Born a Siren, I Saved Men from Their Vows

I had one goal when I walked into St. Agnes Abbey's kitchen: get my brother and sister fed before the last light left the valley. The nun at the stove held a wooden spoon in one hand and a ledger in the other. Steam clouded the small windows behind her. The smell of onion broth made my knees go weak, and I planted my boots wider so she wouldn't see. "I can work," I said. "Give me a bed in the barn and whatever you'd pay a girl to wash pots." The nun looked past me to the two children waiting in the doorway. My sister Ruth was eight and trying not to cry. My brother Ben had tucked his face into her coat sleeve. He was six, but the road had made him look younger. "You're asking for three meals?" the nun said. "I'm asking for work." "That wasn't what I asked." I'd learned on the road that grown-ups listened better when I sounded useful. "Three meals for them. I can go without." The spoon stopped above the pot. "People say the drought is over," I added. "It isn't over for us." A dry spring had burned the western farms to dust. By the time we reached the abbey, our mother was buried beneath a cottonwood tree beside a county road, and the last of our flour had been gone for days. I'd traded my wool scarf for a heel of bread. I'd given Ben the bread and told him I wasn't hungry. He believed me because he was six. The nun closed her ledger. "I'm Sister Agnes. Come away from the door." Ruth stepped forward. I caught her hand before she could cross the kitchen. "Only me," I said. Sister Agnes's gaze moved from my hand to my face. "You're ten." "I'm old enough to scrub." "No child should have to sell herself for a meal." "I'm not selling myself," I said, although that was exactly how it felt. "I'm selling work." I didn't know the words for the difference. I only knew that if I walked away, Ben might not see morning. Sister Agnes turned toward a table at the far end of the room. A priest sat there with a stack of papers and a chipped teacup. He had gray at his temples and ink on one cuff. "Father Michael," she called. "This child needs a practical answer, not a sermon." He set down his pen. "A practical answer is work." "Then write one down," Sister Agnes said. Father Michael asked my name. I told him it was Ada Bell. He asked whether I had family nearby. I told him about the grave on the road, and about the little house we'd left behind after the roof collapsed. I didn't tell him I'd promised my mother I'd keep the others safe. Promises were easy to make while someone was still alive. Father Michael wrote three lines on a sheet of paper. He said the abbey could keep my siblings in its school and infirmary through winter. In exchange, I would work in the kitchen and laundry. When spring came, we would speak again. "Put it in writing," I said. His eyebrows lifted. "If I work, I want the paper to say they stay. Not that you'll decide later." Sister Agnes's expression softened. Father Michael glanced at her, then wrote another line. I couldn't read the fine script, so I asked him to say it aloud. He did. I made him read it twice. The paper said the abbey would shelter and feed Ruth and Ben until they could return to school and work. It said I would receive a bed, meals, and wages after the first month. It said I could leave when the agreement ended. I put my thumbprint beneath my name. That night, Ruth and Ben ate soup at a table with white cloths. I watched from the kitchen doorway, pretending to sort spoons while my stomach cramped. When Ben glanced at me, I lifted my chin and pointed to his bowl. He finished every drop. ***** I slept in a narrow room above the laundry, under a roof that clicked whenever the wind pushed against it. Ruth and Ben shared a small room near the school. Sister Agnes promised I could see them every evening. For the first week, I worked until my hands split. I washed linens, scrubbed pots, hauled water from the pump, and learned which sisters liked their tea strong enough to make their eyes water. I also learned the abbey had more rules than doors. At the end of the second week, I found a boy standing by the stable with a sack on his shoulder. He was older than me, perhaps fifteen, with black hair and a scratch across one cheek. He had one hand on the gate and one foot already on the road. "Are you running away?" I asked. "I'm leaving." "That's what running away means." He looked at the sack. "Not if I tell someone first." I considered that. "Why are you going?" "Because they want me to take vows." He said it like the words had been put in his mouth by someone else. "I don't want to spend my life in a place where I'm told what to want." The gate creaked under his hand. I didn't know what vows were, except that they seemed to involve staying where you didn't want to stay. "I came here because my brother and sister needed food," I said. "I'm still here." "That's different." "Is it?" He didn't answer. I watched the road behind him. It was empty, pale with dust, and stretched farther than I could see. I could have told him to stay. I could have told him to leave. I didn't know enough to do either. Instead, I asked his name. "Eli Mercer," he said. "I'm Ada." "I know. Sister Agnes talks about you." I didn't like the sound of that. "What does she say?" "That you're stubborn." "That's not a thing to talk about." He almost smiled. "I know." A bell rang from the chapel. Eli flinched as if it had called him personally. "I won't tell anyone you were here," I said. He stared at me. "Why not?" "Because I don't like people deciding what happens to me." He lowered his hand from the gate. For a moment, we stood there with the empty road between us and the abbey behind us. Then Eli set the sack on the ground.