The same couldn’t be said for school, which began after lunch. They had different nuns for each subject. María liked arithmetic the best, not because she was good at it but because Sister Francesca who taught it never punished her for getting the answers wrong. The other nuns were not so forgiving, especially Sister Vallín who taught scripture. She must have hit María on the head with her cane three or four times a class, and on the rare occasion she wasn’t in a hitting mood, she would make María copy out pages from the Bible until her hand didn’t work anymore.

Dinner was at six o’clock, followed by church at seven, during which the school’s only priest, Father Pardavé, used his sermons to remind the girls they were unwanted and unloved, castaways, forgotten by the world, lower than a snake’s belly, and they would never amount to anything. Some of the older girls called him Father Finger behind his back because of special examinations he did to them when they reached puberty. And sometimes at nighttime he would select one of them to accompany him to his cottage for “special lessons,” though no one ever told María what these special lessons were about.

Finally at eight o’clock a nun supervised everyone as they changed into their nightgowns and knelt at their bedsides to pray for a half hour. María always prayed for her parents to come and take her away from the terrible school, and when she didn’t find them downstairs waiting for her in the morning, she would pray a little harder and a little louder the next night, so God would hear her above all the other girls likely praying for the same thing.

Then it was lights out, and regardless of whether you were tired or not, you had to go to sleep. If you didn’t, the nuns said the Sandman would come for you. He’d pluck out your eyes, put them in a bag, and carry them to his nest on the moon, where he would feed them to his beaked children, who loved nothing more than the eyeballs of naughty human children.

2

One Saturday morning María woke before dawn and found Laura sleeping next to her, sucking her thumb. She must have climbed into María’s bed at some point during the night.

Laura was six years old, one of the youngest girls in the ward. As there were more girls assigned to the dormitory than there were beds, the younger ones often shared beds with the older ones. Laura, however, usually ended up sleeping on a pillow on the floor by herself because she was a bed-wetter and nobody allowed her in their bed—nobody except María.