“Breakfast,” I heard. For the third morning in a row, I had to figure out where the heck I had been sleeping. Bunny was already up and gone. By the time I got down to the kitchen Eleanor had loaded my plate with eggs and potatoes. Bunny had his snout in his food bowl.
Somehow, the idea of telling Eleanor who I really was drifted away. Brains are like that. I was worried sick about my mother, but I created a world where all I had to do was wait for her to come back to me. Her job was to return; my job was not to get kicked off Paradise Ranch before that.
It took me a few days to get to know Eleanor Rose, but her odd ways grew on me. It didn’t take her any time at all to get used to me. She just put me to work. Mostly by handwritten note, because she didn’t like wasting words.
For Sister Eleanor, thirty words seemed to be the daily limit, not counting prayers, which she said quite often, always playing with that string of beads.
Every day her breakfast was bran and figs. During the morning hours, while it was still cool outside, she’d work in the vegetable garden and ride a tiny tractor around, spraying bug poisons on the peach trees. She might kill some squirrels; Sister Eleanor could throw rocks at squirrels and knock them right out of the tree. That was like me too.
Then she’d come inside for a lunch of bread and cheese and water. She’d do more praying and psalm singing.
In the heat of the day she went to her desk and fired up her computer. She’d sit there for hours, digitizing records for the Library of Congress. “What’s that you’re doing?” I’d ask, but she wasn’t about to waste words answering me, so she wrote it down on an index card: digitizing records for the Library of Congress. What that had to do with nunnery, I never knew.
I’ll tell you a little secret too. I watched her digitizing those records, and the whole time messages from other solitary nuns were popping up on her computer and she’d answer them. She also did the whole e-mail thing. She did a whole lot of electronic talking. True, she didn’t make much noise with her mouth, but—is that solitary enough? I couldn’t answer that, because it was beyond me why anybody in their right mind would give up talking. Why, talking is one of my very favorite things to do. It’s the reason God made Adam, so God’d have somebody to talk to in the universe. It’s the reason God split Adam into two people—so Adam would have somebody to talk to in the Garden.
Anyway, we’d have soup for supper, more bread and more water. We’d chew and look at each other across the table. Have you ever noticed how loud chewing is when you are not talking? It’s real loud because it is between your ears.
After dinner she’d walk out on the ranch. Then, after her walk, she’d hop into the bed and sleep, flat on her back, until morning.
Some days she left for the afternoon, but other than that, we settled into a routine. Routine was very important to Sister Eleanor. Marching through her days was simple, straightforward, and restful. I enjoyed our lopsided ways. I never even thought about going home anymore. That ranch was everything I ever wanted in a place. I couldn’t wait to bring Mother there, but I hadn’t made any progress in getting that to happen.
I talked about everything except my identity. I’d say for Sister Eleanor to look how pretty the roses were, and she wouldn’t even look. I’d ask what we were having for dinner, but she’d swish right by. I asked if she wanted me to bury the squirrels that she killed in the peach orchard, and that was about all she could take.
“You are just making noise,” she said. “Don’t talk unless you have something to say.”
I tried not to talk after that, but failed. She’d hear me talking, I knew it, but she’d just look off in the peach orchard with one side of her mouth curled up in exaggerated patience, like I was a dog who refused to learn to sit and stay.
* * *
Finally I chose a day to tell Sister Eleanor about my true identity.
She had invited me to walk the ranch, and she had used many spoken words to do it. I thought, Ah-ha, that’s a good sign. If she was speaking to me, certainly that meant she liked me. I had proved myself helpful around the ranch. She would keep me for sure, like I wanted her to.
Bunny came along on the walk, trotting like a dog. I trailed alongside Sister Eleanor, then skipped ahead through the dust and rock and ground brush, twirling instead of talking. I even found a clearing and did a couple of cartwheels, which pressed little pebbles into the palms of my hands—anything to avoid telling her who I was.
“Child,” Sister Eleanor said, stomp stomp stomping along in her blue boots. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“A nurse,” I said.
She stopped and looked me up and down, like I’d said I wanted to be a Martian. It was clear she was not the kind of nun to work in a hospital. Why, that woman didn’t even want to talk to people, much less wash their bodies and dress their wounds.
“I’m a healer,” I said. “I do it with my hands. My hands are real special.”
Her eyes turned inward and she caught her stomach like it was falling off. She didn’t seem to like the idea of me being a healer. Some people think healers are witches, but that’s stupid. Then she said, “Come here, girl.”
I did.
“Stand here,” she said. “Right beside me.”
I moved in a little closer. She took my hand and placed it on her belly. “I’ve got something wrong here, see what you can do with it.”
There was so much fabric between my hand and her belly that I wasn’t certain. But if you think about it, how could fabric block healing powers? I closed my eyes and relaxed, sending healing through my hand. No adult had ever asked me to heal them of anything. After a time, I took my hand back and asked, “Did that help?”
She started walking again. “Who knows? I believe in the power of prayer, but I have a good doctor too.”
I kept up with her, fast or slow. I adjusted my pace with hers. Bunny fell in step too, just like a well-trained dog, but he was a pig.
Finally, I screwed up my courage to tell her who I was, but when I opened my mouth—lo and behold, no words. I walked on a little farther, then I got up my nerve. One, two, three—just tell her.
“I have got to tell you something important,” I announced, ready to pour out my whole story, get it off my chest, take my chances.
Suddenly, Sister Eleanor elbowed me out of the way. She lurched forward, lifting a huge rock with both hands, and slammed it down on the head of a rattlesnake, a hideous side-slipping monster that was crossing my path. His head smashed under the rock; his long nasty tail whipped around, slashing the air, shaking those rattles. And he spewed out stink like a mildewed sock. Sister Eleanor kept her blue boot on the rock until the snake stopped writhing. Then she kicked the rock aside, examined the bloody skull, picked up the limp body, and turned to stomp back to the house, her skirts swishing against her legs. She skinned that snake and hung it on the porch railing to dry.
Smashing that rattlesnake was a sign, if I ever saw one. That’s what I thought. It was a sign that I was not supposed to tell her who I was. Besides, it was her fault, she never asked me. Not once. And that was the last time I tried before she caught me.