CHAPTER ONE: Sister Renata Writes, "My Crazy Cousin Is Making Up Stories About Me!!"

Renata’s Diary

April 1, 1883 And now, how to begin? And why? I write because I must. I write because I cannot trust memory anymore. I certainly cannot trust my cousin Antonie and those bizarre stories he has been writing these last months, scratching them out in a wobbly hand, in black ink on thin white paper. He wrote the first, "Renata Dancing," and left it under the pillow. I know he left it for me; he knew that I was coming in that afternoon to change his bedsheets.

I stood, the soiled sheets in my arms, the words he wrote hard to absorb.

I sank to the bed in horror. His poetry had turned me into a Spanish dancer in a flame-colored dress!

The man is sick and daft. I see now how his illness is ruining his mind, and now, after what happened tonight, I see how that he fully intends to ruin me.

Dear God, I am at a loss about what to do.

When I close my eyes, I still see the wretched way he looked at me as I brought a cup of tea to his bedside. That peculiar horror clouded his eyes once again. I know not exactly what goes through that scheming lustful mind of his at those moments, I just know that I am afraid.

And so tonight, I begin. I write this diary because I need a careful record. My dearest friend here at the convent, Sister Teresa, insisted that I write.

The first time I spoke about Antonie's growing madness to her, some months back, I recall the way Teresa recoiled. We were standing side by side at the laundry sink, scrubbing altar cloths. I told her about the first story Antonie wrote, some months ago now, the one he called "Renata Dancing."http://switchthenovel.blogspot.com/2010/05/chapter-two-xandra-can-you-help-me.html

I saw Teresa's smile drain away. She stopped and for a moment, she gazed into the grey soapy water. Then she raised her eyes and looked straight at me. I could see dark clouds in those clear eyes of hers, eyes that normally are the color of a summer sky.

"Renata, this is..." she shook her head. It took her a moment to continue. "You've got to be more careful," she whispered.

“Careful?” I replied. "But what am I to do?"

Well so, she tried to tell me to stop going to my cousin's bedside.

I laughed. "Do you really think I have the power to decide?" I reminded her what Father Ruby's instructions to me. "I expect that you will be a steady source of support to your poor cousin," he said.

Naturally he would say that, as he so values Antonie. My wealthy cousin is a steady "support" to the convent.

Teresa resumed scrubbing the altar cloth, but the stain of red wine was fixed forever in the linen.

"Then you must write it all down, Renata," Teresa said, keeping her head focused on her work. "Writing will protect you."

And so now I do. I write. I guard myself safely in the tabernacle of my own words.

Lately I write things that I cannot share even with her. In this, my diary, I've got an ear that listens, an ear that hears everything but never censures.

After what happened tonight, I need my diary more than ever. I need my own hard and fast version of events, for Antonie is orchestrating me in a distinctly murky light.

It was after midnight. I woke in a black well of darkness and the familiar music rose up. I heard the guitar and immediately it drew me to the window. I crossed the wooden floor, barefoot, and I peered down into the dark soup of night. Señora Ramos was holding the candle. Only the top half of her brown face was clear in the scanty light. Her eyes were stark and sober. From her invisible mouth, there rose an urgent whisper.

“Por favor señorita, please, you must come. He needs you now, señor Antonie needs you right away tonight.”

The candle shifted, throwing her face into angles of yellow light. My heart responded, pumping faster.

“But my dear lady, I cannot possibly leave the convent now. Certainly not at this unseemly hour.”

“Oh but he is calling for you,” she insisted, her speech falling completely into Spanish. She reached one hand up toward me. “I believe he has some fever, at least he sweats and sweats profusely, his face is slick, his color a sickly green, and his bed clothing drenched. When I left him, he was thrashing. He says you cannot keep him waiting any longer, that he is losing strength, but more important, he is losing his mind, he keeps wringing the sheets, and ripping and tearing and clawing at his own clothes, he cries out all kind of foul and impossible things, and he makes dark and ghastly threats, even at me, at me, and you know I am practically his mother! I hear him and his threats and I cover my ears, I cry in fear to my Dear Lord, because I know not from where it all comes, and what drives him to do this.”

I leaned further over the sill. It was never easy to refuse señora, and tonight was no exception. Still, my head was full of reasons that I shouldn’t go. No one to escort me properly, and no one to make Father Ruby’s early morning bowl of coffee. No one to shake Mother Yolla out of sleep at six a.m.

I would be expected in the kitchen at five. And in chapel by six.

And yet, as I gazed down at señora Ramos, I knew I couldn’t refuse her. She was a mother to me in childhood. And here she was more distraught than I had ever seen her. I worried for the old woman’s health.

“Señora, please come inside, will you?”

In the amount of time it takes to strike a match, señora was beside me in my convent room. She settled onto my bed and I beside her. She spoke in a fast rattle of Spanish.

"I will escort you there and have you back here before the morning sun cracks over the horizon. I will vouch for your whereabouts, too, I will tell Mother Yolla exactly what I asked of you tonight. Please do this thing for me, or if not for me, for him, or if not for him, then for your dear uncle, for his memory. Please Renata! Because I fear if I return to him tonight without you, he may take his life.”

Reaching beneath her blue shawl, she took out a single rose. She held it out to me. The yellow flower looked as though it had been dipped in blood. At first I refused it.

“Ah, señorita, ayudame, por favor,” the old woman said. She kept the rose there, her eyes pleading. So finally, I took it.

“Ahora, ven conmigo,” she whispered. “Rapidamente.”

I dressed quickly. Just as I was reaching for my black traveling cloak, señora grabbed my hand. She took the blue shawl from her own shoulders and dropped it to my own. I tried to protest, but señora was already leading me by the hand out the door. As we crossed the courtyard behind the convent, I looked up. I saw the smallest sliver of moon, a silver curl in the inky sky. Something in that peaceful curve, like an open teacup, reassured me, made my spirits rise. I hoisted myself up onto the gray wagon, and turned to help señora.

She handed me the lantern and we set off. We rode silently together for the next hour in the darkness, the dark sky a black platter for the sparkling stars. We rode close, my leg pinned into her fleshy hip. The draft horse moved slowly, his hooves clop clopping into the hard mud of the rutted road. Soon there came the first screech of the coyotes. I tensed, and señora sensed my fear. “No tengas miedo,” she whispered. She handed me the reins, and reached back into the wagon for the guitar.

As I guided the wagon, she strummed, and soon she was humming, and then wailing the way she sometimes does. As I heard the song rise up from childhood, and settle around my heart, I feared the music. This was always the music that accompanied me to my cousin Antonie’s bedside. It was this same music that made me into the woman I so dreaded to be.

To continue reading what happened when Renata and Señora arrive at the hacienda, go to her April 1, 1883 diary entry.

Castenata is the inner "layer" of a story called Sister Mysteries, part of the Albany Times Union's Writing In Motion project, which features seven writers who are committed to completing their books by the end of the year. Castenata -- a book that author Claudia Ricci wrote in 1995 -- is a time travel murder mystery featuring a nun, Sister Renata. In 1883 the nun was falsely accused of murdering her cousin Antonie. Renata's version of the story is contained within her diaries, the first of which can be found on this site.