Castenata

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: Out the Door, I am FREE!

2011-12-19T08:38:00.001-08:00

DIARY ENTRY

stopping now out of breath...

I walked out the door.

I walked out that door.

hand...fingers...trembling...hard writing...

write...

left ankle so sore...where the chain cut in before never healed...

sun lowering...a couple of hours to go before it sets...

what happens after dark...

look up, madrone, deep red... trying to take in what happened? What happened?

I will be sleeping under some tree, stars tonight. Air warm sweet, dry grass, golden hillsides. Sky bright bright blue

frightened... thrilled excited. Trembling now, feeling tears...because I am finally finally...

free.

Nothing it was nothing. Escape? All I had to do was lift up off of Kitty's sofa and take the cloth satchel I packed -- canteen journal biscuits cheese apples.

Heart slamming, walked up to the door turned lock and then, opened... the door. Morning air cool misty so fragrant and there I was top of the stairs with the world waiting.

Tears now. Tears...

so careful down stairs one by one see inside Kitty's cafe. Nobody. No sound. Bean a liquored heap at the bottom. Just lying there snoring. Arm with the bottle and then...I saw his jacket thrown to the side. I took it. I stole Bean's jacket. And kept walking. Fast.

With my heart practically dancing in my throat, sweat sprouting, I just kept walking forward. Thinking for sure, someone bound to come running behind me. Someone sure to come running up guns blazing yelling STOP!!!! STOP!!!!

But no.

I was free.

I am free.

Who knows for how long. But for now, I am free.

A nun, running. My face will be plastered on posters everywhere before the day is out. Must disguise. Bean's jacket falls below my knees.

Must keep walking now, heading through golden hills, trees. Redwood and madrone. Oak.

Thinking of Teresa now, I never said a word never spoke once to her of the plan, now she can be honest saying she had no idea what I was thinking. What I am doing.

What I am doing?

No idea. Where I am going?

Beyond here. Beyond the old life.

To whatever awaits me. Must not think now. Must go forward, now. Now.

Move now. Go!

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: And Now, Finally, For My Escape!!

2011-11-07T03:35:00.001-08:00

Now the sun comes to the lip of the window. Now I see a straight way out. An hour ago I kneeled down in prayer, in total darkness. I asked Mary for a miracle -- a way out. I said the rosary with my eyes closed. I felt those smooth beads between my fingertips, and whispered to Her, PLEASE PLEASE HELP ME!!

Some time passed -- who knows how long. I'm not altogether sure that I didn't fall asleep. The next thing I knew I was rocking there on my knees. I was saying PLEASE PLEASE. I felt a slight puff of air, as if someone was there, right next to me, breathing against my face. I felt a wind -- ever so slight -- brushing right past my cheek like a feather.

I opened my eyes, clutching the rosary. At first I wasn't sure whether I was awake. To my wonder and surprise there She was, beside me in her powder blue veil! Her face was porcelain and her cheeks, blushed pink. She glowed with a kind of light I've never seen. The light was alive. It vibrated and made me tremble.

She smiled and nodded and pointed out the window.

"Go my child. While there is still time, go."

My eyes widened. Her voice was so very kind and so deep and intimate. It was as if she was speaking right inside my head.

And her smile. It filled me, and now the window, with that bright, bright light. A light splashing every which way. A light alive. I've got to find more words for how light can be so full of energy that it feels alive.

She was pointing still, gesturing to the sky gathering the same powder blue color as her veil. My eyes sailed into the distance, toward the navy blue rim of the low Santa Cruz mountains.

I blinked. For a moment it occurred to me, I must be losing my mind.

But no. No. Mary herself was there, I swear it. Glowing, nodding, pointing, offering me my freedom -- it was that clear and simple.

The road -- dusted pink in salmon light -- calls now. No one need know. No one at all is awake. The jailer, old Bean, drank a small tub of tequila at dinner. He's slumped under the staircase there in front of Kitty's cafe. The others -- Kitty, Teresa, Señora -- I hear one of them snoring.

I turn to the door. Do I dare? There is the way out. There now is a way to spare my neck from the loop of rope swinging at the gallows in the town square. If I don't go now, I will be heading tomorrow for the gallow stairs.

Do I go? My heart is slamming but I am moving -- quietly, silently -- toward the door.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: And Now Comes the Governor's Decision

2011-10-29T12:16:00.000-07:00

The dark sky is navy blue, and split by the thin golden crescent that is the moon. I stare at the crisp curve, shining eye to eye with me.

Soon it will be sunrise, and I will have been sitting here, awake, staring out the window, all night. I am dressed head to toe in white, as Sister Teresa brought me a brand new habit, pristine.

It occurred to me that maybe she was thinking, I need to be clean when I go to my death next week.

There is no more hope now. The reply from Stoneman has come. In one sentence, the Governor of the State of California dropped me, sent me tumbling into oblivion. This man, known to have pardoned so many, gave not a word of explanation in rejecting my plea. In just one stiff and official sentence, he has done me in, turned me into Stonewoman and sent me rolling. I have no possible escape from the gallows now.

If I were in a normal state, I suppose I would have cried yesterday when Kitty carried the thin white envelope into the house. It was shortly after noon. The mail always arrives by stage by 1 p.m.

As soon as I laid eyes on Kitty, I knew instantly that the news contained inside the envelope she held was not good. Her pasty white face. Her wide eyes, locked onto my own.

She blinked, and without untying her black bonnet, or taking off her cotton gloves, she dropped onto the straight back chair. She sat there, all in black, holding the envelope, and the letter. She kept blinking, and I was thinking the worst. After all, she looked as though she might just dissolve in tears. Finally she got one short breathless sentence out.

"My dear Renata," she said in a hush, "Governor's decision has come and I..."

She stopped again. I was sitting there on the sofa, the guitar in my lap. I had been, oddly enough, strumming an alegría, a happy melody to which Señora had once sung some wonderfully silly lyrics about a goat who kept appearing, day after day, in a young woman's garden. The goat turned out to be a suitor.

But watching Kitty's face, it was impossible to continue strumming.

She raised one gloved hand to her face. "I have some very bad news," she whispered.

I felt a kind of numb veil descend over me. I could say that I wasn't surprised, but I wasn't. But I also couldn't quite believe that what was happening was real. Everyone else -- or should I say Kitty and Teresa -- were feeling so hopeful when they sent the petition, and the supporting letters to Stoneman's office last week.

I had, in spite of myself, allowed my hopes to rest in the arms and faith of my two friends.

Now, that hope was gone. My life was as much as ended.

"Read it to me Kitty," I said. My voice was steady and strong, but it had a shredded quality, as if it had been scraped with a knife.

She sat there, staring.

"Please," I said. "You must read it to me."

She read: "The petition for clemency in the sentence against Sister Maria Rosa Renata, convicted for the murder of Señor Quiero de Lopez, has hereby been..."

Her voice trembled. It took a full minute before she finally spoke the word. "... denied." Her chin dropped to her jacket, and I could see the tears falling.

I turned away. I saw a large yellow cloud passing by the window. I allowed my mind to be carried up there, to rest in the cloud.

I had not been allowed outdoors for weeks. I thought to myself, at least, I will be hanged in the sun. At least when I take my last breaths, I will be inhaling fresh air. There is, at least, that. I tried to think something beyond that thought.

Kitty was crying and trying to take a seat next to me on the sofa. She was trying to take me into her arms. I ought to have let her, but I wanted my space. I pushed her away.

"Please, leave me be," I whispered. "I wish to be alone, so that I might pray."

Finally, she rose. Sniffling, wiping her nose with her hanky, she asked me if I wanted tea. I shook my head slowly. no. "I only ask that you to leave me in peace. Please. You owe me that."

And so she did.

After when she was gone, I didn't pray. I just lay on the sofa and stared at the clouds passing by the window. I could have done that all day.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: IS ALL OF THIS (LETTER) WRITING JUST A WASTE OF TIME?

2011-08-17T04:53:00.000-07:00

We sit side by side on the sofa, Kitty and me, and she has the bundle of letters piled neatly in her lap. Kitty's face is a study in happiness and her eyes shine with excitement.

Tomorrow morning she is scheduled to package up the letters and deliver them to my lawyer's office. DeLuria will carry the letters directly to Governor Stoneman's office in Sacramento and in a few short days we will know whether he will pardon me.

Kitty is patiently waiting for me to answer her question.

She has just asked if she can read a few of the letters to me before she places them in a box and ties the box with twine. Teresa is sitting across from us in the rocking chair. The two of them are just sitting there, trying not to stare.

Meanwhile, I am gazing into the cup of chamomile tea that Kitty has fixed me.

I inhale.

"So," I say. "I do know how much this means to you. I know how excited you both are, but..." I take a sip of tea and then shake my head slowly. "No, I would prefer not to know what they say."

Kitty shoots a quick glance at Teresa and back at me. She sets one hand very gently on top of the letters. Her hand stays there. After a moment, she leans forward a bit on the sofa and speaks very quietly. "I completely understand that you're very nervous about all of this," she says. "There is so much at stake. But if you knew how much passion is contained here, Renata, if you knew how much concern, even love, if you would just let me share a bit of it wi..."

"Please Kitty, NO!" I set my teacup down in the saucer with a rattle. I am frightened suddenly that she is pressuring me. I feel blood rushing into my face. I shudder just glancing at the stack of pages sitting there on Kitty's knees.

It is indeed a rather sizable batch of letters she has assembled. After an extraordinary effort on Kitty's part, she managed to convince 145 people to put pen to page on my behalf! It is a particularly impressive outpouring of support, especially as the local newspaper had tried so hard to deride my case with their damnable article.

And now here I am, not wanting to read a single one of them. Indeed, I want to forget that they even exist. I want to forget that it is these thin pieces of paper -- some covered with impeccable handwriting -- that might help to decide whether I live or die.

"I know that I should be pleased about the letter campaign. I should be feeling encouraged, and hopeful." I nod and turn to face Kitty. "I am terribly grateful to you Kitty, I really am, but...I cannot bear it." The last few words are hard to hear.

I clasp my hands together and hold them tight.

Kitty stares into her lap.

The last few weeks have been such a blizzard of activity for her and for Teresa. The two of them have been tireless, knocking on doors day and night, gathering letters, convincing patrons of the cafe to sit down and write to the Governor demanding my freedom. In some cases, they fixed free meals for letter writers. In some cases, they had Señora baking bread or pie or cookies, which were passed them out freely to those who picked up pens to write.

After all of that exhausting effort, it is hard now for them to hear me say I don't want to know what the letters say.

"I do understand that all this makes you nervous, Renata," Kitty says. "But I don't think you can possibly understand how many people have stepped forward." She pats the bundle of letters.

"You cannot imagine how many fine, fine letters have been written on your behalf."

I sniffle. "I am sure you're right Kitty. And perhaps if...if we are successful, then, perhaps afterward, after it's all over, but now, now I feel that I cannot possibly listen." I am starting to feel lightheaded, and a sense of dread. Lately that feeling of dread has started to come over me more and more, often in clouds that billow around me like a grey fog.

Teresa bends forward. Her voice is reassuring. "I wonder Renata." She pauses. Bites into her lip. "I've got to ask you this one thing my dear. Is this decision not to hear the letters, it is perhaps...because you feel superstitious? Are you thinking that if you read the letters out loud, then perhaps it might jinx your chances of succeeding with the Governor?"

I study Teresa's sky blue eyes. What she is saying had not occurred to me. But maybe I am feeling superstitious. I shrug. Clasp my hands together more tightly. I remain silent. Teresa clears her throat and continues.

"I have been told that the Governor is deeply compassionate toward prisoners, Renata, as the General himself was a Union soldier taken prisoner during the war. It is said that every time he signs a death warrant he is sick for a day or two!"

I glanced at Teresa and her blue eyes felt like they were boring into me.

"Perhaps I am superstitious," I say, shaking my head. "But most of all, I am just so so exhausted by...by everything. Much too tired to listen. This whole business, the trial, the letter writing, the newspaper story, while I certainly do appreciate everything you've done, Kitty, I...I'm sorry, but I am just too tired."

I sit there staring into the letters. I have other thoughts I could share: In the end I am afraid that all of this letter writing is a waste of time and paper and ink. I think it's hopeless to send letters to Governor Stoneman. My case is closed. Over and done with. I am going to die and I might as well let them get on with it.

My heart is pounding. I am holding my sweaty hands together so tightly that the joints of my fingers ache.

I don't dare say any of it. I look up. My hand trembles as I reach for the teacup again and take a small sip. I haven't had any appetite, and no matter what Señora makes for me, I don't eat. That might be one reason I feel so weak. So light-headed. So full of dread and despair.

I hear the wind whistle outside Kitty's house. There at the door is old Bean the jailer, probably slumped against the wall, asleep on his watch.

The three of us sit there a little longer and finally, I announce to them how tired I am. I ask if they mind if I go to bed. Neither of them say a word.

Kitty gets up from the sofa and sets the letters neatly on the table. And then she and Teresa wrap themselves in their wool shawls and leave the house.

I am left all alone, lying here on the sofa.

I watch a single candle burning. The white wax melts and dribbles in bits and globs as it slides down the side of the candle toward the table.

The stack of letters sits on the opposite side of the table. As I sink into dreams, it occurs to me how easy it would be for all of those letters to go up in flames.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: Kitty Pole Cooks Up a Pardon for the Nun, But will GOVERNOR STONEMAN SWALLOW IT?

2011-07-13T04:16:00.001-07:00

Local Woman Needs Anyone With a Pen and A Bleeding Heart!!

By John Dimson

Crime Reporter

We all know Kitty Pole. She's our one and only cafe lady. At one time or another, Kitty's made her famous chestnut-flavored coffee for each and every one of us here in town.

And yes, she fixes a mighty tasty breakfast at that tiny cafe tucked beneath her sky blue house. Her sweet potato homefries are famous. Her ham and pepper omelettes are divine.

Oh, and she whips up a fierce plum cobbler too. (Ask anybody who's tried it!)

But what's got into Kitty now? She's trying to cook up a stew that is altogether new for her. She's meddling in the court system, and it's not clear what she's up to or what she expects to get out of doing it.

For the last few weeks, Kitty's been going door to door -- even promising free cafe meals -- to anybody who pens a letter to our good Governor Stoneman. Kitty's turned organizer, asking that all of her neighbors team up to request a pardon for our notorious Sister Renata, the nun convicted of slicing her cousin Antonie's throat!

Dear Kitty, with all due respect, what goes on here? Maybe the cafe business is too slow?

According to the Examiner story, published right after the murder last fall, Señor Quiero de Lopez' jugular vein was sliced with a straight razor. And in a particularly gory detail, the poor man's Adam's apple was cored out of his neck!

The very same day that Sister Renata was arrested, a sheriff's deputy found the nun's discarded black habit, coated in blood, buried in the vegetable garden behind the convent!

During the trial, a dozen of Sister Renata's fellow nuns traveled to Gallejo to testify on her behalf. Each of the Dominican nuns went into great detail about Renata's character. Not a blemish, they claimed.

I wish I could believe them!

After all was said and done, Renata was convicted last month of first-degree murder. She is scheduled to die by hanging on January 6th, a mere three weeks from now.

But now, along comes our own Kitty Pole -- who by the way is housing the convicted nun right there in her blue house (by arrangement of the court, I should point out!) Something's come over Kitty, because now the good cafe lady is trying to stop the whole criminal justice system in its tracks!

What qualifies Kitty -- a splendid cook to be sure -- to think she can stir up sympathy for a convicted killer? And how does she expect to gather enough letters here in our small village? So far she's collected a total of only 17 letters, so it looks like she has her work cut out for her!

When she came by my office recently to chat, this is what she said: "We will be making a bad mistake if we send that poor nun to the gallows. I've read the nun's journal, and if you would do the same thing Mr. Dimson then you'd see she can't possibly be guilty of her cousin's murder!"

Just for the record, I read the court transcripts, and I've seen the nun's diary. But what makes Kitty so convinced that it exonerates the nun?

Kitty claims that the nun was framed by her clever cousin. Perhaps.

But what about that bloody corpse that the authorities found? And the nun's habit, coated in blood, buried in the garden? That's the kind of evidence that's hard to ignore.

Kitty flushes to her roots, and her cheeks turn cherry pink, when she discusses the trial. She turns even more passionate when she asks folks to write letters.

"Well of course I am passionate," she said. "It is a human life at stake here. Think about that! The point, Mr. Dimson, sir, is that we have to convince him, the Governor. We must! The whole town must take her side, writing letters, calling for her pardon. If we show him that we are sympathetic, perhaps then he will be convinced!"

Perhaps, Miss Kitty.

But perhaps not. The question is, will Governor Stoneman listen?

And by the way, Kitty Pole, you might take a few moments to think about that other human life -- the one that was cut short by his own straight razor! Poor man, that Antonie!

Miss Kitty, you've got some serious cooking ahead of you! And the whole town's watching too, to see if you really do succeed in setting a convicted killer free!

Why should our good Governor swallow this story?

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: Heaven Help Me, Another Newspaper Tries to Do Me In!!

2011-07-13T04:14:00.000-07:00

One week exactly after visiting the newspaper, we woke up to old Bean the jailer knocking on Kitty's door. He can't read, the poor man, but he'd learned that the Gazette had printed our story and he'd been promised a quarter by Kitty if he bought the newspaper and brought it to the house for us to see.

As she closed the door, my head was spinning in memories. I've seen what newspapers can do when they want to skewer you. It happened to me when the San Francisco paper wrote about me just after I was arrested for Antonie's murder. That article convicted me way ahead of the trial!

But here now was still another newspaper, the local Gazette, and judging by the look on Kitty's face as she placed the paper on the table, it wasn't good.

Kitty muttered something and I asked her to read the headline out loud. She inhaled. And read each word at a painfully slow tempo.

Local Woman Needs Anyone With a Pen and A Bleeding Heart!!

I winced and sank deeper into the sofa.

Kitty cleared her throat and carefully unfolded the paper and spread it on the oak table. She and Teresa pulled up their chairs. I just stayed put there on the couch staring at Kitty's remarkable tin ceiling, my eyes tracing the curlicue patterns.

"Aren't you going to look with us?" Kitty asked quietly.

I shook my head back and forth, very slowly, feeling the tears gathering. A tight panic began squeezing at my insides. "No, you two can read it first, and if it's as bad as I think it will be, I'm...I'll just pass. I am not sure I have the stomach for it."

And so Teresa and Kitty read John Dimson's article in silence. I put my hands over my face and only once glanced up when I thought I heard Kitty sucking on her teeth. At that moment I noticed Teresa shake her head ever so slightly. They finished. They sat there.

My heart hammered. I wasn't able to speak. I wanted desperately to know. I wanted desperately not to know. I wanted most of all to go to sleep and forget the whole matter. But how could I possibly forget the fact that I was going to the gallows in a matter of days?

Finally Kitty spoke.

"Well that young man deserves a good sharp boot right smack in his back side."

"I'd agree completely," Teresa said. She sounded rather weary, even though it was still early in the morning.

"But then," Kitty went on," I could tell right away. The moment I laid eyes on him last week. His whole demeanor. That reporter is well-named. Dimson. DIM-witted Son of a..."

"Oh KITTY!" Teresa covered her ears and shook her head vigorously as if to rid herself of the vulgar outburst.

"Well, sorry for that, Sister, I do apologize, but that man wrote the least sympathetic piece of dirty laundry I've ever read, and hung it out for all to see. And not only does it hurt our cause, but the story isn't even accurate. I am sure that I told him we'd collected 27 letters, not 17. I know for a fact because I had the stack in my hand for Pete's sake."

Teresa inhaled. "It makes no difference really. If he'd written 27, or 207, in that awful story, it would matter not one bit!"

By now, I felt that I might wet my pants. My mouth was so parched and dry that my tongue felt withered. I couldn't speak but I started to cry. Teresa and Kitty rushed from the table to the sofa, where I lay.

"Heavens, don't take it so hard," Kitty said, sitting beside me and squeezing me in a tight embrace. "It doesn't matter what the silly paper writes. I will go door to door, starting this afternoon!"

"And I will go with you," Teresa said, placing a hand on my arm.

I sat there sniffling. I wanted to say, "I'd just as soon you don't. I would just as soon you accepted the inevitable and gave up. I would just as soon you had never tried." But none of that came out of my mouth. I had so little energy to speak. What did it matter, what I said? What did anything matter now?

I knew that I had to read the article for myself. But how to find the courage? The strength?

"Teresa, dear, if you wouldn't mind, would you be kind enough to bring the paper here to me? I don't know that I have in me to sit there at the table with it."

"Of course I will," Teresa said.

Kitty stood. "But wait. Before you read a word of that foul stuff, you need a good strong cup of tea," she declared. She stopped. "Or would you rather my famous chestnut coffee?"

I considered saying that I wanted a shot of old Bean's whiskey.

"A cup of tea would be delightful," I said and forced a smile. And so Kitty made me tea, and brought it to me in one of her grandmother's fine china cups, a pretty green. And she also buttered me a fresh biscuit with raspberry jam.

And only when I'd finished both of these did Teresa bring me the dreaded newspaper article by Mr. John Dimson. Once more I had in front of me the writing of a man who, like Antonie, was using his clever words to turn my life inside out.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: Flies, Flies, Flies

2011-07-13T04:11:00.000-07:00

When I have those moments of despair, when all else fails to cheer me, well, then there are the flies and I tend to them religiously. I laugh thinking about myself doing that. Tending to flies. I laugh. I realize someone might think that I enjoy killing flies.

Absurd. That is never my intention. Well. Perhaps occasionally it is…

The cafe downstairs -- Kitty's place, is a breeding ground. Kitty and Señora are always frying. Endlessly. Bread dough. Donuts. Chicken. Home fries. Or if they’re not frying, they are baking rolls or stirring tortilla soup or grilling steaks in flat pans, and the odors bring the godawful flies up to the windows and I know I shouldn't kill them but I do, I am determined to keep the windows clean, I mean I see that as part of my job.

So I try to catch them in the dishtowels. I try not to squash them, as it bothers Sister Teresa so, she values all life, every morsel, so I try not to let Teresa see me do it, if she happens to enter the room and I am about to swat the fly, I just scoop it into the towel or…

Sometimes if I’ve just killed a fly, I will sit on the towel.

But that's not what I want to tell you. What I want to tell you about is the visit to the newspaper office two days ago with Kitty and toothless Bean, the old jailer who put me in cuffs behind my back. I was allowed to go only because of Kitty's letter campaign, she is determined to convince Governor Stoneman to free me, she is a saint that woman.

What can I say about Kitty is she is becoming a dear friend to me. It doesn’t matter, but I do care deeply about what motivates her. I believe that she lost a daughter. I know now the name of the child in the portrait, the child with the mass of strawberry ringlets, her name was Lynda with a why. I do not mean why, I mean Y.

Why and how she died, I do not know. I have tried to ask Kitty but she will say nothing. I have begged Teresa to tell me the story but she simply shakes her head.

Oh. There now. There is another one, excuse me, I am determined to keep the damn windows clean and fly-free, I mean, I am sorry for swearing, there is more of that these days, Teresa heard me take the Lord's name in vain, she complained to me, but that's what has happened, I am changing, I am...something is coming loose inside me, my tongue feels unhinged, my mind, pressed, I think perhaps it is the flies buzzing, and me waiting for the worst possible end, the buzzing, the waiting, they will drive a person crazy.

I've got the dishtowel but now the fly is gone.

That being said, what I am meaning to tell you about is our visit to the newspaper, the reporter sitting there when we arrived, tapping on an elegant old machine, I've never seen one th…

It’s back. Excuse me. I will get the fly and that will be the end of it.

I’m back.

Frankly, when Kitty told me that we would "drop by" the newspaper, I was horrified. The idea that they were going to do a story, I was at first so very concerned. Not surprising, considering what the San Francisco newspaper wrote about me, hanging me before I had even been tried!

I told Kitty that I was quite upset. I told her that I wouldn't go to the paper I call it The Gaze-Ette -- because they were sure to write a piece that, my God, there, there is another fly.

I got that fly. I …

And another, landing here beside my journal.

And another. UGH. A bloody mass here, a cloud of a dozen or more swirling around me.

Later.

I apologize for the interruption but I had to get them all. I must get them. They buzz and circle, surround my head and they land in the windows and bounce against the glass. Rather disturbing to me.

I know all this about the flies might not seem important but I dreamed about flies last night. I am not certain why. Perhaps because they are trapped. Perhaps because they are trying so desperately to flee. Because the flies remind me a bit of myself.

Trapped as I am. Both of us. Black and going in circles. The flies and I stand at Kitty’s window and we desperately want to be free, and so I let them go if I can but when there are a cloud of them I fumble with the dishtowel.

Too much. Too many. So many that I must kill them, I kill them and the truth be told there is some kind of unhealthy satisfaction in that.

Back to the visit. This is a newspaper that prints lies. Or at least, opinions.

We arrived at the newspaper office – a single room with a kind of closet attached where they keep and operate a telegraph – we got there just after noon. The room was intensely warm.

A gaunt young man sat at the typewriter. I was introduced but as my hands were cuffed behind me, I could only drop my head.

He gazed at me over his spectacles. Which by the way were dirty. Streaked!

His name: John Dimson. Dark and wavy blonde hair, rather oily. And a wiry blonde mustache. Black topcoat. So formal. So funereal. And in that heat. What possesses him? In my case, I have no choice but to dress in black. Sister Teresa brought me a brand new habit, after my last disintegrated in the prison.

After we sat down, he removed the topcoat. White shirt, yellowed collar and beneath his armpits, great wet stains. He pressed the nose of his round spectacles to his face. He has a most unpleasant laugh. And he refused to look at me. He has a way of swaying slightly right and left as he speaks.

He banged on the typewriter, snapping the keys into submission while Kitty explained to him her letter-writing campaign. He stopped when she removed from her purse and presented to him the letter from Governor Stoneman. He sat back and read it and then pulled at his mustache. He laid the letter down on the oak desk.

“I don’t see the Governor here making anything that begins to sound like a promise, Ms. Kitty,” he announced rather somberly.

“Well of course not,” Kitty snapped back. She took the letter and folded it carefully and tucked it back into its onion skin envelope.

“The point, Mr. Dimson, sir, is that we have to convince him, the whole town must be on her side writing letters, all on her behalf, all sympathetic, and then we send them to him, and then perhaps he can be convinced.”

Another. Another fly. Three. Easily caught however in one dishtowel swipe. Oh, sorry, just two. One injured. Not sure. Ah. Here, now, a fleck of a wing right here. IN my hand.

Then I wipe the window clean.

“So, Ms. Kitty, this letter-campaign. How many have you collected? And how is it that you are approaching individuals, to ask folks to write them?”

Kitty pulled herself upright. Nodded and smiled. Explained her pitch. Told Dimson how she gives one free café meal to each letter writer.

Announced our up to date total: 27 letters.

Dimson took a handkerchief from his hip pocket. Wiped his forehead. I sat, thinking about my own face. I had to be, pink flushed damp. But with my hands at my back, there was nothing to be done.

It was at that moment, I saw the fly.

Land on Dimson’s typewriter. There.

It sat. Dimson was asking Kitty how many letters she thought she would be able to collect.

I watched the fly. I stared as it dropped into the pit where the keys pound the paper.

I didn’t see it.

Kitty was saying there was – obviously -- a “time constraint.” I am scheduled to walk those five steps to the gallows on the 6th.

“I am hoping for 200 letters,” she said. She lifted her chin in defiance.

“Miss Kitty, for heaven’s sake, that would be remarkable. We have only 642 citizens. You are saying that approximately one in three people will be willing to wr...”

“It is entirely possible,” she interrupted. “And there is no loss in trying, now is there Mr. Dimson?”

He gazed at her with a narrow-eyed look, and gave a quick shove to his spectacles, pressing them to the bridge of his nose. Wrinkling his mouth, and looking a little bored, he turned to the typewriter. He placed his fingers on the keys. I thought about the fly there in the pit. I gasped.

Dimson and Kitty looked over at me. My eyes widened. I kept staring. I felt like

A fly.

“I…” I nodded. “A fly. There. Just now landed in your typewriter.” I nodded again. Kept pointing. Dimson frowned. Looked rather annoyed by this whole business. Our visit.

Just then the fly lifted out of the typewriter and circled once, then headed for the window.

Dimson continued typing.

We left. No sign of fly as we left.

The article, Dimson says, will be in the newspaper by week’s end.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: A Flurry of Letters But Will They Help?

2011-07-13T04:10:00.001-07:00

Kitty is busy writing letters and what's more, she is getting friends and neighbors, and fellow nuns back at the convent to write letters too. What began as Kitty's pet project -- convincing Governor Stoneman to spare my life -- has now taken on a life of its own.

I cannot say that I understand how this has happened. Why exactly she is so determined to save my life, I'm not sure, but Teresa insists that Kitty's motives are pure and simple.

"We have had a number of long talks about Antonie, and his illness and his bizarre storytelling, and how those stories compromised you, and she was enraged. She wants to rectify the tragedy of what he did to you." Teresa explained this to me a few days ago while standing at Kitty's sink, rinsing the evening dishes. Kitty was downstairs in the cafe, serving dinner with Señora. "I tell you, Renata, that woman is an inspiration to me. Kitty has a great heart, and a magical spirit that carries her. She is full of life."

But when I pressed Teresa to explain what precisely motivates Kitty to be such a tireless advocate for me, Teresa clammed up. "I am not really at liberty to say," she mumbled.

"Oh Teresa, come now. If you know something, for heaven's sake, you ought to tell me."

Teresa looked up toward the ceiling and said nothing at first. Then she turned to me. "Kitty has had a very hard and challenging life, but she has transformed her challenges into opportunities."

"Yes, well, you've said that. But I wondered about the basics. Like, was she ever married? Was she a mother? Is that portrait in the bedroom her child?"

Teresa wiped the last cup and set it on the shelf. She shook her head briskly. "No reason to get into all of that," she said. "After all, what difference does it make to your situation? If you feel it is necessary and you want to ask Kitty, well then go ahead and ask her yourself." She shrugged and untied her apron and at that moment I thought to myself, Teresa has been putting on weight. She looks wider than I remember her at the convent.

"Now I have to run downstairs to the cafe to help out."

I believe that Kitty's a good soul, I don't doubt that. But this intensely-focused letter-writing campaign of hers must stem from something. As I've said before, I suspect that Kitty lost a child -- all I know is that she touches that portrait of the girl with the strawberry curls, the one hanging in her bedroom, at least two or three times a day. Only some deep emotional pain -- a deep, deep well of it -- could fuel her efforts and keep her so focused, working so fervently on my behalf.

I suppose it doesn't matter a bit. And I should be grateful. All I know is that she has a sign up in the cafe offering a free meal to anyone who will write a letter! And the newspaper is set to run a story on the letter campaign.

As soon as I heard the word "newspaper" I cringed, thinking back to that first horrifying story after I was arrested -- I felt crucified in words. And all subsequent reports about my trial were in the same vein. But Kitty assures me that this is going to be a different story, one that explains why an ordinary citizen has come forward to advocate for a woman in need.

Apparently, there are others she has convinced. All I know is that I woke from a nap four afternoons ago, lying there in the parlor on her sofa, with sunlight bathing the quilt that covered me. As soon as I woke up, I realized that Kitty had visitors.

I had been dreaming that I was, of all things, a centaur, half horse, half woman, and that I was galluping off to war! I woke up with tears in my eyes, because I realized that I was almost certainly going to be killed in battle!

That thought had me sniffling and teary when I came to, but there across the parlor, sitting at Kitty's oak table, were three strangers, two rather portly ladies, and one very tall thin woman. All of them are neighbors of Kitty's. Two were sipping lemonade Teresa had fixed, and the third had a glass of port. A plate of cookies sat on the table, and from what I was able to see, the two heavyset ladies were doing justice to the sweets.

It occurred to me that perhaps Kitty was soliciting letter writers by promising the writers free food and drink.

In any case, I lay there, wrapped in the quilt, remaining quiet, just observing, listening to Kitty explain her mission. "Sister Renata is no more guilty of a crime than you or me!" Kitty began. "I can tell you that she has a journal and I've read parts of it, and the way she cared for her cousin, Antonie, she is worthy of a medal. And this is the same man she is accused of killing."

The ladies remained quiet. The two cookie eaters continued to nibble.

"Her cousin, I'm afraid, was very ill, and..." Kitty paused. "Lord help me, but he wasn't right in the head. He wrote some bizarre tales about her. Plain and simply, he lied, but because of his position around here, everyone believe him, and Renata paid the price." Kitty sat forward. "And so I see it as our moral duty to help set her free!"

She brought her fist down hard on the oak table, hard enough so that the plate with the cookies rattled. The three neighbors shifted in their seats. The two heavy women stopped eating.

"Sister Renata's lawyer believes that there is a good chance that the Governor would spare the nun's life if a significant portion of the community is sympathetic to her situation," Kitty continued, now folding her hands and looking from one woman to the next. "And so I'm asking you, can you write a little letter asking Governor Stoneman for mercy?"

This particular meeting with the neighbors was just one of many that Kitty has held, either here in the parlor, or downstairs in the cafe. She has called a public meeting for next week to lay out her case. She asked Deluria if I would be permitted to attend but as I am technically in jail, and this is not a courtroom proceeding, he said I would not be allowed to go.

Just as well, as I know it would be painful to confront a crowd.

After Kitty delivered her pitch the other afternoon, the tall woman asked a question. "I guess I am wondering this, Miss Kitty. Why didn't you try to keep her from gettin' convicted in the first place?"

"Well that would have been ideal, I agree, Alice. But you know the court works the way the court works. And her lawyer, the truth be told, was barely able to hold his own." Kitty took a sip of lemonade herself. "What else you should know is that it took me some time to grow firm in my conviction that Renata is innocent. I went to every day of the trial, and as you know, I've had her in my house here." She gestured in my direction and the next thing I knew I had all four of them staring at me, still snuggled quietly under the quilt on the sofa.

"Oh, Renata, you are awake, I would make you a cup of tea and I will as soon as I am finished here."

"Thank you Kitty, I think you're doing plenty as it is. Not to worry about my tea!"

The three neighbors gazed at me as though I was a panther or a mountain lion in captivity. I suspect that never had any of them seen a convicted murderer up close, I pulled the quilt up over my chin.

And in a matter of minutes, the three of them were on their way, with the tall woman saying she would "give some thought" to a letter. The other two cookie-eaters refused to commit to doing anything on my behalf.

After they had left, Kitty reassured me that she had met with several other neighbors in the cafe earlier in the day and "had at least seven promised letters." Of course promises are cheap, I keep reminding myself of that fact.

But now, today, Kitty has shown me a small stack of actual letters -- eight to be exact. Some are just a few paragraphs long, scrawled in the sloppiest penmanship I've ever seen. But there is one letter that I must admit, I've already read it a dozen times, it too is short, but it presents my case in such a highly favorable light. And what's more, the handwriting is some of the prettiest I've ever seen!

CHAPTER THIRTY: Governor Stoneman, Can You Save Me?

2011-05-28T04:52:00.001-07:00

I am dreaming about my cousin Antonie -- blood spurts from the ragged gash in his throat, and both my hands are coated, warm and slick, the way they were that abominable day he died.

Antonie is grabbing at my neck and his eyes are two fierce black coals burning into me. I'm gagging because he's choking me and my arms are thrashing back and forth as I desperately try to free myself, when suddenly, a glass explodes and shatters. I scream and shoot straight upright.

When I open my eyes I realize that it is Kitty sitting beside me, her fingers circling my throat! It is barely sunrise, the windows glow pink in early light. With all my thrashing, I've accidentally sent the glass of water sitting by my bed flying and it's shattered on the floor.

"Why...whatever are you doing?" I say to her, my heart slamming. Tears spring to my eyes as I feel the dream and the image of Antonie's eyes, and my bloody hands, pressing in on me.

"I am so sorry," she says. "But...your breathing was so...so shallow Renata...I wanted to make sure that you were still...here."

"Of course I'm still here," I say, irritated, feeling a single warm tear leaking out of each eye. I pull the covers, drenched in water, up to my neck while she collects the broken pieces of glass off the floor, piling them into her white apron.

There are moments lately when I wish the three of them -- Kitty, Teresa, even Señora -- would just go away. I'd just as soon they let me be, let them lead me to the gallows and be done with it.

But they refuse. The three of them have teamed up, making me their project, the central object of their daily activity.

My lungs degenerated terribly while living all those weeks in the moldy jail, and after I was sentenced, my wheezing became continual and I developed a deep raspy cough. One morning Teresa found me unconscious on the floor of the cell. Full of rage, she lit into DeLuria, and convinced him to petition the judge.

Somehow, Teresa prevailed. So now, now that I am scheduled to die by hanging in a matter of weeks -- just by chance, the date is set for January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany -- now that I have only days to live, the court has seen the wisdom of transferring me to an "external facility, that is, Kitty's place. The blue house,

which has as its first floor, the tiny café, and upstairs, Kitty's residence.

The jailer, Jimmy Bean, ostensibly stands guard outside the front door. But more often than not, he's got that bottle of whisky in his hands. And he falls asleep. And we hear him collapse off his chair onto the porch. Once he tumbled down Kitty's staircase.

What irony, that the court would want to make certain that I stay healthy long enough so that they can hang me.

Teresa insists that Kitty has a plan, a promise of "new hope." Teresa delivered this bit of news to me a few days ago, after bringing me a cup of dandelion tea. I refused to drink it, but she lifted a teaspoon of the steaming brown liquid right up to my lips.

"My dear, I intend to remain here in this position until you give in and drink this damn tea, so please be quick about it."

I blinked. In all the years I'd known her, Teresa had never once let profanity slip from her lips. "Ah so now you swear, do you?"

"Oh yes indeed, I do when I need to make my point. Now just drink the tea would you please?" So I did, I took the rose petal tea cup -- part of Kitty's best set of dishes -- from Teresa's hands, at which point she settled back into her chair. "Kitty says it helps cleanse the liver."

"And why exactly does my liver need cleansing?" At which moment Kitty emerged from the kitchen.

"The liver stores anger, and in your case, there is plenty of reason for it." Kitty has a ready store of healing herbs, and tinctures she brews in her café kitchen.

Perhaps that is why there is something about this house. A certain nurturing way it feels. I'm not sure, but Teresa calls it a "blessed spirit that circulates between the walls," and she claims that even the convent "never felt this way." She may be right. All I know is that by treating me with gingko and feverfew, Kitty has managed to make my cough virtually disappear, and my wheezing is improved.

It helps too that I now sleep like a lamb (despite this morning's episode) and that I eat like a queen, thanks to the fact that Señora has taken over cooking all the evening meals at Kitty's café. (In this way, Señora is earning her board here, while Teresa does laundry and keeps house for her share.)

So there are four of us living here in the tiny three-bedroom blue house. Why exactly Kitty has decided to open her home and heart to us, why she is so attentive to me, I cannot say. Teresa has alluded to the fact that Kitty has a long sad story, one she will not share. "There is enough you have to carry in your heart right now, no need for more sorrow."

I suspect that Kitty lost a child. At least I know this much: there is a portrait, a sketch in pastels, of a young girl, fawn-colored eyes, and soft strawberry curls gracing her delicate shoulders. The portrait sits in Kitty's room above her bed, and once, I happened to pass by Kitty's open door and there she was, touching the portrait as if she meant to graze the child's face.

There is no evidence of a man having lived in this place, and again, I questioned Teresa, and again, Teresa set her lips together and wouldn't say.

Whatever it is that motivates her, Kitty regards me as her pet project. Her own cause celebre. As she put it to me one evening, when she'd set a fire going in the fireplace, wrapped me in a red and yellow quilt, and fixed me still another cup of strong dandelion tea. "You have suffered more than anyone ever should, Renata, and I'm not going to rest until we set you free."

So now, today, it seems as though there is news. After collecting the shards of glass from the floor, I fell back to sleep, and when I awoke, the sun was pouring into the front windows. Teresa had fixed me what has come to be my favorite morning meal: buttery biscuits and raspberry jam. She left three of them, and a cup of tea, now cool, on a tray.

Soon I heard murmuring, and then, a squeal of excitement.

Kitty came flying up the outside stairs and opened the front door. Teresa followed.

"No, it's not a promise, but it's reason for hope," Kitty said, waving the official-looking letter.

Over the next few minutes I was able to get the full story. Working single-handedly, Kitty has written a letter on my behalf to the Governor of California. George Stoneman. And so now I can understand why a few weeks ago, I woke up to Teresa and Kitty murmuring to each other. I had heard the words. Stone. Man. And then, "Maybe he can help." But I had no idea what they were discussing.

It turns out that this Governor of ours, a war hero, believes strongly in prison reform. He has granted dozens and dozens of pardons -- 247 to be exact -- and commuted almost as many sentences.

Kitty went to the trouble of writing a long and passionate letter to the Governor, explaining my situation, and asking for help.

The letter in her hands was not a pardon by any means, but a request for more official information. "In other words," said Teresa, "It is up to DeLuria to present the request."

"Yes, indeed, we will need his help," Kitty said, "but isn't it wonderful, he answered!"

She handed me the letter and I must say it was a thrill to see the Governor's scrawl across the page. To think that he would consider looking into my case.

I felt my face get warm, and tears spring to my eyes. "Thank you Kitty," I said, and it was difficult to speak.

She kneeled in front of me. I realized in that moment that she had the same fawn-colored eyes as the little girl in the bedroom portrait. And while her hair was graying, there were strands of the strawberry color. "I promise you Renata," she said, taking my hand, "that we won't stand by and watch you die. You have my word, we will have your case heard by the Governor himself!"

Teresa squeezed my shoulders. And I must say, for the first time in months, I felt a surge of hope. At the same time, I recalled all those horrible hours in what amounted to a cage.

Perhaps that's why I started to cry.

Teresa and Kitty wouldn't tolerate my tears for long, however. They made me get up and take a bath, and we spent the day planning a celebration. Señora made my favorite evening meal, tortilla soup, and Teresa baked me a spice cake.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: See Me, Now, Convicted of Murder!

2011-04-17T04:35:00.001-07:00

How quiet the jail tonight.

How bright the moon is outside the window. A perfect white button glowing in the dark cloak that is the sky.

Will she come back again?

Will she bring the other?

I stare between the bars into the courtyard and close my eyes and I realize that I must have been dreaming.

Of course I was dreaming.

Or was I? THAT WAS SEÑORA! She was here. She was here in her flowered shawl. I see her wide face the color of coffee with milk. I see her...and all the bright flowers on the satin shawl.

And I see the other too! She brought the Mother. She brought Her to me.

Or did she? Do I see what I think I see? Am I thinking clearly? I have eaten nothing. I have slept fitfully. I blink and my eyes play endless tricks on me.

What takes the place of Señora's face is horrifying:

The rope. Those five wooden steps.

And if it weren't for her coming, appearing here in the cell. If it weren't for that, for the Mother Herself saying, "Bless you my child, keep steady, have faith!"

If it weren't for that, for the explosion of light that surrounded me, that flooded me, I would say there is no hope.

With my eyes open, with my pen writing words precise and clear here in black ink on this white paper, there is only this to say:

Yesterday is the day that the trial finally ended. Yesterday is the day that the last days of my life were numbered. All that remains for me is the five steps up to the gallows.

No matter that Teresa brought a dozen of the nuns from the convent to testify on my behalf at the trial. No matter that they sat behind me, a phalanx of faith and devotion. No matter that DeLuria (prodded by Teresa) brought each nun in turn to the witness stand to testify on behalf of my "outstanding moral character."

No matter that it took most of the afternoon in that stifling courtroom to hear from each of the 13 nuns (Teresa included.)

No matter that one after the other they sat for the ordeal, listening to the insults of the prosecutor.

To all of you who came on my behalf -- to Sister Baptiste, Sister Philomena, Sister Hermione, Sister Marietta, Sister Felicity, Sister Annabelle, Sister Celina, Sister Genevieve, Sister Pauline, Sister Rafaela, Sister Margot and Sister Lucia -- I am forever indebted to you. I am forever grateful. I salute your courage, and your endurance. Traveling by carriage all those 87 miles from the convent on those red dusty roads. And then sitting on backless benches in that stifling courtroom all those many long hours. Enduring all the questions, the snide remarks, the stern looks from the jurors, all of it.

No matter. At the end of the day, the jury took exactly one hour and 34 minutes to return to the courtroom. I was in the cell only a few minutes when the jailer returned to "fetch me" for the verdict.

I sat at the defense table, hands folded, holding the well-worn family Bible that Teresa had brought me. I watched the 12 men shuffle back into the room, carefully avoiding my eyes.

The judge spoke. "Gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?"

The foreman, a portly man with a bright red nose and wearing a leather vest stood. "Yes, your honor, we have."

The judge nodded. Turned to glare at me. "Please stand and face the jury."

I stood, and DeLuria stood beside me. And behind me, I heard all of the nuns who had come to support my case. I felt them all rise with me!

Suddenly there wasn't nearly enough air in the courtroom to breathe. So I held my breath. My hands trembled so I held them to my chest as if in prayer.

"How do you find the defendant?" I heard the judge's question, but it sounded so far away to me, as if I had been wholly delivered up to another world.

"We find the defendant guilty, your honor."

Without knowing why, I smiled. I will never understand that beatific smile. Perhaps it was a release. Finally, I was hearing the words that I had dreaded to hear for so many many weeks.

A tender hush rose up behind me. I felt a hand at my back, one on my elbow, I know not whether it was DeLuria or Teresa or one of the many other nuns. My legs turned so soft that I felt they would no longer support me.

I collapsed into the chair. There were words being said, I suppose the judge was pronouncing the date that I would be sentenced, but now I felt again that I was not present in the room. Or I was immersed deep under water. Or he was speaking Russian or French. DeLuria tried to pull me by the arm, hoping I would stand again, but it was too late. I had turned into dead weight.

I sat there hands folded staring into the oak table. I studied the grain of the wood, and I felt that I could continue sitting there staring at that beautiful grain -- the whorls so intricate -- for as long as they would permit me.

But it wasn't to be permitted. It wasn't long before I was lifted at both elbows and my wrists were shackled again. DeLuria was telling me he would file an appeal and I was about to say,

"Mr. DeLuria I feel that is a mistake, and not necessary, you see you have done enough already."

But my lips were forming words I couldn't say. I was already being shepherded out of the room. And as I headed out, I glanced once at the bank of eyes and tears and black veils. Sister Pauline was making the sign of the cross and Teresa was holding Señora in her arms and rocking her.

I was all too soon back here, locked in, where I sat in silence until Teresa and Señora came and the three of us held hands through the bars and cried together and said nothing.

What could we possibly say when all is lost?

Finally, the jailer came and told them visiting hours were over. Teresa protested, but I begged her to go. And so they did, but not before Señora left a basket covered in a gingham cloth -- jars of canned vegetables and one of apricots. Ah, but nothing appealed to me, not even the cup of chamomile tea that Kitty later brought me (I took it, however, because as long as I was sipping the tea, Mr. Bean allowed her to sit with me.)

The sun dropped behind the courtyard and that moon I am still staring at rose in the clear dark sky. I must have fallen asleep. When I awoke, I saw that Mr. Bean had left me a bowl of soup which had grown cold, and a crust of bread. I dumped both into the foul pail.

I have a stone dead feeling in my stomach, as if someone had come in and stolen the core of me away and left a gaping cold trench. An open grave.

I have no idea when it happened.

When she came.

I know only that at some point she came.

Or did she?

During the night, when the moon was close to the roof of Kitty's cafe, I stood looking out the barred window. I stared into the courtyard where the gallows will stand and I finally said it out loud:

I am convicted of premeditated murder. I have been found guilty of killing my cousin Antonie in cold blood.

And I would have written that there is no more to say.

That all is lost. That there is no more hope for me. That nothing more remains but the sentence and the sentence we know already is me hanging by a rope.

But then she came. She has come before to me, Señora. She came clear as a ringing bell, she came shortly after I was arrested, she arrived here in this very cell, singing in the key of eternity. She came another time, after I collapsed in the courtroom, and then she brought me the rainbow rosary.

And perhaps because I was saying that very rosary tonight, praying with all my might for a miracle again, she came again, Señora, she came just as the moon settled like a bright bubble on the horizon, just before the bubble burst, and flooded the sky with white light,

She sat here with me, my dear old Señora, playing her guitar, and singing her lovely carcelero.

I am quite convinced of it now but how to explain this PRESENCE?

And how to explain the other, the glimpse I had of the Mother?

She is real. She too was here tonight, as clear as I see these bars she stood above me, as bright as the moon glowed, she showed herself to me in a fabulous light.

She the Mother filled me with love, I glowed too I glowed too. And I am afraid to write it down here, perhaps I fear that the miracle will disappear.

And I've grown nervous that the jailer when I sleep takes the journal, for what purpose I am not sure, he doesn't read a word. But just in case, I will slip the journal inside the powder blue shirtwaist dress.

And I sit here, and with me is the guitar that Señora played and now I sing and play and I sing and I pray.

And she is back, and

Now she sees my tears and changes gear. Now she is singing a gay and witty sort of palo which has a never ending number of poetic verses.

She sings:

Just imagine. What I. Did. Just imagine. Where I fled to.

Only the stars can tell you. Only the sky can guess.

So now sit down and I will try to tell you.

You will see it all come clear.

When the water goes still as a mirror,

And we peer inside.

Do you see now, why I appeared here?

Do you see now, why you must

Tell the world my story? Yes, tell the world

Just sing it, shout it out,

how we turned the past.

Together

We will move her story, Renata's

and Antonie's,

and his false history,

and hers,

around.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: Deprived of My Habit, I am Nun No More!

2011-04-17T04:34:00.001-07:00

Had I known that Teresa was going to deprive me of my black habit after the bath -- burning it in Kitty's barrel behind the blue house -- I would have refused the bath. No matter that I hadn't bathed in weeks.

And no matter that it was a delicious and refreshing bath. Yes -- the warm water was perfect and the suds so gentle and soothing. Kitty brought one after another fresh teakettle of steaming water, until Mr. Bean knocked on the steamed up glass window of the outside door where he was standing guard.

He was getting impatient, as my bath was taking a rather long time, and it was up to him to make sure that I got back to the jail.

The curtain kept him from peering inside where I lay in the tub.

"You ladies had better be gettin' done in there pretty quick."

"Ten minutes more," Teresa yelled.

"Five not a second extra!" he shouted back.

"Mercy, Mr. Bean, I've got to wash her hair!"

"Make it fast!"

She chuckled. And under her breath, "OK, then. rub a dub dub, Renata." She kneeled, groaning as she rearranged her plump self beside the tub. With Kitty pouring lukewarm water over her hands and my head, Teresa shampooed my shorn scalp. I smelled the lavender soap. I felt the brisk work of her strong fingertips massaging my scalp. Oddly, the clean odor of the shampoo filled me with some kind of hopefulness.

My head rinsed, I was helped by the two of them out of the bathtub and into a set of towels. A wonderful sensation. I smiled and pulled the towel tight around my shoulders.

I looked around the room. "What happened to Señora? And what did you do with my habit?"

"Ah not a chance you will ever be seeing that item of clothing again my dear," Teresa said, scowling. She stepped behind me and used the second towel to shuffle dry my hair.

"But...what...I must have it back, you know I must," I said. "Otherwise, I go back to the courtroom in two days and...and what...what exactly do I wear?"

Teresa stopped toweling, and turned me around. She took my face in her two thick hands and stared hard into my eyes. Her cheeks were pink in steam from the bath.

"Renata, my dear, there is not a thing we can do, not today anyway. I gave it to Señora while you were soaking and she tried to wash it out back there where Kitty does laundry. My dear, the both of your sleeves were so rotten in dirt that they came apart in her hands -- and there was a giant tear at the bodice. I'm going to bring you another habit on my next trip." Her voice, lilted in Irish brogue, was usually music to me. But not now.

"Where is Señora, please?" I asked.

"She's taken over the cafe for Kitty, she is fixing us a good evening meal, a tortilla soup, with one of Kitty's chickens, even, and we will be bringing a bowl to you as soon as it's cooked!"

Meanwhile, Kitty emerged from the bedroom at that moment with a neat stack of clean white underclothing. "Here you go," she said, lifting it toward me like an offering. "And I have a powder blue muslin dress in the closet, I think it will fit you. It's a bit snug on me."

I felt warm tears rising out of my eyes, covering my face like the bathwater had a few minutes before. I began to shake my head. The smell of lavender now was overpowering, and it almost made me dizzy. It occurred to me now that I was still weak with the illness that had practically killed me only days before.

"If...I had known, I would have refused the bath," I whispered.

"Renata this is just silly, you will be perfectly presentable in court wearing the blue muslin. And in a week or so I will have another habit here for you." Teresa tried to lift my chin but I wasn't having any of it.

Bean was banging on the door. "I give you two more minutes or I'm coming in," he announced.

My teeth came together. "Let him in then," I seethed, feeling a deep exhaustion set in. I needed sleep. Desperately. It had been a long few days. "Let him see me naked for all I care. What does it matter, as I have nothing proper to wear!"

I was sobbing now, into the towel that Teresa had used on my hair. Kitty put her arm around my shoulders, and squeezed, Teresa had my hands. I cried harder.

"Oh Renata, I am so terribly sorry. I know this isn't easy for you," Teresa said. "And you are still so weak. Come sit down, we don't want you to get chilled."

I let her lead me to a chair. Kitty brought an afghan and covered my head as it is was a veil.

"Can you for a moment imagine how it feels?" I shuddered. "I've been caged there in that ... animal pen they call a jail for so many many weeks. And yet the whole while, I had my...I kept myself going knowing who I was. Feeling that I am, that I was, the same nun who had been dragged from the convent September 13th."

"But now my habit is gone. Gone! My veil, long since lost to me. Without them, I am... what am I Teresa? Who am I?"

She hesitated a moment. Her eyes widened, her face grew a darker pink. "It is not your habit or your veil that made you a nun," she said, her tone solemn. "It was never those who made you what you are! You are the same Renata you were before you left the convent."

I shook my head sadly. "No, no I am not," I said, quietly. "I have no idea who I am but I am definitely not the novitiate I was eight weeks ago. I have fallen too low for that."

Mr. Bean was trying the doorhandle. It was locked. He shook the handle and it rattled loudly. "I tell ya I'm going to bust down this door if you're not out here forthwith," he yelled, "and I don't care if I see her nekked."

Something in the way he said that word "nekked" -- the foolish old man -- ignited me. I stood up from the chair, letting the afghan slip off my hair, and I marched to the door, wearing just the towel. I pushed the curtain aside. I stuck my tongue out at him. "Go away," I frowned.

He must have seen that I was just in the towel because he took a quick step back. "Git yourself dressed immediately," he demanded.

I closed the curtain. I scooped up the stack of underclothes Kitty had given me. "Please if you would, show me the dress," I said, marching into Kitty's bedroom.

Teresa wanted to help but I refused. I closed the door to the bedroom and dressed myself. And when I emerged, with the pale blue belted muslin in place of my scratchy wool habit, Teresa smiled and nodded.

"God made you a beautiful woman, my dear," Teresa said. "And it is no matter what you wear. You look lovely." She handed me my old shoes, newly polished. "You are standing in nun's shoes."

I ignored her and walked toward the door. As I reached for the lock, I turned. "Kitty, I want to thank you for everything," I said.

"Of course," she smiled. "I am happy to be able to help you. I believe in you Renata and I believe in my heart that somehow, it is in God's plan that you will be set free. I have been saying extra prayers for weeks now, every time I attend mass."

I smiled. "Thank you."

I let Bean handcuff me and lead me back to the cell. The smell of the foul pail as I stepped inside the cell was so much worse than I had remembered it.

"Get this out of here," I demanded, and perhaps because of my tone, he did it right away.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: Teresa and Señora to My Rescue!

2011-04-17T04:32:00.000-07:00

What finally woke me: the smell of eucalyptus. And peppermint. And Señora humming something deeply familiar as she pressed a warm wet compress against my bare chest.

I thought I heard Teresa's voice. I thought I heard her telling the jailer, Jimmy Bean, "just stand aside, Mister Bean, just stand aside. We have a mighty sick woman to attend to here, my dear sir." Her familiar brogue was a sweet boost to my spirits. I lay there in such a sweat and a fever that I wasn't sure. I was deliriously happy to hear Teresa's voice, but was Teresa really here?

"I suggest that you just stand aside Mr. Bean," she said again. "We must let Señora Ramos prepare the poultices. Because this is a sick woman here."

In the end, Bean was assigned a job: he was to keep the fire boiling under Señora's copper kettle outside the jail, while Kitty, from the cafe nearby, volunteered to stir hot towels into Señora's mixture of herbs: eucalyptus and mint, thyme and hyssop and cardamon.

Teresa, meanwhile, forked one towel after another up and out of the boiling kettle and let them hang briefly over the jail's porch railing until they could be wrung out and carried inside. Then she would slip the hot towel between the bars and take away the one that Señora had removed from my chest.

Hour after hour Señora sat with me, humming, humming, that familiar something, the old flower song, placing one after another warm towel on my chest. And finally when it grew dark, she lifted my head to her generous lap, and circled us both with a blanket, and I slept that way, parked on her soft lap, into a second day, while Kitty took Teresa home and gave her a place to sleep.

On the second day, Señora applied the mustard poultice, which is not such a pleasant affair, not like the other herbs. Teresa gave Kitty the bag of black mustard seeds, and had her grind them in a coffee grinder, then she mixed the mustard powder with enough flour and hot water to form a yellow paste.

Kitty carried the paste in a bowl back to the jail. Señora spread the paste with a wooden spoon on a large square of soft muslin soaked in hot water. She lay that on my chest -- the skin between my breasts was by now pink and raw from all the wet plasters. She covered me with the mustard paste on the muslin and then covered that with a second piece of dry cloth.

At some point, I began coughing. The congestion was loosening a little, and Señora helped me sit upright and rubbed and patted my back and made circles and now I coughed and wheezed but I was awake. Teresa made me a parade of different teas and forced me to drink. Mint tea, then thyme tea, and even, Señora produced a lemon from her basket. Kitty supplied a teapot and Teresa filled the pot with hot water and lemon slices. Soon Señora was supervising me drinking cup after cup, each rich and fragrant in lemon and each with a dollop of honey and a sprinkle of cayenne pepper.

The second night, Señora went home with Kitty to sleep, and Teresa sat with me, holding my head in her lap. I sank deep and was dreaming of wagon wheels all night. Wheels turning and turning, wheels larger and larger. I was wheezing when I woke.

But I knew right away the fever had eased. My mind had cleared. I yawned. And coughed. And couldn't stop coughing and kept spitting up phlegm into the foul pail. When I sank back to the bench in exhaustion, Teresa mopped my brow.

"My dear Renata, how you have suffered. But my dear, I believe that you've got a wee bit of color in your cheeks this morning."

Soon Kitty appeared with Señora. They had fresh rolls and hard boiled eggs and a pot of steaming chamomile tea. After we ate and drank, Teresa said she had something "quite urgent" she needed to attend to. Little did I know she was about to work a small miracle.

She disappeared from the jail, and was gone for not more than half an hour.

And yes, I am accustomed to miracles with Teresa, like the shower she hammered together at the convent, but this miracle was truly a wonder considering that I am here, a prisoner in this godforsaken cell.

Teresa returned with Jimmy Bean and he unlocked the cell, and cuffed my wrists. Teresa helped me to my feet and held me by the shoulders. "Come along now, Renata," she said, as if it was perfectly normal that I would leave the cell in her company.

"But where...what...where are we going?"

Teresa said nothing to me. Without a word, Bean led us out of the jail into the sunlight. I was weak and tired, but Teresa and Señora were on either side, supporting me.

And if I tell you what happened, I wonder if you will believe it! We crossed the dusty courtyard to the tiny blue house, which has on the first floor, Kitty's cafe. But our destination was not the cafe, but the back staircase. We climbed the creaking wooden stairs, and at the top, was Kitty's place.

We entered, the three of us, and there was Kitty, and behind her, I faced, for the first time in almost exactly two months, a clawfoot tub filled with warm bathwater. Kitty smiled, and stood in an apron, holding up a large towel. Bean stood outside the door, as Teresa promised she would be "guard" inside.

Teresa helped me remove my habit. I had worn it for so long, that it had taken on a stiff and crusted look. I was so dirty and yet, I had stopped smelling my own odor.

But now, I was sinking into the most delicious bathwater. I was shoulder deep. I was up to my chin. I was in heaven. I smiled. Teresa smiled back and Señora clapped her fat hands together.

My body has never felt such complete and utter warmth. I kept thinking, I cannot ever leave this bathtub.

Kitty had some fresh lavender she dropped into the bath, and I lay there, and I said a prayer of thanks, and let the water and the smell of it restore my spirit.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: What More is There to Say?

2011-03-24T18:05:00.000-07:00

My Dear Teresa,

I am chilled and feverish and I have a thick congestion burning in my chest.

I write with the hope and prayer that you will come at once. And that you will bring with you the herbs that Señora Ramos uses so effectively for lung congestion. A doctor came to see me and he mumbled something about pleurisy.

All I know is that I am shivering and sweating and when I start to cough I cannot stop and when I breathe I wheeze and I cannot catch my breath.

When you come I will tell you about the trial -- Teresa, let me just say that DeLuria has made such a profound mess of things -- worse than I ever thought possible -- that I have almost begun to pity him.

Almost.

DeLuria has turned out to be more of a fool than even I dreamed he could be. So astonishing is his incompetence that if I had the funds to hire a real attorney, I would probably have little difficulty getting this charade of a trial overturned on appeal.

His defense?

Teresa, he strode in front of the jury and delivered one of the most implausible opening statements imaginable. He made a statement that was so outrageous that I could see the jurors smirking and shifting uncomfortably in their chairs.

I could feel them staring at me. I saw one or two shaking their heads.

He began by standing and approaching the jury and with great flourish, directing the jury's attention my way. He was wearing what I have come to call his silly shirt, a powder blue affair with satin-edged ruffles at the chest. When he walked his boots made a loud clatter on the wooden floor. His hair was pomaded and his mustache freshly waxed and twirled and all of that made him look even sillier.

He started with a question.

"When you gaze at the nun sitting over there in the sunlight, what do you see?"

Immediately he answered: "You see a young woman with a face that is the picture of innocence. You see a slight woman with wispy hair, and a sweet, quiet expression. You see her hands folded so delicately and resting on the table."

He pivoted on the heel of one black boot and with his hands behind his back, he passed slowly in front of the men waiting to pass judgement on me.

Then he stopped and faced the judge. "But there is something you do not see!"

He paused and then directed their attention back to me by pointing a finger in my direction.

His voice dropped into practically a whisper. His eyes grew large and then, Teresa, I swear, he went...crazy.

"My friends, I want you to look again at this innocent young woman. Because what you see is not really what you see. The woman sitting before you is afflicted by a devilish disorder of the mind. You may never have heard of this disorder before, because it is only in recent years that it has been observed."

My heart started slamming against my chest. I was so frightened to hear the rest of what this imbecile was about to say that I couldn't look at him. I closed my eyes and held my breath and that's when I felt the first burning sensation in my chest!

"Members of the jury, it is my job to explain to you, to prove to you, that this young woman who sits before you may answer to the name Sister Renata, and she may indeed be a devoted nun of the Dominican order. But my friends, there is more to this woman than meets the eye."

Pause. Silence. Shock.

Me still holding my breath. All I could hear was the clock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

He went on.

"Even though it appears that you are seeing just one person sitting here, one innocent-looking nun, that is not the case. The nun sitting here suffers from a frightening disorder, a most troubling disorder."

He swirled around and pointed one hand -- finger extended -- at me, and the other hand -- finger extended -- across the room at the jury. For a moment it looked as if he was going to twirl across the courtroom floor, or worse, perform some kind of bizarre dance in front of the judge.

"It may be difficult to imagine," he said in his most theatrical voice, "but what we have here is a woman who has two separate identities, two separate selves, and these selves are pulling her apart." He looked up toward the ceiling and started shouting. "You must understand that through no fault of her own, and because of a deep malady from which she suffers, this poor nun is not just one person. Friends of the jury, Sister Renata has a double personality!"

He walked over now and stood before me. I shrunk back, away from him. He raised his hands heavenward and brought them together and slowly down in front of him, as if symbolically, he was slicing me in two! Then he turned to the jury, his tone pleading, as if he was in desperate need for them to believe what he was saying.

"My dear friends, I hope I will be able to convince you that this poor woman has two individual selves living inside her body! And one of them is trying to destroy the God-fearing self you see here today."

Yes, Teresa, DeLuria's defense was that I suffer from some kind of malady that gives me a multiple personality -- this notion is something he apparently read about in a magazine somewhere!

I covered my face in utter horror. I wanted to stand up and scream, "PLEASE STOP. Please, no more, you're only making matters worse!"

Fortunately, the prosecutor, Phillip Jackson, did it for me. A portly man with a head of silver hair, Jackson practically knocked over his chair standing up.

"Objection, your Honor!" He crowed. "Mr. DeLuria has not presented us with any exhibit or any doctor or expert list of any kind, he has nothing on record, no one qualified who would attest to this ... this preposterous idea of a personality disorder. I move that his opening statement be stricken from the record."

The Judge agreed and instructed the jury to disregard DeLuria's statement.

At which point, DeLuria was, literally, speechless. The judge adjourned the trial and there was no immediate word as to when it might resume.

I must tell you Teresa, but at the moment DeLuria gathered up his papers and left the courtroom wearing those foolish ruffles, and that hair of his hair all slicked and pomaded, I felt sorry for him. Oh, yes, I felt fury to my depths as well. But he was such a miserable sight I actually found myself feeling a might sorry for the man!

How could DeLuria deceive me like this? How could he fail me so miserably?

I am so weary. I sit here with a cup of tea. That woman from the cafe has started bringing me food. She is a good woman. How she convinced the jailer to let her in, I'm not sure. When I asked, she just nodded and smiled and said, "I'll take care of it."

I am here Teresa. Waiting for you. And praying you will come soon.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Standing Trial

2011-03-07T11:19:00.000-08:00

RENATA'S DIARY
Old Vallejo Jail
November 13, 1883

The jailer slams his keys against the bars of the cell to wake me up the next morning. The sky is black outside the window and I can see only a crisp white curve of moon.

I sit up. "What..what time is it?" I ask, thinking it must be the middle of the night.

"It's time for you to get up," he says. "You got ten minutes before we go." He hobbles away before I can ask him where we are going.

Soon enough, I find out. He leads me in handcuffs out of the jail to the tiny blue house I've stared at for so many weeks. It sits low and tidy across the dusty courtyard and it has an inviting front porch.

When we get closer, I read a sign over the door: "Kitty's Corner Cafe." The door has a large window covered in a lace curtain and a brass bell beside it, and now the jailer rings the bell.

Even standing out here on the porch, I can smell breakfast cooking inside. Bacon. Toast.

The sky above my head is lightening up. Overhead it is turning a sugary blue.

A young woman -- her hair pulled tightly away from her face -- moves aside the lace curtain and peers out the window. She unlocks the door and without a word, the jailer, whose name is Jimmy Bean, leads me inside. The smell of food is so powerful that it makes me a little dizzy.

"Mornin' Kitty pole," the jailer says.

"Mornin' Jimmy." She points to a table in the corner by the window.

"No, now we don't want to be attractin' no public attention," he says. He leads me to the back corner and we sit down at a table with a crisp white tablecloth.

He smells of tobacco and whiskey. I smell of so many things.

The young woman has large dark eyes and she wears a starched white apron. "What will it be Jimmy?"

"Bring the coffee right away and then fix up some eggs and bacon, toast. Please be quick about it."

She nods and glances at me quickly and then leaves the room through a curtained door. She returns in a moment with two mugs of coffee. She sets one down in front of me. I stare into the cup. Suddenly I feel tears gathering behind my eyes. I realize that this is the first cup of coffee I've had -- or even smelled -- since September 13th, the day they whisked me out of the convent and into that hellish cell.

"Why are you doing this?" I whisper. Tears are falling onto the tablecloth but I am unable to wipe my eyes.

The jailer is putting a teaspoon of sugar into his coffee. "Warn't my idea ma'am. The judge's instructions. Told me to get you a decent breakfast before the trial this mornin'. No more of your fancy fainting tricks." He snorts in derision.

I sniffle.

"Well, unless you plan to feed me, Jimmy, I cannot do a thing with these on," I say, nodding to the handcuffs on my wrists in my lap.

He fumbles for the key and unlocks the handcuffs. I sit with my hands limp on the table. I feel like I am unable to move. But then the coffee reaches up to me.

The woman is back with two plates, heaped with food. She sets the plate before me. Scrambled eggs. Crisp bacon. Potatoes. Toast.

"Anything else you need Jimmy?" she asks.

"Yep," He scratches his stubbly jaw. "I want some chile sauce if ya don't mind. That kind you serve at lunch."

"Sure."

I stare at the plate. The food looks so good it doesn't seem real.

"Get eatin while the gettin's good," he says. "We gotta be outta here before the breakfast crowd appears."

I lift my fork and take a small bite of the eggs. They are fluffy and light. I pick up the bacon. In the old days I would never have eaten with my fingers, especially being so dirty.

But now I am indifferent to the filth. I place a bit of the bacon on my tongue, and leave it there. I swear I'm dreaming.

The young woman brings the chili sauce back. It's green as pea soup. "You OK?" she asks me.

I am about to say that I can't suddenly eat a full breakfast after weeks of what I've been used to. Grey gruel. Slop. Greasy stew.

"You are a wonderful cook," I whisper. "It...it tastes...heavenly."

She looks at me with those dark eyes. Nods. "Glad," she says. And then she disappears through the curtain.

I eat most of the scrambled eggs and all of the bacon. But there isn't time for me to finish the toast. The young woman wraps it in a napkin for me. The potatoes stay behind.

She hands me the toast folded neatly into the napkin. "Thank you," I say. The jailer reaches over and snatches the toast away.

"I'll be takin that if ya don't mind," he says.

Kitty turns to me. "I am...happy you came," she says. And then she nods and stares at me with those large dark eyes. "And I hope the day... goes your way."

As the jailer replaces the handcuffs and leads me outside into the courtyard, a shaft of sunlight shines straight into the window of the restaurant. I glance back. Kitty is standing beside the window staring at me.

Jimmy leads me back to my cell and I am greeted by the smell of the foul pail. After the delightful breakfast odors at Kitty's, the pail's stench is almost unbearable. The pail is full and like always I have to yell at Jimmy to take it away.

A few minutes before nine a.m., the Sheriff is there, and the two of them lead me to the courtroom. Deluria greets me and we take our seats. At nine sharp the judge appears. We stand and the first thing he asks is if I'm "fit to stand trial today."

For a moment I think it's me he wants to hear from. But then Deluria answers. "She is indeed, your honor," he replies.

"Well, good thing, because we need to get on with it," he says.

The jury traipses in and I stare at a motley group of twelve men -- one of them exceedingly plump, and one exceedingly short -- who file slowly into the courtroom. They do not look at me, at least not at first.

But I look at them, and then the worst fear comes over me. How can I possibly get a fair trial from this group? And how is it that these men constitute a jury of my peers? How is it that a jury of my peers has not a single woman?

After some preliminaries, the attorneys approach the bench and ask the judge some questions.

The judge keeps removing his spectacles and wiping them.

After some preliminaries, the attorneys approach the bench and ask the judge some questions. Finally, the attorneys leave the bench and the judge asks the prosecutor and Deluria to make their opening statements.

I hate the fact that Deluria represents me. I tried my best to fire him because he is such a fool and a coward. But that first day in court, the judge infuriated me when he told me I wouldn't be allowed to represent myself.

As the prosecutor launches into his statement, his voice booms. He lays out the crime I am accused of committing. He apologizes that he has to shock the courtroom with the gory details of Antonie's murder.

I've heard it all before. Or should I say, I've read it all before. The story of the murder that my cousin wrote. Practically verbatim, it comes spewing from the prosecutor's mouth.

And then he dabbles in my misdeeds and alleged scandals. My Spanish dancing. The visits to my cousin's hacienda, and the seductive way in which I would I supposedly shave my cousin's face.

He dramatizes his silly speeches by lifting one arm and jabbing his long finger in my direction. I keep looking away.

I sit there, trying not to think about coffee and scrambled eggs and bacon. And praying that Deluria will surprise me and find a way to present the truth of my case to the jury.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: I Collapse In the Courtroom but Señora Comes with A Miracle!

2011-02-18T04:30:00.000-08:00

Old Vallejo Jail
October 29, 1883
RENATA'S DIARY

Dear Teresa,

Maybe it was the ghastly heat. Or the unrelenting sunlight. The courtroom baked me like an oven.

And surely it didn't help that the judge, a hulking man without the least bit of patience, infuriated me. He refused to consider my argument that I be allowed to represent myself at the trial. He refused to listen to why I wanted to fire that foolish attorney of mine, Deluria.

A few minutes before I collapsed, I was standing before the bench and the judge had just informed me that I would not be permitted to act as my own lawyer.

"No one in your position could possibly handle the task," he declared, wiping his spectacles and looking a little bored.

"But sir, I am certain that I could do a better job as I have an instinct for how to..."

"You have no knowledge of the law except as you have violated it!" He shouted at me.

"I beg to differ sir, I have a good sense of what needs to..." He interrupted.

"We will proceed and you my good woman, need to sit down immediately and stop the foolishness you are displaying here."

"May I just..."

"NO YOU MAY NOT!" He slammed the gavel on the bench and Deluria grabbed my arm.

"You've got to sit down," he whispered. He dragged me back to the table and he and the Sheriff forced me to sit down. I could feel my face grow exceedingly warm and I had a strange pinching sensation in the back of my neck. I suddenly felt sick to my stomach.

It was at that moment that the judge told me to stand up once again. I inhaled and stood. He proceeded to begin reciting my crime. The next I knew, I was lying face down on the floor, my eyes closed, my mouth open, and I was tasting the filth of dust and dirt on the wood.

I could not move. I felt hands reach underneath my shoulders. I was scooped upright.

I remember being held. I remember wobbling. I remember DeLuria and the judge both swirling before my eyes, in dizzying figure eights. I remember a lurching sensation in my stomach and then everything coming up and out onto the floor. I was heaving up the slop of gruel I had eaten early in the morning in the cell.

And then I hear someone yell, "Catch her," because I was falling again.

And then I am swiftly carried out of the courtroom, and I lay somewhere dark.

They had brought me to the courtroom at 9 a.m. I know this because there was a giant clock on one wall. All I could think was, my life will be decided beneath the thin black hands of this big round clock.

My head was dizzy right from the start. My heart felt like it was pumping twice as fast as it normally does. I had placed my veil and wimple on my head. But the veil was crumpled and crooked, and my face was dirty, and I know -- I could smell myself -- that my habit was a disgrace. I sat beside DeLuria and we didn't speak.

We sat for ten or fifteen minutes before the judge arrived. In a dark robe. A head of white wavy hair. Thick waves. As soon as the judge entered, my dizziness increased. I felt coated in sweat. I stood and could feel myself sway. DeLuria glanced my way. Frowned. I felt the blood drain from my face.

We sat. The two lawyers went to the bench. I set my face into my fingers. I saw you in my mind Teresa. And I saw Señora. I saw her wide brown face.

DeLuria returned to where I was seated and then it was time for me to stand and approach the bench. I looked to DeLuria, waiting for him to take my arm. He didn't. He simply looked at me as if I was a filthy dog. Too dirty to touch. I glared at him and my head grew even more loose.

I stood and with your face and Señora's in my mind, I walked forward.

And stood. And collapsed.

With my falling, the proceedings were halted for the day. I was so weak that there was no way I could walk on my own power back to the jail. They lay me down in a small cramped space, a kind of closet outside the courtroom.

I lay in the dark for who knows how long.

I dreamed. I went back to the stone grotto behind the hacienda. The one Antonie's father built for his mother. The one where my cousin and I used to go so long ago.

The grotto is low. It is tiny. It is surrounded in roses. There is a statue of the Virgin there and I swear I smell the roses.

I kneel before the statue. I look up. The stones are so close I can practically kiss them. I touch the smooth surface of the stone.

I close my eyes and I hear...Señora praying. I hear her saying the Hail Mary in Spanish.

The whispering. The whispering grows louder. You are praying too Teresa. The two of you are kneeling with me in the grotto. We are beginning another Hail Mary.

We are saying the rosary together, the three of us.

Señora speaks. I know Teresa I know this isn't possible. I know. But I heard her so clearly, lying there in the dark.

"Mi'ja, mi'ja," she whispered. She stroked my brow.

This isn’t possible, I know.

The stones are smooth in the grotto. In places the stones are coated in dark scum and patches of bright green slime. Sometimes there is water dripping from the center stone. It passes right behind the Virgin’s head. It falls into the dirt and forms a muddy spot on the ground.

I am seeing my cousin now. There he is. Antonie is a boy. And me, I have just arrived in California. We play in the grotto. We make up this old story about the water dripping from the center stone. We used to say that in the very old days the water used to fall into a little pool where babies were baptized. Sick people and crippled kids would come to the pool. They would take silver cups and fill them with the holy water. They would drink the water and be healed. They would kneel in the pools and walk again.

I am talking out loud in the dark. And then the door opens. I raise my head expecting DeLuria. Or the jailer.

I blink. Because it is Señora. I swear she was there. The old woman

wore the blue shawl all covered in red roses. She walked toward me and reached for my hand and placed something there. Something with beads.

And much later, when they finally moved me back to the cell, when I was well enough to walk very very slowly back to the jail, I knew I had not dreamed this.

Because you see, here, the rainbow rosary. Señora's own personal rosary beads were in my hand.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: I make NUNSENSE out of my Lawyer's NONSENSE!

2011-02-02T15:38:00.001-08:00

Old Vallejo Jail
October 20, 1883
RENATA'S DIARY

Will you be surprised Teresa when I tell you that I am now my own lawyer? How you laugh, I can see so clearly that jolly face of yours so pink and flushed! Your head tips back, your eyes begin watering the way they do when you cannot hold yourself in.

But it's true Teresa,

I am a lawyer, Teresa, in all but name.

The lawyer DeLuria came two days ago, in his crisp starched shirt. Ah the ruffles, these were tipped in black satin thread. He dresses impeccably.

He thinks not at all. We sat in the cell here, and he began to tell me once again that when he examines the evidence against me -- the stacks of white pages with all the "sordid" stories, the "careful" details of the murder -- the evidence against me, he says, "stares him down."

I blinked. I laughed out loud and slapped one hand on my knee and when I looked up I saw him looking at me as though I might be crazy.

I suppose I was being a bit rude, so I covered my mouth (but oh I've become someone altogether quite new here in this cell, Teresa, a woman with no restraints I tell no restraints whatsoever!)

I cleared my throat and sat up straight and said, "My dear sir, have you with you perhaps in that fine leather satchel you are carrying, a report from the scene of the crime? There must be an official report of the crime, yes?"

He lifted his gaze, a bit disdainfully curious I suppose that I was asking HIM a question. "Well, naturally I do. Somewhere here, there is a report by the Sheriff. Naturally I have reviewed all the necessary documents."

I left him to sift through the many papers he carries in his handsome leather briefcase (same color as this my chiseled diary Teresa!) I found myself humming something while he searched, and, quite unexpectedly, the next thing I knew I was WHISTLING! This is not the Renata who left the convent a few months ago now Teresa, this is Renata ANEW!

I looked up and found him glaring at me. "Must you whistle?" he said in a very steady voice.

"Oh, quite wrong of me, so sorry," I said. He resumed his search and I resumed my humming, something that Señora and I have played and sung together.

He found what he was looking for. A single page with half a paragraph of the slanted handwriting of the Sheriff, describing the way they -- the authorities -- found Antonie on the day he died. DeLuria was about to start reading when I held a hand, actually, I laid just two of my fingertips on his coat jacket, and granted they are filthy -- his would be too if he was forced into this hellish cell!

Well, so he instinctively pulled his arm away, out of my grasp, as if I might give him some disease!

"There is no need to read it to me," I said. "I know exactly how my cousin died."

"Well so what is the point here?" he demanded.

"The point here Mr. DeLuria is this: my cousin died a bloody bloody death. But the only question to ask is how did he die? By whose hand? And I know full well it was not MY hand that took his life away."

"Ah but the authorities have the story that describes his murder and the story is clear it is a damnable piece of ev...."

I stood up and stamped my foot and yelled. "It is a damnable batch of lies!" My eyes flamed and he shrank back against that moldy cell wall. All I could think was, his perfect wool waistcoat will be moldy green when he leaves here!

"I have seen that story, Mr. DeLuria, and I know what it says. And I know that as absurd as it sounds, my cousin Antonie wrote it! I know very well that it suggests that I killed him, that I cored the Adam's apple right out from my cousin's throat! But for God's sake, DeLuria, use your head! Make the comparison between that bizarre story and the Sheriff's report! Does the good Sheriff say that my cousin's Adam's apple was cored? Does it Mr. DeLuria?"

He turned his head as if it was a swivel at the top of a barber pole. He examined the Sheriff's slanted handwriting. A whole minute went by before he spoke.

And then of all things, he lit up one of his slim cigars. It occurred to me to say to him, that there was insufficient air for him, me and a cigar as it is still quite beastly in the cell. I thought better of telling him this; instead I began a coughing fit as he inhaled and then blew out rings of blue smoke. I coughed and coughed until he put the blasted cigar out beneath his boot.

"Thank you, very kind of you," I croaked. He picked up the tin cup of water to his right and holding it as if it were a dead crow, he handed the water over to me. I smiled and took a sip.

"So I suppose that there is some discrepancy between the story in question and the Sheriff's report," he said at last.

I smiled and nodded. "Yes, I would think so." I waited a respectable moment. "And thus, it would seem to me a reasonable defense, yes? To lay before the judge and jury the fact that the crime scene and the supposed description of the crime I'm accused of, do not match. They do not match at all!"

I let that sink in, dying to know what he was thinking but reluctant to ask. He twisted his neck this way and that and sat up straighter.

"I cannot promise that this approach will impress the judge adequately," he said finally, in what I can only call a "small" voice. "I must report to you, unhappily, that there is a good deal of bad sentiment against you. The momentum of this sentiment is decidedly strong and it is moving against you."

Folding my lips in on themselves, I quietly laid my hands one on top of the other in my lap. I said nothing. And then I spoke.

"Mother of God, are you indeed the best lawyer available to me?"

"I beg your pardon, that is... insulting."

"Yes, well, my dear DeLuria, you are incompetent." I stood up once more and would have paced the jail cell had there been room. "I keep waiting for you to say something that convinces me that you have my best interests at heart. Or even my interests at all. But I am starting to think I might be better off on my own in the courtroom." I stood with my hands behind my back, imagining myself pacing the courtroom representing myself.

"The prosecution assumes that those foolish pages, those stories, tell some kind of truth. Their case against me rests entirely on stories composed by my cousin and that..."

He interrupted. "No one has established that those pages are indeed the work of your cousin. This needs to be established in court. For all we know they may be anyone's writing. They may even be your own writing." He gave me a leering gaze which only served to make my mouth drop open.

I laughed. "I hope you are joking," I said.

I bent closer to DeLuria and I whispered. "Is this possible that you are as foolish and stupid a man as I think you are? Did you in fact just say what I think you said, that I may be the author of those pages? My dear dear DeLuria what would possess me to write a set of stories that incriminate me? Stories that portray me as a murderer?" I laughed louder, and sat back.

He ignored me, and began filling the satchel with all of his papers. I took a step closer, bent even closer to him.

"Have you thought that there cannot possibly be anyone else who wrote those stories but my cousin? Have you thought it through DeLuria?"

My voice was hoarse, my face flushed, and I'm sure, my breath was a foul cloud.

He pulled away and finally squirmed out of range.

"Good day Sister," he said, and then he called to the jailer. "I am through here!"

The jailer appeared and opened the cell and DeLuria disappeared.

So you see here, now, Teresa, how I've come to be my own counsel. Once DeLuria left, I sank onto the bench here, and the full impact of what I face in the courtroom next week hit me.

It is all but certain that I will be convicted. There is a pile of evidence that should by rights be dismissed without consideration. And yet this idea did not occur even to my lawyer.

Pray for me Teresa. Pray!

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Facing the Gallows, Sister Shouts Her Diary Out Loud!!

2011-01-20T17:17:00.001-08:00

Sister Renata's Diary

Old Vallejo Jail

DEAR GOD What Day is It?

Teresa I'm losing track of time. Maybe it's because I cannot eat a bite of food, or because of this heat wave,

driving up from hell itself. All I know is that the dust blows endlessly through the bars of the window and I'm coated and crusted in fine yellow powder!

I don't know what day it is anymore. I wake up in such confusion that I find myself wondering if I am even alive. I run my hands around my muddy face and up and down my arms to remind myself that I have skin and that I am in it!

I keep the journal, such a treasure you gave me -- surely you spent half your little life savings on this chiseled leather beauty -- anyway, I keep the diary in my hands when I sleep. Lately, in the mornings, in a wash of confusion, I begin reading what I have written. Because rereading my diaries helps me feel alive.

Because without hearing the words I wrote, I am not me, I am not anything anymore.

I keep going back to the opening page.

Over and over, I read my own words -- "And now, how to begin. And why, why am I about to pour myself onto paper? Pure and simply, I wrote now because I don't trust my cousin anymore. I need a record of events..."

My eyes pass over these words and I know for certain that I wrote them and I know I wrote them when I still had hope, when I still thought life made sense, when I used to wash my face and hands and arms and when I went to chapel each day. When I cooked Friday lunch in the convent on Fridays at noon, when I would stand at the sink, humming a little Spanish melody, the ones Señora would teach me.

I remember you and me together, standing by the laundry sink. We washed Father Ruby's sheets, side by side.

I still thought life made sense.

I still thought. Teresa I still felt I still was in the world. That's it. I still was in the world and now I am not. Now I am not alive, not really, at least I've got to keep convincing myself by talking out loud by singing when I can. By shouting out.

But then I tire of shouting and my voice gives way and sometimes the old jailer comes by and tells me to shut up because I am driving him crazy.

I sink back onto the moldy wall and I have all I can do to take another breath.

I sit here in this cage with nothing but the gallows outside my window.

I have thoughts now but how can I write them, they are all so frightening and it is hard sometimes even to keep writing when I cannot stay focused, when I cannot pray, when God and Mary have slipped away then...

When that happens Teresa I pick up the guitar and I play. Or I don't. I lay down and try to sleep. But today what did I do?

I screamed Teresa! I woke up from a nap and I thought it had happened, that they had hung me and I sprung up and shouted NO NO and looked around and realized, oh, I am still here.

I grabbed the journal and started reading my own words right out loud, the jailer yelled at me telling me to shut up and I yelled back NO NO NO NO and then I yelled louder, I began screaming my words, my diary writing, I read the whole first entry in a screeching voice, at least that's how I started, and then by the end, it had become something of a chant.

The jailer took a crowbar and slammed and banged it across the bars, he made quite the racket and then he poked it between the bars, I dodged him at each poke, he threatened to unlock the cell and beat me but I just laughed, I laughed Teresa, I said to him "Go ahead sir beat me if you wish to, go ahead if you dare, but I am going to read, to shout until I have not a shred of voice left!"

I know full well that I am verging on madness tempting him to hit me. And when I'm shouting I am shouting to a world that for certain isn't listening.

I am this thing that was Sister Renata, face of crud and crusted yellow sweat, hair of chopped straw. Ha, the jailer brought an ancient fragment of mirror here the other day, and shoved it between the bars and cackling his vicious laugh, said, "have a look Sister."

I saw I saw. But all that doesn't matter.

I won't let anyone take my dignity away. My dignity, like my words, are what is here in my mind, mine. I cannot allow anyone to take that inner voice, my divine connection, away from me.

As you are wont to say, Teresa, I must have faith that my words, this diary, will somehow, in some miracle that I pray for, help to clear my name.

I can only tell the world one thing: the true story. That I am innocent of any crime. That I did not murder Antonie. Some day the world will see it!

I am about to start reading now Teresa, and my hands are trembling, my hands are trembling so badly that I can barely write, I AM SHOUTING now here here is a passage I AM SHOWERING REMEMBER THAT? REMEMBER THE DAY THE WAY YOU HAMMERED THAT BLESSEDLY SILLY SHOWER OUT OF a pail, a washtub and a pail? RECALL ALL THE SISTERS GATHERED FOR MY FIRST SHOWER?

August 7, 1883, CAN YOU HEAR ME TERESA? I hear you I hear you listening!

"I hold my face in this fine mist of water falling from the holes in the bottom of the pail, and let the water run over my lips and onto my tongue. The clear water and the sunlight cleanse me and silently I mouth a prayer of thanks to my dear Sister Teresa for this purifying gift and silently too I thank the Lord for sending this good woman to us, but particularly, to me. In all eternity no one has ever had a better friend than Teresa!

I hold the washrag in my clasped hands, I bow my head, allow the water to thoroughly soak my short ruff of hair while I stand there giving thanks and prayer, thinking He knew, yes, He knew, but how does He KNOW? How dear God do YOU that?

How does the Good Lord always know exactly what we need?

Lifting my face, I gently pass the washrag across my brow. How good this feels. No, how heavenly. That’s the word Teresa used. How good it is to be back from San Francisco, too, every cell in my body is grateful. I could stand here, water raining down, drowning out a host of thoughts that I would rather go away.

Again I pray, I say a Hail Mary, two, most of all I ask Him how He knew to send Teresa here?

How He knew that she would come and that she would be my only ally, she would give me some bit of advice to begin and end each day, and our friendship would grow and grow, and more than that, she would give me now the clearest water to cleanse the heat and dust and dirt and sins away.

She brings this gift to me at the very moment I am most in need of cleansing – my body and no less my spirit. I arrived back here from San Francisco -- where I had to go with Antonie because he forced me -- in such a dreadful condition, I hate to think what I looked like when I arrived back at the convent, my clothes crusted, my soul in the worst state it’s ever been. I hid in my room that first morning after Señora pulled up to the convent with the wagon, Antonie lying in the back beneath a heap of blankets. The mercury treatment for the syphilis, it sank him into such a horrifying condition!

How hateful that long journey was, how long and miserable the stay at the hotel, but worst of all, Antonie was NOT HELPED A BIT BY THAT CRUEL Dr. Astorga. What a vicious man, what a vicious "cure" he inflicted on Antonie -- the mercury is far far worse than is the illness!

We carried Antonie home in a state far worse than he left.

Señora kissed me once on the forehead and then I climbed off the wagon without even a word of goodbye.

Weary is not the word for what I was. Too tired to eat. To sleep.

And that very next day, dearest Teresa completed the shower that has now come to deliver me my rescue...."

To continue reading about the shower that Teresa built out of a pail and a washtub, go to RENATA'S August 7th 1883 diary, part of "Castenata."

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: The Jail Makes Me See Myself: "A Nun Swingin' by a Rope!"

2011-01-08T06:57:00.000-08:00

September 29, 1883

Old Vallejo Jail

My Dearest Teresa,

I sit in this cell -- an animal in a cage. One thing saves me: my mind making these pictures. I see you and me walking through the fields near the convent. Do you see the sky? Such a glorious purple and blue.

Remember that sunset, that night we walked together so many miles?

Your letters are my only comfort. In the moments when I am so frightened I cannot even whisper a prayer, I clutch my rosary beads and reread your words. Sometimes I repeat them over and over like a soothing chant. Tears pour out when I hear your voice echo. My greatest terror is that there may come a day when I cannot hear you!

Oh Teresa. I could always count on you to make me laugh. Each morning before prayers there you would be, solemn, straight-faced, imitating our pie-eyed Mother Yolla. Her scowl. Her waddle, how like a cow she walks. And then I would dissolve into tears, all the while praying, “God, please forgive me for laughing.”

Believe me, I am laughing no more. For I am certain now that I will die, as that hopeless lawyer Deluria appeared with me in court a week ago and he was abominably bad. You could barely hear what he said. The judge asked him three or four times to speak up!

And when he did say something, he made a few dreadfully weak statements and that was that. I sat with my wrists handcuffed and my head bowed, ashamed that I even agreed to let the foolish lawyer -- his impeccable ruffled shirt -- speak for me!

After they led me back to the cell, I sat for hours staring through the bars out the window into the courtyard. As the afternoon wore on, the sun got hotter and hotter and brighter and I grew more and more weak and dizzy. Fearing that I might faint, I finally did the unthinkable, Teresa, I tore off my wimple and veil. My hair lies now like dry matted straw.

Is this then the end of me, then, Renata the nun? I have begun to think so! Even as I am playing my guitar, my heart is as heavy as a lead stove lid! Forgive me, Teresa, but I have more and more moments lately when I've begun to doubt that there is any Divine order at all, or any loving presence above.

Occasionally as I sat staring out the window, a wagon would come into view, the wheels throwing up thick clouds of yellow dust. Finally, the jailer brought dinner – a cold, grey mass of greasy potatoes he called stew – and I couldn’t think to eat it. In a perverse mood, both he and I were, and maybe because it was so hot, he wasn't cackling for a change and I was desperate to talk, so I asked him if he thought the hanging would be good theater.

"Er, watcha say there sister?" he asked, as I suppose he didn't know the meaning of the word "theater."

"What I mean, Mr. Pie, is when I hang outside there in the courtyard, will it attract a large crowd?"

His eyes lit up. "Oh course it will, Lordy, to see a nun swingin' by a rope, hell, it'll be a real good un," he said, nodding his head. “Criminy sakes how often do ya hang a sister?"

His eyes widened and took on a gleam. He stood there jangling his ring of keys, smoothing his hand over that impossible stubble on his chin. Then, when I said nothing, he silently pushed back his soiled hat. I saw that stitched flap of skin where his eye is missing. This is the first time I ever really looked at it.

I ought not to have asked the next question. "Have you seen...a lot of hangings?" I whispered, my throat knotting up over my words.

"Oh in my day I'd say I seen a dozen or so," he said, smiling. He has only three crooked teeth where there should be a top row. "But ma'am, not to say I'm gonna look or nothin' but hell, this one beats all the rest. I mean, I never seen anybody hang who was wearin' a dress." He slapped his thigh and shook his head. And then he clanged the keys against the bars and turned and left.

What a beast. What a dreadful dreadful man. How could he possibly be so cold-hearted, telling me this? Making me see myself spinning by the neck at the end of a rope, my gown open at the bottom for all to see?

I sat staring at the cold stew. In the last few days, my stomach has taken on new waves of nausea -- I dry heave even at the sight of food and would rather he just didn't leave it at all.

I called out to the jailer and told him to take the bowl away.

The day seemed to last forever. The sun sank lower and lower, and with it went my spirits. In the perverse spirit that I was, I kept riveted on that spot

out in the courtyard where my body will dangle from a rope. I tried to pray, Teresa, but honestly, I have begun to wonder, why bother? Is there anyone listening? Would a merciful Being permit all this to happen?

Oh I shouldn't even write this down here, I shouldn't think this. But I do.

At some point during the night, I must have fallen asleep. I dreamed I was swinging from a rope that hung from a crucifix. I had been hanged, but somehow because I was on the cross, I didn’t die. I woke up with a start, collapsed into the slimy wall of my cell. Oh Teresa, this is hell on earth.

And did I tell you, they now have wrapped a chain around my ankle, as if it were needed? As if there would be any way I could move from this pen!

My skin at the ankle grows raw, and it has begun bleeding and the blood mixes with the rust of the chain.

In your last letter you said the newspaper intends to publish all those stories that Antonie wrote, starting with his first one, "Renata Dancing." Dear God is there no justice? All that rubbish, the filth and lies Antonie wrote about me.

If they do, if they do, dear Teresa, is there a way to bring my diary forward? Will my words carry any weight at all?

I am desperate to show the world that I am innocent. I committed no crime.

At least I can die knowing you will try to clear my name.

The jailer comes now with a cup of tea. He leaves it. But dear God Teresa, it is lukewarm and has an oily film and there is, a hair from that mangy dog floating on top.

I cannot bring myself to eat a bite, or drink either. The jailer says I might die of starvation. And I say, that might be the best way.

Whatever God wills.

Your loving sister,

Renata

CHAPTER TWENTY: Señora Comes, Singing in the Key of Eternity!

2011-01-07T09:23:00.000-08:00

September 21 Old Vallejo Jail

Oh Teresa, how can I explain what happened here, this miracle last night?

I felt myself waking during the night, the light was murky in the cell, and there she was --

I am writing this in my journal, I am writing this all down to ensure that it really did happen, I swear it did, I swear that my eyes came open, and the light in the cell was greenish white, but there above me, I swear it was Señora right there, standing above me. I gasped and was overwhelmed by the smell of the fresh roses. "Mi'ja," she whispered, and there in her arms was a giant bouquet of the most magnificent yellow roses I have ever seen. Each of them is tipped in red, as if they have lips!

“Si, si, mi’ja, for you," she whispered. I sat up and she laid them in my lap.

I don't think I ever felt happy the way I did sitting there with the roses in my lap.

"But how did you...how did you get in?"

She shrugged and looked up at me with the most beautiful mystery in her brown face.

Without another word, she opened the basket she was carrying and brought out a fresh loaf of bread, and a hunk of cheese, and two fresh apples.

"Espero que tu tengas hambre," she said, and I laughed, happily. Me, hungry? Of course, and especially now, here in the cell.

I felt happier even than before.

She sliced the apple -- "but how did you get a knife by the jailer I cried?" -- but she eyed me and continued in silence. I watched her, recalling all the meals she fixed for Antonie and me when we were children.

When she and I finished our snack, she picked up the guitar and sat here beside me on the bench and took me so many years back to the music she used to play for me, including those sad old tientos when I first arrived at Antonie's hacienda as a child.

Her lips part. Her cheeks wobble ever so slightly as she begins humming and then I am singing the words I heard at her knee as a child:

"What kind of bird is that

Singing in the olive tree?

Go tell it to be still,

Its song makes me so sad!"

And then she switches to one that is so much sadder, a siguiriya:

"A la luna le pio

la del alto cielo

come le pio que saque a mi pare

de onde está preso."

I implore the moon

up there in the sky,

Implore it to help my father

Escape from his prison cell.

I am crying now. I don't know how she got here, but I know how much I want her to stay.

Now she sees my tears and changes gear. Now he is singing a gay and witty sort of palo which has a never ending number of poetic verses.

She sings:

Just imagine. What I. Did. Just imagine. Where I fled to.

Only the stars can tell you. Only the sky can guess.

So now sit down and I will try to tell you.

You will see it all come clear.

When the water goes still as a mirror,

And we peer inside.

Do you see now, why I appeared here?

Do you see now, why you must

Tell the world my story? Yes, tell the world

Just sing it, shout it out,

how we turned the past. Together,

We moved her story, Renata’s,

and his false history, Antonie’s,

Around.

She is just about to start into a second verse when there is commotion in the hallway. The jailer is screaming it seems and all of a sudden the outside door to the prison swings open.

It is Antonie. And he looks just terrible. His normally long black wavy hair has been chopped off. In spikes. Wet and matted. His eyes are dark and empty. And he has lost a lot of weight. Her black pants are baggy.

But now, now how DID I MISS THIS HE HE IS HE IS BLEEDING AT THE NECK, his throat is gashed, Dear God, his head, his head is hanging, his head is

swinginggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg back and forth

And then, blink, he is gone and Señora is holding the guitar and singing softly to me here again, she sings the carcelera, again, and again, she sings:

"Ya van tres días que no como

má que lágrimas y pan:

estos son los alimentos

que mis carceleros me dan."

I lay my head in her lap. Señora tells me to sleep and she gently rubs my back. She keeps singing and singing, and as I fall asleep, I think, she will sing into eternity.

I wake up and my cheek is resting on the sleek curve of the guitar's body. Suddenly, I smell roses.

When I open my eyes, Teresa, as God is my witness, there was a single rose -- yellow with bloody red tips -- on the floor beside the door to the cell.

CHAPTER NINETEEN: DeLuria Delivers More Bad News!

2011-01-06T08:58:00.000-08:00

September 19, 1883
Old Vallejo Jail

Dear Teresa,

Why is it that if a newspaper delivers up lies in print, people are so willing to believe them, no matter how wild they may sound?

Why is that no one, Teresa, not even my own lawyer, Steven DeLuria, can allow for the possibility that I was framed by my delusional cousin Antonie, whose great gift was to tell a believable story?

DeLuria came to see me today, and honestly, he seems to be as twisted as his pencil-thin mustache that curls in elaborate waxed spirals on either side of his narrow face!

I welcomed his visit, at least at first I did, as this was the first time I had seen him since they threw me into this hellish cell well over two weeks ago! But it took only moments for me to see that he was miserably uninterested in my case.

He sat on the bench, close enough for me to smell his pomade, and he kept shuffling through papers in his satchel. What in God's name was he looking for?

Ah, then his hand landed on that damnable newspaper, the Examiner, and he shook it at me, and then shook his head and said, "I am afraid that this isn't going to help you one bit."

As if I didn't know it! What a laugh. I was holding onto my guitar, thankfully, and I squeezed the body of the beauty then, because I would have had a hard time holding myself back. I wanted to slap his face. My heart started racing and I felt a sweat start up.

"Of course it isn't going to help, sir," I said. "Do you think for a minute that it was my choice?" I blinked back tears, which felt hot on the rims of my eyes. "Maybe you hadn't guessed this, Mr. DeLuria, but I would just as soon not be here." By then I was sniffling out loud.

He cleared his throat and straightening up, he handed me his embroidered hanky -- lace on a man's hanky? Then he stood -- he is so tall that his head grazes the slimy yellow ceiling of the cell. And he dresses well, at least he has more ruffles on the front of his shirt than a chicken has feathers on her behind.

"I am wondering how you plan to defend me?" I said, giving him a hard steady look.

He took hold of his narrow chin -- in addition to the mustache twirled and waxed at both ends, he has one of those excessively pointy goatees.

"I think before I can possibly develop a defense, I will have to spend more time learning about your situation."

"My situation? You mean how is that I am sitting in this foul place accused of murder?"

"Well, I will want to know how it is that you have come to believe that you are a victim of what you call...this complicated conspiracy?"

"Believe?" I wrapped my arms around the guitar and squeezed. "Mr. DeLuria, let me be clear about one thing here before we start." I felt my heart slamming against my chest. "I am innocent of all wrongdoing here. My cousin framed me with his ludicrous tales about me."

He kept rubbing his chin. "I see," he said.

I stood up. I held onto the guitar. "No, I"m not sure you do see!" I picked up my diary. "So if you want to know my side of the story, here, it's all here, day by day, exactly the way things really happened."

At first he wouldn't take the journal. "My day is very full," he said, "and I'm afraid that I won't have a chance to get to this for at least a couple more days."

I shook my head. "A couple more days? But my first court appearance is at the end of this week, on Friday morning, or at least that's what they said." I whispered. I was horrified by this...bad excuse for an attorney.

"I know full well what the court schedule is, my dear," he said. "But there are two other cases besides yours that I must attend to. So now, if you will excuse me," he took a magnificent gold watch out of his pocket. "I am scheduled for an important lunch engagement shortly."

The word lunch set me into a rage. I dropped back on the bench. "Oh, please, please don't let me stop you from your lunch," I said, angry enough to spit. "And what is it that they are serving today? Leg of lamb perhaps? Consommé? Fricasee of chicken?" My eyes narrowed, my voice rose. "And what for dessert sir? Apple pie? Berry cobbler? Will there be a large scoop of ice cream on the cobbler?"

He studied me curiously as if I were slightly mad. "I will be back," he mumbled, "and when I return, I will consider your journal." He nodded his head in the direction of my diary.

"Oh never fear, I will be right here waiting," I said.

He left the cell and I tell you if it weren't for the guitar...well...

I see now how this will go, nobody but you, and Señora know the truth. Nobody will believe my side of things.

Why Teresa? Could it be simply as you said, that my cousin, with all his money, and his reputation, stands solid here?

I fear that's why.

But I know the truth, and the truth is that he was ill with the syphilis, and as he was descending into madness and delusion, he was writing. As he went, down, down, down, he cast that net of horrifying words around me, he created another Renata, one fashioned entirely out of words, words that he heard in the depth of fevered hallucination, words that poured out of his mind as pure fantasy.

And now those words? Teresa, I am staring out there into the courtyard now, and there, there is the gallows where they will hang me!

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Whiskey and Guitars!

2011-01-05T05:43:00.000-08:00

September 17, 1883

Old Vallejo Jail

Dear Teresa,

I am living again Teresa. I am breathing once more. If I ever doubted there was a God, or that Mary listened to me, that she responded to my pleas and prayers, I could not possibly doubt anymore.

There was this miracle the other day: dear old Señora Ramos delivered me my guitar!

Before, there was just me, lying here, withering and dying in this cell, but now? Now there is me and my beloved instrument and this song, this carcelero that frees me!

Are you listening as I play Teresa? Do you hear me when I sing?

Do you hear the carcelero, just listen to these words:

“In three days I’ve eaten

Only bread and tears:

That is the food

That my jailers give.”

I sit and I play and I sit and I sing, and I keep singing no matter how much the jailer screams at me to stop! I sing until my voice gives up to gravel, and my fingers have bloody tips.

But I am alive and free and remarkably, I am happy!

I have not a thing other than my playing and my writing and my praying, but now I see, that is enough for me! Teresa I am free!

I must stop a moment and say a prayer of thanks, to God and to Mary and especially, to Señora. She is the one who saved me! My cousin's old housekeeper had the courage and she had the wisdom too, what I now call the wisdom of whiskey!

She came to the prison last week, my guitar bundled in a blanket in the back of the old grey wagon. She is so small -- all of four or five feet tall but wide enough to make up for it --but she stood up to the horrible old jailer. She marched into the jail carrying and told the jailer she wanted to see me.

He laughed, but he stopped laughing after she pulled out a tall bottle of Antonie's most expensive bourbon!

When he saw that bottle, the cackling jailer (his name is Jack Pie, can you imagine a stranger name?!) whistled and clapped!

Pie broke open the bottle and drank the whiskey on the spot. But not before dear Señora had gotten the key and delivered the guitar to me. And the blanket. And a basket of the most sumptous foods! (I am eating once more dear Teresa, I am eating once more!)

Before she left, before Pie ended up as a pile of whiskers and whiskey-soaked flesh on the floor, Señora assured him in her broken English that he would have "more weesky" every week if he let me keep the guitar!

Are you listening to me, Mary, when I kneel now on this miserable mud-packed floor, when I say thank you for this miracle you have delivered me here?

Sitting here singing and playing, I can feel blood running through my arms and legs again.

My heart has started to beat again. And yes, I am eating like a queen. I have started with the spinach empanadas.

Dear Teresa, when you visit me in this foul place, soon? Soon? I will swoon you with my music, just the way I used to play for you in the old happy days, when we laid on the blanket under the arms of the live oak!

One thing Teresa, will you bring me a canteen of your perfect lemonade?

NOTE TO READERS: A carcelero is a form of flamenco that specifically refers to prison and jail life. According to "The Art of Flamenco," by Donn Pohren, gypsy prisoners used to sing to relatives and friends outside the prison walls.

No jail here.

Not anymore.

The only bars

are those of the guitar!

The instrument

brings Renata and me

such relief from our suffering!

Utter the words,

play the strings,

and we are free!

FREE!

Ah, Señora, bless you for

your courage, bless you for your

great great wisdom, knowing

that to bring

Sister Renata

her guitar

inside this dank dark hole

of an unholy prison

Music has returned her to life,

and to

visions of

blue skies and

the blanket where she and

Teresa once sank

beneath the

arms of the live oaks,

where she and Teresa

played and drank

sweet and sour

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Sister Renata is Going to HANG!

2011-01-04T05:02:00.001-08:00

September 13, 1883

Old Vallejo Jail

My Dear Teresa,

Can you see me here, trembling as I write? Can you see what I see? This newspaper in my hand that paints me as Antonie's killer? This newspaper that spells my doom? This newspaper that assumes all of my cousin's horrific stories are true?

All around me, Teresa, I stare at yellow slime that looks and smells like urine dripping from the walls. I am caged in a cell that is barely large enough to hold my frame lying down.

This narrow metal cot here, this is bed and bench and my world. There is a tiny window that is shoulder high, but I dare not look outside. There is nothing more out there than the choking yellow dust of the courtyard and the gallows...and the dangling rope!

.

The jailer, cackling and jangling his keys, sang out to me my first day, "hey, lookie see out there Sister, that’s where you are going to die sweetie, so ya better start sayin ya prayers!"

Can you see me here my dear Teresa?

How is that I have landed in this hellish place?Sometimes I wish my cousin had sliced not his own throat, but mine!

Oh, and here, here at my feet, how could I forget this foul foul pail. A swill that so disgusts me that it makes my head dizzy. Its odor fills my nose and gags me.

And what passes through the rusty bars for food?

That word food, it has no place here. And with the smell, is it any wonder that I haven’t the least bit of appetite?

I pray night and day. I ask Mary that there may be some miracle. Because I need one here. A few minutes ago, the jailer, smelling of whiskey, threw the newspaper with the story between the bars. He was cackling again. "Read this, princess," he said.

Reading these words: "I promise you, she will hang" -- a warm flood of fear spills through me. I think my dizziness is going to sink me to the floor.

I may die here before they hang me. I may decide not to drink another sip of that water that tastes like the rust of these bars. I may stop eating and drinking altogether, and I may just pray for a quick demise.

I apologize my dear Teresa. I realize that my giving up all hope like this is just so hopeless…

I close my eyes now and say another prayer.

I so look forward to your coming Teresa. And now, just thinking of you, I feel so much better.

I can see you in my mind, my dear Sister, I see your cheerful face and your eyes that match the blue of the sky and suddenly, now, here, I feel my spirits lifting.

Yes, Teresa, I feel that you are here beside me in this hellish cell.

I am so so thankful that you brought me the diary and I thank God and Mary too that you argued, and that they allowed me, finally, after all your arguing, to keep it.

Perhaps this is after all, the miracle, that I can sit here and write my own words.

Words that are even stronger than the words of this hateful newspaper. (All lies, all because of the hateful stories my cousin Antonie told!)

But now, I see, I see you and me together, and I realize that I have the power to spin my own tales.

I have the power of words that lift me out of this hellish cell, I can tell my own story that takes me up the hillside there

behind the convent,

do you see us there beneath the branches of the oak?

I do Teresa, I do. I see you and I see me, I see us together again, I see it all, the blue sky, and the trees, I feel the warm dry breeze on my face, I feel the blanket on my back, and now, yes, the two of us, we just sank down there in the shade

and yes, now we are laughing and telling jokes again about Father Ruby, and now I taste the sweet and sour lemonade that you have made me.

This is bliss these pictures I have made.

So yes, you know that I will keep writing here, have no fear about that, and I will keep the faith too, as you told me, because what else can I do except pray and sob and write and write and hold onto some hope for a miracle?

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: So here is Antonie's murder, FROM HIS POINT OF VIEW!

2011-01-02T09:58:00.001-08:00

"Roseblood"

She didn't expect Antonie to summon her to the hacienda that morning and she certainly didn't expect to kill him in his bedroom that night. Even an hour before she sank the blade into his throat, she would have denied it possible that she, Sister Renata, could end her cousin's life, that she, a nun, could cast aside the sixth commandment and perform the frightening and horrendous criminal act that occurred.

But she did cast aside the sixth commandment, THOU SHALL NOT KILL, and she did kill him."

If a prophet had approached her as the sun was getting low, as it was sinking like a glowing orange orb into the milky western sky, if the seer had said, 'My dear Renata, you ought to know that before the evening star appears, you will murder your cousin Antonie right here in the bedroom. Very, very shortly you will bring a flood from his throat, a flood that will coat his ruffled shirt like a bib of warm sticky blood.'

If Renata had heard those words, she would have been distraught. She would have dismissed the prediction as absurd. 'Ridiculous, an impossibility, the most preposperous thing I have ever heard. I love my cousin and always have and always will. I have cared for him religiously all these many months that he has been ill. I am his nurse and certainly not his murderer. I can't imagine hurting him. Your words and vision apply to someone else, and that someone had better stay away from me.'

Ah, but she was wrong.

It all started in the evening when she arrived at Antonie's hacienda, courtesy of Tango, the wagon driver. She rode in the carriage bundled under two wool shawls and with a bear skin tucked around her feet. September had brought a fierce and unseasonable chill to the evening air and the wind was up and it was getting dark earlier.

By the time the wagon pulled up before the house, the first diamonds were twinkling in the dark sky, and the trees were nothing more than black silhouettes against the navy blue of the horizon.

Señora was waiting at the front door, more anxious than Renata had ever seen her before. "He wants you upstairs," she whispered, her large eyes wide and her hands twisted around each other.

"Has he eaten?" Renata asked as she removed one shawl. The older woman, who looked smaller than usual, almost child-sized, shook her head briskly.

"Soup is all," she said, and then, in Spanish, she proceeded to describe Antonie's supper in detail. That afternoon, Señora had prepared him chicken broth and a slice of boiled tongue and the sweet red pepper paste that he loved so much to spread on tortillas and bread. She cooked the plump peppers to a pulp, then mashed them so smooth that he didn't have to chew at all. Still, he had eaten practically nothing off his plate, Señora said, sadly shaking her head.

"Come como ave," she whispered. "He eats like a bird."

Renata mounted the stairs and knocked on Antonie's door. She waited no more than a few seconds before proceeding inside. Thick white candles burned on either side of his majestic bed. He lay there, mouth wide, his head tipped back so far that candlelight played on the profile of his chin and throat.

"Antonie?" she whispered, leaning close to his face. "Antonie, do you hear me?" He slept on, and she settled in the leather chair there beside the bed. His chest rose and fell in an easy rhythm.

Eying the guitar that leaned, as always, against the wall to the left of his bed, she picked the instrument up and began to strum. A bulería first, and then a favorite sigiriya -- the death march from Catalonia -- the one she had written herself. She let each note ring out on the strings, but he slept through even the loudest playing. It was only after three folk songs, that she began the first long strokes of the malagueña that he woke with a start.

"Buenas noches," she said, putting aside the guitar. His eyes fluttered and when he was finally fully awake, he sat up on his elbows and reached for her hand.

"Thank you my cousin," he whispered. "Thank you for coming." He lingered over the kiss he placed on the back of her hand. "I've been waiting for so many days."

She blushed and pulled her hand away.

"Please lay back down," she insisted. "And if you do, I'll play for you."

He shook his head. "No," he said in a pleading voice. "I want you to dance tonight. In fact, I insist on it. Please."

She got up from the chair, leaned over him, and pulled the covers up to his chin. "Can I make you tea?" she asked, ignoring his request. She stroked his forehead lightly.

"No," he said, pushing the covers -- and the suggestion of tea -- away with his hand. His voice came out high and thin, a reedy whisper, as if he was speaking through a very thin tube. "I am not interested in tea. You know very well what I want Renata. I want you to dance. Now hurry. Go into the next room, please and get dressed in the red satin that you know I prefer for you."

She sat back down. She was frowning. So many times before she had simply yielded to him, quietly submitting to his authority. He would command her to dance and she would retire to the next room, the one with the oak chest and the round mirror, and she would proceed to remove her black habit and don the ruffled red satin dress.

As she put the dress on, she would also don the identity he loved, that of the Spanish dancer. Tonight, though, she was in no mood for that.

"Oh Antonie," she said, yawning, "I am so tired this evening." She sighed. "I am not sure that I'm up to the dance."

Antonie's face crumpled. He fell back on his pillow. "But I was counting on you," he begged. "I was looking forward to this more than you know. It's been weeks and weeks and you promised that the next time you came that you would..."

"Hush!" Renata commanded and placed her fingertips over his purplish lips. "Things happen my cousin to change what we promise. Isn't it enough that I've come here tonight?"

She looked up and saw on a small table across the room something startling. She noticed now a slender silver vase holding a single yellow rose, a rose with red tips. The tips were blood red in color.

Renata stood and walked to the vase and lifted the rose to her nose. She inhaled the fragrance.

"But what things have happened Renata? I know something has changed and I am determined to know what it is."

She stared at him from across the room, still holding the magnificent rose. She spoke slowly. And softly. "Just today, I am afraid that Father Ruby called me into his private chamber."

Antonie sat up straighter. "Yes? Yes? What did he say?"

She sighed a bored sigh. "He questioned me closely on your condition and..." She looked away.

"And what? What did he say?" Antonie's voice trembled.

Renata let her glance fall. And she went silent. Pushing aside the sheets, Antonie crawled across the bed, reached out for her. She walked slowly to the bed and calmly set the blood-tipped rose in the palm of his hand. A thorn in the stem pricked his skin and instantly, blood erupted.

She was frowning, but he was silent, until he began pleading.

"Please tell me," he whispered. "I've got a right to know my darling."

She shook her head. "Why are you continuing to insist that I am your 'darling?'" she said. She turned to face the other direction. "So if you must know, Ruby asked me how often I was visiting you. And he asked me very directly, 'And so my child, what is his pleasure? What is it he has you do when you visit?'"

"And how did you reply to his question, cousin? What did you tell the priest that you do here?"

Renata pivoted and glared at Antonie. "I told him nothing too specific," she whispered. "I told him that I wait on you, nurse you, shave you, sing to you, play the guitar and..."

"And?"

She blinked, and he was thinking now he saw a greedy smile form on her lips.

"I told him that I meet your every need." Her smile turned into a leering grin. "And he said only this, 'Remember Renata that God is your Witness, and that Hell is forever and it burns, it burns and it burns for eternity." As she spoke, her grin disappeared and tears started up in both eyes.

"What? He knows better than to say that to you, my darling, or at least he should, for all the money I have donated to the convent, maybe if he doesn't get his next monthly payment he..."

"SILENCE ANTONIE!" Renata screeched it as loud as she had ever yelled. "And what did I tell you about calling me YOUR DARLING!" Her eyes went as wide as a dinner plate. "I am NOT your darling!"

Antonie had always had a firm understanding with Father Ruby: Antonie donated to the priest in gold ostensibly to support the convent. In return, Renata was to visit Antonie regularly to provide her "service." Part of the agreement was that neither the priest not the other nuns, or Mother Yolla, would ever question Renata's comings or goings, nor would they interfere with her visits to Antonie.

That was the understanding. But every so often, the greedy priest wanted more money. He never dared ask Antonie for it directly. No, instead his way of communicating his need was simply to harrass Renata: whenever the priest lectured to the nun about Hell and burning, it was code, it was his way of informing her to inform Antonie that he the priest wanted a higher fee for Renata's services.

Evidently the greedy priest was at it again. But tonight Renata was not herself. Not at all. In the past she would pass on the priest's remarks and that would be it. Tonight it was clear that the Devil himself was doing something evil to his cousin.

Once again, as he watched her, he saw that her mood was shifting. Now she was laughing at him, at first in silence and then out loud. Her laughter grew louder and louder and more raucous. Who was this woman he faced? Who had erased his darling cousin, Renata, and replaced her with this vicious demon?

He dropped back to the pillows. "I see that...that you are mocking me," he whispered. "I see that tonight for some reason...you seem to...enjoy mocking me."

She nodded. "Oh God yes I do indeed," she said.

And then her face turned gravely serious. "Ah but don't you worry Antonie, your dirty little secrets remain secrets with me. Father Ruby remains in the dark so to speak. I did nothing to reveal to the fat old priest that you have soiled me repeatedly here in this room, repeatedly abusing me in all the ways you have."

Antonie shook his head. "I did no such thing," he said. "I have loved and adored you more than my own self, Renata. As God is my witness, I have never touched you in a way that ..."

"Silence!" Renata commanded. She walked to the mirrored dresser and picked up my razor. "Silence or I myself will silence you!"

Her eyes gleamed in a dark and eery way.

"Renata, please, my cousin, I am feverish and weak, I am..."

She lifted the razor, and the way she was holding it over the candle, the light of the flame glinted off the steel blade. "I told you Antonie not to speak, or I would stop your speaking for all time. And I'm not joking."

Antonie pulled the covers up to his chin. He had never observed Renata in this condition before. What had happened to her? Where had his sweet cousin disappeared to?

"I want you to know something Antonie." Her eyes narrowed. "All this time you have "donated" money to the convent, in exchange for..." here she paused and her face grew red and wild with hatred... "for my services," she nodded, and lifted the razor and set one of her delicate fingertips against the sharp blade, "all this time you have done this, you have made me feel so...low. So much like chattel, like chicken or cattle, something that has been purchased, sold, as though I am the meat you buy for the evening meal."

Her eyes were full of fury now. "For this, Antonie, I will never ever forgive you as long as I live." She had the razor in two hands now.

He was crying now, and he was frightened. "I...I am so so sorry Renata, my dear cousin," he said, his purple lips trembling. "You know it was simply because I loved you so much. I will...I will take care of the priest, I promise, I always do, you know that..."

She grabbed him by the throat. "I know you do, you always take care of Ruby, but who for the love of God takes care of ME?" She scratched his throat and slapped his face.

And then perhaps frightened of what she had done, she moved away from the bed. They remained like that for a few moments. "Oh dear cousin," he whispered, holding his hand to his bleeding neck, "I hope...I hope that...maybe you will stay the night here. You won't go running off now will you?"

His face was small and childlike. His voice craven and trembling.

She was filled with disgust for him. She ignored his pleading and dropped the razor to the floor. Then she picked up the guitar. She finished the malagueña and then she followed it with an andante, a slow wandering study. He kept his eyes closed and pretended that the song, her serenade would never end.

"I so love it when you play," he whispered when she had finished. "Maybe you could try an alegria?"

"No more." She eyed him.

"So now, maybe, you will dance?" He said this under the covers. But still loud enough so that she could hear.

"Have you heard anything I've said to you?" she screamed. "I am not dancing anymore. I am done dancing. And I am done with this filth that passes for your romance. Your fantastic fantasies. Father Ruby finally has made me see me for what I've become. I do your bidding, and his, and I am nothing but a...a.." The word wouldn't come. Finally, "sinner" emerged in a whisper. And then one more word.

Whore.

"No, no, not that, not that at all," he called out, and it took every last ounce of his energy to speak. "Please my dear cousin don't do this to yourself, or to me, please, it brings me such pain to hear you speak like that. Why listen to that greedy old man, you don't need to listen to him, he nothing more than..."

"Than what?" screeched Renata rushing up to the bed and setting herself down beside her cousin. "He is my priest Antonie. At least acknowledge that much, that he is my priest, MY priest. I can't get away from the judgement he makes. At least for my sake try to see that you and he have destroyed me!" She buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

If he could have, at that moment, he would have taken her in his arms and covered her with kisses. He would have whispered, "My darling, my darling, please don't cry. I will take care of the priest." He would have taken her into his bed, as he had so often before, and they would have stayed together embracing. They would have fallen asleep together, and woken up the same way.

But that was not what happened. Instead, he decided just to touch her, with two fingers.

And that thing he did, touching her with two fingers, would be the thing that would bring him to his sorry ending.

He lifted his hand and ever so gently, much more gently than he had ever caressed his cousin before, he set his hand upon her shoulder. He wanted only to console her. He wanted only to hold her, to help shoulder the pain he knew she felt, and that he knew he had caused.

That was the final blow. She shuddered and then she went berserk and he honestly didn't know what hit him. She socked him in the jaw so hard that two teeth broke. The jawbone -- punished by the disease -- cracked, and his head went tipping back.

And that's when she saw the Adam's apple, protruding so grotesquely from his throat. That is when she got the idea. Something about that Adam's apple TEMPTED her. Something EVE-il struck her.

Instantly she knew. She knew exactly how she had to do what had to be done. She knew exactly how do end all this misery, his and hers, all the humiliation of this intolerable situation with her cousin.

In the end, she would be able to forgive herself this one gruesome act because, she reasoned, it was Antonie's -- and Father Ruby's -- fault that she had fallen. It was Antonie who stood between her and her God, between her shame and her life as a devoted nun, the life she had chosen when she first came to the convent.

She bent quickly to the floor and picked up the razor and as he lay there on the bed, his head tipped backward, she gored his Adam's apple. His eyes popped open and froze in a perpetual stare, a permanent question asking her "how could you do this to me, to me, your beloved Antonie?"

His questioning stare would go forever unanswered, because it was at that very moment that she buried the razor blade deep into his throat. With sure fingers, and with distinct evidence of intent, and with only limited regret, she let the razor slide under and around the Adam's apple, as if she meant to core out the peculiar lump of cartilage, as if she meant somehow to remove it altogether from his throat, and hold it for her own. Perhaps her goring his throat would remove forever Eve's supposed sin of tempting Adam with the apple to begin with.

As Renata gored him, he tried to utter a sound like "NO!" or maybe "HELP!" or possibly even "DON'T!" But who can say? Certainly not Antonie. If he could have screamed, it is possible that Señora Ramos might have heard, it is possible that she might have saved his life that night.

But Renata cut that possibility and his vocal cords, in two. She sawed his scream away, and his voice faded into a deep and bloody gurgle, his voice drowned in the blood that was already filling his scissored throat.

In short order, he was coated: first his ruffled bed shirt sprouted a heart-shaped bib of blood and soon after, he was awash bathing in his own warm gore.

Renata sat numb, staring at the bloody man in her lap. She was empty-minded. She heaved the lifeless head aside and studied the lavish puddle that was already beginning to cool and congeal on the bedclothes and on the floor. Blood dripped from her wrists, her fingertips, the backs of her hands. Her black habit was slippery, the bed soaked. Her shoes, the floor, her face and hair -- nowhere it seemed was there a surface that was blood-free.

In the next moment, Renata's ears were ringing. She closed her eyes, her face grew hot and her head light. She thought for sure that she would faint or vomit or both. But a moment passed, and she did neither. Unsteadily, she lifted herself from the bed, and took a step or two away. She caught sight of herself in Antonie's mirror, was horrified by what she saw. She took one step more, and she slipped on the blood and fell. She screamed. Eyes to the floor, the blood became a Red Sea, rolling in every direction. Was she free? Would she ever be?

Slowly, she pushed herself to her knees and began to crawl. She froze. It hit her: she had no change of clothing. Slowly she continued to crawl toward the door to the next room, the one with the oak chest and small round mirror. The room where she had so many times thrown her habit to the floor.

In that room certainly there was something clean that she could wear. She had promised herself that she would never enter that room again. And she had promised herself that she would never ever wear the red satin dress again. But now if she was going to return to the convent clean, in clothes that were free of blood, she would have to, just once more, dress like what she had been.

The whore.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: This is How Antonie Died, and No, I Didn't Kill Him!

2010-12-30T08:39:00.000-08:00

By Claudia Ricci

The time has come. That last chapter, and the one before, they unlocked the floodgates. There is blood on the floor, more blood than I have ever seen before. And there is more to come because, words,

words are like blood now, that dream, that last chapter, seems to have turned on a faucet, the truth comes pouring out of me. I see the words I have written, I read them here, and like magic, like magic the words make it all come back. IT CANNOT BE STOPPED, THE WARM FLOOD, THE BLOOD, I am a flood and THE BLOOD is all around me.

Here we are, Señora and me, kneeling, screaming, crying, our knees sliding in gore, our aprons soaked scarlet red. And poor Antonie, he lies here limp on the floor. Flooded in his own blood. His face is drained almost as white as this piece of paper. His head drapes back at the horrific gash, Dear Mother of God, my cousin's throat is ripped one side to the other! His lips are bloody, his eyes wide and black and bugged out. He is gone. Gone. What have we done here? What have we done?

I wrote this chapter so many years ago I honestly can’t remember when. It’s been years -- 128 years since Antonie died, and a dozen or more years since I wrote this chapter. I know how it all happened. I know AS GOD IS MY WITNESS THAT I'M not to blame. I know THERE WAS NO CRIME. NO CRIME. None at all. I know how desperately we, Señora and me, tried to save him. I know too that I’m trapped here, inside this prison, chained at the ankle. Drained of energy. Staring out of that tiny barred window into the courtyard at the gallows where they plan to hang me in exactly 33 days.

Teresa visited me again last night, begged me once again to hand over to her this diary entry I hold in a pouch at my waist, right beside my rosary. It is the only diary entry that has never come to light. The only one I refused to give up.

“Please, Renata,” she begged. “It’s your only hope. Just give it to me. She wants you to. Señora sent me here directly, she told me, just the way she told you, it’s time, it’s time. She cannot stand by, and let you hang for a crime that you didn’t commit.”

I sat here staring at Teresa. I felt the hard cold stone of this bench. I bit into my cracked lip. I tipped my head – no veil, no veil, no more nun's veil, I have just a brush of hair -- hacked short, cut away by that whiskey-drenched, toothless old jailer the other day – I tipped my head back to the clammy wall.

“All you need to do is give it to me, my dear dear heart,” Teresa whispered. She was standing now, now reaching her fingers through the bars, just the way my mother used to when I was a child, so many years ago, when I had pneumonia, and I was feverish and dreaming MACHINE DREAMS in the crib. “I will go immediately to see your lawyer, Deluria, I will bring him the diary. I KNOW that he will help you Renata. I know he will bring it to the court, he will file a last-minute appeal. I will stay until he does. But first you must give it to me. You must! Because if you don't Renata, you will..." Shaking her head slowly, she whispers. "Just give it to me, please.”

I stared at Teresa through the bars.

“If I do what you ask," I whispered, "what then will happen, what then will be my dear Señora's fate?"

“She is prepared,” Teresa said, stamping her foot. “She has her faith in God and in Mary. She is not going to stand by to see you hang.”

I stared at Teresa through the bars. I shook my head.

I could not yield up the diary entry that might save me. Not yet. Not last night.

But I am ready to let you read how Antonie died. Right now.

Renata’s Diary

September 17, 1883

If I write it all down, will it feel more real? Will I begin to accept the fact that it happened? I sit here staring into the darkness, my fingers trembling as I push the pen. If I keep my eyes on the page, I can almost pretend that I am back in my room at the convent. I can almost ignore the dank walls of the cell, and the chill, and the atrocious smell. And the swill of that dreadfully foul pail. When the sun rises, I will have to look up and see. Daylight reveals the walls, and all I can think is that they are going to close in and crush me.

Thanks be to God for Señora’s visit yesterday. Thanks be to God that she brought the sky blue shawl. All those roses, all those beautiful red flowers. It isn’t altogether warm, but it is some comfort during these sleepless nights. And thanks too that she brought this white candle, and the pewter holder, for otherwise, I would have no light by which to write. And God knows, I must write. As frightened as I am, as desperate as I feel, I must write. I must fight the temptation to give up.

I will go back four days. Will I ever forget the date? It was September 13^th. It will always be, because time stopped that day. Life will never be the way it was before that day.

We had been back from San Francisco for exactly one month. It had taken me weeks to recuperate. I slept for the first two weeks, and showered in Teresa’s shower as often as I could. But still I felt my soul sinking. I would open my eyes each the mornings and before I was fully awake I would think about my cousin wasting away, and poor Señora caring for him. I would cringe at the thought that I had abandoned her. But I could not begin to think about helping. I could barely raise my head from the pillow.

September 13^th came. It was a Sunday, and I was up early. I finally had enough strength back to attend Mass at sunrise. When I emerged from the chapel, there was Senora waiting for me in the wagon, her brow knit in torment and worry. I hurried to her side. Her eyes begged me. She patted the seat beside her. No words passed between us. I knew what was happening. I knew what I had to do. As I hoisted myself onto the wagon, Mother Yolla emerged from chapel.

“Where are you off to now, Sister Renata?” she screamed.

“I’m sorry, Mother Superior,” I said, bowing my head. “My cousin is dying. I have no choice but to go.”

Señora whipped the horse smartly, and we were on our way. The roads were a rough surface at her speed. But we needed to get there. When we turned, finally, down the long dusty drive leading to the hacienda, I heard Señora whisper, “Gracias a Dios.” And I too said a prayer, that whatever awaited me would not be more than I could endure. I wasn’t sure if Antonie would still be alive.

It was just before noon. A brilliantly beautiful day. I will never forget the sky: it looked as though it had been washed clean. I lowered myself down from the wagon and turned to give Senora a hand. I recalled the day we had arrived back from San Francisco. It had taken the three of us, Señora and Tango and me, to carry Antonie inside the house. I remember we removed the quilts piled over him, and knotted the sheet on which he lay at all four corners.

Tango took two corners, Señora and I each had a corner, and in that way we carried him –a remarkably light load in the sagging sheet—through the monstrous front door and up the polished staircase and into the bedroom. We laid him out on the bed in a long orange shaft of light and I opened the window and the breeze swept inside and immediately his eyes went wide and he stared into nothingness as if he were entranced. He lifted his arms as if he might take flight, and then he cried out.

“I am home, dear God, I must be, I must be home, there is only one place in the world with this exceptional fragrance.”

About that he was right. Everywhere at Antonie’s, there is a remarkable scent of eucalyptus, owing to two giant trees that tower over the hacienda, planted ever so long ago as tiny saplings, a gift to Antonie’s father presented by the first Australian family to set foot on Californian soil.

I recall that Señora left the room to fill a washbasin. When she returned, I stood beside Antonie’s bed and swabbed his face. I could only imagine the condition and appearance of my own face, streaked and coated in mud. I remember that Antonie appeared to fall asleep, and so Señora and I prayed for a short while in silence.

And then Señora made her mistake. She told me, within Antonie’s earshot, that I was welcome to stay the night. Or that I was free to go, that she would be happy to take me herself, or if I preferred, she would have Tango bring me back to the convent in the wagon.

All of a sudden, Antonie’s eyes popped open again. He had heard those words of Señora’s, and they sent him into a tailspin. He sat up straight in bed. His eyes bulged, glazed black and bulbous, in those gaping grey bowls. Without the benefit of flesh in his cheeks, his nose stood out in an oddly prominent hook. And the whole of his face was locked in by his gaunt cheekbones, giving him a distinctly skeletal look.

“No, no, you cannot leave me,” he cried, grabbing my veil in two hands and twisting it between his fingers. Thus followed a pathetic scene in which I tried to disengage my veil from his grasp.

“But my dear cousin, I must go. I cannot linger a moment longer. As it is, I’ve been away from the convent for almost three weeks. Who knows what punishment is in store for me? Who knows what is to become of me if Mother Yolla decides to dismiss me from the order?”

I forcefully yanked the veil away, and Antonie sank to the bed, but still he kept reaching for me. He took hold of my little finger and tenderly he brought it to his chin and his lips and it was almost as though he was an infant again the way he suckled at my hand. “You know full well that Father Ruby will tell Mother Yolla what to do, he will explain that you have been on a journey to help me get well.” At that moment, his breathing became more labored, and he launched into a cough that sounded as though it came from the bottom of a deep and very congested chasm.

When the awful sound finally stopped, he spoke, but ever so slowly, and with a heavy wheeze separating each word. “There…is…no…no…reason to leave. No…reason at …all.”

I studied his horrifying face, his pale purple pallor, and I thought, oh but there is every reason to go, I must leave this house right away because if I spend one more day here, attached to you, a dying man, it will be my end as well as yours.

He began whimpering then, and again he grabbed my veil. Senora helped me wrench it from his grasp. I told him that I would wait until he fell asleep for the night before I left, hoping that he would drop off well before the sunlight disappeared.

Señora proceeded downstairs to help Tango unpack the wagon, and I remained in the chair beside Antonie’s bed. His eyes remained opened, and he stared at me with a curious mix of sadness, as well as resentment and anger. His eyes bore into me, as if they were drills. Finally I had to look away.

“Renata, bring me that journal,” he commanded, gesturing to his desk. “Bring the journal and the pen as well.”

I did, I brought the journal, and as I passed the book and pen to him, and helped to prop his bony back against two pillows, it never occurred to me that I was enabling him to make his last grand written attack. It never occurred to me either to ask him what he intended to write. Why would I think to ask? Here, after all, was a man hovering over the very edge of the canyon of death. What did it matter what he wrote? What did it matter whether he wrote at all?

He scrawled slowly and in a lopsided hand, his head hanging low over his journal, stopping frequently because his fingers shook so that he could barely grasp the pen. At times, too, he would stop just to glare at me, and that look, while it scared me, still did not alert me to his intentions. How could I possibly know that he was weaving the last bit of his elaborate web, setting me up to appear to be his murderer?

After nearly an hour of scribbling, he sank into the pillows, spent.

“Enough of this,” he said. But when I went to take the journal away, he clutched the book tighter to his chest. “I am not finished,” he moaned, his lids closing. “I’ve got more to say and it is not something you may read.”

“Well, yes, of course, then, just keep writing,” I said.

“But I have to know something,” he murmured. “You say you will stay until I fall asleep for the night. But then, when will you return?”

I blinked and didn't answer him. I left the hacienda that day and now, here it was almost a month later. This was my first visit to see Antonie since we had traveled to San Francisco for his disastrous mercury treatment.

I followed Señora into the hacienda. She led me straight to his room. The gloom and the smell surrounding his bed is hard to describe. He looked less shriveled than I expected, however. In fact, when I approached his bed, he raised his face to me. He looked ghastly, a purple glaze clung to his skin, and when he spoke, his breath was as foul as the chicken coop back at the convent.

“Dear Renata, finally, you’ve come.” His gravelly tone made me shudder. “Do you know…how happy I am to see you?” He raised his hand and I gasped. His skin had begun to rot right before my eyes.

I bowed my head, and felt dizziness overwhelm me. I realized that I had to get out of this sickroom, now, because otherwise, I would be sick.

“I…I will be helping Señora in the kitchen,” I said, and I turned and was about to hurry out the door, when I stopped once more and said to him in an even tone, “God bless you, Antonie,” I whispered. And to myself, I continued, “God bless you and rest your soul and keep you for all eternity.”

“Oh don’t go away,” he muttered. By then I had hurried out the door and down the hall. God forgive me, I whispered, but I cannot witness this last bit.

Señora was in the kitchen warming some broth at the woodstove. She turned to me, and I sank to the chair, and began to sob. Senora placed a hand on my shoulder. It was at that moment we heard the ghastly sound.

It reached into my chest and squeezed my heart and roped it tight. And then an agonizing howl followed, a howl and a kind of unearthly gurgle.

It seemed to drown even as it found its mark piercing straight toward my stomach.

Señora and I were in the bedroom in seconds, and there he lay on the floor. He had the razor in his hand, and he was still jabbing and clawing at his throat. Already there was so much more blood than I ever thought possible. How could one man bleed so much? I murdered the air with my own screams, over and over again I yelled, pleading alternately between Spanish and English, between God and Señora, in my desperation and panic. The next few minutes. Seemed to go on for all eternity.

I raced to his side, and fighting all instincts, I dropped to the floor, into the gore where he lay. “I’ve got to, I’ve got to,” that’s what I kept thinking, and telling myself, but all my body wanted to do was run away, run so far away that I could never possibly come back. Instead, though, I forced myself to go forward. I had both my hands covering my mouth, my stomach threatening to disgorge with every step. Soon, I was at the edge of the puddle, the blood so red, so thick, such a flooding of it from the ragged gash at his neck that I grew dizzy.

There was blood everywhere, blood flooding me, warm and sticky, blood puddling and pooling on the floor, blood seeping under my knees, blood rivering around my ankles, “oh please Dear God help him please,” I screamed but it just kept coming and coming, soaking the floor, “we’ve got to do something,” I screamed at Señora, I held my apron to the gash in his throat, but still the blood coated my hands, and Señora’s too, and the two of us sat there, helpless, slick and sliding in Antonie’s gore until… I had the choice then, I could be cowardly and run away, or I could stay. Feeling myself grow woozy, I chose to kneel, to stay and the gore met with my knees, and in short order I could feel the warm blood squeeze through my habit. I was awash in the ooze.

“Please God,” I screamed, “Please God,” and by then, Señora was screaming in Spanish. She laid one hand on my shoulder and I looked up and grabbed her fingers in mine. Then she kneeled too, and the two of us were a statue together, weeping and whimpering, staring into the worst nightmare there ever was, a man with a razor still in his hand, still trying to kill himself and now, barely alive. His lips were bubbling words that could not be heard, his throat gurgled and rapidly disgorged the last drops of his dwindling pool of life.

I bent forward, and holding my breath, I touched his forehead, which was by now about the only part of his face that wasn’t smeared in blood. Feeling his cold skin I began bawling anew and howling, too, wailing for help, wailing at Señora, or who knows who, “Oh do something oh God please do something do something please do something.”

For a moment I was overcome by a fresh wave of certainty that I would black out or retch or worse yet, actually get up and flee the room. But then Antonie turned his agonized gaze on me, and in a fit of caring, and desperate to do something, I used my two trembling hands to lift his head, and in that moment, dreading that it might just roll off, I took the greatest care to prop the back of his head against my thigh. A fresh spurt of blood started out of his wound, pulsing like a bib at his neck, and quickly oozing another thickness of blood onto my leg.

Soon the slide of blood creamed both my hands and pooled in my apron, and I turned to Señora and cried out, “What can we do?” With his last bit of energy, Antonie answered the question. He opened his mouth and guzzling his own blood, cried out, “Finish, Renata, oh please, finish me now.”

I glanced at the razor still locked within his curled hand. But how could I do what he asked?

“No, no, I cannot,” I screamed, and shaking my head, I lifted my hands in the air, and there, there was blood now everywhere, up and down my arms, all over my face and veil. I froze there, staring, shrieking, unable to speak, to think.

As I crumbled to one side, I saw that Señora had found some kind of power to act. I was hardly aware of what she was doing until she was there, doing it. She came forward on her knees, sliding in the bloody sleeze. Without a word, and with an other worldly look on her face, she took the razor from Antonie’s hand and lifted and pressed and she put her entire body into the action. She set the razor between her body and his wound and she went full forward, grunting as she did. And I heard a sound like bone breaking, or cartilage cracking.

And then. I looked up. And standing in the doorway was Tango, his eyes as wide as pails. “Sangre de Cristo,” he whispered, falling to his knees and making the sign of the cross.

I grew more dizzy and must have blacked out.

When I came to, Antonie was a few feet away from me. He lay with his eyes gaping upward, his head wrenched to one side, his face practically white. There was blood so far and wide that it was indeed a new Red Sea around me. I was drenched through and through. I could do nothing but sob, my head just bobbing side to side. I just lay there. I wondered where Señora was. But then I knew.

Because I heard her in the hallway, bawling, and speaking in low tones to Tango, and he too was crying, and trying to comfort her.

“Ven aquí, ven aqu,” I cried, and when the two of them came into the room, I cried out, “Señor Antonie es muerto, es muerto,” and she and Tango joined in my howling and the three of us clung to each other on the bloody floor. Finally, I told them that I had to pray over his body.i

“Si, si, señorita,” Tango said, and he helped me up to a sitting position, but in that position I thought for sure I would black out once more. Drawing on my last shred of inner strength, I slithered forward on my belly. A few inches from Antonie’s prostrate form, I lifted my hand to his face and trembling, I reached up to his eyes, and closed his lids. And I said some kind of a prayer, all I know is that there were words, and I spoke them from my heart, and I started and ended with God and what happened in between I cannot say. At least I did something, said something, because I knew if there had been a priest present, he would do the last rites, and so this might not be the rites, but it was something come from God just the same.

That’s when Señora came to my side, and she whispered to me that it was important that I return to the convent immediately. She was most concerned, she said, that I needed to protect my reputation. And I agreed to go, I didn’t know what I was saying or doing, but the minute I tried to sit up, I realized that it was all too much for me, this vision I faced was so profoundly disturbing that I didn’t know if I could move. There before me lay Antonie, now a grotesquely flayed slab of flesh, a cousin to me no more.

I set to crying anew, my head swimming: Oh Señora, I cried, how could he do something this horrible to himself? And how could he impose this horror on you and me, when we gave him every last shred, every single thing of ourselves we devoted, when we have worked so almighty hard the last weeks and months to see to his every need, to ensure his health?

Señora sobbed along with me, but soon she pulled herself to standing and took hold of my hands and said that Tango must take me home immediately. She promised that she would tend to Antonie’s body, with the utmost care, and that she would alert the authorities.

“But there may be questions,” I said. Señora waved my concerns away, certain that she would convince the Sheriff that Antonie had taken his own life. I was reluctant to leave, but finally I did, because Señora insisted, and promised that she would call on me if she needed anything at all. She covered me with a long black shawl, and walked me to the wagon.

Tango helped me up, and we set off just, the sky still looking like it had been washed. At the horizon though, where I set my eyes, the sky looked glittery, it had the most ethereal silvery blue color. A full moon was rising as we drove, and I kept my eyes glued to the giant golden plate as it made its way above the dark rim of trees.

When we reached the convent, I went inside the chicken coop and cried. And cried. And finally, I shed my bloody habit there, and wearing the long shawl to cover me, I hurried into the convent and found Teresa. When darkness finally came, Teresa helped me up the hillside to the shower, and I stayed in there, praying and praying, until the moonlight was full upon me. When I finally stepped outside the sheet, I was bathed in full in the bluish light. I said a silent prayer, and wrapped myself in the long black shawl, I made my way barefoot down the hill, with Teresa at my side, picking my way between the sage and thorns. Holding my breath, I crept through the hallway, until I reached my room. Teresa tucked me into bed, and I fell into a listless sleep, bouncing awake every few minutes, my mind endlessly remaking the horrifying images of him, there on the floor.

The next morning, as I was kneading a batch of bread, and about to weed the garden with Teresa, two tall men in pale blue shirts and black jackets and tall hats arrived at the convent door with a warrant. One had an oversized German Shepard on a leash, and in the arms of the other man there lay my bloody habit, the one I had worn home, the one I had so carefully hidden the night before under a large rock near the shower. I had covered it with brush and two boughs of live oak, but no matter. That dog had sniffed it out.

Without giving details, they informed Mother Yolla that I was under arrest for the murder of my cousin. And no, they said in answer to her question, I would not be returning to the convent anymore.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: How Antonie Abused Me

2010-12-29T06:35:00.001-08:00

Renata’s Diary

March 13, 1884

Written In the Vallejo Prison

To this day, and to the end of all my days, I will carry the madrone tree deep inside me. But never did I expect to share my shame in words, at least not here on this page. So many years ago, I confessed the sins committed beneath the madrone to Father Crucifer. In the months before I became a novitiate, the nightmares grew so terrifying that I woke up feeling like I was choking. I would lie there, a sweaty heap in my bed, and I would dread falling asleep again because they, the night terrors, would return. Finally I was so sleep deprived that I knew I had no choice but to bring the dreams to the confessional; I poured my heart out there in that cedar closet, with only the dark screen between me and Father Crucifer. After the confession, I knew for certain that I had been forgiven of any responsibility. Father Crucifer himself told me that I was not to blame myself for what happened. My cousin the brute, had abused me.

Alas then, why now must I relive the madrone again here? Why is it that as I rot away in this cell, I am plagued once again by what happened so long ago beneath that red-skinned tree? Why am I cursed to have to re-experience the nightmares? Why have I been waking up with Antonie’s wild young face and strong sweaty hands still strangling my sleep?

Teresa insists that the dreams have started again for a very simple reason: I am enraged at Antonie for landing me here behind these rusty bars. My fury, she says, is beyond containing. There is so much hatred, so much anger, bottled up inside me that it is resurrecting the old pain. All of it is beginning to eat away at my heart. Worse, it’s starting to drown my soul.

“You must write it all down,” Teresa said in her last visit. “If you don’t, I’m afraid, his victory will indeed be complete.”

So I will confess it again, even though it seems so unfair, that he made me the victim once, and now again, I’m the one who’s suffering.

I see the tree so clearly. I see its rich burgundy bark, as smooth to the touch as Uncle Rio’s famous oak door, the one that opens onto the front porch of the hacienda. That door was more than 250 years old when it was imported by boat and train and wagon from Ronda in southern Spain to Carmel in California.

The handsome red madrone was even sleeker to the touch than that door. And its skin was deep red, as bronze as the skin of an Indian. The tree grew at the far end of Uncle Rio’s vast fruit orchard. Peaches and pears, plums, and a few apples filled the orchard. Antonie and I spent many happy days in the orchard the first summer I arrived. We would take the guitars, and a lunch basket prepared by Señora with lots more food than the two of us could possibly consume. And we would play guitars for hours. He was a good teacher, mostly because he didn’t say much, nor did he correct me very often. He played and I copied, and he played, and I copied better the second time. The days melted away.

He took me to the madrone for the first time at the end of July. The madrone snaked into the sky about 30 feet high, towering over a thicket of live oak that lined a small ravine. We sat by the Muddy Bear Creek on the bank of that ravine and Antonie explained to me that the creek ran high until about April every year. By this time of the season, though, the creek was bone dry.

“Which is sad,” he said, “because we have no place to cool off in the summer.”

He turned and looked at me and when I turned to look back at him, I saw a strange glint in his eye. I had started to see that glint more and more but I was young, and unfettered, and I chose to ignore it.

A moment later, he asked me if I wanted to see him climb the madrone.

I wrinkled my nose. “I’m not sure,” I said. “I suppose if I were certain you knew how to, then, sure, I would say yes. But how do I know if you can do it?”

He shrugged. His eyes shone. “I guess you will just have to trust me.” He unbuttoned his shirt and threw it aside. His chest was bare of any hair at all. But he was far more muscular than I expected he would be. I realized that his body was that not of a boy at all, but a sturdy young man.

He hoisted himself to the first branch, which was just above my head. Turning, he stood above me with his legs apart and he called down to me.

“You would love it up here, and I could help you climb up.”

“Not a chance,” I said. I was wearing a long skirt, and even the thought of my feet leaving the ground frightened me.

He took hold of a higher branch. He pulled himself up to the next height and threw himself forward, bending over the branch and hanging with his head below the bough. The branch swayed.

“Oh be careful,” I gasped from below.

“I know exactly what I am doing Renata,” he called back. The last I saw of his face was his smile, which I didn’t often see. He was so very quiet most of the time. So solemn. Now all I remember is that awful smile. Not a smile of joy, but one of conquest.

I watched him pull himself to standing on that bough. And then he was so high into the green blue greenery of the tree that he disappeared from view.

“Now it’s time to come down,” I cried nervously. “I cannot see you anymore.”

“But I can see you,” he said triumphantly. “And I can see everything else from here too. I can see clear to the house, and up to the ridge.”

“Good, but it’s dangerous. Please Antonie, please come down.” Frowning nervously, I found a rock on which to sit. I caught my skirt under my knees and tucked it close around my ankles. I sat there rocking back and forth, waiting.

I heard the leaves swiping against each other. I heard a branch crack. And a gasp. “Uh oh.”

I stood. “What? What? What is happening up there?”

He grew silent.

“Antonie? Please, can’t you at least answer me? Tell me what is happening?”

I could feel my pulse running. I could imagine having to race back through the orchard to the house to have to tell Uncle Rio that Antonie was stuck in the tree. Or worse, that he had fallen. I don’t know how Uncle Rio could take another blow. Another loss would surely kill him.

“Oh drat,” Antonie called. Another branch cracked.

“What are you doing?” I screamed.

“Oh, oh, it’s OK I think… I think I’ve found a way down,” he called. I raced outward from the trunk to try to see where he was, and how he was making progress, but to no avail. I couldn’t see a thing.

“I guess…I guess I will try coming down this way, by sitting down,” he said. I could almost imagine him up there. I could almost see him sitting on a branch and thinking.

“Please please please Antonie can’t you come down right now?” I cried. I was practically sobbing.

“I’m trying Renata. I’m trying.”

I kept picturing myself having to tell Uncle Rio that Antonie had fallen. All I could think was, Antonie will die, just like his mother did, and then Uncle Rio will be destroyed. And all that will be left will be me. And Senora.

I came back to the trunk. I gazed upward, and just as I did, he slid right by me, yelling, dropping from the branch above me. He landed at my feet in a heap and fell to the side.

“DEAR GOD!” I cried, watching his collapse.

For a moment I stood, frozen in place. I saw his face. So so still. His eyes were closed. His mouth hung open.

Slowly, I dropped to my knees beside him. I was sobbing. “Oh my dear dear cousin, please please please wake up,” I cried. “Oh why did you have to go up the tree? Why why why?” He lay there, as still as stone. I began crying harder.

“I don’t know what I will do without you. Please please please, Antonie, can’t you please wake up?” I knew I had to go for help, but first I bent forward and reached one hand toward his nose, to see if he was still breathing.

My fingers were just grazing his upper lip when his eyes flew open and he grabbed me. I gasped and pulled back but not in time. He had my hand vised in his and he pulled me forward making me fall right on top of him.

He cupped his other hand around my neck and he rolled over me as if I were a log beneath him. All the while I screamed and thrashed. “Oh let me go, let me go, oh you are so horrible, why are you doing this, let me go!!!”

By then, though, he was straddled on top of me, pressing his fleshy lips into mine. He caressed me over and over again, he covered my face with his wet lips, despite my yelling, despite my telling him to “get off me, let me go, get away, just get away from me, let me goooooooooooooo!!!!!”

He wouldn’t let up. He took both elbows and planted one on either side of my neck, to make it harder for me to move. Then he planted his face deep in my neck.

“Oh my dear dear cousin,” he said. I could feel his lower body, dear God, I could feel him growing rock hard, as if he had grown one of the madrone’s own branches there inside his trousers. He pulled up my skirt and he lay full on top of me. I tried to scream but he held a dirty sweaty hand over my mouth. He never removed his clothing, because he didn’t have time. But he pressed himself against me, and he rubbed himself in a fury, while I lay there, helpless, yelling into the palm of his hand, over and over again he thrust against me, and finally, he shuddered, and fell heavily against me.

A moment after he had finished his dirty business, he rolled over to the side, and I rolled the other way, and bawling, I curled up into a little ball. And when I could find my strength, I picked myself up and ran all the way back to the house.

The world as I knew it, it just collapsed that day. I never said a word to anyone about it, until three years later, when I was about to become a novitiate. But no matter what Antonie said, or how many times he tried to apologize for his monstrous behavior, I never gave him even a moment to speak of it again. Quite simply, my relationship with him –and life itself—was never the same after that.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Slaughter Happens

2010-12-22T14:30:00.000-08:00

Renata’s Diary
August 25, 1883

I have the smell of blood and slaughter so thickly steeped in my lungs that I feel myself a beast. And when I close my eyes, my mind is reeling, dancing in blood.

Perhaps by writing I will expunge it. At least I must try.

Mother Yolla forced my hand to the ax today. She insisted I perform the dreaded task early this morning, because dear Teresa, the convent’s chief poultry assassin, has been stricken with the same virus that has beset at least eight others this week.

Each nun who falls ill gets so feverish and dizzy and has such intense head and stomach pain that she is forced to lie on her back, flat as a pancake. I make a point of saying a special prayer daily for all of the ill, and one too, to keep myself healthy.

The summer air hung thick and still over the golden hills when I awoke this morning. I stepped outside the back door and uncovered the tin washbasin. The sun even at 7 a.m. was braising, and the air was quivering. Despite the heat, I found the morning something a blessing, and began humming a bit of the alegria I had been trying to teach Theresa, before she took ill.

I was just scrubbing the rings out of one of Father Ruby’s collars and enjoying the cool splash of water on my arms, when I saw Mother Yolla leave the rectory and cross to the convent courtyard. The intense heat had her breathing with difficulty.

“I must ask you to kill three chickens for me today,” she announced. I squeezed the collar I was scrubbing.

“Oh Holy Mother,” I wailed. “I’m not…oh please reconsider. There must be someone else at the convent who can do this chore. It’s not that I don’t want to help, but I have never killed a chicken before and more than that I…well, I hoped I would never have to, as I do so firmly believe that there is a universal life spirit inhabiting each and every being, all of God’s creatures, even those so humble as the chickens and…”

“Oh Renata please! Stop this babbling at once!” Mother Yolla interrupted, swatting the air with impatience. Beneath her eyes were deep circles, the color of smudged ashes. “I am so weary with nursing the others. Half the convent can’t stand up straight and the rest of us are on the verge of falling over. It will be a miracle if the entire lot of us doesn’t end up ill. I know full well that you hate the idea of killing chickens, but there are, I assure you, much worse things. All of us, ill and healthy, need a good meal and I have no one else to ask. So I beg you not to challenge me or to question my motives in assigning you this task.”

“But…”

“No BUTS.” Her words sliced the air like a sharp blade. “I need the chickens prepared for a special meal tomorrow. We are expecting a gueset of Father Ruby’s, an itinerant priest passing through on his way back to New Mexico. Father is so anxious that we make a good impression. And so we will not disappoint him. Now leave the collars to soak in the sun, and attend to the chickens immediately.”

With that, Mother Yolla retreated into the convent. I followed her with my eyes, eyes that were filling quickly. “I can’t,” I cried, speaking softly. “Oh Mother Yolla, please don’t make me because I just can’t.”

Try as I might, I could not hold back my tears. Nor could I block a vision arising in my mind: that of Teresa, chasing fowl. Slowed as she is by excess weight, Theresa sometimes pursues a chicken from one end of the yard to the other before she pounces on her victim. I marvel then, to see her wrestle the awkward squawking bird to the ground, wings writhing and askew.

Moments later, with the chicken’s neck stretched and pinned to the chopping block, the head flies, courtesy of Teresa’s swift ax. When the chicken’s head is free of its body, the bird goes into what Teresa calls its death dance, a spirited strut around the yard spurting blood from its open neck like a small fountain.

Teresa tells me that she does the job of killing so quickly that the birds “never know the blade.” Ah, but I am not convinced. It is my opinion that as soon as they eye the chopping block, the wood thoroughly caked in the liver-colored evidence of earlier murders, those chickens have some primitive understanding of the fate that awaits them. I said as much to Theresa, but she told me to save my worry. “I applaud your delicate concern for God’s feathered creatures, but we all have to eat.”

Once I appeared just as she was completing a particularly messy kill. She had slaughtered half a dozen fowl, enough to feed several extra guests. The blood dripped down the lower half of her skirt, and her shoes were feathered. “Oh how dreadful,” I said, staring into the slick red pools.

“How will you ever clean all this up?” Teresa’s large hands were bloody and red swaths zigzagged her face. She answered in a thick spray of brogue.

“Ah just be glad Renata that we are blessed enough to have chickens to kill. Had we not the chickens, you see, you and I both might be out chasing wild turkeys from morning to night.”
I abandoned the tin basin and made my way to the chicken house at the slowest pace two feet might go. I had never held a pair of rubbery chicken legs in my hand, but somehow I knew the feeling now, I knew exactly how tough and wiry the fowl’s limbs would be. I stood at the picket fence, staring at the pointed yellow beaks and the wild black eyes of the birds as they took their jolted steps around the yard. A chill shuddered me.

“Ever faithful I am to you Lord, but now, here, I say I cannot do what Mother Yolla commands. I need Your help to complete this awful task. I ask you to guide me through.” I remained there praying in silence.”

My hands wobbling, I stepped through the gate. The chickens scattered to four corners of the yard, pecking the dry ground, frantically poking and thrusting their heads in that jagged motion that seems to lead them scurrying forward. Holding my breath, I hurried after one particularly fat white fowl, its wattle wobbling furiously beneath its beak.

Then, when that one danced off, I turned to chase a thinner but larger bird, brown as a walnut. That bird too evade me. “Oh God please help me to do this,” I whispered, bowing my head.

“Please, I didn’t ask to do this and it is a complete mystery how and why it should be done.”

If God was listening to me, His answer was only another loud chorus of raucous birds. “Bock, bock, bock,” rang out through the busy yard. I was close to tears now, and the sweat poured from my brow and my ears and my armpits. I covered my ears in despair and sank slowly to sit in the bare dirt.

I stayed that way long enough that the birds began to gather around me, and soon I was circled by a cackling thicket of brown and white feathers. I cringed, and opened my palms and before I knew exactly what was happening, a large white chicken with two eyelets of yellow on its wings approached and set its red spiky claws within inches of my hand. My eyes widened and my fingers followed and soon I held the chicken by one leg.

“Ayeeeya!” I cried, jumping to my knees, and dangling the bird in one outstretched arm. The bird was splayed in five directions, wings stretched, legs askew, beating and pulling, wildly determined to get free. I too felt pulled apart, half of me wanted desperately to set the animal down. But now that I had made my catch, something else, something new arose in me too. I tightened my grip around the rubbery twig that was the leg.

A fierce dance ensued, with the chicken leading me. Twisting and whipping this way and that, the flailing fowl shed its down feathers in a desperate effort to break my grasp. “Oh I am so so sorry,” I cried, half to the bird, and half to me. But nothing could be heard about the ear squall pouring from the chicken’s beak, and from all the rest of the birds.

It was time, I knew, to twist the bird’s neck, the way Teresa would, either that, or set the creature free. Toward the chopping block I stuttered, eyeing the ax that would do its duty. An odd pain shot up the back of my neck, and quivered across my hips, as I contemplated the job ahead. It would take a good aim to catch the swinging bird by the neck. I couldn’t see how I would manage to grab the chicken and at the same time, avoid being impaled by the nail-like points of the open beak.

As my mind scrabbled in confusion, I recalled telling Teresa that I believed an animal’s fear in the face of death had to translate into the condition of the meat that graced the platters on the dinner table. I suggested that it might be a good idea to place a burlap bag over the chicken’s head before approaching with the ax. Teresa was chasing a pair of Rhode Island reds as I said this. She didn’t honor me with an answer.

“My dear Renata,” she called out, “I am almost on these two, and so I hope you know to stay clear when the heads fly off. Because these chickens will keep dancing about the yard, headless, and the blood flooding out of the open neck is no pretty sight, certainly not for one with a weak stomach.”

At that, Teresa grabbed one of the prancing reds, and with the swiftest and surest moves I’ve ever seen, she twisted the neck in her two capable hands, as if instead of a flesh and blood chicken she held a soft towel for drying dishes. Instantly, the bird limped into her bosom, and within moments, Theresa had it straddling the wooden block.

“Thwunk,” went the ax under the nun’s powerful arm, and with that, the fowl’s head spun off, and so too did my eyes and stomach. I proceeded quickly into the convent, where I spent most of the day, praying. At dinner, facing the bird on the platter, I complained of stomach pain and had nothing to eat at all.

But now the situation here called me to duty. I cinched the neck, and twisted, but the fowl didn’t go limp. This proved my undoing. I swung the bird to the block, and then struck wildly with the ax but as I did, the bird flipflopped across the stump. I had a firm lock on one of the chicken’s legs, but that was all, and the situation unnerved me totally.

Every feather, every muscle, every ounce of bird was determined to escape my falling blade. Between the frenzy of feathers and the squalling jumping chicken flesh, I had all I could do to get the ax to land close to the bird.

After several tries, and with my right arm tiring, I finally caught the bird with the blade, but it wasn’t the neck that I made contact with. The blade cut across the breast of the chicken, splitting the cavity partially open. Blood spit out and hit my face. A sickening sound came out of the fowl, awful to my ears. It seemed only to turn my horror worse.

The sight of the blood and the horrible noises coming from the bird set off some perverse chain of events. Sickened by what I’d done, by what I was about to do, I became that much more determined to finish the job, to end it as fast as I could. But the harder I tired to put the chicken out of its misery, the more misery I inflicted and the sicker I became. Each thwack, each slice into the chicken’s body, turned my horror and the carnage worse.

There I stood, pummeling and slashing at the bird with the ax, hitting and missing, hitting and missing, something wholly evil come over me. I struck until the bird was a bloody mutilated pulp, one however that was miraculously still making noise and still jumping and hopping around the chopping block.

Through most of this torture, I was numb, surely, to what I was doing. But suddenly, maybe because I was out of breath from wielding the ax, I paused momentarily, and something reached inside me. I saw the sorry state of the fowl, saw what desperate violence I was visiting on such an innocent creature, and I proceed to vomit.

When I was finished, I began howling for Mother Yolla. My screeching arose from a place far deeper than any I knew. It was hardly a human sound at all, and certainly not one the nuns knew. I continued, though, screaming to the heavens, begging her to come. Soon enough, she came as did one or two of the other nuns.

All of them I think feared the worst, that a bobcat or grizzly had made his way into the yard, and was hard in pursuit of me or the chickens.

When they reached me, and saw the condition of the chicken, they simply stared, so stunned were they at what greeted their eyes. I had stopped axing, and now I was bawling and all covered in vomit and blood. The poor axed fowl, meanwhile, had been savagely chewed up by the ax, but was still alive, still twitching and squawking a sickly, dying squawk. I had such a thick taste of blood and feathers in my mouth I started to vomit again, but nothing was coming up.

“Hand me that ax!” Mother Yolla commanded, rushing to relieve me of the weapon. In my state of confusion, I suddenly feared for my life. Stricken by guilt, and utterly unhinged, I honestly thought that the older nun intended to strike me instead of the chicken. I started to back away.

“Give me that ax now!” she yelled, forcing the handle from my grasp. The next moments seemed to go in slow motion: Mother Yolla raising the ax, the blade catching the sly glint of in the midday sun, the ax falling and slicing clean through the chicken’s neck and then stopping dead, coming to rest in the wood of the block.

The mutilated chicken didn’t do the strutting death dance that a headless fowl ordinarily would. True, a small fountain of blood bubbled up from the open neck. But the poor creature couldn’t move because I had hacked away the leg that I hadn’t been holding tight. Minus one limb, and its head, the bird was nothing more than a heap of bloody feathers on the stump.

The wings flapped and the bird pumped its final flood of life onto the ground. And then a hush fell, and all around me got dreamy. My eyes rolled, and started to fall, and all I remember is slumping into Sister Peters, and reaching out to take Mother Yolla’s free hand.

CHAPTER TWELVE: Showering Renata's Sins Away

2010-12-22T13:55:00.001-08:00

Renata’s Diary
August 7, 1883

I hold my face in this fine mist of water falling from the holes in the bottom of the pail, and let the water run over my lips and onto my tongue. The water and the sunlight cleanse me and silently I mouth a prayer of thanks to Sister Teresa for this purifying gift and silently too I thank the Lord for sending this good woman to us, but particularly, to me. Holding the washrag in my clasped hands, I bow my head, allow the water to thoroughly soak my short ruff of hair while I stand there giving thanks and prayer, thinking He knew, yes, He knew, how does He do that? How does the Good Lord always know exactly what we need?

Lifting my face, I gently pass the washrag across my brow. How good this feels. No, how heavenly. That’s the word Teresa used. How good it is to be back from San Francisco, too, every cell in my body is grateful. How hateful that was, how long and miserable the stay, and maybe because of that, I feel like I could stand here, water raining down, drowning out a host of thoughts that I would rather go away. Again I pray, I say a Hail Mary, two, most of all I ask Him how He knew to send Teresa here? How He knew that she would come and that she would be my only ally, she would give me some bit of advice to begin and end each day, and our friendship would grow and grow, and more than that, she would give me now the clearest water to cleanse the heat and dust and dirt and sins away.

She brings this gift to me at the very moment I am most in need of cleansing – my body and no less my spirit. I arrived back here in such a dreadful condition, I hate to think what I looked like, my clothes crusted, my soul in the worst state it’s ever been. I hid in my room that first morning after Señora pulled up to the convent with the wagon, Antonie lying in the back beneath a heap of blankets. She kissed me once on the forehead and climbed off the wagon without even a word of goodbye.

Weary is not the word for what I was. Too tired to eat. To sleep.

And that very next day, dearest Teresa completed the project that has now come to my rescue.

For days and days, Teresa had toiled away in the workshed, foregoing lunch (which for Teresa is a major sacrifice) in order to bring to fruition her blueprint for the shower. Often in the past, when we weeded and watered the garden together, she would, as she always does, wonder her ideas aloud to me. One day not so long ago, as she thinned a new planting of carrots, and harvested early radishes, Teresa shared with me her hunch: that she could erect a showering device that would not only refresh us quickly and efficiently but also would save us many gallons of precious water.

I recall her chuckling and running the back of her hand over her sweaty face, as she said the plan had occurred to her that very morning in something of a vision, the washtub sitting in the crotch of a live oak tree. It was a Saturday, and the idea had come to her fully formed, more or less, during silent prayers.

“It came to you during prayers?” I whispered in horror over my hoe. I was preparing the earth for a row of perpetual spinach. “You were contemplating the construction of a shower in morning chapel?”

Sister Teresa smiled her slyest smile, and the flesh that always presses at the edges of the white fabric binding her face pressed further, and the delicate skin that is always a baby pink turned a bolder shade of rose.

Yes, she said happily, she had already prayed her apologies to Him as soon as the vision had come. And she was prepared to confess as well, to tell Father Ruby in the confessional, that it was the construction of a shower that had occupied her thoughts that morning during services.

Sometimes, she argued, God has His reasons for sending His visions the way He does, quite out of the blue. And He had his own timing, too.

“Perhaps,” she went on, staring at the tender carrot seedlings poking up from the sandy soil, “He did it today because summer is so broiling hot, and He knows full well what it’s like during our worst season for water. In His wisdom, He knows our well almost always goes dry, and He knows water is always in short supply and He knows, or I think He does, that I might have come up with an idea to address the problem.” She looked at me, and nodded, and smiled shyly.

Apparently, while I was away, Teresa had made considerable progress on her invention. The second day after I arrived home, we were sweeping and tidying Father Ruby’s quarters. Teresa had taken the sheets from his bed, and we were together laying a clean set in its place.

“Would you tell Mother Yolla my plans to work again through lunch?” We had just billowed a white sheet above our heads and now it was floating into place on top of the priest’s mattress.

“Again, you are foregoing mid-day meal again?” Lunch was our major meal, and it was now getting to be Teresa’s habit not to eat it. And as a result, the waistline of her habit was beginning to swing more loosely across her belly. “But what am I to tell her?”

Teresa’s eyes twinkled. “That I am not hungry and quite busy with one of God’s directives,” she said flatly. Her smile revealed that familiar gap between her two top teeth.

At lunch, I informed Mother Yolla of Teresa’s decision to go without food. Mother Yolla’s eyesbrows rose noticeably higher, and she set her soup spoon down beside her bowl.

“And what is it that occupies the good Teresa’s time?” she asked.

“I believe, Mother, that she has some special work of the Lord’s to complete,” I said, bowing my head. I averted my eyes and lifted a spoonful of broth to my lips. Mother Yolla said no more. For the next few moments, I said a small prayer of gratitude that the Lord had smoothed the way for Teresa to complete her plan.

Not more than five minutes later, however, we heard a thunderous racket, a smash and clatter of metal coming from the shed. My first thought was that Teresa must be hurt. Several of us, including Mother Yolla, flew from the table to the shed out back. There in the dense heat of the shed, with sweat dripping from her overheated face, stood a smiling Sister Teresa, hammer in hand. She was bending protectively over a pail and getting ready to hit it again. She had already attacked the pail in earnest, apparently, because there were already a score of tiny holes in the bottom surface. Smiling broadly, Teresa bowed her head, and said to Mother that by the time lunch was over, her project would be complete.

“And what exactly would your project be here, my good Sister?” Mother Yolla wore her sternest countenance, and her arms were crossed in a kind of protective armor over her ample bodice. Her wrinkled hands disappeared into the sleeves of her habit.

“My project, good Mother Yolla, is a shower,” Teresa replied triumphantly. By then a small crowd of nuns had gathered in the shed. I eyed Teresa’s face intently, looking for signs that she would falter. Had it been me, and had I seen the fierce look on Mother Yolla’s face, I would be on my knees, begging forgiveness for missing lunch and for insisting on doing something that had come so suspiciously from my imagination.

But not Teresa, she stood in silence, and then gestured to the holes in the pail. “The water will trickle down through these holes,” she said, gesturing to the pail. And above it there will be a washtub with a hole, so all I need now is the washtub…”

“My good Sister,” Mother Yolla interrupted, her thin lips thinner than ever. “Who told you that you were free to destroy a pail? Have you any idea how difficult each of these is to obtain? Or what the expense is for the convent to replace them? Have you? I ask you again, who told you that…”

“With all due respect, my good Mother,” said Teresa, genuflecting as if she faced an altar. “But it was the Lord Himself who instructed me to find the pail, and now, the washtub.”

Mother Yolla’s mouth dropped into that settled O of hers, and her eyes shot saucer wide, and for a moment I thought perhaps her face had frozen that way. But as soon as Sister Teresa rose from her knees, her head bowed and her hands clasped in prayer, I saw the Reverend Mother’s expression ease.

“Yes, Mother, I swear to you,” Teresa whispered rapidly now, “this is exactly what the Lord instructed me to do. Who knows His ways better than you. Perhaps you would be so kind as to guide me further in this endeav…”

“Silence!” Mother Yolla spoke the word like a dagger. Her lips folded in on themselves, and in a moment, Mother Yolla began to look so much older, more wrinkled, than she was. Her wrath sent a shudder through both my arms, my legs, and my knees felt shaky. I wondered what effect the Reverend Mother’s look must be having on dear Teresa.

Glancing at my friend, however, I had no way of knowing, as her face was directed toward the earth. I stood there, praying for my bold companion.

A long period of silence followed. Without being instructed, the rest of us began to disperse.

One by one, heads bowed, we filed out of the shed until only Teresa and Mother Yolla were left.

It wasn’t clear how Mother Yolla would resolve this impasse. Her exasperation with Teresa was as clear as the blue sky. And it was nothing new to any of the rest of us, as Teresa was too brave, too inspired, to be sufficiently deferential and polite. Still, we also knew how fearful Mother Yolla was of displeasing the Lord, of interfering, as she put it, with “His most mysterious wishes and inexplicable ways.”

What exactly transpired next will always remain a mystery. Suffice it to say that in the end, Sister Teresa was provided her washtub, and the two heavy chiseled beams she needed to suspend the tub and pail from the live oak. Looking back, it seems a miracle to me, but then, when one knows my dear Sister, one knows that Teresa indeed does surpass reality.

The very next day, there was suspended from the oak a makeshift shower. At first, not one of us modest nuns was willing to wash our faces or even our hands from the water dripping from the pail. That was before Teresa hung a sheet around the outside of the space, to afford some privacy. Once she had nailed it to the beams, I volunteered to wash behind the shed.

Teresa, her habit pulled tight around her ample hips, mounted the ladder over and over, lifting pails, slowly spilling into the washtub water she took from a nearby spring. I watched her carrying for at least an hour, making some twenty trips up and down the ladder to fill our shower. Even after all that toil and climbing, she remained gleeful. She went back and forth across the scrubby yard until she was out of breath, trampling sagebrush as she toted the water from the well to the shower. Several of the nuns gathered around her, teasing her soundly.

“Don’t slip,” they cried. And, “All those water trips are bound to make you thin.” I for one offered repeatedly to help her in the task of toting water, but she was determined to complete the gift of water by herself, at least, as she put it, in this early "testing" phase.

And so this is how I came just yesterday to be the first and principal beneficiary of Teresa’s invention. When she was satisfied that there was enough water for a “proper spray,” she instructed me to “hop to.” That was my signal to disrobe. I hesitated, and a cry went up from the rest of the nuns gathered, but Teresa hushed us with her curt statement: “Oh blessed me, we see each other in the flesh every single day, but if you must, then just turn your foolish eyes away.”

And so I put aside my clothes, letting the black habit slip into the dust. And she recovered it just as quickly and hung it on the nail that she had hammered into the side of the tree. The rest of my clothes disappeared and then, there, was me, bare of any cover.

I wrapped a towel tightly around my middle and stepped inside the circle of the sheet. Before I knew it, Teresa removed the plug in the washtub and I heard a little trickle of water pouring into the metal pail overhead, and then, before I was fully ready, I felt the cool water as it came sprinkling onto my forehead, then splashing down my neck and chest. I screeched and jumped back, and then began enjoying the spray.

All around me, from the nuns ringing the shower, there rose up a cheer. All I knew was there was cool water rinsing my sweaty face and chest and there was a ragged clapping and my ears swelled to all the yelling. And when I looked up, I saw Teresa at the top of the ladder, peering down at me, her face flushed and plump and pinkly triumphant. I smiled up at her and gave a small wave and in that instant it came to me out of the clear blue, like an ethereal appearing suddenly in a sunny sky, what plan the Lord had had me.

It was my duty to be available to my poor cousin Antonie until the end. I was destined to be his nurse and caretaker, to offer solace and all the comfort he needed during his impossibly difficult illness.

At the same time, I was also destined to come here behind the shed to the live oak tree, to Teresa’s shower, where I would wash myself in cool water and free myself of all the ugliness and soiled thoughts that Antonie had released on and in me.

Realizing God’s plan, I closed my eyes, and drank in that moment when I stood in the shower.

And now, every time I am standing there, I do the same. I let God’s plans rain down on me. I accept them. I whisper, “Thy will be done.” And as I write this now, I realize: Teresa’s shower is some kind of glorious confessional for the body, one of Mother Nature’s doing through Teresa.

It is a waterfall of sorts, one that freshens not only the mind and the soul, but the whole body and spirit. I stand in this shower every morning, and dare I say, sometimes twice a day, once in early morning and once at sunset, so that the water letting out from the tub is caught in slanted sunlight and might from time to time produce a rainbow.

These rainbows arching over this confessional are simply a reminder that God delivers His promises. The water drops keep coming, keep dancing in the sun, and the steady shower reminds me of His steady caring. Each drop of water catches the light and turns colors, and the colors wash away our sadness and renew us once again. And if on some occasion the water falling gets slightly colder, I shudder. But even then I grin, and just let the water enfold me. And when I step from this cold shower, a special kind of peace and comfort takes hold. And when I am dressed and warm again, an even deeper tranquility sets in.

THE BOOKS CONVERGE: Chapter 11 "CASTENATA" & CHAPTER 17 "SISTER MYSTERIES": VILLAINOUS DOCTORS, and VILE MEDICAL TREATMENTS

2010-12-19T03:47:00.000-08:00

It was only when I went to post the following chapter this morning here on the "Castenata" blog (where I am telling the story of a nun, Sister Renata, falsely accused of murdering her cousin,) that I realized that THE TWO BOOKS THAT I AM WRITING -- the fictional "Castenata" and the non-fiction work, "Sister Mysteries" -- have now converged here in a number of rather remarkable ways.

In this chapter of "Castenata," Sister Renata (writing in her diary on July 30, 1883) is enraged at the physician, Astorga, for the cruel mercury treatments he inflicts on Antonie in an attempt to cure Antonie's syphilis.

Readers of "Sister Mysteries" will surely be reminded of Chapter 16, and my own outrage at the doctor at Sloan Kettering, who in July, 2003, INSISTED THAT I NEEDED A STEM CELL TRANSPLANT when I didn't. A specialist at Dana Farber in Boston confirmed a few weeks later that the doctor at Sloan had screwed up, and that this outrageous physician was motivated to put me through the hellish and life-threatening stem cell perhaps because he was DOING A RESEARCH PROJECT AND I FIT THE BILL. The rage that Sister Renata feels toward Astorga is precisely the rage I felt, and still feel, toward the oncologist at Sloan, who was at best, inept, and at worst, unethical.

It is remarkable to me that I wrote the following fictional material -- all in Sister Renata's voice -- seven or eight years BEFORE my cancer, and before my deeply disturning encounter with the oncologist at Sloan and all of the issues attendant on brutal medical treatments.

There are a few other remarkable coincidences that have emerged here, too:

1) I saw the doctor at Dana Farber on July 30, 2003. Meanwhile, I had dated this Sister Renata chapter, which I wrote in 1995, JULY 30, 1883. It is only this morning, again, as I went to post Renata's diary chapter here, in its logical order, that I realized this astonishing convergence of dates.

2) The conversation that Sister Renata has with Dr. Astorga addresses the issue of mercury treatment for syphilis. By at least one historical account, mercury treatment is part of a long tradition of "unethical" medical treatment/research. According to the medical journal Dermanities, "mercury is the earliest known chemotherapy for syphilis."

3) Readers of "Sister Mysteries" will recall, in Chapter 16, that my cousin Carol is now suffering desperately from the after effects of TWO stem cell treatments that she got for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. I REALIZED JUST THIS MORNING AS I WAS POSTING RENATA'S DIARY, that Renata's cousin, Antonie, and my cousin Carol, are BOTH in San Francisco suffering from the horrific medical treatments that were supposed to help them.

I wish I understood these "coincidences," but at some point, it doesn't really matter. It is just remarkable that they keep happening!

Renata’s Diary
July 30, 1883

It is well past two in the morning as I sit down here to write in the diary, but I am still trembling and quaking after my encounter with Astorga. It shames me to think that he could make me so enraged, that at one point I thought I would kill him with my bare hands. And so now, before I sleep I must write my thoughts. I must tell what hell I have been through and how it all came to spill over.

I am so terribly weary of San Francisco. It may serve Antonie’s purpose, although that too now looks doubtful. But clearly this is no city for a lady, let alone a nun. I have never spent so much time away from the convent, and the simple routines of country life.

I miss the hazy blue views toward the coast, the golden hills to the east, the smell of fresh air everywhere around me. San Francisoo is crowded, dirty, and life is rowdy, to say the least, and our hotel, while the most comfortable the city has to offer, still attracts a rough and uncultivated lot, particularly to its first floor bar. Most of the time, I walk the city streets with my head bowed, staring into the wooden slats of the sidewalk.

We have been here now past one week, but still there is no predicting how much longer we will stay. There is no saying either how the quicksilver treatments will go. We are living one grueling day, one hour, to the next. We are unsure whether anything in Doctor Astorga’s bag of tricks – bichloride of mercury injections, the mercury rubs and plasters, the ungodly concoctions by mouth that mix potassium iodide into syrup of sarsaparilla or zingiberis—will work. Indeed, all these bizarre treatments and odd brews may fix nothing, and only make my cousin worse. Dr. Astorga won’t admit it, being the proud man he is, but I believe that the mercury and iodide treatments may in fact kill Antonie faster than the syphilis itself will.

So far, the doctor claims, it seems that the injections – or perhaps it is the ointment – have helped. The lesions do seem better. But in exchange, Antonie is coated in gleaming circles of silver ointment, making him into a quilted patchwork of thin mirrored coins. Worse, he has now begun to salivate, and even occasionally, to vomit blood. When that happens, I only wish I could run away. But I continue to do my duty and stay, and mop my cousin’s face and remove his soiled gown and take away all evidence of his wicked illness.

Lately, he has begun complaining of constant burning pain. A dark and putrid diarrhea rains from his bowels, and he describes a taste of slippery metal taking over his tongue. His gums have the characteristic blue line that Dr. Astorga described, and the tissues of his mouth are far more red and sore than before we came. Antonie moans constantly in his sleep, and when he’s awake he says it is his whole body, aching.

This morning, though, he had one of his clear periods. A miracle happens, and for a time, he seems almost himself. His appetite returns in force, and he begs me for something hearty to eat, “a thick steak, a breast of chicken.” Ah, but just as soon as I go to the hotel kitchen, and return with such a meal, he is feeling ill again. His appetite slackens, and he claims that he can feel a rapid loosening of his teeth, and indeed, one of his molars freed itself up in the grits I mashed into his soft-boiled egg this morning.

I shiver to think what will become of him. I keep praying, asking the Lord to show mercy toward my cousin. Despite all that he has done to me, all that has gone wrong between us, Antonie is still family, and he is, right now, so desperately sick and in need of some relief. “Thy will be done,” I say, over and over again. “Oh please, dear Lord, come to the aid of my cousin, relieve him of all pain and suffering, free him from this earthly burden. He has paid for all the sins committed against me. I release him from all past responsibility.”

Sometimes I pray that way. But sometimes I ask the Lord simply to take Antonie. Put him out of his constant misery. One thing is a certainty, I have prayed more in the last week than I ever have before. But are my prayers helping? Will they work? I dare to wonder. I know that having doubts in my Almighty God’s power is in itself sinful. But there are times, lately, when I have begun to ask, where is my Lord?

This brings me to what happened earlier today. It was about four o’clock when the distinguished physician knocked at the door, announcing one of his two daily visits. Senora and I were kneeling, as we so often are, on either side of Antonie’s bed. Before we could respond, the doctor opened the door and strode inside, indifferent to the fact that we were deep in the rosary. We hurried to complete our final Hail Mary even as the arrogant doctor leaned between us and laid his stethoscope to Antonie’s slick chest.

“Can you tell me please, Dr. Astorga, when my cousin’s fever might break?” I whispered. Astorga remained silent as he continued with the stethoscope. When the doctor finished, he answered abruptly, and in a callous and discourteous tone. “I have no way of knowing that,” he announced. “We are waiting to see if the mercury treatments will help.”

Folding the stethoscope, he dropped the instrument into his leather bag. Lifting Antonie’s thin white wrist, he began counting my cousin’s pulse against the gold timepiece he had removed from his vest pocket.

“Does he sleep much?” Astorga inquired, letting go of Antonie’s wrist as if it was a fish he was casting back to the sea.

“Well, yes, I believe so, but he seems more tired each day,” I said, trying to find words to characterize my cousin’s almost constant stupor.

“What do you mean, you believe so?” Astorga asked, accusing me with his eyes. He lifted the bed sheet and rolled it back, exposing the full length of Antonie’s pathetic emaciated body. The simple white gown my cousin wears cannot hide his arms, which are as thin as wooden canes. His legs resemble slightly thicker poles. His sickly white feet lay one on top of another, the same way Christ’s feet did when He was nailed to the cross.

“Antonie does sleep much of the time, but he keeps waking now and then, too,” I replied, angry that Astorga would question how carefully I was observing my cousin. “And when he does wake, he keeps saying strange, almost nonsensical things. This morning, for example, he pointed to the window and called out, ‘The blue wolf, the blue wolf, I will follow the blue wolf as it races through the forest into the pale moonlit sky.’”

Astorga snorted. “Ah, so the hallucinations are worse,” he mused, pulling the bedclothes back up to Antonie’s chin so rapidly that the sheet snapped as if was a sail in the wind. “I am not at all surprised by that. But pay no heed to what he says.”

“Doctor, in those moments when he speaks, and particularly when he speaks of me, it is quite difficult not to pay attention,” I murmured.

Astorga glanced at me, annoyed, I suppose, that I would once again challenge his medical wisdom. “May I suggest that when he yells out, that you simply pretend that he is a dog barking, or a bird chirping. Or perhaps even a baby crying. Yes, think of him as an infant who has been fed, bathed, burped and freshly diapered. At some point, my dear, you must ignore the baby, and his crying, because there is nothing more to be done.”

My teeth set together and my face reddened. My head swirled. What was he saying? How could he possibly suggest that we simply ignore Antonie? And what business did he have comparing my cousin to a dog, a bird, a baby? I studed Astorga’s crisp white ruffled shirt beneath his jet black waistcoat. I noticed, too, the doctor’s string tie, how it ran vertically, and how his dark pencil mustache ran just as thin but in the horizontal direction above his upper lip.

“I would also suggest that it is probably fruitless to try to fight this fever,” Astorga said. He spoke in a short, peremptory tone. He was snapping shut the clasp on his black bag, his fingers long, brown and tapered. “I would in fact suggest that in cases like this one, that the heat, the intense fever, may actually be of some help, in conjunction of course with the mercury injections. Assuming of course that the mercury works at all.”

“I see,” I said, nodding, as if agreeing with Astorga’s point of view. But in fact, I wasn't seeing at all. OR, I was seeing in still one more way how terribly blasé this physician was toward his patient’s suffering. How could he be so absolutely indifferent to Antonie’s desperately-intense fevers? And how could he visit the horrors of mercury on this poor man without any qualms whatsoever?

Once again it struck me: my cousin should not be here. He should not have to continue to endure this villainous doctor, and the horrors of the mercury. The liquid white metal is hardly a cure. Antonie has deteriorated considerably since we arrived. The cousin I have known all my life has, in the last few days, all but disappeared. He is transformed into a haunting shadow, one that once had a body attached, but has none anymore. His flesh has burned away, his arms are but living stems of pain and agony, and he complains of headaches that make him cry out, bellowing over and over again, ‘please tell the doctor to kill me please, so it will be over, please.”

Just after the doctor departed, Antonie woke with a jolt. His skin was clammy and hot and he was trembling with such force that I was not sure I could keep him on the bed. Señora brought a fresh bowl of crushed ice, and filled a washcloth and set it to his head. He fought her, though, and didn’t know where he was. He clung to me, but didn’t remember my name. He called me Adelaide, which made me cringe, for Adelaide was the prostitute that my cousin consorted with for years, the woman who made him ill.

Apparently, Antonie had been dreaming a particularly nasty nightmare, something about Adelaide coming to him at night, all he would say was, ‘she was smoking one of her thin cigars, and I asked her, ‘why are you here?’ and she smiled in that way she does and said, ‘I am here, to end your misery,’ and then she threw the cigar to the bed and began to choke me and the cigar lit the sheets on fire and I was burning up, and she was choking me and there was smoke, dark dark smoke everywhere.”

There was nothing I could do to ease his delirium. He was sweating so profusely that Señora and I rolled him, as we so often do, in the sheets and stood each of us at an end and heaved him up and lowered him to the floor. As she kneeled and sponged his rubbery limbs, I laid a new towel on the feather mattress and tucked a new sheet into the corners. All the while he kept yelling, “No Adelaide, no, please, let me go, let me go…”

When we finally had him back in bed and we had his head propped on an extra pillow, I fed him sips of weak tea, heavily sugared. After a while, he seemed to calm down, and spoke of the dream. “I was desperate to get out of her bed, but she laughed, so this is how you repay me for the way I have given you pleasure? And afterward, was when she smoked and the fire, the fire, the smoke it was choking me, and I couldn’t get out…” And now he was sobbing, and I held a cup of cold water to his lips.

“It was only a dream,” I said.

He nodded, and I set him into the pillow. And then I sang to him. I held his hand and I hummed one of the soleares we both knew. Every time his eyes opened, I would reach over to gently close his lids again. Finally, he drifted into sleep, and Señora took my place at the bed. She told me to leave, and I decided I would pay a visit to Dr. Astorga, to say the things that I hadn’t said. I decided to tell Astorga that we would discontinue Antonie’s mercury treatments immediately. We all need to return home.

It was close to five when I reached Astorga’s office. I knocked, and he admitted me, but then he kept me waiting for almost an hour. I spent the time in prayer, but there were moments when my anger surfaced nonetheless. Finally, he brought me into his office, only to inform me that he would have no more than a few minutes to spend in conversation.

“So please, my good Sister, get right to the point.”

I blushed, and my anger and humiliation crested together at my lips. I tipped my head forward and would have lost my voice, except then I had a vision of Antonie’s ravaged body. Instantly I found my focus, and my voice.

“When we came here a week or so ago, we had no idea what the mercury would do, or what to expect, or whether it would help,” I began, trembling.

“True, one can never know those things,” he replied.

“Well, so, now that I have seen how…how, well, how absolutely brutal the mercury can be, I want to discontinue Antonie’s treatments. I want to bring him home to die in peace.”

Astorga’s eyes widened to two black coins and he lifted his chin in that arrogant and defiant way that he often does. “Are you saying, my good Sister, that you are prepared to take your cousin’s life?”

“I said nothing of the sort,” I said, struggling to maintain a steady tone. “I said only that he isn’t getting any better with the mercury. And in fact, he is suffering desperately, more than he ever has before. In light of that, I believe that it may be the most humane thing to do, to let him be. And to let God’s will be done.”

“Ah yes, so now I see that you are the one to decide God’s will in this matter, is that it? You are choosing for your cousin? You are willing to discontinue the only treatment that may prolong your cousin’s life? Let me ask you this, what does your cousin say? How does he feel about this matter? Because of course, it is his life that is at stake. Make no mistake.”

“We have discussed it briefly. He has at times begged for someone to put him out of his misery. I believe that I can say with confidence that Antonie has now begun to realize that the mercury is hopeless. He has screamed on numerous occasions that he would prefer to die rather than to continue to suffer. So I would suggest that he has accepted the possibility that death may follow his return home.”

“Oh yes,” Astorga said, clasping his fingertips together beneath his chin. “So in other words, you have convinced him to give up?”

I stood, flooded suddenly with anger that I could not control. “How dare you say that to me. I have spent weeks caring for my cousin. I have remained closeted in a room with him, attending to his every need, mopping his brow, swabbing him when he bleeds, feeding him whenever he can take the food. You have no right to accuse me this way.”

My voice rang through the office, and my hands trembled so much that I could barely hold them in my lap. “I have simply told Antonie that the misery won’t end until he decides to end it. And I have prayed for him, and prayed that the suffering will be over, and now, it is clearly time that we return home so that he can live out his final days in the tranquility of the home where he grew up. And if you knew anything about human dignity, Doctor, you would agree.”

Astorga ignored my insult, and smiled his thin wicked smile. One thing I know, I have come to hate that smile.

“How very kind of you, Sister, to take such a benevolent attitude toward your cousin,” he said. “Are you always so convinced that you know the appropriate time for someone to die? Or did someone at the convent, or in the church, perhaps, endow you with a special privilege in this matter, that you should know when it is right and proper for your cousin to give up on life, to die in what you call tranquility…”

I will be truthful. What occurred next should not have happened. I am not proud of my behavior. I deeply regret letting my temper get the better of me. All I can say by way of explanation is that I have endured more from Astorga –and Antonie-- than anyone should have to endure. And that I have been living under enormous strain especially this past week.

Simply put, I was transformed, in that moment in Astorga’s office, into a raging bobcat or maybe a vicious mountain lion. I grew claws and I flew at his face. I began screeching and scratching, and I raked his cheeks bloody and pounded my fists into his white ruffled shirt. I screamed until my throat felt bloody. I pulled his pomaded black hair.

The rest, well, the rest I don’t remember. I hadn’t eaten, or even had anything to drink, all day. And that may explain it: I fainted, you see, at that very moment. The rage in me, thankfully, closed me down. I say thankfully because if I had remained conscious, and on the attack, there is no telling what black havoc I might have wrought that night. I end this now, pulled heavily toward sleep. But still frightened at the rage that lies within me. I lose all sense of civility, every ounce of devotion to the Lord’s cause. Something inside me snaps and I turn grizzly, and my victim is at my mercy, and I am not responsible for what happens, deep within my skin.

CHAPTER TEN: Sister Renata Dancing on the Hotel Bar?

2010-12-08T03:33:00.000-08:00

“Bar Dancer”

Antonie awakens with the cotton sheet of the bed making a tent over his head. His first sensation is that he is slippery, his back and buttocks pasted to the bed in his own sweat.

Each time he breathes, the sheet comes in and out with him, and with it comes that same metal taste in his mouth. In his feverish state, he imagines that he is tasting the muzzle of one of his guns.

There is another taste too, the sour twinge of blood, and something else he cannot identify. He fears the taste and the accompanying odor, because there is death lurking in both, the scent is clear evidence, he believes, of his own rapid decay. Gathering his energy into one limp hand, he pulls the sheet from his mouth. He fills his lungs with fresh air, and he gags, and coughs, and there is immense pain in his chest when he tries to sit up. Just then, it occurs to him that no one is sitting beside the bed, offering him a cup of water, a teaspoon of soup. There is no one praying or mopping his brow or smoothing his hair or saying soothing things to him in Spanish, as Señora does. No he is lying in this sickbed very much alone.

Where have Señora and Renata and even Tango gone? He asks himself, how could all of them have abandoned me when I am so very weak, so terribly hot, when I can barely reach for a glass?

He pushes himself up to both elbows. He knows what he must do. But who will help him? Who will walk the four steps across the room, bend down to the floor, reach for the chamber pot that he's got to use so desperately right now?

His lower lip shudders. Utterly exhausted, he falls back onto the bed.

In that moment, a flurry of Spanish music fills his head. There is the sound of a guitar, someone playing a fluid arpeggio coming up from downstairs. There is hearty laughter and loud catcalls, too, a raucous of men’s sounds mixed with glasses slamming on wood, and occasionally, he would swear, a female voice ringing high above the rest.

Eyes closed, he has a scene before him, and it has a clarity that he hasn’t had for weeks. It is the music that calls him, reminds him of a long ago place and time when he and Renata danced as children. There now is Renata dipping forward, careful even as she swivels and bends, stepping left, then right, making a series of tight turns with one arm curved so gracefully overhead. The whole while she is dancing she also smiling into his third eye, laughing too at his awkward attempts at dancing. Only too painfully, he is reminded that he wasn’t the perfect partner. Anything but.

“Please, go slower, slower,” he would plead. Or, “show me again, Renata, just once more show me how to complete the turn.” At that, her laughter would ring out. She could be cold and heartless in her ridicule.

“Oh Antonie you are hopeless I’m afraid. Will you never manage to learn these steps?” She would resist, but he made her show him again. The ruffles of her dress would twist this way and that, and she would lift her arms and flat torso and flare her fingers and skirt and proceed. And at the end, she would say one sentence that went straight to the core of her motion: “Just make it look like poetry,” she declared.

Now, from downstairs, a loud peel of female laughter erupts. After all these years, Antonie surely knows that laugh. The sound of it creeps like cold water down his spine, and simultaneously, as if stiffening him, it pulls him up into a semi-upright position in his bed. He fumbles for the table, and is hardly able to take the cup of water in two trembling hands. He drinks, water dribbling down his chin. In the next moment, the cup drops, spilling its contents into his lap.

Recoiling, Antonie rolls to one side, and lies there, panting, his mouth wide open, the front of his nightshirt now soaked as wet as the cloth of the back. Again the laughter rises from downstairs, and with it, the guitar gets louder. His eyes fall shut, and now, it is not clear but doesn’t he hear the clatter of her metal cleats on wood?

“Dear God, could she…would she…has she actually agreed to dance down there…in the bar?”

His heart gallops as he forces himself to the edge of the bed. Driven now by a vision of her in the black and red dress, he pushes himself to a sitting position again. He moves his legs off the side of the mattress, and rising unsteadily, he gropes for the mahogany headboard. But wait, this is not his bedroom at home. His hand meets only the wall. Ah but that wall is all he needs, it gives him a place to lean as he stands. Eyes shut, sweat glazing his face, he rises and moves inch by inch toward the door.

“I will…I will get…down there,” he groans, lunging for the door. Taking hold of the handle in two hands, he pulls the door open and rivets himself against the doorframe. A cheap gilded mirror greets him in the hall, and in the first horrible moment, he wonders who that pathetic creature he faces is, and where he himself went?

His pallor is deepening to a deathly pale purple. His lips are a mixture of grey and blue. But he pulls his attention away from the mirror. Now is not the time to worry for his appearance. The staircase looms ahead.

Suddenly, a wind catches the door behind him and slams it shut.

The sound is enough to push him forward to his knees. He falls to two hands and crawls unsteadily toward the first step. When he reaches it, oddly enough, the step begins to blur; then it turns wavy, and actually disappears. He rubs his eyes and the step returns. Collapsing to a seated position, he brings his legs around. His bare feet slap the wooden step. That sound reaffirms him, yes, he is still of this world, and that realization serves to propel his body forward. He sinks to the second step, the third, the fourth.

And there he collapses into the grimy yellow wallpaper of the staircase, a wallpaper all of ivy and rosy flowers, a faded pattern that is greased in stains and handprints. He adds his own hands to the wall. His head collapses too.

By all rights, that should have been the last step for Antonie, because he is far too dizzy now to go any further. But no. So motivated is he that he fights the lightheaded swinging feeling behind his eyes, and uses every bit of might to reach up to grab the hand rail. Holding tight with both hands, he extends one skeletal foot further down the staircase. The whole leg trembles. But his foot is sure in purpose, and now it meets a step exactly half-way down the staircase. The sound of that foot landing squarely, that slap of skin against wood. That helps him once again. Pulling up on the railing, he actually achieves an upright position. He stands, wavering, staring into the hotel lobby, his eyes fiery bright.

“You…you…” he cackles, and if he could, he would shout out the word he is trying to form: “whore.” But nothing emerges. There is not an ounce of air to carry any sound. Instead, he simply glares, his eyes frozen wide. And points one bony finger.

There on a long table in the center of the bar stands Renata, poised, her arms raised, her head thrown back, her throat naked and alluring. Thankfully, he cannot see her face clearly, but he doesn’t need to. What he sees in his mind’s eye is sufficient to confirm his worst fears: that she is wearing the dress, And worse, she is wearing her most seductive smile. Below her shapely legs, the table is surrounded by leering men, all of them shouting, leaning their glasses and beer mugs inward, raising their fists, grabbing below her ruffles to fondle her thighs.

The words he wants to utter – “I will kill…kill…you…her…and all of you,” never come out; he sputters, and only bloody yellow foam rises to his lips. Gracefully, as if he is a diver, he tips forward and thens his legs give way, and his hand comes loose from the railing and he spills forward like a feather drifting into the wind. In the next moment he knows only one thing, that he is collapsing, tumbling down the staircase, and that the pounding and slapping of his body falling on the wooden steps is no affirmation of anything but his complete weakness.

At least, though, it brings the sound of the guitar to a sudden halt.

Renata, taking in the fact that her cousin is sprawled across the bottom of the stairs, drops to her knees and hauls her ruffled dress to the edge of the table. Hands grope her, but with a few swift kicks of her steel-heeled shoes, she fights off her admirers.

“Please!” she yells, swinging her legs to the floor. Shouting rings out: “Hey, we want more,” and “I paid for a full show, where are you going, sweetheart?” and “What happened, señorita, the fun’s just started.”

Renata ignores them all and elbows her way to her cousin. Crouching beside Antonie, she wipes a string of blood from the corner of his lip. Cradling his bruised head, she strokes his tumble of wavy black hair.

“Antonie, oh Antonie, I told you to stay up there in your room,” she murmurs.

His mouth is slack, and his coal black eyes fall shut. He wants to spit in her eye, because that’s what his gut urges, but he is far too embarrassed. Because in all of the commotion of falling, he has soiled himself, his urine has soaked his cotton gown, and it is still leaking down his legs and the ruffles of Renata’s beautiful red satin ruffled dress.

All he can do is lie there, in intense humiliation, glued to the stairs. All he wants to say to her is, “you are no better than a whore, a whore,” but he has no breath to speak the words, and not an ounce more energy to move his lips or even, to open his eyes and cry.