BURRO ALLEY

SISTER BLANDINA CAME FROM AVIGNON, LEAVING FIVE unmarried brothers behind. Sister Theodosia dreamt of chocolates—she left a sister in Riom who made the best she’d ever tasted, covered in toasted almonds. When Sister Josephine left Lyon in tears, a rainbow spread over her father’s house and then a day later he died. Sister Philomene didn’t say much—her lips were pillowy, she often sang. They came to aid the bishop in his quest to civilize, to corral young misses on the path toward virtue in a land that was most untamed. They came to care for orphans and to teach orthography, reading, writing, grammar, arithmetic, geography, history, and—for the more intelligent—astronomy (with the use of globes), natural philosophy, and botany, also needlework, bordering, drawing, painting, piano and guitar, vocal music, and finally, French.

The nuns. They lived around the corner, frowning behind the adobe walls of the old bishop’s palace, whacking little Spaniards on the hand. They said their novenas between cursing the laughter that floated through the all-too-open swinging doors of Doña Cuca’s.

“Bon soir,” Eva Shein said through a strained, surprised smile, standing in her doorway. The afternoon air was a surprise—she hadn’t felt it all day—and it carried clanging of bells; the heady scent of piñon smoke curled thinly skyward.

“The weather turned so soon this year,” Sister Blandina responded in English, after an authoritative clearing of the throat. “It is frigid simply standing in this doorway.”

“I’m sorry…” She could barely get the words out, she wanted to shut the door so badly, but she could hardly have them tell the bishop how she turned them away, refused them as they stood in the cold. Her third winter in Santa Fe promised to be a difficult one. The newspapers filled weekly with stories from the plains: five soldiers killed, six merchants scalped, rivers gone solid thick with ice. “Please do come in.”

“We do not wish to disturb you,” Sister Theodosia declared as they stepped down through the doorway. They trudged inside over the newly swept dirt floor. Chela had spent yesterday sweeping, looking up every so often at her strange mistress standing in the doorway, for Eva could not bear to be alone in her room any longer and she could not bear to go outside where the sky was too vivid, too open, and people always stared.

“Tea?” The word floated out of Eva’s mouth. It sounded amazingly strange, as if she were hearing it right that moment for the very first time.

“Have you been outside yet today, dear?” Sister Theodosia said, sitting right down at the table.

“Chela, por favor—” She wanted so badly to beg Chela’s help (help please make them disappear), but she realized with a start that Chela was not in the house. Chela was with her own family—a chili-farmer husband, a stout son, and a daughter. It was Christmas Eve, she remembered, and the smell of green garlands and roasting meats were also suddenly present on the winter air. “Joyeux Noël,” she managed to say instead. “How kind of you to visit, when this is such a special day. All those good Christian children—why, you needn’t bother with me.” She could do this in her sleep. She could be so gracious—she knew this is what anyone said in her defense, should someone make unfavorable mention of her moods. She was gracious but not expansive and she had yet to make a suitable friend. The nuns sat themselves at the dining room table. The swish of black fabric, if for one peaceful moment, was the only sound in the room. She looked at the nuns, their cow eyes and pie faces, how they waited for their tea, patient in all things. She smiled. She smiled. She could do this in her sleep. Perhaps she was asleep. Perhaps she had not woken in a house of mud, only to stand for hours alone, pacing and then standing, staring at a dirt floor long since swept of blood—the dirt floor hers, the blood hers—blood dark as aubergines mixed with soil—further proof of her fickle womb. What, after all, did she expect? At least she had lived.

“You know what Doctor Sam says about taking air,” said Blandina.

“You do not want to grow melancholy,” added Josephine in her high and nasal voice. “You must think of the next time.”

The next time, thought Eva, I will turn away. After that, I will insist on a shield—either animal skin or rubber—which I know is available at the store along with sexy pictures wrapped in brown butcher’s paper from China and from France. She could no more say this to the visiting nuns than she could actually manage to do it. Because the next time would be soon, and when he came to her she would simply close her eyes; she would breathe deeply and fall. She was a woman. She could not hide behind a holy costume and make love to a heavenly father. This was earth; it was time, and the first three had not held.

Dear Mother and Father, she had written not long after her arrival here in town, Abraham says it will not be long now until the house is built. He is a German and he wishes very much for the house to reflect this. The house will be the first in Santa Fe built in any style besides Spanish, Mexican, or Indian. It will be a brick mansion with scroll saw woodwork and probably a cupola. Perhaps I may have my own grass garden after all with apple, plum, and cherry trees. Rest assured, Father, there is indeed grass here—it is hardly one big desert as you had feared. There will be a fountain in the garden and, best of all, a carriage house. So you see there shall be plenty of room, should you decide to brave the frontier! Abraham says it is only a matter of days until the foundation is laid. Isn’t that exciting?

Dear Uncle Alfred, she had written, I have missed you all my life. I take it your family is in good health? I know you believe that America is the only truly free country, but this morning I looked outside at first light and saw not one but three men hanging from an oak tree. Some nights there are the sounds of gunfire. Oh, Uncle, what have I done?

“Won’t you play us something?” Theodosia asked, after two cups of tea.

“I don’t really feel—”

“Your touch is unrivaled,” she insisted. “It is Christmas.” There were crumbs on her habit, on her chin.

“What would you like to hear?” The square Steinway sat in the corner, like a canary trapped in a mine. Heinrich, pleasantly drunk, takes a walk with his girl through the wintry holiday streets; here was her very own bird-of-thought trapped in her limited mind.

“Oh anything, dear. Play us anything. Or, perhaps Mendelssohn, if you’d like.”

Eva made her way to the piano bench, as if slogging through a swamp, her skirts weighing her down. Despite—or perhaps because of—the profound absence of society in Santa Fe, she was expected to don corset and gown not only when walking about, but also while at home during appropriate hours, should anyone happen to call. When she’d arrived in town, the news had made the front page of The New Mexican, so it was her duty, or so she understood, to best reflect Abraham’s significant stature. And she was proud of him, to be sure—proud of his courage and tenacity and of the manner in which all men—from the Yankee prospectors to the half-breeds—greeted him with tremendous respect when he passed by.

“Oh look at her lovely posture,” whispered Josephine.

She adjusted the bench and the pedals, finally closing her eyes as she always did right before playing. Because she remembered she was facing the wall and that they could not see her face, she kept her eyes closed. Then she touched her fingers to the keys, merely grazing the cool ivory through the ubiquitous fine layer of dust. When the faint scent of violets released, when Henriette’s carefree giggle filled her ears, she then began to play from Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, starting with the most childlike piece and progressing toward the most difficult, the one she always thought of as Henriette’s showpiece.

Playing the piano had become not unlike running: It was something she had done as a child—if not excellently then effortlessly—without much consideration, and it had now become an action to take when under peril. It wasn’t that the piano no longer gave her pleasure, but it had become a refuge, the closest thing to a state of grace in which conversation was not necessary and expectations were easier to understand. Her back was straight, her fingers quick, and for a fluid span of moments she was lost somewhere in time, flying over rooftops in winter Berlin, picking blackberries during a Karlsbad summer, watching Mother powder her fine white skin. Finally she was listening to the piece her hands created, but it sounded far more stylish and strong, because it was Henriette who was playing and she was only watching. She really liked to watch. Instead of slightly tinny and out of tune, the sound was rich and unending—a sip of cool water, the first sip, after traversing the desert for days. She was no longer surrounded by well-meaning nuns but by something so much larger than she could ever name. She had not known what safety was before she had forsaken it.

She was floating on a minor key near the end of the piece when a sudden urge to stop became too strong—like the cramping right before the blood came, signaling an immutable end. She tried willing her hands to move, even stopped and started twice, before giving over to the silence, the disappointed silence in the room.

“Please excuse me.”

She rushed by the black-cloaked figures sitting at her dining room table. Blandina, Theodosia, Josephine, Philomene—such exotic names, beautiful names—looming like the hills surrounding the city, a smudge of judgment, cloudlike, on the sky. They sat in their incomprehensible existence as women; they sat in a unity appealing as it was horrendous—like a pair of massive arms moving closer, closing in.

In the washroom she soaked a cotton cloth in the copper bowl of water and pressed the cloth against her forehead as Chela had done for her so gently while she was still permitted to rest in bed. Head against the splintery door, she closed her eyes and she listened.

“But we cannot,” said Josephine. “It has not been even forty minutes.”

“I, for one, have no attraction for entertaining wealthy ladies,” hissed Blandina.

“The bishop says—”

“She is suffering…” The rare voice of Philomene—hazy, high.

“We all must suffer, mustn’t we? It has been nearly two months. It was God’s will. For heaven’s sake, she isn’t even baptized!”

“Her husband is a friend to the bishop.”

“Her husband is a Jewish gambler!”

“Hush, Sister Blandina.”

“Well he is.”

“The bishop says…” continued Josephine. Lake Josephine, as Eva thought of her: flat and placid. Or was it fat and flaccid? “The bishop says we must stay one hour’s time. I, for one, will honor his request. It is Christmas,” she said virtuously.

When listening became too much to bear, Eva flung open the door in a sudden burst. “Of course my husband gambles!” she said. She might have screamed it, she wasn’t sure.

“Whatever do you mean?” cried Blandina. Their pale faces tinted with sudden heat. They bowed their heads, all but Sister Philomene, whose eyes—almond both in color and shape—blinked furiously.

“Gambling is a sport,” said Eva. “It is a game.”

“Please forgive us,” said Philomene.

“Do you hear me?” Eva’s hands began to shake. Of course the nuns could not possibly have called on their own volition; she was entirely too unpleasant to stand. It was the bishop, her only true friend; he had sent them with the best of intentions, not able to understand how these nuns were merely a clique of ladies who loathed her. They loathed her weakness, her indolent ways. They disapproved of her reading habits, how she had no use for a Bible but instead retreated into German novels full of unquestionable wrongdoing. And they were especially suspicious of how she did not even have the moral foundation to know how to sew her own clothes.

But Philomene walked slowly toward her; she reached out and touched Eva’s face.

“Philomene!” cried Sister Josephine.

But Philomene did not pull away. Her hand was warm. She smelled like the inside of a treasured book.

“Please,” Eva whispered into her ear, small and pink as a shell.

“What is it?” Sister Philomene whispered in urgent reply; with her breath came mild garlic, a garden of wilted roses.

“Please…” It was all she could say. She choked on the other half-born words that rose up in her throat.

Philomene took Eva’s trembling hands, and—as if she understood everything, or at least this one odd craving—slipped Eva’s fingers under her own heavy veil, allowing her to touch the soft, clipped hair.

         

THAT EVENING, WHEN THE CANDLES WERE LIT, HER CORSET TIGHTENED, and her face scrubbed and rouged, she waited for Abraham, but instead she found two visitors knocking at the door.

“Mrs. Shein,” said the tall one in English. He was a hulking fellow in a good suit, toothless and jowly-pale.

“My husband is not at home,” she replied, with one of the first sentences Abraham had insisted she perfect out loud. She felt uncharacteristically confident of its cadences, so she was surprised when the shorter Spanish man stepped forward and asked where her husband was.

“My husband is not at home,” she said louder. And then, “Maybe you leave a card?”

“We ain’t got no card,” said the tall one. “No, ma’am.”

The Spanish man laughed so she could see all his teeth, some of which were covered with gold.

         

SHORTLY AFTER THEY’D GONE, ABRAHAM RETURNED, SMELLING OF brandy and snow. “You look better,” he said in German.

She tried to smile, but it came out as a sigh.

“I saw Mrs. Smithson at the party. She sends her very best. They all do.” He handed her his coat and hat, and she went into the bedroom to put them away. “It was a jolly crowd,” he called to her through the wall. “The room was full of hundreds of candles. You would have loved to see it.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed yourself,” she said, too softly, she knew, as she looked frankly at her gaunt reflection in the speckled looking glass. There were hollows in her face, dark and ghastly. Soon she would be nothing but a play of light and shadow, a study in contrasts to the bone. She pulled herself back into the dining room.

Abraham sat at the table, waiting to be served.

She brought the platters to the table and poured wine into crystal glasses. He took a bite of beef and chewed thoroughly. “You might think about beginning to call on the officers’ wives.”

She took a long sip of wine. “I cannot have them here, this is for certain.”

“You might call on them”—he continued, as if she had not spoken—“before it gets too terribly cold, pay a visit to the government quarters.”

“I might.”

“You cannot stay inside and weep forever,” he muttered, having switched over to English, which irritated her beyond measure. She would speak English to anyone; she didn’t mind, she really did not. But he was her husband and this was her home. His insistence was maddening.

“I do more than weep,” she said tersely in German.

“Oh?”

“I played the piano for the nuns. They paid a visit.” Moth shadows flickered on the wall behind his head in globes of yellow candlelight. Flames cast shapes on the ceiling: dancing wraith, paper flower, bear. He looked up from his plate. Another thought occurred to her. “Or maybe you had the bishop send them?”

Abraham held his fork aloft as he laughed. “And why would I do such a thing?”

“To comfort or frighten me. I am not certain which.”

“Why would I want to frighten you?”

“Tell me,” she said in English, ignoring her heart beating faster than it should have, “who are the men?”

“Which men? You are not being clear, Eva. You must try to be clear when you speak.”

“Here,” she said slowly. “Here. At the door. They ask for you. Two men.”

“Well how should I know? You know how many people want something from me and Meyer?”

“They did not ask for your brother.”

“You cannot set store by any of these border ruffians. What did you tell them?”

“You do not wish to know what they looked like? What they said?”

“What did you tell them?”

“My husband is not at home.”

“Good girl.”

She nodded, took a good sip of wine. “How is business this week?”

“We are prospering. You know that.”

She felt familiar pin pricks at the backs of her eyes. “Then…” she sputtered, as the sweet sandy resin slid down her throat. “Then—then—why has there been no work done on the house? Each day I walk by and it sits there—like rubble—abandoned. It is embarrassing. My dowry…” she began, but she was too ashamed to have to ask. “Why are we living here?”

“You are perfectly aware—”

“Your brother Meyer built a house. His wife has a stove and she is a native! Alma Lucia was raised to cook over flames!”

“Even in this modest home, you are coddled,” he said, shaking his head. “You are—”

“This is not what you described. Nor is it what you promised my father.”

“Still,” he said softly, sitting back and watching her in the way he often did, with frank appraisal, “you would have come.”

“There is refuse and burro droppings under our portal; if we had to live this way it would be a different matter. If we had no other choice, I would not say a word. But…Abraham…” she pleaded, hands gripping each other under the table so as not to gesticulate. “My darling, I don’t understand…” She looked into his rich, brown eyes, his thick-combed hair which would never need a drop of bay rum. He was her husband. “Where does the money go?”

“You would have come no matter what I described. Am I wrong?”

“I wanted to go with you.” She dabbed at the corners of her eyes.

“I sometimes wonder why.”

“Why do you think?” she asked, and there was a part of her that was still flirting after all this time, flirting just like Henriette taught her to flirt, so very long ago. She thought that if he chose to smile at this moment, everything could turn around.

“It’s funny,” he said. “I had the distinct feeling that your father wanted me to take you to America.”

She shook her head and nearly choked. “How can you say this?”

“I think he wanted you to go.”

“You don’t know anything,” she said, and before she could stop her tongue, “They didn’t think you were good enough.”

There was never silence here in Santa Fe, not even in such a moment. Doña Cuca’s saloon, the dogs, cats, and jacks, the bleating of cattle and hogs—he slammed his fist on the table. He picked up his glass and hurled it toward the shadowy wall. She couldn’t help but gasp.

“Before Henriette was married,” she said, her voice cracking through a glaze of pointless tears, as the red wine dripped down the mottled whitewash, filling the small room with its vinegary scent, “a painter came to make our portraits.” She lowered her voice and whispered, “An artist.” She stood and retrieved a broom. “He told me stories.”

“Why would a father want his daughter to move across the ocean?”

“You are lying to me. My father wanted me to stay. He wanted me to stay but he let me go. Because I begged him! I begged him.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said that I loved you, of course. I said ‘Father, I love him,’ and you”—she felt her face tighten, her temples begin to pulse—“you told him that you would treat me kindly. You told him there was great freedom and riches and—”

“And what about this painter?”

She looked at the shattered glass on the floor and thought of their wedding ceremony. “He painted our portraits,” she said. “I told you.” His eyes met hers and she continued. “He told me how while Martin Luther was translating the Bible, he threw an inkpot at the devil. The devil kept appearing to tempt him, you see…” She trailed off into coughing, as she bent with some difficulty and swept the glass.

“Why do you tell me this?” he asked, rising from his chair and placing his napkin on the table.

“In Wartburg Castle,” she said quietly, “there is still a black spot on that wall.”

“The devil does not exist,” he said almost patiently. “There is only you and I.”

“What about God?”

“This is not a question.”

“Who is your devil?”

“Shh,” he said. “Shh. I am sorry. I am sorry you lost the child.”

“Tell me,” she demanded. “Tell me where your devil takes you.”

And, as he often did when questioned, he put on his hat and walked out into the night, closing the door behind him.