Birthday at the Hermitage by Lana Spendl

In the church in the fields, the original statue of Our Lady of Sonsoles sits near the sacristy. A copy stands at the altar. Legend has it that whenever attempts were made to carry the original from the grounds, it grew heavier and heavier until it could be carried no more. Sonsoles, clearly, did not want to leave her hills. Sonsoles did not want to go down into the city. She had an enmity with the city’s patron saint, Teresa.

This is all hearsay, of course.

As we sit at the stone tables behind her small, stone church—the adults munching on pretzels and cake, the children playing on swings—I think of enmity. Below us, hills roll to the city, the sky above a resplendent blue. Grasses scent the warm breeze. The day is perfect for a child’s birthday.

My daughter, Esther, is turning seven. She leads four girls and two boys around the purple slide on the playground. She yells orders, chides with her finger. She is stubborn, grouchy. Her brows are knitted. 

Enmity sits a table over, in the form of my husband’s mother, Isabel. Isabel is in her mid-sixties. Isabel sits alone. Two mothers, who were sitting with her, encouraged her with pats on the arm to join them for a walk in the hills, but Isabel, like a stone, refused.

She sits erect as a plank and studies the children through gold-rimmed glasses. She is wearing a casual suit, a scarf, pearl earrings. I’ve never seen her without a blowout. 

A few months ago, Isabel lost her husband. My husband pleaded with her to come today. To get out, see people. I’ve seen her since the funeral, when I’ve taken meals to the house, and she pretended to dust the spotless living room as I fumbled around in the kitchen. I felt the emptiness of that space then, and for the first time ever, tenderness for her. But I did not know how to express it. I did not know how to offer myself. I had gotten too used to being silenced.

I met Isabel nine years ago, when Oscar took me over for dinner the first time. I nodded eager to her statements, offered stories about my late parents, my childhood, the priest who had been at our church since my teenage years—everything a woman as conservative in movement and dress as Isabel might appreciate—but she cut me off by saying that she had left her glasses in the kitchen, by asking her husband to pass the bread, by droning on that she had forgotten to stop by the pharmacy. Her eyes rested on mine for a mere second or two before wandering the table in boredom. 

I wondered then if Oscar had brought other women home before me and she did not think it worth the effort anymore. Even after our engagement, though, even after the wedding, she remained stern, cold, displeased. From time to time, I suspected that my background was too humble for her. But she sometimes said things to Esther that countered the airs she put on. Like that every grain of rice on the plate should be finished, because every grain had been paid for. Something her father used to say, she would tell the girl.

Now she rises—tired, languid—and paces the grass toward the church.

Oscar, mid-sentence with the couple across us, turns after her and gives me an apologetic glance. Would I check in? his expression says. He is occupied.

Annoyance hardens inside me like armor. I turn my chin sharp to the playground. I have no intention of going after her. He continues expounding on the state of local medical affairs, his hand stirring the air, as if his mother has already been attended to.

On the playground, Esther pushes a boy and the child falls onto his bottom. Parents rush in from all sides. My breath catches, and on impulse, I touch Oscar’s forearm, point him to the playground, and jump up and stride in the direction of the church after his mother. I feel a rush, like a teenager getting one over on the adults, and I near the church and break into a smile.

I walk around, under the arch holding the bells, to the front. A cobbled space spreads before the entrance, and a pathway extends from it, across the extensive lawn, to the main gate. I lean my back against the façade and close my eyes. All the swirling and moving inside me begins to settle, and I feel like a body with no present or past, the way bodies are supposed to be.

A woman’s laugh pierces the warmth. I look, and a young couple, holding hands, is walking from the main gate, down the pathway bordered by trees and shrubs, toward the church doors. I unglue myself from the wall, sink hands into pockets, stroll in a semicircle over the cobbles, and knit my brows in thought. As they pass, the girl nods, and I nod back. She is sixteen or seventeen. The two step into the dark.

I do not want to follow. With everything inside, I want to stay in this heat and silence, but the interior of the church draws me with its demand. Reluctant, I push myself toward the doors.

The coolness inside does not soothe. My eyes, adjusting, fall on the glass case housing a preserved crocodile to my right. The animal’s eyeballs are gone, the sockets painted red. Down its snout, unruly fangs stick out.

In the age of the conquistadors, it is said, in the Americas, a Spanish gentleman on a horse was surprised by a crocodile. He invoked the Virgin of Sonsoles, and she turned his horse in such a way so as to give him a clear shot with his sword into the animal’s back. Grateful for his life, the man preserved the reptile and brought it as a votive offering to this hermitage across the ocean.

We should all be so fortunate.

The sanctuary, like a treasure cave, opens before me. Columns, gold, arched domes above. The scent of stone and water and years. Sonsoles at the altar, lit up, holding the boy in her arm. The young couple is sitting in the back, to my right, and Isabel kneels at the front, to the left, head bowed. Her tendency to be so silent and yet so prominent—always in front rows or standing in the center of things—leaves me anxious. I wait in the back, hands clasped at the waist. 

The couple—in a clumsy, giggling shuffle—jump up and hurry from the pews to the doors. Amusement glitters inside the girl like a secret flirtation. For a second, swept away by her youth, I feel very young too.

Isabel turns, eyes the couple stumbling out the door, then me. She looks startled, intruded upon—her mouth has parted—but then, regaining somberness, regaining displeasure, she turns and bows her head again. A lake surface settling after a pebble has sunk.

In the back, I feel let down. I did not come seeking connection, but the world has again placed me in a position of seeking and her in a position of turning away. Irritation fills me, and bolder, I stride into the pews where the couple had been and sit. Faint warmth lingers on the bench under me.

She prays a while. I think about the clothes I need to wash and hang in sun. I wonder how much longer we’ll stay at the hermitage. A carving—perhaps done by key—gleams on the back of the bench in front of me. “S.O.S.” in jagged letters. An adolescent, perhaps. But how would the child have had the chance to do it under a parent’s watchful gaze? No, they had to do it while the church was empty. Or while the only other people were sitting in front, like Isabel is now.

Is there anything I could do while no one is looking? My eyes scour benches, candles in front, the painting of the ship in the storm to one side. Dark excitement fills me, but Isabel stirs and crosses herself and stands and everything in me flurries with respectability. My posture straightens, my chin rises. And yet I hate it. I hate that every movement of hers, every glance, every sigh, elicits this chain reaction. I hate that I cannot stay the course I have set for myself.

My eyes fixate on the altar as she paces down the aisle toward the doors. She will pass without a word, I suspect, and I both want this and do not want it. My muscles crave the relief of being alone, but my pride wants acknowledgement. 

At my row, she stops. Soft, surprisingly soft, she says, “What are you doing here?”

I turn at an angle, a child suddenly, words sticking in my throat. “I came to see if I could do anything to help.” I cannot bring myself to say that I came to check in on her. I cannot mention her in my speech.

She examines my features. “No, no,” she says, tired. She places a hand on the back of the bench in front of mine and twists to look over her shoulder at the altar. “You should not be here. You should not worry so much. You are young. You should be out in the sun.”

Her words are like a strange incantation, and she is far away, speaking to someone other than me. This leaves me uneasy. To assert my presence, I say, “I wanted to get away from all of that, to tell you the truth.” 

Her eyes fly to mine, and she gazes at me longer than she ever has before. I become uncertain. She steps into my row and walks to me, knocking heels against the ground. My insides jump like frogs. She sits, her upper arm for a second brushing mine, and the scent of lilac wafts up my nostrils. It is in her scarf, her neck under the scarf.

“You and me both,” she declares.

I am surprised. It is blunt, down-to-earth. Like an engine breaking down and hissing steam. Rigid, I stare ahead.

“It’s too much sometimes. Other people’s attentions. You don’t know if they’re doing it for themselves or for you.” With this, her voice regains a bit of its haughtiness.

I think of the women asking her to join them for a walk, of Esther tugging at her arm, of Oscar leading her from the car with his hand on her back. I am overcome with responsibility for it all, with embarrassment. “I hope this party was not too much for you.” 

She glances at me and shrugs. Her eyes, half-lidded, are as indifferent as women in oil paintings. “If it weren’t the party, it would be something else. One has to rejoin the world sometime.”

After my parents’ accident, I recall now, my facial expression remained flat for months. I could not liven it up, make it move. People would examine my features in conversation—at the office, at the restaurant, at the bank—calculating whether they had offended me somehow. “When my parents passed”—I say, hesitant—“it was an effort to be in the same room with people. To try to appear cheerful.”

She shifts, looks away cold. “You were young. You cared too much about what people thought.”

My chest hardens.

“I am not criticizing you,” she says sharp, as if feeling it. “We all care too much when we’re young. This goes away with time. I have given it up.”

“So what do you care about now?” 

She takes it in stride. “I don’t know.” Her eyes fix on Sonsoles. “Sometimes coming to a church, being silent. Going through my rituals. Imagining other worlds. Feeling love, imagining love all around me. Pure love. Not this web of interactions and politeness I must participate in every day. This is so puny and small. And yet so tiring.” She lets out the depth of her breath. She turns toward me at an angle, crosses her legs, and places one elbow over the back of the bench between us. “You were always a nice girl, Bea. Smart, capable, humble.”

“I didn’t know you felt that.”

“Of course I did. I wondered if you would leave Oscar. If you would find someone else.”

My eyes widen. I do not know what to say or do. Guilt scurries through me, as if I’m betraying my husband. 

“I’m not wanting to throw a wrench into anything. Your family seems to work well. I do not know enough about it all, of course. You’re the only one who knows enough.” Her eyes fall to my lap, and she knits her brows in thought. “Just keep some pockets of life to yourself. Just yourself. That’s what I want to say. Keep your other sides alive. Don’t get carried away in the hustle of every day. The hustle of other people. Even if they’re close people.” She studies me, curious to see if it is sinking in. It feels as if it has taken her effort to say this.

I want to take her hand in mine, but part of me still sees her as the woman from an hour ago, and I take my right hand in my left hand on my lap instead. The carved letters on the bench gleam, and I think of the rush I felt a moment ago at the thought of doing something to act out. I do not want to share this with her, even though now, I am unsure how she would take it—this new woman—but I feel her blessing, her support, in holding my private spaces up. 

From the ceiling above hangs a small ship. In the times of the invincible armada, a tempest rose up to batter a ship. A sailor on board invoked his Virgin of Sonsoles, and in a rush, she saved his life. In gratitude, he brought the ship to the hermitage. The painting by the altar shows the same tale in deep blues and foam whites.

Lana Spendl is the author of the chapbook We Cradled Each Other in the Air. Her work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, World Literature Today, The Rumpus, Witness, New Ohio Review, and other journals. She was a Bosnian War refugee, and her childhood was divided between Bosnia and Spain.

15 August 2025