Outlawed(13)

She just shrugged. “You don’t know until you ask.”

The Mother’s cell looked like the one I shared with Sister Rose: the bed in the corner, neatly made; the crèche above it carved from rough wood, Mary and Joseph little more than curved shapes around the infant Jesus; a small window looking out on the cow pasture. The only difference was the desk where now she sat, the hard chair in front of it for me, and, on the wall opposite the crèche, a painting of Saint Joan of Arc in her armor, kneeling in prayer. This was unusual; some of the older sisters had devotional paintings on their walls, but generally they showed Saint Monica or someone else from the list of mother-saints I’d had to memorize in catechism. The only reason I even recognized Saint Joan was because of Mrs. Covell back home in Fairchild. Her people were Quebecois traders, and she taught us about Saint Joan who died for her God when she was almost as young as us. Later I heard that some parents complained, and Janie and Jessamine never learned about Saint Joan.

“That’s a beautiful painting,” I said to the Mother.

“Saint Joan wasn’t beautiful,” she said. “What do you want, Ada? I know you wouldn’t visit me just to talk.”

All my time in the convent I had done nothing but obey. I had read the Bible and learned dozens of verses by heart, including Proverbs 31, even though I could not become a wife of noble character or any other character. Every day I got up before sunrise to milk the cows; at matins, lauds, and vespers I bowed my head in prayer. I kept my cell neat and my shift spotless. I wanted to tell the Mother I was sure it was a sin to hate someone for no reason.

Instead I said, “I’ve been doing some studying.”

She raised her eyebrows. “So I hear.”

“I’ve been reading a book by a master midwife who’s been researching my condition,” I went on. “The thing is, she lives in Pagosa Springs.”

“And?”

I forced myself to look her right in the eye.

“I’d like to go there, Mother,” I said.

“Why?” she asked.

“I want to find out why I’m barren,” I said.

“You mean you want to find a cure,” she said.

“No,” I said. “At least, not for me. I just want to understand.”

“That’s very noble,” she said. “Have you considered that it might be a better use of the talents baby Jesus gave you to understand the scriptures instead?”

“Mother,” I said, “I saw a woman hanged for being barren. If I’d stayed at my family’s house, I would’ve been hanged. Imagine if people understood barrenness, even a little. Think how many women could live.”

The Mother took her glasses off. Her eyes were smaller without them; her face looked older and softer. She rubbed the bridge of her nose.

“When I entered the sisterhood,” she said, “I was going to start a school. The sisters were going to be the teachers, so boys and girls would learn reading and writing and catechism from barren women. I thought if we became schoolteachers, the children would learn not to fear us, and then when they were grown and became sheriffs and mayors and mothers, more of us would be safe.”

“Did it work?” I asked.

The Mother raised an eyebrow.

“Do you see any children here?”

It was hard to imagine—girls laughing in the silent halls, boys playing sheriffs and outlaws in the meadow. Holy Child a part of the world, not hidden away from it.

“Three boys and four girls came to study with us,” she said. “They were all from poor farming families far out in high country. Most of them had never been to school. One girl was thirteen and didn’t know how to read.

“Three months we taught them, from the end of the harvest until the snow came. Even in that time they learned so much, they were hungry for it. That girl could read the twenty-third psalm.

“One day early in the new year the sheriff came up from Laramie with three deputies. We were in the middle of catechism. It was just three of us then: me, Sister Dolores, and Sister Carmen—you never knew her. They put us in handcuffs in front of the children. They said we were not women, we were witches sent by the Devil to corrupt their minds. I saw how quickly the children believed them. As they led us away that thirteen-year-old girl spit in my face.”

The Mother in handcuffs—I could barely imagine it.

“Did you go to jail?” I asked.

“We were there five years,” she said. “Sister Carmen got tuberculosis and died there. After that they let me and Sister Dolores go. When we came back to Holy Child someone had smeared shit all over the walls. It took us days to clean it. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not sure I do.”

“Knowledge can be very valuable,” she said, “but only if people want it. If they don’t, it can be worse than useless.”

“I understand,” I said, even though I didn’t.

She waved her hand to shut me up.

“You have a choice,” she said. “You can stay here and try to lead a godly life, or you can go up to the high country, to Hole in the Wall.”

I thought of the stories I’d heard about the Hole in the Wall Gang, outlaws who robbed banks and wagons all around the territories.