The Sisterhood

Chapter 32


From the Chronicle of Las Sors Santas de Jesus, by the pen of Dona Esperanza Aguilar, the Mission Convent of Las Golondrinas de Los Andes, April 1560





There has been a miracle. I could write the words over and over. A miracle.

When we reached the convent a novice led me to Pia’s cell. I carried Isabelita with me—I hold her tightly always so that Death cannot wrest her from my arms. I had forgotten how small and dark Pia’s cell is, with only one narrow barred window. It was morning but a candle burned on either side of her narrow bed. Pia’s face was as white as the sheet that covered her and her rosary was wound in her fingers. For a second I thought she was already dead, but then she gestured to the nuns praying on either side of the bed to leave us. I could tell from her eyes that she knew it was me.

I bent down to kiss her and she looked at Isabelita who lay in my arms, listless as usual. “Oh Pia,” I said. I could not stop the tears now.

Pia reached up and touched my wet cheek. Then she laboriously unwound the rosary from the thin fingers of her right hand. Twined with it was a gold chain, and at the end of the chain, the Abbess’s medal!

“You took it from Mother the day that you…Zarita…Oh Pia, have you had it all this time?”

“Mother wishes me to be buried wearing it,” Pia whispered. “But this is a better use for it.” The ghost of her old serene, otherworldly smile crossed her face. She slipped the chain over Isabelita’s head with frail fingers and said, “A gift for you, little one.”

The baby’s eyes fluttered open and she turned her head and looked at Pia curiously. Pia smiled at Isabelita and they held each other’s eyes for a long moment. And then…my baby did a terrifying thing. She arched her back and kicked vigorously with her little feet. She waved her arms, threw back her head and began to howl. Such a sound from a tiny bundle of bones! Terrified she was having a fit, I rocked and shushed her. Her pale little cheeks grew pink, then her whole face turned red from crying. If it had been one of my other children I would have said this meant she was indignant at not being fed quickly enough.

“Feed her,” whispered Pia, “feed her at once. All will be well now.” She closed her eyes, the smile still on her face. “Farewell. The demons are gone. I have vanquished them. Feed her.”

I put the baby to my breast, and to my astonishment and joy, Isabelita suckled greedily, smiled at me and fell asleep, milk dribbling out of her little pink mouth. When I looked up again, Pia was dead.

That night wonder and grief denied me even the terrified half-sleep that was all the rest I had known since Isabelita’s birth. That and the baby herself. Isabelita woke often, demanding to be fed. At the requiem funeral Mass three days later, Isabelita was quiet but alert, holding her head up from my shoulder and looking around her with interest. I held her up to see Pia’s coffin, and the incense made her sneeze and kick and wave her arms, squawking in protest. Then she suckled again until I was dry, and that night she and I slept soundly for the first time since her birth.

So soundly, in fact, that when I woke I was terrified to hear none of the wheezing sound her breathing makes when she is asleep, or the sad little fretting noise she makes when awake. Had I had been mistaken about her recovery? Had she died in the night? But instead she lay beside me sucking her thumb contentedly, medal still around her neck. She looked at me, her thumb slipped from her grinning mouth, and she gurgled and waved her arms and kicked.

At home again she feeds constantly and smiles and crows with delight at her sister and brother. She chews anything she can grasp, laughs when someone catches her eye, and has become a plump, naughty monkey. When Don Miguel looks at Isabelita and smiles, I see how deep the lines on his face are, like crevasses in a rock.





The Hacienda of the Sun and the Moon, September 1563


Isabelita comforts us. Salome has died. The Hacienda of the Sun and the Moon feels empty. I can write no more.