The Poet's Wife (7 page)

‘Can he not go to school?’

‘School?’ Aurelia scoffs. ‘How many schools have you seen around here?’ Shaking her head, she resumes sweeping. ‘No, education’s not our lot. We’re scum of the earth, us
gitanos
. That’s what the
payos
think of us.’

I open my mouth to contradict her but am immediately silenced. ‘I’m not talking about
you
, child. But you’re not exactly like all the rest, are you?’ Aurelia stares at me and I feel myself blushing. ‘No, we’re to be seen and not heard. If the government really had its way, we would be burnt, buried and forgotten within days.’

I feel angry and deeply ashamed, not only of the snobbery so rife amongst my class but also because I know that Aurelia speaks the truth. On countless occasions I have heard my parents or sisters pour scorn on the
gitanos
, calling them pilfering thieves and murderers. I know that there is an element of truth to some of the stories that circulate of their crimes, yet the majority are pure fiction, invented by bored and malicious tongues. People see what they wish to, and all that I perceive at this moment is an honest woman minding her own business and trying to eke out a living for her daughter and grandchildren. As I study Aurelia’s face, I am shocked to see stout tears form in the corners of her eyes and steal down her cheek. Instinctively, I stand up and move towards her.

‘Aurelia.
¿Estás bien?
’

She pauses. ‘I’m not crying because I care what people think of us. I don’t care, believe me, I don’t.’

I hold up a hand and stroke the old
gitana
’s arm. Aurelia stands there, rooted to the spot as she weeps. Taking my hand in hers, she looks at me directly; that same forceful look that has stunned me into silence on several occasions and that right now is racing with demons and clouds. ‘I am crying because of what is to come. I would give anything to change it. But the fact is I cannot.’ And with that, she pulls her hand away sharply and walks towards the cave.

‘
I
sabel
cariño
,
come here.’

I wander over to Mother and let myself be turned around so that my hair can be arranged. Leaning back into the warmth of her familiar chest, I reach up behind me to pull her long, sleek mane of hair over my shoulders, running my fingers through the dark threads before bringing the ends to my nose. I can smell cloves and figs and stare at her hair slipping like sand through my fingers. I decide that, if not black, it’s very close to it. The man who cuts Mother’s hair at the salon told her recently that the fashion is now for short bobs. He’s right, for we can see them everywhere; not up here so much, but down in the city, in the fashionable shopping streets. But Mother isn’t interested in short hair, and I’m relieved. I think ladies with short hair look peculiar.

‘Stop that,’ Mother says gently as she pulls back her hair and resumes her plaiting.

‘Why don’t I have the same hair as you, Mother?’ I ask.

‘Because we are all different, and that is what makes us special,’ Mother replies as she ties a large white bow in my hair. She turns me around and brushes away escaped strands from my forehead. ‘
Bueno
,’ she says and kisses the tip of my nose. ‘Now it is my turn.’ I love this early morning ritual of neatening our hair in front of the looking glass and then putting on our clothes together. It’s Conchi’s job really to dress me and my brothers and sister, but if I get up early enough, which I always do, I can slip into Mother’s room so we can be alone as even Father has left for work by this hour. For a short while I can pretend it’s just Mother and I, that I am her only child.

Mother lets me brush her hair out with a tortoiseshell comb, so long it almost reaches her waist, and I linger over this job, finding imaginary knots as I tug through the strands, seamless as silk. Then she gathers up a top layer and expertly plaits it, the tendons in her dark, sinewy hands tensing and relaxing before she scoops it into a chignon at the back of her neck.
When I grow up
, I think,
I shall grow my hair that long.
But so far, it has stubbornly refused to grow much beyond my shoulders before it curls up in revolt and the plait Mother forces it into is more stubby than sleek.

I sit on the counterpane and swing my legs over the side of the bed, my hands resting on my pinafore as I survey Mother. She steps into a cream petticoat and then pulls a yellow dress gracefully over her head. It falls to just above the ankle, hugging her slender frame that bulges out around the waist. Even after giving birth to four children, her bump is still small and neat. I would like to have another sister, a better sister than María, who I find terribly prissy. She’s the least likely of us all to get her hands dirty and the only one who can’t climb up the garden wall without being given a leg-up. She is also maddeningly rosy and beautiful and on top of that has a sweet nature. Sickeningly sweet, in my opinion. There’s one day that Mother takes the two of us for a walk. María looks such a picture of perfect prettiness with her blonde hair and dark eyes that, since I am her sister, I assume I look the same until I catch sight of my reflection and realise that with my dishevelled chestnut hair and broad features I’ll never be what’s regarded as classically pretty.

Walking to the wardrobe, Mother crouches down and pushes through shoes before settling on the gold pair. These are my favourite; they have stars on them and are narrow at the toe with a small, dainty heel and a strap over the top. Not long ago I tried them on and stood before the full-length looking glass, squinting my eyes and imagining myself to have long, dark hair and narrow eyes, the shape of almonds and the colour of olives. Mother pats her hands over the top of her dress and then turns to the side to look at her back in the looking glass, lifting the toe of one shoe up. As she does so, she catches my eye and smiles at me, and her smile is warm and open and mine.

My mother has lean but muscular arms that are always active with us children, the kitchen or garden. She never stops, not for a minute, and when she does, her hands still seem to be busy. I love the way she challenges convention with such easy and good-humoured grace. I love the way dark strands of hair work their way free from her chignon around her forehead and neck as the day wears on. I love the way she always pushes her sleeves back up over the elbows, as if preparing her hands for work. Her arms are dark from the elbows downwards and white and smooth as paper above. I love the freckles that are flickered over the bridge of her thin nose, making her look younger than she is. What I would give for people to exclaim ‘Oh Isabel, you are so like your mother!’ But,
claro
, they never do. Because I know I’m not like her, not physically at least, and I must content myself with the fact that my smile is, apparently, Mother’s.

After breakfast, Conchi pulls a cloak on to us all and we walk into the city together for it is market day.

‘You shouldn’t be going to the market, Señora, not in your condition,’ Conchi says, her black eyebrows knitted together as her frame fills the doorway.

‘
¿Qué dices?
I am quite alright. In fact,’ she says as she ties the ribbon under María’s straw hat, ‘I always feel as though my energy increases when I am carrying a child.’ She pauses, as though taking in this reality afresh and then shrugs and laughs.

Down in the city, it is a frenzy of activity and commerce with peasants flocking in from the villages to sell their fruit and vegetables. Away from the main market square though, ladies with fancy hats and dressed in the latest fashions saunter elegantly from one shop window to the next with their parasols, staring through the glass at delicate hosiery on waxed legs, waves of silk and ribbon and costly headwear shipped in from Paris or London. Mother does no more than give these displays a cursory glance and I feel a surge of affection for her; in her simple dress and golden shoes offset by her dark fountain of hair, she is far lovelier than any of the other flamboyant ladies I see.

We are about to cross the street when we hear the ring of a tram and Mother, instinctively, throws both her arms out to keep us all back, flattening us with the baskets she holds in each hand. The tram is followed by a horse-drawn omnibus and my youngest brother Fernando, just four years old, stands with his mouth agape as the horses trot dutifully by, swishing their tails this way and that. The street clears again; Mother waves the baskets over our heads to our backs and pushes us gently across.

The market stalls are filled to bursting and Mother picks through gleaming red tomatoes and finely spiked artichokes whilst I push my nose into the fragrant green leaves of bright oranges which spill down the trellises of stalls, smiling as I think of my orange tree back home. Mother buys saffron-scented soap and small, gnarled
garbanzo
beans tied up in a muslin square with string. The fruit vendor with crooked eyes hands each of us a shiny red grape and I bite into it, savouring the nectar as sweet as honey. Once Mother’s baskets and mine are filled – for I am seven years old and the others are too little to carry this load all the way home – we thread our way through the cobbled streets and begin our ascent back to Carmen de las Estrellas.

A
s soon as
Alejandro is born, I forgive him for being a boy. For he is a beautiful, tiny black-haired creature who opens his mouth and squawks like a little bird for mother’s milk. This same year, I feel the softness of snow for the very first time. I have grown up with a view of the Sierra Nevadas, liberally cloaked in whiteness for five or more months of the year. When I sit in the garden and stretch my arm out I pretend I’m touching the mountains. I turn my hand upside down and use my fingers as legs to climb the craggy peaks. But until now, the reality of snow, how it must feel, taste, smell has always been out of my reach.

Then one evening, my family and I are eating dinner when strange white shapes begin to drift silently past the window. We all jump up from our seats and gather noisily, impatiently pushing one another out of the way. I can’t bear to fall asleep that night I’m so excited and the very next day we wake up to an entirely different world. Mother stays at home with Alejandro, and Father bundles the rest of us up in our warmest coats, mittens, woollen hats and thick scarves tied so tight and so high that we can barely breathe or see. We make our way down the slopes of the Albaicín in single file, one hand holding onto the shoulder of the person in front to prevent slipping. Father walks at the back, and when I turn I see him struggling under the weight of Mother’s best skillet pans we have decided will serve best as sledges.

At the foot of the Albaicín we walk out to a wooded slope on the other side of the Río Darro where we spend hours hurtling down hills at top speed. On one of my descents, during which I go so fast that all the breath is punched from me, Father stands in my path to prevent me careering into the ditch beyond. I don’t know if it’s Father or I who is more terrified and thrilled as I plunge towards him and before the pan and I crest the next ridge, he pulls me free and we laugh with cold and with joy. Moments later, I show him the pattern of a snowflake which has lodged on my mitten and Father stares at it, his eyes widening in amazement and then he picks me up and holds me under my arms as he spins me round and round.

I bottle up a handful of snow in one of Conchi’s pickling jars, leaving it beside the icy draught beneath my bedroom window in the hope it remains intact. When it melts, I am bereft. Not only does all the snow vanish as quickly as it settled, but this year spring seems almost forgotten as a thick blanket of heat descends upon us as early as May. By July, the heat is unbearable and my face turns pink and bothered. On one of these breezeless days, most of my family are inside trying to nap after a heavy lunch, but the combination of a large meal and the high temperature, rather than encouraging sleep, just makes me restless. Mother has insisted I attempt a short siesta, but it’s no use. Instead, I lay a rug out in the inner courtyard in the shade of my orange tree, as I so often do, imagining shapes in the clouds through the leafy fingers of its canopy. All my family call it ‘Isabel’s tree’, and it’s as though there is a metre circumference around it that nobody may enter. Do I appear that unwilling to share the tree that Father planted at my birth, I wonder, or is nobody else interested in coming near? Even when it begins to bear fruit, those scaly, dimpled Seville oranges that are far too bitter to eat but which Mother sometimes adds to her fortune cookies, it’s my unspoken task to collect them in a basket and hand them to her. Nobody in my family ever talks about it but somehow the orange tree remains, quite indisputably, mine.

Lying under it this breezeless summer day, I hear the sound of footsteps approaching the main door. I wait for the knock, but when it doesn’t come, I stand up and listen to the pacing back and forth. Conchi must have heard the footsteps too as she has made her way out of the kitchen, her apron and hands bloodied from the meat she’s preparing.

‘
Está bien
, Conchi, I’ll see who it is,’ I tell her. I leave the courtyard through the kitchen and run out into the garden. From as early as I can remember, along with my younger brothers and sister, I’d haul myself up onto the ivy-covered wall surrounding the house and garden and lie flat on top of it, peering down into the alleyway below to see who is visiting us. Father always panics when he sees us up on the wall, convinced we will fall and break our necks, whereas Mother just says that if we’re stupid enough to go up there, it will be our own faults if anything happens.

On this occasion, I pull myself up and lie on the wall’s surface, sucking my breath in and studying the woman below. She is clearly upset, but she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, with long night-black curls and an expressive face. As I lie there gazing at her, a small pebble dislodges itself from the wall and rattles down noisily. I’m not sure who is more startled, because we both stare at each other, shocked, for some time.

After a while, she clears her throat. ‘Are you Luisa’s daughter?’

I nod.

‘Is your mamá here?’

‘She’s having her siesta.’

The woman looks disappointed. I can see her biting her bottom lip then she turns her head up towards me. The fix of her stare alarms me; it is so dark and so bottomless and so full of a pain I can’t understand.

‘I’ll come back another time,’ she says quietly, and quickly turns and starts to make her way back down the alley.

‘No, no, wait!’ I spring down from the wall and race round through the inner patio, heaving at the door and beckoning for her to come in. ‘I’ll get her. She won’t mind.’

After a few moments of faltering, the woman walks in and, satisfied I’ve trapped her, I turn round. Conchi is standing there, her hands cleaned. She gives me a strange look as I pass her to run up the stairs and stands there in silence, staring at the visitor.

‘
¡Mamá, ven rápido!
’ I cry, hurling myself into her bedroom. ‘Somebody is here to visit you!’

Mother stirs, the imprint of pillow against her smooth cheek. ‘Who is it?’

‘
No lo sé
, but you must hurry, before she leaves again!’

M
other is
out of bed in a flash and I race down the stairs behind her as she takes the mysterious woman into the conservatory, closing the door behind her. Disappointed, I peer through the keyhole and watch, puzzled, as Mother draws the lovely lady into her arms and her body shakes with loud sobs.

‘Come away, Señorita,’ Conchi chides as she tugs at the sleeve of my blouse.

‘Who is it, Conchi?’

‘I have no idea,’ she replies, pursing her lips, ‘but no doubt your mother will tell you when she wants to.’

And she does, that very evening, explain to me that this is Abuela Aurelia’s daughter who has been away for a long while but has now decided to go home to her mamá and little ones. It all seems very odd, but in our following visits to the caves, Mar is nearly always there and I think little of the fact that this mysterious woman has been curiously absent for so long.