Poison (36 page)

Every person in the room stood still in horror. No one breathed. But then, I could not help myself, I went to Alvaro, I buried my face in his neck. He stiffened. This was not part of his plan—I was implicating myself. Quickly, to cover for my mistake, he made as if he were the one who had grabbed me. I felt his hands all over me. I felt him touch me from without and felt his child kick me from within, and the night roared around us as though a terrible storm shook my papa’s house, smashed the window and tore the door from its hinge.

“Francisca, Francisca, Francisca.” He said my name over and over.
Possessio mea
. His one possession. I felt his lips, cold, on my forehead, and then they tore him off me.

The White Hood and his deputy took him away in the black cart they had waiting, and they remanded me to the care of my father. For a few days there was confusion. The whole town of Quintanapalla had itself purged and bled, so that the evil left by so wicked a priest as Alvaro would be banished. They took senna and mustard and lobelia, they swallowed any noxious herb to make them vomit years of sacraments touched by his unclean hands. A special
sangrado
came to the town, and he filled basin after basin, pouring them out so the gutters outside the barber’s ran with blood. Dolores fumigated our house with burnt yarrow, she waved crosses in the air and burned up whatever she could. She made a bonfire of our bed and washed me down with tea made of skullcap. I sat naked in a tub and watched dully as the brown water ran over my swollen belly. Every time I looked her way she made the sign of the cross between us. But mostly I kept my eyes downcast. Whenever I could, whenever she would let me, I slept. My hatred for her wore me out in those weeks. Later, I did not blame her so much. I saw how Alvaro and I had been so blindly foolhardy and indiscreet that we might as well have turned ourselves in to the Holy Office. If Dolores had not spoken to the wheelwright, someone else would have done so.

Alvaro’s fate was certain: he would be tortured; whatever confession he made would be recorded. For the sake of his soul, he would be pressed to implicate whatever other sinners he could. But he would not betray me, he would do what he could to save me and our child. After they had as much as they needed, or as much as they could get, the Holy Office would excommunicate him, and the Church would then abandon Alvaro to secular justice. The Church sheds no blood, not even that of denounced heretics and seducers. Spain, however, would take her due. Would burn him, or—as it happened that he died in prison—content herself with burning his bones.

My fate remained unclear for a while. As I was carrying a child, I could not be hanged or even tortured, not yet. And the
baby, whom I had expected in a matter of weeks, stayed put in my belly as if he had no intention of abandoning his mama. Perhaps I misjudged the time of my confinement, but my son did not come into the world until a decision as to my fate was reached. The rhetoric was a bit mystifying, the pages of the decision ran to thirty or more—“As thick as this,” Papa said, and he held his fingers to show a fair width—but the gist of it was that I was considered to have been abused and led astray by one whom I had reason to trust, a man representing the Church, so the Church could hardly punish me as it might any other harlot. As it had not yet begun its postmortem pursuit of my mother, inherited suspicions had not yet fallen on me.

Still, I was punished by the townsfolk, regarded with suspicion and contempt for the rest of my free days. I could not go to Mass, they barred the church door, and just as well, for it made me ill to be in a church now. The incense was overcome by the smell of so many bodies in one place together.

The day following the decision to leave me free under the care of my father, I went out walking with no guard over me. I was almost at the time of my confinement, I was so great with child that I felt breathless and unwell, I was sick and shocked over Alvaro’s arrest, and yet, still I felt some—what?
Joy
. Yes, I was so happy to think that I would be allowed to keep Mateo; I had already decided the child was a boy and would be named so. I had gone to the river and was now walking the long way home, up the hill and through the grove. I began, even great-bellied as I was, to run among the trees and around their trunks. I made loops and loops and eights and naughts, and I felt the baby moving inside me. I was like a child myself with sudden happiness, the child I had not been for so long, not since the death of my mother. My sides ached with the running, but I did not stop. I thought no sensible thoughts, such as that I might bring on the baby with my antics, I just danced and danced. I began to turn around like one of Papa’s tops. Around, around. Alone in the mulberry grove, those trees of failed dreams, and so big with life, with
hope
, inside me, and my skirts flying out from my body. I felt as if at last I was dancing in my mama’s arms, dancing and dancing the hopeful, hopeless dance of women.

•   •   •

During my lying-in I missed my mama as I never had before. With the first pain came a gush of memory, and soon I was drowning in a sea of the past, wet and tearful, a thousand things that I would not have been able to recall at any other time. Her hands warm on my face when I came down the hill from the silk house. That little pot of clove ointment that she kept on the shelf by the door, and her habit of dipping two fingers into it and rubbing the yellow salve on her dry elbows. How she would touch a little of the grease to her eyebrows and lips to make them shine.

My mother made a soap using the fat of deer kidneys. It took nine days, like a novena to beauty, and if we could buy any musk or civet at the market she would add a little. She had a mold that she got from her own mama, and into it she poured the liquid soap when it was hot. After it cooled, ten soaps came out with a little picture of a deer jumping on each, very pretty, but I saw her make them only once. Of course, she knew how to do such things because she came from a family of soap makers, but she had little time to think on her own looks and comfort. Nine whole days to make a basket of the little cakes of soap. She sold them at market, or Papa did, except for one, which we kept, and with the money she got she bought Dolores a new pair of shoes. That was the year Dolores grew tall, and her shoes were too small. She did not complain—she liked to be a martyr about everything—but her toenails turned black, and the big ones came off from wearing shoes that were too short.

No one was with me when my confinement began. Dolores came home from the mill at dusk, I had been inside all day, not feeling well and worried that something might happen if I were to go too far from home. Then the pains came, and they began hard and fast. Dolores looked at me as she came in, and she dropped the flour she had been carrying on her shoulder just inside the door, and the white dust came through the sack and fell around her shoes.

The midwife in Quintanapalla had made it clear that she would not come, but in the next village was Azima, who was so old that she had not brought a baby since before even my papa’s
birth. Azima had agreed to come for the price of my birth cord, and she required transportation, she could go nowhere by herself. But we had no cart of our own anymore, so Dolores could not fetch Azima but had to go to the oil merchant who traveled between the towns with his casks. The oil merchant, Raynard, was a widower, and for the price of a ride in his cart, Dolores had baked him bread for a month. It would have made better sense for my sister to stay with me and send Papa for Azima, for Dolores had attended a birth or two, but I guess she did not want to be alone with me. Or with the child of such a malefactor as Alvaro about to make its appearance. Our dealings with each other were polite and distant; we were to each other as we would be to a stranger.

Dolores took a piece of bread and a swallow of water and she went to get the midwife. While I waited, my papa sat on one side of a sheet Dolores had hung for decency and I sat on the other. I tried to make no noise, but every once in a while I cried out.

“Francisca?” Papa would say, and I would answer that I was fine, that everything was all right with me and surely Dolores would be back in a short time. But she had a fair journey before her, and I was frightened. Perhaps the old midwife had reconsidered. Perhaps not even she would risk bringing forth the Devil’s child.

I do not know how long it took for Azima to come, but it seemed that it was dark for a great while. The fire burned low and then Papa threw a log on and it was high and bright and then low again, I don’t know how many times. At one point he went outside to get more wood. He dropped it onto the stone hearth. I heard one log fall and I could see his silhouette against the sheet Dolores had hung, his strong arms full of wood and then the black shapes of the logs dropping down into the wood bin.

It seemed the house was growing very hot—it was April and not a particularly cold spring—but perhaps that was all Papa felt he could do for me, keep burning more and more wood. I could see his outline as he sat at the hearth and poked the fire, sometimes raising his iron rod and striking the burning wood, one, two, three times until such a flock of sparks flew up, I could
see them even through the sheet, and great hot sighs of heat were echoed by Papa’s sighing. Now I cannot think of the birth of my son apart from that fire, and it seems apt, since the child was the gift of heat, of improvidence.

I was up as much as I could be, I walked back and forth between the close walls, stumbling a little, but finally I just got down on my knees as if in prayer. Perhaps I
was
praying. Even the faithless pray when they are sufficiently afraid. I remained kneeling on the floor with my head on the bed Dolores and I shared.

I began to believe that Dolores meant to kill me by delaying with the midwife, and in my mind I flew after my sister, down the rutted road to Rubena. I kept seeing the cobbles around the well in the marketplace, and I would get just so far as the portal to the east, so that I could see the black road to Rubena, the moon making wraiths of the trees, when there would be another pain that pulled me back into my body.

Papa made a black shadow on the sheet and all around him was the orange of the fire on the cloth. He was seated with his hands before him, his right hand moving in a continuous even arc, back and forth like the weighted stick in the clock in the cathedral. He was carving a toy. When he was done he would put it—a little man or a horse or a top—in the basket where already he had made others for his grandchild. The house was hotter than the blacksmith’s, and I had undone my bodice and taken my arms from my sleeves so that I was unclothed on the upper part of myself and my skirts were bunched wet around my legs, wet with the water that came with each pain. I was thirsty, but though I could see the water bucket, being undressed I didn’t ask Papa to bring me a drink. I felt I had done enough to him.

Most fathers would have turned out any daughter such as I had proved to be. But Papa—well, perhaps the death of the silkworms had humbled him, for never once did he act as though he were ashamed of my state. In truth, he seemed happy, and he had spent many hours in the last month making toys. He had no sons, of course, none that lived, and he was sure that his grandchild would be a male, and thus a Luarca, since there was no one
else to give him a name. The name Alvaro Gajardo had been removed from all lips, and those who agreed to see me treated my expectant state as a mystery, as if, like the Virgin, I had gotten magically with child.

Dolores came back around midnight. She opened the door and the cold air came in, and I sobbed with relief. “Where is she?” I asked.

“Not here yet. I did not go myself. Raynard said his ass would be faster with but one person in the cart. I have been this long walking back from where he left me by the pillar at the gate.” Dolores looked at the sheet. She hung a blanket over the rope so that I could not see through to the fire anymore, so that Papa could not see through to me. She lit a candle on our side and helped me out of the wet skirt and onto our bed. I knew I should keep walking and moving about, but already I was so tired that I wanted only to lie on my side and rest between the pains. Though Dolores had wasted little affection on me in the past weeks, she tried to stroke my head now and she offered her hand to hold but I brushed her away.

Before Mama’s friend Pascuela died they had fetched a birthing chair for her, but she could not sit up. Her sisters tried to sit her in it, and then she screamed so, no one could lift her off. “I won’t,” she had cried, “I can’t. Please, no, do not make me.” That was the last I had seen of a baby coming, and I knew when we fell into silence that we were thinking back on that birth long ago and how frightened we had been.

My sister talked to pass the time. She sat beside me spreading black bread with salt and garlic, breaking open the cloves so that the smell of it, together with the pain, made me ill. She said her prayers and then she said more for me, endless Paternosters and Credos and Aves. After each pain, I slipped away and rose over the roofs of our town. I saw the smoke rise from the houses, I felt that I cared for nothing, only that this ordeal pass.

When Azima at last came and slipped her hand inside me, her skin was cold from the night outside and the feel of that chill reaching in called me back. Eyes closed, I was going through all the contents of my mother’s chest of cures: the different herbs and powders and charms. I didn’t care that I would die, I was
thinking that it seemed better to die than to go through any more of this. And just as I screamed out—blaspheming, as Dolores pointed out the next morning—crying that if there was any God of mercy he would surely take me, then it was over, my son was born.

Mateo.

His face was blue, the mark of the cord still around his neck as though he had been delivered from a hangman’s noose, and the rest of him just a miserable lump of red flesh, eyes swollen shut and mouth open wide and crying. When the afterbirth was delivered, Azima tied a piece of twine around the cord, and then she cut it. My son was so ugly that I thought of the silkworms of years before, and I laughed and cried at once as I held him. Of course he was a worm! He had to be—he was mine.