Unforgettable letters from Colombia

A remarkable voice and illuminating writing make The Book of Emma Reyes, a gritty 175-page collection of letters, an unforgettable look at growing up impoverished in Colombia. Painter Emma Reyes, who settled eventually in Paris, begins her memoir at age 5 in a one-room, windowless Bogota hovel. Her first chore each day was carrying the household’s brimming bedpan to a garbage heap. Reyes and her sister moved from cycles of neglect to rounds of abuse, including some in a Catholic convent, as recounted in the excerpt below, courtesy of Penguin Books. Reyes allows us to see the world through the narrowed lens of an illiterate reject who would not give up on her future. The Book of Emma Reyes was on WORLD’s short list for 2017 Book of the Year in the Understanding the World category. —Mindy Belz

Letter Number II

My dear Germán:

There were no girls in that convent. It was a convent where they made nuns. There were some very young ones, but they were all novitiates, and we weren’t allowed to be with them. We weren’t allowed beyond the first courtyard, where the entrance and the visitors’ rooms were. Next to the entrance were two rooms, one where the doorkeeper slept, a very old, pigeon-toed lady who talked to herself all day; in the second room, full of furniture and packages, they arranged a bed for the two of us, because Helena didn’t want me to sleep alone. In the doorkeeper’s room was a large table, where food was left for us whenever the nuns brought food for the doorkeeper.

In the mornings we played alone and helped the old doorkeeper water the plants. The courtyard was enormous, with many flowers and large trees, plus the birdcage; we’d spend hours talking to the birds. The young nun from the hotel, the one we called our friend, would come in the afternoon. Sometimes a group of novitiates would come and stand at the door to the second courtyard. They’d watch us and smile, but they couldn’t talk to us. The first thing the young nun taught us was to play cross, which she called making the sign of the holy cross. Every finger had a name, she said, but only the ones on your hands; the ones on your feet have no name. Like the Boy, we thought. To play cross you had to close your whole hand and leave up the finger called the Thumb. With Thumb, we had to make three crosses, as if they were two sticks crossed one over the other. The first cross is made on the forehead, the second on the mouth, with your mouth closed, and the third in the center of your chest. Then you had to quickly open all your fingers and with your hand stretched out completely, make one large cross with the tips of all your fingers, first in the middle of your forehead, then the middle of your chest, then on your left shoulder, then on your right shoulder, and finish by giving the nail of Thumb a tiny kiss, always with your mouth closed. I enjoyed that game a lot, because I was always making mistakes and all my crosses would get mixed up. Sometimes I started on my chest and finished at my forehead. Or started with my mouth, and instead of kissing Thumb I’d kiss the pinkie, because I felt sorry for it because it was so small. The nun would get furious and make me start over a thousand times.

Another day she told us the story of a boy named Jesus. This boy’s mother was also called María. They were very poor and traveled by burro, just as we had when we went to Guateque. But this Baby Jesus had three fathers. One that lived with his mother, whose name was José and who was a carpenter; another who was old and had a beard and who lived in the sky among the clouds. This father was very rich; according to the nun, he owned the entire world, all the little birds, all the trees, all the rivers, all the flowers, the mountains, the stars—everything was his. The third father was named the Holy Spirit and he wasn’t a man but a dove that flew all the time. But since the mother lived only with the poor father, they didn’t even have a house to live in, and when Baby Jesus was born he had to be born in the house of a burro and a cow. But the old father, the rich one who lived in the sky, sent a star to some friends of his, who were also rich and were called Reyes, kings, just like us. Those men came to visit Baby Jesus at the house of the cow and the burro, and they brought him so many gifts of gold and jewels that he wasn’t poor anymore, but rich. I asked her to take us to where that child was, but she said he wasn’t on the earth anymore, that he’d gone to live with his rich dad who was in the clouds, but if we were good and obedient, we’d see him in the sky.

We spent hours looking at the sky to see if we could see him. Helena told me one day that if we could climb one of the larger trees, she was sure we’d see him, that we couldn’t see him because we were small. We waited for the old doorkeeper to fall asleep after lunch, and we climbed the tree. When the nuns came, we were holding on to the highest branches, so high up we couldn’t hear what they were saying. We couldn’t get down. The nuns ran in all directions and gestured for us to wait. They brought some ladders, which they tied together, and called a man dressed as a soldier, who climbed up and brought us down. The old woman whom they called Mother Superior hit us on the head and legs, but when we said we’d climbed up the tree because we wanted to see Baby Jesus in the sky, they all started laughing, threw themselves at us, and covered us in kisses on our face, our head, our hands. The old doorkeeper wept and said, “They’re two little angels, two little angels …”

The old woman whom they called Mother Superior hit us on the head and legs, but when we said we’d climbed up the tree because we wanted to see Baby Jesus in the sky, they all started laughing, threw themselves at us, and covered us in kisses on our face, our head, our hands.

We were in that convent only a few days. One morning, as we were waking up, a new nun came to take our measurements. She took long pieces of thick gray cloth and made us two very ugly dresses. They were long like those of the novitiates, with a high collar, long sleeves, and many pleats. They were so odd looking that I hardly recognized Helena anymore, and Helena hardly recognized me. They also bought us espadrilles, which were nice indeed. They combed our hair back into pigtails so tight I could barely close my eyes. The Mother Superior brought some pieces of small white cloth stuck to a brown necklace that she called scapulars. She put them around our necks and said we should never take them off, that they were so that people would know we were daughters of the Virgin Mary and of God. When the nuns left, I asked Helena who had told the Mother Superior we were daughters of Mrs. María and Mr. God. Helena didn’t answer and gave me a slap on the mouth.

A while later, all the nuns came back. One brought a basket covered with a white handkerchief. One by one they started to kiss us and make crosses in the air with their open hands. Our friend and the Mother Superior took us by the hand. The young one took the basket, and we left the convent. As soon as we were out on the street, we started to cry. We went directly to the priest we already knew. The Mother Superior spoke with him as they strolled through the garden. When the train whistle blew, they took us by the hand and we left, running toward the station. When we saw the train, we called out in earnest, shrieking, “No! No! No!”—but we weren’t sure what we were saying no to. I held on to the priest’s legs, not wanting to get on the train, but finally they forced us to board. When we saw that the nuns were coming with us, we calmed down a bit. They told us to kiss the priest’s hand, and then the train left. No one spoke during the trip. Helena and I pressed tightly up against each other, and I could see great anguish in her face. Her eyes had gotten bigger, and she opened and closed her mouth as if she were out of breath. The Mother Superior looked at her watch and told the young nun that it was time to eat. They opened the basket; there were hard-boiled eggs, potatoes, pieces of hen. We ate only a banana. When we got to Bogotá, we took a horse carriage like the one we’d taken with Mrs. María when we left the room in San Cristóbal. In the buggy we started to cry all over again, perhaps because we were thinking of her.

The buggy stopped on a narrow street, in front of a large door. A little piece of wire stuck out through a tiny hole; the Mother Superior pulled it, and a bell rang. We heard the sounds of chains, keys, sticks, and door knockers, and finally the door opened. “Good morning, Sisters. The Mother Superior is waiting for you. Come in, come in; this way.”

I couldn’t see anything. Everything was a fearsome darkness.

Mother Dolores Castañeda was tall, so pale she was almost transparent, with very large hands and extraordinary tenderness and generosity. She leaned forward and asked our names and our dad’s name and our mom’s name.

“We don’t know.”

“Helenita, you, who are so pretty and are already such a big girl … tell me, what’s your mom like? Do you remember what she was called? And your dad?”

We both began to weep.

“Tell us, Mother. You haven’t been able to figure out who the men were that abandoned them?”

“No.”

“And not where they came from?”

“No. Mother, the priest has been to all the markets to speak with the Indians. At mass on Sunday, he has asked all the faithful that if they know something, they should tell him, but until now we haven’t been able to find out anything. If the girls remembered anything, they could help us, but as you see, anytime anyone asks them, they start crying, or fall silent. I promise you, Mother, both we and the priest will keep asking, and if we find out anything, we’ll let you know right away.”

Mother Dolores Castañeda looked very concerned. “Mother, I insist and I beg you not to give up. It’s not because we’re interested in finding or knowing who the parents of these two children are. What I’m interested in is knowing whether or not they’ve been baptized, whether they are legitimate children or daughters of sin. You can imagine that we can’t have, beneath the roof of this holy house, two girls who were conceived in sin. We have the obligation before God to save their souls. I’ll have to ask the bishop what we can do.”

“What I’m interested in is knowing whether or not they’ve been baptized, whether they are legitimate children or daughters of sin.”

If I can recall this conversation with such accuracy, it’s because we heard the same one, with the same seriousness, repeated for years. Every now and then they would bring up this issue again, either because we had a visit from the bishop, or because Superior General was coming from Rome, or because Holy Week or Christmas was approaching. Every time someone important from church visited us, they’d take us to the sitting room and we’d be subjected to the same questions, with the same arguments.

The two mother superiors went on discussing how to save our souls, until a bell rang, and we were told to kiss the Mother Superior and say good-bye. The old one and the young one made the cross over us, then bowed their heads and left without a word. Again we heard the keys and the chains. When the door opened, a ray of sunlight swept across the sitting room. On the floor you could see the shadows of the nuns as they departed.

The door closed behind them, separating us from the world for almost fifteen years.

A big hug for everyone.

Emma. Paris, January 1970.

Excerpted from The Book of Emma Reyes by Emma Reyes; introduced and translated by Daniel Alarcón. Published by Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2012 by Gabriela Arciniegas. Translation and introduction copyright © 2012 by Daniel Alarcón.