The scent of cloves and cinnamon wafts up from saffron broth as grandmother fills our bowls with white beans, chickpeas, and cubes of beef.
For a while no one speaks as we enjoy Grandmother’s adafina, kept warm from yesterday, because cooking is work, and work is forbidden on Shabbat. We eat the first bites hurriedly but eventually slow down, because Shabbat meals are meant to be savored, and no one will be leaving the table until we have talked about our week, sung a few songs, and eaten all that our stomachs will hold.
A loud knock startles us. “Who’s there?” I hear the alarm in Grandfather’s voice as he goes to the door.
Grandmother hurries to hide the remainder of the bread, and my mother covers the pot of stew and takes it out the back door. A stew kept warm on a dying fire and a braided loaf means that we are observing the Jewish Sabbath, and no one must know. But it is just neighbors, Bernardo and Marisela, come with a flute and tambourine to be among their own kind making music on Shabbat afternoon.
The bread and stew are brought back to the table, and though we all claim to have had enough, the pot is soon emptied with small tastes, sopped up with the remaining bread. Susana has disappeared, using the excitement of the new arrivals to slip outside.
“You mustn’t be so hard on Susana,” Grandmother says. “Girls get moody when it’s their time to become a woman.”
“But she’s so scornful!” My mother’s eyes glisten. “She says, ‘I was born a Christian.’ What kind of talk is that? As if we can choose our ancestors?”
“Sensible talk,” Grandfather replies. “We are Jews who cross ourselves, eat pork when a Christian puts it on our plate, and buy leavened bread during Passover even though we feed it to the chickens when no one is looking. We’ve left behind so much of who we are, perhaps it’s no longer worth the trouble it causes us.”
“Jaume!” Grandmother is aghast. “Such talk coming from you?”
Grandfather snorts. “I will die having never swallowed that wafer at Mass or bent a knee of my free will to the Hanged One.” Above his gray beard, his face is mottled with anger. “I was a young man still living in Mallorca when I let them splash me with their water. I did it to save my life, but I have never thought of myself as one of them.”
I hate these conversations because I know, even at six, that a threat hangs over these afternoons. To Christians we are Judaizers. To Jews we are traitors to our faith, Marranos, swine. I fight back tears. “Can’t you unbaptize yourself?” I say, hearing the huskiness in my voice. “Can’t you say, ‘I’ve changed my mind and I’d rather be a Jew?’”
My grandmother smiles wistfully. “I wish it were that simple, little one, but Christians believe that once they’ve wetted you, there’s no turning back."