Biting her bottom lip to stop the tears, María thrust Angela at the woman.

Sister Lupita took her and said, “Well, well, you can learn. Maybe you’re not as dumb as everyone says.”

2

Sister Lupita led María to a nearby room that had a sewing machine on one desk and a typewriter and transistor radio on another. A number of framed photographs lined the windowsill above a magazine rack.

In the center of the room a short, frail nun stood next to an empty chair. She held a pair of metal scissors in her hand.

“Sit in the chair, 46,” Sister Lupita instructed.

María went to the chair and sat. She liked haircuts. The hairdresser her mother took her to always gave her a lollipop when the cut was finished.

The short nun lifted a handful of María’s long black hair and snipped it close to the roots.

María was horrorstruck. “My hair!” She tried to leap off the chair, but Sister Lupita seized her shoulders and pinned her in the seat. She twisted and thrashed.

The short nun produced a hairbrush from her pocket and rapped María on the head sharply with its wooden backside.

“Ow!” she cried, tears springing to her eyes.

“Sit still,” Sister Lupita said.

Her skull throbbing, María obeyed, and the short nun went back to work.

Snip, snip, snip.

All around her, clumps of hair fell to the floor.

3

After the horrible haircut—her hair was now shorter than most of the boys’ hair had been in her old school—Sister Lupita marched María down a hallway, stopping when they came to a staircase. There, she used a key on her keychain in an angled door built into the side of the stairs. She opened it to reveal a pitch-black space and said, “This is where little girls who don’t know how to behave go to think about their sins and pray for forgiveness.”

4

María didn’t know how long she was in the cupboard, if that was indeed what it was. She guessed maybe she’d been there a day, maybe longer. She couldn’t see her hands if she held them directly before her face, and there was a strong toilet smell. The long stretches of silence were occasionally punctuated by footsteps treading the steps above her head. She wanted to yell out, ask for help, but she didn’t, fearing it might be Sister Lupita or another nun.