How has she gotten into this mess? She is an O’Neill from St. Louis, Missouri. This wraith-like creature with a smudged face and hollow eyes staring at her from the window is no one she recognizes. Hurtling through the night to an unplanned destination, she feels loneliness seep in like fog. No one knows where she is; no one around her knows her name, her history. It is hard to conjure up images of her mother, her father, in this blackness. Even Tom’s face, so desired, has become a shadowy image, dimly seen in an old mirror. A terrifying chasm looms before her. What if she is truly alone? What if God is only a word the poor and frightened of the universe use to comfort themselves in moments of cold fear—a word repeated in vain, like the cry of a sobbing child who’s lost and can’t find her mother?
Doubt is a stranger to Kate, and she struggles against its pull. She tries to think about Tom, of these last few months when he has somehow become the center of her universe. But now in the darkness she sees. She has fallen into idolatry. She has made him the reason for her existence. Again her thoughts race back to the early days.
The euphoria of knowing she was loved had yielded quickly to anxiety. After those first letters admitting their love for each other, the next two weeks had dragged by. Kate found herself going to the dining room early before lunch, looking for a letter with Tom’s thick scrawl on the envelope. She hated the way her stomach dropped each day when there was no letter for her on the buffet. One Sunday the three nuns sat talking together after lunch.
“I think what this group needs is a little excursion,” said Sister Josepha, wiping her mouth neatly on the napkin while looking across the table at Jeanne Marie and Kate. The mood in the convent the past week had been somber. Sister Magdalena had left the community the week before. Moody and withdrawn for weeks, she had burst into tears one evening at supper and rushed away from the table. Later, in a tearful session, she blurted out how unhappy she was, how much she missed her family and friends. Kate watched as she shredded her delicate handkerchief in her hands, her eyes shining with relief at having at last said the truth.
Magdalena had looked at the three American nuns pleadingly. “The thing is, I feel so guilty abandoning you. These are my people, and yet I feel as if I am on the moon. I feel so strange up here.”
Jeanne Marie interrupted, her voice calm, matter of fact. “Now there’s nothing to feel guilty about. You gave this life a wonderful effort.”
“When will you be going?” Kate asked.
Sister Josepha answered for her. “Father Jack is going down to Arequipa on Thursday. She’ll go with him that far, and then her mother and father will meet her there and take her home.” Kate knew that Josepha was crushed. It was her dream to build up a small Dominican community of Peruvian nuns. There were other Dominicans in Peru, but they were the old European orders, tucked away in their houses in Lima or Arequipa.
Magdalena, intelligent and lively, had seemed like the perfect first candidate for a new community of native Peruvian sisters. The daughter of a teacher, she had been at the University of San Marcos for two years studying philosophy. She was idealistic and passionate about her country. But Kate wondered if the nuns had done the right thing in bringing her up to the Altiplano so soon. She had been in the order for only two years; it might have been better to have left her in Lima. Learning to be a nun was hard enough in the best of circumstances. She thought of her own long years in the novitiate, yet here in the Altiplano she was still as confused and uncertain about her vocation as a homesick postulant.
After Compline that night, Kate had gone to Magdalena’s room. She knocked softly and whispered through the closed door, “May I come in?”
Magdalena was in her nightgown, and Kate was startled at her shiny black hair. It reached almost to her shoulders. She saw Kate staring at it and laughed softly. “As you can see, I’ve been planning my exit for some time.”
Kate grabbed her and hugged her. “I’ll really miss you.” They sat on the bed together whispering like two girls at a slumber party.
The young woman stared at Kate. “Catalina, how do you stand it? You are intelligent. You could be anything.”
Kate met her gaze. “Pray for me, Magdalena. And be happy—God wants you to be yourself.” She found she could say little more; after another embrace, she left the room quietly.
Magdalena had left at dawn with Father Jack on a windy, rainy morning in late January. The three nuns had stood aimlessly in the courtyard for a while after the jeep disappeared through the gates of Santa Catalina. Without a word they’d cleaned Magdalena’s room and stored her freshly washed linens away, ready for the next time they had a guest.
So to Kate, Sister Josepha’s suggestion they take a holiday came as a welcome relief. The superior had a definite plan in mind. “Next week is the Festival de la Virgen de la Candelaria in Copacabana. Sister Mary Katherine, you haven’t seen a real Peruvian festival since you’ve been up here. I suggest we drive over to Puno, and then go on
