The Staircase

by Ann Rinaldi

  I told her yes. I believed her. I agreed with everything she said. I acted interested, which I was. But they were fairy tales. I knew that. And my time for believing in fairy tales was over. I must get her back to the convent.

  All the way home she talked, switching between the past and the present. I couldn't keep up with her. Inside my head I was pondering what I was going to tell Mother Magdalena about running off, and hoping that bringing this woman home—this daft woman who thought she knew Jesse James and the sister of an Apache chief—would redeem me.

  6

  "RULE NUMBER ONE," Mother Magdalena declared firmly, "we do not leave the grounds without permission. Our girls do not roam the streets of Santa Fe."

  "But most of the girls go home at night," I reasoned. "How do they get there?" I knew I was pushing it, but Uncle William had always said that when you are caught in the wrong, you must seize the argument by the tail and act with righteous indignation. "It rocks people off their feet," he said.

  Mother Magdalena was not rocked.

  Loudly she rapped her desk with a ruler. "You are sharp-tongued. A bold little piece, miss. We are trying to give you every leverage because you just lost your mother, but impudence is never tolerated at Our Lady of Light. We, here, encourage humility and ladylike behavior. Like the Virgin Mary." She pointed to the statue behind her desk. The Virgin had a snake at her feet, and she was stepping on it. That didn't look very humble or ladylike to me.

  "Just where did you think you were going when you rode out the gate this morning?"

  "To fetch una madre," I lied.

  "Her name is Mrs. Lacey."

  "Ramona called her una madre. Ramona told me she was missing. So I rode in the direction Ramona gave me."

  "You know Spanish, then?"

  "No, ma'am."

  "No, Mother;" she insisted.

  She was a very tall woman. And her pointed wimple gave her more height. Her complexion was normally red. But when she became angry, it became even redder. And her blue eyes blazed. In my short time here I'd already learned that the girls were terrified of getting the rough side of her tongue. But she did not frighten me. "I can't call you Mother," I told her, "because you aren't my mother."

  "In the True Faith it is a symbolic term."

  "I'm not of the True Faith. I mean no disrespect, but if it's all the same to you, I'll call you ma'am. No, ma'am, I don't know Spanish other than a few words. But I took Ramona's meaning."

  She was too taken aback to know for a minute what to say. And I felt a small bubble of triumph inside me. Uncle William was right.

  "You may not be of the True Faith, which only means that we must pray for your soul," she said, "but you are under my jurisdiction. In view of the fact that you just lost your mother, I shall not insist you use that term for me. But I will not tolerate impudence! I assume that impudence is frowned upon by Methodists as with Catholics?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "Very well. Nor will I tolerate disobedience. In the school you attended in Independence, were you allowed to leave the grounds whenever you chose?"

  "No, ma'am."

  "Then obedience is the same in Missouri as it is in Santa Fe, I assume."

  I allowed that it was, while I tried to figure out how to make her assign me to Mrs. Lacey every day on her trip to the cemetery.

  Uncle William had always said if you want something from someone, make them think you don't want it.

  "Very well, then I believe you knew you were doing wrong this morning. And wrong must be punished. Now, I have several thoughts on the matter. First, I can take away your horse."

  I felt my face go white. But somehow I managed not to let my fear show. People preyed on your fears. Something else Uncle William once told me.

  "I can assign you special chores. Chores the girls consider most onerous."

  "Please don't assign me to Crazy Lacey," I begged. "She's a daft old lady. She talks about meeting Jesse James. Everybody knows Jesse James doesn't come down this way. And she leaves a lantern at her son's grave because he was afraid of the dark. Mind you, I think she's sweet, ma'am, but sure as a tarantula has long legs, she's cracked in the dome."

  "Don't be disrespectful, Elizabeth. Mrs. Lacey is a dear woman who has been a friend to this church and convent, though she is not of the True Faith. We shall all be old someday, Lord willing. And as such we, too, will deserve respect."

  "But then why are you going to hang a bag of asafetida around her neck to punish her?"

  She looked at me sharply. "Who said that?"

  "She did."

  "Asafetida prevents croup and colds. She is prone to such. And if I ever put a bag of it around her neck, it is not for punishment. The woman gets mixed up in her head sometimes. Surely you know that by now."

  "Yes, ma'am," I said meekly. "But—"

  She cut me off. "Enough!" She raised her hand to silence me, and I fell silent, pouting to please her. "Henceforth, as long as you are with us and as long as the good Lord allows Mrs. Lacey to live amongst us, she is your responsibility."

  "Ma'am?" I can pretend stupidity with the best of them. I learned that back in Independence, in Miss Cannon's fifth grade. Mother Magdalena had nothing on Miss Cannon, who terrorized her class with a ruler she wielded like a saber.

  "Every day, after your lessons are completed, you will accompany Mrs. Lacey to Fort Marcy so she can bring flowers to her son's grave."

  "Ma'am, that place is creepy. Please, I'll take any other punishment."

  "You have proved yourself adept with her, Elizabeth. She told me she likes you."

  "But she wants to bring food for her dead son." Of course, I knew who the food was for.

  "The food is not for her dead son, Elizabeth," she said sadly. "It is for Delvina."

  "Ma'am? You know about Delvina?"

  She smiled, and I had to admit that her face softened in the most disarming way. "There is not much I do not know around here, Elizabeth. You might make a note of that for future reference."

  "But then, if you don't mind my asking, ma'am, why don't you do something about Delvina?"

  "And what would you suggest we do, Elizabeth?"

  "Why, bring her here. Give her a place."

  "Impossible. And if I must answer to you, it is impossible because her husband is a known brigand hereabouts. Your Jesse James from Missouri is a lesser angel compared to him. He is, God help him, a drunkard, a wife-beater, a thief, and worse. If he knew she was here, our safety would be threatened. I cannot endanger my girls. So, you will keep your own good counsel about Delvina. Tell no one. Or I will have to forbid Mrs. Lacey from visiting her son's grave. Is that clear?"

  "Yes, ma'am." It wasn't, of course. How she, who was supposed to be of the True Faith, could allow a woman expecting a child to live in an abandoned fort was beyond my understanding. I knew what my own mama would do about the problem, all right.

  "There are one or two more things before you go," she was saying.

  I sighed wearily.

  "Henceforth, if you do not wish me to take your horse, you will leave the grounds only to take Mrs. Lacey to the graveyard. And then, only when you sign out. And as of today, you will wear the purple school uniform. Girls who are seen in that on the streets are known to be from this school, and everyone respects them. You will attend regular classes, mass every morning, and the novena we are making to Saint Joseph for the staircase."

  "Novena? Isn't mass enough? I don't even understand the mass. All that Latin."

  "The novena is very important to us here, and, as part of the school, should be important to you, too. We need a staircase to the choir loft."

  "I know. Mrs. Lacey told me."

  She gave me a queer look. "I'm not surprised. She is downright crazed on the subject. Even gave us more money after her first contribution to the church, to find a good carpenter to build one. Says she is doing it for Robert, her son. She has some strange notion that Robert won't rest in peace until the church is completed. And to her th
at means the staircase. And she's not even Catholic!"

  Then why don't you get a carpenter, I wanted to say. But, of course, I didn't.

  "It is a major crisis at the moment, that staircase. We hoped our first Christmas in the new chapel would be celebrated in a fashion after the Bishop's beloved Sainte-Chapelle, in Paris. We have exhausted every other hope. Our last resort is a novena to Saint Joseph."

  I was not expected to reply, thank heavens. Not being of the True Faith, I thought simply that she was living in a dream world. I was dismissed then, so she informed me. I was to go right to classes. And as part of my punishment it was henceforth my duty to bring Mrs. Lacey's meals to her room, also.

  "She drinks only goat's milk. She will ask you to sneak coffee out of the kitchen for her. She is inordinately fond of coffee. But under no circumstances are you to do so. She has neuralgia. Sister Roberta is in charge of the infirmary, and you are to inform her should the neuralgia act up. She will give you a pillow filled with hops and heated in the oven."

  "Yes, ma'am." I started to leave. At the door, I turned. "Ma'am? Can I ride Ben when I take Mrs. Lacey to Fort Marcy? Sometimes she gets tired and—"

  "Yes, yes." She waved me off, and her attention was then on some papers on her desk. She was finished with me. I no longer existed. I was no more than a dust mote in her eye. I closed the door and went down the hall to my first class, which was French. Why French, I thought, when I need to know Spanish?

  I'd won, hadn't I? Wouldn't Uncle William be proud of me? Hadn't I taken the argument by the tail and acted with righteous indignation? She wasn't taking away Ben. I'd outsmarted her by making her think the worst thing in the world she could do to me was to make me take Mrs. Lacey to Fort Marcy every day. When I didn't mind at all. Why, she'd given me permission to take Ben, and everything.

  Except for wearing the purple uniform and going to mass and her stupid novena every day, I had bested her. Even Uncle William would say so.

  Then why did I feel as if the woman had seen into my soul? In that moment as I went down the hall to class, I recollected the Arapaho who had walked into our camp that night on the Trail, and how he had looked at me, and what he had said about me. Funny, I hadn't thought of him since then. Something in Mother Magdalena's eyes had reminded me of him.

  I felt a stab of hunger and remembered I hadn't had much breakfast. Either that, or it was a small bubble of triumph inside me bursting into a thousand pieces.

  7

  MOTHER MAGDALENA'S RULE NUMBER ONE, not leaving the grounds without permission, was easy. After all, I had permission to leave every day in order to take Mrs. Lacey to the cemetery.

  I wore the school uniform, dreadful purple thing, hanging to my feet under my heavy shawl. And people were respectful to me on the street. Or maybe it was being with Mrs. Lacey. She knew everybody. We walked through town—I, leading Ben—and people waved to her. Men doffed their sombreros. We couldn't get to the end of town without being stopped by at least five people inquiring after her or telling about their troubles. She was interested in everybody's child, everybody's sick mother every new family that came in on the Santa Fe Trail.

  She had a small silk bag tied to her waist inside her warm shawl. In it were coins. She gave them out to many who spoke with her. In another silk bag, she kept candy. Some were peppermints, some licorice, and some were candy hearts. She gave these out to the little Mexican and Indian children playing kanute on the streets. It was a kind of shell game.

  It took us a very long time to get through town.

  We stopped at the marketplace. I loved the marketplace, with its booths piled high with red and blue corn, its hanging peppers, its melons, chamois coats, hand-carved chests, Indian pottery, Mexican turquoise jewelry, colorful shawls, and every other thing under the sun.

  I loved the sleepy burros that stood waiting for their masters to sell their wares. I stared at the dark-eyed señoritas smoking cigarillos in the doorways. Elinora had told me they wore no underwear. They didn't wear petticoats, I could see that. Or corsets or long sleeves. Their skirts reached just above their ankles. Never had I seen women so boldly dressed.

  Mrs. Lacey bought me a pair of Indian moccasins and candy that looked like shelled corn. I protested. "You are my friend," she said. And I stopped protesting, knowing it was enough.

  We walked past the Governor's Palace on Central Plaza. At the end of the building was a large grillwork door. Mrs. Lacey knew the prisoner behind that door. She called him Billy the Kid. He came to the grillwork to say hello to her. He was young and sassy. She chatted with him awhile and told him how proud she was of the part he'd taken with the Regulators in the Lincoln County War. "Nobody appreciated what you people did," she told him.

  He thanked her. She gave him some candy, and we went on. "He's New Mexico's Jesse James," she said. "He'll escape from prison, don't worry."

  "He can't be Billy the Kid," I said, "or we would have heard he was here." Surely the gossipy girls at school would have mentioned it.

  "Oh, I call him Billy. He likes it and goes along with it. It enlivens his days."

  Once I got her up the hill to Fort Marcy, the miseries would come upon me. The grave site, the whole cemetery, made me uneasy. Not because the dead were there. Not because some of their bones were coming to the surface. But because I wished Mama were here, and I thought of her lonely grave covered over with stones on the prairie. And my spirit would be so spent that I wanted to stand there and howl out my misery like a wolf.

  Each day I'd look for her, but so far I hadn't seen Delvina.

  "Where is she?" I asked Mrs. Lacey on the third visit to the cemetery.

  "She's here."

  "But where?"

  "She's not ready for you to see her yet. There are really a lot of people here."

  "A lot?" I looked around at the deserted fort with its crumbling walls through which the wind whistled. I felt eyes watching me.

  "Some are very old gods," she explained patiently, while she lit the lantern in the little stone cubicle next to her son's grave. "Some are ghosts, like Governor Perez. He was beheaded by the Pueblo Indians forty years ago. And some are alive. Like Delvina and Lozen. It's a wonderful place to hide."

  I looked into her eyes and saw she was having one of her "moments." So I got on Ben and rode off to the edges of Fort Marcy, where there were cedar and Russian olive trees. The afternoon sun was warm, but this first week in November there was snow on top of the Sangre de Cristos in the east. I saw sheep grazing on distant mesas. I knew dark would come quickly. It was my job to get Mrs. Lacey home before dark. Already the sun was getting itself ready to drop behind the Jemez Mountains in the west.

  I could smell the smoke of the piñon logs, rising in the air from fireplaces in town. Dusk was my worst time for the miseries. I felt my losses stand out sharply inside me. I felt my soul like the landscape around me, its green places all gone, its pain jutting out, exposed and unprotected, like the bare bones in the cemetery. Once back at the academy the hustle and bustle; the chatter of the five girls who boarded, Lucy and Consuello, Winona, Rosalyn, and Elinora; the sounds and smells from the kitchen, where supper was being prepared, would distract me. So I wanted to get back, away from here.

  Still, I would wait a bit and give Mrs. Lacey her time. I knew she had prayers to say, that in still another sack she had food for Delvina, that before we departed she must set it out and leave it. So I devoted myself to Ben and the view. But I still felt eyes on me.

  THAT FIRST WEEK at the academy I was so confused I felt like a mule in a mud hut. Every which way I turned I broke some rule.

  The convent was like a mirage in the desert. Everything looked calm and inviting and peaceful and elegant. But none of those qualities were there. The nuns never raised their voices, but their sad disapproval was damnation in whispers. Sin was everywhere, in everything I did.

  During the week when all the girls were present, to speak at meals was a sin. You had to be quiet, while a nun read from so
me book of lessons that told about saints undergoing whippings and being eaten by lions, and having their heads cut off to preserve their souls.

  To swear was a sin, and of course I'd learned to swear from Uncle William. To eat meat on Friday was a sin. On Friday you ate fish. And all I could think of was Fridays on the Trail, when we were so happy to bag an antelope or a rabbit.

  To have pride was a sin. Humility was everything, though all the girls preened and boasted and glowed when they got praise from the nuns. To have impure thoughts was a sin. I'd been having them for two years already. Chastity was the biggest prize of all, the one you fought for every day in a battle with yourself. Some girls prayed to be attacked on the streets on the way home so they could fight off their attacker and be stabbed and die for their chastity.

  These same girls spoke constantly of the boys school "over the fence," behind ours. And when they spoke of it they giggled and whispered. The fence was built of adobelike material, with a grillwork gate between the properties. By some hapless bit of planning—likely the kind that had made the carpenter forget the staircase in the chapel—there was a grotto with the Virgin in it in the middle of the fence. My first two days at the convent I'd learned that boys from school dropped over the fence and met girls behind the statue of the Virgin. It was a risky business, and only the brave dared it.

  In the name of chastity the girls who boarded at the convent, the five besides me, all bathed in their undergarments. I tried it once. All it led to was my chemise and pantalets sticking to me, and I couldn't figure out how to get clean, and then I was left with dripping undergarments.

  To covet what somebody else had was a sin. Yet the girls were jealous if someone got a new ribbon or special attention or praise from a nun. And they all discovered Ben, of course. And were already begging for rides on him. Lying was a sin, but I told Mother Magdalena that Ben had a penchant for kicking strangers who came too close and for tossing off girls he didn't know. Just ask Elinora.