Teresa
What's
your name?
Yo soy Teresa Cepeda Davila y Ahumada.
So what was it before?
The woman
on the phone says
she wants to talk to a rabbi, because
she has dreamed
night after night
that her ancestors,
bearers of all that Spanish blood
her grandmother is proud of,
were New Christians,
Marranos,
Jews.
She thinks
perhaps it means
she should be Jewish,
maybe that would give them peace,
but what will she say to abuelita?
What was your name before, Teresita?
Around
the table,
over the Thanksgiving turkey
another grandmother
lets the news fall casually.
We were Jewish in Spain.
You know this.
I told you, remember?
But during the war, you know,
it was better to be Catholic.
And in
America too,
it was just easier.
What was your name in the old country?
A nice
Jewish girl
becomes a Spanish saint
in towered Avila,
grows up behind castle walls.
Yes, we were Jews, years ago.
Don't talk about it.
Secrets are common,
each of our neighbors has
a Moor to be forgotten.
The love
of Spain keeps us
rooted in these mountains,
and besides ahora nosotros credemos.
It's been generations.
We've forgotten,
we've been forgotten.
There is nothing to remember.
What was your name before Teresa?
Meshuggineh
Even if
she didn't wear the gold-plated
star around her neck,
still, I think I'd know
what brings us together, she and I.
The madwoman
rising from the desert
to confront me on an anonymous street
somewhere in cold Europe.
She shines
bright as the moon,
for she has lost the struggle
to pale away into the walls.
Lost the fight to be lost.
Are there
any of us, once crazy
that are no longer Jews?
Copyright © 2000 Charlotte Honigman-Smith
