by John Horst
Rebecca decided she’d take Marta on a shopping spree and the two would be transformed into proper little ladies. Rebecca’s plan was to dress her new sister as if she was a living baby doll, and Marta thoroughly enjoyed it. She’d already begun to mimic Rebecca’s actions and was very keen to learn how to behave properly.
N.S. Stein immediately came to Rebecca’s mind. The little nun had gotten them cleaned up okay, but purchased the most horrid looking prairie dresses she could find at the nearby dry goods store. Here daddy used to say of both of them, she and her mother, that they were spoiled, but not rotten and Rebecca had, at an early age, developed a wonderful sense of style.
She was convinced the dresses must have been made from discarded feed bags. She wasn't a proud or vain child, but was used to nice clothing. She looked at herself and her new little charge doubtfully.
Marta, on the other hand was rather pleased with her new look. She liked the way the dress swished when she moved quickly from left to right.
"Come on, Marta, we need to get some other clothes." She took the little bandit by the hand and announced her intentions to the mother superior, who recognized at once that they were not attired according to Rebecca's custom. She smiled at the thought of her poor clueless assistant; the young woman was the quintessential nun.
They made it to N.S. Stein in short order and Rebecca was immediately shocked at the cool greeting they'd received. She didn't realize that no one ever looked very carefully at eight year old customers. Her Mamma and Daddy were not there to be recognized and fawned over by the staff.
One haughtily dressed man ignored them, seemingly on purpose, and Marta walked up to him in her little general's stride. "We are in need of assistance."
The man looked over his spectacles, then at her flour sack dress, then at her little companion. "Go fetch your mother, child. I will help her."
"Pendejo, I have no mother, and this girl with me is a famous person.”
Her daddy taught her how to deal with people who were rude or unkind, and Rebecca handled the man in this way. Her daddy always said that she should work to be kind to mean people as one could never know what’s bothering them and they might just be having a bad day, or were unhappy in life for some reason. He told her to never take abuse from anyone, but never try to pick a fight or be nasty back to them.
She looked behind him and recognized an old man sitting at an important looking desk at the back of the store. He had his name on this desk which read N.S. Stein. Rebecca recognized him as the man who’d always treated her Mamma as a queen. She walked past the officious clerk and up to the desk. The man was working diligently on some documents, and Rebecca cleared her throat.
The man looked up and smiled. “Yes, madam, how may I help you?”
Marta was pleased to hear Rebecca called madam. She looked over at the clerk, satisfied.
“I’m Rebecca Walsh, sir. I’ve been coming to your store for a long time, but my Mamma and Daddy are not here right now.” She looked over at Marta and smiled, “We need some new clothes and things.”
The old man jumped to his feet. “Little Rebecca, of course, of course.” He extended his hand to shake her’s gently. He turned to Marta and bowed. “Madam.” Marta beamed.
“I have heard of your troubles, little lady. I hope all is well.”
“Yes, all is well, Mr. Stein. All is well. My Mamma and Daddy are still in Mexico, but we are at the convent. We have no money to pay you, Mr. Stein, but I remember Mamma telling the people here to put it on the account, which always was very surprising to Daddy when he got the letters from you.”
The old man smiled broadly. He looked over at his newest clerk. “Welk, whatever the ladies want.”
“Yes sir.”
The clerk named Welk had a funny look about him. His lips were pushed up, toward his nose, as if he were breathing in an unpleasant odor. Rebecca remembered her daddy would sometimes point out people to her; look at that one, Rebecca, he’d then mimic them, screwing up his face and contorting it to make her laugh, he looks like he just stepped in a pile of dog shit. She’d laugh all the harder at her daddy’s naughty words.
This man did look as though he stepped in dog shit and Rebecca could not help but look down at his fancy black congress gaiters for signs of excrement. Of course there was none. This man obviously worried a great deal over his appearance and he would never be caught with shitty shoes.
Marta found the man very amusing. He’d covered his black hair in too much oil and parted it down the middle, so that his white scalp shown through like a beacon. He looked mostly over his glasses rather than through them and this made his face stretch out all funny. The man was new to the West and Arizona as he had spent his formative years in Chicago. He’d not yet learned to hate Indians and Mexicans, and his negative response to the girls was not due to that prejudice, but rather a general disdain for children.
Marta had some fun with him and he started to relax. He pretended not to care but, being new to the region, thought it good to learn the words common to the locals. He casually asked her to repeat the name that she used to address him.
“Pendejo.”
The man repeated it carefully. “Pen-de-ho”, rolling it around, off his tongue as if he were tasting it. “What is the meaning of this word in English?”
“Oh, it is a nice word. It means fine fellow.”
Rebecca was trying on an outfit in the little dressing room next to them. She laughed out loud when she heard Marta’s explanation. She did not see the clerk stand up a little straighter, pleased with the term the little girl had used to describe him. She dressed quickly, all the while envisioning the poor man using his new word in public, at some restaurant or saloon and having his nose properly punched for his trouble. She came out still wearing the new dress.
“Sir, it really is not a nice word. My friend is just learning English herself and doesn’t know.” She gave Marta a knowing grin and a wink without letting the man see what she was doing. “May we see some shoes in our size, sir?”
When they were finally alone Rebecca chastised Marta in her best Pilar impersonation.
“Marta, you are not among savages anymore. You cannot call men Pendejo. You have to act proper.”
Marta smiled her devilish smile. “He is a Pendejo.”
“That doesn’t matter. And he isn’t really. He’s just different.” She loved her naughty new sister, who reminded her too much of her mother. “You are a very bad girl.”
The clerk returned with shoes in their size. Marta looked at the top of the man’s head while he placed a shoe on her left foot.
“What is your name?” She half questioned and half demanded.
The man did not look at her, but kept at the task at hand. “Mr. Welk.”
“No, what is your other name?”
He did not understand and Rebecca interjected. “Your Christian name, sir.”
He thought for a moment. The impudence of the little girl was astounding, yet there was something about her, something so unnatural and disarming that he found himself blurting it out. “Waldemar. But I like to be called Waldo.”
“Waldo Welk?” Even Marta worked hard to control herself now. She was beginning to like the hapless dude.
“Well, Waldo.” She admired the kid-lined shoes he’d placed on her feet, moving them one way, then the other to get a proper view. She leaned in close to his ear so that Rebecca could not hear her. “Do you know where I might get a cigarette?”
They returned from shopping, looking like two debutantes twice their age. Most of the packages would be sent to the convent for them, but Marta insisted on carrying many of the most exciting items with her. The present source of their joy was Marta’s interest in looking at herself through the gild hand mirror Rebecca had purchased for her. She’d look left and then right. She liked the new way Rebecca had fixed her hair. She’d make comments into the mirror about how beautiful she looked, then would screw her face up, like a monkey, and ask Rebecca how s
he looked.
She eventually stopped that and went onto her tatting, periodically gazing down at her lap, at the lovely material of the new dress she was wearing. It was so much finer than the one the nun had gotten them, and that one seemed wonderful at the time. Little Marta was learning quickly. She’d become better at tatting and had created two doilies. She wanted to make something for Señora Maria.
“You know, you could call her Mamma if you wanted?” Rebecca did not look up from her own work.
“Sí, I know.” Marta was suddenly overwhelmed. “But, she is not my Mother.”
“I know. But there is enough of her to go around. And then we could be sisters.”
“Could we?” Marta looked up at Rebecca who could now barely recognize her. Gone was the fearless little bandit. Gone was the cigarette smoking profane little creature she’d encountered just a few days before, at least from where Rebecca was sitting.
Rebecca looked back at her work. “I think so.”
The redheaded lady watched them go into their little cell. She looked back at her boy sleeping, looked around at her little room. It was safe here, safe and cool and quiet. It smelled good. It smelled of fresh bed linen and candle wax and the slightest hint of incense from prior special mass celebrations.
The nuns were so kind to her and her little boy and the other captives. She didn’t want to ever leave the convent. She’d had time to think a lot here. She’d been so confused over the past days. The worst calamity of her life, the horrible, repeated assaults, the violation of her body, the decadence of the men who’d been her tormentors for so many days.
She wasn’t a worldly woman, but she’d done her share of book learning, voracious reading, but nothing in her experience up to this point in her life could have ever prepared her for this. Not even in her wildest dreams could she have ever imagined such inhumanity.
She wandered over to the little chair and table next to the beds. The boy’s nightmares were so intense that she resolved to put the mattresses on the floor, making a large bed so that they could sleep together. This was the first time in her life she let the child sleep with her. She felt guilty, as her kindness to him was so alien to him, so out of character, that often he’d stiffen, hold back because he didn’t want her kindness to end, but didn’t want to do anything to set her off, for fear that she’d resort to her old ways. She hated herself for this. She should not have treated the child in such a way, just because his father had done her wrong. It wasn’t the child’s fault, and she knew that the boy didn’t deserve it. She knew what the fat bandit had done to her son the night he’d taken him away, the night that she thought he was gone from her forever, and the thought of this made her especially sad. She’d make it up to him, though. It wasn’t really hard being kind or loving to him. He was a good little boy and responded so positively to her love.
He was sleeping well now, and she wandered out into the courtyard where a brother was working on a little garden. This was the first man she’d encountered since her abuse. She thought that she’d not want to see another man, especially a Mexican, and now there was one just a few feet away. He looked up from his work and invited her to sit down at a little bench next to the garden. He was dressed in a plain brown robe and sandals. He looked timeless, old-timey in the backdrop of the old plain adobe walled convent. It reminded her of how she used to be transported to a place in time and history, the way she used to when she and her sister read one novel after another. She could have been in an ancient monastery in France or Italy.
She sat silently for a while, watching him work. He was an older man, very dark, more Indian than Spanish. He worked the garden with care, gently, so as not to bruise or do harm to the plants. It was especially significant to the woman, as she’d only known cruel hands for so many days. He never spoke to her or even looked in her direction. He thought that perhaps it was just good to have another human being in her presence, so that she wasn’t alone but was additionally not obliged to interact in any way.
So these were her saviors. Papists and Mexicans and children. It was confounding to her. She finally felt compelled to speak. “How long have you been here, brother?” She’d heard the nuns call him that, and thought it appropriate.
The man didn’t look up from his work. “Fifteen years, Miss.” He stood up straight and surveyed his work, reached over and pulled a weed that had escaped him. “I lived in a village down in Mexico, but Sombrero del Oro came and,” he made a little sound with his mouth and waved his hand in the air, “all gone.”
She suddenly felt a connection with him. “You were not always in the church?”
The man smiled. “Oh, no Miss. I had a family and a trade. I was a blacksmith. I still do blacksmith work at the convent.” He pointed to some iron hinges on the garden gate. “I made them.” He took his gloves off and laid them down.
Without asking, he walked over and sat down next to her. She didn’t mind. “I had a wife and two children and my mother and mother-in-law, all living together at our home. And, puff, it was all gone.”
“I am sorry.” And she honestly was. She never thought she’d feel sorry for any man again, any Mexican or for that matter anyone who wasn’t just like her. He smiled at her and patted her arm.
“And I am sorry for you, dear. But, now he’s gone, no more Sombrero del Oro.”
She thought for a moment and looked at the old fellow. He’d survived. He’d lost more than she. She’d been terribly brutalized, it was true, but her boy was alive. She suddenly felt queer, even fortunate.
“Tell me,” she was not trying to pick a fight with the old man, but was genuinely curious. “How did you come to join the church?”
He laughed a little. He sensed where she was going, what she was thinking. “You would think that I would be angry at God for my predicament, but,” he sat quietly for a moment.
She interjected, “Why would God let these things happen? Why would He allow Sombrero del Oro to exist?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Have you found the answer?”
“No, I have not.”
Marta woke early and left the little room as Rebecca slept. It wasn’t quite daylight but something had been on her mind ever since she’d seen the brother in the garden the day before. She picked her way quietly through the breezeway and to the spot.
The man smoked, but never stripped his cigarette butts. For some reason, he put them in a little bucket in a corner covered by shrubbery. Rebecca found it after a short search and pulled a dozen little stubs together. She’d gotten some old newsprint and fashioned a cigarette paper from it, creasing it down the middle. Into this she dumped the contents of the stubs and eventually had a serviceable smoke. She lit it with a match she’d taken from the bedside table and smoked and blew smoke up at the sky as the daylight began to illuminate the little courtyard. Birds started and lizards started. Everything was moving about her.
She liked this place, but so many images of Jesus and The Virgin made her think a lot about how things were unfolding in her life. She could not help but feel a bit strange. Something uneasy and foreboding. She’d never had this feeling in her life and she was not certain she liked it much.
The mother superior was over her shoulder before she could react. She knew the old woman would not like to see her smoking, but the nun said nothing. She sat down next to the little girl and still said nothing.
“Old nun...” she knew that was not the correct way to address the woman, but was not certain how. She was just learning civility and it was coming to her slowly.
“Yes, child.”
“I wonder if I will go to hell when I die.”
“Not if you lead a good life, and take Christ into your heart.”
“I’ve done bad things.”
“I see.” The old woman thought back to the incident in the desert. She decided not to push the girl.
“I don’t mean killing.” Little Marta was a smart child. She seemed to be able to read the nun’s mind.
&nb
sp; “Oh, I see.”
“I let many bad things happen to people. The red haired lady. And many others. I would just stand there and let the things happen.” She looked into the nun’s eyes and was genuinely confused. “Will that make me go to hell?”
The mother superior took the cigarette from little Marta’s hand and crushed it out. “Smoking is a vile and filthy habit, Marta.”
“The Mexican Lady does it.”
“Ah, this is true.” She laughed a little, barely audible. “You like her, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes, sister, I like her. Rebecca says I may call her Mamma, but she’s not my Mamma.”
“Would you like it if she were?”
“Oh, yes.” She began to fidget as she no longer had a cigarette between her fingers. “She kills men, but she will not go to hell, will she, sister?”
“I don’t know, child. Everyone has to stand before God when the time comes, and I don’t know what is in her heart.”
Little Marta stood up. She was finished now. She felt a bit better. She looked the nun in the eye again and smiled. “I do.”
Uncle Bob leaned into the doorway of Pilar’s room. He’d gotten in late and she’d finally fallen asleep. He listened to her snoring. It wasn’t a pleasant sound, but the best he’d heard in days. He breathed deeply, breathed in the familiar smell of home. He began to turn away, disappointed but willing to wait until morning when she spoke from her bed.
“Do you need coffee, old man?”
“No, no. I’m sorry to wake you, old girl.” He took a couple of steps forward and she, without further acknowledgement, held up a blanket, welcoming him into her bed.
He kissed her all over and was pleased to find her without her big sack of a sleeping gown. She pressed herself against him, burying her face into his old boney sternum.
