Page 40 of The Familiar

Valentina was less sure. “Shouldn’t there be … some enticement?”

“The trick of impressing a man is in letting him believe you find him splendid.”

“And if you don’t?” Valentina felt her face heating but hurried on. “If you don’t find a man splendid?”

“Well, you find something you do find splendid and you think of that when you’re with him. Ices, for instance. Ripe figs. A good sunny day.”

“Freshly folded linen?”

“Exactly.”

“That you didn’t have to fold yourself,” muttered Luzia.

“Hush,” said the widow. “I’m thinking. The dress is good, very good. A fitting costume. A bit of armor. La Hermanita with her milagritos. Lovely theater. The rest … needs work. Take your cap off.”

Luzia’s hands clenched and unclenched in the fabric of her new skirts. “Can I not wear it?”

“No, you may not,” said Valentina, surprised at the harshness in her voice. “You’ll look a fool.”

“A veil, then, or—”

“The king doesn’t care for veils,” said the widow. “He thinks they make it too easy for whores to pretend to be honest women. Are you not an honest woman?”

Luzia’s eyes flashed and Valentina remembered the night she had confronted her over the burnt bread. The feeling she’d had that a wolf had taken the shape of a girl.

“I’m as honest as you, señora,” Luzia said to the widow, and for a moment their gazes locked.

Valentina wondered if the widow would strike her. Or if Luzia might strike the widow. But Luzia simply reached for the pins that held her cap in place.

“I’ll help you,” said Hualit.

“I can manage very well by myself,” Luzia bit back. “I always have.”

Hualit only laughed and whispered, “You started this. Let’s see how we finish it.”

Luzia didn’t know what to make of her aunt’s changing moods. Where was the woman who had sat by her bedside only days before? Who had smoothed her hair and promised escape?

Hualit snatched the cap from Luzia’s head and stepped back, tapping her lip once more as if reminding her mouth to stay in place, a gesture she only used in her disguise as the widow.

Every morning, Luzia bound her hair in a tight braid and pinned it in a coil up the back of her head. She knew very well how she looked when she’d just removed her cap, the moist warmth lifting the strands around her face in an exuberant halo. The effect was comical enough that it had made Hualit and even Luzia laugh on more than one occasion.

But it was not her vanity that had her snatching back the cap from Hualit’s hands. She had few memories of her mother, but she remembered her hands gently combing oil through her hair when it was wet and pliable, a ritual that had brought her calm and that was the only way to tame the thick mass of black curls.

Desert hair, her mother had called it. Luzia hadn’t understood what it meant at the time, but it had pleased her because it felt special.

Even now that she knew better she sometimes took the pins from it and felt the weight of it in her hands. It stayed damp long after washing, held the scent of almond oil in its coils. Hair that had survived the destruction of the temple, the Roman legions, the long road to Morocco, that had endured conquest, and conversion, to be tied up like a secret in her little white cap. Hair of the sands, of sun-washed stones, of a horizon she would never see. Desert hair.

“Is there more of it?” asked Doña Valentina. “She looks like a newborn chick.”

Luzia met Hualit’s gaze and held it, unsure of the challenge she was making as she pulled the pins from her braid, letting them fall to the floor. A silly gesture. She was the one who would have to pick them up.

Hualit moved behind her and she felt a tug as her aunt pulled her braid free, and now she did want to weep because no one had seen to her hair or touched her with any kind of care in so long. Now again there was a doubling and Luzia was a child, Hualit was the mother whose face she couldn’t recall. Her father had never gone mad with grief. He sold leather goods and pieces of tin and they were poor, but they had a home with candles in the window. Her father whispered the hamotzi over the bread, the blessing like a golden cord, one they were all forbidden to grasp but that dangled there above the kitchen table. What does it mean? she had asked.

I don’t remember, her father admitted. I’m not sure my own father remembered.

But her mother had the words, not just the echoes. Blessed are you, Lord our God … Luzia couldn’t remember the Hebrew. Latin had seemed more important at the time.

She had known no real fear then. She had believed she would have a life like that one. She would be married and cook over her own fire and her husband would kiss her cheek at night and call her beloved. Was that why she had helped Valentina? Because she knew what it was to live without love? To believe you would never have it and cling to anything that resembled it—an invitation, a bit of conversation, wine served in a small jade cup?