Elizabeth Enders

Elizabeth Enders is the young outsider at the center of a story shaped by bereavement, abandonment, and the possibility of choosing trust again. Sent reluctantly to Santa Fe after Mama’s death and Mr. Enders’s departure, she enters convent life hoping one day to find her hero, Jesse James. She leaves the convent for Texas with Elena in her care: better, in the author’s account, but still uncertain whether the carpenter she encountered was Saint Joseph. Her guarded belief becomes the measure of a narrative in which human kindness can feel miraculous without settling whether a miracle has occurred.

Identity and Background

The author describes Elizabeth as wandering through New Mexico’s unforgiving landscape at a tender age after her father runs off and her mother dies. The combination places her at risk of becoming a lifelong cynic, but her mistrust remains incomplete rather than absolute. She arrives at the school reluctantly, with Jesse James as the hero she hopes to find someday; the aspirations of a girl looking outward for adventure sit beside the harder experience of having been left behind.

Elizabeth’s Protestant identity at a Catholic convent school informs her wary response to Catholic mysteries. The author characterizes her as having a healthy disrespect for what she sees as the bloody mysteries of Catholicism, and as accepting miracles only in small doses. This does not make her indifferent to other people’s suffering. Instead, her skepticism and her capacity for attachment coexist: she can resist a supernatural explanation while recognizing people whose actions offer real care.

Life at the Convent

Elizabeth’s time at the convent brings her into intimate contact with death and its practical consequences. Mother Magdalena tells her that Santa Fe requires burial within twenty-four hours, and that because the next day is Sunday, Delvina’s funeral will take place that evening. The convent will keep Delvina’s baby at the Bishop’s wish, since the only known relative is described as a drunken, violent father. Elizabeth listens with her hands folded and nods. Although she has reason to connect that man with the attack on her at the fort, she does not tell Mother Magdalena; she thinks he may already be dead.

The encounter also brings news that her own father has written. Mother Magdalena gives Elizabeth the letter, addressed in Mr. Enders’s familiar handwriting to Miss Elizabeth Enders. She initially does not want it and is so shaken that taking it seems almost impossible. The handwriting itself carries the force of the return: the father who left her has reached her in writing, though the letter’s delivery does not erase the hurt of his absence. Mother Magdalena distinguishes his conduct from the drunken abuse associated with Delvina’s husband, reminding Elizabeth that not all fathers are alike.

Her relationships at the convent also place her in moments of uncertainty that belong to others. After learning that her friend Mrs. Lacey is no longer mentally present to her, Elizabeth understands that Mrs. Lacey’s worst fear has come true: the Bishop has baptized her Catholic. Early the next morning, the Bishop summons Elizabeth to his study. He is solemn but unfailingly polite as he draws up a chair for her. The account establishes the summons and its setting, not what Elizabeth says there; its place in her story lies in the new proximity between her friend’s fate and the authority who made the decision.

Witness, Friendship, and Conflict

Elizabeth is sometimes drawn into conflicts not as their instigator but as someone others invoke. When Jean Baptiste Lamy presses Elinora for the truth about whether she has seen Abeyta, Elinora denies it and asks him to ask Elizabeth, claiming Elizabeth has seen her in her room every night. Jean Baptiste Lamy looks toward Elizabeth. The scene leaves her with the weight of being called as a witness, without establishing what she knows or what she answers. It also places her beside Elinora’s attempt to meet her uncle’s scrutiny, a moment in which Elizabeth’s presence becomes part of another person’s defense.

The author presents Elizabeth’s most consequential attachments as a counterpoint to her suspicion. In assessing the story’s miracles, the author names Jean Baptiste Lamy and Sister Roberta, and even Elinora, as people who function as miracles for Elizabeth. Most significant is the possibility that Mr. Enders eventually wants her. These are not all the same kind of reassurance: some arise from the actions of people around her, while the father’s renewed desire to have her speaks directly to the abandonment from which her journey began.

Departure and the Unsettled Miracle

Four months later, Elizabeth leaves the convent of Our Lady of Light. The new Santa Fe Railroad has reached the plains of New Mexico, with its tracks still sixty-five miles from Santa Fe, but she does not travel that way. She is bound for Texas, where Mr. Enders is an important manager at Santa Gertrudis Ranch. He has his own adobe house and courtyard; a Methodist circuit rider visits monthly, and the ranch has a school for children. Elizabeth has been told she may bring Elena, making the journey not simply a return to her father but a passage with a child whose future also needs arranging.

Jean Baptiste Lamy arranges the trip. Teresa Espinosa, Elena’s wet nurse, travels with her husband, Georgio, and their baby boy. Abeyta’s father supplies an escort of six expert riflemen and scouts, and the party sets out in three wagons. These details give the departure a guarded, collective character: Elizabeth is not sent into the landscape alone, and the plan makes room for Elena’s care as well as her own destination.

The carpenter’s disappearance leaves the question of the staircase miracle unresolved. He never returns to collect his pay; his soaking tubs and tools are gone, and the group never sees his mule again. At the same time, the story leaves Elizabeth with one small opening to belief: the blind cat is no longer blind after the carpenter holds her. The author explicitly leaves open whether Elizabeth believes she has met Saint Joseph, just as the carpenter’s identity remains undecided. Elizabeth’s ending therefore brings neither full conversion nor simple disbelief. She departs better than she arrived, carrying both the evidence of human care and a wonder she cannot conclusively explain.

Narrative Role and Significance

Elizabeth’s perspective holds the story’s competing registers together. The convent and the surrounding New Mexico landscape offer danger, grief, and religious mystery, but she does not accept their extraordinary claims automatically. Her skepticism gives the reader room to doubt that the carpenter is Saint Joseph; her response to the blind cat keeps that doubt from becoming a closed verdict. The uncertainty is deliberate: the author says the reader must decide whether the carpenter was the saint and whether Elizabeth believes it.

Her development is consequently measured less by the disappearance of mistrust than by its limits. She begins with the losses of Mama and Mr. Enders, and leaves with a route back to her father and permission to bring Elena. The possibility that her father wants her again matters alongside the smaller, immediate miracles she finds in other people. Elizabeth’s story ends not with certainty, but with a guarded capacity to accept connection while leaving the supernatural question open.