Page 42 of The Moon Sister
‘It is you and me, little one,’ she whispered as the baby finally suckled and silence descended once more in the cave. ‘You are born a girl, and that is your bad luck.’
María staggered out of bed, the baby still clasped to her, desperate to take a drink of water. Micaela had left in such a rush she had not filled her patient’s mug. She walked from her bedroom to the kitchen at the front of the cave feeling dizzy from thirst and exertion. Grabbing the water jug, she put it to her lips and drank. Looking out of the tiny window hewn into the rock at the front of the cave, she saw it was a beautiful clear night and the stars shone brightly, framing a perfect crescent moon.
‘Light.’ She whispered and kissed the top of her baby’s downy head. ‘I shall call you Lucía, little one.’
After making her way back to bed, still clutching the baby in one arm and the jug in her other, María finally fell into an exhausted sleep, lulled by the distant rhythm of the flamenco guitars.
*
1922, ten years later
‘Where have you been, you naughty girl?’ María stood with her hands on her hips at the mouth of the Albaycín cave. ‘Alicia told her mamá you were not in school again today.’
‘Alicia is a sneaky she-devil who should mind her own business.’ Lucía’s eyes flashed in anger.
María saw her daughter had mimicked her stance and was also standing with her own hands on her tiny hips.
‘Enough of your cheek,pequeña! I know where you were, because Tomás saw you by the fountain, dancing for coins.’
‘So what if I was? Someone has to earn some money around here, don’t they?’ Lucía pressed some pesetas into her mother’s hand, then with a toss of her long black hair, she marched past her and into the cave.
María looked down at the coins, which were enough to buy vegetables from the market and even a blood sausage or two for José’s supper. Still, it did not excuse the child’s insolence. Her ten-year-old daughter was a law unto herself; she could be taken for a child of six due to her tiny stature, but that fragile outer packaging contained a volcanic and passionate temperament, which her father said only added to her exceptional flamenco skills.
‘She was born to the sound of thealboreas! The spirit of theduendelives inside her,’ José said that evening, as he hoisted his daughter onto the mule to take her off to dance in the city’s main plaza to the sound of his guitar. José knew the money he’d earn with Lucía’s tiny form stamping and whirling would triple his usual tips from those drinking at the surrounding bars.
‘Don’t bring her back too late!’ María called to her husband as the mule clopped off down the winding path.
Then she squatted back down on the hard dusty earth outside the cave to continue weaving her basket out of the esparto grass that had dried since harvest. Leaning her head back against the wall for a moment, she enjoyed the mellow warmth of the sun on her face. Opening her eyes, she glanced down into the valley beneath her, the River Darro running through it, swollen with springtime thaw from the Sierra Nevada mountains. The setting sun cast a rich orange glow on the Alhambra, which sat above her on the opposite side of the valley, its ancient towers rising up out of the dark green forest.
‘Even though we live little better than mules, at least we have beauty,’ she murmured. As she worked, a sense of calm flowed through her, despite the ever-lingering anxiety that José was using Lucía to earn the family a living. He was too lazy to take a normal job, preferring to rely on his precious guitar and his daughter’s talent. Sometimes, they would receive an offer from a richpayo– a non-gypsy – to perform at a party in one of their grand houses in Granada. This had only added to Lucía’s delusions of grandeur – she didn’t understand that thepayoscame from another world that she could never hope to aspire to.
Yet Lucía seemed to thrive on it. It was hard to remember a time when she had not been tapping out a rhythm – even as a baby sitting in her highchair eating with her iron spoon, her feet would be continually beating. The child was never still. María remembered the moment when, at only nine months old, Lucía had hauled herself to her feet by grabbing the table leg and determinedly taken her first few teetering steps unaided. It had been reminiscent of watching a fragile china doll getting up to walk. The residents of Sacromonte had backed away in fear at the sight of her when María had taken her out and about.
‘Devil child,’ she’d heard one neighbour whisper to her husband, and indeed, as Lucía’s toddler rages had made her ears ring, María had thought the same. Desperate for some peace, she had eventually discovered her daughter would only quieten to the sound of her father’s flamenco guitar, tapping her little hands and feet along to it. Then, as María had practised heralegríasin the kitchen in preparation for a fiesta, she’d looked down and seen two-year-old Lucía’s diminutive form copying her movements. From the proud tilt of her chin, to the way her hands swept gracefully about her little body and the fierce stamping of her feet, Lucía had managed to capture the very essence of the dance.
‘¡Dios mío!’ José had whispered, glancing at his wife in amazement. ‘You want to learn to dance like your mamá,querida?’ he’d asked the child.
Lucía had fixed her father with her intense gaze. ‘Sí, Papá. I dance!’
Eight years on from that moment, there was no doubt that María’s own ability as a flamenco artist – she was considered one of the best in Sacromonte – had been surpassed by her daughter’s prodigious talent. Lucía’s feet could tap out so many beats to the minute, that even though Lucía begged her to count them, María could not count fast enough. Herbraceo– the use of her arms in the correct position – was almost faultless, and above all, there was a light in her eyes, which came from an invisible flame inside her and elevated her performance to another level.
Most evenings, as white wisps of smoke rose from the chimneys of the many caves, the mountain of Sacromonte was alive with the strumming of guitars, the deep male voices of thecantaors, and the clapping and stamping of the dancers. No matter that its gypsy residents were poor and hungry, they knew the spirit of flamenco could lift them up.
And Lucía embodied that spirit more than anyone. As she danced with the rest of the village at fiestas in one of the large communal caves used to celebrate such events, others would stop to marvel at theduendeinside her; a power that could not be explained, that soared out of one’s soul and held the onlooker hypnotised, because it contained the gamut of human emotion.
‘She’s too young to know she has it,’ José had said one night after Lucía had performed for a crowd that had gathered outside their cave, drawn by the pounding feet and the flashing eyes of a small child who did indeed seem possessed. ‘And that is what makes her even more special.’
*
‘Mamá? Can I help you with the baskets?’ Lucía asked her a few days later.
‘If you have time in your busy schedule, yes.’ María smiled, patted the step next to her and handed her daughter some esparto grass. They worked together for a while, María’s fingers slowing down as weariness overcame her. She’d been up at five to feed the mule, the chickens and the goats that lived in the cave which served as a stable next door, then she had lit the fire under the pot to provide her four children and husband with a meagre breakfast of maize porridge. Her lower back ached after carrying water from the large cisterns at the base of Sacromonte mountain up through the steep cobbled alleyways of the village.
At least she now felt a rare moment of peace, sitting here with her daughter working quietly beside her. Even though on so many occasions, she’d looked up at the great Alhambra, its position and grandness signifying everything that was so unfair in her life, and had railed at it – at her life of constant struggle. Yet she had the comfort of being surrounded by her own people, tucked away in their small hillside community. They weregitanos, Spanish gypsies, whose ancestors had been forced outside Granada’s city walls to carve out their homes in the unforgiving rock of the mountain. They were the poorest of the poor, the lowest of the low, those who thepayoslooked down upon with disdain and mistrust. They only came to thegitanosfor their dancing, their ironmongery, or theirbrujas, like Micaela, the medicine woman, whom thepayoswould consult in secret when in desperate need of help.
‘Mamá?’
‘Yes, Lucía?’ María watched her daughter point to the Alhambra.
