What moon will gather up
your grief of lime and oleander?
—Frederico García Lorca, “El paso de la siguiriya”
I WAS BORN IN SPAIN, in Granada, where Soledad went when she fled the island in March 1958. She had lived there for two years already, earlier, in university. She had wanted to become an architect. She loved flamenco, and with her throaty voice gave such life to the “Siguiriya” and the “Solea gitana,” those solemn songs, sober and majestic, that churn up from the bottom of the belly and somehow manage to convey all the tragedies of the human condition.
The butchers had taken everything from her, María Luz said, leaving her only the weeping moons to gather her sorrow and her voice to lament—the voice that from time to time floated up in a corner of the house, a desperate cry as she sang “El paso de la siguiriya”: “¿Adónde vas, siguiriya, con un ritmo sin cabeza?¿Qué luna recogerá tu dolor de cal y adelfa?”
María Luz claimed that I was supposed to be born in October, but Soledad had decided otherwise. She would never have allowed such an affront: she associated October with Duvalier, terror, the repressive debauchery of all the rabble celebrating his rise to power. So Soli had spent July and August walking, every single day. Sometimes she wandered for days on end, covering incredible distances, to try to bring on labour.
María Luz had never been a midwife, but Soledad didn’t want anyone else with her, so she had to learn.
“The day you came out of her belly, right away you cried your first cry, then you opened your eyes. When she saw you, Soledad was speechless, astounded.”
“Did she expect me to have horns and claws?”
María Luz was accustomed to these kinds of remarks, which I let slip all the time without thinking—a sign, María Luz said, of my yearning for a mother’s love—a love Soledad had never been able to give me. As usual, María Luz ignored my sulking.
“I had prepared bottles of milk,” she went on. “I had hired a young woman to take care of you. You wriggled gently in my arms, trying to bury your whole tiny fist in the flower of your mouth. Your small pink fist, so energetic and determined. Soledad was trembling, she couldn’t take her eyes off you. I could see her frail body shivering. I left the room to set the milk to cool, and after a moment I heard a cry. I rushed back into the room with you, still clutching you, huddled against me. Soledad was squalling her pain. She vomited her hatred in a shuddering swell of sobs, but her face was dry. For the first time, I felt the real weight of so much suffering. You looked so patient bundled in my arms. You had already gotten used to sorrow in her womb. You were waiting quietly with your fist in your mouth. Suddenly Soledad took out her breast, and without a word, I laid you in her arms.”
My childhood was wild and solitary. Soli was absent, even in the way she looked at me—she was raw, and it pushed me away, to nothingness, to wandering. I was so alone in my silent despair. What could I have asked of her? How could I ask for what she couldn’t give? What hope was there for either of us? I begged for her impossible love with all my might, spinning alone in the blind nights. I was looking for something to hang on to. María Luz fought to block out that sadness, to protect me with her imperfect words. Soli, reclusive in her silence, was always a little bewildered at the sight of me. Soli, who only ever paid silent attention to me—silence punctuated by withering sighs that burst from her chest. And there was María Luz, trying to fill the void. Luckily there was Mika, too, my grandmother, whose self-sacrifice and gentleness never ceased to amaze me. She never went a single month without writing to us, and she made a point of coming to stay for a few weeks every year. Without her, without her presence, and of course without María Luz, I would have spent my whole childhood like a bird screaming alone on its branch, as the song goes.
Soledad had made silence an absolute rule, an inviolable fortress, and anytime she felt threatened, she berated me, hysterical: no words, no talking. In those moments, an intense pain heaved through my body. My blood ran cold.
The day I turned sixteen, María Luz, beaming, asked Soledad to put her arm around me for a photo. Soledad frowned. She had spent the afternoon cooking and humming, singing her usual blues. Without a word, she opened the door, leaped over the railing, and started to run. María Luz panicked and followed. She ran after her for a few minutes, trying to catch up, but she had to give up. Soledad didn’t come back until long after midnight. Forgive me, she said. I had never dared to tell her how painful her silence was for me. I could hardly believe that the woman who had given birth to me had once been a cheerful girl, happy to be alive—once, before all the horror.
Soli’s future, María Luz repeated, had disappeared, it was annihilated that night. Sunday, January 5, 1958. But all the hatred that Soledad spewed out, I absorbed. I sipped it, I drank it down, and as the years went by I became consumed with a desire for revenge that was as overwhelming as my longing for love.
By the time I turned seventeen, still an orphan of the world as well as by birth, I was spitting fire. I went around with fury in my belly, aimlessly, searching for my soul. The silence droned on without respite. Although we lived together, I had forgotten what Soli’s voice sounded like.
Only María Luz was watching, her shadow always over me.
María Luz taught me joy, she taught me to love the wind, the rain, the smell of the earth, to name the stars and talk to the birds. She loved her country, and the woman who caught me, who caught my first smile, was able to replace the acrimony flowing through my veins. “I christened you as a daughter of this land, which no hatred, strong as it may be, can strip of its wonders. The rust and ochre of Al-Andalus will dwell within you, along with my love and Soli’s. She does love you, our Soli,” she said, leaning her forehead against mine. I pouted, but María Luz went on. “In her own way, of course, she loves you. And you know it.” She changed the subject: “To love Spain, to love any land, you have to know its history.”
María Luz gave me books to read, and she brought me along when she travelled, on holiday, all over the country. I walked through the streets of Andalusia to the foot of the sierra. I learned to name the stones laid by the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans. I learned to decipher Spain. Yet all the gardens of Andalusia, all the love that María Luz had for me—none of it could lighten the weight that rested on my shoulders. It poisoned my blood, and it had made my life a road paved with delusions. What I was looking for didn’t exist in Spain. It was something neither Soledad nor María Luz could give me.