Magnolia City

by Duncan W. Alderson

  “You were so right to send me to see Velma,” Hetty said, joining them on the floor. “I feel so much better. She actually forgave me, Tía.”

  “Now you can forgive yourself.”

  “I know. I don’t feel that noose around my neck anymore.”

  “I noticed it was gone the minute you walked in the room.”

  Hetty laughed. “What are you doing with these prisms?”

  “I’ve been studying Goethe’s experiments with color. I thought Pierce might find them fun.”

  “Don’t you think he’s a little young for optics?”

  “I’m afraid you’re right. He’d rather suck on them than look through them.”

  Pierce held a prism up, and Hetty took it from him. She looked through the sparkling glass at the windows and let a little gasp of breath escape when she saw the colors coating everything. “I see rainbows around the windows. Where did they come from?” she wondered, lowering the prism.

  “They arise where the light and dark clash,” Cora said. “That was Goethe’s theory. He said something I find intriguing as an artist—color is the deeds and suffering of light.”

  Hetty looked again. She saw the usual rainbows, with their deep rivers of purple rising up into blue and green and falling back into streams of orange and red. But then Hetty spotted something else that made her eyes tingle with mystery.

  “Tía, I can’t believe this. I think I’m seeing another rainbow! Is that possible?”

  “What good eyes your mother has,” Cora said to Pierce. “Can you describe it?”

  “It’s like the butt end of the rainbow, where the purple and red overlap.” Hetty studied this unfamiliar iridescence appearing around the dark strips that held the panes of glass in place. It gave birth to a radiant rose magenta framed by turquoise and gold. “Cézanne said we live in a rainbow of chaos. Is this it?”

  “You’re looking at one of the mysteries of the universe, my dear niece. Not chaos, but darkness. A rainbow of darkness. Out of it comes that indescribable shade of pink. I’ve been trying to capture it in paint.”

  “It’s like a little glimpse of heaven.” Hetty glanced at Cora. “But why did you call it one of the mysteries of the universe?”

  “Look again. It’s lighter than the two colors forming it.”

  Hetty lifted the prism to her eyes. Cora was right. The deep purple and red met and merged to form a prismatic pink many shades lighter. I like this better than chaos, Hetty thought. Much better! “I saw it once. In a sunset over the Galvez Hotel during my honeymoon. Garret and I were out on the sandbar. I won’t tell you what we were doing.”

  “You do see magenta in the sky at times—if you’re lucky. Goethe said it surpassed all other colors in beauty and splendor.”

  “He’s right. It sure did that day.” A pang gripped Hetty’s heart when she remembered clinging to her husband in the ocean as a rainbow of darkness spread itself across the sky. She longed to feel his hands on her again. How could she let him leave without her?

  Later, she heaved her baby off the floor and held him so he could see the paintings his great-aunt was working on. It looked to Hetty like Cora was driving her dreamscapes into the realm of nightmare. There were nuns with animal heads, melting boulders, monstrous beings part modern, part Mayan, and towns flooded by rivers. Everything was painted against a midnight blue sky blazing with stars.

  “I put the stars on with gold leaf. They’re all for a show at my gallery in October. I’m calling it Quimeras.”

  “They’re fantastical, all right.”

  “Yes, but it’s one of those Spanish words that has a delicious double meaning. It also means quarrels.”

  “Ah,” Hetty said, noticing a half-finished canvas of nuns engaged in a bloody quarrel with knives. As she followed Cora out of the studio toward the kitchen, a painting stacked next to the door transfixed her. A large canvas, four foot by five, depicted the kind of sacrificial well where Mayans might have thrown their victims. Hetty felt the air sucked out of her lungs as she stared into its depths. There were no gold leaf stars here. The well plummeted into blackness so complete, the vertigo one felt staring down into it was not physical, but spiritual. She hugged Pierce tight and stepped away.

  As they threaded through the hallway, she stopped when she spotted another picture, this time the photo of the two sisters in sailor suits laughing and hugging their legs. Nella’s girlhood face reminded Hetty of something. The painting that loomed over the living room, the one called Sisters. She went in and studied it. Under the black habits of nuns that lifted like the wings of fallen angels, a girl stood with outstretched arms trying to hold up ponderous volumes. And yes, it was the face in the photograph, the hair pulled up in a knot. Nella went through some kind of crucifixion, Hetty realized with a shock. That’s what Cora’s trying to say in this painting. There was something else that stood out. In the black building with high walls, only one window had a light on, struggling to stay lit in an overpowering darkness.

  Over coffee the next morning, Hetty asked, “That girl in your painting? That’s Nella, isn’t it?”

  Cora nodded, reaching for a pecan galleta off a plate of cookies on the coffee table. Hetty was grateful that Pierce was still asleep, so she could talk intimately with her aunt.

  “Why have you painted her in the crucifix pose?”

  Cora washed the cookie down with a gulp of black coffee. “Oh, my niece, my niece, my niece! You have to understand, when something very shameful happens to you, you bury it.”

  “Wait a minute,” Hetty said, sitting up on the sofa. “Didn’t you tell me you’ve been psychoanalyzed?”

  Cora looked at her warily from the other end of the sofa.

  “I thought the whole point of psychoanalysis was to dig things up.”

  “Ay, m’ija. You’re too smart for me.” Cora sighed deeply. “I did spend quite a bit of time on this—then I made that painting.”

  Hetty pulled out the black leather folder she carried with her everywhere, bearing the embossed gold letters Citizen’s Bank of South Texas. “Ever since Kirby closed my bank account, I’ve been making my own entries into my passbook.” She scanned the pages, then looked at her aunt. “I have one in here that reads: Nella’s knees. Followed by question marks. A lot of question marks. Why won’t anyone tell me about this? Lina said to ask you.”

  Cora gave her a baleful glance. “I guess I’m the lucky one.”

  Hetty felt a surge of relief until she saw what her aunt did next. Cora got up and went over to the decanter next to the antique birdcage. She poured some mescal into a snifter and lifted it to her mouth. Instead of sipping it slowly like she usually did, she swallowed two big slugs of it right down. Then she came back and settled into the sofa, kicking her shoes off. She turned to Hetty and bored into her with her eyes. Jesus, Hetty thought, this is going to be good.

  “It all started with your mother’s quinceañera.”

  “Fifteenth birthday?”

  “Sí. Nella wouldn’t have told you about this custom, but you have to remember that your grandmother, Liliana—”

  “Mamá always called her Lili. Why didn’t Granny Lili ever come to visit us?”

  “You’ll see! Her full name was Liliana Ardra y de la Herrera de Beckman. She was first generation out of Mexico, and there, when a girl turns fifteen, she is ripe for marriage. And Nella was—all rosy cheeks and high spirits in those days, a dazzling beauty always surrounded by a pack of boys. But the one boy she never flirted with was the one she intended to marry. The Folksinger.”

  “Who was the Folksinger?”

  “We called him Tipo. He was at my level, two years older than Nella. Junior and senior high were in the same building. Tipo was one of the Mexicans—not the best-looking boy in school, but definitely the friendliest. We girls cheered wildly whenever they let him sing a solo at school assemblies. His voice made up for his face; it was so rich and melodious as he sang in Spanish and strummed his guitar.

  “ ‘El
la te ama,’ I whispered to him one day at the back of the class.

  “His reaction surprised me. ‘But she is a güera,’ he said. Light-skinned.

  “It was true. Although we were both mestizas, Nella never looked it. Tipo couldn’t believe that a güera girl could love a moreno man. Skin color was what controlled your life back then, of course, and determined your destiny. I was always aware that Nella was whiter than I was, not that I cared. But Tipo would never have dared approach such a light-skinned girl without some prodding.

  “He began to notice Nella, the way she looked at him. Soon, they began to disappear into the mountain laurels lining the playground. I would find my sister back in there with her arms around his neck, gazing into his black eyes, lisping Spanish into his ear as he kissed her neck, daydreaming through her classes for the rest of the day.”

  “They must have really been in love,” Hetty said.

  “They were, con delirio. Once Lili decided that the young man was suitable, she approached Anton. Nothing prepared us for the storm that followed. He cursed at the Folksinger and locked Nella in the house.”

  “No! He can’t!” Hetty said. “They must be together.”

  “He did. Nella was placed under house arrest for days and couldn’t even go to school. Under no circumstance was she to marry a Mexican, he declared. He hadn’t worked this hard so we could become Chili Queens like our mother. That’s what your grandmother was, you recall, when he met her.”

  “Papi always said she was the prettiest of all the Chili Queens.”

  “She was, too. She had the reddest dress and the hottest chili on Military Plaza. Her stall was a favorite among the soldiers. They all wanted some of Lili’s chili. It’s because she wore a crown of peacock feathers in her black hair and pinned roses on their lapels.”

  “Granny Lili in peacock feathers! ¡Jejeje! That must have been a sight.”

  “Muy mona—like a doll. Anton saw himself as her redeemer. He rescued her from that life by marrying her—quite an audacious thing for a German officer to do back in those days. I’ve always said Papá was seduced by chili con carne! But he wasn’t about to let his daughters go back to that life. Within a month of finding out about Tipo—¡vámonos! He moved us into this house, far from the Mexican Quarter.” Cora looked about the living room, as if searching for ghosts in the shadows.

  “You remembered quite a bit,” Hetty said.

  “It all came back during my analysis.”

  “So how did you feel about moving here?”

  “Like I’d been ripped out by my roots. I just wilted.”

  For the first time, the dank shadows of the river house felt ominous to Hetty. She pulled her feet up onto the sofa. “How did Nella take it?”

  “Defiantly. She continued flirting with Tipo behind the mountain laurels. But then the school year came to an end. Nella knew she wouldn’t see her lover for three long months. She began meeting him en secreto that summer, took terrible risks—”

  “Good for her!”

  “Oh, but she got caught! Mid July.”

  “Uh-oh. What did Anton do?”

  “He retaliated by sending us both to All Saints Academy for Girls in September. He made us board there—we weren’t even allowed to come home at night, even though it wasn’t that far from where we lived.”

  “I can’t believe Mamá let herself be locked up!” Hetty said, reaching into her bag for a Lucky. Beside her on the sofa, her passbook sparked a memory. She checked an entry she’d made under Balance: “Tell me something—is All Saints on Dolorosa Street?”

  “Yes, at the foot, on a hill overlooking the river.”

  “That’s why Mother doesn’t like driving down that street. See, I wrote it in my passbook the first time Garret and I came to visit you. It sounds pretty grim.”

  “It’s all in my sketchbook. Let me see if I can find it.”

  While Cora was rummaging around in her studio, Hetty went in to check on Pierce. He had apparently just awakened and was lying in dappled sunlight reaching for the shadows, cooing. She picked him up, cooed back at him, and set him down on the bed to change his diaper. Back in the living room, she fed him a galleta and a glass of milk, then pulled out musical instruments for him to play with on the floor. Cora emerged with a sketchbook dated 1904. Hetty leafed through and saw how the images changed. Saints replaced the grapes and papayas of still lifes. Page after page was filled with the praying hands and uplifted eyes of the statues in the nichos along the hallways. The medium changed from pencil to India ink.

  “Pencil wasn’t dark enough,” Cora said when Hetty asked. She described how gloomy the place was except for the floors that the sisters kept so highly polished. The girls weren’t allowed to talk in the hallways, so they were always utterly silent except for the swishing of the nuns’ habits, the nuns who emerged out of the shadows unexpectedly, starched and frowning. The brick walls rose all around, locking them in, the saints keeping watch from their nichos.

  Hetty lit one of the Luckies and let its smoke rise in the air like incense to ward off evil.

  “If we slipped into our secret sisters’ language and spoke a word of Spanish, the nuns would rap our hands with a ruler. It really hurt.”

  “You couldn’t speak Spanish!”

  “The first thing they do is take your language away. We used to steal toilet paper and write notes to each other in Spanish late at night. Then we’d flush them in the morning.”

  “Oh, Tía, how sad.” Hetty took a long drag off the cigarette.

  “Sad but true. They’d rather minister to rich Anglos, not to us humble devotees of the Virgen de Guadalupe. We were sent to All Saints to have the dirty Mexican scrubbed out of us. All Saints was short for All Saints of Ireland Convent and Academy and the nuns were as Irish as you could get. They had us reading Shakespeare and Wordsworth and Yeats. Nella was used to the poetry the Folksinger sang. ‘Como naranja la granada, cuan dulce las gardenias. ’ How orange the pomegranates, how sweet the gardenias. Come to me, oh my love! El amor, that’s what was on Nella’s lips—the hot-blooded words, the sunlit words that rolled off her tongue so melodiously. But every relapse brought another stinging slap on the hand and a hiss from one of the sisters: ‘Say it in English!’ ”

  “It’s like they cut out your tongue.”

  “Exactamente. And our eyes. We were taught to see things in a whole new light, a cold Northern, Puritan light.”

  Pierce held up a leather strap studded with bells, trying to get Hetty’s attention. She waved her hand back and forth. He imitated her, making the bells ring and drawing a cat out from under the sideboard. Hetty knew she should be down on the floor playing with him, but was too absorbed in what her aunt was telling her. She turned to another drawing in the sketchbook, a schoolgirl floating in the sky above the black walls of the convent. One could see the river in the background with retama trees blooming along its bank. It didn’t look like Nella. This girl was taller and more angular. “Is this you?”

  “Yes. My analyst was very interested in that drawing. He saw it as an image of disassociation.”

  “I wondered how you coped.”

  “That’s how. I think the disassociation saved me. I read a lot of books, went elsewhere in my mind.” Cora sighed.

  “But Mamá couldn’t do that, could she?”

  Cora shook her head, then rang the bells that Pierce had brought over to her. He began pulling the leather strap across the carpet, playing chase with two cats. Hetty turned back to the sketchbook, to the dark swirls of India ink. She could see the black place where Cora’s story was headed and dreaded going there, but couldn’t resist hearing more. She stubbed out her cigarette. “No floating for Nella?”

  “She simply couldn’t do that.” Cora raised her hands into the air. “She lived too much in the moment. Heartsick with love, she withdrew and became sullen. Her personality changed. She rarely said anything in class, until the final block of lessons in the spring.

  “Officially they were
called ‘political science,’ but really it was just another way for the sisters to inoculate us with their particular strain of Texas history. We only had enough girls to make up a junior and senior group, and we were all together in this final session. The classes were taught by Sister Flanna, a third-generation San Antonian heavily invested in the virtues of the Texas Republic. I can still see her today. She had a flaming Irish temperament, her wimple barely concealing the fire of her red hair. In studying the formation of the Republic, we had to hear about the Battle of San Jacinto and the Fall of the Alamo.

  “Sister Flanna laid the hyperbole on thick, how the little band of one hundred and fifty brave souls had held off an army of fifteen hundred until the bitter end—martyrs who had sacrificed their lives in the name of freedom and democracy. Indians and Mexicans were described as bloodthirsty savages.”

  “You’re not serious!” Hetty said, nervously lighting another Lucky.

  “Perfectly serious. Nella and I looked at each other amazed.”

  Hetty sniggered with smoke. “I guess you’d heard a different story from Liliana?”

  “¡Claro que sí! In fact, when all us girls were taken on a field trip to the old mission, Nella became incensed. Sister Flanna was in her glory, of course, ushering us through the hallowed rooms and describing the events that had taken place on what she described as ‘the saddest day of time.’ We gathered under the north wall, where the attackers had made their first breach and ‘poured in like sheep.’ We stood in the dark sacristy, where even children had been murdered by the Mexicans, then gazed into the small room where Bowie had been slaughtered on his very sickbed as he fought for freedom with his last breath. Something in Nella snapped at all this. She couldn’t sleep that night. The next day in class, she interrupted the lecture and proceeded to recite the Mexican version of the Fall of the Alamo.

  “ ‘But, Sister Flanna,’ she said, ‘most of the men at the Alamo weren’t even native Texans. My mother told me.’