Chapter Thirteen: We Go Somewhere "Closer to God"

By Gina Morrison

As the crow flies, it isn't that far from Xandra's home to her office in Menlo Park, but with the horrendous traffic, we go so slowly that I end up nodding off. When I wake up Xandra tells me that I've been snoring.

I shake my head and sit up. I realize that we have left the freeway and now we're driving on some back road that winds up through the golden hillsides.

I yawn. "This looks like the very long way around," I say.

Xandra smiles, and sips from her traveling cup, which contains green tea.

"I told you, Gina, I'm taking you to see my friend."

"Oh right, the therapist."

Xandra looks at me slyly and nods. Her dark eyes are full of mystery. "Trust me, Gina, this is like no therapist you have ever met before."

I shift in my seat. "You're making me nervous Xand."

"Oh, just relax, she's wonderful."

"Yeah, so, where does she live?"

"I would say she lives in a fairy ring, but then you would think I was joking."

"Yes I definitely would think that."

Xandra laughs. "I could also say she lives closer to God, but that might be hard for you to swallow too."

"Yup." I yawn, and rub my eyes. Two things are clear, my dear Xandra is taking me someplace beautiful. And she isn't going to tell me much about her friend in advance.

"She lives in the Santa Cruz mountains in a house that she built herself."

"Wow. That's cool."

I gaze out the window. The sun is just climbing over the golden hillsides. The sky is that brilliant California blue, and the hillsides are rounded and full of billowing live oaks. I yawn, and in that sleepy state, I am thinking, weird how familiar all this looks, and in that instant,

suddenly my head clears and IT HITS ME

I've been here before,

I've been here before. I've been here before.

I suck in my breath.

"Fuck," I whisper. I gaze out the car window

up into the branches of the live oak where I'm lying on the baked earth. Teresa and I escaped up here after chores at the convent.

We are on a blanket beneath our beloved live oak tree. A hot breeze is blowing. I so much want to take off my veil. I don't dare because there are times some of the other nuns walk up here and that would be the worst thing in the world for them to find me without my veil.

"Are you thirsty?" Teresa asks now.

I turn. She has buried in her basket beneath a towel a cool canteen of freshly squeezed lemonade.

"You are so kind," I say, and drink from the canteen.

After a few minutes of silence, Teresa asks again to read the pages I've tucked into my sleeve.

I'm scared to let her read them. What Antonie has written here on these thin pieces of white paper is clearly the work of an insane man. But I cannot keep them from Teresa any longer.

I hand her the piece he calls “Renata Dancing." She reads in silence. Then I let her read "Roseblade.”

When she finishes, those normally cheerful blue eyes of hers are muddied and solemn.

“Oh Renata.” She takes my hand. “He… he is… that devil who is your cousin is going to destroy you with these lies for sure.”

“Yes, I fear he will. But what am I to do?”

She gazes out to the golden hillside, where two large black birds land. She is still holding onto my hand. Slowly she shakes her head.

“I don’t know that there is anything that can possibly help. But one thing you must absolutely do.” The deep blue sky color sails back into her eyes. “Take precautions. And continue to record everything that happens. Write it all down in your diary. Leave out nothing, not a single detail.”

I nod. “God knows, I am writing in the diary every blessed day.”

“Yes, yes. You must continue. And one other thing you could do. Remember I told you to write the story of how things were when the two of you were growing up?”

“Yes. I remember. And I have considered it. But how is writing such a history going to help?”

“You will see for yourself, and show others too, how the past, your past with Antonie, has shaped things. You will see how things have come to be the way they are.”

I consider her face. Usually such a jolly soul, Teresa is wholly serious today.

“Yes, I suppose it can’t hurt,” I say.

“And now Renata, I’ve got to head back. Mother Yolla instructed me at lunch to attend to the henhouse today and I dare not show up to supper without having done it, or I will pay dearly.”

“Oh yes, of course, and I’ll come, I’ll help,” I stand too. But she stops me.

“NO.” She holds up one hand in commandment. “You my dear sister, you are going to sit down and write.”

“But it might wait, I could…”

“NO.” Another hand up. “You must write in the diary. Right now. I am leaving the canteen with you. Open straight to a clean page. And begin. Write about your cousin and you. In the old days, when you first came. Maybe buried in your words you will see if there were clues, already, back then.”

When she says that, I squirm. There are things about Antonie and me in the past that I would prefer not to recall.

I watch my dear Teresa retreat down the hillside. She holds the dark skirt of her habit wide, in two hands, and as she lopes down the hill, the hot air shimmers, and she presents a ghostly figure, there on the hill.

Chapter Twelve: I Arrive in California, Where Xandra has a Surprise Waiting

By Gina Morrison

I wake up on the rock hard floor and it is it takes me more than a minute to figure out that I am wrapped in Xandra’s red Navaho blanket and that it scratches at my face and for a minute I’ve got myself convinced that I am lying on Renata’s narrow bed beneath the crucifix.

I blink and then I see one thick leg of Xandra’s brass bed, the bed I was supposed to sleep in last night and I am a little frightened wondering how the hell I got here on the floor, I’m sure it has something to do with that bottle of white wine I downed on the plane and then the two, yes, two ativan I swallowed, one as the plane did a severe rocking and rolling and nosediving routine somewhere over Kansas. And the second one I took as we started to descend into SFO, that’s the moment I realized for the first time that I had actually left David 3,000 miles behind and the fact I did it sort of blew my mind and not in such a good way either.

I vaguely remember Xandra meeting me outside baggage claim in San Francisco, I remember her saying we should get dinner and I remember thinking I was so tired that I couldn’t hold my head up.

“Oh God, I’m starving, would you mind if we stopped somewhere?” So how could I say no? W hat I should have done was have a strong shot of espresso but instead I had more wine, and by ten p.m. when we were heading down the 101 toward San Jose, the lights along the Bay were like birthday candles all alight, whirling on the dark horizon with the stars bright overhead in the sky.

I don’t remember when, but I fell asleep.

The weird thing about the ativan is how it makes me forget so completely, it takes my memory and turns it into a piece of Swiss cheese. Sometimes it scares me, like the time I went to make a milkshake and I put a spoon in the blender and then I went to peel a banana and I turned on the blender and there went the spoon.

And so much for the blender.

David refers to ativan as “outofit.”

I sit up now, here on Xandra’s floor, and my head is still swimming upstream, and the first thing I realize is how I miss him, really totally miss him in the gut in my legs and in every other part of me I won’t even mention, especially in my heart , I ache and that feeling sets me into a sweat and frenzy.

At that moment the door squeaks open and I see what looks to be a powder blue curtain, which turns out to be Xandra in a chiffon bathrobe. Very sexy, and her dreds are a cloud flying in a million directions.

“Are you awake?” she whispers and I whisper “uh, yes, I guess so.”

She makes her way into the room. “What in God’s name are you doing under the rug?”

I push it away. “I wish I knew,” I mumble, rolling over.

“So I’ve got to get to work early today, but I want you to come with me. I have a friend I want you to see this morning."

"Who is your friend?"

"She is a therapist, but not the sort you've been seeing."

"What sort is she?" I sit up, and I am yawning and so at first when she answers I am not quite sure I hear her right.

"She does hypnosis for past life regression."

I don't answer right away. Finally I say, "I don't think so, Xand."

"Look, Gina, you just have to meet her. She's someone you would like. I work with her now and then and she's amazing. And all you have to do is meet her. You can decide later if you want her services."

I lay back down on the floor and close my eyes. "Right now Xand all I want is more sleep. I don't want to meet anyone. So if you don't mind, I think I'll stay here this morning."

Xandra doesn't say anything at first. Then she sits down on the floor cross-legged and suddenly I realize that she is studying me.

"What?"

"Oh it's just that I was thinking of taking the afternoon off. I thought we could take a walk at this bird sanctuary and talk about what’s going on with you and David.”

"Sure. That sounds great. So you could come back and get me at lunch and I can sleep a few more hours."

"Yes, except if you stay here it means an extra two hours of driving."

I feel trapped. Xandra is pushing me way too hard, and I don't want to be pushed. I am about to say this to Xandra, except she beats me to it.

"Look, Gina, I know I"m putting a bit of a squeeze on you, but I really wish you'd go along with me here. I have a strong intuition that you are going to like this woman. She's helped a lot of people and she's very easy-going."

I am not happy, at all, but I decide that in the interest of keeping peace, I will meet Xandra's friend and get it over with.

I drag myself off the floor and head for the shower, where I stand for an extra few minutes, letting the water soak into my head and neck. Soon I am dressed and in the kitchen, where Xandra hands me one of her green "power" shakes.

"I'll take an English muffin, if you have one," I mumble. Naturally, she doesn't have English muffins.

I take a sip of the power shake and it tastes vaguely like my lawn back home. I place the glass very carefully back on the counter and soon, I'm sitting in Xandra’s BMW, and we are in traffic backed up the 101, and my new life in California, packed like a sardine in a car on the freeway, has begun.

Chapter Eleven: Renata at the Campsite

Only with great reluctance did Renata return to the campfire to lie in the bedroll that Señora had prepared for her.

Antonie was in a deep sleep when Renata woke him sometime during the night. The first thing to catch his eye as he came to consciousness was the moon, a glowing curl, visible just over Renata's shoulder, as if it were somehow entwined with her image as it moved toward him.

He knew that was an illusion, because her hair, naturally, was tied back and completely curtained by her dark veil. Her eyes shone, too, or at least the whites stood out, circling the irises that dropped with the rest of her looming form into night. All but the stark white swath of linen binding her forehead was black.

For a moment, he imagined the linen to be some insurmountable white barrier, the stone fence he once faced, years before, back when he was a child struggling to master the forbidding Arabian steed that his father had called “Paolo.” In an instant, Renata’s face had displaced the frustrating memory of the horse. Her breath was shallow and insistent, and before he was altogether sure what was happening, she was drawing him in over the white wall. Her lips were moist and warm, and her mouth lingered tenderly on his for a long time. In the morning, he knew for certain that she would deny that she had ever left her bed. In the morning, she would deny she had ever approached his cot, or knelt beside him, or that she had kissed him repeatedly, cradling his head, or that she had laid her own head briefly on his chest berfore she got into his bed and proceeded with her seduction.

Nonetheless, he let her proceed. He kept his eyes closed and tried to breathe in calmly as she unbuttoned his shirt and slipped the belt out of the hammered silver buckle of his pants. Silently, she set to work with her fingers, letting them pass lightly across his raised nipples, dipping them gradually toward the ribs, lettting them dance down his chest until he was heaving with impatient desire. Soon she traded lines for circles, the circles following the slight swell of flesh around his stomach. She enlarged the circles so slowly that he hardly noticed them widening, expanding, until, her hand just grazing the uppermost edge of his pubic hair, she proceeded to leave it there. Her circling abruptly stopped, and her hand remained, poised, lightly running back and forth along the line at the top of the triangle of hair. He lay there, head flopping side to side, teeth digging into his bottom lip, not daring to moan because it might wake Senora, or the driver of the wagon, but praying all the while that Renata would keep on, dip further with her fingers, let them encompass the rest of him. His legs turned liquid, and limp. Tired of waiting, he groped impatiently for her hand. He allowed himself to groan, and to call out once, “please, Renata, now.” And then, his own hand shaking, he pulled at her fingers, desperately pushing them downward, at which point she froze, and grabbed her hand away from his groin.

“No,” she said abruptly, her voice stern. She rose and he lay there, his eyes wet, his chest heaving. For the first time he realized that he was almost completely exposed to the damp night air. He shuddered, but made no attempt to cover himself, there, where his desire welled.

“You…you are so unfair to me,” he began, tears pooling. “You are…” but he couldn’t finish, because his voice had risen to a high pitch, and he felt choked off and breathless. After a moment he was able to continue, but only in fits and starts. “I…I lie here…I …I am…half crazy with desire…I am in sheer agony when I’m near you…I am helpless around you, and you, you know that, you know that so well. Helpless. I am helpless to do anything about my…myself, the way I am…you know that too, you know me so well, so long. You know, and yet you…you just…you just keep taking advantage of me.” The last words were barely audible. She stood over him, and he was horrified to see that she was smiling, she was delighting in his humiliation once again. Whenever this happened, whenever she led him to his breaking point, and left him there, abandoned him, unwilling to follow through, to show him she cared, he felt as though he had to start over, invent himself anew.

“It’s too bad that you’ve developed such an…attachment to me,” she murmured after a moment had passed. “You know,” and here she sighed deeply, and he wondered if it was just for effect, “you know Antonie, or you should, that this is…this has been so…so hard for me, too, your illness especially, trying to coax you through, this has been more difficult than you can imagine.”
He raised himself to both elbows and poised there, trembling. If she could have seen his face then, she would have observed an unusual fury in his eyes, a brutal anger creasing his forehead and pulling back his lips and chin.

“Hard? For you? Hard for you?” His voice was coarse and throaty. “For you, no, this isn’t hard. This isn’t hard at all. And this isn’t new either. This is, this is what you do best, best in all the world. You tease and mock me, yes, you mock me, you scorn me, you always have, forever, ever since you were the horrifying child I grew up with.” Exhausted, he dropped back off his elbows onto the makeshift bed, which wobbled with his every move.

She was silent again, and again, he couldn’t imagine her face. Nor did he want to. He vowed not to think of her again, not to let her come near him, to tempt him, tease him, and then, let him down. But it was fruitless, and he knew that too. Within a few days, another episode, another encounter, another seduction by Renata would follow, because that is how it went, always.
Gazing at her, he could barely make out the white linen fence.

“I suppose I could lie with you, lie next to you, that is, for a short time, if that would calm you.” Her voice blended into the night wind.

He stared at the stars, pinpoints of light in the blue black night sky. He watched one of the points flicker and blink. “Am I awake or asleep?” he asked himself then. It occurred to him that if he would just keep asking that same question over and over throughout the night, then it might not matter what Renata said, or did, because she would simply assume a place beside him, a place in one of his grand illusions. She might seem real, or she might not. But she would be fixed for certain in her uncertainty and she could not hurt him anymore. She would become, simply, a matter for discussion, observation, an unstable image or object evading direct perception, one of a myriad fluid aspects of nature. Her reality, simply, would reside apart from him behind a curtain. He could live with that. At least he thought so, in that moment, lying there, staring at the winking stars.

But almost immediately, and maybe because of the way the stars flickered, he wasn’t sure. After all, he knew so little about the boundaries of trickery and sorcery and witchcraft. And Renata, after all was said and done, was of that nether world.

“Yes, I would lie with you,” she said in an enchanting whisper. And before he could answer, or refuse, she stretched herself alongside him on the cot. As he felt the rough black fabric of her habit against his bare skin, he thought of her soft white underclothes beneath, and beneath those clothes, her flesh, as soft as the underbelly of a new pup. As she cupped her clothed body submissively around his, his mind circled around one fact: that black is black and white is white, and the world, understandably, wasn’t ready to accept someone like himself, or Renata, either, people who so casually blurred the distinctions of propriety and good taste.

“So why,” he asked himself, “should we be any different than we are? Why should we be shy about our desire?” That thought squared him, gave him assurance and peace, eased his mind, allowed him to let go of his anger and frustration. He folded her in his arms and stared into the dark sky and held her black and white layers to his yearning flesh, and he felt terror about what was to come, the grotesque treatments the doctor would soon prescribe. He feared dying, but even more, he dreaded living through what was in store.

But now he lay quietly beside Renata, happy to absorb himself in the stars, and in her, and in the curl of the moon approaching the horizon. In his feverish state, her words echoed and reverberated in his mind. He heard her saying: “I would lie with you, I would lie with you.” But soon enough, like the winds cooling his forehead, the words shifted. “I would lie with you” became “I would lie in you.” The vacillation continued until finally her words achieved their final form: “I would lie to you, I would lie to you.” He felt her warm breath, heard her singing whisper, and knew that “I would lie to you” was the only truthful statement he would hear from her all night.

Chapter Ten: En route to San Francisco, Antonie Writes

It was their first night at camp en route to San Francisco. They had been traveling for the better part of one day, all the way from the convent, and shortly before dusk, when the sun's rays had fallen behind the horizon, and the sky was a milky blue, Señora Ramos pulled the wagon up to a stream, where they proceeded to water the horses.

After a simple dinner of corn meal and beans, Renata withdrew from the fire.  She hugged the blue shawl closer around her shoulders, tucking her slender white fingertips protectively into the folds of her elbows on either side. The shawl was satin, and hardly offered protection against the chilly night. A brisk wind lifted the lip of her veil and scooped at the hem of her dress. A tall line of trees made a ragged black silhouette against the dark sky, and tiny stars dotted the sky like diamonds.

Renata's chin dropped to her chest, and she rocked, slightly, with some impatience. The toe of her black shoe was barely visible, but it kept time in the loose gravel where she stood, tapping out the rhythm of some vital internal clock. She avoided Antonie, even managed to ignore the odd collection of noises –wheezing, coughs, congestion, and steady chattering – that rose from him as he lay on blankets on the ground. She had taken her share of the dinner basket – a cold thigh of chicken, a hunk of sourdough bread, a sweet potato baked in the stones of the campfire – and she had eaten the meal on a warm rock, apart from the others.

She faced the steep ridge of the Santa Cruz mountains that they would climb through the following morning, and she watched the last of the sun slip down the western sky, and she wondered how the traveling would go, with Antonie so ill.

Once the sun dropped into a dark pool behind the mountains, though, she put aside her concerns and walked back to the fire. There were more night noises now, and there was no telling what creatures – bobcats, jaguar, bear — roamed the gathering shadows beyond the campfire.

Señora hummed a low wordless melody, huddled over her open-toed leather sandals, her white cotton skirt spread in the powdery dust. Renata listened closely to the tune, but could not identify it nor could she say even whether she had heard it before. She wished then that when Antonie had come to take her from the convent kitchen in the morning, that she had been able to bring her guitar, although under the harried circumstances of her departure, there was no time even to pack a simple change of clothes. She stared at him, and hateful thoughts flooded her.

As if he were reading her mind at that moment, Antonie looked up from his makeshift bed, which Señora had prepared as soon as they had made camp. Antonie had instructed Señora to place his head close toward the fire, so if he woke during the night he might have sufficient light to write "his pages." Señora defied him, however, saying in Spanish that she dare not place his blanket right next to the flames, lest stray sparks set fire to the bedroll or to "el pelo," the long black hair that rippled in waves over Antonie's shoulders.

“I would like it so much if you would sing to me,” he said now to Renata. He lifted one hand in her direction, and spoke slowly but with deliberation. Renata saw that he was shivering, and that his face was wet beneath the brim of his hat. The jumping flames of the fire

licked golden stripes in both his eyes.

“You know I came on this trip only because you forced me to come. I have no intention of singing to you,” Renata responded, lowering her eyes so that the flames could find no reflection there. She was going to add the word ‘ever’ but just then, the coffeepot toppled over and sent boiling liquid into the fire.

Señora rose abruptly, yelling out “Dios mío!” Grabbing at the fiery pot with the bottom of her cotton skirt, Señora managed to lift her dress high enough to show off her brown wiggling thighs. She missed the pot, which hit the ground, discharging sizzling liquid all around. Hot black coffee shot out at Renata’s feet and Antonie’s head. Simultaneously, Antonie turned and the nun jumped away, so that the coffee all but missed her dark skirt and her blue shawl

and his black hair. Señora crossed the distance to where Renata stood gazing at the coffee pot as it roasted in the flames.

Señora began a furious babble of Spanish.

“No, no, Señora, please, don’t worry, I am fine,” Renata said, calmly touching the woman’s thick graying hair. Señora looked up, and shook her head, her eyes large and round. There was contained in those eyes a pleading look that Renata had never seen before.

“You...we...God, I believe, He is telling us that we must be more kind to him,” Señora whispered, at which Renata recoiled, mouth open. She tossed one loose end of the blue shawl across her chest and hurried out of the light of the campfire. For the rest of the evening, until the sky went pitch dark, and the fire settled into glowing red and white coals, and the stars were dull sparks glittering above her head, Renata sat on the same large rock where she had eaten her dinner.

She listened to the coyotes call, and she prayed that she would see no wolves or bobcats. And then she whispered a second prayer asking God that whatever He had in mind for her as they traveled to San Francisco the next day to see the doctor, that all would be well.
more to come...

Chapter Nine: I Arrive in California, Where Xandra has a Surprise Waiting

By Gina Morrison

I wake up on the rock hard floor and it is it takes me more than a minute to figure out that I am wrapped in Xandra’s red Navaho blanket and that it scratches at my face and for a minute I’ve got myself convinced that I am lying on Renata’s narrow bed beneath the crucifix.

I blink and then I see one thick leg of Xandra’s brass bed, the bed I was supposed to sleep in last night and I am a little frightened wondering how the hell I got here on the floor, I’m sure it has something to do with that bottle of white wine I downed on the plane and then the two, yes, two ativan I swallowed, one as the plane did a severe rocking and rolling and nosediving routine somewhere over Kansas. And the second one I took as we started to descend into SFO, that’s the moment I realized for the first time that I had actually left David 3,000 miles behind and the fact I did it sort of blew my mind and not in such a good way either.

I vaguely remember Xandra meeting me outside baggage claim in San Francisco, I remember her saying we should get dinner and I remember thinking I was so tired that I couldn’t hold my head up.

“Oh God, I’m starving, would you mind if we stopped somewhere?” So how could I say no? W hat I should have done was have a strong shot of espresso but instead I had more wine, and by ten p.m. when we were heading down the 101 toward San Jose, the lights along the Bay were like birthday candles all alight, whirling on the dark horizon with the stars bright overhead in the sky.

I don’t remember when, but I fell asleep.

The weird thing about the ativan is how it makes me forget so completely, it takes my memory and turns it into a piece of Swiss cheese. Sometimes it scares me, like the time I went to make a milkshake and I put a spoon in the blender and then I went to peel a banana and I turned on the blender and there went the spoon.

And so much for the blender.

David refers to ativan as “outofit.”

I sit up now, here on Xandra’s floor, and my head is still swimming upstream, and the first thing I realize is how I miss him, really totally miss him in the gut in my legs and in every other part of me I won’t even mention, especially in my heart , I ache and that feeling sets me into a sweat and frenzy.

At that moment the door squeaks open and I see what looks to be a powder blue curtain, which turns out to be Xandra in a chiffon bathrobe. Very sexy, and her dreds are a cloud flying in a million directions.

“Are you awake?” she whispers and I whisper “uh, yes, I guess so.”

She makes her way into the room. “What in God’s name are you doing under the rug?”

I push it away. “I wish I knew,” I mumble, rolling over.

“So I’ve got to get to work early today, but I want you to come with me. I have a friend I want you to see this morning."

"Who is your friend?"

"She is a therapist, but not the sort you've been seeing."

"What sort is she?" I sit up, and I am yawning and so at first when she answers I am not quite sure I hear her right.

"She does hypnosis for past life regression."

I don't answer right away. Finally I say, "I don't think so, Xand."

"Look, Gina, you just have to meet her. She's someone you would like. I work with her now and then and she's amazing. And all you have to do is meet her. You can decide later if you want her services."

I lay back down on the floor and close my eyes. "Right now Xand all I want is more sleep. I don't want to meet anyone. So if you don't mind, I think I'll stay here this morning."

Xandra doesn't say anything at first. Then she sits down on the floor cross-legged and suddenly I realize that she is studying me.

"What?"

"Oh it's just that I was thinking of taking the afternoon off. I thought we could take a walk at this bird sanctuary and talk about what’s going on with you and David.”

"Sure. That sounds great. So you could come back and get me at lunch and I can sleep a few more hours."

"Yes, except if you stay here it means an extra two hours of driving."

I feel trapped. Xandra is pushing me way too hard, and I don't want to be pushed. I am about to say this to Xandra, except she beats me to it.

"Look, Gina, I know I"m putting a bit of a squeeze on you, but I really wish you'd go along with me here. I have a strong intuition that you are going to like this woman. She's helped a lot of people and she's very easy-going."

I am not happy, at all, but I decide that in the interest of keeping peace, I will meet Xandra's friend and get it over with.

I drag myself off the floor and head for the shower, where I stand for an extra few minutes, letting the water soak into my head and neck. Soon I am dressed and in the kitchen, where Xandra hands me one of her green "power" shakes.

"I'll take an English muffin, if you have one," I mumble. Naturally, she doesn't have English muffins.

I take a sip of the power shake and it tastes vaguely like my lawn back home. I place the glass very carefully back on the counter and soon, I'm sitting in Xandra’s BMW, and we are in traffic backed up the 101, and my new life in California, packed like a sardine in a car on the freeway, has begun.

Chapter Eight: How I Wanted Desperately to be A Nun Growing Up!

By Claudia Ricci

As a little girl, I was desperate to be a nun. I wanted so badly to be a nun that my Grandfather Claude, for whom I am named, and whose English was thickly accented by Italian, used to trail me around the house calling me “Seester.” So maybe that’s why I think I am a nun since he christened me and his name was Claude, which by the way means “lame one” (for the Emperor Claudius.)

My dear friend and spiritual advisor Denise, who helped me recover from cancer eight years ago, thinks I should change my name. I asked her why and she told me that the "lame one" creates an energetic field that isn't just good for me.

She suggested that I use my middle name, which is Jean, or some version of it, Jeanna or Gina, because Jean “is of Hebrew origin, and its meaning is "God's grace." I should mention perhaps that some years ago I converted to Judaism.

How odd, a Jewish Italian woman writing a story about a Spanish nun who is imprisoned for killing her cousin.

Well so, Grandpa Claude and my Grandma Mish (short for Michelina) referred to all nuns, except for me, that is, as “crows.”

The ones I knew in Catholic school certainly fit that description to a T, they were as mean as black beady-eyed crows. They made us kneel on hot asphalt in the schoolyard in June so that we could say the stations of the cross. I remember the hot burning tar and the sharp grit cutting into my young knees.

And now it hits me: the name of the church and the school that I attended as a little girl, where I suffered the brutality of the nuns, was Saint Anthony's.

I have so many nun stories I could tell, and so does my brother and so does my mother too. Very scary stories. But the only nun story I really want to tell is the murder mystery, the one about Renata and Antonie, and how I believe that I am living in 1883, sitting in the courtyard and climbing the hillside with Teresa and traveling to San Francisco with Antonie and Señora.

Denise believes in past lives, and she thinks my nun story is…important.

Once a few years back I saw a psychiatrist at Harvard, my sister Karen took me there on a sunny cold morning in January, we drove I 90 all the way to Boston, my sister, who is a nurse, insisted we go because she was so worried about me, my mental health, I was quite depressed.

When I told the shrink about my nun story, how I feel like I’m in prison, how

I have the scratchy feeling of her black wool habit right here at the tender part of my waist, where my big black rosary beads hang, how I sit in the courtyard of the convent with Sister Teresa, how I can see the black cracks snaking through the blue and white tiles, how I can see the fountain, dry now of water, how I can count the birds, how I feed the chickens corn pellets from my white apron, how I often stare up at the lion-colored California hillsides near the convent how I walk up those hillside giggling with Sister Teresa, how we have picnics under the live oak trees, how the smells make me sneeze, how we unlace our blocky black shoes and we take them off and lie down on the blanket side by side, how we stare into the azure sky, how I decided to let Theresa read my diary, http://renata1883.blogspot.com/2010/04/renata-writes-diary.html and so now she is the only one who knows the truth about Antonie and how he is trying to frame me with his outrageous stories.

Well, so, I should tell you that I even have the newspaper clipping from 1882 accusing me of Antonie’s murder. The one from the San Francisco Examiner, you can see it right herehttp://renata1883.blogspot.com/2006/06/this-is-newspaper-that-condemned-her.html So this way maybe
I can prove to you and the world that this nun story is absolutely true.

Anyway, when I told the shrink at Harvard all about that, I expected her to commit me, but she didn’t even blink at my story, she simply suggested that I take it very seriously, she actually suggested that I consult a past life regression therapist she knew about in Worcester. Or she said, I should find a different past life therapist nearer my home.

I was surprised, and my sister, well, she was a lot more surprised.

I never did seek out a past life therapist.

And then there was the time more recently when my sister Holly bought me the nun costume. It was a really lovely costume, and it looked quite good on me, even the white headpiece binding my forehead, and the black veil looked quite lovely too. But that was not good timing, her buying me that nun costume, because. Well.

Let's just say it was a difficult time in my life. A very scary time.

Sometimes I get scared even now.

Sometimes I get scared because I am convinced that maybe I am just plain crazy. A crazy Italian Jewish Spanish woman telling a nutty story which
nobody will believe
and
nobody will ever read.

Of course, on that subject of readers, Denise would say to me, Claudia, it's your ego that makes you feel like you need readers.

Denise has tried to impress upon me the difference between objective and subjective art. She suggests that a person who is on a spiritual quest

(and here I should pause and say that most days I do consider myself to be on a spiritual quest)

is looking always to be guided by the Divine and motivated to enhance the BEING; that same person should always be looking at her motivations, why she is doing what she is doing.

I called Denise a few weeks ago and told her I was a bit confused about how to go forward with this crazy story about Sister Renata. I was confused about whether it was objective art, or subjective art. I was confused about whether I was feeding my ego or operating out of a spiritual quest for the Divine.

She told me to start by considering what my motivation was behind my book.

And all I can say is that my motivation is unclear, except for one thing: FREEING SISTER RENATA FROM PRISON.

I know I've got to get her out, and I'm the only one who can do it because I alone know the true story, I know that she did NOT KILL ANTONIE. Señora Ramos knows it too.

I also know that somehow by freeing Renata, I am also freeing me.

I know that but still, it gets difficult. Sometimes it feels impossible to go forward.

So often all I can do is sit in the courtyard with Teresa and stare up to the lion-colored hillside where we walk. Sometimes all I know is that I write in my diary about my cousin Antonie and his foolish stories making me into a flamenco dancer.

Sometimes all I know is that I am in Renata's body. In her blocky black shoes and in her scratchy wool habit.

I am sitting on the cold stone bench in the prison with her staring out at the gallows and...

and on and on.

Anyway, Denise doesn't deny all of this. She simply tells me me that I have to call forth art from the BEING, which is part of the eternal, and not from the ego, which is a fleeting construct of my mind.

I would be lying if I said I understood completely what she is saying. Sometimes I understand but sometimes I just don't.

Sometimes I think I am just telling a story that I have to tell.

Sometimes I think I am telling a true story.

And sometimes I think I am lying.

Of course, sometimes I am convinced that all stories are lies, even if they are supposedly true stories. Because all stories are made out of words and words are just not real. They are only symbols for what we are thinking.

Stories are made up of symbols, little black and white squiggles which are known as words, which fill up a page or a screen.

But words are also magic. If Antonie writes a story about me, dancing in a red dress with ruffles, you can see it, right?

And if I write the words, “green pine trees in a forest” you see can that too right?

And if I say, “hummingbirds at my backyard feeder,” you can see that too?

Stories are a lot more important than people realize. Without stories, without memories, we wouldn't know who we are.

I started writing the Renata story when my dear friend Nina was going through chemotherapy at Sloan Kettering way back in 1995. I thought that by delivering up to her a good story, in this case a kind of wacky time travel murder mystery, that she would be distracted from her terrible pain and suffering.

Nina is absolutely fine today but when she emerged from Sloan she looked just dreadful: like a greenish yellow ghoul, puffy with no hair. Awful awful.

But then what happened: I never delivered her the story, and then I got cancer in 2002 and then I too had to get blasted with chemo at Sloan Kettering and let me tell you no story could possibly have distracted me from the goddawful misery that was sitting week after week in those olive green barka lounge chairs with those poles swinging overhead, waiting for hours as those clear plastic sausages full of vicious fluids drained slowly into my blue veins.

Is it any wonder I have had some difficulty with the nun story? Is it any wonder that I'm stalling even though all my readers probably want me to go forward, assuming there are readers?

But of course, I don't need readers, I just need a mission of love and integrity and divine purpose.

Or not.

It is fucking absurd to write a book like this, on a blog. WHO EVER HEARD OF SUCH A THING?

Maybe I will Google, "Novels on blogs" and see what comes up....