Ramona

Ramona, the convent’s cook, is one of the people who turns its household routines into active care. She gives Lizzy Enders food and a way out when Lizzy is escaping, later helps bring aid to people in danger, and tends to Lizzy when exhaustion overwhelms her. In the kitchen, where meals, repairs, and messages converge, Ramona’s work repeatedly becomes a means of protecting others.

Identity and Place in the Convent

Ramona’s life in the convent is closely tied to its kitchen and its everyday needs. She cooks for the household, prepares special food for Mrs. Lacey, and works alongside servants who assist with the kitchen’s labor. The kitchen is not merely a backdrop to her character: it is where she feeds people, shares news, and responds to emergencies. Her practical knowledge of the household also gives her influence over what happens at its gates and when.

Her relationship with the convent’s residents is shown through acts rather than formal authority. She is fond of Mrs. Lacey and regularly bakes delicacies for her. She is also close enough to Elinora St. Clair to be included in the arrangements for nighttime outings, though Elinora conceals their real purpose from her. Ramona’s connection to the household extends beyond the convent: her husband, Gregorio, works as its gardener, and Elinora secures his help in letting the girls out and back in.

Help for Lizzy Enders

When Lizzy is preparing to flee, Ramona finds her near the gate and gives her warm corn bread and a canteen of coffee. Lizzy thanks her with an embrace and calls her a friend. The exchange offers more than provisions for the road: Ramona’s generosity interrupts the loneliness and uncertainty of Lizzy’s escape with an unmistakable gesture of trust and care.

Ramona then points Lizzy toward someone she believes is in danger. She repeats a plea referring to a mother, gestures toward the hill at the end of town, and indicates that Lizzy should fetch someone from there. When Lizzy does not immediately understand, Ramona takes Ben’s bridle and leads them through the gate before pointing the way again. The scene makes Ramona an active guide rather than a bystander: she uses the means available to her—gesture, repetition, and a direct escort—to turn Lizzy toward a need beyond the convent.

Later, when Lizzy returns exhausted after seeking help, Gregorio carries her inside and calls for his wife. Ramona seats Lizzy at the table, while a servant is sent to summon Mother Magdalena and Bishop Jean Baptiste Lamy. The household quickly mobilizes in response, and the Bishop orders a wagon to retrieve Mrs. Lacey, the baby, and Delvina. Ramona’s part in this response is immediate and practical: she receives the distressed girl and helps bring the people with authority into the crisis.

Afterward, Ramona looks after Lizzy herself. She gives her a meal, takes her upstairs to a guest room, and prepares for her to bathe in hot water scented with lavender. She washes Lizzy’s hair, dries and brushes it by the fire, and leaves her in a feather bed with a candle. The care is intimate and unhurried, in sharp contrast to the emergency that has just brought Lizzy back. The narrator’s sense of resting as if in her mother’s arms gives this domestic kindness particular weight without making it a substitute for the losses Lizzy carries.

Household Work and Quiet Agency

Ramona’s work also exposes the condition of the convent’s kitchen. When the table collapses beneath its load, she and Sister Roberta kneel amid flour, dishes, broken eggs, vegetables, bread dough, and trout. Lizzy joins them in sweeping and salvaging what can be saved. The incident turns the kitchen’s wear into a shared problem, and Sister Roberta sends Lizzy to fetch a carpenter so the meal service can continue.

The need for repairs is broader than the broken table. Lizzy points out that the window frames need fixing and that rain leaks in; Ramona confirms the complaint. The kitchen’s coming new stove is welcome, but it cannot solve the other damage. Ramona’s confirmation gives her everyday observations a place in the conversation about the convent’s neglected work: she knows the room through the repeated demands of cooking in it.

Food remains one of the clearest ways the novel renders Ramona’s care. She prepares hare jardiniere, identified as her specialty and a favorite among the household, while a servant tends the sauce and Ramona makes pastry. On another evening, she continues cooking as the wet nurse holds Elena by the stove and Lizzy eats at the kitchen table. These scenes present cooking as skilled, sustained work, not a decorative sign of domestic comfort; meals have to be made amid illness, repairs, and the needs of others.

Messages, Conflict, and the Ending

Ramona’s place in the convent’s nighttime arrangements depends on what she has been told. Elinora St. Clair has arranged outings with her, and Ramona hopes that Elinora will speak to her uncle, Bishop Jean Baptiste Lamy, about replacing a stove that smokes badly. On one night Elinora says that the girls are going to check on a friend of Mrs. Lacey whose baby has a fever, and that Mrs. Lacey cannot sleep until she knows the fever has broken. Ramona believes this account and has Gregorio let the girls through the front gate and wait to admit them on their return. In fact, their destination is Dolores la Penca’s home on Agua Fria Road. Ramona’s trust makes the arrangement possible, while the deception underscores that she has not been told the girls’ real purpose.

Ramona also becomes the messenger of grave news about Mrs. Lacey. While Lizzy eats, Ramona drops the pan she is holding and tells her that Mrs. Lacey is very ill, that the Bishop has come because she may die, and that he has baptized her. Lizzy learns from this that her friend has entered a coma and that the baptism Mrs. Lacey feared has taken place. The dropped pan marks the interruption of ordinary kitchen work by news that cannot be softened into routine; Ramona’s disclosure changes what Lizzy understands about Mrs. Lacey’s condition and the Bishop’s visit.

On a later Tuesday morning, Ramona wakes Lizzy to say that Sister Roberta has summoned her because of Mrs. Lacey. Again, she carries information from the household into Lizzy’s room at the moment it is needed. Near the end of the story, she goes to take the carpenter his supper and discovers that the chapel staircase has been completed and that he has gone. Ramona brings this news back to the others, prompting them to hurry to the church. Her final report links a familiar act of service—carrying a meal—to the revelation of the finished staircase. Across these episodes, Ramona’s importance lies not in formal power but in her dependable movement between kitchen, gate, sickroom, and chapel, where her attention and labor help make other people’s choices and acts of care possible.