The Barefoot Queen (22 page)

Surrounded by fertile gardens and orange trees, Milagros couldn’t see Caridad’s head or torso, hidden behind the shirt she dangled in front of her. What she could see were the rips in the blouse. An uncontrollable, tender shiver swept over her as she realized how the gesture revealed Cachita’s innocence.

“What … what happened?” Milagros asked after clearing her throat a couple of times.

But before she could answer, Milagros went on, “We’ll fix them, Cachita. I’m sure we can.” She had already heard about how El Gordo
had managed to steal those two bags of tobacco from the Vegas and that Melchor had set out in search of vengeance.

As they were about to resume their walk, Caridad carefully stuffed the blouse back into her bundle and came across the handkerchief that Melchor had given her to deliver to his granddaughter.

“Wait. This is for you, from your grandfather.”

Milagros looked at the large, colorful handkerchief with affection and squeezed it between her fingers. “Grandfather,” she whispered. “He’s the only one who loves me. And you, too, of course, I mean—I guess,” she added, flustered.

But Caridad wasn’t listening. Did the gypsy love her as well?

At the settlement, Caridad spent her time twisting tobacco and making cigars. Tomás put her up in the shack of an old married couple, both dour and surly, who lived alone and had a bit of extra space. He also got her all the tools needed for her work but, above all, he was the one who defended her against Ana’s aggression when she saw her arriving with Milagros.

“Niece!” shouted Tomás, getting between the women and gripping Ana by the wrists to get her to stop hitting Caridad, who was curled up, trying to shield her head from the gypsy woman’s shouts and blows. “When Melchor comes back, he will decide what should be done with the
morena.
Meanwhile … meanwhile,” he repeated, shaking her to get her to listen to him, “she will be working with the tobacco; those were your father’s orders.”

Ana, flushed with rage, managed to spit in Caridad’s face. “I refuse to sell a single cigar made by that Negress!” she declared, escaping Tomás’s hold. “So they’ll all rot, and you along with them!”

“Mother!” exclaimed Milagros as she saw her flee toward Triana.

The girl rushed after her.

“Mother.” She tried to stop her. “Caridad did nothing,” insisted the girl, tugging on her clothes. “It’s not her fault.”

Ana pushed her away and continued down the road.

Milagros watched her go and then returned to where a fair number of gypsies had gathered. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Always marry a woman from a good family!” declared Uncle Tomás. “She’s just like her father: a Vega. She’ll get over it.” Milagros looked up at him. “Give it some time, girl. This issue with the Negress isn’t a question of gypsy honor: it will pass.”

And while Caridad was shut away in the hut, choosing leaves and removing their stems and veins, moistening them and drying them just right, cutting them, twisting them and finishing off the cigar’s mouth with thread, Milagros learned the basics of the potions and remedies from the healer by following her around everywhere: to gather herbs in the fields or visit the ill. Old María didn’t allow the girl the slightest lapse in concentration or attitude, and she controlled her: her mere presence was enough to make Milagros submit to her will. Later, at night, she allowed her some time to relax, and Milagros would run in search of Caridad. Together they would leave the settlement and lose themselves in conversation or just smoke and look up at the starry sky.

“Do you steal them from Grandfather?” the girl asked one night after taking a long puff, the two of them sitting side by side on the bank of the Guadalquivir, near a rundown fishing pier, listening to the murmur of the water.

Caridad’s hand stopped in midair as she was about to take the cigar the girl was passing her. Steal?

“Yes!” exclaimed Milagros at her friend’s hesitation. “You steal them! It’s OK, don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.”

“I don’t … I don’t steal them!”

“Well, how do you explain it then? If the tobacco isn’t yours …”

“It’s my smoke. They belong to me.”

“Go on, take it,” insisted the gypsy girl, pushing the cigar closer to her. Caridad obeyed. “What do you mean by your smoke?”

“If I make them … I can smoke, right? Besides, these aren’t made of twisted tobacco, I just use the veins from the leaves and the remains, all chopped up and wrapped in a leaf. On the plantation that’s how it was. The master gave us our smoke.”

“Cachita, this isn’t the plantation and you have no masters.”

Caridad exhaled some long scrolls of bluish smoke before speaking. “So, I can’t smoke?”

“Do whatever you want, but if you stop bringing your smoke, I won’t see you anymore.” Caridad was silent. “It’s a joke,
morena
!” The gypsy girl let out a laugh, hugged her friend and shook her. “How could I stop seeing you? I couldn’t!”

“I co-co-could …” Caridad stammered.

“What?” prompted the girl. “What? Spit it out, Cachita!”

“I couldn’t either.” She managed to get the words out in a string.

“For all the gods, saints, virgins and martyrs in all the heavens, it’s about time!”

Milagros, with her arm still around Caridad’s back, pulled her closer. Caridad awkwardly allowed it.

“It’s about time!” repeated the gypsy girl, giving her a loud kiss on the cheek. Then Milagros took Caridad’s arm and forced it over her shoulders while grabbing her around the waist. Caridad even forgot about the cigar she held between her fingers. Not wanting to break the spell, Milagros let the time pass, feeling how her friend returned the embrace, both of them with their gazes on the river. Nor did she want Caridad to notice the sobbing she was struggling to hold back.

But Caridad surprised her with a question nonetheless, her voice projecting out onto the water. “Your mama?”

“Yes,” answered Milagros.

Ana hadn’t set foot in the gypsy settlement again; Milagros couldn’t go to the alley.

“I’m sorry.” Caridad blamed herself, and squeezed her friend tighter when Milagros could no longer hold back her sobs.

Caridad remembered shedding similar tears the day they separated her from her mother and her people as they forced her and hundreds of unfortunates like her to wait for a boat at the trading post; but when had she stopped crying—was it during the voyage …?

She blocked the memories when she noticed that the cigar was burning her; she sucked on it again. In Cuba she had searched for her mother’s spirit in the parties, when she was mounted by one of the saints, but here, in Spain, she only tried to remember her face.

Milagros and Caridad’s affection for each other grew as they sat together by the river, but those evenings didn’t last long.

“Girl.” The healer stopped her one night when she was about to leave
the hut. Milagros turned back. “Listen to me: don’t distance yourself from your kind, from the gypsies.”

Caridad received a similar message that day from Tomás.

“Morena,”
he warned her, entering the hut as she was carefully wrapping a cigar in leaf, “you shouldn’t take Milagros away from her blood brothers. Do you understand what I’m referring to?”

Caridad’s long fingers stilled and she nodded without lifting her head.

From that day on the two women strolled along the street of the settlement without going farther, Caridad behind the girl, converted into her shadow, mingling with those at the doors of their huts who chatted, played, drank, smoked and, above all, sang. Some voices were accompanied by guitars, others by the unembellished sound of palms hitting some object, most by the warmth of simple clapping of hands. Caridad had witnessed some of the celebrations in the San Miguel alley, but it was different in the settlement: the songs didn’t turn into a party or a competition. They were simply a way of life, something that was done as naturally as eating or sleeping; they sang or danced and then went back to their conversation only to start singing again or they’d all get up from their seats and go over to encourage and applaud the two almost nude little girls who were dancing off to one side, already showing some flair.

Caridad feared that they would ask her to sing. Nobody suggested it, not even Tomás. They accepted her—with some misgivings, certainly, but they did: she was the Negress of Grandfather Melchor; he would decide what to do with her on his return. For her part, Milagros was growing used to being burdened by grief; she missed her parents, her grandfather and her girlfriends from the alley. Yet what tormented her most was her internal struggle. She had ending up putting Alejandro on a pedestal in order to compensate for a death that she knew was a result of her whims; nevertheless, she kept thinking about Pedro García night and day … What was he doing? Where could he be? And most important: which of her girlfriends was seeking his favors? Alejandro was watching her closely and knew her desires. Ghosts knew everything, Caridad had told her, but the thought of Pedro García being flattered by other girls ate away at her so much that she pushed away those feelings and took advantage of any errand Old María sent her on to approach the San Miguel alley furtively.

She saw a lot of gypsies, including her girlfriends. One day she had
to hide quickly in a doorway with her heart pounding when she saw her mother. She must have been going out to sell tobacco.
I should be going with her,
she thought as she watched her slow, determined gait. She dried a tear. On one occasion she saw Pedro, but she didn’t dare to go out to meet him. She saw him again another day: he was walking with one of his uncles toward the pontoon bridge, as handsome and dapper as ever. Milagros had regretted not going over to him on that first day. The council of elders’ sentence, she reminded herself, was to stay with the healer and not set foot in the alleyway. But Old María felt free to send her on errands to Triana … She ran along a street parallel to the one Pedro was on, circled a block of houses and before turning the corner took a deep breath, straightened her skirt and smoothed her hair. Did she look pretty? She almost ran right into them.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at the settlement, with the healer?” spat out Pedro’s uncle as soon as he saw her.

Milagros hesitated.

“Get out of here!”

“I …”

She wanted to look at Pedro, but his uncle’s eyes had ensnared hers!

“Didn’t you hear me? Leave!”

She lowered her head and left them behind. She heard them speaking as she started walking again. She wished Pedro had bothered to look at her.

“
YOU HAVE
to do it!”

Old María’s shout echoed inside the dwelling. José Carmona and Ana Vega avoided looking at each other over the table where the three of them sat. The healer had showed up at their house unannounced that morning.

Neither of the parents had dared to interrupt Old María’s words.

“The girl is sick,” she warned them. “She doesn’t eat. She doesn’t want to eat,” she added, seeing in her mind the gypsy girl’s protruding cheekbones and her increasingly pointed nose since her frustrated encounter with Pedro. “She’s just a girl who made a mistake. Have you two never made one? She couldn’t foresee the consequences. She feels alone, abandoned. She no longer even finds comfort in the
morena.
She is your daughter! She is wasting away in plain sight and I don’t have a cure for grieving souls.”

Ana played with her hands and José repeatedly rubbed his mouth and chin when the healer referred to them.

“Your problems shouldn’t affect the girl; what happens between you isn’t her fault.”

José seemed about to say something.

“I’m not interested,” María said before he could speak. “I’m not here to solve your disagreements, or even to give you advice. It’s not my intention to find out what brought you to this situation; I only want to know: don’t you love your daughter?”

And after that meeting, on a cool dusk in late September, Ana and José Carmona showed up at the settlement. Caridad saw them before Milagros did.

“Your parents,” she whispered to the gypsy girl despite the fact that they were still quite a distance away.

Milagros froze; some of the boys she was chatting with fell silent and followed her gaze, locked on Ana and José, who approached along the street, between huts and shacks, greeting those still sitting at their doors whiling away the time. When José stopped to talk to an acquaintance, her mother stepped ahead of him and, when she was a few paces away from her daughter, opened her arms. Milagros needed no further invitation and launched herself into them. Caridad felt a knot in her throat, the boys released the breath they’d been holding and there was even someone, from the shacks, who applauded.

José approached them. Milagros hesitated when she saw him, but the shove that Ana gave her encouraged her to walk toward him.

“Forgive me, Father,” she mumbled.

He looked her up and down, as if he didn’t recognize her. He brought a hand to his chin, with feigned seriousness, and scrutinized his daughter again.

“Father, I …”

“What’s that over there?” he shouted.