The Mapmaker's Daughter

by Laurel Corona

  ***

  As usual, Grandfather is waiting at the gate. His jaw drops when he sees my father, and then he breaks into a grin. Putting his arm over Papa’s shoulder, he starts toward the house, with Luisa and me trotting alongside as Papa shares the news.

  “It was Eanes’s fifteenth attempt to round the cape,” Papa says after he and my grandfather are settled in. “They continued south until they ran short of provisions. Prince Henry plans to send expeditions to see how much farther it goes.”

  Grandfather strokes his beard, mulling what Papa is saying. “I spent several years with Prince Henry in the Algarve, at Raposeira,” he says. “The man’s curiosity is unbounded. He will want maps.”

  “I know,” my father says, glancing at my mother. She puts down the jug she is carrying and moves closer. “I am thinking of writing to offer my services.”

  Portugal? On the atlas, it looks close to Sevilla, but I know it has to be a journey of many days from here. “Would you be gone a long time, Papa?” I ask.

  “If I go, it would be all of us, to get out of Spain.” I know he has been worried about our safety since conversos were killed along with Jews in riots in Toledo. All I can think is that I would be rid of Sister Teresa if we went to Portugal, although I suppose Susana and Luisa might find more nuns there.

  “Would we have a nice house?” I ask Papa.

  “The best that Prince Henry’s money can buy.”

  “It’s true, little one,” Grandfather says, looking at Grandmother. “We lived well there, didn’t we?”

  She nods. “And there’s less ugliness about Jews, praise the Holy One. At least less that shows.” She lifts the lid from the stew pot. “Come and say the blessings, Jaume. It’s time to eat.”

  ***

  By the time my mother is ready to give birth, my father has received an invitation from Prince Henry to come to Raposeira, a town near Lagos on the southern coast of Portugal. It’s fall now, and with a new baby, we will not leave until the following spring.

  The best part is that Susana will not be going with us. She is betrothed to a Christian man, Roberto Salas de la Cruz, from a family of textile merchants. Though Susana is only fifteen and my mother thinks that is too young for marriage, her wedding has been set for April, before we leave.

  I am so happy I could float away. In Portugal, Mama won’t have to hide her Shabbat candles in the basement. Papa will have fewer distractions and can spend more time with me. And with Susana gone, Luisa will stop being so stubborn about everything the nuns tell her. In Portugal, I will have the family I want.

  When Mama’s water breaks, I am sent with Luisa to gather rue and garlic to protect her and the baby. By the time we come back, it has already been born. Susana acts as if she’s always been aware it doesn’t take long when women have had several children, but I don’t see how she could know unless she’d just been told. Grandmother and Susana take the rue, placing some of it over the baby’s crib, some in Mama’s tangled hair, and the rest at the foot of her bed. The garlic is tucked under her pillow and beneath the baby’s mattress.

  “Is it a boy?” I ask. Grandmother holds her finger to her mouth. “Don’t bring the Evil Eye! Pretend nothing happened today.” She takes me to the baby’s crib and unwraps its swaddling, and immediately a tiny appendage lets out a stream of urine. I look up at Grandmother and smile, knowing how happy everyone must be that it’s a boy.

  “He’s very pretty,” Luisa says, trying to be polite, since the wizened creature is nothing of the sort. Susana gasps. “Take it back, Luisa! He’s not pretty at all. Look at that ugly little thing. Who would want it?”

  Luisa’s face crumples. Grandmother rubs a clove of garlic between her palms and touches them one after the other to the baby’s forehead. “It will be all right now,” she says, pressing her warm palms to Luisa’s and my face as well.

  Susana takes a tiny bracelet of blue beads from which dangles a hamsa charm in the shape of a hand. She puts it around the baby’s wrist, then holds up her own hand, palm out and fingers straight. “Cinko!” she says, for the number five, which has the power to keep away evil spirits looking for babies to steal.

  My mother gives the baby a lick on the forehead. “Te pari, y el espanto i el ayin arah ti kiti. I gave birth to you, and the fright and the Evil Eye I remove from you.” She licks him again. “The cow licks her calf because of love, and I lick away your fright and the Evil Eye.”

  Susana, Grandmother, and neighbor women stand watch over the next few days in the room where Mama and the baby lie. Neither of them is left alone, for it is when no one is looking that spirits come to lay a curse on a mother’s milk or make a baby sicken and die. I am too young to ward off the Evil Eye myself, but I spend almost every minute in her room, fluffing her pillow and bringing whatever she wants.

  Like all Christian babies, the child, whom my mother calls Abraham and my father calls Benito, will not be circumcised. “It’s why the others died,” I hear her whisper. “I didn’t claim them as Jews, and the Evil Eye thought I didn’t want them.”

  When I come in her room the morning of the baptism, I am surprised to see her out of bed. “Let Leah stay,” she tells Grandmother.

  She shuts the door as my mother takes out a sewing needle. “We are doing what needs to be done,” Grandmother tells me. “Don’t make a sound.”

  “Blessed art thou, Lord God, king of the universe,” the two of them whisper as Mama unswaddles the baby. “Who has commanded us to bring him into the covenant of Abraham, our father.” I watch in shock as my mother makes a shallow prick near the top of his penis. He lets out an angry howl, as a tiny jewel of blood rises at the site.

  “This is what we do when we can’t circumcise a boy,” she tells me.

  Grandmother murmurs in Hebrew, looking furtively toward the closed door. “Just as he has entered the covenant, so may he enter into the Torah, the marriage canopy, and the performance of good deeds.”

  “Ken y’hi ratzon. May it be so,” my mother says, holding the baby close until he quiets. “You can take him now,” she says to Grandmother. “We’ve done the best we can.”

  I follow her as she carries the baby to my father and Susana, who are waiting near the front door. “Rosaura is not feeling well enough to attend the baptism,” Grandmother says. “The rest of you go ahead. I’ll stay with her.” As I leave the house, Grandmother whispers in my ear, “Just go along and look happy. We fixed it, so don’t worry.”

  When I get home, my mother is in bed looking ill again. The count of Medina-Sidonia, the baby’s godfather and Papa’s employer, is throwing a dinner this afternoon in honor of the birth, and Mama asks Grandmother and me to stay home with her. My sullen mood at missing the party vanishes when, to my surprise, the minute they are gone, Mama jumps out of bed, wearing her regular underclothes beneath her nightgown. She puts on her dress and places Abraham in an empty basket lined with a towel. Grandmother and I leave the house first, and Mama follows with the baby, covered by loose folds of cloth.

  The way is as familiar as my own feet. At this time of year, the field is dry, brown stalks, and the path is stomped to a dirty pulp. When we reach the spring, Mama begins pulling off her clothing. Naked, she steps into the pool, and Grandmother hands her the baby. She crouches to submerge him, whispering something in Hebrew too soft for me to hear. Then she stands again, lifts her eyes skyward, and recites the Shehechiyanu, a blessing we say for special or long-awaited days that will not come again. “Blessed art thou, Lord God, king of the universe, who has created us, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this day.”

  Abraham cries at the shock of the water but quiets when Mama puts him to her breast. “Take off your shoes,” she tells me. “Put your feet in.”

  Mayyim hayyim. Living water. That’s how it feels as I submerge my toes in the cold, crystalline water. Mother puts on her clothes, and while Abraham sleeps in his basket, the three of us sit together, dangling our feet and making ripples with our toes. We recite every b
lessing we can think of and make up a few more—for the shelter the trees provide, for the smell of harvest burning in a nearby field, for the blue of the sky, for the sun and the water, for each other, for the new life sleeping on the bank.

  “You need to learn our ways well, Leah,” my grandmother says. “When we are gone, you must pass them on to your own children—the ones who will listen. May there always be some of those.”

  When the baby cries, we get up and head for home. “You know why we came,” Mama says as we cross the field. “We undid the baptism, but no one must ever know.”

  God’s love radiates from the heavens as we cross the field. Only when we reach the streets and can be observed am I back in a world where the best things must always remain the deepest secrets.

  ***

  Abraham is so warm and strong, and his eyes are bright, but Mama and Papa seem worried, as if he will disappear if they look away. We keep quiet about how the baby is doing. No one speaks of how well he feeds, how much he has grown in the six months since his birth, how easily he survived an unusually cold winter. “Hello, Abraham,” I whisper in his ear, though I am careful to call him Benito when other people are listening. He calls me Mahyah and wets my hair when he puts it in his mouth. He laughs and bangs the floor with his toys. “Pum! Pum!” I say. “Buh buh!” he says back, smacking his lips.

  But the Evil Eye has many ways to strike a family. That spring while hunting with the count, Papa slams his head against a rock when he is thrown from his horse. He is brought bleeding and limp to the palace, where he drifts in and out of consciousness for days, with a fever so terrible he moans and cries out as if seeing a terrifying vision of the beyond. We take turns sitting with him day after day until his fever breaks and the count’s physician says he can come home.

  He complains that everything sounds as if he is under water. “It will pass,” Mama says, but it doesn’t. By midsummer, Papa can hear only his own pulse in his temples and muffled sounds when we yell or clap to get his attention.

  Our troubles mount when the summer brings renewed hostilities against conversos all over Spain. Though Sevilla is quiet, we’re all afraid.

  I try speaking with my fingers in my ears to understand what it must be like for Papa, and everyone tells me to quiet down because I am yelling. His voice has grown so loud I’m afraid people will make fun of him if he goes out.

  Mama and I act out simple things, like shaking a basket to say we’re going to market, and I use wax tablets to write what we can’t communicate any other way. No one has to say the obvious, that he will not be able to function at Henry’s court. Papa has written to the prince already, putting off his departure for Raposeira until the following spring, while we hope for improvement.

  Papa and I develop a system of hand and finger signs I use to supplement the movements of my lips. We only communicate simple things at first, but by the time winter has passed, we can converse almost normally, using signs for most things and spelling the rest with finger shapes we invent to stand for letters. We go out so Papa can practice talking with people through me, and though he often comes back frustrated and glum, I know he is relieved.

  “Will we still go to Portugal?” I ask him one day after a meeting with the count. By now, I am invisible at my father’s side, and business goes on as if I am not there. Papa’s face clouds. He points to his forehead and shakes his head to say he doesn’t know.

  “But I can help!” I touch my chest and grasp my forearm. “You can work with the count—why not with Prince Henry?”

  Papa barely tries to speak anymore, having seen the distressed looks on people’s faces at his loud, nasal mumblings. He shakes his head, puts two fingers to his mouth, and draws P-O-R in the air.

  He doesn’t have to finish before I know what he means. “I can learn Portuguese! I’ll translate for you!” More than anything, I want him to be glad again. I want him to pick me up and spin me around, telling me what a wonderful girl I am, how proud he is, and how much he needs me.

  But he doesn’t. His face grows pensive. He spins his finger, our sign for the future, then points to his eye. “We’ll see.”

  That’s all. He looks away so I won’t see the sadness flitting across his face, but I see it anyway and recognize it better than he knows.

  ***

  Mama doesn’t want to leave Sevilla. There’s a one-year-old baby to think of, and with Susana marrying in a few weeks, she will need her mother while she adjusts to being a wife. Mama is not confident things will work out well at Raposeira. After all, Henry might reject Papa’s services if he sees how limited he is, and what would we do then, so far away from home?

  “Remind her that I am one of the best cartographers in Europe,” Papa signs, his face darkening at the insult of her fears.

  “Well then, see if the count will compensate you better so we can stay here,” Mama replies.

  “Henry doesn’t want to talk with me. He wants my maps. He wants my charts. I could work in a…” He stops to spell on his fingers. “M-O-N-A-S—” I nod. “Monastery, for all he cares.”

  Mama is adamant. The Riba family is at home here, Susana needs her mother, and my father is deaf. We are not going to Portugal, and that is that.

  ***

  The night Susana goes off to be the wife of Roberto Salas de la Cruz, I lie awake wondering if it will be different now that I am the oldest child in the house. When neighbors talk about what a good wife I would make because I am so devoted to my parents and the baby, sometimes I want to cry out that they don’t understand. I don’t care about making some man happy—all I want is for my mother and father to say what a good job I am doing, to notice how hard I try.

  In any case, I am too important to Papa’s livelihood to consider letting me marry when I’m older. It’s my little sister whose future hips get talked about, how she will bear some man’s children and shop for his vegetables someday. I glimpse pity when the neighbors look at me, as if it is already decreed that I will end up like the shriveled-up old crone at the end of our street, the one whose house Luisa and I hurry by.

  Why doesn’t anyone ask me what I want? I catch myself grousing like Susana, but the truth is I don’t know what I would say if anyone asked, other than I’d like to feel a little happier right now.

  How could I forget that the sheddim are always lurking, ready to turn idle complaints into fateful wishes they love to grant? “You think other people are happier than you?” the Evil Eye whispers. “You selfish child—just see what I have in mind for you.”

  ***

  One day shortly before my tenth birthday, Abraham’s nose is running and his bottom is scarlet from watery messes. By the next day, his eyes and face are bright with fever. By the third, they seem drained of life, and he sags in our arms. No one sleeps that night. We cover his bed with amulets and sprinkle his bedding with rosemary and rue and dozens of cloves of garlic, but to no avail. All day, his breath is shallow and infrequent, and as quietly as if he were falling asleep, at nightfall, he dies in Mama’s arms.

  She wants to bury him the Jewish way, in a simple shroud, but Papa will not hear of it. Benito Riba is buried in the Christian cemetery, his name carved onto the stone below my other lost brothers.

  A day after the funeral, Mama wakes me after everyone has gone to bed. “Come with me,” she says.

  She carries a cloth-covered basket as we make our way to the Jewish cemetery. Once there, she goes to the top of a rise and crouches under an almond tree. In the moonlight, its blossoms look like hundreds of tiny, luminous angels hovering above us. Mama gets out a trowel, and when she has dug a hole, she pulls out something wrapped in a small white cloth.

  “I cut a lock of his hair before we buried him. It’s inside.” She gives me a package so weightless it could drift away with the slightest puff of breeze. “I did this for my other babies too.”

  I nod my head, silenced by a moment that feels too weighty, too sacred for words.

  “On the eve of Yom Kippur, the Day
of Atonement,” my mother goes on, “I ask the Holy One to have mercy on me for all the ways I have been unable to honor him—for food I was forced to eat, for the festivals I didn’t keep. And each time I lost a child, I’ve come here to bury a lock of his hair and ask for forgiveness that he sleeps with a cross over his head. I ask God not to be harsh with me, but…”

  We are both crying as we place the packet of hair in the soft, cool earth under the tree. We sprinkle dirt until the cloth is heavy with it, then we push the rest of the soil back in the hole, patting it down as gently as when we held Abraham over our shoulders to coax the air from his stomach.

  She brushes a fallen petal from my hair, and I pick one off her sleeve. “Is there a blessing for burying hair?” I ask.

  She smiles. “There are many that will serve.” She raises her voice in a plaintive call. “Blessed art thou, Lord God, king of the universe,” she sings out, “who restores the souls of the dead.” I want with all my heart that he would do that for Abraham, but Mama has taught me that it is not proper to pray for what cannot be undone.

  Day is breaking, and we will soon be missed. Hand in hand, we walk back to a home that seems no more part of the living than the tiny grave we left behind.

  ***

  That summer is the hottest in memory, and the churches are full of people praying that the plague spreading across the country will spare our city, or at the very least that the Angel of Death will visit someone else. We don’t have the outbreaks they had a hundred years ago—the Great Mortality, when whole towns died overnight, when wolves came down from the hills to finish off the dying, when people spit up their lungs and smelled their own bodies rotting. The fluxions, agues, and poxes that have visited Sevilla in my lifetime are frightening enough, though they lay low no more than one neighborhood and sometimes just a few households.

  No one in our family could imagine for whom the angel would come, and how.

  An upturned pot of stew burns my mother’s arm, making it blister and weep, but Mama assures me she has seen worse. She applies a poultice of figs mixed with yarrow and chervil and then goes about her work, stopping from time to time to chew poppy seeds for the pain.