The Staircase

by Ann Rinaldi

  Worst of all, to be angry with God was a sin. And I thought of my daddy, and how he hadn't prayed since he lost his arm in the war.

  Of course, to dishonor your parents was very bad. This nearly put me into a state of apoplexy. I was supposed to pray for Daddy every day—to love him, to forgive him for walking off without even saying good-bye.

  The nuns told us that we should all keep our hearts open to see if we had a calling. That the highest destiny for a young girl was to become a bride of Christ.

  Each May they crowned the Virgin Mary. All the girls hoped to be the one to crown, come May, because they would get to wear a bridal gown and veil. They wanted to practice, because many expected to wed by the time they reached sixteen and to have many babies.

  The nuns told us that if the babies died, we mustn't mourn, because we were creating souls for heaven. But if they died before baptism, they would not go to heaven, but to someplace called Limbo. They would never see God.

  This bothered me more than bathing in my undergarments. Why should a little baby be suspended forever in someplace called Limbo? Why would God not want to see it?

  If they had a cold or cramps, or had to do an onerous chore, they were told to "offer it up" for the "poor souls." I thought they were talking about the poor on the streets until I understood it was the poor souls who were burning for their sins in purgatory. In church the priest was always praying for the "intestines of the Holy Father" in Rome. I thought the poor man had gout of the stomach until Elinora told me it was intentions, not intestines.

  The girls were always sacrificing, giving up sugar in their coffee, meat when they didn't have to, butter or jam on their bread. I, on the other hand, was always hungry. They would give me dirty looks at the table when I took a second helping. I didn't care. I heaped butter on my bread, right in front of them.

  Some of the Sisters got up in the middle of the night, got out of cold beds, to go into the chapel and pray. "It's so that God won't be lonely," Elinora explained to me.

  I didn't see how God could be lonely. Didn't He have the whole world He created? If He was lonely, why didn't He take some of those babies from Limbo? I didn't understand anything about these people. They set up barricades for themselves, made rules it was impossible to live by, then enjoyed their guilt. I'd understood that Arapaho Indian better.

  Didn't God have my mother? How could he be lonely?

  How I longed for the straight, simple, clean lines and the uncluttered faith of the Methodist church in Independence. All this talk of blood and martyrdom and eating flesh and agony. It was just too much, is all.

  OF COURSE, THERE were nice things, too. Besides the music. But the music! When Elinora did her solo singing "Panis Angelicus," I thought someone was wringing out my soul. No wonder these girls were always swooning.

  Some of their prayers had phrases that gripped me and held me in their jaws, like one of my cats held a mouse. "They have numbered all my bones" was one phrase. I thought how fitting it was, Christ saying that about himself. Was it blasphemous, I wondered, to feel akin to it at times? To feel that you were so hurt, so exposed, so haunted, that they could number all your bones?

  "Blessed be God in His angels and in His saints," they prayed. And I thought, yes, we would say "and His angels" or "with His angels." But the way they said it, though it defied all proper English, was right, I decided. In His angels. And in His saints.

  BY THE END OF the first week, I learned, too, that of all fifty-one girls at the school, I was the only one not of the True Faith. And that practically all of them were praying for visions.

  "Like the Indians have?" I asked Elinora.

  She said no, the girls were praying for a vision of the Virgin Mary. "Watch in church," she told me. "Sometimes you will see a girl kneeling there, her eyes all glazed over, not blinking at all, very still and enraptured."

  "Does that mean she's having a vision?" I asked.

  "No," Elinora said. "That means she's faking it." Elinora was getting bitter because her granduncle, the Bishop, was still not back from his trip, to make a fuss over her. "They all fake it. They lie about seeing the Virgin," she said.

  I understood, then. It was like the girls at home in Independence lied about seeing Jesse James.

  FRENCH WAS NOT EASY.

  For one thing, all the girls were ahead of me. The language spilled off their tongues. Sister Roberta taught French. She was a very large woman. Yet her weight seemed to be all strength, not flab. She kept fish in large tanks in her classroom, and she could lift and move those tanks of water like they were pillows. She had a sallow-complected round face and a lot of hair above her upper lip. But somewhere in her bulky frame, under all those black clothes and behind that wimple that framed her face, was a young mischievous girl trying to get out. I sensed it by the way she cracked jokes and her eyes twinkled. I liked her on first sight.

  The other girls made fun of her and whispered in class. This day they whispered about the novena to Saint Joseph. Tonight was the seventh night for it. Every night for a week now we'd gone to the chapel, and after the usual evening prayers, the priest conducted the novena.

  I was getting accustomed to the incense, the Latin, the chanting responses to the prayers. Evening prayers in the chapel were like an oasis in the confusion of the school. First, the day students were gone and there were only a few of us and the nuns. Second, the whole business gave me a sense of peace. Or at least time to study on things and sort them out.

  It was the only time I really allowed myself to think about Mama.

  Oh, she came to me during the day, especially at the cemetery. I would think, "I'll have to remember to tell Mama this." Or, "Mama won't like this; wait until she finds out."

  And then I would remember there would be no more telling her anything. No more waiting until she found out things. She would never again find out. But most painful was the blankness that came after minding that she was gone forever. That was when I wanted to howl like a wolf. I did not understand forever in the same sentence as Mama being gone. So I would push the thought of her from my mind. Until evening services.

  Then she came at me. I couldn't hold her off anymore. She came at me with the full force of a dust storm. I was helpless as a tumbleweed in the dust storm she created. She was in my nostrils, with the memory of the lavender she used. She was in my ears, telling me to never help my father unless he asked for help, because he had to feel independent with one arm.

  I'd sit there benumbed with her swirling around me in the middle of the smell of incense and the grip of the music. I had held her off all day, and now I was too weary. And it did not matter, because here I could let the tears flow and nobody cared. Some girl was crying all the time, caught in a fit of romantic holiness.

  It went together, the mumbo jumbo of the Latin, the nothingness that my mother had become, and the fact that the nuns and the girls expected that there would somehow magically appear, behind the last pew in the chapel, a staircase. Because they prayed to Saint Joseph.

  I felt cheated, because I could not believe this. I wished I could. I knew that if I could just believe, I would understand Mama's death, too. And the way my father had left me.

  I'd sit there and wish I could believe in something. Maybe just in my father.

  FOUR NUNS RAN THE SCHOOL—Mother Magdalena, Sister Catherine, Sister Hilaria, and Sister Roberta. Sister Roberta ran the infirmary, taught French, nursed the sick, and sometimes helped Ramona in the kitchen. I had to go to the infirmary to fetch medicine for Mrs. Lacey. It was a small, many-windowed room that caught the light of the morning and the afternoon sun. All around on the wide windowsills, Sister Roberta grew her special plants, and at one end was a potbellied stove to keep them warm. In the infirmary she rolled her long, loose black sleeves up above the elbows. She wore boots because the brick floor was often wet from watering her plants. She tucked her skirts up in and around her belt, so I could see she had legs.

  Also, she smoked.

  She
smoked a pipe. "Only in here," she said. "The fragrance is good for the plants." And she winked at me.

  It came to me, then. She was the one who'd carried me upstairs on my first night here, when I'd smelled Daddy's tobacco and thought he'd grown another arm.

  On top of the potbellied stove, she also kept a pot of coffee boiling at all times. She'd put Mrs. Lacey's medicine in a small basket. Next to it she'd put a mug of coffee, sweet, with milk and a bit of nutmeg. The first time she did this I'd given her a questioning glance and she'd smiled and shaken a finger at me. "God forgives disobedience," she said, "when the act helps someone in need."

  I was soon to discover that Sister Roberta had her own ten commandments.

  After that I think I would have died for her. And then, at the end of my first week in school, she made me remain after the others in French class.

  "Your French is deplorable," she said.

  I summoned the mettle to suffer a scolding, but instead she smiled. "Personally, I don't see why these girls have to learn French. It's the Bishop. Anything French is dear to him."

  "I just can't seem to learn it, Sister," I said.

  "We will teach you."

  "I don't think I'll be here long enough to learn."

  "Oh? I hope you don't leave too soon. I'd like you to come along with me to the river. I need to pick some O-pshaw. My supply is running low."

  I said I would likely be here. At least for a while.

  "Aren't you going to ask what O-pshaw is?" she asked.

  "What is it, Sister?"

  "A Mexican cure-all. They have many such remedies. Half magic and half tradition. I don't believe in it as much as some of these girls do. Its curative powers are in the belief it fosters. Like so many things you will find they use around here."

  I met her calm, unblinking gaze. Was she speaking of the novena to Saint Joseph?

  "I'd love to go with you, Sister."

  "I also have to fetch more bark from the wild chokecherry tree. And make some cough syrup with honey for Bishop Lamy. He's due home in a week. He always returns home from his trips with a cough. Tell me, where are you going when you leave here?"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "You said you were leaving. What are your plans?"

  I stared up at her. Her eyes looked as if she was about to burst into laughter any minute. "I don't know," I said. "I only know I can't stay here. Maybe I'll write to my uncle William and ask him if I can come back to Independence."

  "Is he the one who taught you to swear?"

  "Yes, Sister. How did you know?"

  "I met your uncle William once."

  "You did?"

  "We Sisters come from Kentucky, you know. Before you were born. Bishop Lamy summoned us here to start the school. We came by paddle wheeler up the Mississippi. Then by wagon from St. Louis. By the time we got to Independence, three of us were taken with the cholera, myself included. We had to stay there awhile. We lost Mother Matilda to the cholera. Your uncle saw to it that we were put up in the best lodging, and he kept us supplied with everything we needed."

  I beamed. "That sounds like Uncle William."

  "What do you plan on doing when he writes that you should return? Living at Fort Bent?"

  "I hadn't thought on it," I said.

  "Your grandfather was just starting to build the new Fort Bent when we came through. I always wanted to see it. If I were a man, I'd be a fur trapper. What about you?"

  "I'd join Jesse James."

  She smiled again. "Do you think you could stay with us until Delvina has her baby?"

  "You know about Delvina?"

  "We all do. How do you think Mrs. Lacey gets food from the kitchen to take to her? We'll have to be sending her heavier blankets soon. Nights get very cold by mid-November."

  "I don't understand, Sister. How can people who believe Saint Joseph will bring them a staircase leave her up there? Who will deliver her baby?"

  "Saint Joseph will give us a staircase. And we will bring her here. That's why I want you to stay. I need to be kept apprised of her situation. As she nears her time, we must bring her here."

  "Mother Magdalena won't allow it."

  "Even Mother Magdalena isn't that heartless. Will you find out from her when she is expecting her lying-in?"

  "I haven't even met her yet."

  "You will. Soon. Maybe tomorrow. Promise me you will. And promise me you will stay until she has the child."

  Where else would I go? I promised.

  8

  BY SATURDAY I HAD STAKED out my claim in the room I shared with Elinora. My poster of Jesse James that Cassie had given me, I pasted on the wall over my bed. It was about as fine a poster as could be. It offered five thousand dollars for the capture of Jesse W. James "in perpetration of the robbery last aforesaid."

  Next to both of our beds, which were against opposite walls, were little shelves. On hers Elinora had a statue of the Virgin. On mine was my chamois sack that Daddy had given me. It had once held his Bull Durham tobacco and still carried the fragrance. In it was an agate marble I'd won in a game in the schoolyard in Independence, a piece of Mama's hair in a small locket that she'd given me just before she died, and three horsehairs wrapped around an eagle feather I'd found on the trail. It was my good-luck charm. Everybody had to have one.

  "You shouldn't have that drunken heathen's picture on your wall." Elinora stood in the doorway.

  "He isn't a drunk. He never drinks anything stronger than beer."

  "You know that, I suppose."

  "Yes." I was kneeling on my bed, straightening the poster. "I also know that he believes in out-of-body travel, that he was named after his mother's brother who committed suicide, that he doesn't swear in front of ladies, that he married his first cousin, and that his mother had her arm blown off when Pinkerton men attacked her home. Just like my father had his blown off in the war."

  "And all that makes him a hero, I suppose."

  "In Missouri he's one."

  "Missouri is a robber state. Mother Magdalena said so. She said the Chicago newspapers reported that in no state but Missouri would the James brothers be tolerated for so many years."

  "You come from Missouri."

  "Why do you think I wanted to leave? Anyway, I come from St. Louis, where people are civilized. You ought to have a statue of the Virgin on your shelf. Or at least of Saint Joseph."

  "I'm sick to the teeth of Saint Joseph already."

  "Hush!" Elinora closed the door and stepped into the room. "Tonight is the eighth night of the novena. You'll hex it by being blasphemous."

  "You talk of Saint Joseph like he had sorcerer's powers."

  "Will you hush! Oh, why did they ever put me in the room with you! A heretic!"

  "I was asking myself the same question, Elinora. Why did they ever put me in the room with a ninny who parrots everything the nuns say? And doesn't have an opinion of her own."

  "I have opinions." She paced, hands clasped behind her back. Her thick glasses gave her eyes the look of a toad's. "And I'm not as much of a ninny as you think. As a matter of fact, I came up to ask you if you wanted to go on a lark with me."

  "A lark?"

  "You don't know what a lark is?"

  "Well, in Independence it could mean sneaking downtown to stand outside the grog shops at night to see the hurdy-gurdy girls. But I'm sure in St. Louis it consists of putting your elbows on the dinner table."

  "You needn't be so superior. I've sneaked out at night twice this week already."

  I stared at her hard; she stared right back. "You snore at night. I hear it all night long."

  "Funny, you're sleeping pretty deeply when I do it."

  I nodded, bested. "Where do you go?"

  "With some other girls. To meet friends from the boys school, by the grotto. I've already met one nice young man and plan to meet him again. Are you going to tell?"

  "No," I said. "But if your uncle finds out, he'll be crushed."

  "He won't find out. Not unless you t
ell. It's harmless. The worst we do is smoke a cigarillo. Now, do you want to come with me tonight or not?"

  "I have no interest in meeting boys at the grotto."

  "Not there. I'm going to visit someone who can give me advice. I need some good advice right now."

  "Then why don't you ask Mother Magdalena? You know you're her pet."

  "Only because I'm the Bishop's grandniece. I know that, too. It's advice that regards my future. And I don't trust her."

  "Who is going to give you this advice, then?"

  Elinora gave a secret smile. "Come with me, and you'll see. And you might even have some fun in the bargain."

  I NEVER WOULD HAVE expected it of droopy-drawers Elinora. First, that she would want to disobey the rules, and second, that she would ask me to accompany her.

  She was the most unlikely of confederates. The only reason I could think that she chose me was that none of the other namby-pamby girls who boarded would go with her. They would only risk sneaking out to meet with boys. Besides, I was curious. What advice did Miss Know-It-All need about her future? And from whom?

  She had our escape all planned. After the eighth night of the novena, after we girls who boarded were allowed into the kitchen for a warm cup of cocoa and were then sent upstairs to bed and the convent got quiet, we two sneaked out.

  It was not as difficult as it sounds, because the nuns were back in the chapel, adding more prayers to Saint Joseph's list, and we simply walked out.

  Elinora had a lantern, we both wore moccasins to dull our footfalls, and the door by which we left was in the kitchen. Unlocked. Elinora had arranged all nighttime adventures with Ramona, who, as it turned out, had a special request for the Bishop when he came. Everybody gained. Ramona, the girls who sneaked out, and certainly Elinora.