Read No Enemy but Time for Free Online

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    Encarnación realized that if her son was ever to have a chance amid the terrible babel of adult life, she must remedy this situation. For too long she had kept him from feeling the afternoon sun on his pert, monkeyish face. That she had deprived him of this blessing, primarily because her neighbors regarded her as a fallen woman and a witch, shamed her deeply. Today she would articulate this shame by attempting Page 17

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    to exorcise it.
    Hoisting the boy onto her hip, Encarnación steeled herself to the ordeal of carrying him to the roof. Her dirty clothes she had knotted inside one of her cheap, capacious skirts, such as gypsy women wore, and this makeshift laundry bag provided a counterweight to the child. So laden, she left her apartment, walked along the gallery landing, and climbed a set of dingy interior stairs toward the building's concrete wash house.
    Expressions of wonder and fear took turns passing across the child's face, but he hung on gamely and did not avert his eyes from a single challenge. Only the angry circle of sun peering down into the stairwell made him blink.
    Near the roof Encarnación heard a sound like a single tiny fish frying in a skillet. Emerging into the open, she saw an old woman clad from pate to shoe tops in rusty ebony, all about her the sodden flags of wash day. This person gazed raptly at the Giralda, the tower of the great cathedral of Seville, while peeing into a tin can thrust beneath her concealing skirt.
    The arrival of unexpected company startled the vieja , but, with a stoop and a whirl dazzling in one so ancient, she withdrew the can from between her legs, made a kind of toasting motion with it, and thereby salvaged both composure and pride.
    Encarnación hesitated. Her child, his every didy in need of laundering, was wearing only a stained cotton jersey; and this old woman—hardly a friend, since no one in the building was—hurried forward to examine the boy. After easing her tin can onto the lid of the water drum beside the stairwell entrance, she poked the child with gnarly fingers, all the while gabbling furiously. Although he recoiled from these attentions, the pokes seemed to trouble him less than the spent air spiraling noisily from the vieja ' s mouth. He had heard Encarnación give vent to many strange sounds, including, most often, tongue clicks meant to warn him away from mischief—but the crone's performance was of a different order, vigorous and patterned. It hypnotized as well as cowed him.
    “ Qué alerto, ” declared the old woman, addressing the mother while studying the child. “Is it true that he has never heard the talk of other people? Is it true you have not taken him to the priests for christening?
    Por Dios , Señorita Ocampo, if these accusations are true, you arm those misguided gossips who call you bruja . You give them cause to dishonor your name.”
    Spoken to her face, the word bruja —witch—made Encarnación cringe. This calumny, she well knew, derived from her singular appearance and her neighbors’ astute surmise that her ancestors were Moriscos —that is, Christianized Moors—of uncertain steadfastness in their new faith. Disciples of Mahomet, the Moors had come to Iberia from northern Africa. Yes, but what spiritual allegiance had bound them before their conversion to Islam? Black magic, Encarnación's neighbors would say. Mumbo jumbo. Voodooism. Imbued with misinformation and prejudice, they believed her a stalking horse for Satan. Indeed, the old woman haranguing her on the rooftop now ascribed to her, heartlessly point-blank, an odious personal quality known among Spaniards as mal ángel , or negative charm.
    “A proper christening would remove this child from the realm of devils. Why do you deny him? To increase your stores of mal ángel ? Do you wish him to converse only with your titties and the evil spirits of your sins? Por Dios , Señorita, it