The Goldsmith's Daughter

W
hen I slid into this world, my tiny body gliding wetly across the floor of my father's house like a fish plucked from the lake, I was pronounced dead. I lay curled, stiff and silent as the mother who had borne me. Wrapped in a torn cloak, I was set aside for burning.

But something nudged my infant self into taking a sharp, indrawn breath and emitting the piercing wail that brought my father running to my rescue. In taking my first breath, not only did I confound Pachtic the midwife, challenging her wisdom and earning her unrelenting resentment; with that one gasping cry I defied the gods.

In later years, when the horizons of my world had shrunk to the hearth and courtyard of my home, and my range of daily tasks had narrowed to endless cleaning and sweeping, and the pounding of maize and rolling of tortillas, I delighted in hearing the tale of my birth repeated. Over and over again our nurse, Mayatl, told it to me as she wove lengths of coloured cloth. I clutched the story to my chest, thrilling with delicious terror that I had once, albeit unknowingly, performed an act of such daring. For it seemed to me then, as one dull chore was succeeded by another of even greater tedium, that I would never have the chance to do anything so courageous again.

I was born in the market district of Tlaltelolco, in the northern part of the great city of Tenochtitlán, which lay at the heart of the vast Aztec empire. Here dwelt our mighty emperor, Montezuma, whose controlling hand reached every land and touched the very edges of the earth; in whose smallest fingertip was contained the power of life or death over each and every race of men.

Our city was a well-ordered one, but my father had both gone against its traditions and offended his own family when he married my mother. A goldsmith by trade, he should have chosen his bride from amongst the daughters of those who lived in the region of Azcapotzalco, where he himself had been born and had grown to manhood, and where gold was fashioned into fine ornaments, figurines and jewellery.

But one spring morning, as he went to buy jade and turquoise in the great market square of Tlaltelolco, his gaze fell upon my mother. She was trading maize and squashes grown by her father on the shallow, mud-filled chinampa fields that edged the city and provided the fresh vegetables which fed the population.

My mother, so my father sometimes said, had a smile that could outshine the sun. Laughing at a joke told by her sister, she failed to lower her eyes immediately, as she should have done, when my father looked at her. And in that one unguarded moment, the bonds of love tied my father's heart to hers. He would have no other wife. Staying by her side all that morning and for many mornings after, he followed her from the market one day and presented himself as her suitor to her astounded father. Though it was ancient custom for a father to choose his daughter's husband, my grandfather had not objected to the match. How could a peasant complain about his child winning the prize of a goldsmith?

Their ceremony followed some months later. The priests had examined the sacred calendar and set a day when the stars were best aligned to bring good fortune to the marriage. A healthy boy was predicted as the first fruit of their union.

My father's parents refused to come to the wedding, heartily disapproving of his choice of bride. Indeed, no other goldsmiths attended, for they would not mingle with peasant farmers. And yet the ceremony was a joyous occasion, full of laughter, my grandfather telling all who would listen how his clever daughter had traded sweet potatoes for a rich husband.

As my mother and father knelt on the matted floor, their cloaks were drawn together and the knot was tied that bound them as man and wife. And with that my mother's fate was sealed.

Ten months later – in the black of night while the sun battled against the dark spirits of the underworld – my mother fought her own desperate battle to bring me into the world. Pachtic the midwife chanted prayers to Tlazolteotl, the goddess of childbirth, and laid a warm stone on my mother's heaving belly to ease her pain. But nothing, neither prayers nor soothing herbs, could help her distress. When I finally came forth, sliding across the floor in a blue and bloodied mess, my mother slipped for a while into unconsciousness. She did not hear Pachtic's cry of disgust – first on seeing that I was a girl, and then on thinking that I was dead. It was not worth the trouble of reviving me: a girl was of no value. I was bundled away into a corner and Pachtic turned her attention back to my mother.

A swift examination showed that she carried more than one child. With a fervent prayer that this second baby would prove to be the promised boy, Pachtic began once more to aid my mother in her labour.

A short time later, drawing her knees to her chest in a last great spasm of pain, my mother fell again into unconsciousness. That last spasm ejected my brother from her dying body, but his large size tore her beyond recovering. He came feet first, as though prepared to stand and fight the instant he entered this world.

While Mayatl wiped my mother's brow and chafed her hands, frantically trying to hold her spirit in her body, Pachtic cut my brother's cord and safely stored it, for when he grew to adulthood he would have to carry it to a distant battlefield and bury it there. Pachtic bathed him with reverent prayers and ceremony in the cleansing waters that are the gift of Tlaloc, the rain god. Only after this ritual was my father allowed to have sight of his son.

But my father did not glance at the child who had seemingly killed his wife. Seeing his beloved's limp body he gave an anguished cry and, crouching low beside her, lifted her head to his breast and sobbed her name.

“Yecyotl!”

She heard him, for her eyes fluttered open, and her lovely smile greeted him fleetingly, before her soul at last departed.

Perhaps it was her spirit giving a soft, farewell caress that caused me then to wail.

“For I cried,” I said, grinding my stone against maize.

“You cried.” Mayatl spoke the words that had become chorus-like in the oft-repeating of them. “You were not to be disposed of so lightly. Small and weak though you were, you yelled, and a more indignant noise I have never heard!”

“And my father leapt up, and ran…”

“Your father ran, and cradled you in his arms, weeping.”

“And he named me…”

“He named you for the thing you then were. Itacate, a little bundle of cloth – and his most precious possession.”

In later years I realized that Mayatl had sweetened the tale for my hearing. My mother had passed from life to death as I had made the reverse journey. My father had clutched me, hoping, perhaps, that I carried a last word from her fleeing spirit. When he saw I was nothing more than a mortal baby – hungry, and demanding noisily to be fed – he handed me to Mayatl and looked at me no more.

The knowledge that my father had once held me was a bright jewel which I kept in my heart throughout my childhood years: a prize that was counterweight to the jealousy I sometimes had of my brother.

His bathing ceremony was held with great feasting and celebration four days after his birth. For he was born at the first dawn of Izcalli – the month of resurrection. At the precise moment that the sun broke free of the underworld and rose above the horizon, my brother entered this world. As the priests lifted their conch shells and gave the blast which called that morning into being, he took his first breath. The divine influences then were so propitious that the priests declared he was destined for deeds of glory. He would honour the gods and bring fame to his family.

The priests had studied the sacred calendar, and declared my brother's fate to be that of a mighty warrior: one who would shine above his fellow men and delight the gods with many captives. So when Pachtic laid the basin of water upon the reed mat, she placed beside it an amaranth-dough tortilla to represent a shield, and set a small bow and arrow on top. He was named Mitotiqui, for the great uproar he would cause amongst our enemies when he faced them in battle.

Throughout the ritual of bathing and cleansing and prayers, I was tucked away in a dark corner. And when the feasting and music began, there I remained, attended only by Mayatl, never even glanced at by the guests who stood grouped at opposite ends of the house – goldsmiths and farmers keeping as far apart from each other as they could.

My own ceremony a few days later was a cursory affair, performed by Pachtic with perfunctory ritual. I was a girl, born under an ill-favoured sky. Though I had preceded my brother by just a few heartbeats, I had arrived before the dawn, in the dead days between years, when nothing good could be predicted.

The same priests who promised earthly distinction and eternal glory to my brother sucked their teeth and shook their heads over my small frame when called upon to determine my fate. One said I would not survive my infancy; another that my father's prayers would buy me a longer life, but it would be utterly unremarkable. The third – the most respected of the priesthood – was gloomier still. After long thought and much consumption of the sacred mushroom, he made a terrible pronouncement. Not only would my life be worthless, but I would also bring ill fortune to all those closest to me. Any whose life brushed against mine was likely to be stained with it. And when I passed from this life to the next, I would not join my mother in the western paradise but would descend to the perpetual night of Mictlan with all those who lived dull, purposeless lives, and died fruitless, dishonourable deaths.

It was this prediction that everyone remembered. It was this that was whispered behind raised hands wherever I went. The gods had decided I could hope for nothing; I could expect nothing; I would do nothing. As a child, my fate weighed about my neck like a chain. But as I grew, so did a fierce determination that I would one day prove the priests and the gods wrong.