The Sisterhood

Chapter 36


Las Golondrinas Convent, UNESCO World Heritage Site, Tristan Mendoza Foundation and Museum, Directors Menina Walker de Fernández and Alejandro Fernández Galán, June 2013





Becky had been the first person to grasp that things were indeed “just getting started.” What Menina had found was a huge project waiting to get off the ground. When she arrived in response to Menina’s phone call saying she had to drop everything and come to Spain and get the story of a lifetime, Sor Teresa allowed her to stay in the convent where she was given a pilgrim’s cell next to Menina’s. Sor Teresa reluctantly agreed to unlock the gate so Becky and Menina could come and go to the café for their meals. “But no mens,” she said as sternly to Becky as she had to Menina. Becky followed Menina around the convent, beside herself with delight at having an exclusive news scoop. She foresaw a series of newspaper features, then maybe a book. “Oh Child of Light! If any male reporters get wind of this, it’s just too bad! They won’t be allowed in the convent!” she exclaimed gleefully, and within a day had sold a series to the New York Times.

“Things are just getting started, probably. I mean, look at this place! I started off trying to help the nuns a little,” said Menina. “Now I’m wondering how to make everything come together—it keeps nagging at me.”

“The place is a mess. Interesting, but a mess. That bathroom is evil,” said Becky. “Good thing Alejandro asked your parents to stay with him—his place is fabulous. You can tell it’s an old house, but he’s had a lot of work done so it’s comfortable. He’s got good taste for a man. Anyway, he said we can come over and take showers whenever we want.” She had looked sideways at Menina, trying to gauge her friend’s take on the handsome police captain. Becky’s take on him was that he was macho but good news. He gave Menina space. Becky was definitely getting signals that something had been started between them.

When Serafina Lennox came to the convent the first time and saw what Menina had discovered she was speechless, and hyperventilated until she had to sit down, while Menina brought her some water and assured her they were just getting started.

For Menina and Alejandro the phrase “things are just getting started” became a mantra. Over the years it preceded statements like, “maybe this is a crazy idea, but what if we could turn the convent into a museum” to “how can we ever raise that much money?” to “let’s try it” to “Dear God, what were we thinking!”

Menina and Alejandro said it when experts arrived to look at the Chronicle and medal. They said it when Menina wondered aloud if it would be possible to keep and display the Mendoza cycle alongside the Chronicle and the medal, to have a gallery in the convent and a shop selling copies of the medal and Chronicle and reproductions of the paintings. They said it hopefully to teams of architects and conservationists and heritage bodies who trooped around the convent, shaking their heads at the impossible job of restoring and repairing a building that ancient, historic, and huge. They had said it to insurers and museums and charitable trusts. They said it, talking themselves hoarse, giving speeches and networking and chasing official bodies for funds. And when they told Sor Teresa that the very first work to be done was new quarters for the nuns and a live-in care team of lay sisters. This provoked exclamations and warnings and a flood of advice from Sor Teresa, so Menina left it to Alejandro to explain to his aunt that in fact they were “just getting started.”

They said it when the first tentative fund-raising efforts bore fruit, and then to describe the state of perpetual upheaval—fund-raising, dignitary-visiting, building work, repairs, renovations. Alejandro said it when he asked Menina to marry him. Only when Menina, who seemed to be immune to every method of birth control, announced she was expecting their fifth child did they look at each other and say, simultaneously, “Don’t, whatever you do, say we’re just getting started!” And when his wife was tearing her hair out over yet another crisis, Alejandro would put his arms around her and remind her the best was yet to be.

And when it was suggested that Alejandro, a local hero for his part in breaking up the smuggling ring and rescuing women from the traffickers, should run for election to the Spanish parliament, the Cortes Generales, they had sat up late into the night, discussing it. Menina could see her husband was interested. “I guess just getting started—again,” she said. “It’ll be interesting! But you’re a good man for the job.” And then she told him she had some news as well, they were expecting baby number six.

Today was one of the rare occasions when Menina had time to think about anything that had happened longer than five minutes ago, and she thought about that conversation and smiled. They must have been insane thinking they could let life get any fuller, but somehow it was working. Menina had become quite good at living calmly amid chaos, just dealing with the most essential things. She had had plenty of practice. And the one thing you could say for being pregnant was that you got to sit down occasionally.

Today Menina, dressed in a pink maternity sundress, big pearls, and espadrilles, sipped orange juice as she sat in the shade of a huge umbrella out of the scorching midday sun and took stock of her life. She watched her parents enjoying a game of ring-around-the-roses with four of her daughters—Pia, Esperanza, Marisol, and Luz—in the old walled pilgrims’ garden. One-year-old Sanchia was taking her prelunch nap in her stroller.

Today she had a full house of the people she loved best, and the remaining one, her husband, was driving back in time for what promised to be a lively Spanish family lunch. The table was set in the arbor, she had postponed two urgent meetings until the next day, her parents had the children, and her assistant, Almira, was dealing with the lunch. This left her time to concentrate on the most essential and pressing matter of the moment—Becky, whom she hadn’t seen for years.

When Becky had walked through the door the previous evening Menina had to mask her shock at Becky’s appearance. Sarah-Lynn had been less reticent. “What on earth happened to that child?” she had whispered to Menina almost as soon as Becky left the room. From a distance, Menina thought Becky looked her old self. Up close, Becky’s face had fine wrinkles from a hot Iraqi sun. There were dark shadows under her eyes, her cheekbones were sharp, her nails chewed to the quick. Becky tended to hit things angrily with her crutches. Menina wanted to hug Becky and cry, which Menina knew would be a terrible mistake. So while trying to smile and chat like everything was fine, Menina was racking her brain trying to think how to help her troubled friend. Years ago the convent had helped her deal with the aftermath of rape. Maybe it would somehow help Becky just to be here. Menina should remain calm and patient and give Becky time. If Becky didn’t explode first.

Becky had written a series of brilliant pieces about the convent, the paintings, and the proposed gallery, paving the way for Menina and Alejandro’s efforts to get the huge project they envisaged off the ground. But still determined to follow the lure of adventure, she had literally been through the wars. After graduating from journalism school she had somehow finagled press credentials that took her to Afghanistan then Iraq. She had reported from one hellhole after another, getting addicted to the adrenaline rush of danger, and the crazy living-on-the-verge-of-death high that lent an intensity to everything, from relationships to a cold beer.

When Menina had tried to ask how she was, Becky had snapped that the counseling her paper had insisted on hadn’t worked and she didn’t want to talk about it. OK?

Sitting on a deck chair across from Menina, Becky was halfway through a bottle of wine and her right foot was jiggling. Immobilized in a caliper, her left leg lay heavily on the chair and her crutches were in reach. “So peaceful,” muttered Becky, then jumped like a scalded cat when from somewhere in the depths of the convent there was a loud clash of scaffolding poles, and the rattle of pulleys, then workmen shouting over a blaring radio.

Menina bit her tongue so she wouldn’t blurt out what she was thinking, that thank goodness the paper had enough sense to refuse to send Becky back. Becky had wanted to go. Iraqi women with horrifying stories to tell, things they would only tell a woman reporter, were her speciality. That was what she had been doing when the bomb detonated and blew up the café full of widows and children she was interviewing. Becky was struggling with the fact she was alive.

Menina kept her tone light, as she tried to decide whether to tell Becky that Hendrik was joining them for lunch, instead of springing it as a surprise as planned. No surprises, she decided. “Remember the UNESCO architect, Hendrik? Swedish, glasses, tall, looks like an owl? Sweet guy, you kind of liked him.”

Becky nodded and made a noise that sounded like “mmmf” or like “the married one,” depending on how closely anyone listened.

“He’s having lunch with us, and I wanted to tell you that he’s div—”

“Whatever’s cooking for lunch smells fabulous. I’m starved.” Having changed the subject, Becky ate the last of the olives and started on a dish of baby artichokes.

“Almira cooked it—it takes about twelve hours. Lamb stuffed with herbs.”

“It’s been too long since I’ve seen you.” Becky’s foot jiggled and tapped like it had a life of its own. “I miss us meeting up in Paris or Venice for a week like we used to when you first got married.”

“So do I, but as you know I’ve been the size of an elephant and unable to fly for most of the past nine years.” Menina patted her stomach. “Nice of Muhammad to come to the mountain this time. By the way, how’s your mother?” It seemed like a neutral question so Menina changed the subject and asked it.

Becky took a deep breath and tried to grin. “She says teaching kindergarten would have been so much more ladylike—well, you can imagine. She was ecstatic when I told her this assignment was a story on you and the foundation. She still thinks you’re the good influence in my life.”

“Not that we’re not glad to see you, but I didn’t get the whole story on the phone about this interview when you called two days ago. The phone connections aren’t wonderful and I’ve got diaper brain.”

“It’s ostensibly one of those ‘how does a modern woman cope with her partner’s political career, her own career, and a family’ things. I know, I know—gag! Finger down throat. But I had to pitch it that way so the paper would agree. What I really want to write about—to tie it in with religious divisions since 9/11—is the interfaith conferences here. I know you want to keep politics out of it, but Child of Light, if there’s one thing I learned covering wars, it’s that you can’t keep politics out of religion. So I kept nagging about doing a story on you and the foundation because I’ve written about war. And it occurred to me I need to write about someone trying to start a peace.”

“Any excuse to stay sitting down with my feet up.”

“OK if we do a little work now, then?” Becky reached down and fiddled with her recording equipment and swore, then angrily banged it with her fist, swearing. Menina flinched.

A little red light came on. Becky snapped “testing” into the microphone, and when she played it back it repeated “testing.”

“Finally! Now just start with what made you think about having interfaith conferences. We’ll edit later.” She pressed a switch and put the microphone between them, and Menina said what she had said many times before.

“Well, by 9/11 people from different religious groups had been meeting on what they saw as common ground here, because of the special history of this place. But it was after 9/11 we had another idea. There’s so much unused space, and if we could get the funding, we thought, why not use the cycle as the focus of an interfaith center. It made sense when you think about the parallels—religious intolerance today, and religious intolerance in the sixteenth century. People are still as anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, and anti-Christian, anti-Catholic, and anti-Protestant as ever. UNESCO finally declared it a World Heritage Site and we held the first interfaith conference about the time you went to Iraq. Word spread and more and more groups are connecting with us, and our conference center is a neutral meeting ground for everyone.

“I really like your phrase ‘starting a peace’—it’s exactly what we’d like to do and we need more funding to do it. A lot of basic work ate up the first grants—supporting walls, plumbing and electricity, and new quarters for the nuns. Things still collapse, and some new artifact turns up from time to time—there was a Roman lady’s comb the other day, for example. They finally got the special room to display the medal—it would take a nuclear bomb to open that display case—and magnified and mirrored so you can really see it. Same for the Chronicle. We need security like the Pentagon and it’s expensive. The shop sells translations of the Chronicle and the Gospel in different languages and copies of the medal and reproductions of the paintings by the thousands, so that provides income to take care of the nuns that are left. We have nurses and a resident doctor who are all nuns, willing to respect their wishes not to leave the convent, even for medical care.”

Becky shifted and switched off her machine.

“And Sor Teresa?”

“She looks frail but she’s indestructible. She still insists on getting up at dawn to make polvorónes for the café. She refused cataract surgery—believes it’s God’s will she can’t see and in return God seems to have given her a second wind. The children think she has magic powers because she told them she sees with her ears. Grumpy as she is, they adore her so I take them to visit for a few minutes most days.” Menina sighed. “She has a lot of advice about raising children.”

“I bet she does! I’ll go say hello later,” said Becky. “Now I’m going to have to write a few words about adorable you.” She switched her machine back on. “People are interested in how busy politicians’ wives with jobs and families manage, with all the extra demands on them, to look good, stay informed, and be supportive. You run this enterprise as your full-time job, Menina—how do you get everything done?”

Menina groaned. “I have no idea because I have never yet gotten everything done for just one day. I prioritize chaos. There are always workmen and architects arguing, wanting me to look at plans or arbitrate or making a huge mess just as an important delegation is due and we need to make a good impression. I visit the nuns every day, see if they need anything. Leaving aside the fact that I have five children and another due any minute, there’s correspondence and putting people in touch and speakers to organize for conferences. If we didn’t stop for lunch and a siesta I’d collapse. But if it weren’t for Almira being my assistant I would give up. She’s the efficient one.”

“But you make speeches and stuff, you’re the face of the institute. How do you manage to look so good?”

“Fortunately, being pregnant softens people up. Alejandro and I keep being overtaken by events. And Alejandro laughs and says big families are normal, and I always wanted a big family—probably the adopted-child syndrome—but he’s promised to have the snip after the next one. Very un-Spanish male of him. Oh Lord, don’t write that!” Menina leaned over and switched off the machine. “Without Mama’s help I’d look like something the cat dragged in. My dad won’t go shopping with her any more, says all he does is sit on the husbands’ bench.”

“I’ll get some photos of the kids, too; they’re adorable.”

“They need to get out of the sun now anyway. Girls, come give Mommy a big hug and have some juice,” she called.

Four little dark-eyed girls of seven, six, five, and nearly four in identical smocked sundresses raced across the courtyard, followed by their grandmother.

Becky picked up her camera and aimed it at the children. “You’ve got your work cut out for you, Mrs. Walker.” The little girls and Becky made silly faces at each other while Becky took photos.

“Yes, I do, honey. I’m blessed having so many.”

There was the sound of an engine coming up the new gravel drive through the convent gates. Menina closed her eyes and smiled happily, seeing a dark-eyed man in a blazer and an open-necked shirt, who had driven much too fast to return home, get out of the car with a big bunch of flowers for his wife.

At the bottom of the steps leading up to the old pilgrims’ garden that was now their private one, Alejandro smiled, too, as he heard his daughters’ laughter on the terrace where Menina and her mother and her friend were waiting for him, and his father-in-law calling “get ahold of yourself” to one of the children. He smelled lamb and knew his mother-in-law had set the table under the grape arbor with their wedding china and that a lazy lunch in the shade surrounded by his family and his wife’s best friend would be followed by a siesta. Pregnancy increased Menina’s appetite for sex, and then she would sleep, entwined in Alejandro’s arms while the baby kicked them both. They would visit the nuns’ quarters to hear whatever advice Sor Teresa felt was called for today. And neither of them would have traded this for anything on earth.

Alejandro was halfway up the steps to them when there was a terrible boom like an explosion, and a rumble of collapsing masonry deep inside the convent. He swore, dropped the flowers and leaped up the last stairs shouting, “Menina!”

At the top he nearly collided with Becky swinging past on her crutches propelling herself toward the explosion. She looked more than upset, she looked dangerous, face white and shrieking something incomprehensible. Alejandro quickly counted his children to be sure they were safe and gave his hand to Menina who was struggling out of her chair with a worried expression. He wrapped his arms tight around her. “Thank God!” “It’s alright, darling, it wasn’t a bomb. Hendrik warned me they were pulling a wall down in the old pilgrims’ quarter and it might be loud, but Becky’s a little shaky—I didn’t know till I saw her how badly she’d been injured. I think she’s got post-traumatic shock and she needs help. We have to get her before she kills Hendrik with her crutch.” She pulled her husband toward the cloud of dust billowing from the convent. “She’s been holding it together, by herself, for too long. She needs professional help and peace and quiet. I was so glad she was coming because I thought being here might help, but listen to her, screaming at poor Hendrik! See what I mean? And I’d asked him to join us for lunch because Becky liked him when they met before, but he was married. I didn’t have a chance to tell her he’s divorced now. I hoped meeting him again would remind her there are good guys out there…I’m an idiot.”

Steadying his pregnant wife, Alejandro muttered, “I thought it was a bomb. Not surprised she did as well. But Hendrik and Becky? Ice and fire.”

They listened and could hear Becky’s voice, high pitched and hysterical now. Coughing and waving dust away so they could see, and stepping carefully over pieces of broken wall, they went inside toward the screaming. Which suddenly stopped.

“Do you guess Hendrik’s still alive?”

Alejandro peered into the dimness then nudged Menina as the dust slowly settled. “Maybe you were right.” At the end of a long dark corridor a tall blond man in glasses had his arms protectively around a short woman with hair so sun bleached it was white in the dim light. The woman’s face was muffled in his shoulder and he was murmuring soothing indistinct words into her ear, rocking her gently back and forth. “We’ll go back and let them be,” advised Alejandro.

“Oh!” said Menina. She stopped and panted, leaning on her husband’s arm. “Oh, Alejandro, I think that was a contraction. Just a little one.”

“Thank God I’m home! I thought you weren’t due for another two weeks.”

“Babies don’t keep very good time. But it is early. Probably a false alarm.”

“Papa?”

Their four-year-old stood silhouetted in the entrance.

“Wait there, Marisol, it’s a mess in here. Too dangerous for you. Mommy and I are coming out.”

Marisol stamped her foot. “Hurry because I want to tell you! There was a lady in the garden. She came after the big bang and told me not to be scared. She had a long dress on and it blowed in the wind and I showed her my new tricycle and was ringing the bell and she smiled and went ‘Shhh.’ So I did shhh. Then she showed me a swallow nest hidden in the vines. It had little eggs in it. She asked did I want to know a secret. Guess what? Aunt Becky’s going to get married and live here. Then the lady said she lives here, too, that she was goned away but she came back. I told Granma but Granma said the lady wasn’t really there but she was, Mommy, she was!”

Menina stared at her daughter, and bent over clumsily to give her a hug. “Marisol! Oh, sweetie…” She stared up at Alejandro. “Salome?” she mouthed. He shrugged.

Then there was a snuffle and slow footsteps. A man cleared his throat. Hendrik looked at them solemnly through his horn-rimmed spectacles. “Careful,” he said. He was carrying a large rectangle that seemed to be wrapped in ragged old material. Becky, looking tearstained and drained, limped along behind him. “I was just telling Becky, that we are finding something hidden in the wall that we knocked down. This is a very interesting thing to find, I think. Come, we must see it.” Alejandro went to help him.

In the kitchen Almira hastily cleared the large refectory table and Hendrik laid the object down. Menina said, “It looks like it’s a painting. Behind the wall? Like it was hidden?” She felt another unmistakable sensation. It was a long drive to the maternity hospital in the valley, but first she had to know what this was. She carefully pulled away rotted material, blew the dust off, and underneath they could see the faint outline of a group of people. “What on earth…hand me some bread.” Almira grabbed the breadbasket ready for lunch and passed it to Menina. Everyone gathered around expectantly as Menina dabbed a little dirt off here. Then there. Even Becky looked curious.

They could see the outlines of five heads.

“Oh!” Was that another contraction? Menina tried to ignore it; she needed to know if it was what she hoped it was—the missing piece of the puzzle. She grabbed more bread and worked as quickly as possible until the sitters were visible enough for the others to see. “Esperanza gets to sit on Grandpa’s shoulders. I want to see, too; pick me up, Papa!” demanded Marisol. Alejandro swung her up. She shrieked and pointed at the figure on the right of the portrait. “Mama! There’s you!”

“She’s right!” exclaimed Becky with Hendrik at her shoulder.

“Sure enough is,” Virgil agreed. Almira’s eyes were wide. She crossed herself. The resemblance was unmistakable.

“That’s Esperanza,” said Menina. “And…and the others.” She pointed them out, identifying each one easily. Sanchia, Marisol, Pia with the hair like moonlight, and the dwarf Luz.

“But that’s my name!” Esperanza protested from Virgil’s shoulders.

“Yes, it is, just like the Esperanza in the picture who is probably your great, great…I don’t know how many great, grandma. Maybe you’ll look like her too one day when you’re older. And when you are, I’ll tell you all about them.” About these girls, and about Isabella who had become Sor Beatriz, and Salome and the Inca commander, how Esperanza had married Salome’s son Don Miguel…everything she knew about her ancestors, which she would tell them made her no less the Walkers’ daughter.

She was distracted from her musings by another contraction. A stronger one. Probably time to go.

“I’d love to eat lunch first but this baby,” she announced, “is going to be born on this table, Alejandro, if we don’t leave for the hospital at once!” There was a flurry of consternation, Almira ran to phone the hospital, Sarah-Lynn was telling Virgil where Menina’s suitcase was, and the little girls began jumping up and down. Alejandro searched his pockets frantically for his car keys, and Sarah-Lynn was giving instructions to everyone.

Menina pointed out the keys where Alejandro had put them on the kitchen table and holding his arm said, “But before I go, we’ve decided what to name her. Or actually, I think the name chose us a little while ago, when Marisol was in the garden.” She raised her eyebrows at Alejandro to see if he agreed. He nodded.

There was a chorus of “What is it? You can’t go until you tell us!”

“It’s Salome, of course,” Menina said, patting her stomach. “Salome is finally coming home.”





ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Photo © Roger Low, 2012


After ten years as a barrister, Helen Bryan left law to write full time. In 2003, she received the Award of Merit from the Colonial Dames of America for her biography Martha Washington: First Lady of Liberty. Her first work of historical fiction, War Brides, was a bestseller on Amazon. She is also the author of the law handbook Planning Applications and Appeals. Raised in Tennessee and Virginia, she currently resides in London with her family.