William Kennedy - Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes

The Manhattan convent school Esme had gone to no longer existed in 1953, but when Alex came to visit he told her of one in Albany where Latin Catholics for decades had sent their innocent daughters to be educated bilingually by an order of nuns that was as elite as the Jesuits. Esme flirted casually with Alex, without consequence, and though he owed her nothing, she knew he would godfather Gloria’s every need. He was, after all, Max’s close friend, the Mayor of a heavily Catholic city, he had political power, and he was an Episcopalian, which was almost Catholic.

“Those nuns are purity itself,” Alex told Esme, “and they’ll preserve her from excessive sophistication.”

The words were magical to Esme, who wanted Gloria to have the adolescent purity that had eluded her. And so, at age seven, Gloria was enrolled in the convent school at Albany and, except for one year in Cuba with her mother after Castro’s triumph, she spent her elementary and high school years in a cocoon of holiness, as that concept was understood by the holy women of Sagrado Corazón.

When Gloria asked Renata for instructions on how to behave with a man—“What are the special secret things and how do you do them?”—Renata worried about wounding such innocence.

“Do you mean kissing and touching?”

“Yes, but more,” Gloria said.

“You mean complete sex?”

“I don’t know how to think about it complete.”

“You know how it is done, verdad ?”

“I may not,” said Gloria.

“You know the sex parts of the body.”

“I know my own, but I don’t know much about them. About that.”

“What don’t you know?”

“I don’t know what I don’t know. In health class we saw a slide show on female anatomy but Sister Mary Kneeling Bench referred to those parts of the body in Latin, so we didn’t understand the words. We were told never to wear open-toed sandals because our toes might look like the male organ, which most of us had never seen. Our chests had to be flat, our knees invisible, and we weren’t allowed books, magazines, or movies that might be obscene.”

“Did you ever see boys from other schools? At dances?”

“We were chaperoned. If we danced we had to be a foot apart, and if we ever sat on a boy’s lap we were told to put a telephone book under us before we sat down.”

“No sane person would tell you that.”

“Some people say the nuns are insane, but they are only holy women.”

“You know how to get a baby — tell me they let you know that much.”

“I know it somewhat. When you menstruate you can have babies. I asked Mama if nuns menstruated and she said they did. Then why don’t they have babies? And she said because God knows they’re not married.”

“Oh, my silly sister. Child, why do you come to me with these questions?”

“I have a friend, and I want to behave right. I know you know how to behave right with men.”

“What is right? Sexually safe? Is that your fear?”

“What do you mean by safe? I want to know how to do things, or not do things, whatever those things are. Do you understand?”

“I am trying.”

“I want to be with him.”

“But that is the point. How do you mean, with?”

“What do you mean how do I mean with?”

“I mean do you really want to sleep with him? That way, with.”

“I want him to like me.”

“I’m sure he does already.”

“When we’re close I want to be sure how to do things.”

“You don’t want to disappoint him if you sleep with him all the way.”

“What is all the way?”

“All the way is everything, giving him your body.”

“Is that so easy to do? Exactly?”

“Very easy, even when it is not exact.”

“I think I want to sleep with him even if I don’t sleep with what you call everything.”

“You don’t sleep with everything, you do everything.”

“Then no.”

“No? What do you mean no?”

“It seems too soon for everything since I really know nothing.”

“Oh, child— ay ay ay ay ay. ” And she waited. “I don’t recommend this, but perhaps, just perhaps to begin, you can tease him and then stop.”

“Is it possible to stop?”

“Once you start, the body will want to continue. But you can teach yourself in your mind.”

“How would I tease him?”

“You do not say no when he asks. You say yes, un poquito . But not all the way yes. Maybe later it will be yes. Then you push him away, but nicely, and kiss him while you do it. Has he asked about any of this?”

“No.”

“What does he do?”

“He kisses me.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes. He’s tall.”

“Does he touch your body?”

“My face and arms, my hands. He doesn’t do any of the with thing you mentioned.”

The with thing. They educated this child to be a social idiot. So Renata spoke of seduction, how to talk to the man, how to be shy, how to grow bolder, when to laugh, because sometimes it really is funny, but you must not laugh at the wrong time or he will lose his mood. She spoke of clothing being loose here, tight there, the positioning of skirts, the crossing of legs, the ways of sitting. Renata put on a dress that shaped her figure but did not drape it, modeled a blouse and a skirt and demonstrated the visible arcs of the breasts, fleeting evidence of stockinged thigh, and the gradations of temptation through lingerie. She spoke of the control of one’s eyes and mouth, the things a man or a woman may desire and which desires you must postpone till another day. She did not speak of coition in explicit language. She did not want to use those words yet, either in Spanish or English, but she spoke of specific places being touched and pushing his hand away from other places. When you decide not to push him away then you are more or less doing it, and you will probably do it all, and then you will be with him. She mentioned the condom, without which you do not do the with thing. She spoke of a favored way of being with and suggested one angular variation on that. There are many ways of being with, she said, but you do not have to do them all at the same time, although some day you may try. The essential attitude when you are finally deciding not to say no is to think deeply about what you are doing, to think of yes as an act of love. One should not, on this night, or this afternoon, be with him just to be with. That may come later. On this night, or perhaps it is an afternoon, one must be the vessel of love, and when that happens you will know everything forever and will need no more lessons.

“Do you know what love is, amorcita ?”

“I think I do,” Gloria said.

“Good. Then the nuns have not totally destroyed you.”

Gloria’s lesson in not going all the way came in March of 1964 when she

was a second-semester freshman at Bard College and Alex, every other week, came for her in his Cadillac to take her to lunch. Renata and Quinn had wanted her to go to the State University where Renata was taking art history and literature courses to finish her degree, cut short when Batista closed Havana University as a revolutionary hotbed.

But Gloria chose Bard because it was out of the city and she would live apart from family, but still close to Albany, and Alex. She was a scholarly and intense youth, undistracted by the common teenage fixation on romance. The school offered a focus on her potential career: social work and political science, an outgrowth of the awe she felt for her Aunt Renata, the political rebel. Renata, soon after she and Quinn moved to Albany in 1963, took Gloria to the civil rights protest March on Washington, and being with the vast black throng as Martin Luther King delivered his Dream speech was Gloria’s baptism in racial politics.