Incantation (2 page)

People came to ask my grandfather, Jose deMadrigal, what he thought of what was happening in the Plaza. Our closest friends always wanted his advice. My grandfather was a respected teacher. Boys in the village often came to study with him; only the best students, the brightest boys. These students were afraid of my grandfather, as I was, but there was something more in these boys’ eyes: they admired him. They hurried to their lessons and bowed when my grandfather walked in the door. They huddled around him to hear his wisdom, just as our friends did on the day of the burning.

My older brother, Luis, was studying at the seminary. He was my grandparents’ favorite, and for good reason. Luis was compassionate and kind, a brilliant student. Being at the seminary was an honor, and Luis had passed many difficult exams before he was chosen. My grandfather had helped him in his studies toward becoming a priest; he’d worked hard with Luis, teaching him Latin and Greek. I often heard my grandfather say a prayer for my brother when he thought no one could hear, not like the ones we said in church; something special, for Luis alone.

No matter how proud I was, I missed my brother, especially today, when everything seemed so frightening. I knew we’d all feel better if Luis were at home.

As for me, to the great Jose deMadrigal I was nothing more than a bothersome fly, not worth the least bit of attention. I was jealous, because my grandfather ignored me even when I asked the simplest questions: Why did we light candles on some nights and not others? Why couldn’t girls be educated?

Take the child away,
he would call to my grandmother whenever I questioned him.
Teach her to make bread.

He felt that way about all women, except for my mother, whom he treated as though she were a son. He adored Abra, and because of this my mother thought she was the queen of all fate. My grandfather had let her run wild, so my mother was not afraid of anything or anyone. She could speak so many languages, people joked that she could speak to the birds. She was so intelligent that when my grandfather’s friends came over for tea and heated discussions, my grandfather let her participate in the conversations. Women were not often allowed to do this. Abra had to sit behind a screen at these times. Otherwise men who were scholars might stop thinking about serious matters; one of them might even get it into his head that he should marry my mother.

Abra considered herself married for all eternity—even though my father, the love of her life, had been gone for so long. He was lost to illness when I was only a baby, in the time of the black fever. He left us before I could remember him. But I remembered how much my mother loved him. She still wore an emerald ring my father had given to her on their wedding day. She was partial to emeralds; she said they were the single thing that remained constant, always green, always the same.

W
HEN OUR FRIENDS
gathered in our doorway on the burning day, my grandfather told them that the soldiers in the Plaza were driven by bloodlust and evil. A monster brought to life, just as I’d thought. Something let loose from the very deepest part of the earth.

Stay away,
my grandfather told our friends.
You don’t fight a monster with sticks and stones.

Even the pigs in the yard were frightened by the noise in the Plaza. Poor Dini, my special pet, hid under the porch. Other families killed a pig every spring to make chorizo sausages, but my family preferred green vegetables, so Dini was getting strong and fat. Catalina and I often sneaked him into my room and let him sleep on my bed while we played with him as if he were a doll. Once we dressed him up in my brother’s baby clothes. When I called Dini by name he came running to me, and he would bow on command.

All the same, Dini was still a big baby, afraid of the screaming in the Plaza, refusing to come out from under the porch, even when called, which meant I would have to wash him later with lavender soap so my grandmother wouldn’t complain that he was a filthy creature that should be sold at market.

My grandfather may have ignored me completely, but my grandmother was even worse. She noticed only what was wrong, never what was right. My grandmother was called Carmen, but I never thought of her as a woman with a name. She was too demanding for anything as human as that. I called her
Señora
out of respect, but also out of fear.

My grandmother had long white hair that she braided and wore up, like most women her age. She knew all the tricks a girl might play, and she couldn’t abide laziness. Sometimes I truly believed my grandmother could read the thoughts in my head, especially if they were thoughts of doing bad things, like climbing out the window at night to sneak through the Arrias family’s yard and meet Catalina so that we could dance in the field of sunflowers when the moon was high in the sky. My grandmother would always be waiting outside the window, ready to catch me when I came back. As a punishment I would have to sweep not just the house, but also the yard where the chickens were kept.

Sometimes the little Arrias sisters from next door, Marianna and Antonia, came to help me with my chores while their mother was out cutting sunflowers for the market. All the while we worked, my grandmother would watch with a tight, unfriendly smile.
See,
she was telling me without saying a word.
Even the little sisters do better than you, and they are only eight and nine.
She would offer the Arrias sisters drinks of iced lime,
alicante granizado,
or
horchata,
almond milk, treats she never offered to me.

Nothing I did was good enough for my grandmother. When she taught me to make
kouclas,
the dumplings we added to our favorite dish,
adafina,
our Friday night chicken stew, she would stand right over me.
Mix it faster,
she would say.

Any dumpling I tried to make always fell apart. Unlike my mother, I did not make things more beautiful. Under my grandmother’s watchful eyes, I grew nervous and made mistakes.

Don’t cut your nails and let them fall!
my grandmother would tell me.
That is a sure way to be cursed.
She would gather my nail clippings together and burn them in a dish till they were nothing but ash. She said she wanted to protect me from any
echizo,
witchcraft; witches made spells out of nails and hair.

Once I used rouge before going to church on Sunday, and although I swore that the sun had burned me, my grandmother scrubbed my face with soap.

You’ll bring a curse on us,
she vowed.

It was little wonder I spent as much time as I could next door. On one side of our house was the Arriases’ cottage, on the other side lived Catalina’s family. Catalina’s home was not as clean as ours, or as well kept. There were no silver candlesticks or good linens; still I preferred it. Catalina’s mother gave us almond cakes without our even asking. Catalina’s mother told me I had nimble fingers on days she taught us needlepoint. When I helped her with chores, she swore she couldn’t have asked for a more helpful girl. Once when Catalina was not in the room, her mother sighed and told me she wished Catalina were as pretty as I.

I laughed and said,
But she is! We look just like sisters.

Catalina’s father was a quiet man, a cobbler who sat beside a pile of boots. He was easygoing and never raised his voice the way my grandfather did, but Catalina looked down on him. A man who fixed other people’s shoes was worthless, she said. Catalina would someday marry her cousin Andres, who had come to live with her family when his own parents died of fever, and Catalina had high hopes for him.

Andres is smart,
Caterina told me.
He’ll take my father’s olive grove and make us rich.

On the evening of the burning in the Plaza, I started to go to Catalina’s house, but my grandmother came after me. Maybe one of the reasons I spent so much time at Catalina’s was because of Andres. We both had parents who had died, and we often talked about that, how you don’t forget such things, even if you don’t exactly remember.

But going next door was impossible now. My grandmother had pulled me aside, into the yard where we grew grapes. After all those ashes in the air, the vines smelled sweet.

Your grandfather and I bought something for you on the day you were born,
my grandmother said.
On a day when there’s fire, there should also be water. You’re sixteen now. You’re old enough.

I was stunned when she showed me a perfect strand of pearls. When my grandmother fastened them around my throat, I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t used to her kindness.

The pearls were indeed as cold as water, but after a moment they warmed to my skin.

These were always meant for you, little Esther
, my grandmother said. I was even more stunned to have her call me by this special name that my mother had used for me long ago, when she sang me lullabies.

Sometimes my grandfather called my grandmother by a special name, one my mother said I should never repeat. The secret name sounded like glass, something broken and strange. My mother had laughed when I once gave her my impression of my grandfather calling for my grandmother. I sounded as if I were choking.

That’s the way love sounds,
my mother told me.
You think it should feel like honey, but instead it cuts like a knife.

I was beginning to understand. My grandmother’s love was cold because she was afraid of things; that was why everything had to be perfect. I bowed my head and thanked her for her gift. Then, before I could stop myself, I threw my arms around her. The pearls were my treasure and my truth, and I would only wear them on special days. The most important days of my life.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, I was so deeply asleep that my mother had to shake me awake so that we could go to shop in the Muslim quarter. In the middle of the night I had heard men talking in my grandfather’s study under the stairs in the cellar; they were gathered in a room where I wasn’t allowed. Their conversations ran together into a chant that filtered through my sleep. In my dreams, I had walked through a gate. I often dreamed this, and my mother told me this was an unusual dream. It was a dream that some people never had, not if they stared into still water for days or weeks, not if they studied with the greatest teachers.

What did the gate look like?
My mother asked me that morning.
Was it made of gold or marble or emeralds? Was your father in the garden?

I didn’t want to disappoint my mother and tell her the truth: The gate in my dream had been made out of bones. I didn’t want to tell her that even though I’d had this dream many times, even though the garden was always the same, the gate was always different. In every dream I had no idea where I was. I was lost, unable to call out or find my own way. The only thing that remained the same was the garden, lush and emerald green.

W
E WERE NOT
allowed to go into the alajama—for that, you needed to be a person marked with a red circle—but we could go to the Muslim part of town, which was on the outskirts, since the
Mudejars,
like the Jews, were not allowed to live side-by-side with Christians.

Abra fully understood their chatter, a mix of Spanish and Arabic, and could converse with the storekeepers while bargaining for cinnamon and cloves and sweet blood oranges, which were red in the center, like a heart. In the Muslim stores there were enameled teapots, ceramic tiles, silk from Arabia spun by a thousand worms, candy made of sesame seeds and honey, copper bowls hammered with patterns that were so intricate there was no beginning and no end to their design.

W
E WENT OUT
of our way to make one special visit whenever we went to the quarter. The wife of a Muslim doctor who always bought yarn from my mother was also kind enough to offer us cups of mint tea when we came into her garden. There was a red lily that grew there, which my mother said could only be found in this one place. It was a miracle lily, one that grew from true devotion. This Muslim woman loved her husband as much as my mother had loved my father. The doctor’s wife’s perfect love had turned the lily red when she planted it in the ground and said a blessing over it; now it was one of a kind.

The doctor’s wife needed yarn because she was making her husband a coat. Something he would be safe in; something that would last. She and my mother looked at each other as though they knew each other well. Certainly, they both knew we lived in a time when anyone could become an outcast, suddenly and without notice.

On this day, the doctor came to the window while my mother and his wife were searching through the baskets for the perfect skein of yarn. The doctor was tall and quiet; a handsome, educated man. Some Christians didn’t believe in the medicines he used; all the same, when they were ill they often came to him for help.

His wife turned to him when he called a greeting to her; she held up some of the wool she had chosen and said something in a mix of Spanish and Arabic.

What did she say?
I asked my mother.

She said, “The yarn woman has brought me something to help you fly, should you ever need to do so.” She said that’s why she’s making his coat the same color as the sky, so he can blend in and never be seen if he needs to escape from Encaleflora.

I thought this was because there was talk in town of casting out any Muslim who wouldn’t convert to Christianity—exactly what had been done to the Jews all those years ago. They called the Muslim converts
Moriscos,
but like most
Conversos,
they still weren’t considered equals.