Magnolia City

by Duncan W. Alderson

  “Sister Flanna tried to point out that there weren’t any native Texans back then—that was the whole point, we had to fight for our independence.

  “ ‘But the land belonged to Mexico,’ Nella retorted. ‘The Anglos were aliens living in a foreign country. Most of them were recent arrivals. And my mother said they broke every treaty they made with Mexico.’ ”

  “Yes!” Hetty raised her cigarette in the Statue of Liberty pose.

  “It was gutsy, all right. But that didn’t stop Sister Flanna. A beatific smile dawned on her face. This was exactly the opportunity she’d been looking for to explain the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. She pontificated for a full fifteen minutes, then ended with, ‘It was God’s will, you see.’

  “ ‘The Mexicans didn’t think so,’ Nella said, and got a laugh from the whole class.”

  “I love my mamá!” Hetty said, lowering the Lucky and taking a furious drag.

  “Patiently, Sister Flanna explained how the Mexicans were tyrants and that the Americans were fighting in the name of democracy. She raised her chin high and said, in a ringing voice, ‘They were men of honor!’

  “ ‘Oh, really? My mother told me they were the dregs of society. That Travis deserted a wife and two children, then committed homicide. Is that true?’

  “Sister Flanna didn’t quite know how to respond to this.

  “ ‘And that Davy Crockett also deserted his family to go fortune hunting. And that Bowie was a pirate and slave-runner and had a terrible reputation as a brawler—’

  “The sister tried to point out that he’d invented the Bowie knife, but Nella was not to be stopped now. She forged on: ‘And that so many undesirable characters began to pour into Texas seeking quick riches that the Mexicans had to cut off any further immigration. Isn’t that true?’

  “The nun’s face grew as red as her hair. What Nella was saying was blasphemy. It was bad enough she was speaking up in class without permission and being the unruly ‘Mexican’—but on top of that she was disputing her teacher, striking at the very roots of Texas history and pride. A third-generation San Antonian couldn’t allow this.”

  “What did she do to Mamá?”

  “Put her in the crucifix pose.”

  “Oh,” Hetty said, looking up at the painting.

  “She made Nella stand holding heavy books in her outstretched arms while she recited ten Our Fathers. Most girls never made it, but Nella refused to give in. She finished the ten recitations even though her arms were shaking at the end. This was done in front of the class, of course.”

  Hetty couldn’t imagine her mother enduring such trials. “How did she react?”

  “Nella was quiet for the rest of the day. She sat at her desk, feeling shamed, hugging herself with her aching arms. I prayed it was over.”

  Pierce pulled himself up on the trunk, looking for a new toy. Hetty retrieved the xylophone and handed him the mallets. He started banging away on it.

  “Unfortunately, it wasn’t. Word got out to the other teachers. All the girls were talking about it. An epidemic of disobedience swept through the school like measles. The Mother Superior grew alarmed. She and another nun joined Sister Flanna in class the next morning and demanded that Nella recant what she’d said. When she refused, the Mother Superior insisted that Sister Flanna use a more severe form of discipline—the kneeling station.”

  Oh, the knees. Jarring notes from the xylophone scraped at Hetty’s ears as she waited to hear what came next.

  “It was a little shrine at the back of the classroom where you were sent to do penance. You were forced to raise your skirt, roll down your stockings, and kneel with bare knees on pebbles while you recited a rosary.”

  Hetty remembered the flash of a kimono closing and Nella hiding her knees in shame. So this is where it started? “But Mamá didn’t cave in, did she?”

  “Wait a minute, sobrina. You have to realize that a rosary takes about twenty minutes. Have you ever tried to kneel on rocks?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it’s very painful. These weren’t smooth pebbles. They were little river rocks the sisters gathered out of Río San Antonio.”

  “Oh,” was all Hetty could say, beginning to sense the gravity of the situation. Still.

  “Usually, you only had to recite one or two rosaries, but Sister Flanna wasn’t going to absolve Nella until she recanted. I sat frozen in my seat, horrified. I could hear her voice behind me droning away during lessons—all day long—‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee . . .’”

  Cora paused and swallowed hard. Bang! Bang! Hetty wanted in the worst way to get up and go take the mallets away from her son. Each jangle hit her nerves with a jolt. But she could only sit there on the sofa appalled, trying to imagine how many days it would take to push someone over the edge. “So,” she finally asked. “How long . . . ?”

  When Cora finally turned to Hetty to speak, there were tears in her eyes. “She was there three days.”

  “Three days!” Hetty lost her breath for a moment. “That’s torture.”

  Cora’s voice thinned out with grief. “Poor thing. I was the one who had to dress her knees at night. They were all cut up. And then to have to kneel again the next day, when the old wounds would start bleeding again. I begged her to give in, but she refused. She simply couldn’t refute what she knew to be the truth. Her very soul was at stake.”

  Hetty stood up impatiently, went over, and fished a hand puppet of a witch out of the chest. She knelt, tore the mallets out of Pierce’s hands, and laid the puppet in his lap before he could protest. Hetty lunged back onto the sofa and turned to her aunt, frowning. “Go on.”

  “I offered to kneel for her, but Sister Flanna would have none of it. Nella had to atone for her sins. I tried to negotiate a truce. I implored my sister to relent. I offered to write a confession that she wouldn’t even have to read, just sign. I petitioned the Mother Superior, but she only slapped my hand and scolded me for interfering. Each day, I felt I was losing Nella more and more.”

  “At least she didn’t back down.” Pierce dropped the puppet, stood at the edge of the coffee table, and reached for the mallets. Hetty shook her head no. She stuffed them into her purse. He whined.

  “She held up pretty well until the other students joined in the shaming. Like any girls’ school, All Saints had little cliques. There were lots of Anglo girls, of course, and an especially hateful group of Germans. Because Nella was being made an example, they started picking on her. They called her cunt in three languages. The German girls would walk to the pencil sharpener at the back of the class and whisper ‘Dumme Fotze’ to Nella as they passed. The other Hispanics started shouting ‘Cara de chocha’ at her in the hallways and giggling. That was the one that stuck. Chocha became her nickname ever after.”

  “Cunt was her nickname?”

  Cora nodded. “We would hear girls whispering outside our room at night, with a shouted ‘Me cago en ti’ as they ran down the hall.”

  “I shit . . . over you?”

  “This on top of the physical pain she was in. We actually found feces in her bed the second night.”

  Hetty could only stare at Cora with her mouth open.

  “I know. It was dreadful for me. When I escorted her to the kneeling station the third day, I felt so desperate. There was blood on the rocks. By lunch, it was running down her calves. It just got worse and worse, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. That was the hard part”—Cora choked up—“I couldn’t help her!”

  The tears turned into weeping as Cora dredged up the old sorrows. Pierce crawled over to her and pulled himself up on her knees. Her sobs upset him, and he started crying, too. She pulled him up into her arms, and they wept together for a while. Hetty took the baby and rocked him until he stopped. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said. “They stole Nella away from you.”

  “No . . . it was like she fell into—a deep well.”

  “Oh,” Hetty said. “The painting.”

&nbs
p; “Yes,” Cora continued in a ragged voice. “I had to watch her sink into that blackness. I could hear her voice changing as she recited the rosaries. Her resolve crumbled, and the words became a crazed whisper. ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners.’ ”

  Hetty felt a kind of horror gripping her with a cold hand. The well’s gravitational pull was strong. “Poor Nella. They broke her.”

  “Sí.” Cora nodded. “The next morning, a totally humiliated child stood before the political science class at the All Saints Academy for Girls and read her recantation in a dull, lifeless voice. That was the end of it.”

  “What did she read?” Hetty asked. I have to know!

  “It’s there, in the sketchbook,” Cora said, nodding. Hetty picked it up off the coffee table and let Pierce help her turn the pages until she found a sheet of wrinkled notebook paper that had been pasted in. Words had been hastily scribbled across it. The ink here was not black like the India ink, but had faded to the color of dying flowers. Hetty read the words out loud:

  I wish to withdraw my statements about the fall of the mission and fort they call the Alamo. I have been made to see that Santa Anna was a cruel oppressor and that it was the will of God that Texas become part of the American nation. My mother was wrong in making me believe that the fighters at the Alamo were disreputable men. I now know that these heroes, Travis and Bowie and Crockett and Bonham, were fighting in the name of Liberty and gave their lives nobly so that we Texans of today could live free of the dictatorship of the Old World. I apologize for misleading the history class at the All Saints Academy and ask my teacher, Sister Flanna, to forgive me in the name of God.

  Signed,

  Nella Beckman y de la Ardra

  “Her reading was followed by a heavy silence,” Cora said. “Not one of the girls moved for the longest time. Only Sister Flanna. The layers of her starched black robes began to stir. Nella was dismissed with a mere nod. We all watched as she shuffled down the aisle of desks, her bandaged knees covered by her skirt. She didn’t look at anyone, just stared straight ahead. Her eyes, which had been so sparkling before, were glazed with the dull passivity of defeat.” Cora dried her tears on a tea towel.

  “I can’t believe she wrote those words!” Hetty shut the album and slammed it down on the coffee table. “Anton ruined his child, sending her there. Didn’t you call home and tell them what was going on?”

  “Father wouldn’t have cared. It’s what he wanted. He even kept her there after I graduated.”

  “Mother was left alone at All Saints?”

  Cora nodded sadly. “She was there for another year. Miss Chocha.”

  “That must have killed her.”

  “Wait till you hear the rest.”

  “I can’t take any more.” Hetty rubbed her temples. A headache was banging its way into her forehead. “Now I’m the one who needs a drink.”

  “Good idea.” Cora stood and started cleaning up the coffee table. “Mescal?”

  “Yes! And I’ll have mine straight up.” Cora brought over the decanter and tipped some of the golden liquid into snifters. Hetty didn’t wait for the toast, but let it blaze like a fuse all the way down her throat until it exploded in her stomach. “Ahhhh!” She gasped and held out her snifter.

  “Easy.” Cora laughed, tipping more in. “You must drink mescal for your tummy, not your head.” She put the decanter away.

  “Look who’s talking!” As Hetty sipped at the second glass, the glimmering sunlight began to swim in her eyes and her rage relaxed. “I need some time, Tía.”

  “Take all the time you need. You’ve come to the right place to heal. San Antonio is built over many springs.”

  Hetty would have drowsed until noon if Pierce hadn’t woken her midmorning. She carried him into the kitchen, where Cora was already at work brewing coffee. Together, they made huevos rancheros and toast. She sat her baby on her lap and fed him some of the toast before she ate herself. After Hetty unpacked the Wichita truck, they talked more about the family over cups of fragrant coffee. The sun began to trespass on the house and heat it up. Cora yanked the chain on the ceiling fan, and a cool breeze swirled between them. Pierce and the cats scampered about on the carpet.

  “There’s something else I wanted to ask you about, Tía.”

  Cora nestled back into some cushions and waited.

  “I have dreams.”

  “About the future?”

  “Yes! How did you know?”

  Cora smiled. “You have the ancient eyes. It’s in your blood. You’re an Ardra.”

  “Do you have dreams like that, too?”

  Cora snickered. “Not since I was psychoanalyzed. That hammers it right out of you.”

  “I’d like to get rid of them, too. I’ve decided they’re evil.” Hetty explained how she had come to view her gift as more of a curse than a blessing.

  “Sobrina,” Cora said, shaking her head. “You can’t get out of it that easily. Such dreams arise from an old, untamed clairvoyance in the blood. Entirely amoral.”

  “So they’re not inherently evil?”

  “Would you call wild animals evil? They are what they are.”

  “Just pictures?”

  “Exactamente. It’s all in how you use them.”

  “I guess I used them for the wrong purposes.” Hetty reflected on what her visions of the faucet had led to, and the two pines bent together. They had afforded her glimpses of goddesses—Santa Adiva and her own magical grandmother who could turn water into wine—yet she had focused solely on tapping the secrets to gain power and wealth. “Does Mamá have the dreams?”

  “Not for a long time.”

  “Is that part of the story?”

  Cora nodded sagely.

  “I guess I have to hear the rest of it,” Hetty said, scooting down to the floor to play with Pierce. “Whether I’m ready or not.”

  “Let’s see. Where was I?”

  “You had to leave Nella alone at All Saints. Another year in that place must have finished her off . . . dreams and all.”

  “Well, if that didn’t, the next place did.”

  “She was sent to another school?”

  “Exactamente. Nella’s last year was spent at Miss Hockaday’s Finishing School for Girls in Dallas.” Cora slipped her shoes off and curled up with her feet underneath her on the couch. “I didn’t recognize her when she came home. My little hermana linda had somehow shape-shifted into Miss Nella Beckman. She talked without a trace of a lisp, refused to speak Spanish, and corrected our table manners. She and Lili fought bitterly, Mamá cursing en Es-pañol, Nella ranting back at her in English: ‘I’m not a dirty Mexican anymore, Mamá. I’m Anglo now. Talk to me in English.’

  “So began my sister’s assimilation into WASP society. Since we were known in San Antonio, Anton took her to Houston for her coming out. The name Ardra was never uttered. She was Nella Beckman, daughter of the mysterious lieutenant who had rented a house at the corner of McKinney and Fannin. She danced beautifully, conversed well, and had a dazzling smile and long lustrous black hair that she wore swept up into a Gibson Girl except for a few curls, which trailed tantalizingly over her pure white complexion. Kirby was smitten right off, and in only a few months, with permission from Anton, asked Nella to be his wife.”

  “When did he find out about la familia?”

  “Not till you were born.”

  “Really? How?”

  “Liliana appeared in Houston for the first time, bringing a Mexican midwife, a partera, with her. Liliana hoped that Kirby would be so filled with the glow of fatherhood that he would accept you and her graciously. But unfortunately, there was no hiding the secret when you were born. Kirb took one look at Liliana, then at the partera, then at you. His white skin turned even whiter as he backed out of the room.

  “He wouldn’t touch Nella for months after that, I heard, so angry was he at the way he’d been tricked. No one was allowed to see the baby or its grandmother. People were told you were ill. You were all
kept locked away. Ask Lina. That was when they had to hire her—to take care of you.”

  Hetty caught her breath. “You mean—Nella . . . ?”

  “Talk to Lina, please.”

  “All right . . . then. I will.”

  Cora pursed her lips and veiled her eyes. “I know this for sure—the only thing that saved you was your light skin. If you’d been the least bit brown, I fear Kirby would have divorced Nella and that would have been the end of it. There was no way an Old Houstonian, especially an Allen, could have a mestiza as a wife. They could remain married only under the following conditions: Liliana had to leave immediately, en secreto as she’d come, and never return to their home. That’s why you never met her. She went back to Mexico. Not a word of this was to be spoken to anyone. Nella would have to join the Episcopal High Church and raise the child Esther as a Protestant and an Anglo, bereft of any Mexican heritage. Nella was allowed one secret room where she could keep the artifacts of her previous life. But no one was allowed to go in there. That was the choice she was given.”

  “But what other choice did she have?”

  “Return to San Antonio in the hope that Tipo would take her back and adopt you.”

  “Do you think he would have?”

  “Yes, I do. He waited for her for years. And he would have loved you like his own daughter. That’s how Mexicans are. Any child brought into their family is raised like their own blood.”

  “She took the coward’s way.”

  “Perhaps.” Cora sank deeper into the cushions and sipped at her cold coffee for a few moments. “But somehow I can’t condemn my sister. Not when I remind myself of what she went through.” Cora looked down at Hetty. “And I was hoping it would help you understand things a little more.”

  Hetty sighed. “It does. Now I see why Kirby’s always preferred Charlotte. He rejected me from the beginning.”

  “¡Exactamente! And why I wasn’t invited to her wedding.”

  “That would have blown their cover completely. Pobrecitas—they don’t even know what love is anymore, do they?”

  “Love is a language unto itself. You have to practice it every day or you forget how to speak it.”