Page 185 of The Moon Sister
‘I am happy for you, Mamá.’
‘Well, I hope you will also be happy for yourself when you see it. And it cannot be that difficult to learn to drive, can it? There is hardly anyone else driving these days, what with the fuel shortage. Alejandro says he can find me a cheap car through a friend who runs a garage.’
‘It sounds as if you have a new admirer.’ Lucía swept her eyes over her mother: her dark eyes were sparkling and the summer dress she wore showed off her voluptuous body, the curves sitting in all the right places. There was a new confidence to her that Lucía could only guess came from finally walking away from José. Lucía only wished she could feel the same about parting from Meñique – but then,hehad lefther. . .
‘Alejandro is a married man with five children, Lucía. He is only grateful to receive some extra income for himself and his sister. He says we may take as many oranges as we can eat before they are harvested. Can you imagine? Our own orange grove?! Now,’ María finished counting out the pile of dollars, stacked them together and placed them in her handbag, ‘I must take the deposit downstairs to Alejandro before he changes his mind. He says that his friend the cashier will give him a good rate of exchange. Dollars here are like gold dust apparently!’ María flashed her daughter a smile and left the room.
Lucía was glad she had gone. Even though she felt mean and selfish, María’s high spirits only served to highlight her own non-existent ones.
‘What is happening to me?’ she whispered as she stared up at a large cobweb in the corner of the ceiling. ‘Where have I gone? I have disappeared, like the spider who once made that web . . . there is only a husk left.’
Lucía closed her eyes, tears of self-pity dribbling out of them.
Where are you, Meñique? Do you think of me as I think of you? Do you miss me . . . ?
Forget your pride and tell him what has happened . . . tell him that you didn’t realise before that he was more important than anything . . . that you are nothing without him . . .
Lucía sat up, just as she’d done a thousand times since he’d left. Her hand reached out for the telephone beside her bed, and hovered over the receiver.
You know where he is, the telephone number of the bar he is playing in . . . Call him and tell him that you need him, that his baby needs him, that you love him . . .‘Yes, yes, yes!’
Lucía’s hand grasped the receiver. All she needed to do was give the number to the switchboard telephonist and within a few minutes, she’d hear his voice and this nightmare would be over.
He left you!The devil voice began to stir the hatred she felt towards him like sand in a stormy sea.He didn’t love you enough . . . didn’t like you much either . . . he was always criticising your stupidity . . .
Lucía dropped the receiver into its cradle. ‘Never!’ she hissed. ‘Never will I crawl back to him, beg to be with him. He doesn’t want us any more, or he wouldn’t have left.’
She sank back onto her pillows, exhausted by the mental merry-go-round that she seemed unable to escape from. ‘He has even stolen you two from me,’ she said as she looked at her feet, which felt as though they were disconnected completely, a separate entity that had once taken her on a euphoric journey up to the heavens, but now hung on the end of her little legs like a couple of dead sardines. ‘I do not even want to dance! He has taken everything from me, everything. And given me you instead,’ she said to the bump.
Reaching into the drawers next to her bed, Lucía took out a tablet from the half-empty packet and swallowed it down with a glass of water. Thepayodoctor she’d seen before she’d left New York had prescribed them for her when she said she wasn’t sleeping.
Ten minutes later, she slid into blissful unconsciousness.
*
‘Lucía, you must get up!’ María entreated her daughter. ‘You have been lying in this room for almost two weeks! You are as skinny as our old mule and you look as if you have already joined your ancestors above us! Is that what you want? To die?’
María listened to the rise of her voice. She was at her wits’ end with Lucía; nothing she could do or say could stir her daughter from her bed. As she spent her days scrubbing away the years of neglect from their new home, Lucía lay here, inert and more unresponsive by the day. So, it was time to play her final card.
‘I am going to thefincanow, and by the time I get back, I want you out of bed. You have not had a wash since you arrived and the room stinks of your sweat. If you are not up and dressed, then I shall have no choice. I will call Meñique and tell him where we are and what has happened.’
‘No! Mamá!’ Lucía’s eyes shot open and María read the fear and horror in them. ‘You wouldn’t dare!’
‘Oh yes I would! I will not let you lie here any longer. I must protect my precious grandchild.’ María picked up her handbag and walked towards the door. ‘Remember how much I have already lost, Lucía. I will not see another pointless death occur right under my nose. I will be back by noon. Okay?’
There was no reply so, with that, she slammed the door behind her, glad of the relatively pure air in the corridor. She hadn’t been exaggerating when she had told her daughter she stank. Walking towards the lift, she saw her hands were shaking and only hoped that her threat would have the desired effect.
To her relief, when she arrived back just after lunchtime, she found Lucía at least sitting up cross-legged on her bed, wearing a towel.
‘I am up and washed as you wished. I had the maid come in to change my sheets, okay?’
‘It is a start, yes. Now let us find you some clothes.’ As María rooted through Lucía’s wardrobe, she realised that part of her was actually disappointed she had not had to carry out her threat. Maybe the best thing that could have happened was for Meñique to know.
‘It is hot outside, so wear this.’ María laid a cotton dress in Lucía’s arms. ‘I want you to come with me this afternoon to thefincaand see where it is that your baby will come into the world. I want you to look up at the Alhambra and remember who you are, Lucía.’
‘Do I have a choice?’
‘Yes. You can start taking responsibility for yourself, but if you insist on acting like a child, I shall have to treat you as one.’
