A rose with thorns

Aly shivered in my arms. I hurried along the wet road avoiding what puddles that I could. The rain had begun less than half an hour ago yet we were drenched. My jeans were tight, muddy and soaked. The mud was caked all over the bottoms of my shredded jeans. I almost cried in relief when I finally saw the dark looming gates of the convent of Santa Lucia. The holes between the bars were not big enough for an average 17-year-old girl and a two-year-old girl to fit through, but it didn’t matter. Neither of us had eaten a real meal in days. Somehow we made our way to the door. I set Aly down on the cobblestone step so I could knock on the door. I pounded on the door with my remaining strength before I fainted out of exhaustion.
I woke up lying under soft rose scented sheets. I was sure it was a dream. I pinched myself because after everything that had happened I was certain this was a cruel trick being played on me by the heavens above. Once I fully realized that none of it was a hoax my thoughts instantly jumped to my daughter. I raised my bruised body out of the bed only to fall because I was not prepared for the height of the bed. The noise I made when I fell to the cold linoleum floor did not go unheard, as it would have been back home.
A tall Mexican woman hurried into the room and helped me back into the bed. Her black hair flowed down her back in ringlets. Her face was very striking. She had full red lips and round cheeks and her eyes were in perfect crystal shapes. She looked and still looks way too beautiful to be a nun. There was a fierceness in her silver eyes that reminded me of the stories my mother once told me of the Catholic women who took up arms and were brave to fight for what they believed in. The Cristeros women . For me that was enough confirmation that she was a nun.
I tried to ask her about Aly. She wanted to have me stay in bed. I fought the woman determined to get to my baby girl. “Por favor, debo encontrar a mi pequeña muchacha.” My weak voice pleaded to the woman. She told me to call my child’s name. I called Aly and my baby toddled into the room. Her face lit up when she saw me and that made me feel warm inside. Aly settled in my arms sucking her thumb ,where she belonged as I begged for us to stay. The lady put up her hands and said that we could discuss that when I was well and after we ate. I was sure she was holding off on discussing it in Aly’s hearing.
“Baby girl , go see the nice nuns and wait for me there, it will take me awhile to come down.” I told Aly. She skipped out of the room and I could hear her little feet lightly bouncing on the ground. The lady helped me get up and make my way to the door. She gave me a warm robe to wear over the nightgown I was dressed in. I told her some story about how Aly was a child I found and I was a high school student whose bus on a field trip got hijacked by bandits and I ran. She gave me a look of such disbelief I knew I wasn’t going anywhere.
“My name is Esperanza-Damaris Llosa head abbess of this convent. You have asylum here for as long you need it.” I broke in to try to make excuses and tell her the truth. She cut me off just as fast as I tried to cut her off. “I don’t care to know your story. It isn’t important. You and your daughter are here and you can stay. As long as you aren’t a fugitive from the law?” I shook my head no. “I don’t need to know what happened, or why or whose fault it is. You can work here and raise your child for as long as you need to. There is no need for you lie to us or tell us the full truth, we won’t report you. Who are you?” She spoke matter of factly as if there was no problem with me, an American citizen running to México. She treated me as if she believed that I was trying my best to survive. She seemed willing to protect us if we kept to her simple guidelines.
The way she shot to the heart of the matter and only asked me the most crucial information made me respect her well enough to answer. She also spoke to me in English and made the effort to switch tongues. “I don’t have a name,” is what I told her testing to see how much she’d believe me. She replied in the same tone that she didn’t believe me and reprimanded me over my lie. Reluctantly I gave her a straight answer.” My name is Kyra Vasquez. I am seventeen.” That wasn’t all she wanted to know.
“And the child,” she prompted me. I was hesitant but a reflexive nerve that it was better for me to trust her than not, loosened my tongue. “ Aly, her full name is Alessandra Vasquez. Her father is dead. Suicide. She is two and a half years old.” She was satisfied with that intake of information. She helped me down the hall to the dining room and we ate a delicious Mexican meal. The nuns all seemed to accept her acceptance of me and they already seemed charmed by Aly. Afterwards Lady Esperanza sent me back to bed and I slept with Aly in my arms. A couple of weeks of rest and the wholesome food restored Aly and I back to full health.
We all called the Abbotess Lady Esperanza because Cecilia said she used to be from a noble family. She kept up a close relationship with all of us. Only she seemed to know why everyone was there. The nuns were willing to keep their silence about me if I also kept my mouth shut. More than one of the nuns seemed to have stories almost as crazy as mine. I don’t think that they are all actually nuns and Cora’s sister; Ana had the same wariness of a runaway. They don’t try to delve into my history so I let theirs also lie.
Aly always has something to occupy her; she often will spend her hours in the kitchen tasting the different concoctions Cecilia comes up with. My job is to do any manual work to be done. I am strong after the year I spent on the run, from all the ordeals I had to face. The convent is very simple but ornate. The entire convent was centered around the central courtyard where the water pump and garden was situated. The church occupied the eastern wall of the courtyard; the kitchen, dining room, and the rooms we slept were along the side parallel from the church. The chapel was situated on the northern side and the southern side of the convent was Lady Esperanza's rooms and the office and food stores.
My thoughts were interrupted when the bucket slipped. I cursed even though I wasn’t supposed to and tried to salvage the rest of the water that didn’t spill. The icy cold water sloshed in my shoes because I had the bucket balanced between my legs and while I wasn’t thinking I knocked it over. The iron pump refused to pump after I righted the bucket. I pressed down on the old fashioned pump with my calloused hands. My muscles screamed as I pushed the pump up and tried to get it down. “Ugh! Why can’t we just get a newer pump,” I muttered to myself.
“Because then we wouldn’t have to kill ourselves pumping water and the younger ones of the convent like you and me might be lazy because they aren’t dead from fighting the pump. How awful a thought!“ commented Ana sarcastically. Ana told me that Lady Esperanza had sent her to come get me. I willingly set down the heavy plaster bucket I had been trying to fill to go answer her call. The work I do in the garden and the manual work was good because it exhausted me so that I barely manage to make it through meals, mass and to Alys bedtime. I spend my time after the final mass telling Aly stories or reading to her, and often I fall asleep with her in her bed. I love being in the fresh air and working, but pumping water for the kitchen and the water for mass was one of my least favorite tasks. It did help to sincerely drain me of the energy to fuss and worry how much longer I had till being found out though.
Ana walked with me to the Lady’s room. I questioned her trying to find out why I was being sent for. The lady almost always came down when she had other work for me to do because she enjoyed checking on me. It was surprising that she had sent someone. Ana didn’t seem to know what was wanted of me at this time. Ana was only nineteen just one year older to my eighteen. She and I had become friends through closeness in age and we were both runaways though we never spoke of it. Our pasts united us more than we let on in words. Two people with secrets make great friends, I tell you. Both are trying so hard to protect their own enigma that they are too busy to solve the riddles of others. Ana, Cora, Cecilia and Lady Esperanza were the women who made up Aly and my circle of family during the year and a half we spent there.
Ana and I knocked on the Lady’s door twice before it opened. The mahogany door had borne the weight of many generations. Each intricate pattern that decorated it was a remembrance to a member of the convent who had died or been lost. The oldest nun in the convent at the time of the death was given the honor of inscribing the chosen adornment. The years passed and each embellishment would interlace and merge into one. The Lady asked for me to come in and dismissed Ana. Ana gave me a thumb's up and a goofy grin as she walked away. I waved and turned to walk into the Lady’s study.
The world of the Lady never failed to amaze me. Her study was enhanced beautifully. She had an elaborate tapestry woven on her wall depicting the Lady Guadalupe holding an enfant.
“ Kyra, there has been word of a missing girl from the same time you came to us. A woman has been asking around about a Latina girl with a baby who might have come here any time from six months ago to a year and a half ago. She clams the girl ran away with the girl’s baby daughter. She came to a local village and pressured them for information but no one was willing or able to give her any. A farmer alerted me as soon as she visited yesterday. The farmer suspects her to be a social worker, which said she was from the Utah area in America. I only ask because I will protect you if you are the one they are looking for, and I can’t protect you without you telling me the truth. All of it” she narrowed her eyes at me.
The elaborate exquisiteness of her chambers fell away. That knocked the wind out of me. My first thoughts were to run, again. If I wasn’t safe even in Mexico I could flee farther south. Then I remembered Ana and the Lady and this place that had been my home for the past couple of months. The work was hard and tough but I didn’t work harder than anyone else here. I had just recently begun to understand the sermons that I heard in mass and Aly loved those services. The candles and the singing lit up her face.
Santa Lucia convent was way different than my previous life. “I spent my first fourteen years the perfect Mexican daughter but always overshadowed by my older brother a sport star. Then I met Alessandra’s father, Andy and he appreciated me. Mamma loved me and in some world I suppose Papa did too but Kyle was always their first baby. If I got B grades or won an award for writing I hade to get A grades and be athletic cause Kyle did. I was always just comparison second to him. Andy encouraged me in my dreams and he wanted me to be happy. Andy defended me from the people at school who picked on me. Mamma and papa didn’t mind me seeing him though he was two years older because it meant I demanded less attention. Then I got pregnant with my baby at fifteen years old. Mamma and Papa didn’t have a choice but to let me have the baby. Kyle was excited that he would be an uncle and he was proud of me. Kyle was all that mattered to my parents. Aly was born and Andy and my parents loved her. When she was seven months old Andy and an old buddy of his took illegal guns into my high school and massacred 13 people. My brother was one of those people to perish in the Columbine tragedy. Andy killed himself after shooting the people. My parents neglected Aly and I after that out of their grief I heard them talking about new papers and a special school but didn’t find out about it till the next day. Then three months later on her and my birthday they threw us a party. They invited a social worker to my home, she offered me two choices. That I go to a special school and therapy and I would lose legal guardian ship of my daughter to my parents or I could giver her up and leave my parents home until I was 18 and court would decide who would raise my daughter. I ran. I lived on the streets selling drugs to keep us alive for the next year and half. Then I crossed the Texan border into Mexico and I asked local farmers for a place to stay and they sent me here. The social worker and my parents want Alessandra, not me. Please don’t let me lose her.” I pleaded and was almost reduced to tears. The Lady promised to do what she could and told me to go back and not worry about it. That when the time came they would hide us and warn us if needed.
I went back to my work with a heavy heart. I was scared for the first time in 6 months. I didn’t want to give Aly up nor did I want to leave. For the second time in my life I was appreciated and not treated like a second-best and I was willing to fight for that right. Tears sparkled in my eyes threatened to rebel against my will and fall. I finally got the pump to work and I got water flowing. I carried the water to the places it needs to go and then I went to clean up for mass.
Aly surprised me by humming along to the hymns in mass. I had barely memorized the time we got communion. She held tight to my hand as we went to get communion and kneel. ‘Please keep my baby safe, don’t ever let her smile fade. Let her get to grow up unlike Kyle. And please God, let me get to witness it. Gracias’, I prayed hoping he would be listening. Maybe he was maybe he wasn’t. I heard nothing more of the social worker for the next six months.
I finally memorized the prayers and Alessandra got to join the choir even if unofficially. She sung for the Sunday masses. It made me proud to watch her four-year-old voice try to match pitch with the other trained singers. I always smiled when she blew kisses at me and waved excitedly from the front of church. The nuns never rebuked her for it because they loved her too. The next six months were spent in utter bliss. I loved being part of a community and so did Aly. She had one mother but many adopted aunts and sisters and mentors. Cecilia adopted her as official taster for the kitchen and refused to let anyone else have her job.
When they came I was teaching Aly her letters in English. She was learning Spanish but I wanted her to learn English too. Her chubby fingers couldn’t quite grasp the chalk right. I reached over to grab her fingers and guide her through her name. When her tiny innocent smile vanished, I knew something was wrong. A shadow fell against the scrap paper we were using. I brushed a runaway black curl out of her eyes and averted my own upward. The Lady was leading my parents and the social workers too us. I stood up and picked up my four year old Alessandra. She was heavy but I was strong. The Lady wore a glance of utter hopelessness on her face. She told me that the social worker came bearing legal permits and she had to open the doors. I could tell that she regretted having not resisted.
The last time I saw my parents and the social worker, I was crying, a child, and my father hit my mamma. Well, I was no longer a child. I had grown up in my time on the run and living in Mexico and I no longer cried for lack of something to cry over. With my baby in my open arms with her arms around my neck trusting, I defiantly met the social workers eyes. Alessandra only knew that I disliked the social worker and for some reason Abuelo and Nona too and blindly trusting glared at them too. I no longer feared my parents. If the social worker could make the Lady, who had escaped The Massacre in Haiti long ago to make it here and who protected all of us-follow her, then I had to be wary. I kept my mouth shut as the Social worker pleaded with me to just try one of the options. She knew I had not forgotten.
Mamma asked me to see sense but I wondered what sense there was to see. Ana heard the ruckus and came over to stand beside me. I was nineteen now and they could not deny me my rights to my child but they did have those papers that I avoided all those years ago. Mamma beckoned to Alessandra and Papa told her to go to her grandmother. To my credit, Alessandra stubbornly shook her head. The social worker came to take her from my arms, and I refused to give her and Alessandra refused to go. I was proud but it was the wrong time to show it.
“Kyra, stop being a stubborn child and let the child come with us. We have rights to her. She will be better off. You are not fit to raise her,” Papa tried to reason. He stopped in his tracks when I flat out refused. “NO! I am not a child. I am nineteen and under the country’s laws you are trying to take her from me, I am an adult. You have no rights to her, she isn’t yours. You want her because Kyle lost his life so you want to take away the only reason I have to live. She is fine here; I have raised her so far. I love her, you don’t. She loves me. I am happy here and so is she. I barely survived you myself and so did Kyle. Alessandra is to me what Kyle was to you. She has what it takes to be somebody and I can’t let you ruin her. Kyle and Andy were the only ones who loved me back home,” I argued with my parents. At the sound of my brother and my love’s names, my father swore and my mother crossed herself. ‘Papa Andy was a better man than you and so was Kyle. Andy did not kill Kyle, his friend did. He tried to keep his friend from killing Kyle. He did that for ME. He hated Kyle too but because Kyle was the brother to the mother of his child he tried to save him. He wounded Kyle trying to end it there but Kyle didn’t survive. I asked people who were at the shootings who survived. I am not going with you, and neither is my daughter. Kyle would not have wanted you to do this and neither does Alessandra. That is final. I am the daughter you raised me to be and I learned from you not to listen. No estoy apesadumbrado.” I told them my final words.
I started to walk away with Alessandra at my side. I don’t know where I planned to go. My father started coming towards me and the Lady tried to stop him. My father pulled out a gun and was about to shoot her through grief and blame. Ana walked in front of the bullet, it went through her and swerved around the Lady and hit the old pump. The Lady took the gun from my father and emptied out the bullets before he could react. She threw the bullets far and wide. Some landed in the pump hole and some flew farther. My father went crazy in that moment, he ran out of the convent and into smugglers. He was never found alive. My mother went home and so did the social worker.
Alessandra sang at Ana’s funeral service. We buried her in the garden. I was given the honor of inscribing a pattern in the door. I put to wood a rose with thorns, because that’s what she was. Ana was a rose but she was a runaway and so she had her own thorns.
A year later on the anniversary of Ana’s death, I was walking with the Lady and Alessa as she now wanted us to call her and the pump just stopped working all together.
“About time I get a new pump, don’t you think Kyra?” remarked the Lady. We cracked up. It was funny for some odd reason. We kept laughing and didn’t stop for hours. Alessa walked inside when it started raining calling us loco. I smiled my first real smile since Ana and smiled it big. That’s what she would of wanted. Now the convent is my home for now and till I die or Alessa wants to move on.