I sulked. How could I forget if you remind me constantly? I wanted to say. But I knew Tío was still mad at me for having come to his world, and as I did not want to upset him further, I said nothing. Eyes wide open, I followed him along perfectly straight paths flanked by trees and across square patches of green to a big rectangular building that seemed to be made entirely of glass. Through its walls, sitting on sofas randomly arranged, I could see young people talking.
Tío opened the door and motioned me inside. “This is the Recreation Hall where students come to relax,” he said, his words barely audible over the loud chattering.
I paused for a moment, longing to join them, but Tío urged me forward to a long table where a young man smiled at us from under a banner that read “Information.” At Tio’s request, the boy handed me a map. It was a miniature representation of the campus, with little drawings of buildings on it. They were so cool, I could not stop looking at them.
Tío snatched the paper from my hands. “We are here,” he said, marking the place with a cross. “This building is your dorm, and this is the English department.” Folding the map, he squeezed it into the outside pocket of my backpack. “Come on. You can study it later. Let’s go to the Coffee House now and get something to eat.”
Holding my arm, he led me through an open door into a big noisy room that smelled of spices and broiled meat. It reminded me of the kitchens in Father’s castle, only here students walked around the tall tables not cooking, but picking dishes and putting them on small trays. “Self-service,” Tío called it. I called it paradise.
Just like in the paradise of Ama Bernarda’s stories, some food was forbidden, at least until I had learned how to use a fork in the proper manner. For now, to be on the safe side, I chose only a bowl of soup and a sandwich, while promising myself I would practice hard that night so I could try anything I wanted to the following day.
After we had paid for our lunches, we walked into an open patio where around little tables symmetrically arranged under huge striped parasols, students talked, ate, and laughed with a contagious exuberance.
Once we were seated,Tío gave me one of the small boxes he had on his trays and showed me how to drink from it with a bright yellow straw. “It’s chocolate milk,” he said, laughing when I asked what kind of cow made such a wonderful milk. He also offered me crunchy chips from a fluffy metallic bag. He said they were potatoes, but they were nothing like the potatoes of my world. They were flat and crispy and made me hungry for more. But Tío, claiming I would get sick if I did not stop eating, forbade me to go back inside to get another bag.
“Besides,” he said, getting up, “I want to show you the library. And since I have to teach a class at two, we have to hurry.”
“May I come with you?” I asked after he had explained he was a professor in the anthropology department.
“Sure,” he said, but didn’t sound sure at all. “Just don’t ask any questions.”
I found Tio’s talk on “The Psychology of the Medieval Warrior” fascinating. His students kept interrupting him, and he answered their questions promptly. But when I raised my hand as everybody else was doing, he ignored me. Upset, I left as soon as the class was over without waiting for him and wandered around the campus by myself, intoxicated by the freedom I was allowed in this world with no Ama to chaperone me everywhere and no Mother to force me to act against my nature.
The following day, I attended my first real classes. I was nervous at first, but soon I realized I had no problem keeping up with the teachers, and I relaxed. In between classes I talked with some of my classmates, and by the end of the morning, I had already made friends.
John kept a promise he had made at Al’s and took me downtown for lunch. Happy to practice my newly acquired ability with the fork, I ordered a salad. But John insisted I try his “pizza.” He offered the triangular pie to me that he was holding in his hand, and so I dropped my fork and took the pie in mine. I imagined John sitting at my father’s table in the Great Hall, grabbing the food from the common trays with his bare fingers as he had done with the pizza, and smiled at the thought: He would fit right in.
I liked the pizza so much, John just let me eat his piece and bought himself another one.
Once we were finished, we strolled along the streets on our way back to the campus. Unlike the random pattern that the alleys of the villages in my world follow, these streets were neatly arranged in a perfectly straight grid. Although I found each and every one of the shops that occupied the first floor of the houses fascinating, the most amazing thing of all was to be close to John. And to stop staring at him required amazing effort.
Several days passed this way, swift and pleasant like a summer breeze. And every day I felt more comfortable in my new life. I loved the freedom this world allowed me. I loved its people and its food and the rhythm of the new language. And above all, I loved the thrill of knowing I would see John playing basketball the following Sunday.
But Tío had other plans.
“Good news, Andrea,” he told me on Thursday as I left my English class. “I’ve been able to rearrange my schedule and free up this weekend for you.”
I didn’t say anything, but my eyes must have conveyed my total lack of enthusiasm at spending time with him, because he added. “That means we’re going on a road trip. We’ll be visiting some of the Spanish missions.” He said this brightly, as if I should be thrilled.
I wasn’t. I would have preferred to stay in Davis. But I couldn’t tell Tío about my wish to see John—Tío would have guessed my interest in John and probably forbidden me from seeing him altogether to avoid further trouble. So I had no believable excuse for staying, and in the end, I agreed to accompany Tío Ramiro on his trip.
Kelsey laughed when I asked her if she wanted to come. “Go with you to see the missions? No thanks. I saw them all when I was a child, once too often, actually, and have no interest in seeing them again. They all look the same to me. Very nice, very pretty, very boring.”
“Why is your father taking me there, then?”
Kelsey shrugged. “Who knows? He may actually believe everybody shares his passion for them. You see, Dad has been studying the missions for so long he may have lost perspective. He even runs a field course in one of them over the summer.” And then after a pause, she added with a knowing smile, “John helps him.”
“John?”
“Yes. He’s one of dad’s graduate students. Hasn’t John told you that? Oh, I see you have other, more important things to talk about. Or maybe you don’t even need to talk.”
Just then, she reminded me more of Rosa than I cared to contemplate. Trying not to blush, I asked her what time the basketball game was on Sunday. Maybe if it was not too early, I could still make it back in time to watch it.
Kelsey laughed. “Don’t worry, Andrea. Their team doesn’t play in Davis this Sunday. But I’ll tell John you asked.”
I blushed anyway.
Kelsey was right about the missions. They were nice. She was also totally wrong: nice did not begin to convey the magnificent beauty of the Mission Santa Inés, the first place we visited.
Set in a wide open valley against a background of distant hills, the mission seemed to grow out of the earth as we approached it, seeming both eternal and dispensable, like a white speck dropped on the canvas by mistake one day and later embraced and made the center of the painter’s picture.
We left the car in the parking lot—empty, since the mission was closed that day—and walked up to the front of the church.
Two cypresses—vertical lines of green against the whitewashed walls—framed its wooden door; high above, the roof—a triangle of red tiles—stood out against the blue sky. To our right rose the bell tower, a metallic cross on top and three arched openings set in two rows where the bells hung. Beyond the tower was a long wall with a single arch that served as the entrance to the graveyard. To our left stood the cloister, a succession of arches growing smaller in the distance under a red-tiled roof.