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Egypt—of which one of the clearest is—
precisely
, an owl! But a M ister Herodotus says a gentle m an na m ed Cad m us introduced the
entire alphabet
to Greece fro m Phoenicia. And we know the Phoenicians were m ariners and?—no?—why,
m erchants
too. Yet this Cad m us brought back not only our
abecedario
† but also the
boustrophedon
, the lovely flow of our script fro m left to right, and down and back again— m uch like the tilling of your father’s fields, is it not? And if we trace this now in ink, see all the little “ m ’s” lying on their sides—h mmm
?
Well, why
not
indeed?— m aybeit
was
the sa m e field in which Cad m us had sown the dragon’s teeth. The very teeth which then sprouted up as m en, if mem ory serves. Yes as ene m ies, unfortunately. And the Greeks—well, yes, right after Cad m us’s funeral m aybe,
quien sabe
—called this new m arvel of the alphabet
stoicheia
. And surely felt it was m inted expressly to convey
stoicism
—an invention the God of the Hebrews only i m parted to Ada m
after
the Fall. And here is the best part now: God still denied the
stoicheia even
to the seraphi m , for after all—
angels never had to sit in school with so m any SIX-YEAR-OLDS
.
    I did not go on to the letter N. Sister Paula was in such a flap of crossing herself that she had come within one stub pinion of her own miraculous assumption.
    My hexachord may not have run to exactly these words and notes that day, but whose childhood recollections are not coloured by the perceptions of others? Elders, adults like Sister Paula, should know to be more careful about exaggeration and its effects on children, and on the truly credulous. Her version of how the sorceress hexed her classroom has followed me for years, and it is greatly vexing that I can do so little against it.
    When Grandfather brought me home that day, he described for Isabel the little Inquisition the sisters had held before releasing me. He was scandalized that their chief concern should be whether the others had been infected by my polluted lips.
    â€œInfected?” he snorted. “Such a disease we should all hope to catch….”
    So that’s what an Inquisition was. To calm Grandfather I told him I thought it might have been much worse. Still, this idea of pollution, infection, was unsettling. Just from my being near the younger girls? I was not so very different. I was good with facts, never forgot what things were or where they came from, and sometimes grasped even the whys. But I knew so little about
how
things were, how they
felt
.
    And then, there were the books Grandfather had not let me see.
    â€  transept
    â€  the Red and Black, the ancient ways, ‘knowledge and death,’ and the insignia of the keeper of its books
    â€  Nahuatl metaphor for the Conquest
    â€  St. John of the Cross (canonized 1726)
    â€  the most cowardly ambush
    â€  granddaughters
    â€  death and mortality
    â€  Spanish for the ABCs and also for the primer that teaches them

A NAGRAMS
    T he nuns had sent up a whirlwind of prayer as Grandfather escorted me home from school.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee … Virgin serene, holy, pure and immaculate
… 7 Or so I recall, if not to the letter. Well, I might be different from the others in some ways, even if I was a little confused about how, but I
wasn’t
polluted and I wasn’t infected. Abuelo promised me I was not confused about that.
    And I’d hardly begun to appreciate all the things the other children and I shared. They had a mother, for instance. And like me, they were subject to the arbitrary exercise of her power. I had won the good sisters’ agreement to an early matriculation, only to discover I was still denied access to Abuelo’s library.
    â€œIf you’re quitting school,” said Isabel, “it’s because you’re learning enough here. Are you or are