Page 53 of The Moon Sister
‘People feeding you chocolate again last night, were they?’ she commented as she wiped the cloth briskly over her daughter’s cheeks and mouth.
‘¡Ay!Yes.’ Lucía smiled as her mother proceeded to strip off the flamenco dress, the train of which was now caked in brown dirt. ‘All I had to do was dance for them and they gave me coins and chocolate.’
‘And today you must dance again for your grandparents. But not in this,’ she said as she set her naked daughter on the floor, then rolled up the dress and stuffed it into the wooden chest that she used for dirty laundry. ‘Here.’ She proffered a clean shift dress, which at least had some delicate embroidery at the neck and hem to distract the eye from the cheapness of the fabric. ‘Wear this instead.’
‘But, Mamá, I wore that when I was six! It is a baby dress!’
‘And see, it still fits you!’ María soothed, determined that her daughter, who was almost certainly going to be centre stage after lunch, would not disgrace her. Even if her husband already had, and her sons were nowhere to be found . . .
‘Now, I will brush and plait your hair. Sit still whilst I do it, and I will give you a glass of fresh orange juice.’
‘Orange juice? Where did you get that from, Mamá?’
‘Never you mind.’
Once she had fixed Lucía’s hair and sent her outside with her orange juice, María attended to her own toilette, which consisted of a brief wash in the barrel of water Eduardo had refilled, and donning a fresh white blouse. She rubbed precious almond oil into her long black hair and with no mirror to guide her, she coiled her hair into a bun at the nape of her neck, then carefully slicked down the baby hairs on the sides of her face into two gleaming curls that caressed her cheeks.
‘We must talk about what happened last night.’ José strode into the kitchen.
‘Later, after we have visited my parents for lunch. Here, I have brushed your best waistcoat.’ She held it out to him.
‘I must tell you that Lucía and I have received . . . offers of work.’
‘Which I’m sure you refused because she is underage.’
‘Do you really think anyone cares about that? If Lucía can dance in their bars and can bring in the customers, they will find ways around it.’
‘And where have these offers come from?’
‘Seville, Madrid and Barcelona. They want her, María, and we would be fools to turn them down.’
As José took the waistcoat, putting it over his filthy, smelly shirt, María stopped in her tracks.
‘You haven’t accepted any of these offers, have you?’
‘I . . . we will discuss it later. Where’s breakfast?’
María bit her tongue and offered him a bowl of porridge, having hidden the rest of the orange juice away as she knew he’d drink the whole lot down in one. While her husband went to sit on the step outside and smoke a cheroot whilst eating his porridge, María went in search of Eduardo, who was getting dressed.
‘Did you see your brothers last night?’
‘Early on in the evening, yes.’
‘They were watching the competition?’
‘They were in the crowd,sí.’ Eduardo avoided her gaze nervously.
‘Then where are they now?’
‘I do not know, Mamá. Shall I go and see what I can find out?’
‘What is it you’re not telling me?’ María studied her son.
‘Nothing . . .’ Eduardo tied a red polka-dot scarf around his neck. ‘I will go and make enquiries.’
‘Don’t be too long, we must be at your grandparents’ very soon,’ she called after him as he left the cave.
Her mother and father’s cave was at the bottom of the hill, which in terms of social position in Sacromonte, meant they had reached the top. It had a wooden front door, small shuttered windows and a concrete floor over which her mother had laid brightly coloured rugs. There was a proper sink in the kitchen, which they could fill from the well nearby, and a separate fire, just for cooking on. The furniture had been made out of local pine by her father, and when María stepped inside, she saw the table was heaving under pans filled with food.
