Blood Secret (7 page)

O
NCE AGAIN IT WAS
Friday night, and once again as Jerry came out of her room she saw the back of her aunt as she stood in front of the window lighting her Lenten candles. The window itself was a rectangle of lavender light, with her aunt’s face mirrored in the glass. And just beneath her eyes, which were shut tight in some sort of prayer, there were the reflections of the flickering candle flames. A bolt of lightning popped across the sky, jagged and hot white, slicing the window on the diagonal, splitting the image of her aunt’s face.

Thunder rumbled as they sat down to their dinner, and outside the sky flinched with lightning that spread like electric lace over the mountains.

“You want a little wine, Jerry? You can have
some. It won’t kill you. And it’s a heck of a lot better than that stuff they give us at Communion. Friday night, you know.”

Jerry shrugged. She really meant to say no. She tried to make her mouth move around the simple word, but ever since…well, she didn’t want to think about “ever since.” Even so, she stole a glance at the cellar door, then slid her eyes to where the putty can had been. It was still there.

“Nnnah.” The chopped sound came out with a mighty effort. It felt as if she were spitting a chunk of rock.

“I’ll take that for a ‘no,’” Constanza said softly, and then quite suddenly reached over and patted Jerry’s hand. “It’s fine, gal. You’re doing just fine.”

Jerry felt an unfamiliar sting in her eyes. Was she going to actually cry? She did not want to cry. Constanza got up quickly from the table. “Forgot the raisins. This stew always tastes better with raisins.”

Jerry could see that there were already raisins in the stew. Constanza had not forgotten them at all. Her aunt was not a good liar, but her intentions were good.

She came back to the table with the box and sprinkled some on top.

“A garnish, you know. Just for decoration, really,” Constanza explained, and then they began to eat, both pretending about the raisins—about the raisins being just a garnish.

Later, after dinner, after they had gone out to look for trapdoor spiders, after the dishes were cleaned and dried and put away on the pine shelves, and after Constanza had gone to bed and Jerry had stuck on nearly one hundred “Constanza Delivers” labels to the baked-goods boxes in the back pantry, a task she knew Constanza loathed, and after she had lain in bed for almost two hours staring at the ceiling unable to sleep, Jerry began to think about the silent lies she had told in the past two days—the two days since “the ever since.” Yes, she reflected on how one did not have to speak to be a liar. She had written a very excellent, exactly three-hundred-word essay (excluding the quote) about why Romeo’s stupid speech moved her profoundly. She had just agreed that there were no raisins in the stew. Let’s see, what else? she mused. Oh, Jerry’s silent voices could be very sarcastic and cutting. Perhaps that was why her voice had deserted her, because her tongue was gnarled with lies. She squeezed her eyes shut as she remem
bered the touch of her aunt’s hand on her own.

Then she suddenly got up. She knew what she had to do. It was time to think of “the ever since.” She refused to be pinned in by “the ever since” and the silent lies. So she walked out of her bedroom, down the hall, and to the kitchen. It was a moonless night, a night of deep shadows. She could barely discern the outline of the cellar door, and yet she moved inexorably toward it. She opened the door and stood on the first step. She let her eyes adjust and then began to descend the stairs. Her steps were sure, her vision clear, but her heart beat madly as she lifted the lid of the trunk.

The lace was exactly where she had left it. She picked it up, looked at it, and replaced it carefully. Now she took the Bible and opened it. It was a Spanish Bible, and although the pages were yellow with age, it did not seem that old. Not as old as the lace, maybe even centuries younger. But then a fragment of a piece of paper drifted from it, almost lazily, yet in its idle course it seemed to beg her attention. She picked it up. It was not a piece of the Bible’s pages. No, there was handwriting dim with age. Jerry shined the flashlight on it and squinted at the spidery script.

She slowly began to translate the Old Spanish. It was hard. Whole sentences remained undecipherable. The word orders were strange. Sometimes she was not sure what the verbs were because they cropped up in funny places. There was something about a veil, a Communion veil Jerry thought, but she wasn’t sure. A bit of meaning began to melt out from the paper.

How fine indeed! Jerry felt a quickening within her. It was as if a storm of butterflies suddenly rose in a
golden flight inside her chest. The paper seemed as fragile as the wings of a butterfly. Time began to slip from its harness. Jerry held the paper and closed her eyes for a second. Instead of blackness or the crazy jig of neon squiggly lines that had danced on the inside of her eyelids, this time she glimpsed a dim light, a light from an unimaginable distance that had traveled like the light of ancient stars.

The House in the Wall
C
ALLE DE
P
UERTA
V
IEJA DE
B
ISAGRA
T
OLEDO
, S
PAIN
J
ANUARY
1449

Beatriz

The baby is crying again. I can hardly write this letter to my cousin between his crying and the hinges of the city gates creaking. Well, in truth, I am more accustomed to the city gates than a baby’s cry. My room here in our house in the walls is right next to the gates. Those creaks of the hinges have been a part of my life since I was born. It’s the baby I am not used to. I just don’t see why he had to be born this week of all weeks! The week of my First Communion! I have waited ten years to become a
communicant in the church of our Lord and there is the party planned and everything. All those hours I had to spend with Padre Hoya and then Sister Maria Theresa. Sister Maria Theresa has an ugly mole right above her lip with a hair growing out of it. It was very hard to concentrate on the catechism. Sister would ask the questions of, say, the first lesson, and I would answer.

“What must we do to save our souls?”

“To save our souls, we must worship God by faith, hope, and charity….”

And all the time I answer and she bobs her head, that little hair sprouting from the mole waggles about. It is a credit to my powers of concentration that I could learn the catechism so well, and now with this baby yowling? Why, oh, why did little Enrique have to come this week of all weeks? I know this is selfish, but it is really
my
week.

I know that to think this way, so close to the day of my First Communion, is not proper. Sister Maria Theresa is too old to read these sins of my heart. She still thinks that if my feet dare touch the ground when I kneel I shall have to spend thirty minutes in hell having my toes scorched.

The sisters speak of such dark things. There is so
much talk of purgatory. It frightens me. The sisters remind us of how terrible it will be to see the face of God after death if indeed our sins have not been made up for, our “accounts” not reconciled. So sometimes I picture myself waiting in front of God, a faceless God because I cannot imagine his face, but he is holding an account book, a ledger just like the one Papa writes in the payments or debts for his silver orders.

“Beatriz! Beatriz! Your cousin Tomás has arrived. You must get ready for dinner.”

“Yes, Abuela. Just a minute.”

I wish Mama would let me wear my hair up in a crown of braids like the big girls. I love the way they look when they walk around the square on Saturday afternoons. If I shall be old enough to take Communion by tomorrow, why not wear my hair up? Of course, even when I am old enough, Mama and Papa will never let me walk around the square to show me off to possible suitors. We are New Christians and that “parade,” as Papa calls it, is considered an Old Christian custom. Funny, isn’t it, this New Christian, Old Christian business. How can my great-grandmother Doña Grazia be considered a new anything at nearly one hundred years old!

I hear Mama calling again. “Coming!” I shout,
and rush downstairs. But just as I am passing my grandfather’s study, I hear a word that makes me stop: “Granada.” I catch my breath. If I press myself into the shadows just outside the study, they will not see me but I can see them. I see Tomás pacing.

“I think, Don Alvaro and Don Diego, that you must consider Granada.” That is my cousin Tomás speaking. What is he talking about? Granada? I have to listen. I know it is spying. Yet another sin.

“You, Don Diego, the king recognizes what a fine job you have done collecting for this loan for the country’s defenses.”

“It is the
pueblo menudo
….” Don Alvaro interrupted. “The little people, it is always the lower classes and Governor Sarmiento who cause the problems for the New Christians.”

What does this have to do with Granada? I wonder. What must they consider about Granada?

“Look, hasn’t Sarmiento always been hoping for your job, Don Diego, as tax farmer? The resentment has been building against New Christians like ourselves who are successful with good positions, ever since last spring when they passed the pure-blood laws.”

I cannot stand this talk of the pure-blood laws. It
sickens me. I have been a Christian my whole life. Mama and Papa have been Christians their whole lives. My grandmother converted and was baptized when she was ten. So why do they call us “New Christians,” and impure ones at that? It seems so unfair. Who can help how they were born or who their great-grandparents were? You know, I used to like the word
limpieza
. I liked its sound. I liked the way it felt on my tongue. It felt a bit like what it meant—“clean.” But now when they talk about clean pure-blood laws, I hate the word. It is odd how a plain and simple word can be ruined. I must admit the one very good thing about Sister Maria Theresa is that she hates the laws and I think the word, too, now.

I remember soon after the laws had been passed when Sister and I were walking home together from devotions, a town crier was calling out the new rulings. He was announcing how New Christians were no longer permitted to hold public offices because of their lack of pure blood. Sister clapped her hands over my ears and actually shouted at the town crier, “This is foul! This is foul! You have no right to bring this news to the ears of little ones preparing for their First Communion. We are all pure in God’s
eyes, even sinners like you.”

For this alone I know that Sister Maria Theresa will never have to spend one minute in purgatory.

I hear only quiet now.

“Judaizers! They call us Judaizers.” What is this word
Judaizer?

“Judaizer!” Don Diego hisses. “How can they say that? My own grandparents converted long before the massacres of thirteen ninety-one. My own granddaughter is to have her First Communion tomorrow.”

“Still they think that we secretly practice the old faith.” It is Tomás’s voice I hear.

Then my grandfather takes the thoughts right out of my head and gives them words. “And when do they think we do this? When do we ‘Judiazers’ practice as Jews? One religion takes enough time.” He snorts. And I nearly laugh out loud.

Tomás walks to the other end of Grandfather’s study, and I cannot hear him so well as the fire in the hearth crackles louder. I strain. It is something about the gates of the city. Then I hear my name as clear as anything. Why would they speak of me?

“Who knows how loyal the sentries at the gates are? That is why it is so good that you live where
you do, here in the house in the walls. You can hear the hinges, can’t you?”

“Yes, much to Juana’s annoyance, and Beatriz too can hear them plainly as her bedroom abuts the east gate’s hinges. The walls are thick, but the sound of that iron carries through the stone.”

“Well, warn her that she must come to you immediately if she hears the sound of the dead bolts and the ring bolts that they use in the hinges.”

I scratch my head. A bad habit just like my grandmother Abuela Maria inherited from her mother. Abuela Maria has to wear a piece of a wig to cover the bare patch. “But why must we listen for the hinge bolts?”

“Because, gentlemen, that means that they are sealing the city to the king, the king and his forces, and that indeed Sarmiento and his rebels will hold Toledo. Then God help the New Christians.” Tomás laughs harshly.

Roasted pigeon, not my favorite. I think I’ll just eat the olives and the bread if I can get away with it.