Teresa, My Love: An Imagined Life of the Saint of Avila

Ana, Teresita, I don’t sense you anymore, are you there? (Wakes up, full face.) I know you can’t hear me, my voice won’t come out. I’m cold. This blue air chills me to the bone, I wish there were some warm arms around my neck. I long for nurturing breasts, soft lap. Hot water, the four waters of the divine garden. Can’t you see that I’m a newborn babe? Bathe me, fill my mouth with warm milk! (Convulsions. Thin trickle of blood from corner of mouth.)

I’m shivering, but only because I’m too lightly dressed. This fresh breeze, so airy and sharp-edged, tells me I’m in Avila, is that right? (Fervid reminiscence. The serial goes into historical-epic mode.) Father let me wear the white silk gown with pearl trimmings and lilac-pink stitching over muslin sleeves, the one Mother wore when Charles V came to town. And those leather ankle-boots I loved to see on her. Today’s a holiday, I’m sixteen, and the Empress Isabella is coming with little Prince Philip, who is only four and who will become His Catholic Majesty King Philip II. (Fast.) To swap one’s infant garb for a sovereign’s finery, what a tiresome ceremony: flamboyant celebrations, head-spinning fuss. Then that feeling of emptiness and discomfort, me trembling and shivering like I am now, look, in this lovely dress of white and old-rose silk you’ve decked me out in, I know you meant well, but it’s the middle of winter, be sensible, children.

(No answer. La Madre can no longer hear the nurses whispering, her mind spins upon itself inside the crystal castle of her soul. No, it’s a castle of snow and ice that’s either melting or hardening, it depends. A delicate confusion merges dwelling places, years, silks, contours, beings.)

Is it me arrayed in queenly splendor, or is it you, my daughter? Father Gratian’s favorite, little Beatriz Chávez? (Stares at her for a long time.) Another one with my mother’s name; the Beatrices are definitely keeping me company on this last voyage. And you even took the religious name of Beatriz of the Mother of God! Like our dear padre, that noble squire of the Virgin, who chose the same name to become Jerónimo Gracián de la Madre de Dios. I presume you noticed the coincidence? (Pause.)

Ah, that Mother of God, how desperately we reach for her when our own fails us! It would be an understatement to say you lacked a mother, Beatriz dear. (Attempts sweeping movement with arm. Falls back.) She was unkind and a bully, quite unlike other mothers that have been coming to my mind ever since I’ve lain dying in this freezing cold, for how many days now?…Anyhow, not really a mother at all, not like mine, nor like the way I attempted to be a mother myself, although, God forgive me.…(Pause.) He knows how flawed I am. (Pause.)

(Beatriz de la Madre de Dios makes the most of this sentimental moment by acting the little girl, and a pretentious one at that: she’ll never change.)

BEATRIZ DE LA MADRE DE DIOS. In centuries to come, people will say that I was an abused child, won’t they, Madre? You went into detail about my ill-treatment in the Foundations, in the chapter about the painful process of foundation in Seville.

TERESA. Appalling, to leave a seven-year-old mite with her aunt! They may have been rustic mountain folk, but your parents were Christians, like everyone else! (Falls back.)

(Beatriz doesn’t reply at once, intent on her own history as though drunk on bitterness.)

BEATRIZ DE LA MADRE DE DIOS. And then those three servants, who were after my aunt’s inheritance, accused me of trying to poison her with arsenic!

TERESA. To be honest the idea doesn’t seem to me so far-fetched (full face again), in an abandoned child who would do anything to get home to her mother. We can admit these sorts of things now, can’t we? This Hell on earth is well behind us, I mean behind me, and the cold air is already carrying my body, if not yet my soul, up to Heaven.

BEATRIZ DE LA MADRE DE DIOS. You are more au fait with all that than I, Mother. How can I remember what happened when I was so little? I do know that when Mother got me back, she gave me a scolding and a whipping and made me sleep on the floor every night for more than a year.