A half hour later the machine was cleaned and oiled. They had just begun to thread it. Jerry reached for the pieces of the skirt that she had cut out. She had already pinned them together. They were ready to stitch. She slipped the two pieces in. “I wish I had done a straight skirt instead of a blouse. It would be so much simpler,” Sinta said.
Jerry began to pump the treadle. The needle dropped down into the cloth. She gently pushed the cloth on the small plate under the foot that clamped the needle. “Oh, look what a nice stitch.” Sinta spoke softly. “And you can go just at your own speed. This is so much easier.”
The weather was warm and they had actually set up the sewing machine on the porch that stretched across the back of the house. Instead of a railing at the edge, there was a low adobe wall on which Constanza had set scores of flowerpots. Some grew herbs; some dropped silvery green vines over the edge that hung like lace; some had bright red geraniums. On top of the wall and in niches were Constanza’s souvenirs that had either somehow mysteriously arrived in her yard or she had picked up while traveling about delivering bread. There was an iron piece that looked like a fish skeleton, but Jerry thought might be a long-handled cooking instrument for use in a fire. There was part of a cow’s skull and the bones from what looked like a bird’s wing that Constanza had arranged in a pretty design. There was also a little terra-cotta figure of the Virgin Mary. There were in fact many of the small wooden carved figures of saints called bultos.
Jerry had nearly finished the seams on her skirt and Sinta was trying to set in the sleeve on one side of her blouse. “I wish I could get this sleeve to not puff up so much at the shoulder. I don’t want to look like a football player.”
Just at that moment Constanza came out with a pitcher of lemonade and some pine-nut cookies fresh from the range. She set down the tray. “Let me look at it,” she said, holding out her hands for the blouse Sinta was working on. She spread it out on the table and unpinned the sleeve. “Will you let me make a few little slits in the edges here where the sleeve joins the shoulder hole? That will make it set better.”
“Sure,” said Sinta.
The long, knobby fingers began to snip and pin. “It’s just like crimping a pie crust,” Constanza said, and handed it back to Sinta.
“Oh, thank you so much.” Sinta paused. “I asked Jerry if she wanted to go to the movies with me tonight, but I don’t think she wants to.” Jerry looked down at her sewing.
“Well, it’s up to Jerry,” Constanza said. “Maybe some other time.”
Sinta began gathering up her things as her mother had just pulled up in her car. Jerry and Constanza walked with her toward the drive. Sinta turned to wave as she climbed into the car. Jerry waved back absently. She was thinking about the cellar. When she had turned to look around just before she and Sinta came up, she had thought it looked ordinary. But she knew it wasn’t. She knew if she went down again, it wouldn’t seem ordinary at all.
Chapter 7
JERRY HELPED CONSTANZA in the cook yard for the rest of the afternoon. Then Constanza came over as Jerry was raking out the last oven. She was holding a bunch of scraggly-looking roots.
“Seed onions,” Constanza said. “Ugly, aren’t they?” She snorted and held up the bunch. When she held them that way, with their white, dry roots pulled back, the onions did look a bit like bony heads with scraggly hair. “Want to help me plant them? I always plant my onions in early March, then put cold frames upside down on them. It’s warm now, but you never know when a blizzard can sweep down from the mountains.”
Jerry nodded.
“Good! I’ll get the rototiller. Teach you how to drive it.”
Jerry wondered if this was something she had to ride like a tractor. Constanza returned a few minutes later pushing a machine about the size of a small lawn mower.
She pulled the starter cord and the motor roared. Then Constanza immediately turned it off. “Now you try.” Jerry looked at her. “Go on. This is something you got to learn how to do. Start an engine with a whipcord.”
Jerry bent down and pulled on the cord. She heard a small wheeze of a wheel turning. “You got to snap it smart like. It’s all in the snap.” Jerry tried two more times. She got it to sputter. “See, it’s harder than starting a car. I think cars should have whipcords—make them more challenging. Harder for robbers to get away too.”
On the fourth try Jerry got it.
“Okay, now I’m going to throw it into gear. Hang on.”
Jesus! Jerry thought. The thing leaped out in front of her and took on a life of its own. She hung on. The vibrations were huge. She felt her arms might shiver out of her shoulder sockets.
Constanza was yelling at her over the roar. “Head for that patch right in front of you.” Jerry jiggered over to where Constanza was pointing, her teeth rattling, her hair quivering. Even her eyeballs seemed to shake. “Now tip it forward so it can lock into the dirt.” The rotary blades sliced through the soil. “Don’t worry about keeping it straight, just try to keep a steady pressure on it.”
Jerry watched as the red soil came up in little clumps. “Good job. Now turn the corner. Just tip it back a little bit. There you go.”
Twenty minutes later the onion patch was tilled. Constanza gave her a trowel, and together Jerry and her aunt sank down on their knees and began to dig holes for the seed onions. The soil was soft and damp, and Jerry could almost feel it drink up the last of the vibrations that still ricocheted through her body. The earth smelled like the root cellar. She could almost imagine that glow behind the light that seemed to saturate the air.
After they had finished planting the onions, she helped her aunt arrange the cold frames on top.
“Oh, look,” said Constanza. “That glass pane over in the corner of this frame is half in, half out. I’m going to have to reset it with some putty. Tell you what, Jerry, go down to the root cellar. There’s a can of putty on the shelf just beneath the window. Fetch it for me. I don’t think I’ll do it today, it’s getting late. But if you can put the can by the sink in the kitchen, I’ll remember to do it tomorrow.”
Jerry opened the cellar door. The dim amber light seemed to reach out for her. As she walked down the stairs, she felt as if with each step she was melting through the curtains of amber light. She found the putty can. But she didn’t want to leave. She touched the walls. They were sandstone. When she looked at her fingertips, there were minute particles that left on her skin a reddish tinge. Did she hear something in a corner to her right? Was it the mouse? Certainly she could never hear a spider, not even down here where the silence was so thick. But it seemed as if something furtive and hidden was happening. She turned toward the corner where she thought the noise might have come from. The window behind her let in the last of the day’s light and illuminated a trunk with a high, curved top. It stood behind the veils of amber light, apart and aloof and with a muffled gleam, faint like the glow of a guttering flame. Yet it seemed to almost dare Jerry to come closer. She took one hesitant step and then another. There was silence, complete and perfect silence. Flawless, indestructible silence. But then Jerry felt a cold chill and the hair on the back of her neck stood up. Children’s voices. Faint laughter melted out of the amber light. She turned and tore up the stairs.
Jerry knew she would have to go back.
Chapter 8
JERRY WAITED UNTIL midnight, when her aunt would be asleep. Then she crept out of bed. She looked out the kitchen window. Everything was so quiet, so still. The entire land seemed wrapped in silence. She was not frightened. She went down the stairs, her eyes adjusting to the darkness that was not really darkness. She was not really surprised when she finally saw the fat spider suspended on a silken thread just by the trunk. It was as if the spider had been waiting for her and decided to spin another web just to have something to do while waiting.
Jerry ran her fingertips lightly over the top of the trunk. A shiver ran through her. Her fingers seemed electrified. She swept them across again. Did she fee
l a design in the top? She bent her face closer and noticed that there was a pattern of little pinpricks. It was as if her fingertips had been dusted with iron filings and the pinpricks were the magnets drawing them to the trunk. These were letters she was touching. She could deduce their shape. The first was an s. She could feel the opposing curves that made the letter. The next was much smaller, a d possibly, and then a straight vertical line. At the bottom it met with another at a right angle. An l! So the initials must be SdL.
She lifted the latch. This time it was not silent, and the creak startled her. But the latch simply fell off into her hand. How long had it been since anyone had opened this trunk? Had Constanza lived ninety-four years and never opened it? Did this constitute some sort of trespassing? Jerry wondered. As she lifted its lid, she realized that this was beyond right or wrong.
A veil of dust drifted down from the interior of the lid. The contents seemed neatly arranged, although Jerry could not tell at first exactly what they were. Some were shallow boxes; some things were wrapped in ancient-looking tissue paper, some in Spanish newspapers. There were odd bits of fabric, a picture frame with no picture, a Bible, a cup tarnished nearly black with age, something that looked like a corncob with a bit of worn fabric wrapped around its middle. Nothing too unusual at first glance. And yet all strangely compelling. Who did this stuff belong to, these bits and pieces? She sensed that she had at her fingertips the fragments of a puzzle. An extraordinary kind of three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, a puzzle of time and space. The cup had been wrapped in newspaper, but there was no date on the paper. The printing, however, looked odd. She sensed that it had come from a time even before her Aunt Constanza had been born. When she set the cup back, she noticed the corner of what appeared to be some lace. She dared not pull on it. Yellow with age, the lace seemed as if it might turn to dust with the slightest touch. Carefully she lifted the Bible and the empty picture frame that lay on top of the lace. Jerry stared at the lace. It was folded over and appeared somewhat larger than a handkerchief. There was a dull stain toward the center of it.
She felt her heart begin to beat harder and she lifted her hand to the crown of her head and began to rub her hair. There was something terribly disconcerting about this lace. It was connected with those faint voices she had heard, the dim voices of children. A chill crept up the very bones of her fingers, but still she reached into the trunk and picked up the piece of lace. Jerry lifted the lace close to her face to see it better. It had a pleasant woody smell, like piñon or perhaps cedar. She held the lace and studied its design. There was a pattern, beautiful and delicate. Time began to bend. She closed her eyes. She saw flickerings on the inside of her eyelids, a crazy jig of little particles and squiggly lines. There had been another girl who had rubbed her head in just the same way as Jerry. Maybe she had even stuffed this piece of lace into her mouth to muffle a shriek, a cry. Maybe she had bitten the lace as Jerry had bitten a sleeping bag—to make it all silent. But this long-ago girl was not Aunt Constanza. It was another little girl in another place, another country, another time….
In the House of the Lace Maker
STREET OF THE LITTLE PEPPERS
SEVILLE, SPAIN
JUNE 1391
Miriam
“Reyna! Reyna!”
I hear Mama yelling for my sister. She must be too close to the gates of the Jewish Quarter. Mama is always afraid that we are going to go outside the gates. She spends half her day calling for us. It has been forbidden for Jews to leave the quarter since the terrible days in March. It is the bad friar Martinez. He makes decrees. He orders conversions of Jews. He makes rules about what we can do and where we can go and what businesses we can have. Sometimes I think he is more powerful than the king and queen. Don Solomon, our good friend, believes this. He says the friar does not need the king and queen. He needs only the little people, the pueblo menudo, because between his genius and their ignorance he has created a monster of evil for Jews. He whips those little people into a frenzy against us. It is a scary time. A time of great danger. And that is why Mama spends her days calling for us. She does not want us out of her sight, much less outside the quarter.
“Miriam!” Mama calls upstairs. “Go get your sister. It’s almost time to light the candles for Sabbath. The sun is going down. Everything must be ready.” Then she tries to add gaily, “The Sabbath bride comes.”
That’s what Mama calls Friday evenings when we have our special dinner—she calls it the Sabbath bride, for everything is pretty and clean and a special white tablecloth is laid on our table.
“Miriam!” She calls again.
I find Reyna. She is by the gates with a group of girls. They are actually joking with a guard on the other side. Mama would be furious. “Come on, Reyna, Mama needs your help. It’s nearly time for the…” But I don’t say it. I don’t want to talk about Jewish things in front of a guard who is paid to keep us in. Reyna and I walk back in the dusky light. We wind through the narrow streets of the quarter. Most of the shops are already shuttered for the Sabbath. I can smell good smells—chicken with olives, sometimes lamb with cinnamon. Shadows fall across us and I feel a chill. Reyna throws her big shawl over the two of us. “I wonder,” she says, “if things will ever be normal again.”
I wonder if I shall even remember what normal is.
We slip in the door just in time. Mama already has her prettiest ivory lace shawl over her head. She looks like a bride from behind as she stands in front of the table that is against the wall. We slide in beside her. She lights the two candles and now raises her hands, covering her eyes as she recites the blessing. When she is finished, she turns and kisses each of us. My poor mama. She does not exactly look like a young bride. Her face has grown more lines—more come each day—and her hair is turning white.
I am too young to have a white-haired mama. I am too young to have a dead father. Mama and Reyna go out to the kitchen to help the maid, Annuncia, with the rest of the preparations for dinner. Mama gives me some small task to keep me away, but I can hear them talking in whispery voices. I am not supposed to hear. But I know what they are talking about—the friar Martinez. They say he is getting worse. I don’t know. I just know that I do not like to think about it. I especially do not like to think about my friend Ruta. She converted. They took her to a church. They sprinkled water on her head, and I think it only gave her a big head. Yes, that is what I think. She is so stuck-up now. Always showing off how she’s learned some things she calls the Credo and the Ave. She said that when Friar Martinez rushed into the synagogue in Córdoba, where her aunt lives, crosses appeared in the air. They hung there for just a minute in the sunlight coming through the windows.
Her name is no longer Ruta. It is Immaculata. When she was baptized, they gave her a Christian name. Imagine me calling her that! Such a long silly name after being called Ruta. I forget all the time and she gets very snippy about it. So I call her nothing most of the time. If I see her in the alley and maybe want to play sticks and pebbles, I just say, “Oiga!” “Hey, hey you.” I know it’s rude. I don’t care.
Anyway, I am not thinking of any of this, for tonight Solomon Ben Asher comes to our house for dinner. When Don Solomon comes, it makes the Sabbath even more special. He always has sweets and ribbons in his pockets. Sweets for me and ribbons for Reyna, who now that she is fourteen wears her hair up. Don Solomon is a physician and an astronomer to the court of King Enrique and Queen Catarina. Don Solomon was here when Papa’s heart stopped after the riots in March, when the mobs stormed into the Jewish Quarter. They did not come up our street, but they got to Papa’s warehouse on the Street of the Grapes. They broke all the casks and the sherry flowed across the cobblestones and filled the gutters. Mama says it was a blessing that it was simply his heart that stopped, not like Señor Perera. Something terrible happened to him. I have heard whispers. But what is so simple about a heart stopping to beat? Now Papa is dead.
I hear a rap at the door. It must be Don Solomon. Annuncia goes to
answer it. “Ah, Doña Grazia,” he greets Mama. He is dressed in his court clothes, a sayo, a kind of sleeveless jerkin made of brocaded cloth that is belted at the waist. Underneath he wears a silk shirt with billowing sleeves. On his head there is a tall scarlet hat, which signifies that he is a Jewish physician. He looks very handsome and very dignified, I think. But best of all his hat has gold braid, which means he serves in the court of the king and queen.
It is my job to take Don Solomon’s hat when he arrives. So I always try to stand as tall as I can, even though I am short for my ten years. After he has bowed to my mother and my sister, he turns to me. “Señorita Miriam,” and with a flourish he takes off his hat and gives it to me. This is the best thing about his hat: It smells like limes. Reyna says it is an oil that he uses on his hair. And even though Don Solomon is slightly roly-poly, I believe he is a most elegant man. When I take his hat, he makes me feel elegant too. So I always dip my knees slightly in a curtsy, and each time Don Solomon murmurs the words “Adecuado por la corte.” This means that I am suitable for the court of the king and queen. He says this so softly, though. I wish he would say the words a little louder so I can be sure Mama and Reyna hear. Next he reaches into his pocket for his green velvet cap and something always falls out. With a flash of his hand he catches it. Or sometimes he puts the green cap on his head and something dangles from the edge. Then looking up he will comically cross his eyes. “What have we here? Aah! A sweet?” And he whisks a twist of brown paper from his hat and gives it to me. Rolled inside is a honey stick or maybe my very favorite, a violet crinkle all sparkly with sugar crystals. For Reyna there is a velvet ribbon or sometimes a braid pin or a small vial of perfume. And I dip another curtsy.
But tonight there is a difference. I felt it from my first curtsy. First Don Solomon did not speak the words “Adecuado por la corte.” And I know I did the curtsy perfectly. His manner was exceedingly grave and he nearly forgot to give me the candy. Then through dinner they seem to talk of only the most boring things. I look down and concentrate on my plate. I press my spoon into the rice to make a little lake for the rich beef broth.