The Staircase by Ann Rinaldi Page A

filled with hops and heated in the oven."
    "Yes, ma'am." I started to leave. At the door, I turned. "Ma'am? Can I ride Ben when I take Mrs. Lacey to Fort Marcy? Sometimes she gets tired and—"
    "Yes, yes." She waved me off, and her attention was then on some papers on her desk. She was finished with me. I no longer
existed. I was no more than a dust mote in her eye. I closed the door and went down the hall to my first class, which was French.
Why French,
I thought,
when I need to know Spanish?

    I'd won, hadn't I? Wouldn't Uncle William be proud of me? Hadn't I taken the argument by the tail and acted with righteous indignation? She wasn't taking away Ben. I'd outsmarted her by making her think the worst thing in the world she could do to me was to make me take Mrs. Lacey to Fort Marcy every day. When I didn't mind at all. Why, she'd given me permission to take Ben, and everything.
    Except for wearing the purple uniform and going to mass and her stupid novena every day, I had bested her. Even Uncle William would say so.
    Then why did I feel as if the woman had seen into my soul? In that moment as I went down the hall to class, I recollected the Arapaho who had walked into our camp that night on the Trail, and how he had looked at me, and what he had said about me. Funny, I hadn't thought of him since then. Something in Mother Magdalena's eyes had reminded me of him.
    I felt a stab of hunger and remembered I hadn't had much breakfast. Either that, or it was a small bubble of triumph inside me bursting into a thousand pieces.

7
    MOTHER MAGDALENA'S RULE NUMBER ONE, not leaving the grounds without permission, was easy. After all, I had permission to leave every day in order to take Mrs. Lacey to the cemetery.

    I wore the school uniform, dreadful purple thing, hanging to my feet under my heavy shawl. And people were respectful to me on the street. Or maybe it was being with Mrs. Lacey. She knew everybody. We walked through town—I, leading Ben—and people waved to her. Men doffed their sombreros. We couldn't get to the end of town without being stopped by at least five people inquiring after her or telling about their troubles. She was interested in everybody's child, everybody's sick mother every new family that came in on the Santa Fe Trail.
    She had a small silk bag tied to her waist inside her warm shawl. In it were coins. She gave them out to many who spoke with her. In another silk bag, she kept candy. Some were peppermints, some licorice, and some were candy hearts. She gave these out to the little Mexican and Indian children playing
kanute
on the streets. It was a kind of shell game.
    It took us a very long time to get through town.

    We stopped at the marketplace. I loved the marketplace, with its booths piled high with red and blue corn, its hanging peppers, its melons, chamois coats, hand-carved chests, Indian pottery, Mexican turquoise jewelry, colorful shawls, and every other thing under the sun.
    I loved the sleepy burros that stood waiting for their masters to sell their wares. I stared at the dark-eyed
señoritas
smoking
cigarillos
in the doorways. Elinora had told me they wore no underwear. They didn't wear petticoats, I could see that. Or corsets or long sleeves. Their skirts reached just above their ankles. Never had I seen women so boldly dressed.
    Mrs. Lacey bought me a pair of Indian moccasins and candy that looked like shelled corn. I protested. "You are my friend," she said. And I stopped protesting, knowing it was enough.
    We walked past the Governor's Palace on Central Plaza. At the end of the building was a large grillwork door. Mrs. Lacey knew the prisoner behind that door. She called him Billy the Kid. He came to the grillwork to say hello to her. He was young and sassy. She chatted with him awhile and told him how proud she was of the part he'd taken with the Regulators in the Lincoln County War. "Nobody appreciated what you people did," she told him.
    He thanked her. She gave him some