SERGE IS AN EVEN-SIDED, TWILL-WEAVE, WORSTED FABRIC SUITABLE FOR BOTH men’s and women’s clothing. My Tía Cati taught me to make serge when I was just a child. You sew a two-up, two-down diagonal pattern, sometimes with a contrasting color, if what you want is to make something very imaginative and original. Serge is very durable, which is why it has been used since the beginning of history—well, maybe not that long, but for a long time—for nun’s habits. The important point here is that serge is highly resistant to fleas.
No sooner had the four novices settled into their new convent than María Bautista (always one to take things to extremes) decided that our serge habits were just too comfortable. “How can we be one with Jesus if we don’t suffer as he did?” she complained to Teresa, now installed as prioress of San José. “Instead of soft, serge habits,” argued María, “we should be wearing coarse sackcloth.” Teresa thought about it. It seemed logical that discalced Carmelites should wear bristly material in honor of Christ’s passion, but before giving permission, she decided to try out the idea herself. She cut a tunic of sackcloth and wore it for a few days. It seemed to work. The new attire was serviceable and appropriately prickly. The novices followed suit, and soon we were all wearing sackcloth habits.
I was the first to complain. The new habits were too itchy. “They’re supposed to be itchy,” said María. “We’re suffering for Jesus.” Every night when I took off my habit, I examined my arms and calves. They were covered with red welts, not welts caused by the barbed filaments of sackcloth, but by some insect. They were fleabites! The new habits were breeding grounds for fleas. All the women agreed: something had to be done.
As usual, María had the answer. “What’s the best insecticide around?” she asked.
“White arsenic,” I said. “Or else potash, or sulphur. It depends what you’re trying to kill.” “No,” said María. “The solution to every ill is Jesus. We should have a procession.”
It seemed logical to everyone else, so I went along with it. The next morning before dawn, we each lit a candle and filed from our cells to the choir, where Teresa knelt in prayer. María Bautista led the procession carrying a small crucifix high above her head. As we processed we sang psalms: “Come, let us cry out with joy to Yahweh, / acclaim the rock of our salvation. / Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving, / acclaim him with music.” And then, against our enemies, the fleas: “He turns back their guilt on themselves, / annihilates them for their wickedness, / he annihilates them, Yahweh our God.” When we arrived at the choir, each of us prostrated herself before the large crucifix in the sanctuary. I thought the situation called for coplas. Teresa, who composed poetry for every celebration, thought a minute, then improvised.
Hijas, pues tomáis la Cruz, |
Daughters, accept your Cross |
tened valor, |
and be brave, |
y a Jesús, que es vuestra luz, |
look to Jesus, your light, |
pedid favor, |
He who gave |
El os será defensor |
Everything to defend you from |
en trance tal. |
Dangers grave. |
To which we responded:
Pues nos dais vestido nuevo, |
Since you’ve given us new habits, |
Rey celestial, |
Heavenly King, please |
librad de la mala gente |
Free them from evil critters |
este sayal. |
such as fleas. |
Teresa took a large vial of holy water and a cross. The procession wound its way through the convent—around the refectory, the laundry, the pharmacy, the cells, the locutorium, the patio. As we processed, she sang, “Hijas, pues tomáis la Cruz, / tened valor, / y a Jesús …” and we responded, “Pues nos dais vestido nuevo …” She flicked drops over everything from chairs to dirty linen, taking special care to douse the habits. She skipped along like a kid in a pasture—and don’t forget she was nearly fifty. “Hijas, pues tomáis la Cruz,/ tened valor, / y a Jesús …” She didn’t have a great voice, but her singing made us giddy. She grabbed her tambourine, and the rhythmic jingling made her sing all the louder.
What a beautiful morning! The clink and tinkle of bells, the not-quite-seraphic voices of the not-quite-in-tune San José sisters! And the best part is that it worked! I don’t know if processions are always such effective insecticides, but the truth is, after that, San José was never again troubled with fleas, and the same is true of other discalced Carmelite convents. No fleas. Ever. Anywhere. Of course, it’s also true that we burned the sackcloth habits and started wearing burlap, which is made of jute, not hemp or flax, like sackcloth, and is as resistant to fleas as serge.
Those were wonderful years. San José was such a small convent that each of us had several jobs. I ran the sewing room, the laundry room, and the pharmacy. I also tended the herb garden, where I planted shoots I needed for cures. Before long we started to grow. Juana Isabel and Radegunda joined us, becoming novice mistress and chief cook. Then came Marcela, who was cellaress but whose real talent was writing doggerel for feast days and professions. Teresa put a limit of thirteen on the convent, so we remained a small, happy, active group.
Whenever a new nun professed, we gathered in the meeting room to celebrate and put on skits. We were poor and sometimes didn’t even have a loaf of bread to divide among us, but we turned it into a joke and killed our hunger with laughter. For one profession, Sister Marcela wrote this poem, making fun of herself and the other two cellaresses, Mariana and Escolástica:
POEM DESCRIBING A VERY POOR CONVENT
It had cellaresses so terrible,
their cruelty’s verifiable
their personality’s just miserable,
thoroughly despicable.
One tyrant was marcelicle,
The other quite marianicle,
Which means a meal’s a miracle,
And probably inedible.
And then, there’s Escolástica,
As shrewd as she’s contemptible,
Her nastiness unforgivable,
in no way justifiable.
But it’s really not practical
To complain about Escolástica.
She controls all our victuals,
Which she serves in little particles.
None of them’s magnanimous,
Kind or simpáticas,
But they’re quite unintelligent
To get on the wrong side of us.
Because we can get fanatical,
Vengeful and implacable,
When we’re feeling ravenous,
Angry and cantankerous.
So I’ll end my little canticle,
But it really is quite pitiful,
We can’t eat just a bitiful
Of something rich or succulent.
I wish they were more lovable
Kind, sweet and adorable,
Instead of just deplorable,
But I won’t say any morable.
She left us in stitches, the way she played on her and Mariana’s names—“marcelicle,” “mariancle”—I don’t know whether my stomach hurt more from laughing or from hunger. Although on that particular day, we did eat better than usual. Radegunda made yemas, and after the clothing ceremony we sat around the fire eating bonbons, listening to Marcela’s poems, and putting on skits. In one of them, a poor student comes to the door and begs for food, only to discover the nuns are so poor, even the mice have abandoned the larder. When the cellaress refuses to give him even a crumb, he curses all the sisters in the convent in the most awful language.
Sor Bitch, Sor Witch, Sor Miserly!
You, virtue? What hypocrisy!
I curse your greed and perfidy,
Your maleficent inhumanity!
I played the student, and I have to say, I must have a knack for acting, because Juana Isabel and Radegunda laughed so hard they wet their underskirts. Silence at San José was sacred, but so was laughter. Teresa also wrote a poem, but hers was serious. After all, she was the prioress.
Dichoso el corazón enamorado |
Happy is the enamored heart |
que en sólo Dios ha puesto el pensamiento, |
that puts its thoughts only in God, |
por Él renuncia todo lo crïado, |
renouncing for Him all created things, |
y en Él halla su gloria y su contento. |
finding in Him its glory and joy. |
Aun de sí mismo vive descuidado, |
It lives unconcerned for its own well being |
porque en su Dios está todo su intento, |
because God alone is its objective, |
y así alegre pasa y muy gozoso |
and so it weathers cheerfully, joyfully |
las ondas de este mar tempestüoso. |
the thrashing of the tempestuous sea. |
Oh, I admit it was difficult at first. When we lived at Encarnación, we could go out to San Gil, to Doña Guiomar’s, or to visit Teresa’s sisters. We could gossip at the grille. At San José we lived cloistered and in silence, speaking only when necessary or during the recreos.
One thing Teresa was very strict about was what she called “special friendships.” There could be no best friends or cliques that excluded this one or that one, no touching or kissing, no walking arm-in-arm in the garden, as close friends sometimes do. Women like Cándida, who had once grabbed Teresa’s breast, well, they weren’t allowed. The rule about special friends troubled me at first. Teresa and I were like sisters. Did this mean we could no longer be close? Did it mean we could no longer share secrets or give each other a pat of encouragement once in a while? But as it turned out, nothing changed between us. What Teresa wanted to do was provide an environment conducive to a prayerful life, not turn herself into a tyrant. She didn’t go around flicking the switch at nuns who gave each other an occasional sisterly hug. It was gossip and cliquishness she worried about. That and women like Cándida.
We had a small locutorium with a grille, where we could receive family members and friends. María Bautista thought there should be no visitors at all, but Teresa said that was too severe. “Women need conversation,” she insisted. “Otherwise, they’ll go crazy.” But with visitors we were supposed to talk only about God, never about the affairs of the world. The extern was to monitor conversations and report inappropriate chatter to the prioress. The penalty for breaking the rule was nine days in the convent prison, with a public scourging in the refectory on the third. “Discipline is essential to the order,” insisted Teresa. “Obedience is the most sacred of our vows. Submission to the prioress is a way of restraining the will, of keeping one’s sense of one’s own importance in check. Obedience makes us holy.” She said these things, and yet, as I said, she wasn’t a tyrant. “Rules don’t exist for their own sake,” she insisted. “What’s the point of being a slave to rules if your rigor makes you cruel, rather than sensitive to the needs of your sisters?”
Teresa refused to check up on the lineage of her nuns. After all, how could she, the daughter and granddaughter of Jews, insist on “purity of blood”? At San José, there was no distinction between Old and New Christians, between ladies and commoners. True to her word, she abolished titles. There were no doñas or señoras, only sisters. Even so, she kept the traditional two-tiered system of black-veiled and white-veiled nuns. Once there were enough sisters, black-veiled nuns performed the more intellectual duties—administration, accounting, chronicling—while white-veiled nuns performed manual tasks, like scrubbing pots and chopping wood. Later, when Teresa wrote the constitution of the order, she stipulated that all nuns had to learn to read. Only black-veiled nuns had to learn to write, though. Usually the white-veiled nuns were poor girls used to doing heavy lifting and content to sign their names with an X. But when Teresa saw that one of them had talent and potential, she made her learn to write and take the black veil.
The habits themselves were black, although later we adopted brown. We were allowed no ornamentation, no color at all. Choir mantels were of the same rough material as the habits, but white. On our feet we wore hemp sandals, with stockings of tow, not for warmth, but out of modesty. The cells were small. Mirrors were forbidden. The beds had no mattresses, only bags of straw covered in cloth, except in the case of sick nuns, who were allowed sturdy beds with mattresses and whatever else they needed to recuperate. For pillows we used stones. We ate no meat, except on Thursdays, when we were allowed some sort of poultry—chicken, plover, partridge, dove, or goose. During Lent we had a piece of salted cod. In our ovens we baked coarse bread, and in our garden we grew vegetables and fruits, which we dried for the winter. Sometimes there was so little to eat that Radegunda had to cut a turnip into a dozen pieces to make it go around. Once in a while the mother of a novice sent some jam or cheese.
Does this sound austere? Yes, I think I’ve made our lives sound a bit ascetic, but the truth is, it was wonderful. No gossip. No politics. No kissing Sister So-and-So’s ass because she was the niece of Bishop Something-or-Other. Convent life isn’t that different from life at court—well, I’ve never been to court, it’s true, but I can imagine the shifting alliances and power plays. At San José, you could just pray and work and think about God without distractions.
I think it was during those days at the new convent that I felt closest to the Lord. In the spring, I rejoiced in the morning sun, in the purple saffron flowers pushing their heads through the still hard soil, in the novices saying their prayers. In the summer, I saw God in every marigold, every shoot of mint, every cooing dove in the dovecote. I delighted in the hectic goings-on of honey-gathering bees, in the frantic flirtations of sparrows and jays. I heard God in the singing of Radegunda as she boiled fruits for the preserves we would use when the ground slept. Fall brought the cooling relief of God’s fresh breath on my cheek, the consoling beauty of red, orange, and gold leaves wafting unhurriedly toward the fading flowerbeds. In the winter, I could feel God’s love in the steady, soundless fall of snowflakes and in the relaxed movements of sisters stitching silently by the crackling fire. I sensed God’s graciousness in Apolo, the convent cat, who began his day with a prayer of thanks, stretching and bowing his head. We named him for a pagan god because he wasn’t baptized, and yet, he clearly had a sense of the divine. What holiness there is in a cat who curls up on your lap and eases your anxiety by allowing you to run your fingers through its fluffy fur. Most of all, I felt God’s love in our community of sisters, in the affection we had for one another, in the new kind of spiritual life we were forging.
Fray Julián de Ávila, brother of María de San José, was our chaplain. He was a jovial, self-effacing man, kind and patient. “Quick confessions, easy penances,” was his motto. He was a native of our town, about twelve years younger than Teresa, and had studied philosophy with the Dominicans at Santo Tomás. As he told the story, one day, on his way back from school, he began to worry that his father would be angry at his tardiness, so instead of going home, he took off for Toledo. After wandering around Spain for several years, he settled in Córdoba, but eventually got homesick and decided to return home. On the way, his mule flinched at a jackrabbit and threw him. He fell on his sword and was so badly wounded that he almost died. While he was recuperating, he began to meditate on the fragility of life and decided to become a priest. When he finally made his way back to Ávila, he confessed to Father Daza, who facilitated reconciliation with his father. Fray Julián was ordained about four years before Teresa founded San José. Rumor had it that he had wanted to be a Jesuit, but, being of converso background, couldn’t stand the sight of pork. Ever since the Jesuits of San Gil had expelled twenty-five converso priests, they’d become touchy about lineage. They manifested their pureza de sangre by serving Serrano ham at least twice a week. It was too much for Julián, so he became a Carmelite instead.
It was Daza who introduced him to Teresa, and Julián adored her with the kind of devotion one sees in dogs. He wasn’t an original thinker or a brilliant administrator, but whatever Teresa wanted, he’d do. He’d get up in the middle of the night to hear the confession of an ailing nun or, later, when Teresa started to travel, drop everything to accompany her to some ramshackle inn in the middle of a godforsaken village. He never said no.
San José was like a peaceful island. Year followed year. Spring came on time, exuberant butterflies played tag in the garden, and blossoms splashed color over the earth. In the summer frisky rabbits stole our marigolds and performed their love rites, oblivious to the titters of consecrated virgins. Then came fall, with its cool evenings and smells of newly baled hay. In winter, dancing angels filled the night sky, only to be chased away, in springtime, by almond trees bulging with dainty white flowers. Every day the sun rose in the East and set in the West just the way it’s supposed to. Vigils, Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, Compline. Everything orderly, regular, methodical. God in His heaven and the sisters in their cells.
Although Teresa seemed happy enough, she had little time to enjoy the marigolds. She was busy revising her Life, since Father García de Toledo had commanded her to make certain corrections and to include a chapter on the founding of the new convent. As prioress, she had to oversee finances, secure supplies, attend to the upkeep of the building, interview prospective novices, and deal with her superiors. During the recreo she wrote, seated on a cushion by the window, paper and inkwell on the ledge. Even when the wind howled and rain battered the burlap window cover, making the candle flicker, she wrote. And then, after the rest of us went to bed, she wrote still more, often working hours past midnight. Not only did she have to finish her memoir, but she also had to make a copy of it to send to the censors. It was Christmas, 1565, when she handed the final manuscript to García de Toledo, who in turn sent it to Domingo Báñez, who in turn submitted it to the Inquisition in Toledo for its imprimatur.
García de Toledo had had Teresa write the book to prove her orthodoxy, but we all knew the project could backfire. The Council of Trent had inflamed the king’s zeal for purity of faith. Don Felipe had been harsh before, but now he was ruthless. With his blessing, the Inquisition came down harder than ever on people claiming to be seers or mystics. Luther had accused Catholics of superstitiousness, and the council was determined to crack down on popular belief and unsubstantiated claims to holiness. Teresa’s Life, full of descriptions of visions and ecstasies, was bound to be suspect. García decided to take preemptive action. He contacted Don Francisco de Soto, the inquisitor in charge of the case. Soto suggested Teresa send her Life to Juan de Ávila, a theologian of impeccable credentials, whose verdict he, Soto, promised to accept. Teresa sat down to begin the tedious job of making a second copy. When it was finished, she sent it to Doña Luisa de la Cerda, who was leaving soon for an estate near Fray Juan’s monastery, and promised to deliver it to him. Five years later, the book was still in Doña Luisa’s hands.
For the moment, these tempests passed right over me. For me, San José was like a little corner of paradise tucked away in San Roch. My life was perfect. I never wanted it to change. Of course, when the Devil sees souls at peace, he has to stir things up. Although I can’t really blame the Devil, because this time God Himself was the culprit. He kept nudging Teresa to found another convent. He sent her visions, sometimes of angels, sometimes of Jesus, always telling her the same thing: Carry on with the reform. He must have been poking around at the Council of Trent too, because when it closed in 1563, the fathers announced that from then on, all nuns had to be cloistered. Our most gracious king had never been in favor of enclosure, but he was a stickler for rules, and now that the council had taken a stand, he begged the pope to send supervisors to make sure the Spanish orders were complying. Word soon came that Father Juan Bautista Rubeo, the Carmelite general, would be visiting Spain to enforce the council’s reforms.
Teresa didn’t expect problems from Rubeo. We already followed rules far stricter than those imposed by the Council. Our troubles came from elsewhere. News had spread all over Spain that a nun from Ávila had started a new convent that followed the primitive system of the desert fathers: poverty, silence, and mental prayer. Carmelites everywhere balked. In particular, the Andalusian brothers were enraged. Who was this arrogant woman? How dare she change the rules? They were a wild crew, those Andalusian Carmelites, known more for whoring, gambling, and drinking than for piety. They adorned their habits with fancy buttons or else paraded around town in elegant street clothes. They got into brawls and carried daggers. Oh, I don’t doubt they prayed. They prayed for luck at cards, for a good kill when they hunted, brave bulls at the bullfights, and buxom wenches at the taverns. The pope, spurred by the council’s demand for reform, ordered an investigation of their conduct. It was Rubeo’s job to force the unruly brothers into submission. “Make them behave!” His Holiness instructed. “Fat chance!” the friars responded when they heard Rubeo was coming.
Rubeo went first to Seville, where he was received with pitchforks and knives. He hightailed it out of there so fast his horses kicked up a dust storm on the way to Madrid, where he was supposed to meet with the king. However, that mission failed, too, since Don Felipe was reluctant to tangle with the powerful and politically connected Andalusian Carmelites, and refused to see him. There was nothing left for Rubeo to do but go back to Rome. However, before he left Spain, he wanted to confer with this reformist nun, Teresa de Jesús, about whom he’d heard so much and with whom he shared certain ideas about the value of austerity and discipline. He arranged for a meeting at the church of Nuestra Señora de la Anunciación, the Masonic-looking structure where we had once met Fray Pedro de Alcáncara.
Teresa asked me to go along. She’d been trying to charm me into becoming her secretary for a while now, but I resisted. Teresa had a huge amount of correspondence, and she required two or three copies of every letter, since thieves—some of them working for the Inquisition—often waylaid couriers. She also needed someone to take notes at meetings and write up reports. These were tasks that had to be entrusted to someone absolutely dependable, someone capable of keeping secrets. I understood the situation, but still, I told her no. I liked my humdrum routine, and I didn’t want any extra work. San José was supposed to offer repose and recollection. Why should I let Teresa lure me into a position that would expose me to politics and intrigue?
She could have ordered me to be her secretary. After all, she was the prioress. But that wasn’t her way. “Forcing nuns into submission makes for unhappy nuns,” she said, “and unhappy nuns do sloppy work.” So instead, she begged. She wore me down. “Who else can I depend on? I can’t manage without you, Angélica. Just this once.” I’d been cloistered for five years. I was used to mixing compounds in the morning, sewing in the afternoon, and stroking Apolo after supper. The truth is, I was afraid to go out. But Teresa always got what she wanted.
The instant we left the convent, the afternoon assaulted me. The roar of the street—clattering hooves, cartwheels on cobblestones—gave me a headache. We made our way across the once familiar Plaza de San Jerónimo, and I stared at the houses and shops as though I’d never seen them before. We continued toward the city walls. Everything looked familiar, yet I had to say the names of places out loud in order to fix them in my mind. We entered intramural Ávila through the Puerta del Peso de la Harina. It was a cold, clear April morning. The blinding brightness of sunlight against stone made me squint. Our mules walked lazily, unperturbed by the iridescence of the red tile roofs. We crossed the Plaza de la Catedral. The sky was a fathomless, inverted, mother-of-pearl bowl. The majestic building—part temple, part fort—reached toward heaven, its towers and spires piercing the sheen. We headed toward the Plaza del Mercado Chico, then veered right toward the church. It wasn’t such a long way, but by the time we arrived, I was panting and disoriented.
I don’t know what I expected Rubeo to look like, but I didn’t expect him to look like Christmas dinner. He had the head of a suckling pig, with feathery hairs sticking out of his ears like tender, young celery leaves. His torso reminded me of a partridge breast, broad and meaty. His hands were small and his fingers short like baby carrots. His legs, the outlines of which were visible under his habit, were fat at the thigh and narrow at the ankle, like parsnips. He burped unceremoniously when he saw us.
Teresa greeted him with deference. “Oh, Father Rubeo,” she oozed, “what an honor for this poor, insignificant, little nun. I admit I don’t know a thing about running convents. Fortunately, it’s His Majesty Himself who guides my hand.”
“Yes … well … I hear you’re doing a magnificent job,” stumbled Rubeo clumsily.
“If I am, it’s because I have help.” I looked up to see if she was going to give me some credit. “God Himself helps me,” she went on. “He talks to me. He encourages me.”
He nodded. “You are right to acknowledge your limitations, daughter.”
I took notes while they talked. She explained the importance of mental prayer, through which the nuns maintained an active, dynamic relationship with God. She talked about recollection and interiority. She explained the need for absolute poverty, which enabled the nuns to avoid the temptations of the material world. She praised silence, essential to a nun’s spiritual health. He lapped it up. When she was sure she had him in the palm of her hand, she squeezed. God wanted her to found other convents, she explained. He had told her so. He also wanted her to found friaries. In order for the reform to be successful, she said, she had to have a male branch, not only because the sisters needed confessors who understood their brand of spirituality, but also because an order consisting entirely of women would never be taken seriously.
Rubeo shrugged. He’d have to inspect San José, he said. If he liked what he saw, then he’d see. “Of course, Father,” she said. “You’re right, Father. I put myself entirely in your hands, Father. I submit to your authority.”
“What the hell were you doing back there?” I hissed on our way back to San José. “Why are you kissing Rubeo’s hindquarters like that?” She got that pious look on her face, the one that made her look like a constipated cherub. “No wonder he couldn’t get anywhere with the Andalusian friars,” I added. “He learned his manners at the King Herod School of Charm.”
She turned and looked me right in the eye. “We need him, Angélica. In order to found more convents, I need patents. Only Rubeo can issue them. And he will issue them.”
The minute we got back to San José I went to my cell and flung myself down on my sack of straw. I was exhausted, and my limbs ached. I skipped Vespers and Vigils, pretending to be sick, and I didn’t respond to the supper bell, either. But I couldn’t fall asleep. I heard Apolo creep out from under my bed and felt him nestle against my body. Before long, he was purring softly, and the steady “Rrr rrr” calmed my nerves.
When I was certain the others had retired for the night, I snuck my copy of my favorite pastoral novel, The Seven Books of Diana, out from its hiding place under my dirty laundry. I lit a candle, opened the volume to Book II, and began to read, “Love is such, beautiful Nymphs, that the lover is not subject to reason …” Who knows how long I read. The intricate love affairs of shepherds and shepherdesses lulled me. Reading brought me the kind of relief I got long ago, as a young woman, from touching certain sensitive parts of my body. I dozed off just before dawn and awoke with the terrible sensation that my routine was about to be shattered.
Teresa turned out to be right about Rubeo. On April 27 he issued a patent authorizing her to acquire “houses, churches, sites, and other property in any part of Castile subject to my jurisdiction, on behalf of the Order.” He stipulated that both friars and nuns were to wear brown serge, and in no convent would they number more than twenty-five. Serge, not burlap. Teresa knelt before the statue of Our Lady and gave thanks.
Almost immediately, Teresa started making plans to found in Medina del Campo, about twenty-five leagues from Ávila. I had no intention of going with her. I’d found God at San José. I loved to listen to the monotonous drip-drip of raindrops on the eaves. Raindrops had been falling since the beginning of time, even as God set Adam in the Garden of Eden, and they would be falling at the time of the Apocalypse. My life would come and go, but raindrops were timeless. In the monotony of raindrops, I discovered Eternity. “No,” I told Teresa, “I won’t go.”
“I need you, Angélica,” she said sadly. I was sad, too. We hadn’t been apart since we were children. “Jesus wants this new convent. It’s our duty to go to Medina del Campo.”
“No, Teresa. Every time you want someone to do something, you say it’s Jesus’s will.”
“But it is!” Teresa de Ahumada had gotten her own way since she was a child. She tensed her jaw and pursed her lips. “This is God’s will,” she said firmly.
“Jesus told you to found convents, Teresa, but he never said a word about it to me.”
“As your superior, I command you go with me to Medina, Sister Angélica.”
I knew she didn’t mean it. I looked at her calmly. “You’re a hypocrite, Teresa,” I said, without raising my voice. “You gave us the cloister so we could retreat from the world. Now you’re in a snit because I won’t leave San José to trudge over dusty roads with you.”
Anger flashed in her eyes. Then she smiled faintly. I’d called her bluff.
“Pray for me while I’m away,” she whispered, kissing my cheek.
“No kissing in the convent!” I laughed.
“Between sisters, it’s okay,” she said. “I mean, between real sisters. Anyhow, the spirit of the rule is more important than the rule itself.”
I felt as though the nail were being yanked from my finger. But I couldn’t go with her. I was happy at San José. I just couldn’t give that up. “I’ll pray for you,” I said.
“I know.” Her eyes were filled with tears.
Sister Angélica del Sagrado Corazón
Toledo, 20 September 1576