The Sisterhood

by Helen Bryan

  The woman raised her eyebrows as if to ask what on earth Menina was doing on the tour, extracted a card from her handbag, and gave it to Menina. “Yes. So nice to get acquainted with students. I don’t recall you from any of my classes. You are…?” Menina mumbled her name as she put the card in her jeans pocket, wondering how to explain what she was doing here. She couldn’t think of a good way to do that just at the moment.

  Professor Lennox said, “We’ve been diverted to Malaga because of bad weather. You were…er…asleep when it got rough, so I pulled your seatbelt tighter and I noticed your lovely medal. Is it old?”

  “Actually I don’t know much about it. I’m sorry.” It hurt to talk, and Menina didn’t feel up to explaining about the medal or her thesis. She turned away and peered out the window. After the storm, the air was clear and bright and below them dark-blue mountains were topped with snow. As the plane descended, Menina could see the coast in the distance, and beyond it, the gray-blue Mediterranean. Her hand closed nervously around her medal as the plane sank lower and lower, the wheels hitting the tarmac with a thud that made her aching brain bounce.

  “Welcome to Spain,” said Professor Lennox dryly.

  CHAPTER 4

  Spain, Holy Week, April 2000

  Malaga was airport hell. Menina lost track of Professor Lennox, the only person she recognized from her flight. At the information desk where Menina tried to find out when her flight to Madrid would leave, a harassed young woman threw up her hands. “Nobody knows about your charter. Is Semana Santa! I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t go today. You must wait over there.” She pointed vaguely toward the departures hall, another heaving mass of people. Menina felt she either had to lie down and die from her hangover or get herself to Madrid somehow and meet her group at the hostel.

  “Is there another way I can get to Madrid—a train, or a bus?”

  “Trains impossible this week unless you have a reservation, is Semana Santa, but you can take a bus from the airport. There, past the telephones. Longer than train but nice sceneries. You get there tonight.”

  Next Menina tried to call her parents on a pay phone. It wasn’t easy. The operator’s lisping Spanish sounded different from the Latin American accent she was used to, and when she couldn’t understand the operator finally hung up. An elderly woman stopped and showed her what to do, and finally there was a ringing tone and her father answered. Sleepily. “Menina? You OK?”

  No, not really. “I’m fine. Sorry, I forgot about the time difference. It must be four thirty in the morning…”

  At the other end Virgil yawned. “Naw, it’s OK, honey. Glad you got to Madrid in one piece. Make the most of it. Go shopping with that new Visa card. Get your mother a pocketbook; I hear they got nice leather in Spain. Don’t worry about anything else. By the time you get home the whole mess will have blown over.”

  “OK, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it…but I’m not in Madrid yet, Dad. There was bad weather and we got diverted to Malaga. It’s kind of crazy at the airport, and nobody knows when there’ll be another plane to fly us up to Madrid. Rather than sleep on the airport floor I’m taking a bus up to Madrid. I’ll get there tonight.”

  “You be careful. Don’t go talking to strange men!”

  “Strange men!” Menina couldn’t help laughing. “I’m not five years old.”

  “By the way, speaking of strange men, last night after we got back from the airport a man and a woman, nice couple, rang the doorbell, looking for you. They’d seen that article in the paper—well, you know the one, it was in yesterday—anyhow, they had had something to do with the Catholic Church and the adoptions of you hurricane kids. Your mother served them cake and coffee and we showed them your file for old times’ sake. They said they’d love to see your medal, it was supposed to be real old, and asked when you’d be back. I told them not for a while, you’d just gone off to study some old painter in Spain, and they…”

  The phone made a pipping sound. Menina found she had no coins left.

  “…They had some idea our last name was Smith, asked when we moved here from Chicago—don’t know where they got that—but we straightened that out and…”

  “My money’s run out! Bye, call you when I…” and the line went dead.

  Menina hung up and picked up her backpack. It weighed a ton. She hadn’t paid attention to that in Atlanta, but now she opened it to see why. In case the airline lost her bag she had put in a sweater, a spare T-shirt, a change of underwear, clean socks, tampons, and the velvet bag that contained the old book from the nuns because she really didn’t want to lose that if her suitcase went missing. She had tossed in the small Latin dictionary she had used in high school, too, in case she needed to tell the people at the Prado what the Latin part was—it seemed too short to be a prayer book. They could figure out the Spanish part themselves.

  She dug deeper and found the miniature toiletries, and aspirin, some small towels that expanded when wet that Menina had once used at summer camp, and a new travel bathrobe, all stuffed in by her mother. Then she exclaimed, “Oh no!” At the very bottom, her mother had hidden the heavy old guidebook to Spain that Menina had tried to leave behind. In the side pocket Sarah-Lynn had put in a couple of spiral notebooks, ballpoint pens, and Menina’s favorite Hershey bars. In another side there were two bottles of water Menina had bought at the airport in Atlanta.

  The woman who sold her a bus ticket said, “Is Semana Santa,” and everything was crazy; there were no direct buses. She would have to go toward Ronda, then change. She gave Menina a bus schedule, pointing at a stop where she would have to transfer. And Menina mustn’t miss it; there was only the one bus a day to Madrid from there.

  The bus driver, a swarthy man whose stomach hung over his waistband, stood by the open baggage hold sucking a toothpick. Menina showed him her ticket and the name of the place she was supposed to change buses for Madrid. “Si! Le dire.” I’ll tell you. The driver smiled, flashing a gold tooth before throwing her suitcase in. He held out his hand for the backpack but Menina shook her head. She’d take it to her seat and read her guidebook.

  Menina found two seats to herself, took two aspirin and fished out the guidebook. Fifteen minutes later the bus pulled out of the airport, going west along a coastal highway dotted with construction sites and new holiday villa developments. Out to sea an oil tanker hovered on the horizon, sun danced on the waves, and a gleaming white gin palace motored closer to shore as they wound along the coast.

  Then the bus turned inland and the villas gave way to new-planted fields and an occasional old farmhouse with wooden lean-tos added on the back. Sun shimmered on the silvery leaves of olive trees planted in rows on walled terraces. Plodding horse-drawn carts laden with firewood, women in black stockings and cardigans and faded headscarves carrying loaves of bread, an elderly couple leading a donkey with wicker-clad wine jars on its back across a field where wildflowers rippled in the breeze.

  Menina opened her guidebook. Andalusia, it said, was derived from Arabic, “Al Andalus,” and traces of the Moorish civilization that flourished in the Iberian Peninsula between 711 and 1492 could be seen everywhere. “Look closely and you will see the footprint of the Moors—terraced fields, fountains and arches, orange and almond trees, and even churches that contain traces of the mosques they once were. The modern road follows an ancient way linking the mountains to the coast. It is possible to see the white stones that mark it, and it is still used by people who live in the mountains. Archaeologists have found shards of pottery stained with the purple dye from Tyre, and half-buried altars dedicated to the Phoenician goddess Astarte, suggesting the Phoenicians had traveled into the mountains from the coast before the Romans colonized the Mediterranean. This pre-Roman route continues east into the mountains, probably to France.”

  The guidebook drew the reader’s attention to the white villages clinging to the mountain face. These dated from the time of the Moors. Even so many hundreds of years later, old customs, legends, and
superstitions lived on in them.

  Menina found something soothing and reassuring about this history, about the fact time moved on, life moved on. Maybe eventually it would move on for her, too.

  She read on about the Semana Santa celebrations that had drawn travelers and pilgrims to Andalusia for hundreds of years, still held in many of the villages. They were part religious, part fiesta, and part drama, designed to advertise the Christian triumph over the Moors to the populace. Most involved decorated floats, some centuries old, that carried images of the crucified Christ, the Virgin Mary or saints, or sometimes saints’ relics—bits of bones, dried blood or desiccated body parts, often believed to have miraculous powers—in jeweled containers. Everyone joined in the procession: priests and acolytes and local dignitaries in their medals and decorations at the head, followed by religious brotherhoods called confraternidads, nuns, laypeople, and often a special contingent of children. Processions usually took place at night, through torchlit streets and with all the participants carrying candles. Afterward, fiestas went on until dawn, with wine and singing and dancing, special food, and people dressed up in traditional costumes. Gypsies traveled from near and far, setting up market stalls, selling horses on the side, and singing, adding to the ceremonies with their unique laments for the dead Christ and his grieving mother, another centuries-old tradition dating back to the Reconquista.

  Had Semana Santa been celebrated this way in Tristan Mendoza’s time? Menina put down the book to think about it and watched a bird of prey circling the sky over the valley. It drifted on the thermals, around and around. Watching it was hypnotic, and Menina drifted off.

  An hour later she woke with a start when the bus halted, thinking the stop must be the place where she’d change, but the bus driver looked back and shook his head no. She pushed her window open and leaned out to see they were in a plaza before a whitewashed church. The plaza was full of people, many wearing Andalusian costumes—women with ruffled skirts and high combs in their hair and men in braid-trimmed jackets, some on horseback. There were tourists who looked plain by comparison, holding cameras and moving slowly through a market set up in the center, where swarthy men and women jostled to sell carpets and lace and copper utensils spread out on blankets to the tourists. Somewhere the smell of food cooking, like a barbecue or sausages, filled the air.

  Then a slow insistent drumbeat made itself heard over the noise, and the people in the square fell silent as the drumbeat grew louder, moving aside to leave a path through the crowd. A somber chanting sound came with the drums, like someone was on a microphone. Then a procession passed slowly in front of the bus, led by a priest in black robes carrying a tall pole with a crucifix draped in black gauze. A group of boys in robes followed behind him, chanting responses to the microphone.

  Then Menina caught her breath. A huge black-draped float bearing a larger-than-life plaster image of the grieving Madonna appeared, swaying above the crowd and dwarfing the grimacing, sweating men who carried it on their shoulders. Beneath an enormous silver-filigree halo, a wimple and black veil framed the Virgin’s white, grief-stricken face. A rosary of outsize black pearls with a silver cross swung from her hands raised in prayer. At her feet lay the tortured, twisted body of the dead Christ, red blood dripping realistically from his wounds. The image dominated everything in the square, and some of the women selling carpets began to sing in a shrill, keening harmony, a primitive lament raw with grief and suffering that sent chills down Menina’s back.

  The next part of the procession was even stranger. Behind the swaying Madonna, also walking in slow time to the drumbeat, came figures in purple robes and tall conical hoods that covered their faces completely save for narrow slits for their eyes. They held what looked like whips made from barbed wire. Every few steps and in sync, the hooded figures swung the whips onto their backs, ritually beating themselves. A few had faint red patches on their shoulders. Then with a roll and a final thud, the drumbeat ceased and the procession halted. The singing stopped. In the silence an order rang out and the men carrying the float shifted their weight in unison and lowered it down on the plaza. The float bearers, wearing thick pads where their shoulders took the weight, rubbed their necks and wiped their brows. The hooded men took off their hats and many lit cigarettes. Wine and coffee were produced.

  “Están practicando,” announced the driver, half turning his head toward the passengers and gesturing with his thumb. Practicing. The driver leaned out his window and exchanged laughing comments with some of the men before slapping the side of the bus and starting the engine. As they pulled away Menina stared back, feeling shaken. In Laurel Run, Easter was lilies at church, colored eggs, and ladies in new hats. What she had just seen was raw and visceral—about death and blood and terror and the iron grasp of religion.

  Menina thought they must be getting close to the place where she would change buses. When it didn’t happen she began to wish she had bought some food at the airport. By three, with her stomach grumbling, she stood up to retrieve a Hershey bar from her pack. Just then the bus swung wide round a precipitous hairpin bend, throwing her off balance. Grabbing the baggage rack with both hands, she felt the bus turn again as it wheezed slowly up a narrow street leading into a white village that hung over the valley, then stopped at the edge of a plaza with a large tiled fountain, a white church with a red tiled roof, orange trees in bloom, and a café with tables outdoors in the sunshine.

  The driver stood up and announced they would stop for “la comida” for one hour. He pointed at his watch, and said to be back on the bus on time. People should take all their possessions with them; Spanish people were honest but even this high up there were many Africans and other illegal immigrants nowadays who stole things. He winked at Menina, patted his stomach and beckoned. She busied herself with her backpack and handbag and ignored him. After she ate she would have a look inside the church and avoid the driver like the plague.

  In the café, a boisterous group of men stood round a bar laden with wineglasses and bottles even though it was only lunchtime. The driver’s gold tooth flashed as he moved over to make room for her beside him. Menina turned quickly and went to sit outside at one of the tables under the orange trees, took her pad of paper out, and began sketching the church, the flowers, and what looked like the ruins of an old castle on the rocks above. She was dying for a cheeseburger or a club sandwich, but the waiter shook his head. He would bring her something. She didn’t understand what, but nodded and wolfed down the dish of small black olives that arrived with her Coca-Cola. Then she ate a large potato omelette with herbs and peppers. After she paid the bill she felt too full to get up and visit the church right away.

  The people from the bus were still inside the bar and the plaza was deserted. The only sounds were the swallows flitting overhead, and the fountain in the center of the plaza. Little bursts of sweet scent drifted her way from the orange blossoms, bees buzzed, and the hot sun on her back felt relaxing. Menina laid her head on her pack on the table and closed her eyes for a minute.

  A jolt on the back of her chair woke her. Struggling to remember where she was, Menina saw a boy sprinting away down a narrow gap between the houses. It was late afternoon and the plaza was in shadow now. She shivered and reached for the handbag she had hung on the back of her chair. To her horror it wasn’t there. She sprang to her feet, looked around her and under the table but the handbag with her money, passport, and airline ticket home, as well as her new Visa card, was gone. With a sinking heart she knew the running boy must have stolen it. Surely the driver would still let her back on the bus, he had seen her ticket…but the place where the bus had parked was empty. It had left without her and her suitcase was on it. “No,” she whimpered. “No!” Her stomach knotted in dismay.

  And then she was afraid. The square had filled up with the workmen she had seen drinking in the café earlier, now hammering together some large structure at the edge of the plaza. Seeing a young woman by herself, a few came closer. “You are f
riendly girl, no?” one asked in Spanish, with a furtive smile that revealed bad teeth. His friend whistled softly and raised his eyebrows. The men raked her body with their eyes and exchanged a joke in a guttural language Menina did not understand, but the gist of which was all too clear. One of them rubbed his fingers together in a universal language for money. “A little drink, yes?” said a man. Laughter.

  There was menace in the air and only some instinct for preservation made her force herself to behave calmly, not to act like a victim. Across the plaza a sign said Policia. Thank God. Pointedly ignoring the men, she forced herself to sling on her backpack in an unhurried fashion and then walk calmly past the leering men across the plaza, feeling their stares on her back. She was seriously in trouble with no money or passport, but the police would help her call the American consulate in Madrid about getting a new passport, and—much as she dreaded the explanations that would be necessary—she could phone her parents to wire her money. But how stupid of her to get into such a mess!

  The door to the police station was unlocked. Menina walked in calling, “Hola?” She didn’t see anybody at the front desk. She wandered down a corridor to the only room with a light on. Inside was a single policeman at a desk covered with files, absorbed in reading something. He looked up with surprise when Menina knocked at his open door. Menina was relieved to see it wasn’t some teenage rookie. The policeman looked thirty-ish, with a mustache and thick dark hair. The collar of his uniform was unbuttoned.