Page 195 of The Moon Sister
‘Dios mío, it is a sad state of affairs when my mother’s love life is more hectic than mine,’ she told her baby.
*
On 7 September, Lucía woke up in the night, feeling sweaty and uncomfortable. She stood up to empty her bladder for the fifth time that night, but before she had taken more than a couple of steps, she felt warm liquid trickling down the inside of her legs.
‘Help! Mamá! I am bleeding!’ she screamed into the blackness. Both María and Angelina came running from their different rooms and switched the electric light on.
María looked down at the puddle of clear fluid between her daughter’s legs and sighed in relief. ‘Lucía, you are not bleeding, your waters have broken. It means your baby is on its way.’
‘I am off to the kitchen to prepare a potion,’ Angelina said. ‘The baby will be here by sunrise,’ she announced as she left.
Despite Lucía’s high-pitched screams, which echoed around the rooms with enough velocity to frighten off any wolves lurking at the tops of the mountains above them, her stomach muscles, honed from years of dancing, stood her in good stead as her baby began its journey into life. Angelina took over, seeming to know instinctively what Lucía needed; she paced with her, sat her down, stood her up, rubbed her back, all the time whispering words of comfort that her baby was well and would soon be here.
María and Angelina helped her onto the bed when Lucía said she wanted to push and the baby girl came into the world at five o’clock in the morning, just as dawn was breaking.
‘Never again!’ Lucía panted in relief. ‘That is the hardestbuleríasI ever performed. Where is my baby?’
‘She is here,’ said Angelina, who had just severed the cord with her teeth, as she had watched Micaela do. ‘She is strong and healthy.’
‘What will you call her?’ María asked as she gazed down at the miracle of a second granddaughter granted to her since she had arrived in Spain.
‘Isadora, after the American dancer.’
‘That is unusual,’ María commented.
‘Yes.’ Lucía said no more, but as she held her newborn in her arms, her treacherous mind took her spinning back to her thirtieth birthday when Meñique had taken her to an exhibition of photographs of the dancer called Isadora Duncan. She hadn’t wanted to go, but once she was there, she was swept away by the pictures, and the story of Duncan’s life.
‘She was a pioneer – she pushed boundaries, just like you,pequeña,’ Meñique had said.
‘I believe she looks like her grandmother,’ said Angelina.
‘¡Gracias a Dios!Then I am happy because I would want no child to look like me. Hello, baby,’ Lucía said, peering down at the little face. ‘Yes, you are definitely far prettier than your mamá. I . . .’
As the baby stared up at her, Lucía caught her breath at the tiny features that – even in miniature – were so familiar. But she would nevereveradmit to anyone who the baby really looked like.
*
Autumn turned to winter, and the strange little family that María and Lucía had collected retreated inside to sit around the small fire in the sitting room. María used it for her cooking, preferring the taste of the food to that produced by the great iron range that stood in the kitchen. Isadora thrived under the care and attention of both María and Angelina, although Lucía had point blank refused to breast feed after the first attempt.
‘Why bother when all three of us can take turns feeding her out of a bottle? Besides, I thought she would rip my poor nipples off with the force of her suckling; it was agony!’
Secretly, María thought that it was much more to do with the fact that Lucía enjoyed her sleep at night, and with other willing hands happy to get up and tend to Isadora, Lucía took advantage of them. The fact that the baby slept with Angelina in the nursery didn’t help either. Yet María held her peace as she saw the little girl diligently changing nappies and feeding her bottles. Whilst Lucía sat smoking on the terrace, Angelina would sing Isadora lullabies as she rocked her to sleep. Some women were simply not made for motherhood and Lucía was one of them.
And whilst Angelina tended to Isadora, María used her own tender hands, with the help of Angelina’s potions, to care for Ramón, who continued to gather his strength as each day passed. The rattling cough that reminded both of them of the dreadful jail receded and soon Ramón was able to wander in the orange grove, tutting at the lack of care it received.
‘Perhaps I should ask Alejandro if he wishes you to tend to the trees?’ María suggested to him one chilly evening as they sat in front of the warmth of the fire.
‘Ay, María, I will do it for free, because it is what I love and know,’ shrugged Ramón. ‘This house – and you – have saved me. The least I can do is care for the trees that grow on the land.’
There soon began a constant trickle of visitors from Sacromonte, who found their way down the mountainside to drink coffee with María in thepayohouse and to consult the littlebrujafor her seeing and her potions. María was heartened to hear that, slowly, more residents of Sacromonte were returning to the village after years of exile in other countries. Food was still expensive, with delicacies sold on the black market, but occasionally Angelina would be paid with a bar of chocolate or a bottle of brandy for Ramón, its provenance uncertain.
At Christmas, María made a pilgrimage to the Abbey of Sacromonte and went down on her knees to thank God for the safe delivery of her granddaughters, and her wonderful new life back in her homeland. Yet there was something that told her that this life was a temporary hiatus – a fact that was exacerbated by a sound she had not heard for many months: the continual tapping of Lucía’s feet on the tiled terrace outside.
‘Mamá,’ Lucía announced to María one morning, ‘I am ready to go back to dancing now. Pepe has telegrammed to say that thecuadrohas been offered another season at the 46th Street Theatre. And they will triple the money if I make a return to the stage. Mamá, this is the perfect moment to go back.’
‘Surely it is too soon? Your baby is only four months old.’
‘If I do not, I will lose everything I have worked for.’
