Juanita

Juanita, Amaia Salazar’s grandmother, is present in the story through the home she left behind and the details Amaia remembers from childhood. Though dead by the time Amaia was five, she remains associated with a place of refuge: a house whose rooms and possessions carry the texture of family memory, and whose remembered safety returns in a later scene shaped by Amaia’s childhood perspective.

Family Home and Inheritance

The house had been closed since Juanita’s death, but Engrasi had maintained its structure, roof, and chimneys. When James suggests that the family restore it so Ibai can spend part of his childhood there, Amaia recalls its vast rooms, a chimney she could once stand inside, the smooth shellac-polished furniture, and the deep-red silk-satin bedspread on Juanita’s bed. The house is both a physical inheritance and a storehouse of memory: Amaia can summon its surfaces and scale even after years away.

The furnishings themselves did not remain in the house. Engrasi explains that the handmade pieces had gone to Amaia’s father in the family division, along with the bakery; Engrasi received the house, its surrounding land, and money. Rosario sent a moving truck the day after reading the will and emptied the house. Amaia does not remember seeing Juanita’s furniture in her parents’ home and quietly supposes that Rosario sold it. The contrast between the vividly remembered rooms and their emptied state makes the home’s continuity fragile: its walls endure, but the objects that once gave it a particular life have been removed.

Care Remembered in Childhood

Juanita’s care also survives in a more personal object: the white nightdress she had sewn and embroidered for Amaia. In a scene where Amaia experiences herself as a nine-year-old, she notices the pale pink ribbon showing through the lace opening in the garment. She had chosen that ribbon herself from among the ones Juanita showed her. The detail preserves both Juanita’s handiwork and Amaia’s small act of choice, making their bond tangible without placing Juanita in the scene as a speaking or acting presence.

Safety and the Returning Past

As the child Amaia climbs the stairs in the remembered house, the distant sound of Ibai crying no longer makes her hurry; she moves with curiosity, secure in the thought that nothing bad can happen in her grandmother’s home. That childhood confidence gives Juanita’s house a significance beyond family property: in Amaia’s memory, it is a shelter. In adulthood, however, returning to the family home is not uncomplicated. Amaia associates Elizondo with unresolved ties and with the presence of the forest being she has continued to feel connected to. Juanita’s remembered home thus holds two meanings at once: the safety Amaia once found there and the past she cannot simply leave behind.