Using the books in her father’s library she taught herself about the maths and sciences. In Catalina’s time girls were not typically educated. Intelligent thought was something that was considered a virtue of only men. Catalina’s father however saw things differently.
Over time her father taught her the math of the heavens. He taught Catalina how to map and follow the stars.
Catalina’s father passed away in the seventh year of the reign of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. After her father died she continued to learn. She continued to expand her knowledge. She did this for her father. She did this because in some way this meant that his memory lived on. Her continued quest for knowledge was her father’s legacy. However, she also did this for herself. From her father she understood that it was the duty of a person to continue learning. The pursuit of knowledge was an important thing and it was something that a person should work their whole life for. It was important to understand the world and all that surrounded it.
She continued her quest for knowledge and along the way something amazing happened. She was enrolled at a university. She was one of the first women to ever to be allowed this privilege.
At the University, Catalina began to see things differently. She began to see new truths beyond the ones she had been taught her whole life. Catalina was Catholic and her faith was strong. However, she realized that there was something that the teachers at her University were missing in regards to the fundamental workings of the world. The world around them was not like they believed it to be. God had created a more wondrous universe then any of them could truly imagine. Catalina understood this when she looked at the stars. The heavens were far more mysterious then people understood. But wasn't this the way things should be? If God was greater than us all shouldn't the world he created be more wondrous then the minds of lesser beings could ever comprehend?
She began to question her teachers. They often could not answer her questions. However, instead of focusing on these unanswered questions they would grow angry with her. They began to treat her with hostility.
Catalina could not quiet her mind. She took it upon herself to find her own answers to her questions. She began studying in secret. She read books that were forbidden. They were books that talked about the universe as a machine. They talked about the world not being the center of things. These ideas did not shake Catalina’s faith. Instead they made her faith grow.
She began to understand the greatness of God was the power of infinity. To understand infinity all one had to do was look at the night sky. Catalina would often look up at the stars and wonder about them. Sometimes she dreamed that she could fly among the stars like a bird. In her dreams she could hold the stars. In her dreams the stars were like diamonds. In dreams she flew amongst diamonds in the night sky.
Then one day she understood something. It clicked in her mind and made perfect sense. The Sun in the sky during the day was like one of those diamonds in her dreams. However, it was a diamond that was near. Far, far away were other diamonds just like the Sun. Perhaps around these other diamonds were lands like hers.
She began to discuss this with her teachers. This would be her great folly.
There was something in the air. It was a madness that heaped scorn on those who sought to question traditional wisdoms. Science was a new way. It was met with hostility by those who only understood the old way of religion. Their minds were unwavering. Their ears were deaf. They would immediately seek to silence Catalina when she spoke to them and began to share her ideas. They did not listen to logic. Their minds were buried under the absolute conviction that there was nothing else to learn. To them there was one will and there was one wisdom. That was the wisdom of the Church. That wisdom was absolute. There was no room for questioning. There was no room for doubt. Catalina was told repeatedly that she could have all the understanding that she needed from the simple lessons of religion.
Catalina realized the ones who scolded her did not want their minds weighed down with the extra work of understanding new ideas. However, Catalina’s mind thirsted to expand her knowledge.
Unfortunately, she was in the wrong age for this. Spain was currently in a struggle between the old and the new. All over the country special tribunals were being set up for those who would question the Church’s teachings. In each Parish inquisitors were dispatched. They sought out those who would undermine the word of the Catholic Church. Those that did question the Church’s teachings were labeled by many names. One such name was heretic.
Catalina was born in a time of madness and she was cursed with two sins. The first sin was that she would question the way things were and the lessons she was taught. The second sin was that she was a woman. Questioning was an egregious fault but for a woman to do so was unfathomable.
One day the inquisitors came to her home and she was brought before a tribunal. Catalina was interrogated. Those in the tribunal did not like her responses and she was imprisoned to give her time to reflect on her sins.
They offered her a reprieve. All she had to do was recant the logic and wisdom that she had worked so hard to acquire. However, her father had raised too determined and defiant a daughter for that.
She was brought before the tribunal again and when she would not recant she was labeled a heretic. They gave her options. They offered her forgiveness as long as she agreed to never speak of these things again. She refused. They then offered her life in a cell. As she looked in their eyes of anger and hatred she saw her father. She saw her father looking back at her. She saw him giving her strength. Her father had taught her through the teachings of the great thinkers, that wisdom was everything. Knowledge was the true key to the salvation of the soul.
Catalina thought of Socrates. He had been punished for asking too many questions. His questions had outlived the hatred of his persecutors. That was what was important. Truth can never die. It can be oppressed. It can be scorned. It can be persecuted but it will never die. Maybe someone generations from now would find some of Catalina’s writings. Perhaps they would feel the same awe that she had felt reading her forbidden books of science and math.
She continued refusing to turn her back on knowledge. She would not call the truth a lie. She would not call the quest for knowledge a sin. Instead she fought. She fought for what was right the way her father had taught her too.
This sin was intolerable to her persecutors. The greatest crime was to fight them. For this sin a judgment was passed. The judgment was to break her.
They tried. They sent her to their dungeons and they tried hard to break her spirit. They succeeded only in breaking her body.
In the dungeon cells she was not alone. The inquisition found many like her. The torturers were kept busy. However, though they were separated in different cells hearing the screams of one another provided many of them strength. Together without words or ever seeing one another they understood each other. They understood that for each scream someone was standing up for their beliefs. Someone was standing up for truth.
The torturers never broke Catalina’s mind. They never broker her spirit. Since they could not break her they decided to erase her. She would be an example. It was decreed that Catalina would be burned at the stake for her heresy.
The night before her execution, as Catalina was awaiting the flames of the next day, she stood in her cell staring out her small window. She was trying to see the stars. She wondered about all mysteries they held that she would never know.
As she stared out the window she could not help but feel some despair.
Would the madness always win? she wondered. She thought of the smile of the inquisitor as he passed his condemnation upon her. Would the wickedness of ignorance and prejudice always reign?
As she pondered this she heard a noise in her cell. She turned to see what had made the noise. Had her torturers come to perpetuate some final punishment? Had they come to offer her one last chance to repent?
Catalina’s cell looked suddenly strange. The walls were
now grey. They reminded her of smoke from a wet fire. She felt almost as if she could step through the walls.
That’s when she saw a large man in the corner. His head was bald and his eyes were wide. He was giggling slightly.
“Hello, Catalina,” a voice in the shadows said.
A figure stepped out of the darkness. It was an old women.
Catalina didn’t know what to say. The moment was strange.
The old woman looked over Catalina’s tattered and torn body.
“I’m sorry, Catalina,” she said. “But we have to take something from you. It is something that we need greatly.”
The moment was surreal, but Catalina managed to find her voice.
“What? What are you here to take?” Catalina asked.
The woman paused for a moment before replying.
“We have to take your mind,” she said. After a few seconds she went on. “We have to take a piece of it.”
The old woman looked like a foreigner but Catalina noted her Castilian was perfect. She stood with the aid of a cane.
The woman continued speaking. “I’m sorry for all that you have had to endure. I'm sorry for what will come tomorrow.”
“Who are you?” Catalina asked.
“I am like you. I am a seeker of knowledge. I am a seeker of wisdom. And we need your mind very badly. Often…we just take. Time is not a luxury we have. Even for those who know no boundaries in time. So, we just take. But not from you. I cannot bring myself to do that. You have fought your whole life to push wisdom forward. You should be one of us. But you are not. You have worked your whole life to fill your mind. But we need to take it from you. We need to take the best parts of you.”
The old woman looked at Catalina and sighed.
“But for your struggle,” the old woman said. “For standing up for the knowledge you gained I will not forcefully take away from you what they could not. I will ask you for it. You can deny me of your own free will. But know this…. what you give me can help to save a future. So that those stars outside your window can shine forever.”
Catalina thought about the women’s words. This was all madness. However, life was madness and Catalina had learned in that madness the value of knowledge.
In Catalina’s heart she knew there was truth to the woman’s words. This old woman talked of protecting the future. The future was always the most important thing. Because as long as there is always a tomorrow, there is always hope.
Catalina realized she was at a moment that was more real then all of the reality she had ever known. Tomorrow her body and mind would go up in flames. Through this old woman she saw hope. She saw hope that some part of the knowledge that she had fought for would go on. As mad as the whole thing sounded it was a glimmer of hope in this darkness.
Catalina nodded.
“Yes,” was all she said.
The old woman gave a sad smile.
“Lay back my child,” she said. Catalina did as she was told. She lay on the dirt floor of her cell. The woman came up behind her. Using her cane for support the old woman knelt carefully behind Catalina.
Catalina felt pain. She felt blood running from her head. Catalina had gotten to know the feeling of her blood running from her body well over the last several months.
The old woman began speaking.
“I am taking the essence of what makes you so special, Catalina. I am taking your genius.”
The old woman paused for a moment.
“I can take your pain too,” the old woman said. “I can make it so tomorrow you will not feel the fires. I can make you numb to the flames.”
Catalina reflected on this. The thought of the fire frightened her. After a moment she replied, “If I do not feel the pain upon my death for all I fought for then what was the point of my suffering for it through my life?”
The old woman nodded. She understood.
A few moments later the old woman was done.
“I have what I needed my dear. I thank you.” She looked at Catalina’s eyes which were now devoid of focus. “The stars thank you,” the old woman said. She leaned over and kissed Catalina’s forehead. She stood up and walked towards the smiling man with the wild eyes. She grabbed his hand and together they stepped through the fog. A moment later they were gone.
They took with them part of Catalina’s mind. Yet Catalina’s body remained in the cell that she had lived in for too long. She still lay on her back. She stared at the ceiling with an empty gaze. However, in her mind she could see the heavens. In her mind she could see the stars.
***
For Isiah life came down to one choice. It was a simple choice. It was a choice to either stand up or to live life on your knees.
Isiah had made his choice in life. He would stand.
It was a time of change. It was time of much needed change. Isiah lived for a cause. He lived for a cause that was started by a woman on a bus.
Over the last year Isiah had thought of this woman often. She was an old woman and she had started something amazing. She taught people how to stand by sitting. The woman’s name was Rosa Parks and a year ago she boarded a bus. She sat down in the first available seat of the bus. The seat was near the front of the bus. She wasn’t supposed to do that. It was simply not the way things were done. She was black after all. Blacks were not allowed to sit in the front of the bus in the state of Alabama.
The fact that blacks were not allowed to sit where they chose was nothing strange. It was life. It was the only life anyone had ever known.
However, Rosa Parks made a simple decision. She decided that when she was told to move that she would not. She instead remained seated. In refusing to stand up and move she taught a whole generation that it was possible to stand up and fight.
Isiah lived among a generation of people who questioned why things were the way they were. They wondered if things should be different. Change was in the air. A generation was now deciding to stand up.
It was a time to fight for change and there were many heroes arising in this fight. One of these heroes was a reverend named Martin Luther King Jr. Isiah saw him on TV doing interviews. He also saw speeches on TV that the reverend gave. When Isiah heard the Reverend King speak his heart would swell with pride. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of a world where people didn’t have to sit in the back of the bus because of the color of their skin.
People all over the country were standing up now. They were fighting. Amidst this Isiah made his own decision. He would stand up too. He would stand up for himself. He would stand for his family. He would stand up for the future.
Isiah sought to find a way to be a part of this great cause. He found what he was looking for. Just like Rosa Parks he would stand by sitting. He found a group of people in his county. They were blacks like him and they were organizing a series of sit ins. They would go into places that they were not allowed to go into. They would go into restaurants that had signs that said “Whites Only.” They would go into these places and they would sit. When they were told they needed to leave they would remain seated.
Isiah’s father told him not do this.
“This is just the way the world is, son,” his father would say. “We can’t change these things.”
Isiah saw it differently. He saw a world where his sisters could drink out of any water fountain they wanted. He saw a world where his sisters did not have to go to subpar bathrooms.
Isiah remembered an incident that occurred with his father when Isiah was still a child. This incident too had occurred on a bus. It occurred when Isiah was eight years old. He and his father had gone into town to purchase some hardware items. His father bought them both a soda pop at one of the local pharmacies and then they headed home.
They boarded a bus that was nearly full. Together they moved to the back of the bus as was customary.
The bus made another stop. Some white people got on the bus. It was clear there were not enough seats for everyone. The bus driver walked to the back of the bus and spoke to
Isiah’s father.
“Sorry nigger you need to get off the bus,” the driver said.
Isiah saw anger in his father’s eyes. Then he saw his father turn his head down. Isiah saw something that would forever bother him. He saw his father simply accept what was occurring. He was accepting it because it was the way of the world.
The image of his father’s acceptance of the way he was treated was part of what pushed Isiah to join this fight for equality.
Tonight, Isiah was going to his third sit in. Isiah and his friends had been arrested on the two previous occasions. They suspected the same would occur tonight.
Isiah was with four of his friends tonight. He was with Marcus, David, and Ethel.
As they stared at the diner across the street from where they were standing they all felt nervous. It was David who spoke to calm their nerves.
“We can do this,” David said.
David looked to each of them reassuringly.
Together they crossed the street and entered the diner. The moment they entered the restaurant everyone in the diner stopped what they were doing and turned to stare at them. The silence was thick. Finally, a waitress behind the counter said, “I think you boys have the wrong place.”
Isiah could feel his heart pounding in his chest. He approached the counter. His three friends followed. The people sitting at the counter moved away. Isiah stared at the vacated seats before him. That moment seemed to last an eternity.
Isiah sat.
“I want a menu,” he said.
Isiah’s friend sat with him.
“Will!” the waitress behind the counter shouted.
A moment later the cook appeared from the kitchen. He stared at Isiah and his group of friends. There was hatred that burned in the cook’s eyes. He walked to where Isiah was sitting and he stood before him. The cook grabbed a menu.
“You want to know what’s on the menu?” the cook asked.
Prisons of Stolen Dreams Page 4