BULL SHOT #2
I stopped in the kitchen doorway, waiting for them to pass, to fill their eyes with the sight of the girls in their tight dresses and crowns of flowers and lace. But the Senor didn’t look at them. He looked straight towards me, and smiled.
It was then I understood: he had not ordered the rabo because he wanted it, but because I would have to make it.
I would have to pour time and sweat into the pan.
I would have to serve him at the table with my own hands.
I had thought that cooking was a sort of freedom, a way to gain an ounce of control over the people who dominated my world.
But I was wrong. I was not Ifrahim, able to drift and charm and cook my way across a continent.
I was a woman, and the Senor only had to flex his will to remind me – to remind the world – what that meant. I would never be free.
By the time I returned to the kitchen my palms were clammy with fury and nerves.
I swiped them down the apron, trying to think, my mind cloudy as old fat.
He might have ordered the rabo but he didn’t know about the bull, about the blood.
Did that make it my weapon, or his? I wasn’t sure.
All I knew in that moment was that it was a weapon, and that it was dangerous.
I busied myself with whisking oil and garlic, with dredging fish in flour.
I didn’t want to think about him, but I couldn’t stop, the smell of the stew kept getting in my nostrils.
Before, the Senor had been content to eat and drink like anyone else, to grasp Elena’s waist and throw the occasional leer my way as I crossed the patio. Why did he now …?
My hands stilled. This was the first feria without Ifrahim; the first year without his quiet presence, filling the kitchen. Perhaps he had spoken for me, all these years, in more ways than one.
I took a breath. I would serve the rabo de toro.
I would leave them to their drinking. I would be the cook, nothing more.
I told myself all of that, but I also picked up one of the kitchen knives and dropped it into the pocket of my apron.
I was no longer a child. I’d do more than vomit on the man if he tried to touch me.
A flicker of movement in the doorway made me start.
It was Elena. She was wearing the pale flowered silk dress that the Senor had given her, the year before.
It was girlish, but then, that was how he liked her.
The lace mantilla, his first gift, fell around her face, over her shoulders and down her back.
It made her look like she was on her way to communion.
Morales wanted her to seem that way for him, the man who paid to have her clean and to himself for the feria.
We stared at each other, Elena with her soap-scrubbed skin, me soaked in sweat and reeking of the stove. For a moment, the kitchen seemed to fill with the smell of gelatine and roses.
‘Mama sent me to check on the rabo,’ she said. ‘Is it ready?’
I pulled the stew pot towards me and gave it a stir. Rich, viscous and silky with marrow. A piece of the bull’s tail rose, tender around its star of bone.
‘Almost.’
‘Well, hurry up,’ she said. ‘They are drinking imported whisky. It’s making them impatient.’
I glanced over at her. There was something odd about her manner, something furtive. She was worrying at the web of skin between her thumb and forefinger, worrying it red.
‘The Senor seems different tonight,’ I said.
Her round face flushed. ‘What do you mean?’
I could hear the nervousness in her voice, barely held back. I left the stew and took a step towards her, my eyes on the door.
‘What’s going on?’ I whispered.
She looked at me for one shallow breath, two.
‘I’m leaving.’ Her voice was so quiet I could barely hear it over the din coming from the courtyard.
‘He’s going to take me with him, after tonight.
He said … he told me that when I turned eighteen he’d take me away from here, set me up in my own apartment.
’ She pinched at the skin of her hands. ‘I’m eighteen now.
So he’s got to take me with him tonight. ’
The lace mantilla, the sherry, the Turkish Delight, they weren’t what had made her bow her head and follow him into a bedroom, four years ago.
‘Elena—’
‘He has to.’ There was a tremble of panic in her voice. ‘He swore he would.’
‘But you hate him.’
She looked up at me. In that moment, I saw Mama Morales in her, in the defiance that coloured her cheeks and made her lips compress, in the rigid stare that said there is no way but this.
‘I hate this place more,’ she said.
And so I set the stew in front of them. I watched from the shadows as they ate, as their mouths and moustaches became coated with juice from meat and bone, as they mopped the thick, brown sauce with bread and washed it down with glasses of their expensive, foreign spirit.
When the Senor lifted a piece of meat on a spoon and held it to Elena’s lips, I wanted to rush out and tell her about the blood and the bull, tell her not to eat.
But I couldn’t. I could only watch, and wait.
Trouble was brewing. As I crossed the yard to clear the table I could hear it in the music, in every cracked-throat cry and feverish guitar note, in the hands that beat slap slap slap against each other. I collected the dishes. The Senor’s eyes crawled over the nape of my neck.
‘A fine rabo de toro,’ he said, as I loaded the tray. ‘Though a little forceful for my liking.’
I couldn’t help it. I looked at him. He was drunk, his face reddened from sun and alcohol, the brash smell of whisky all about him.
His friends had been diluting theirs with seltzer, but I watched as he tipped some into his glass, neat, spilling it on the tablecloth.
Beside him Elena sat, pale and sweating. He caught my glance towards her.
‘Poor little Elena, your rabo was too much for her.’ He drank his whisky. ‘Perhaps the two of us should take her up to bed.’
‘Be my guest,’ I retorted and walked away before I could see the consequence.
I didn’t have to wait long. Morales stepped into the kitchen a few minutes later, where I was hacking the bread to crumbs.
‘He wants ice, upstairs,’ she said. ‘Take it to him.’
I stopped my sawing and met her gaze. My lips were shaking with rage. I did what you wanted, I told her silently, I made what he asked for. Now leave me be.
‘I’m busy,’ I said.
‘You are not too busy for this.’
‘Get one of the girls to do it.’
‘No.’ Her face didn’t change. ‘He wants you to take the ice.’
In that moment, I remembered the knife in my pocket.
You know the rest. You know what I found, when I carried that bowl of ice upstairs and opened the door.
Blood and sand. Whisky and violence. Elena with the bottle in her grip – sharp as a freshly broken promise – and the Senor, his throat slashed, bleeding all her hope out on to the rug.