The House of Impossible Loves by Cristina López Barrio

paths, she would look away, lashing the animal’s back with the reins, the Saint Pantolomina of the Flowers card pulsing inside her bra.
    One morning in early summer, Clara had Bernarda return the priest’s violet-colored Bible. Pigeons were roosting in the bell tower, and old women escaped the heat inside their whitewashed houses. Holding little Manuela on her hip, the cook went into the church through the back door, which opened onto the cemetery hill, and handed the priest his Bible wrapped in brown paper. Padre Imperio asked her to wait on a pew while he went to the sacristy.
    “Why?” Bernarda grunted, shrugging her shoulders.
    “You’ll see. I know why you’ve brought the child.”
    Padre Imperio returned wearing his tunic, a jug of holy water in his hand.
    “Give me the girl.”
    Bernarda resisted with a growl.
    “I’m not going to hurt her, woman!”
    The priest took Manuela in his arms, walked over to the baptismal font, and poured holy water over her head.
    When Bernarda arrived back at Scarlet Manor, Clara was waiting in the kitchen.
    “Did he pour water on the girl?” Clara asked.
    “Water, water,” the cook repeated, passing a hand over her dark hair.
    “Good. At least he got some of what he wanted,” Clara muttered. “No more niceties. It’s time for me to get on with my revenge.”
    Clara pulled the Saint Pantolomina card out of her bra and tossed it behind cans of peaches in the pantry. She looked down at her daughter. Manuela was now a year old, and her eyes had grown even darker.
     
    Manuela Laguna did not have a pampered childhood. Every morning Bernarda repeated the instructions her mistress had given her—“make sure she’s fed and keep her warm”—then fattened the girl up as if she were preparing a lamb for slaughter. On cold nights she pulled the child to her body with its smell of stables, putting her to sleep with no more affection than the rhythm of her breath. Whenever Manuela cried, the cook grabbed oranges or tomatoes and juggled. But she did not bother to teach the girl to walk. Manuela took her first steps holding the hand of a regular client who often came into the kitchen to warm his chilblains by the stove with a bowl of stew or plate of roast. Nor did Bernarda teach the girl to speak. The cook had little faith in words and tried to use them as rarely as possible, preferring to communicate through her cooking and the occasional grunt. It took a new prostitute recently arrived from Galicia, a young girl with long, black braids and a eucalyptus heart, before Manuela spoke her first words in a northern accent she never lost.
    It was early autumn 1902. Manuela was three years old and—apart from the few babbles and grunts she learned from Bernarda—as mute as the insects that were her friends. For the rest of her life, Manuela Laguna would groom cockroaches and centipedes as pets. She would bathe them in warm water, dry them with a cloth, and any that survived she would fit with a tiny leash requiring an artisan’s patience.
    When the Galician woman first saw the little girl using a stick to pull cockroaches out from under the cupboard, she thought her mother was the woman with the deformed nose who stood smiling beside her, revealing the blackened teeth of a mule. Manuela was wearing a moth-eaten dress and booties the cook had knit for cold nights.
    “What’s your name?” the Galician asked.
    Manuela stood staring with big eyes, then brandished her stick.
    “Aren’t you a little terror?” The woman smiled. “Would you like a present?”
    In one hand she held the last of summer’s blackberries. The little girl dropped her stick, snatched the berries, and stuffed them all into her mouth.
    “I’ll tell you a story if you tell me your name.”
    With berry juice dripping down her chin, Manuela grunted and fled to the room where she slept with Bernarda.
    As the leaves fell from the beech trees, the Galician woman learned that Manuela—who was always sucking on