Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [4]
Ana spent her Christmas vacation and Holy Week with her parents in Sevilla, where she was allowed to take the air in the courtyard, but not permitted to go into the teeming city without her mother and a footman. Like many sevillanas, Jesusa veiled her face when she went out, as if she were too beautiful to be seen. Ana was happy that she was still a girl and could look around as they walked through the city.
The streets were crowded with vendors, pickpockets, nuns and monks, sailors and merchants, Gypsies, vagrants. Ana and Jesusa heard daily Mass in one of the chapels at the magnificent Catedral de Santa María de la Sede, built in the fifteenth century, its construction and decoration paid for by the riches streaming into Sevilla from the Spanish Empire. The vast Gothic arches, the gold-encrusted saints and virgins, the elaborate altar and numerous niches manifested the wealth of the city and Spain’s glorious history. Ana felt small and insignificant under the vault. Its towering columns were like fingers reaching toward purgatory, where she was heading, the nuns assured her, if she continued to be so defiant.
Ana and Jesusa lit candles before the gilded saints, and dropped a coin or two to the beggars on the steps. They walked to the cemetery to leave posies over the graves of the three dead boys for whom Ana was no substitute. They delivered remedies to housebound neighbors. They exchanged gossip with women and girls who visited and must be visited in return, and evenings, when she was old enough, they attended balls meant to display Ana to prospective suitors. In between religious obligations and social engagements, Ana was confined indoors, sewing or embroidering alongside Jesusa while two fat pugs grunted and snored in a cushioned basket at her feet.
“Keep your eyes on your work,” her mother snapped when Ana’s gaze strayed to the sliver of sky through the richly draped, narrow window. “That’s why your seams are so crooked. You don’t pay attention.”
Her mother criticized Ana for never sitting still, for speaking as if her opinion mattered, for not dressing her hair properly, for not having friends in Sevilla.
“How can I have friends here? You’ve banished me to a convent.”
“Swallow your sharp tongue,” Jesusa warned. “No one talks to you because you’re so disagreeable.”
She wondered if other girls felt as she did, that she was of no consequence and unwanted by her parents. She resented Jesusa’s obvious disenchantment at the same time as she tried, unsuccessfully, to earn her love. She avoided her father, who scowled whenever she was near, as if she offended him by being female.
She reached puberty at the same time Jesusa entered menopause. When least expected, Ana caught her mother’s gaze, a combination of envy and disgust that confused them both. Were it not for Iris, her maid, Ana would have believed she was dying the first time blood appeared on her pantalets. She was embarrassed by the changes in her body and her heightened emotions, mirrored by Jesusa. But she was discouraged from discussing or even thinking about any of her bewildering, disjointed feelings. She explored the new sensations in her body, but envisioned God frowning whenever she brushed her fingers against her budding breasts to feel the pleasure at the touch, so even her thoughts were forbidden.
Her schoolmates talked about the increased closeness to their mothers as they became young women, and Ana wished that Jesusa could be like them—loving, warm, attentive, encouraging, and willing to answer her questions. But Jesusa had buried maternal love with her three dead boys.
“I love you, Mamá,” Ana had once said to Jesusa.
“Of course you do,” Jesusa responded. Every time she remembered that day, Ana felt even more abandoned because Jesusa didn’t say “I love you” back.
While there was no affection at home, Ana