The Familiar

Luzia works for the Ordoño family in the Calle de Dos Santos. One morning, the cook burns the bread because she is upset about her son’s interest in a lady playwright. Doña Valentina, who has a cold relationship with her husband, Don Marius, comes downstairs to scold the cook and Luzia.

When she comes down a second time, the bread in the pan is perfect. Luzia, who notices Valentina’s bitterness, fixed the burnt bread by singing words over it that her aunt taught her. Luzia knows that “she should be careful, but it was difficult not to do something the easy way when everything else was so hard” (3). Sometimes at market, she will sing a little song to multiply the eggs or vegetables. Once she tried to multiply money and was bitten by a copper spider that appeared in the purse. Her Aunt Hualit taught her the words but Luzia makes up the tune, and her aunt warned her against trying to use magic to get rich.

Valentina asks Luzia about herself and is unsettled by the girl’s gaze. The next day, Luzia goes to the church of San Ginés. Her mother, Blanca Cana Cotado, was buried beneath the church floor after she died of illness and had a pauper’s funeral.