L'Enyorance

A week out, Llòrdes bought me a dress for the occasion: bright ruby red, trimmed at the neckline, short sleeves, and brief, billowing hemline with what resembled a sort of gilded Greek Key, with a blazon of the Crosses of Old Provence and Toulouse on the chest just above the left breast.

"Your father would have loved you in this," she slurred admiringly, as if a Cuc could possibly fathom even one of our myriad interpretations of beauty.

In the mirror I traced the outline of one of the Crosses against my skin, wishing numbly that I hadn’t just heard her.

I already knew that I had no intention of going. I could drink till I got sick or simply sham illness. Jouenodte had invited me to spend the night with her, but insisted on accompanying me to the ceremony the following day. So, I thought, I can just drink to the point of nausea, spend the night basking in her llar and her arms anyway, and then oblige her to nurse me all Dedication Day.

Somehow, of course, that plan never quite cemented itself. Jouenodte had to leave Fideus on business. Llòrdes insisted that I remain at home the evening before the Dedication so that she could inspire me with more trumped up tales of my father’s saintliness. I sat, across from her in front of the llar, my jaw deposited on the ledge of my palms, gazing out the oval picture window in the front room.

Somewhere between pirouettes, the Cuc must have noticed my lack of interest. "Pay attention, l-little Mercè! This is … your father I’m telling you about."

I thought of Jouenodte, my Jouenodte, and how strange it was that I should now think of her as mine. Resentment, again, as always, this time mottled with the texture of Jouenodte’s hard, round shoulders, her flaring trapeziuses, the taper of her long neck -

- and then, only the resentment again.

"I’m not, uh, I’m not feeling so well, Llòrdes. I need to lie down for the night."

***

Maybe I dreamed that night, I still don’t know for sure. When I woke on the morning of Dedication Day, I felt as if I had spent my whole life in that house, as if I had slept in that same bed every night for as long as I could remember. There were no Cucs in the world - as soon as I awakened, before I ventured to open my eyes - no Auses, no Llòrdes. Father was still alive, somewhere downstairs I could have sworn, probably making me breakfast. Strange, too, that he really wasn’t my father. He was just Father. I must have dreamed, sometime that night, that that was all I needed to feel.

Downstairs, the Cuc sat upright in front of the fire, fore and hind arms across one of her bellies, eyes shut. I sidled up to her, as quietly as I could, but her shuttering nostrils got the better of me. The old girl blinked empty lids repeatedly, jogging both eyeballs from the depths of her skull.

"So there you are." She began to smile, a Cuc’s smile, a wolf’s smile as Juisefine Huguet once described it. "Your father would be so proud of this day." I don’t remember hearing her jaw unhinge.

I reached up and stroked a forearm. "I can’t go, Llòrdes."

"Never mind that, little ch-child. We-," she twisted her head towards me. She began to scowl, I think, but her lips suddenly coagulated behind a row of fangs. "What do you mean, girl?"

"I can’t go. I don’t want to go." My words must have just glanced off her. I have never believed that Cucs were particularly adept at reading Catalan facial expressions either.

"You’re sick, then?" Llòrdes whisked around me, inspecting every centimeter of my frame.

"No, not especially."

"Then why? This is a g-great day for your father. You have to g-go! I will not allow this, this - disrespect - for his memory.