Ines of My Soul Read Online Free

replied defiantly.
    I was used to working from sunup to sundown, and I did not lack for customers for my sewing and embroidery. In addition, I made onion- and meat-filled pies, cooked them in the public ovens at the mill, and sold them at dawn in the Plaza Mayor. After a lot of experimenting, I discovered the perfect proportion of lard and flour to obtain a firm, thin, malleable dough. My pies—or empanadas—became very popular, and after a while I was earning more from my cooking than from my sewing.
    My mother brought me a gift of a small wood statue of the miraculous Nuestra Señora del Socorro, hoping she would bless my womb, but the Virgin must have had more important matters on her hands, because she ignored my pleas. I had not used the vinegar sponge for a couple of years, but there was no sign of a child. The passion I shared with Juan was becoming a source of vexation for both of us. The more I demanded of him and the less I forgave, the further away he drifted. Toward the end I was almost not speaking to him and he was speaking only to yell. He did not dare hit me, however, because the one time he lifted his fist, I swung my iron skillet at his head, the way my grandmother had with my grandfather, and then my mother with my father—which, they say, was why he left us and we never saw him again. In this respect, at least, my family was different: the men did not beat their wives, only their children. I had barely tapped Juan, but the frying pan was hot and it left a mark on his forehead. For a man as vain as he was, that little burn was a tragedy, but it made him respect me. The welt from the skillet put an end to his threats, but I admit that it did not help our relationship, because every time he ran his finger over the scar, I saw a criminal gleam in his eyes. He punished me by denying me the pleasures that once he had given with such magnanimity.
    My life changed; the weeks and months dragged by like a sentence in the galleys, nothing but work and more work, always grieving over being sterile and poor. My husband’s whims and debts became a heavy load that I assumed in order to avoid the shame of facing his creditors. Our long nights of kisses and lazy mornings in bed had ended; our embraces were further and further apart, brief and brutal, like rapes. I bore them only in hopes of a child. Now, when I can look back and observe my whole life from the serenity of my old age, I understand that the Virgin’s true blessing was to deny me motherhood and thus allow me to fulfill an exceptional destiny. With children I would have been tied down, as we women are. With children I would have stayed in Plasencia, abandoned by Juan de Málaga, sewing and making empanadas. With children, I would not have conquered this Kingdom of Chile.
    My husband continued to deck himself out like a chulo and spend like a hidalgo, assured that I would achieve the impossible in order to pay his debts. He drank too much and visited the street of the procuresses, where he tended to disappear for several days, until I paid some hefty men to go look for him. They would bring him back covered with lice and limp with shame. I would rid him of the lice and nourish the shame. I stopped admiring his torso and his statuesque body and began to envy my sister, Asunción, married to a man who looked like a boar but who was a hard worker and a good father to his children. Juan was getting bored and I was losing hope, which was why I did not try to stop him when finally he decided to go to the Americas in search of El Dorado, a city of pure gold, where children’s playtoys were topazes and emeralds. A few weeks later, he left in the middle of the night, without a good-bye and with only a bundle of clothing and my last maravedís, which he took from the hiding place behind the hearth.
    Juan had succeeded in infecting me with his dreams, even though I had personally never seen any adventurer return from America a wealthy man. To