The Staircase by Ann Rinaldi Page B

candy, and we went on. "He's New Mexico's Jesse James," she said. "He'll escape from prison, don't worry."
    "He can't be Billy the Kid," I said, "or we would have heard he was here." Surely the gossipy girls at school would have mentioned it.
    "Oh, I call him Billy. He likes it and goes along with it. It enlivens his days."
    Once I got her up the hill to Fort Marcy, the miseries would come upon me. The grave site, the whole cemetery, made me uneasy. Not because the dead were there. Not because some of their bones were coming to the surface. But because I wished Mama were here, and I thought of her lonely grave covered over with stones on the prairie. And my spirit would be so spent that I wanted to stand there and howl out my misery like a wolf.

    Each day I'd look for her, but so far I hadn't seen Delvina.
    "Where is she?" I asked Mrs. Lacey on the third visit to the cemetery.
    "She's here."
    "But where?"
    "She's not ready for you to see her yet. There are really a lot of people here."
    "A lot?" I looked around at the deserted fort with its crumbling walls through which the wind whistled. I felt eyes watching me.
    "Some are very old gods," she explained patiently, while she lit the lantern in the little stone cubicle next to her son's grave. "Some are ghosts, like Governor Perez. He was beheaded by the Pueblo Indians forty years ago. And some are alive. Like Delvina and Lozen. It's a wonderful place to hide."
    I looked into her eyes and saw she was having one of her "moments." So I got on Ben and rode off to the edges of Fort Marcy, where there were cedar and Russian olive trees. The afternoon sun was warm, but this first week in November there was snow on top of the Sangre de Cristos in the east. I saw sheep grazing on distant mesas. I knew dark would come quickly. It was my job to get Mrs. Lacey home before dark.
Already the sun was getting itself ready to drop behind the Jemez Mountains in the west.

    I could smell the smoke of the piñon logs, rising in the air from fireplaces in town. Dusk was my worst time for the miseries. I felt my losses stand out sharply inside me. I felt my soul like the landscape around me, its green places all gone, its pain jutting out, exposed and unprotected, like the bare bones in the cemetery. Once back at the academy the hustle and bustle; the chatter of the five girls who boarded, Lucy and Consuello, Winona, Rosalyn, and Elinora; the sounds and smells from the kitchen, where supper was being prepared, would distract me. So I wanted to get back, away from here.
    Still, I would wait a bit and give Mrs. Lacey her time. I knew she had prayers to say, that in still another sack she had food for Delvina, that before we departed she must set it out and leave it. So I devoted myself to Ben and the view. But I still felt eyes on me.

    THAT FIRST WEEK at the academy I was so confused I felt like a mule in a mud hut. Every which way I turned I broke some rule.
    The convent was like a mirage in the desert. Everything looked calm and inviting and peaceful and elegant. But none of those qualities were there. The nuns never raised their voices, but their sad disapproval was damnation in whispers. Sin was everywhere, in everything I did.
    During the week when all the girls were present, to speak at meals was a sin. You had to be quiet, while a nun read from some book of lessons that told about saints undergoing whippings and being eaten by lions, and having their heads cut off to preserve their souls.
    To swear was a sin, and of course I'd learned to swear from Uncle William. To eat meat on Friday was a sin. On Friday you ate fish. And all I could think of was Fridays on the Trail, when we were so happy to bag an antelope or a rabbit.

    To have pride was a sin. Humility was everything, though all the girls preened and boasted and glowed when they got praise from the nuns. To have impure thoughts was a sin. I'd been having them for two years already. Chastity was the biggest prize of all, the one you