Sister Roberta

Sister Roberta is one of the four nuns who run the school, but her authority is defined less by rules than by what she does for people in need. She teaches French, manages the infirmary, tends plants, and helps in the kitchen; she also makes room for humor, practical disobedience, and faith tested by the body. To Lizzy Enders, who has lost her mother and been left at the convent by her father, Sister Roberta becomes a source of warmth and dependable care.

Identity and Work at the School

Sister Roberta teaches French in a class where the other girls are far ahead of Lizzy and the language seems to pour effortlessly from their tongues. Her imposing appearance makes an immediate impression: she is a very large woman with a round, sallow-complexioned face, abundant hair above her upper lip, and a frame that seems made of strength rather than softness. She can lift and move the large fish tanks in her classroom as if they were pillows. The girls whisper and make fun of her, but Lizzy sees something they miss: beneath the black clothes and wimple is a mischievous young spirit, visible in her jokes and twinkling eyes. Lizzy likes her from the start.

Her work extends well beyond the classroom. Sister Roberta runs the infirmary, nurses the sick, and sometimes assists Ramona in the kitchen. The infirmary is a light-filled room with many windows, broad sills crowded with her plants, and a potbellied stove to keep them warm. When tending the plants, she rolls up her loose sleeves, wears boots against the wet brick floor, and tucks her skirts into her belt. She smokes a pipe there, explaining that its fragrance is good for the plants, and winks at Lizzy. The detail makes her neither a remote emblem of religious discipline nor merely a comic figure: she is a capable caregiver with private habits and a playful ease inside her working space.

The tobacco smell also links Sister Roberta to Lizzy’s first night at the convent. Lizzy realizes that Sister Roberta was the person who carried her upstairs then, when the smell had made her think her father, Mr. Enders, had somehow grown another arm. The recognition revises an unsettling first impression into a memory of physical help: before Lizzy knew who had carried her, Sister Roberta had already been there to bear her weight.

Care, Rule-Bending, and Practical Skill

Sister Roberta’s care is concrete. She keeps a pot of coffee boiling on the infirmary stove and prepares Violate Lacey’s medicine in a small basket, adding a sweet mug of coffee with milk and nutmeg. When Lizzy looks questioningly at the extra coffee, Sister Roberta answers that disobedience is forgivable when it helps someone in need. Lizzy soon understands that the nun has her own principles, not a simple obedience to institutional rules. Her generosity is a form of judgment: she weighs a rule against the person who needs help.

That judgment matters when Lizzy is confined to the cold penance chamber. After the house quiets, Sister Roberta slips in with a blanket, a pillow, and a heated brick wrapped in a towel. She explains that the sisters sometimes use the cell while fasting and doing penance, but Lizzy has no need to do penance; she is therefore willing to break the rules to make the room bearable. She fetches hot chocolate, sits beside Lizzy, holds her, and reassures her that what happened was not her fault. The scene turns the cell from a place of punishment into a place where care quietly defeats punishment’s intended meaning.

Her practical knowledge also shapes the response to Delvina’s crisis. Sister Roberta has been keeping track of Delvina’s condition and explains why the woman must be brought back to Santa Fe: midwives there need a license granted by a municipal judge and a parish-priest’s certificate that they know how to administer baptism. When Lizzy returns exhausted with news of the birth, Sister Roberta is among those sent to help. At the bishop’s direction, she goes with Gregorio in the wagon to fetch Violate Lacey, Delvina, and the baby, and runs for remedies before the party leaves. Her care joins local legal requirements, religious practice, and urgent transport rather than treating them as separate concerns.

Sister Roberta also responds to grief as a shared, ordinary duty. After Delvina’s death, the girls are told to walk softly, pray for her soul, refrain from chatter and giggling, and give something up at supper. Sister Roberta explains these instructions to Lizzy, who has not heard them. The small disciplines of silence and sacrifice give the community a way to mark the death, while the nun’s direct explanation brings Lizzy into that communal observance.

Lizzy’s Ally and the Convent’s Problem-Solver

Sister Roberta’s relationship with Lizzy develops through invitations as much as rescue. After keeping Lizzy behind in French class, she asks her to come to the river to gather O-pshaw because her supply is running low. Lizzy doubts she will remain at the school long enough to learn French, but Sister Roberta hopes she will stay and makes space for her in a task beyond the classroom. She also knows about Delvina: food has been carried from the kitchen to her, and heavier blankets will be needed as the nights grow cold toward mid-November. Her request that Lizzy remain until Delvina has her baby shows that she trusts Lizzy with a continuing responsibility, not simply a single errand.

That trust becomes especially visible in the kitchen. One morning the table collapses, scattering flour, dishes, broken eggs, bread dough, vegetables, and trout. Sister Roberta recruits Lizzy to help clean and salvage what can be saved, then points out that the table must be repaired if the convent is to serve the noon meal. When the carpenter says he cannot wait a week for Saint Joseph to arrive because he cannot work for nothing, Sister Roberta accepts Lizzy’s idea that he could do other jobs in exchange for food and lodging. The kitchen’s disrepair thus becomes a practical way to keep the carpenter employed, and Sister Roberta is willing to let Lizzy’s proposal answer a larger problem.

She is equally attentive when Lizzy brings Cleo to the infirmary. After examining and cleaning the kitten and giving her something to quiet her, Sister Roberta identifies injuries to both eyes from a sharp object. Her assessment confirms the seriousness of what Lizzy fears. Later, when Lizzy secretly takes an asafetida bag from the infirmary shelf, Sister Roberta catches her but does not rebuke her. She says Lizzy could have asked and that she would have given it to her, then lets her take it. In both instances, she responds to the vulnerable creature and to Lizzy’s fear with care rather than reprimand.

Faith, Attachment, and the Staircase

Sister Roberta’s kindness does not shield Lizzy from the losses that make attachment frightening. Lizzy tells her that everyone who is nice to her either dies or leaves, and that she would rather be at cross-purposes with people. Sister Roberta answers quietly that she is neither dying nor leaving, and invites Lizzy to trust her enough to hear a suggestion. She has learned from the carpenter that he came because Lizzy invited him and believes he might stay if Lizzy asks. Her intervention does not promise that affection can control every departure; instead, she offers Lizzy a way to act within the uncertainty, making trust a practical choice rather than a demand for reassurance alone.

At the staircase, Sister Roberta’s physical courage gives her faith a public form. She examines the carpenter’s work and notes two complete three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turns, spliced in seven places on the inside and nine on the outside. Asked whether the structure will hold, she proposes a test and volunteers because she is the heaviest person present. She mounts all thirty-three steps, keeping her balance, while the others watch and pray. The test is not abstract: her weight supplies the very evidence the anxious observers need.

When asked why the carpenter made no banister, Sister Roberta interprets its absence as a lesson in faith. She then descends backward on her hands and knees, one step at a time, describing that as the only feasible way down before proposing that they practice a graceful descent. The physical awkwardness and danger remain visible; faith does not erase the need for balance or caution. Once safely down, she praises the wood as the most beautiful she has seen. Sister Roberta’s final role in the episode gathers the qualities that define her throughout the novel: she is strong enough to test what others fear, practical enough to recognize the risk, and religious without separating belief from the body and the work at hand.