. How I cried.

  I was crying because my Best Friend Ever Cassie was there. Cassie's mother was soon to have a baby, and Cassie and I had talked for hours of how we'd care for it. I always longed for a little sister. Now I missed the tree-lined streets of Independence, the stores, the steepled brick courthouse, the constant flow of emigrant wagons coming through—the way their drivers would shoot off guns to announce their arrival and everybody would go out to greet them. Sometimes we'd take a weary family into our home for the night.

  When we left I knew I'd never see Cassie again. She ran after the wagon, crying. I hung over the tailgate, reaching for the paper she was holding out to me. I just managed to grab it. "Don't open until you are lonely," she yelled.

  I watched her until she was a small speck in the dust, and then I opened it. It was her very best reward poster for Jesse James. The one issued by the Pinkerton men right after he robbed the Missouri-Pacific Railroad of over fifteen thousand dollars.

  Tacked onto it was a small bit of paper. I know you will cherish this. I'll take care of your cats, don't worry.

  I had to leave my cats behind with Cassie. I had three, and a whole passel of kittens. I begged to be allowed to take one kitten, but Daddy said no. Oh, how I would have loved just one kitten!

  I was allowed to take Ben, my saddle pony, for he'd be useful on the Trail. I rode him beside the wagon. But then Elinora would get jealous and cry. I never saw such a girl for crying. So I had to sit in the wagon with her or let her ride Ben. Once she fell off and near killed herself, so Mama wouldn't let her ride anymore. After all, you couldn't deliver a girl with a broken head to an archbishop.

  Bishop Jean Baptiste Lamy knew Mama's family. And though we weren't Catholic, he knew Mama was a good church lady and Daddy wanted to make a trip to trade on the Gila Trail, then head for Colorado. So the Bishop wrote and asked Daddy to make a stopover at Santa Fe and bring his grandniece to the girls school there. He was the bishop of the whole Southwest, Daddy said. And he would pay well for safe delivery of Elinora. So Daddy saw his way not to accept any money from Mama's brothers for our trip. With our caravan we had four mules, carrying cargo, books and paper, and supplies for the girls school—cutlery, dinnerware, woolens and calico, even canned goods.

  The whole trip up to the time Mama died took fifty days. And we still had more to go. We could have taken the train to southeast Colorado, the farthest point the railroad went. But Bishop Lamy wrote that he wanted his grandniece to "witness the travel on the Santa Fe Trail," as he had so often done, before the railroads took over.

  Elinora knew, all the while, that she was Miss Importance on this trip. Every whim of hers was satisfied. If she wanted to stop and pick wildflowers, we did so. Mama and I shared the same basin of water to wash as we crossed fifty miles of dry plain, but Elinora would have her own. At Fort Union Mama was already sick, but Elinora must be taken through the fort to see it.

  Only one time did she not get her way. She had wanted to travel the Mountain Branch route to see Bent's New Fort and all the trappers, Indians, and military men there. Daddy said no. The Cimarron Cutoff was a hundred miles shorter. But I think the real reason was because Daddy just didn't want to see Uncle William.

  I WAS FEEDING BEN and seeing to him for the night when I noticed Elinora talking with Daddy a bit away from the fire. She wanted something again. Probably to stop tomorrow at some stream and do a watercolor for her uncle. She had her drawing paper and watercolors with her. She fancied herself an artist. I know Daddy wanted to get on with the trip. It was already the beginning of October.

  Oh, it would be so good getting shut of Elinora.

  I stayed awhile with Ben.
I had a bit of sugar for him. I put my face close to his, and he knew I was grieving. Horses know. Animals know, Mama always said.

  "We're going on to Colorado," I told him. "We're going to find gold, and someday we'll come back here and find Mama and take her home for a proper burial."

  By the time I got into the wagon, Elinora was already snuggled—in my traveling bed, the one Mama had made by sewing two comforters together. One side was lined with a warm Indian blanket and the other was covered with canvas so water would roll right off it.

  "It's going to be cold tonight," Elinora said. "You wouldn't want me to come down with the fever, would you? Your daddy promised my uncle I'd be delivered safely."

  "Keep the old thing," I said. "I'll use Mama's." My mother had made one for herself, too.

  "See that fire outside? Your daddy's burning it because your mama died of the fever." She pulled up part of the wagon canvas so I could see the fire. It was sending sparks into the surrounding dark.

  I settled down on the other side of the wagon, in some quilts, with a pillow. Oh, how I wished I had a kitten! I heard the murmur of voices outside as the others settled into the wagons. My daddy would take the first watch, then sleep under our wagon. A dog would do, I decided. Maybe on the way to Colorado Daddy would let me get a dog.

  I ached for Mama, for the way she'd always kiss me good night. The pain was like what Daddy had told me his pain had been when he'd first lost his arm—and sometimes still was. An aching of the part of you that was not there anymore. How could that be, I'd wondered when he first told me. Now I knew.

  "Do you want to talk about your mama?" Elinora's voice came across the dark.

  "No, I want to be left alone."

  "You can't go on to Colorado with your daddy, you know."

  "And why not?"