My dear Germán:
The night the Mother Superior announced the tragic death of Tarrarrurra and the New Girl was the same night I wet my bed in my sleep. That had never happened to me before. In that sense Mrs. María had taught us well, and when I got to the convent the nuns had given me a bedpan that was always under my bed. After lights out, the dormitories were locked, and if any one of us felt the need she had to ask the nun who slept with us for the key. But walking alone through the convent filled us with the darkest fear, so unless it was really serious, we held it until the morning bell. In my case, since I was the youngest, I had the privilege of a chamber pot for the first three years. The beds were made of wood and board, with mattresses of hay and covered with a heavy sheet that differed in color from dormitory to dormitory. In the María Auxiliadora dormitory, the sheets were blue; the ones in Don Bosco were yellow; in Santa Teresa, green. In my dormitory, the Baby Jesus dormitory, the sheets were red. When I wet the bed, the color ran, staining everything. I didn’t tell anyone, and made the bed very quickly so the nun wouldn’t see the stains on the sheet, but when I went to the chapel to pray, Sor Teresa saw that my legs were all reddish. I hadn’t thought of that, and in the early morning darkness neither Helena nor my friends had noticed. I felt Sor Teresa pick me up by the braids. “Go outside and wait for me there.”
I did as I was told, my knees trembling with fear. When the girls had finished filing in, Sor Teresa came out, and without giving me even a moment to open my mouth, she struck me, punching and slapping me all over. Then she took me by the ear and with giant steps dragged me to the dormitory, where she had me strip the bed. The smell of urine-soaked hay was piercing. Sor Teresa yanked my braids once more and started rubbing my face against the mattress, the same way they did with the cats at the bakery when they peed outside their litter box. When we went back to the chapel the mass had begun, and all heads turned to watch me. I cried through the entire service. After breakfast, they sent me to take the mattress and the bedsheets up to the roof so they could dry. Ester and Teresa helped me. They also helped me clean my red-stained legs with soap and a scouring pad.
But the same thing happened the next night, and the next, and the one after that, and the fifth night too. I tried desperately not to fall asleep, but sleep always overcame me, and as soon as it did I’d wet the bed. The mattress kept staining everything red, and the smell of wet hay was intolerable. I felt that odor chasing me all day long, and I carried it with me, to remind me of my torture. I regarded the coming of night with real terror. I prayed to Jesus and the Virgin to give me the grace not to wet the bed, but no saint heard my prayers, and the nuns intensified my punishment. They forced me to spend mass on my knees in the center of the chapel, with no right to sit or stand. The pews had wooden kneeling boards, which were far better than the brick floor for kneeling. By the third day I began to suffer from vertigo, and I’d fall to the ground, splayed out like a dead woman, my forehead bathed in cold sweat. I’d surely been weakened by the anguish and by my dreadful efforts each night to keep from falling asleep. The mattress didn’t manage to dry out during the day, and I had to sleep atop the damp hay. Because my fainting spells had become a daily occurrence, they decided to change my punishment. Throughout recess they placed my mattress on my head, and none of the girls could talk to me or come near me. And it wasn’t just that I no longer had the right to play with or speak to my friends; now the other girls, the mean ones, who were the majority, entertained themselves by insulting me and pinching their noses as they walked by. I couldn’t take much more. I’d lost weight and I could no longer work in the sewing workshop because I felt dizzy and because my eyes hurt terribly from crying all day. All the punishments were useless. I kept wetting the bed every night. The Mother Superior was getting alarmed, and one day she called me to her office. She gave me candy (we hadn’t seen candy since the times of Mrs. María). I don’t remember what she said, but she caressed my head and patted my cheeks and gave me a medal of the Christ Child standing atop a ball, which she said was the world itself. She placed the medal around my neck on a ribbon of black silk lace and told me to go to the infirmary, that Sor Teresa was going to give me medicine to cure me from my shameful malady. Three times a day Sor Teresa gave me a large cup filled with a blackish, slightly greasy sort of broth, lacking salt and tasting a little bitter. At nighttime Sor María would wrap me from the waist down in a wool blanket.
Many days passed without the medicine having any effect at all, and each day it tasted worse. One day I asked Sor Teresa what the broth was made from, and she answered very seriously that it was made from mice.
“Mice? Those black animals that scurry along the ground in the bakery and the kitchen?”
“Yes,” she said. “From those black animals that scurry along the ground in the bakery and the kitchen.”
She hadn’t finished her sentence before I’d started vomiting. I threw up for three days, but I never once wet the bed again. As a prize they gave me a new mattress, with red fabric like the old one. Ever since I’ve had a special connection with mice.
In September we had spiritual exercises. Every year, on the same date, we suspended all our work for five days. During those five days, we weren’t allowed to speak a single word all day long. Even the recess was silent and we couldn’t play. They often sent a priest from outside to visit our convent during this time, usually one named Father Beltrán. Not only did he speak eloquently, but he was also so handsome you wanted to die. I don’t think there was any girl, old or young, who wasn’t in love with him. He was tall and thin, with mesmerizing green eyes and a deep voice rich with subtle tones that swaddled us like a cloud. Old Father Bacaus came for mass, and the beautiful one came to teach us twice a day, at eleven and at five in the afternoon. The main topic was sin; in fact, the goal of the spiritual exercises was a comprehensive and meticulous confession of all the year’s sins. We were supposed to use those five days to search for the sins hidden from us in the darkest corners of our conscience. Father Beltrán’s mission was to help us find them.
Every morning and afternoon, he lectured on the commandments and analyzed us from top to bottom. The commandment he was most passionate about was the sixth, which was the one we understood the least. The little ones, most of all, demanded to know what fornication was, and with a malicious smile, he’d say:
“Those are all the sins against modesty, for example, undressing in front of your peers, or showing one another parts of your body.”
And from there he started talking about passion, which he compared to a tempestuous sea. He’d been born near the sea, and described it so violently that we, who’d never seen it, were terrified of its monstrosity. Those lectures were thrilling for us. That priest was a genius. He’d imitate the noises, the birdsongs, the howl of the devils in hell, and he was so handsome that even when we didn’t understand what he was saying to us, we were happy.
We spent the whole day in the chapel, coming out only to eat and walk around the courtyard for ten minutes in silence. What I didn’t like, though, was the holy hour. The Mother Superior herself read it. She had a very sweet voice and she read very well, but there were things that were so macabre that I still get frightened when I think of them. It was a detailed description of our entire body at the moment of death. When our glassy eyes start to lose their sight . . . When our tremulous, bruised lips . . . When our cold, numb feet . . . And in those chilling terms she described the hour of our death.
The fourth day was a sort of general rehearsal for the confession. We had the right to go to Miss Carmelita on that day so she could write down the principal sins on pieces of paper for us, so we wouldn’t forget them. At confession we would pass these slips through the window to the father. This made the process go more quickly, because on the fifth day poor Father Beltrán had to confess us all in a single day. He’d finish at eight in the evening, dead of fatigue, and we’d invent all sorts of doubts and nonexistent sins, such was our desire to speak to him as long as possible. The poor thing would have to tell us that this or that was not a sin. Confession began with the older girls, and we younger girls went last.
We’d been in the convent for three or four years, and the nuns still had no idea how to solve our problem. They could never determine if we’d been baptized, so we were still unconfirmed, unable to take communion. There were only four of us who didn’t take communion, the two Santos sisters and us. The Santos girls had their first communion before we did, because eventually they were able to find their proof of baptism. I couldn’t bear not to confess with the other girls, and the opportunity to speak in private, alone with Father Beltrán, seemed marvelous. Since the younger girls went last, by which point the nuns were tired of looking after us, they sent Sor Honorina, the Italian nun whom we liked so much. The old nun sat close to the confessional with her breviary and fell asleep. I went behind her and knelt, trembling, in the confessional. Suddenly from above my head, I heard a very deep voice:
“Confess your sins, my child.”
I raised my eyes and realized that if I didn’t stand, I wouldn’t be heard because I couldn’t reach the window.
“Forgive me, Father. This year I’ve wet the bed many times.”
Through the holes in the window I saw the priest cover his mouth and then heard him clear his throat.
“Forgive me, Father. I haven’t done my first communion because the sisters don’t know if we belong to God or the Devil. Forgive me, Father, because I’m confessing without permission from the nuns.”
He could no longer help himself, and he started to laugh. “You’re the little girl with the black glasses?”
“Yes, Father.”
“What’s your name?”
“Emma.”
“Emma what?”
“Reyes. Kings. Like the Three Kings.”
“How old are you?”
“No one knows, but I say I’m over ten.”
“Go. Don’t worry, child. I’ll speak to the Mother Superior to see how you can do your first communion. I’ll take care of it. Receive the blessing.”
When I stood up, there were three nuns behind me: Sor Teresa, Sor María, and Sor Honorina, who’d woken up. Sor Teresa grabbed me by the arm, but I held on to the confessional, and accidently drew back the purple curtain. Realizing what was happening, Father Beltrán stuck out his head and, his face full of fury, said:
“Please, Sisters. Don’t punish that girl. She needed to speak to me, and she’s done right to come to the confessional. Let the children come to me!”
The three sisters melted away, all smiles, and said nothing more to me after that.
The spiritual exercises always ended on Sunday. The only feast days we had all year were that day and the Mother Superior’s birthday. They decorated the chapel with ornaments and luxurious fabrics, filled vases on the altar with flowers, illuminated all the saints, and lit twice as many candles as usual. The closing mass was led by Father Beltrán, who looked even more handsome surrounded by the ornaments. In preparation for communion, he gave us a sermon; he’d tell us that now that we’d completed the magnificent spiritual exercises, he could see above us an aureole of purity and he hoped that we’d keep our souls as pure all year round as they were on this day. Then he’d give us communion, and we’d all sing the Te Deum, full of fervor and gratitude for all the prayers God fulfills. That day was the only one all year when the nuns ate breakfast with the father in a specially prepared room, and we had permission to talk through breakfast. We were given a piece of cheese and an extra bread roll, and we even drank chocolate—very thin and watered-down, but chocolate all the same. What a marvelous day! After five days of not talking, we shouted like crazy, invigorated, and of course the main topic was Father Beltrán, so lovely, so handsome, and everything he’d said during his lectures. There was nervous laughter from all corners of the dining room. We had all day Sunday free, for ourselves.