Blood Secret (11 page)

“When do they ask them to repent and confess?” I asked.

“Oh, soon, I should think.” The old lady turned to a companion. “When do you think, Maria?”

“Oh, look, there goes Friar Torquemado now. Up the steps. He will ask them. The queen’s confessor himself. My! My!” She sighed in wonder.

Now I prayed. “Please, God, if there is a god, make my parents confess, make them say anything. Please, God.” But when I looked up again, I saw that my mother’s head seemed to hang oddly to one side, like a wilted flower collapsed on its thin stalk. “What happened?” I asked.

“What do you mean, what happened?” the old lady asked.

“The lady at the stake, she looks as if she has fainted.”

“No, no, she’s confessed. They have shown her mercy.”

“But she looks”—I struggled to form the words—“she looks dead.” The two old women lifted their hands to their mouths and giggled as if they were shy, slightly flirtatious young señoritas.

“But she
is
dead,” the one named Maria finally said.

“She is dead? But I don’t understand. I thought you said they were showing her mercy.”

“They did. They garroted her, broke her neck. It is ever so much less painful than burning, child. It is very merciful.”

“But…”

At that moment I heard a crackling. “Oh, look, Maria, they’ve lit the fires. Oh, they must have poured grease on the kindling.”

“On the sinners, my dear, as well. Look at them.”

Within five seconds the flames leaped twenty feet in the air, and the roar of the inferno drowned out the cheers of the crowd. Ashes began to swirl up on drafts of air, and columns of smoke like knobby fingers poked at a blue and perfect sky.

That was the day my parents burned.

It is Holy Week in Seville. Always during this week there is a special feeling that seems to seep through the city, through the neighborhoods, and even into the narrowest alleys. There is anticipation. This sense of the possibility of transformation. There is a belief that through these days of the Passion of Christ, something deep within each person will change. And so indeed the city changes quietly, subtly, as if awaiting this new spirit. In the workshops of artisans, new images of the Virgin, the Virgin of Macarena, are carved. The artisans pay special attention to the Virgin’s tears. The tears are the hardest part of the sculpting and they are often painted in silver or gold leaf so they will sparkle. For the Virgin is only represented in her sorrow, crying at the death of her son. It is through her tears and his wounds that transformation is expected. I wait now near the cathedral, for it is Maundy Thursday. This is the most important day. It is the day of humbleness, when kings and rich men are supposed to wash the feet of beggars, and so the beggars line up in front of the massive doors of the cathedral. Their feet are horny with calluses and some festering with pus, toes gnarled from a lifetime without shoes. I line up too. It is risky. I could be discovered, but I
wear an urchin’s cap down over my eyes. I see Don Olivares, Paco’s father, the same man who paid for the statues of the prophets of the
quemadero
where my parents burned; he is the head of one of the brotherhoods that carries the floats in the procession. He carries a cross. But he will set it down at the entrance of the cathedral and will take a bowl of water to wash the beggars’ feet. And with this act of humility he shall assure himself a place in heaven. But he does not listen to the gentle gasps of the beggars as their poor feet are washed. No. He listens for the voices of the common folk who say, “Ah, there goes Don Olivares; he is one of the richest men in the province and look at him now on his knees.” Yes, I want to look at him on his knees and say, “You will still burn in hell.”

I did not wait for the Brotherhood of the Silence and Great Mystery, which was the one of Don Olivares. For just before they came, another group arrived, a handful of women in black scarves carrying candles. They were in fact from the Convent of Santa Ines, and even the statue of the Virgin that they carried had been disfigured. But the wounds carved into her cheeks had been studded with paste
jewels. Such is supposedly the transformation of those who suffer. What stupidity!

The sound of the
saeta,
the strange musical prayer that seemed like a moan rather than a song, rose in the air as the women passed. I recognized the wife of the herbalist where I often went to fetch theriac for Papa, but then just behind her were some nuns. One nun was leading another by the hand, for she was blind. And then I felt a gasp tear from the deepest part of me. A shriek froze on my breath. And I thought I had seen the worst. I had not. For there a few feet from me, her face dripping flesh like melted candle wax, her eyes gone, the empty sockets crinkled as peach pits—there was Rosita, my sister.

My city used to smell of orange blossoms, but it now has a strange odor. It is the smell of burning flesh. For indeed they did not even stop the autos during Holy Week, and when I saw my sister I smelled scalded skin and seared eyeballs.

It is only a matter of time until I am discovered. But tonight I have decided I shall leave. The smell, the smell I must get away from, the foul stench. There is only one town that is safe anymore. That is
Granada, still held by the Moors, and I think I remember that Papa said that our relatives from Toledo went to the Moorish city many years ago. I shall try to find them. Yes, it is risky and dangerous, but honestly I now fear nothing. Once you have smelled the flesh of your own parents burning, what else could there be to fear? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It is time for me to step out of the shadows.

J
ERRY BLINKED AS
she walked upstairs. Outside the world had turned a dazzling white. The fence posts of the cook yard wore snowy white caps. The branches of the apricot trees hung heavy with their mantles of snow. Constanza, bundled in a sheepskin coat, her head tied in a scarf under her Navajo black hat, was raking out an oven. Jerry peered at her through the window as she threw a pinch of bread into the hornos. A draft caught a puff of ash and sucked it out of the oven. A thin streak of smoke uncurled like a finger. Jerry felt a bone-pricking shiver rack through her. She did not smell bread.
That was the day my parents…
“No!” And she said the word loudly and very clearly as she stood in the kitchen.

“Whatcha saying no about?” Constanza was in the kitchen now, stomping her feet on the
mat. She untied her scarf and took off her hat, the brim of which had collected its own little snowdrifts.

“No.” Jerry felt her eyes grow wide and round in astonishment. “I am not going to church anymore.”

“Fine, dear, suit yourself,” Constanza said softly.

Is this going to be like the letter? Jerry thought. Was she going to be left standing in the kitchen in a puddle of the melted snow her aunt brought in, saying, “That’s it”? She wasn’t saying simply no to church. “Aunt Constanza,” Jerry said, “listen to me.”

Constanza turned slowly around. A new alertness in her eyes. She licked her lips and then very deliberately pulled out a chair from the kitchen table. She sat down and took a deep breath, then folded her hands on top of the table. Despite the calm, folded hands and the steady gaze, Jerry could see that Constanza was nervous. “Yes, Jerry,” she said quietly. “Do you have something you want to tell me?”

And so Jerry began to tell.

Hours passed. She had missed most of her morning classes. It had begun to snow again, so it seemed pointless to go. The sun that had been so bright was swallowed up into a sky swirling with
snow. “It’s a blizzard out there,” Constanza said when Jerry came back up from the cellar. She was carrying something in her hand. Constanza leaned forward while scratching her head. “So what you got there?” She spoke in a low whisper.

Jerry set down the letter, then the piece of stained lace. She unfolded the lace and took out the medal with the man and the squirrel perched on his shoulder. There was also a piece of shell she had found with a hole in it. It looked as if it had once been strung to wear as a pendant.

Constanza’s long fingers reached out, her hand shaking. She touched the medal. “St. Francis,” she said softly, then looked up at Jerry. “So you learned all this—all that you were telling me—from these things—this lace, this letter, this medal of St. Francis?”

“In a way. It was the beginning.” Jerry knew it would be hard to explain what had happened in her mind. Constanza looked down at the objects on the table and touched one, then the other, sometimes picking up one to look at it more closely. Jerry waited. She had nothing more to say. She hoped Constanza would not ask for anything more, any reasons or explanations of how she had come to
know what she knew. It was not a dream. She thought that Constanza understood this. Minutes passed. No one spoke. Then finally Constanza rubbed the patch on her head. “Well, yes, a beginning. It’s a beginning,” she said, and got up to leave for church.

She put on her sheepskin coat. Slapped the hat on her head once more and anchored it with a scarf. Just before she walked out the door, she paused and looked back at Jerry, who was still sitting at the table. Jerry saw a guttering light in her aunt’s eyes, almost a flicker of fear, or was it embarrassment? Her strong, straight-backed aunt suddenly seemed slightly hunched and smaller. Jerry saw her bite softly on her bottom lip as if she were about to say something, but somehow her words were lost.

“It’s all right, Aunt Constanza, you go on to church. It’s okay.”

Jerry looked down at the things she had brought up from the cellar. The piece of shell looked out of place. It didn’t look as if it belonged. But it was lovely. Jerry got up to get a piece of string. She cut a length off the ball that Constanza kept in the cupboard, threaded the shell onto it, and tied it around her neck. She liked the feel of it at the base of her
throat. In another minute she heard the door slam, and when she looked out the window, she saw that the twilight was now slipping into a darkness studded with snowflakes. She watched her aunt as the old lady bent herself against the wind and punched through the blizzard to her truck.

I
T SNOWED ALL NIGHT
, and when she got up the next morning and looked out her window, she saw that the hornos had vanished entirely under huge drifts of snow. There were a few telltale feathers of smoke hovering over the drifts, and that was the only sign that beneath bread was still baking. She saw Constanza with a shovel and quickly hopped out of bed. How was that old lady going to move all that snow?

In less than five minutes she was dressed and getting her coat off the hook.

“You need a hat, foolish girl!” Constanza looked up at her niece. “Go in and get a hat if you want to help. No school today, huh? Snow day. Lucky you. You can help me all day if you like. I have a lot of orders to deliver. Time you learned how to drive in snow.”

Jerry looked hard at her aunt. Drive in snow! Was she crazy? If there was no school because of snow, why in the name of God did her aunt think this was a good day for a driving lesson? “Go in and get your hat,” Constanza cawed. “What good will you do me if your hair gets wet and you get sick?” Jerry turned to go back in.

They worked together in the cook yard all morning. It did not take them long to excavate the hornos. For the first time her aunt allowed Jerry to build the new fires for the second batches, putting in the fruitwood one piece at a time, as her aunt instructed. When the wood had burned down completely, the ashes were raked out with the wet cloth and the pans of bread slid onto the oven’s floor. Hot rocks were placed inside with damp cloths over them to block any cracks in the stove, and another rock was placed on top of the smoke hole. By midmorning the supply of split wood had run out. “Come on,” Constanza said. “You might as well learn how to split wood.”

Jerry walked with her aunt over to the woodpile, which first had to be broomed off to even reveal a log. Then her aunt put a short log on end atop the chopping block and took her splitting maul.

“Watch me. You try to swing this maul in a big circle so it comes down hard.” Jerry watched her aunt begin the swing. Her head and eyes stayed focused on the wood. There was a
thunk
, then a
thwack
sound, and the log popped apart into equal pieces.

“Now you try it.” Constanza stepped aside. “Keep the swing at full arm’s length, then you won’t chop off any of yourself.”

Lovely, thought Jerry. There was another
thunk
and a
thwack
.

“You’re a natural.” Constanza gave a little cackle. “Too bad for you. You can split the rest of that pile. I’m taking a rest before I put in the second batch.”

Within minutes Jerry was sweating. She removed her coat and hung it on a fence post. It took her the better part of an hour to split the pile. She took the split pieces in the wheelbarrow, which was not easy to negotiate through the snow, to the ovens where they had built the new fires. She saw her aunt coming out of the house again with the dough for the second batch. She set down the plank with the flattened loaves and reached into her pocket for one of the little dough balls. Jerry was still breathing hard from her labors, and when the word came out it
sounded almost more like a breath or small gasp than an actual word. But Constanza heard it: “Why?”

“Well, now, that’s a good question.” She looked down at the little dough ball in her hand, chuckled softly, then shrugged. “Not sure, really. I just do it. Superstition, I suppose. My mother did it. Her mother did it and her mother’s mother did it. Indian stuff, maybe. Some of my folks came from the Yucatán. I guess that means some of yours did too, seeing as you’re my great-grand-niece.”

“N
OW THE LAST THING
you ever want to do if you start to skid on a patch of ice is put on the brakes. No. What you do is steer right in the direction you are skidding and let up on the gas.”

Jerry nodded and concentrated on the road. The roads didn’t seem too bad except they were climbing higher and higher on this mesa road and the banks of snow were getting deeper. They had already delivered orders to the country club as well as three restaurants downtown. But Constanza had some special customers.

“We’re going to see Margaret Santangel. She’s sort of a relative.” Jerry started to look at her aunt. “Keep your eyes on the road. You’re not that good yet. And shift. The grade gets steep here.” Jerry pushed in the clutch, shifted, and then eased up on the clutch. She was get
ting better. “Margaret—let me see. She’s a relative on your great-grandfather’s side, I think. There were some cousins—Navajo ones that married into some Pueblos. I can’t remember. Anyhow they’re having some corn dance or something up here. Lot of tourists come. So I’m bringing them up some bread to freeze. Tourists don’t know whether it’s been frozen or not. Give the fresh stuff to Margaret. She’s a nice gal.”

Gal! Jerry wondered. If Margaret Santangel was a gal, Jerry thought, she herself must be an embryo. Margaret was the absolutely oldest person that Jerry had ever seen. She was almost as dark as a prune and about as wrinkled. Her legs appeared to bow into a near O in her loose-fitting pants, and she wore a sweatshirt that said “Go Tigers.” Her house in the pueblo on top of the mesa was small and neat as a pin.

“Do you like Twinkies, dear?” the old woman asked. Jerry wasn’t sure what she meant, but she nodded, and Margaret went into her kitchen and brought out a cellophane package. Indeed inside was one of the small buns filled with cream.

“How can you eat that crap, Margaret, when I bring you good pueblo bread?” Constanza demanded.

“My teeth, they been hurting.”

“What teeth?”

Margaret giggled. “Well, it’s the gums in between the two I have.” She grinned and turned toward Jerry. Margaret’s gums were the exact color of blue corn.

“So you’re not going to eat my bread?”

“No, of course I will. I dunk it and it’s just fine. But youngsters like Twinkies. I keep them on hand for my grandchildren.”

There was a knock on the door. Margaret said something in a language that Jerry didn’t understand. The door swung open and another lady nearly as old as Margaret entered. Margaret began speaking in the strange language. Constanza seemed to know the lady and joined in. Then Constanza turned to Jerry. “They’re speaking Tewa—Old Tewa.” She then turned back to the woman who just arrived. “Grace, this is my niece Jerry.” Grace smiled and bobbed her head and then resumed talking in Tewa. Margaret brought out some more Twinkies and some of the bread that Constanza had brought and put on a tea kettle.

The women continued to babble away in Tewa. Jerry couldn’t help but wonder how, if Margaret was
such a distant relative, Constanza had learned to speak this language. Margaret got up to get a picture of one of her grandchildren. The framed photograph rested on the mantle between a crucifix and two funny little figurines no more than four or five inches tall caught in some antic dance. “Ah, you like my koshare doll?” Margaret didn’t wait for Jerry to ask what a koshare doll was. “Everyone makes big fusses about kachina dolls. Me, I like the koshares—the mischief dolls, Delight Makers, some call them. They do everything we might want to do but are scared to try. See this one. The two are dancing and he’s trying to peek under her skirts and she’s about to kick him.” All the old ladies laughed heartily. “I got a golfer one too in the back room. He’s a cute fellow. But I don’t play golf. I might give it to a nephew who’s got the golf bug.” Margaret sighed. “I like the koshare dances at the corn festival. Those are the best. You know they do everything that is rude. Not real nasty. Not devil nasty—not white-guy religion—just rude and funny—old Pueblo religion. Here, let me get this one down for you so you can have a look.” As she walked by the table, she brushed against the plate with the Twinkies and bread on it and it fell to the
floor and shattered. “Oh, my my my! So clumsy.” She went to get a broom and dustpan. Before she could really think, Jerry jumped up.

“I’ll do that.” The words slipped out easily. She took the broom and began sweeping the pieces into a pile near the door. She bent down and swept the pile into the dustpan, but then there were a few little bits and pieces of dust. Jerry put her hand on the door and began to open it to sweep out the rest.

“Oh no!” Constanza said, and then stopped herself suddenly. She began scratching the thin patch on her head.

“What’s the matter?” Margaret asked.

Jerry looked at her aunt. “Oh, just an old superstition. Never brush dirt across the threshold,” Constanza replied.

“Oh, for heaven’s sakes!” Grace batted the air with her hand. “I had an old aunt, over in Tucumcari. She did the same thing. Used to scold me all the time. Never sweep dirt out the door!”

“Margaret,” Constanza said suddenly. “Jerry’s been asking me ’bout old times.”

“What old times?” Margaret said, fiddling with the skirt of the koshare doll.

“Oh, you know, way back. You know any of those
stories when those folks came up here from the Yucatán, that kind of stuff?”

“You mean real old times, them folk that came before New Mexico was even New Mexico—all just Mexico, I think. All Spanish. I dunno,” she said, still fussing with the koshare doll. “I get them all mixed up. You know they marry into this family and that, some go into pueblos, others with Navajos, others marry Spanish. You go up to the old cemetery. You see some of them stones.” She put down the doll and looked up. “Yeah, some of them stones got those six-pointed stars.” She touched her index fingers and her thumbs together to make a triangle. “You know a triangle right side up and one upside-down. What do they call them stars?”

“Star of Davis,” Grace said.

“Yeah, yeah, something like that, Star of Davis.”

“Star of David,” Jerry said softly.

“Yeah, maybe, maybe that’s it. Sounds more right, doesn’t it. Star of David.” Margaret nodded. Then she put her fingers to the side of her head and gave a little tap to her skull. “I’m trying to think. I recall having a koshare doll one time with one of them stars hanging off its neck. Think I traded it, though.”

They chatted on for a few more minutes, and then Constanza said they had better be getting along.

“You come back now, Jerry. I promise I’ll try and remember to talk more English.” Margaret Santangel stood in the doorway and waved. She waved the way a baby might wave, deliberately and slowly opening and shutting her hand.

Jerry smiled and climbed in the truck. Constanza was driving now and she turned to Jerry with her hand on the ignition key. “’Spose you want to go to the cemetery now.”

Jerry nodded. Then spoke. “I mean yes.”