A Ceiling Made of Eggshells

by Gail Carson Levine

The fate of my marriage might, if my creations disgusted all my suitors. The handiwork of girls was on display on pillows and wall hangings.

  “I like spinning best,” I said. Whatever I spun would go next to the dyer, who, as far as I was concerned, could pick whatever color he liked best.

  When Ledicia came with her children, my task—my beloved task—was to watch and play with them, while she helped in the kitchen in my place. Todros delighted in making things fall, so I had to take care that he dropped objects that wouldn’t shatter. I always kept a bowl of walnuts on hand for him to play with. I gave Beatriz my first doll. She named it Tusa and played with it and talked to it by the hour, though sometimes she interrupted herself to say, “Tía Loma, guess what happened to Tusa.”

  “She grew fins and swam to Egypt.”

  “No, Tía Loma!” she shouted with laughter. “She’d drown!”

  After supper, I studied with Samuel. At bedtime, Mamá planted a hard kiss on my forehead, and Papá, if he was home, sat with me and kissed my cheek softly.

  In the afternoons when he was home, Belo called me to his study, and I had to go, even if the little ones—the littles, as I thought of them—were visiting. Occasionally, I’d find Fatima there, kneeling and massaging a salve into Belo’s feet while he read a book or wrote in a folio on his lap. While he was reading or writing, he ignored me. I dipped into his books, which I could understand only in glimmers. I was often bored. But sometimes he read to me or had me read to him.

  I liked best when he talked about his ideas, almost as if I were grown-up. He’d tell me he was trying out a thought, and when he finished, he’d tell me if he was pleased or if he had to think more. He didn’t ask my opinion, so I didn’t have to reveal my confusion, because I was often confused. But I’d think later about whatever he’d said and work out my own understanding.

  I grew less afraid of him, and I came to love him much more than when he just loomed over our family like an eagle over a field, regal and remote. By wanting my company, he let me know that I was important to him. He was more interested in me than everyone else was combined. His attention became precious.

  Two months passed. One afternoon, Belo put down his book, turned his chair, and asked me what Bela used to say when she came to me at night.

  She said different things every night. And I was starting to forget. I didn’t know how to answer.

  The air seemed to harden. I had to say something. “One night, she said Vellida’s husband would be kind and mine would be kind and gentle. She said I’d have many children. Do you think I will?”

  Belo frowned. “You will if God wants you to.”

  Was he remembering my star chart? Did he believe God wanted me to be childless? “Belo, do you believe in astrology?”

  The air softened. He clasped his hands in front of his chest as he often did when expounding a theory. “The Almighty put the stars in the heavens. He directs His purpose toward us. Thus, yes, I believe the position of the stars influences the life of every man—Christian, Muslim, or Jew—and every nation.”

  “Mamá had a chart done for each of us when we were born.” I wanted to ask him about my chart, but I didn’t feel brave enough.

  “Daughters, too? I didn’t know.” He went on. “The stars’ effect on a man is less than their influence on a nation. That makes sense, doesn’t it, Loma?”

  I nodded.

  “If the stars predict famine in a kingdom, a particular man may die even if his chart augured a long life for him. Just so, the stars’ sway over a wife isn’t as strong as it is over her husband.”

  I smiled so widely my cheeks hurt. “Really?”

  He frowned in mock displeasure. “You doubt your abuelo?”

  Then if I married a man who was destined to have many children, his fate would win over mine, and I would be a mother. Hooray!

  Ha, Ugly Camel Head!

  How could I make sure my future husband had a good chart?

  “What else did your abuela say?”

  “Um . . . She said that Jews are safe in Spain.”

  “Were you thinking the Jews were safe when you ran after me?”

  The night of the mob. I shook my head.

  “We’re not safe if we do nothing, so we do something.”

  “What do we do, Belo?” I hoped the question wasn’t bold.

  He didn’t seem to mind. “Your papá and I make ourselves useful.”

  “How?”

  “With donations. We buy the church an altarpiece, and we pay for armor and swords for some of the king’s knights to help them win wars. The constables and the bishops and the king and queen don’t forget when the Jews need them. That’s how our family keeps us and all the Jews safe.”

  When we went to synagogue, Bela had always stayed outside in the street with me for a quarter hour or so, until a priest, or more than one, left the building. Then we’d go in. I never asked why we waited, because priests frightened me, and my mind shied away from them.

  But after she became Bela of blessed memory, the next time we went to the synagogue, which was for Rosh Hashanah—the Jewish New Year—no one kept me outside. Feeling grown-up, I followed Mamá in with everyone else and up the stairs to the front of the women’s gallery, where I could see the tevah downstairs by peering through gaps in the lattices of the low balcony wall. The tevah was where the Torah was read and where the rabbi and other men addressed the congregation.

  When everyone had come in and the rustling of clothing had stopped, a priest mounted to the tevah. Sunlight from a leaded-glass window made an X on the bald center of his uncovered head.

  He raised his hands, palms up, and screamed, “Woe to the Jews! Stinking in sin, sinking in sin. God curses you! Jesus Christ curses you!”

  This was discord beyond anything Mamá produced. I could barely breathe.

  Next, in a normal voice, he urged us to convert. If we did, he said, we’d no longer be devils.

  We were devils? A chirp of alarm escaped me.

  His voice rose again. “You are evil. You are sin! You are abominations!”

  Tears blinded me.

  “You will burn forever. Demons will torment you.”

  I wailed and drowned out his voice—

  —and the sound of his feet on the stairs.

  Hands girdled my waist. The priest raised me over his head and carried me downstairs.

  I became rigid. Terror, even greater than I’d felt a moment before, silenced me. I squeezed my eyes shut. My breath came in gasps.

  In seven steps, he returned to the tevah and climbed the three stairs. “This blessed child”—I felt him rotate me so that everyone saw my frozen face—“doesn’t want to burn. You heard her. She longs for salvation, longs for eternal life among the angels of the Lord.”

  7

  The priest lowered me in his arms, descended, and passed me to someone else, who passed me to a third person, while my stomach lurched. This third person carried me out of the synagogue, set me down in the street, and turned out to be Ledicia.

  The priest could decide he still wanted me. Sobbing, I ran to the end of the street, turned, turned again, and sank to the ground in front of our door.

  Though she was no longer a girl, Ledicia lowered herself to the cobblestones, too, and hugged me. “The priest won’t get you.” She held me at arm’s length. “Did you see Belo glare at him?”

  I hadn’t.

  “That’s what made him stop.” She chuckled and let me go. “That and the weight of you. His arms shook when he put you down.”

  I was plump.

  “He was just saying those words. He does it whenever there are services, him or some other priest. Don’t worry.”

  I’d have to hear it again?

  But my need to not cause discord had returned, so I pretended to be comforted. A servant let us in, and Ledicia stayed with me until, exhausted by emotion, I fell asleep on the bed I shared with Vellida.

  In the dining room, first thing in the morning, Papá waved to m
e to join him at the window. “Loma, the Christians believe we’ll be punished after we die for being Jews. The priests want to save us from that.”

  Were they right? I nodded and didn’t ask.

  Papá added, “The priest shouldn’t have touched you. I’m still angry about that.”

  In the afternoon in his study, Belo said, “We don’t believe what the Christians do. It’s all death with them.”

  I ventured, “But everybody dies.”

  “We don’t believe in their hell.” Belo moved a book on his desk toward him.

  Did we have a different hell? I didn’t ask that, in case ours was worse.

  “That priest won’t touch you again. No priest will. I’m going to speak with the bishop tomorrow.”

  I nodded.

  But by now, Belo knew me. He sighed. “Your abuela would have known the right words to say to you. I don’t. Forgive me.”

  I forgave him.

  At night, I asked Mamá, who, I was sure, would tell me the truth, even if the truth was awful. “Will demons torment us when we die?”

  “Jews don’t believe that, but I haven’t died yet.”

  That brought comfort, actually. The priest hadn’t died, so he didn’t know yet, either. “Why did he shout like that when nobody knows for certain?”

  She drew the sheet up to my chin. “Be glad when they just shout.” She pecked my forehead and left.

  Ai! What else would they do?

  I developed a terrible habit. In bed, after the last person had kissed me good night, usually Papá when he was home, I counted my worries:

  A priest picking me up again.

  Dying and burning and being tormented by demons with pointy teeth and bright red skin.

  Marrying a man whose horoscope also predicted childlessness.

  Falling out of Belo’s favor.

  Plague returning and sickening Ledicia and her family.

  Sometimes I fell asleep after only one or two, but sometimes I stayed awake for hours, adding items to my list.

  A week later, Yuda disgraced himself. He was discovered to have been dicing. Vellida and I learned the details from Aljohar, who wasn’t fond of Ugly Camel Head, either.

  Gambling was considered by both Christians and Jews as a terrible vice, even a crime. Yuda had won twenty-five reales from fifteen-year-old Astruc, the son of Yuda and Samuel’s teacher. After he lost, Astruc had complained to the rabbi, who had gone to Belo, and Belo had made Yuda return his winnings. My brother spent an hour in Belo’s study with Belo, Papá, and Mamá, whose cries rang through the house, blaming both Papá and Yuda: “You failed to instruct your son! Better if I’d given birth to a fox!”

  At dinner, Yuda apologized for shaming the family. His eyes traveled to each of us, even Samuel, Vellida, and me. “I won’t disappoint you again.”

  “After next month,” Papá said, “we won’t be able to protect you.”

  On November 19, he became our family’s first bar mitzvah. At dinner, Belo and Papá, but not Mamá, kept smiling at him. Aljohar cooked his favorite: beef stew with garlic and onions.

  He was next to me. For a change, when he filled our bowl—because two people always shared a bowl at meals—he said, “I’m a man now, and Papá is my example. The meat is more for you than for me.” He beamed at me the smile he once reserved for Bela.

  I smiled back, as I felt I had to. I expected a trap, but he actually ate little.

  The transformation lasted only a few days, and then he was his gluttonous self again. I saw no benefit in his rise to adulthood until, two weeks later, he was apprenticed to Don Ziza, the goldsmith. He left home to live with his master, returning only for Sabbath dinners and holidays. Soon after, Papá negotiated for him to marry Dueyna, a merchant’s daughter, the prettiest girl in the aljama.

  The engagement was to be celebrated in December, on the day after Hanukkah ended. I was thrilled, because it was the first engagement in our close family that I would remember. I had been only two when Ledicia had her party.

  The day came. I woke up wishing I were the betrothed—but not to an ugly camel head!

  Vellida still slept. The winter sun hadn’t risen yet, so I dressed by feel, putting on my tan silk gown with the green velvet border around the neckline and pulling over my head the heavy silver chain that had been a gift from Papá. I wished for Bela’s pendant, but Belo still had it.

  The stars were out when I stepped onto the courtyard balcony. The air was crisp. I lowered my right knee and extended my left leg in front of my right, up on my left foot, hop!, down, up, hop!—dancing toward the kitchen. The dancing was sure to be my favorite part.

  Aljohar was bustling about the kitchen by candlelight. She set me to work peeling the eggs—seventy-three of them!—that had spent the night simmering in a cauldron of water with red onion skins and vinegar, the fire kept alive by Fatima, who had finally been allowed to go to sleep. Aljohar and I had cracked the shells in the evening, after they’d first been hard-boiled. Now as I worked, I admired the patterns of lines that had been created: ivory where the shell had remained, violet where the cracks had been. Yawning, Vellida came in and stood next to me at the worktable, transferring dried mackerel to a platter.

  The party would be in the street outside our house, and most of the aljama would come. While everyone was singing, dancing, and eating, servants, hired for the occasion, would prepare more food to bring out later. The day would close with a meal after the ceremony.

  I smiled at Vellida. “You’re next.”

  “God willing. And then you.”

  “First Samuel.”

  “I meant girls.”

  God willing.

  When I finished placing the 292 egg quarters on platters, Aljohar had me begin to bring them out to the street, where Dueyna, beautiful in a blue woolen cloak embroidered with silver artichokes, stood with her family.

  She ran to me, saying, “How pretty you look . . .”

  I realized she didn’t remember my name. “Paloma—Loma.”

  “Loma, I’m happy to have a sister at last.” Her voice was so breathy it seemed to have bubbles in it. “The first question I asked Papá was, ‘Does he have sisters?’”

  I smiled though I didn’t believe her—it wasn’t what I would want to know.

  Her papá called her. She went to him, and I returned to the kitchen, where Aljohar told me Belo wanted me in his study.

  When I got there, he was wearing his finery, a green silk overgown that was pleated down the front, but he was where he usually was: at his table, writing. He looked up. “Ah, Loma. Do you approve of this poem for the occasion of the engagement of my least-worthy grandchild?”

  Because of the gambling, or did he know more?

  He read the poem from a book at his elbow. This was the last stanza:

  The gate is shut! Arise, oh, please,

  and open it! Oh, send to me

  the gazelle that ran away! Godspeed

  her to my side. Ah! Ah! You’re here!

  Your scent and honeyed voice hold me

  and will forever please me.

  I said, honestly, that it sounded beautiful. I didn’t add that I’d break out in giggles if anyone ever recited it to me.

  “Then I’ll read it when the time comes.”

  Because of my opinion? If Bela could be here, she’d be smiling.

  I hoped he’d say I looked pretty, but he returned to writing. I opened the door to leave.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To the party?”

  “Stay for a little while. A party is noisy. I prefer studying and talking with you.”

  I closed the door.

  “I’m considering how God chooses the children for each family. Why give Joseph to Jacob? Why you to us? Why Yuda? Why the others?”

  Why did He give us to Mamá out of all the other mothers?

  Belo was waiting, as if I could tell him.

  “Samuel, Ledicia, and Vellida are good children.” That didn’t feel like
enough. “Dutiful. Kind. We’re nice to each other.”

  “But why did the Almighty, out of His goodness, give you to us? Sit.” He pointed at my cushion.

  I sat.

  Voices drifted in through the windows. People were arriving. Someone began tuning a lute. I wanted to hear what Belo would say next, and I wanted to be outside. I wondered if the littles had come. It was their first party, and I wanted to help them enjoy it. And if Dueyna really hoped for a sister, she’d be missing me.

  “The Almighty, when Bela died, made me notice you and realize that you may help me while I help the Jews.” He said that before there were juderías, Jews and Christians and Muslims could live wherever they liked. “They’d celebrate together, grieve together, even write poems together. I and a few others keep that tradition of friendship. It’s one way of helping.”

  Outside, the lute was joined by drums and tambourines, and the music began in earnest. I bounced my knees. In a little while, Yuda, with three other unmarried young men, would ride down the street on mules fitted with bells and would stop when he reached Dueyna, which seemed the height of romance, a moment—when it happened to me—that I would treasure.

  My heart-hatred side wanted to see it, too, because Yuda would look ridiculous—an ugly camel head on a jingling mule.

  But I also wanted Belo to keep talking about Spain and my part in helping him. If I stopped him and joined the party, he might never return to the subject.

  I stayed. Soon, hooves clattered and bells chimed. I missed Yuda’s arrival, but Belo started to talk about his childhood and his parents, who had died long before I was born. His papá spoke even more languages than Belo did, including Russian, and his mamá played the lute.

  “Angels danced above her head when she played.”

  I knew he didn’t mean real angels, but I wished I could have heard her. I wished she was playing for Yuda now, and we were both out there.

  My brothers and sisters probably hadn’t heard these stories. Would they be angry if they found out?

  Another worry to keep me awake at night.

  Belo talked until Papá rapped on the door and came in. “Oh, there you are, Loma.”

  I jumped up from the cushion, feeling guilty, though I wasn’t sure why.