My dear Germán:
Each workshop was led by a nun who specialized in the task, and Sor Carmelita,* the only saint I’ve ever met, led the embroidery workshop. She had the hands of an angel, and everything she did was perfect. There was simply no problem she couldn’t solve. She was the one who drew the designs and copied them onto the fabric, getting everything ready for us to begin the embroidery. She designed monograms for sheets, handkerchiefs, and pajamas of extraordinary beauty and elegance. If one of us made a mistake while embroidering, or tore one of the pieces of fabric—which happened many times—she was the one who would fix it. She knew more than three hundred kinds of stitches, which she applied at will, depending on the shapes of the drawings and the quality of the fabric. We’d get the drawing that went with each job, and since we didn’t know how to read, she’d draw in blue the shape of each stitch she wanted us to sew. Many years later I took over almost everything for her, because the poor thing had gone nearly blind.
Sor Trinidad, a native of Antioquia, strong as a bull and with an almost inhuman cruelty and coldness, led the dressmaking workshop. She was the one who treated us worst of all, because we were daughters of the street, because we were poor, because we were stupid, despicable, pitiful beings. But she was an extraordinary dressmaker, and of course, like all of them, she had her favorites.
Sor Teresa, the most ordinary of the nuns, the most vulgar, with the soul of an executioner, supervised the laundry. The work there was endless, and after embroidery, it was the workshop that made the most money. A hundred fifty bags of laundry arrived each week, to be washed, ironed, and mended. There was a lot of very delicate clothes from the church or tablecloths that had to be starched and ironed to perfection. Sor Teresa was responsible for everything except for the ironing, where the nun I loved most, Sor María Ramírez, was in charge. The coal irons came in every size, some very heavy and large, some so small they looked like toys. There were always more than twenty irons sitting atop a cement table, all of them hot, ready to be used.
The tailor shop was in the second courtyard; Sor Inés, poor thing, was in charge, but we never took her seriously. We considered her our equal, and so no one obeyed her. The nuns themselves didn’t respect her either; it seems she came from a very poor family, in Boyacá, and the class prejudices among the nuns were terribly pronounced.
Sor Honorina was our entertainment. She was Italian, spoke awful Spanish, and was very old, but she was as agile and jittery as a spinning top. She was always agitated and had a bad temper, but she was full of extraordinary generosity and kindness. The first thing that made us laugh was her name, Honorina, then her language and her buffoonery—there was something of a Neapolitan clown in her. She directed the kitchen and the bakery, with fifteen girls permanently under her supervision. She was the only one who went out into the world, to shop in the market, accompanied by two old women who’d been in the convent for thirty years, and who’d spent each of those thirty years in the kitchen. They weren’t thought to be like us; they didn’t follow the rules and never participated in anything. They had a room to themselves above the bakery. They never talked to the girls.
You understand that, given the infinite variety of jobs, the nuns always had a way of getting us to work for them. No matter how stupid you might be, you were always good for something, even if it was just blowing on the irons, untangling thread, undoing stitches, threading needles, folding clothes, or separating dirty clothes. I remember a girl of indeterminate age, with Down syndrome, who spent ten years at the convent making balls of soap for ten hours a day. Two kinds of soap were used for washing clothes—a black soap called mud soap and a yellow one called pine soap. You had to mix the two and make balls of them, the size of a hand.
The first job they gave me was in the laundry, sweeping away the mountains of foam that gathered at the drains and blocked the water. For many months I spent ten hours a day going from one drain to the other with my tiny broom, not being allowed to sit for even a moment. The laundry employed the strongest girls on the one hand, and the most intellectually limited on the other. My second job, a step up, was in the embroidery shop. I spent the day threading needles. They’d say to me only “ten,” “six,” “eight,” “three to thread,” “little worm,” “soul,” “tracks.” Each represented a specific kind of thread. I loved this job. I spent the time in a tiny seat at a large table, all the threads arranged impeccably, with a thousand needles of varying thickness poking out from a small blue pillow. For each thread, there was a particular needle, whether thicker or thinner. When I’d prick my finger with the needles and bleed, Sor Carmelita would tell me that my soul could escape through the hole, which frightened me terribly.
An embroiderer began by learning how to remove a needle. The delicate sewing of frills, particularly the smooth kind or moiré, outlined with gold or silver thread, couldn’t be done by folding it on a canvas because it would get wrinkled; you had to spread it out to its natural size. Of course the eyes and the arms of the embroiderers couldn’t reach farther than forty centimeters from the edge of the fabric. So to work on the center, you had to stand up and have another girl take out the needle. Boxes were placed beneath the canvas, and the one who took out the needle would lie completely horizontal, with her head directly beneath the section to be embroidered, and in that position she’d receive the needle and wait for the embroiderer to indicate where the needle had to be returned. She signaled this by making a hole with another, slightly larger needle. It was exhausting work. When it was time to go, after five or six hours of this, I’d walk out like the drunks from the cantinas. That was my third job. It was my bad luck that I got so good at it that I wouldn’t get pricked when the needle was returned. I’d learned to embroider in reverse, which represented a huge step forward in the work, such that for many years I never managed to get switched to another job. Naturally this contributed greatly to my eyes, already crossed from birth, getting even worse. No one knew which direction I was looking in.
After much discussion, the nuns decided to remedy my cross-eye and give me glasses. Glasses made by them, of course. It was the Mother Superior herself who made them. They were very simple, two black cardboard squares, very strong, tied together with wire. In the middle of each piece of cardboard was a tiny hole made with a needle. If I wanted to see, I had to look through the hole. If I didn’t, I couldn’t see anything.
It was a marvelous remedy. I was happy, because I had felt different from the other girls. For four years I tolerated those cardboard squares on my nose, but I doubt any ophthalmologist could have cured me much better.
Talking was strictly prohibited during working hours, except conversation about the work itself, which was permitted in a very low voice. For every piece of fabric there was a girl in charge of the sewing, and she gave verbal instructions to her helpers.
The only thing that was permitted was praying aloud. Anyone could lead a prayer of the rosary, or a few requiems for the souls in purgatory, or a holy hour. And because we were always in debt to God, we tried to pray as much as we could during work. In that sense, Miss Carmelita had the most important role in our lives. Because none of us had money, all the gifts we offered, which were many, we offered in the form of prayers.
For the Mother Superior’s birthday, a set of prayers. For the birthday of the chaplain, another set. To send to the Pope in Rome on Saint Peter’s day, another. To the Virgin during the month of Mary, to Baby Jesus at Christmas, to our patron saint, John Bosco, to Mother Carolina Mioletti, general director of our community, to the bishop on the day of his celebration, to our friends on their birthdays. In other words, not a month passed without having to gift another set of prayers. Between us, I doubt there were more than ten girls who knew how to read; the rest of us were illiterate.
And Miss Carmelita was the only person who could help us. Because she had no obligations in the convent, she was in charge of her own time. I don’t know when this came about, but the fact is that she was secretary and accountant for all of us.
We went to her at recess, in alphabetical order, when we had to make a gift. She wouldn’t allow more than one of us at a time. Next to her, always on the tabletop, lay large accounting books, and in a tin box she kept the colored papers on which she’d write our prayers or our letters to the saints or to Baby Jesus at Christmas. The formula for these bouquets of prayers was this:
I, Emma Reyes
Offer to the Sister Superior (or whomever) with great affection and respect the following spiritual bouquet in honor of her birthday.
|
Masses |
(Here the quantity) |
|
Communions |
50 |
|
Hours of silence |
20 |
|
Rosaries |
20 |
|
Requiems for dead relatives |
100 |
|
Mortifications |
25 |
|
Acts of humility |
25 |
The bouquets for Baby Jesus at Christmas were different, because we had to make him clothes so he wouldn’t come into the world naked. These were written like this:
I, Emma Reyes
Offer the following items to Baby Jesus for his birth:
Six wool shirts to be paid with 6 masses
Twelve diapers to be paid with 12 communions
A little hat made of wool (we were free to choose the quantity, the material, and the different types of clothing)
Two pairs of tiny socks with pink and blue pom-poms to be paid with 20 acts of humility . . .
And so on and so on until we’d completed the trousseau.
Each set of prayers was signed “Your humble” or “Your unworthy daughter, Emma Reyes.” When it was completed, she’d fold it in fours and give it to us to give to the intended party. Then she took one of the large books where our names were written, and she’d note down the quantities, add them up, and ask us how much we were going to pay her.
“Well, I’ve paid ten masses.”
“Ten masses? But that’s not possible. You owe three hundred masses already. At that rate, you’ll never finish paying. And what else?”
“Well, fifteen rosaries.”
“Good.”
“And one hundred requiems . . . And that’s it.”
“What do you mean that’s it?”
“And the hours of silence and the acts of humility . . .”
And that’s when the awful discussions began. She’d insult us, treating us like dishonest thieves. Not paying God what we owed him was the worst kind of robbery we could commit. “Next time if you don’t pay what you owe me”—it was no longer God who was owed, it was she—“I won’t take care of your accounting anymore!” But she didn’t forget the next time; on the contrary, she was the one who pushed us to give more when it was time to offer prayers, calling us greedy, faithless, and selfish. She was never at a loss for words to insult us.
There was a girl from Tolima who’d been at the convent for twenty-two years and was so deep in debt to Miss Carmelita that there was an accounting book just for her. It was the Mother Superior’s birthday, and she went to Miss Carmelita for her bouquet of prayers, but Miss Carmelita became furious and told her not to come back, that she was dishonest, a liar, a thief who stole from God, and that she was going to tell the Mother Superior. Poor Consuelo. She was a good girl who sang beautifully, and the little ones at the convent, we loved her dearly because she was very maternal toward us. She cried all day, so we decided that for one week we’d all offer her our masses, our communion prayers, our rosaries, our hours of silence, all of it to pay Consuelo’s debts.
There was a little girl of twelve or thirteen who adored Consuelo. At every recess she was by her side, as if stuck to her. She was called Inés Peña. One day the scandal exploded: Inés’s seatmates accused her before the Mother Superior of standing up twice during communion in order to receive the host. She’d done it to help her friend pay the thousands of communions she owed. The nuns screamed: “Sacrilege! Sacrilege!” They cut her off from everyone and shut her in a very dark room beneath the stairs. Everyone said that, many years earlier, in that very room, a woolly hand had claimed a girl who’d committed mortal sin.
Inés spent more than ten days locked in there, until the bishop arrived with Father Bacaus. With an incense burner and a large cross in his hand, the bishop and the chaplain, followed by the nuns, called Inés three times. They’d kept us in the back patio, but Sor María recounted the entire ceremony to us. The bishop called her three times, and in the name of God shouted that she must lie on the ground. The door stayed closed. They recited many prayers, sprinkling holy water against the door. When their prayers were finished, the Mother Superior opened the door, and they ordered her to come out on her knees to the bishop. The bishop placed the cross on Inés’s head and in a firm voice ordered the Devil to leave her body. When they thought the Devil had gone, they scattered holy water over her and made her kiss the Christ. Then the bishop took her by the hand and led her to the chapel, where he took her confession himself. The poor thing didn’t last very long at the convent. The bishop made her write to an aunt, the only family she had, and that aunt came and took her. But you can imagine what an example she set for the rest of us.
I can’t say we loved Miss Carmelita; on the contrary, we knew that a lot of what we did wrong, the nuns learned about because of her, because she had her followers, who fed her all the gossip.
Each one of us had a personal reason not to like her, but when we knew that she was sick or that she’d lost her appetite and didn’t want to eat, we were seized by a terrible anguish. We all, in a chorus, prayed rosaries and rosaries so that the Virgin wouldn’t let her belt close. Because if Miss Carmelita died, we knew that no one would keep track of our debts to God.
A big hug
Emma
Paris, March 28/70.