Blood Secret

by Kathryn Lasky

  Mirror Eyes was stepping out of the car. She shook hands with the lady, whose face was now cast in the shadow of her hat’s brim. Jerry’s eyes traveled beyond them to the yard. Hard dirt packed with horno bread ovens popping out of the ground like a ghetto of giant beehives. Beyond the hornos was the low adobe house, a rough wood door painted pale blue, odd-shaped windows punching the walls that watched like blank eyes in the hot noonday sun.

  A sudden shadow slid across the car window and into her lap. The old lady had come right up to her side and leaned in. Jerry gasped. It was not only that she hadn’t been expecting her to do this, but also her face was so close, and it loomed dark and somehow fantastic in the window frame.

  “You want to get out, child?” the woman asked.

  Jerry moved her hand to the door handle. She paused, opening her eyes wide, and peered directly into the woman’s face. Above her upper lip was a hedge of thin, crimped, vertical lines. A radiation of similar lines as fine as cobwebs spread from the far corners of her eyes to her temples. Jerry had seen old people before, their faces creased and gouged into deep crevices or crumpled into fleshy pouches, but she had never seen a face like this. Dark and tawny as leather, the tissue paper–thin skin had crinkled into a fine tracery. The eyes were so heavily hooded that it was impossible to see much of the white. And was the iris black or was it a deep amber?

  “Come along, child. Might be March, but it’s hot enough in this car to bake bread, and I don’t need another oven in my yard.” A ragged snort tore from her throat as she looked up and gestured.

  Mirror Eyes had already gotten her suitcase out of the trunk and was handing Jerry’s aunt a folder of papers. She got back into the car and leaned out the window cheerfully. “Good-bye, Jerry. It’s been nice…,” but her voice dwindled off as she started the engine.

  Her aunt’s shadow grew longer as Jerry followed her along a stone-edged path to the house. She was careful not to step out of that silhouette into the white light. The shadow stretched and grew narrow, and Jerry pressed her arms to her sides. Then the shadows of the roofline of the house began to reach out for them. Constanza stopped for a moment and looked toward the ovens. Heat rippled off them in waves, distorting the air.

  For some odd reason, perhaps not so odd, Jerry thought of Hansel and Gretel, but she made her feet go forward in the shadow of this aunt. At least they told her this old lady was her aunt. But you never really knew anything for sure. Dead for sure, alive for sure, an aunt for sure.

  The next morning when Jerry woke, she watched the light slide through the deep-cut window like a thief stealing the shadows one by one from Jerry’s bedroom. She could smell the bread baking, and if she looked out she could see the humped profiles of the hornos’ shadows stretching across the cook yard. When the shadows started to shrink, that was when the first batch of bread was ready to come out and that was when everything smelled the best. The smell swirled through the yard, and even the tumbleweed that reeled by seemed to pause for a second or two as if not wanting to leave. Then in the afternoon the shadows would begin to stretch long again.

  This was what Jerry did for her first few days at her Aunt Constanza’s. She sought shadows through following light. She had her favorite places both indoors and out. It was an old-style adobe. Scattered at odd angles across the earthen floors in the living room were colorful woven rugs. There wasn’t very much furniture at all. No sofa, just a banco, a kind of bench, where the thick adobe had been cut away from the wall to offer a deep niche for sitting. Because the house was so empty—no knickknacks, just a kitchen table, a low coffee table, a few chairs—it was as if the light and the shadow were the real furniture.

  Jerry fit in a strange way. Her silence matched the shadows. She could slip between the dark and the light, slide between the swirling motes of dust busy in the shafts of sun, and disturb nothing.

  The light entered the house in many different ways because of the windows’ odd shapes. Some were shuttered and some not. She walked outside, where the shadows of clouds cast pictures on the flat, scrubby land—a buffalo charging, a rabbit with wings, an angel with a rabbit’s head, a hunchback caped and hooded creeping across the landscape. Shadow characters in shadow stories. She could feel the shadows and not simply their coolness. They had a weight. Maybe in the same way that time was fixed in the layers of stone, shadows out here carried their own histories.

  Indoors by late afternoon the last of the sunlight slipped from the banco, and the violet grayness of the early evening began to gather in the rooms.

  Constanza did not seem bothered in the least by the fact that Jerry didn’t talk. Constanza didn’t talk much herself. She might have said three or four dozen sentences to her in the first two days Jerry had been there. Tonight Jerry had set the table for dinner after Constanza returned from her late deliveries. Constanza had told her to turn on the “range,” as she called the inside oven, for the roast. Jerry had just about begun to think that Constanza was a vegetarian. There had been no meat at any meal so far. The first night a vegetable stew with the delicious flatbread—the morning’s last batch—and salad. Last night a fritatta. But now a roast and it smelled good. She hoped that Constanza would serve one of the fancy little pastries she had made as a special order for the country club. They were puffy little golden shells filled with cream and preserved apricots from Constanza’s own tree. In the center of each one she had set a sparkling raspberry. When Jerry saw the pastries sitting out on the counter, she almost gasped. They looked like jewels…. Almost gasped. It was as if that sound somehow died in her throat. She had been sitting on the stool and watching as Constanza packed them. She had made nests of tissue paper in neat little white boxes and then set them in, six to a box. Jerry had watched Constanza’s long, bony fingers. The knuckles knobbed with arthritis, her hands placed the shells so carefully. Her fingers and hands were whiter than the rest of her. It was as if she could never get rid of the flour. It had in some way been absorbed into her skin. After the pastries were boxed and tied with string, she took a label from a spool fastened to the counter. The labels were oval and printed in the same swoopy writing: “Constanza Delivers.”

  The little tartlets were so different from the sheet cakes that they always served at the Catholic Charities homes or the state-run homes for kids like Jerry. Everything here was different. Not just the food. The floors were different. No linoleum. Linoleum smelled funny, she suddenly realized, and that smell was not here. The living room floor at Constanza’s was earth, dirt, and it felt cool coming up through your feet. The kitchen floor was wood. There were no steam tables in Constanza’s kitchen with metal pans set in them and giant spoons to shovel out the food for lines of kids. Constanza served food in ceramic casseroles and dishes.

  Jerry had wanted to help Constanza with the tartlets. She liked the process of packing the sweet little gemstones. She found the rhythm of the small tasks strangely comforting, but of course she could not ask and she was afraid to simply start helping. So she sat silently and looked.

  “Ah, the table’s set,” Constanza said as she came into the kitchen from her deliveries. “Thank you, child.” She stopped abruptly as she untied her hat. “I shouldn’t call you child. I must stop that. You are fourteen. I’ll try and remember to call you Jerry.”

  At least Constanza did not say, as teachers so often did, “Now do you prefer Jerry or Jeraldine?” She never could answer that one. She always just shrugged a bit. “And you, when you like, may call me Aunt Constanza or just Constanza or Connie if you must. I come when called.” And that was the first time Jerry saw Constanza smile. She also noticed that her aunt was missing one tooth, the third from the left of her front teeth. It was a dark little gap that only the smile could reveal.

  Constanza had just finished slicing the roast when Jerry got up to get herself a glass of milk. “Oh no, Jerry!” Constanza said as she sat down with the milk. “No, you can’t have that!” What had she done? Jerry looked quite confused. Every other night she’
d been allowed to pour herself a glass of milk. “Don’t you know it’s terrible for your digestion?” Constanza continued. “To drink milk with meat, especially red meat. Oh, you’ll be sick as a dog. And tomorrow’s your first day of school.”

  Jerry had never heard of such a thing in her life. She knew darn well that it wouldn’t hurt her. She went and put the milk back and got herself some water. Now as they sat over their roast, Constanza looked up. “I’m going to the seven o’clock mass this evening. I was too busy with those tarts this morning to make it. You’re welcome to come. But I want to get there early.”

  Jerry felt her head nod slightly, almost mechanically.

  Jerry watched Constanza disappear into the confession booth. She wondered what possible sins this old lady could confess. It seemed like a lifetime ago to Jerry since she had last seen people go to confession. It was probably the first time she had been at the Catholic Charities home in Santa Rosa. That was before her mother had disappeared but after she became too sick to take care of Jerry. She wondered what she would have confessed back then when she could still talk, if indeed she had been old enough to go to confession. Probably something to do with envy. Envy of other girls. She had arrived at the home with her peculiar clothes. The long flowered skirts that her mother liked to dress her in and the lace-up hiking boots and the frilly blouses. Everyone else had been wearing normal clothes: jeans, cutoffs, T-shirts. Well, yes, she did have her own Harley Davidson T-shirt. But that probably had more to do with her mother’s yearning for Hammerhead than anything to do with her.

  There were only four other people in the church for the evening mass and only one other aside from Constanza took confession. It was a nice church—very small. Jerry doubted if there was room for more than fifty worshippers. It was adobe, and there was only one stained-glass window. But darkness had already fallen and there was not enough moonlight, so the colors seemed drained from the glass and the Virgin looked almost sickly, as a woman might look if she had suddenly turned pale under her makeup. The painted surface was still there, but the blood beneath the skin gone. There was an arrangement of dried grasses and a few branches from some flowering tree. The tall, thick tapers in the candlesticks were guttering down, and their last flickerings cast antic shadows on the adobe walls.

  Constanza came out of the confessional and knelt in prayer. When Jerry saw Constanza rise, she put her rosary beads in her pocket and followed her aunt. At the door of the church, the priest stood waiting for them.

  “Jerry, this is Padre Hernandez.” Jerry stood there saying nothing. She might have nodded slightly. Padre Hernandez took her hand. “Your aunt tells me that you’re quiet.” Jerry pressed her lips together into a line that could have meant agreement or “so it goes.” He continued holding her hand in his. His hand was large and warm. The skin rough. She felt a callus at the edge of his palm. “You know, Jerry, silence is not merely the absence of words. It can indicate the presence of something as well. You are welcome to confess even without words. God does not need to hear words to listen to a heart speaking.” This time Jerry nodded again, twice. He squeezed her hand and then released it.

  They walked out of the church to where the truck was parked. Constanza gave a big sigh as she got her keys out. “Tired. So tired.” Then she turned to Jerry. “You drive?” She held out the keys. Jerry stopped and looked at her aunt. Her mouth opened to say “What?” But the word remained within. Constanza looked at her. “I know. I know. You don’t have a license. That doesn’t matter. When I was a girl, they didn’t even have driver’s licenses. I was younger than you when I started. Get in now.” She thrust the keys into Jerry’s hands. Aunt Constanza’s instructions were brief and to the point. She showed Jerry the gears. Let her try them to find the positions. She explained about the clutch, and then they were off.

  “Press in the clutch. Let up easy. Don’t ride that damn thing like a nun. You’ve never seen a bad driver until you’ve seen Sister Evangelina. Not much traffic tonight. I’ll take you out when there’s more so you can learn how to switch lanes. Nothing worse than getting stuck behind some pokey old lady driver.”

  Jesus! Jerry thought. So she was probably with the only old lady speed demon in America. Jerry actually felt her heart race as she imagined trying to pass one of those immense semis, a sixteen wheeler!

  They rode on in silence for a few more minutes. Then Constanza seemed to peer forward. “Now I don’t mean to get you nervous.” Jerry clenched the wheel and felt her hands begin to perspire. “But we’re coming up on a stretch where a deer can bounce out of the brush.” Jerry swallowed. What was she supposed to do? “Now, you’ll see their eyes first. They just kind of boing out at you all red and fiery. And they don’t move. See, that’s the problem. They get kind of hypnotized by your car lights. So you have to be prepared to swerve.” What? Jerry thought. This was horrifying. “You slam into a deer. Well, you can total the truck. Deer won’t be much good either.” Constanza snorted.

  Five minutes later they pulled into the drive and Jerry turned off the ignition.

  “So there.” Aunt Constanza smacked her lips together. Jerry could not tell if this was an expression of approval or a statement of fact, the fact that they had arrived. Aunt Constanza climbed down from the truck and slammed the door.

  When they were in the kitchen, Constanza sat down with a thump on a kitchen chair. “Nothing’s as hard as it seems.” Jerry assumed she was referring to the driving. “Day after tomorrow I have a big delivery to the country club, the snooty one on the northeast side of the city. We have to take the highway. Good practice. Lots of traffic. Passing!” Constanza said almost gleefully.

  Constanza got up and listened to her answering machine and wrote down the new orders that had come in. She fixed Jerry and herself cups of hot chocolate. They had just sat down, each lost in her own thoughts, when they happened to look up from their hot chocolate. Each had just raised her hand to the top of her head and begun to rub the hair. It was the precisely identical nature of the gesture that stunned each of them. It was as if Jerry and Constanza were, despite the years, for one brief moment mirror images of each other. “Oh, dear child, don’t do that. You have the same bad habit as me. Look, you want the top of your head to look like mine?” Costanza tipped her head forward. Jerry saw that right at the crown the center part widened and seemed in fact to dissolve into a patch of pink covered by a few white strands. “You twist your hair, don’t you? Yes, I did too as a child and that is why my mother parted it in the middle and made me wear braids. But if I couldn’t twist it, I would rub it. My abuela had a bald patch on top that was big as a saucer.” Jerry suddenly wondered how old Constanza was. How long had it taken her to get this bald patch that was, if not as big as a saucer, at least as big as the well in the saucer in which a cup set? How many years of twisting and rubbing had it taken? She didn’t want to go bald. She curled her hand into a fist and fought the urge to raise it again.

  Jerry rested her chin on her fist and looked at Constanza, who was studying her sheet of orders. Was there more than just this silly old habit that connected them? Did they look alike in any way? Constanza was so tall and skinny. Jerry was short and—she hated the word—stocky, but she was. Constanza had Indian blood. You could tell it immediately. And although Jerry had a dark olive complexion, there was absolutely nothing olive in the darkness of Constanza’s face. There was a deep, deep reddish brown to the darkness. Were they of the same blood? Carve away the pudginess of her own face, were the bones underneath it at all the same? It wasn’t just Constanza’s high cheekbones, however, that indicated Indian blood. There was something else. Maybe it was the slope of her forehead, the sharpness of her nose. Constanza’s nose sat as bold as a knife-back ridge on her face. When Jerry thought of her own face, it seemed kind of squashy and soft in comparison. Her mother had had sort of a sharp nose, but it was short and fragile, perched on her face like one of those teeny tiny handles from one of those teeny tiny teacups, and her mother was about as fr
agile as a teacup too. She was always breaking her bones, breaking her bones and breaking her nerves. She talked a lot about her nerves, and her feelings and her emotions. Jerry listened.

  “I suppose,” Constanza said, “you’re a bit nervous about starting school tomorrow. I always rub my head when I get nervous. I’ll walk with you tomorrow and show you the way. It’s an easy walk. I have to go anyway to sign some health forms or something.”

  Without thinking, Jerry raised her hand again to her head. She wasn’t used to this. It made her uneasy to have someone fussing about her in this way. It wasn’t like the nuns. And it wasn’t like the social workers. And it sure wasn’t like her mother. If anything, she would have been the one walking her mother to school.

  Jerry got up to get the broom and began to sweep the kitchen floor. The door to the yard was open and she had just started to sweep the dirt over its threshold when Constanza’s hand, like a claw, suddenly grabbed the broom from her. Jerry gasped. The suddenness of Constanza’s gesture had frightened her. She could not imagine what she had done. Then, gently, Constanza spoke.

  “No, child, never out the door. Always sweep the dirt to the center of the room and then pick it up with a dustpan and put it in the trash.” Then, as if to apologize or perhaps explain, she added, “Just a silly old superstition, I guess.”

  Jerry bit her bottom lip and watched as Constanza bent down with a dustpan and collected the crumbs. A breeze came in through the open door and picked up a remaining few in a small gust and sucked them over the threshold into the night. What happens now? Jerry wondered.

  Chapter 3