By putting up this mezuzah in this new world, you will be able to do what we cannot do here since the Inquisition came to Portugal. You might touch the mezuzah and kiss your fingertips upon entering your home. And of course you must tell your wife and your servants never to sweep the dirt out a door when there is a mezuzah on its post.
I myself was surprised, indeed astonished, to find this mezuzah in the trunk. It would have been a dangerous object to possess; that someone had not thrown it away speaks greatly. You understand that it is not the money that these articles would fetch but the stories they hold: the dismay at what we have suffered and the wonder at what we have endured; the horror at what we have lost but the amazement at what we have held close. I can remember my first Seder, when not one of the men knew what all of the four questions to be asked were, and that when I finally came to your mother’s house in Granada I learned all the questions. Yes, our faith and the faith of our fathers is in many ways like a tattered cloth, worn and threadbare but still there. The Inquisition can keep killing us one moment and baptizing us the next, but there are those who in their hearts keep repeating the Shema—“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your might. And these words which I command you this day shall be on your heart. You shall teach them to your children, and you shall speak of them when you sit at home.”
I must stop reading for a minute, for I am struck by how similar these words are to the Credo that the padres teach Jerusalem. This was a credo that is not perhaps so full of ghosts and mysteries, but it is a credo nonetheless and I like it! This credo speaks of only one God, one spirit, not the three of the Trinity; but even so I think this God could be a feathered serpent if I want it to be so…. It is a God without a face. That is good. “Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Come here!”
“What is it, Mama?”
“I want to teach you something. Everyone should learn something new when they turn ten.”
Then Jerusalem Milagros de Luna Perez turned to the air beside her and said in a hushed voice, “Listen carefully, Estrellita.”
Later that same evening, when Jerusalem is sound asleep and her soft breathing purrs through the air of the adobe, I fetch a candle and get out León’s Bible and open it to the Book of Deuteronomy. Some of the verses sound very much like the Credo, for there is the commandment to love the one God and to teach the children. The words are almost identical. I close the book. And begin to think. There are too many good signs to ignore. The name of the province itself is the same as that of my beloved husband, León. His mother was named Esther—so close to the imaginary friend of Jerusalem. The relative in the province was named de Luna, the moon! The signs are all there.
I must walk to Nuevo León. I must meet my husband’s relations. I must begin a new life. I shall find work—I am after all a baker. This is my credo!
I get up and walk into the yard and take a pinch of dough and throw it into the oven as I do every morning between the last of the evening stars and the first light of the new morning. But this is the last time I shall do it here in Quimpaco. The thought excites me. Tomorrow we shall leave! I go in and look at Jerusalem. I am so excited I almost want to wake her up to tell her of our great adventure. But she sleeps with the wind jewel clutched in her right hand as she often does after she takes it off in the evening.
Chapter 21
WHEN JERRY WOKE up the next morning, she touched the shell at her neck. The wind jewel. Could this be the same one? Jerusalem’s wind jewel? She had taken to wearing it all the time. Usually she took it off and put it by her bedside table. Last night, however, she’d forgotten. But she looked now at the table. The paper, the map fragment had been moved! If it had fallen onto the floor, she could have understood. That would have seemed natural, but the paper had moved from one side of the table to another, and its corner was under the small mat on which her reading lamp stood. That could not be accidental. Someone must have moved it. Someone? There was only one other person in this house. Then she recalled the presence that she had sensed hovering over her as she had slept, the unnameable presence at the edge of her dreams. Constanza! But it was not simply that Constanza had come into her room. She had in some way entered Jerry’s dreams. Jerry began to tremble. It had been so easy when everything was neatly divided between the world up here and the one down in the cellar. But now these two worlds were not just overlapping; they were beginning to penetrate each other.
“Baked goods always do lousy during Lent,” Constanza growled as she, Jerry, and Sinta drove up to the church. This was to be Jerry’s first time at the church in weeks. But she was not coming for a service. It was the church fair and the weather was fine, so most likely it would be held outside. Jerry and Sinta had agreed to help at the fair—run the pinto bean toss for the children. In exchange Sister Evangelina promised them first pick, if they came early, from the Saints’ Closet, the name of the donated clothing section.
“There’s not going to be anything good,” Sinta said.
“I found a pair of work boots last year,” Constanza said.
“I mean fashion,” Sinta said.
“Of course there’s no fashion. Have you ever seen anyone fashionable in this church? I haven’t, and I’ve been coming here for over fifty years.” Ahead a station wagon lurched into the church driveway and there was a grinding of gears. “Oh, good Lord, we should all be buying crash helmets. It’s Sister Evangelina,” Constanza muttered.
“Hi, girls—my angels of the pinto toss! Okay, a deal’s a deal! Go right to the Saints’ Closet and take your pick.”
Sinta had been right. There was nothing worth looking at on the rack. Sinta had gone over and begun to pick through a bin with odd bits of jewelry. “Look, this is sort of cool.” She held up a zebra-striped hair clip.
“Nice,” Jerry said. She walked over to the bin and began picking through.
“What’s this?” Sinta said, holding up a tarnished silver cylinder. Jerry inhaled sharply. She knew what it was immediately. It was a mezuzah. Sinta turned it over in her hands. “Look at these designs on it—weird.”
“It’s Hebrew.”
“Hebrew? How do you know?”
“Because.”
“Because why?”
“Just because.” Jerry shut her eyes for a moment. Hadn’t she had this conversation before?
“Are you all right, Jerry? I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have pressed you. You’ve just been doing so well with…uh…the talking.”
Jerry’s eyes were still clamped shut. These two worlds were coming too close together. But she knew that she couldn’t give up the one of the cellar. To do so would be to retreat again into a terrible silence; she just knew it. But she was scared. What was happening?
She took a deep breath and forced the words out. “That thing with the Hebrew, it’s like a charm, sort of.” She touched her sweater and felt beneath it the wind jewel. In that moment she knew her name was not Jeraldine, but that she was Jerusalem.
Jerry couldn’t wait to get home. She had bought the mezuzah for ten cents from the Saints’ Closet. She wanted to look at it more carefully. One end of the silver tube was smashed and the silver seemed to have thinned, and she wondered, if indeed she could pry it open, would she find the pieces of parchment with the words from Deuteronomy or other Bible passages? She was tempted to try and open it. But would this be considered sacrilegious?
In the cellar she stared at the mezuzah that she held. She had a sudden inexorable urge to pry open the thin end. She took a bobby pin from her hair. The tip was just right to insert. A minuscule piece of silver flaked off. There was something inside! She needed tweezers, a pin, anything. Did she dare go back upstairs? Constanza had gone to bed early, but perhaps she had not been asleep long enough to be really sound asleep. She had another idea. She bit off the rubber tip from the end of the bobby pin. That made it slimmer. She began to reinsert it. Perfect. Working carefully for several minutes, she
finally extracted a darkened fragment of paper. Would it be the ancient biblical passage…These words I command you this day…. No! What was this Spanish word that jumped out at her: limpieza…. Jerry broke out in a sweat. There was something very wrong here.
But it did connect. There was a terrible, chilling connection between this fragment of paper and, yes, another fragment in the trunk. She had seen it. As if in a trance she lifted the lid to the trunk. She knew exactly where that fragment was. Like iron filings drawn to a magnet, her hand moved toward it. Jerry fitted the two fragments of paper together. It was still not whole but there was enough—and this was no biblical passage. “Este documento verifica que el portador Julio de Luna es el cuarto descendi-ente de la generación de Cristianos puros sin la ascen-dencia judía descubrido por los cientos años pasados y por lo tanto esta concedido un certificado de la limpieza de sangre….”
Jerry slowly translated the words. It didn’t matter that they were Old Spanish, that they were stained and sometimes a tear broke them up. The meaning of the words, like coils of hatred, descended into her consciousness and became clear. “This document verifies that bearer Julio de Luna is the fourth-generation offspring of pure Christians with no Jewish ancestry traceable for the last one hundred years and therefore is granted a certificate of pure blood with all the attendant rights and privileges and therefore is fit to hold public offices or any benefice within the Kingdom of Castille, and within its jurisdiction.”
Jerry closed her eyes. “I remember,” she whispered into the amber darkness. “I remember how Beatriz hated that word limpieza! How she said the word had been ruined. Blood…blood…clean blood…pure…blood…blood libel…blood secrets…” Jerry spoke, and as she spoke her voice seemed to fill the cellar and the amber light swirled about her. I am just a small particle, a dust mote in this history, she thought, and she saw a house, a wooden and adobe house on a street. There was a woman who looked so much like Constanza now, almost as old, it would seem. And there were secrets in the house—blood secrets.
The Merchant’s House
THE STREET OF HERNÁN CORTÉS
MEXICO CITY
1590
Zayana
I stole the limpieza de sangre when we first arrived in Tampico in the village of Pánuco. That bitch Dora. To think of the hopes I came with and how within a blink she dashed them all! But that was forty years ago, why am I thinking of that now? Ah, yes, I know. I know…I don’t forget. I just lose the thread. Well, what can I expect? I am over eighty now. So the thread, why I am thinking of that stupid limpieza? Because when I first came here so full of hope with my darling little Jerusalem, I remembered my father-in law’s words:
“By putting up this mezuzah in this new world, you will be able to do what we cannot do here since the Inquisition came to Portugal. You might touch the mezuzah and kiss your fingertips upon entering your home.”
I thought I would do that. I liked the idea, and so when they led me to the little lean-to out in the backyard, not far from where they dumped the night soil, I might add, I thought, Well, I can nail this to our doorpost. It is the perfect way to honor my dear León’s family. I forgot the other part of the letter, the part where León’s father had written that it was a dangerous object to possess. It still was dangerous. I remember how hot it was that day. There is no hotter place than Tampico in late August. Humid, and mosquitoes so thick you kept your mouth shut and breathed only through your nose. It doesn’t seem forty years ago. I can still hear her shriek.
“What are you doing? That is private property. You are to rent it from us for five reales a month. You do not have permission to nail up anything. What is that thing?”
“It came from Luis Perez, León’s father. It has some holy texts from the Bible,” I began to explain, and her face seemed to turn to stone.
Then she spat out the words. “We are not Jews. There are no Jews in this family. You stay right here. Don’t move.” I was scared. I could not imagine what she was going to do, but when she came back she held out a certificate. “I don’t suppose you read, but I’ll read this to you.” I said I did read, but she paid me no heed. It was a fancy paper with a wax seal. She called it a “Limpieza de Sangre.” After she had finished reading it, she drew herself up very tall. “You see. We are of pure blood and this is legal proof. How could we be Jews? We have a son named Jesús, and another in Spain studies for the priesthood. My great-uncle’s second cousin was an archbishop. We are hidalgos! We are aristocrats and you never forget it. You foolish, stupid Indian. If you plan to stay here, we shall have none of that.”
She treated me like donkey dung. She ripped the mezuzah from my hand and threw it as far as she could over the courtyard wall. In those days there was not even a street in this village, and on the other side of the wall it was the swamp. I was so angry I could have strangled her right there—this plump, pale woman with a face like kneaded dough and two small eyes set in it like tiny raisins. I vowed that I would find that mezuzah. The rainy times would not come for another two weeks, so there was still a chance. Every day I went out and searched. I prayed, too. I prayed to all the gods, the god of my husband, to Quetzecoatl and Atlau. I figured I needed all the help I could get. I even prayed to Jesus and the Madonna. My reasoning was that if these gods are truly powerful, if they are good, they must see what Dora did was evil—the way she spoke to me, the way she denied her own blood. The words that were written in the mezuzah were not bad words—what could be better than admonishing parents to teach their children to love something greater than themselves? Here was my reasoning for calling all the gods. I figured that God could be called one thing in one language or by one people and another name by another people. It still really was all one God, more or less. That is what I believed then and still believe now.
So every day and sometimes in the evenings, I went out to look for the mezuzah. And, in fact, four days before the rains came, I found it. It was near noon and I noticed a fierce glint in the weeds. There it was. It was as if it had been waiting for me. I was so happy, but I knew that I couldn’t keep it on my doorpost. I tried to think where it would be the safest. Then I knew! It was an astounding thought. I would put it in the Madonna statue that Dora kept in the front courtyard and kissed every time she and her husband, Don Julio, and their children came home. And I too can touch the Madonna, then kiss my fingertips just as León’s father did, but I shall know the truth of what’s inside. What a trick, I thought, what a magnificent trick. So I got up when the house slept and I stole into the courtyard. As I thought, the Madonna was hollow and perched on a pedestal. She was a small statue and not heavy. So I just tipped her slightly and slipped the mezuzah inside into the folds of her gown. It was right where her ankle would be if the artisan had bothered to make her with legs, which he did not. Her weight rested on the hem of her gown. I nearly laughed out loud. Oh, how I delighted when I would see Doña Dora kissing that statue. If she knew!
Doña Dora proved impossible to live with. She treated me and little Jerusalem terribly. If she thought the taint of Jewish blood was shameful, she thought Indian blood just as bad and my little Jerusalem resembled me more than she did her father, although she did have his chin. But her skin was dark and her eyes even darker. Don Julio was not a bad man, but his wife gave him no peace. I was trying to do my baking, but I realized Jerusalem and I could not remain there. I began to look for another place to live, and shortly before we moved out, something very bad happened. Doña Dora was always very particular about her clothes, and she accused a serving girl of scorching one of her silk gowns. The girl was no more than twelve and she beat her so brutally that the child will be blind in one eye forever. I could not move out of this house fast enough. When would she turn on my little Jerusalem Milagros? Jerusalem, who had survived the plague, might not survive this woman with her raisin eyes and rancid breath. Yes, her breath was terrible. I don’t know how Don Julio could stand to lie with her. I wanted to hurt her terribly. I wanted to scare her. I wante
d vengeance for the serving girl and, yes, myself and all the other people she had hurt in life. The afternoon before I left, there was a sign that came to me. I was washing clothes in the stream when I heard a great beating of wings. Jerusalem looked up and said, “Mama, águila! Águila!” An immense eagle had landed on a rock on the other side of the stream. But I knew that this was not simply an eagle. No! It was Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of war and of the sun. The Aztecs believed that the sun god needed daily “nourishment”—tlaxcaltiliztli, that is, human blood and hearts. The hearts were offered on the sacrificial stone. I had heard about these sacrifices and so had Jerusalem, for she began to tremble fiercely as she too remembered who the eagle really was. She had heard the stories of the young virgins sacrificed. “Mama,” she whispered. “Has he come for me?”
“No! Never. It is not your blood he wants….”
And that was when I knew the true meaning of the eagle’s presence. He did not want our blood. He wanted the pure blood. The blood of a hidalgo. He wanted the coveted blood of Doña Dora proven and certified by the fancy parchment in the gilt frame. I knew exactly how I would do it. The next night was to be my last night in the house of the de Lunas. I had already planned to go to the statue and retrieve the mezuzah, but now in its place I would leave the scraps of the Limpieza de Sangre. Yes, I would tear it up and hide it in the statue of the Virgin. This would destroy Doña Dora. And as a relic of my conquest, I would take one small scrap of the document with me. But it was not just a sign of my conquest. I had already taught Jerusalem the passages from the Bible that were in the silver vial, and now I would teach her a new thing. I would show her these little scraps of paper with the words at the top, “El Certificado del Limpieza de Sangre” and my lesson would be, You can have the purest blood, but with a bad heart, it is worth nothing.
Blood Secret Page 14