That night Kate’s dreams were troubled. She felt smothered, as if something was gagging her. She awoke drenched in sweat, panting for air in the small dark room. She slid out of bed to her knees. “Oh, please,” she prayed, “please help me.” She waited for a long time, but there was no answer.
C
hapter Eight
Friday, June 26, 1964
Kate wakes to the smell of coffee brewing in Peter’s kitchen. She jumps up, confused by this unfamiliar room, and lights the kerosene lamp on the dresser. She fumbles into her habit, still stained from her travels of the day before, but dry now and warm. Kissing each part as she puts it on, her lips move automatically to say the prayer that accompanies each piece. She pulls the cincture around her waist, and whispers, “Guard me this day from the fire of temptation.”
Back in the convent in Juliaca, Sister Josepha would be rising, too, in the dark dawn. She would be sad, worried, maybe even angry at her as she went all alone into the empty mission chapel for Lauds and meditation. Kate whispers the words of the morning hymn as she pins her black veil to the starched headpiece: “. . . that He from harm may keep us free/In all the deeds this day shall see.” Would He keep her from harm? It was to avoid harm that she was running away. She had become afraid of her own desire. “Forgive me,” she whispers, looking into the mirror that reflects back the nun she has once more become.
Kate finds Peter Grinnell in the kitchen, and he barely looks her way as he piles sandwiches into a bag. “Glad you’re up,” he grunts. “There’s hot water for tea in the kettle on the stove, some oranges and bread over there on the table. I’ll be loading the jeep.”
Kate nods, feeling shy now in the daylight. He had been different last night, friendlier. She supposes he is nervous about taking her into Arequipa, or perhaps he is just bored at the thought of a long ride through the mountains with a neurotic run-away nun. She hurries through her breakfast as his tall, blue-jeaned form passes in and out of the kitchen, loading his suitcases, boxes of notebooks, and camera into the jeep.
When she joins him in the courtyard at the back of the house where his jeep is parked, he mutters, “I find it incredible that you dashed off with no coat or jacket . . . or whatever you nuns wear,” and shoves at her a navy-blue jacket lined with alpaca fur.
Kate murmurs her thanks and clumsily pulls the jacket on over her habit, lifting her veil free of the collar. The air, fine and crisp, smells of frost and reminds her of a winter morning in St. Louis.
She thinks with a pang of her parents. When she left them at the airport a year ago, they were proud, and yet she saw the worry in their eyes. Walking with her onto the tarmac on the way to the plane, her father somehow sprinted ahead of her up the stairs; then he stuck his head in the door to ask the stewardess to watch over his daughter. The tall blond looked surprised to see a nun get on the plane for Miami. She probably expected a twelve-year-old. Kate’s mother wrote later that every time she tried to tell someone about her departure, she would break down in tears. Yet the night before she left, they were cheerful and joking in the Irish way of disguising sadness.
Peter helps her climb up into the jeep; then he swings in on his side in one easy movement. The jeep coughs and sputters, but in a few minutes they are out on the road, heading for Puno and then southwest to Arequipa. The sun is just rising, gilding the blue mountains with rose, sending glancing rays into the great Lake in the distance. They follow the curve of the shoreline in silence.
Soon they are on the outskirts of Puno, already bustling with trucks, herds of llamas being driven to market, and groups of women in brilliant colors, their polleras—great full skirts with petticoats—bouncing as they walk, reminding Kate of the crinolines she and her friends had all worn in the 1950s under their full cotton skirts. Many women have babies wrapped tightly in striped mantles slung firmly on their backs. Peter navigates the busy streets quickly, leaning mercilessly on his horn to warn any careless pedestrian of the danger to their life. Kate hopes no one from the Maryknoll house is out at this hour.
There are five nuns here, she knows, and a big house for the Maryknoll priests, a central place for the many men working out in the campo. The priests and nuns from Santa Catalina drive into Puno once a month for team meetings, usually followed by dinner. Last month the nuns had cooked a big pot of spaghetti; someone had saved a few bottles of cheap red wine, so the Americans and the British, along with a few German and French missionaries, had a boisterous supper.
A young priest she didn’t know got out his guitar, and soon the center house sounded like a college dorm. They sang Blowin’ in the Wind, If I Had a Hammer, and much later in the evening, Moon River. Kate saw that after a few months on the Altiplano these evenings helped them endure the profound loneliness and frustration they all felt in a culture that was so opaque, so impenetrable. If they acted silly and got a bit tipsy, it was to let out their pent-up frustration. Now, riding in the front seat next to this Englishman, Kate doesn’t want to see anyone who knows her. How would she explain what she is doing? As Peter negotiates the winding turns that would lead them through the Andes, Kate looks at him.
