The Seamstress (13 page)
“The colonel will protect us,” Aunt Sofia said. “I’m sure of it.”
After lunch, as Luzia measured and cut her last jacket, she heard voices rise and fall through the open windows. She heard the colonel’s and then Antônio’s voice, unmistakable in its tone and depth. But the sewing machines clattered so loudly that she could not determine what, exactly, they were saying. Luzia kept cutting, but when the voices rose to yells she looked nervously at Emília. Her sister slowed her pedaling. They heard a clatter—a cup or dish falling and breaking, and then a gunshot. It echoed through the house. Luzia’s cut went crooked. The sewing machines stopped.
The colonel appeared at the door, pale and sweating. He held a handkerchief—one that Luzia herself had sewn—to his white hairline.
“Nothing to worry over, ladies,” he said. “It was a misfire.” His eyes flitted around the room, falling on the chairs and tables draped with finished and unfinished uniforms. “Keep at it,” the colonel said, nodding, then backed out of the room.
Minutes later, the Hawk stood at the edge of her cutting table. Luzia did not look up. He recited his measurements one by one. Luzia jotted them on the writing tablet.
“My man Baiano—the tall one—will have two suits,” the Hawk said. “Make him two suits.”
Luzia nodded.
When the colonel’s grandfather clock let out six long clangs, they had only four jackets to go. Luzia took over for Aunt Sofia, who rested on the settee. Kerosene lanterns sat beside the sewing machines. The lanterns hissed and sputtered, heating the air around them. Luzia wiped sweat from her neck. She kept her perfectly wound measuring tape close by, to check any odd swatches. Emília stopped every half hour to stretch her legs. She had been switching feet to pump the pedals, but by dusk, she complained that her toes were numb. One by one, the cangaceiros had picked up their pants and jackets. Some had thanked them, others had simply taken their clothes without a word. A bonfire crackled outside, and as the sky grew dark, the firelight made shadows in the sitting room. The men threw their old uniforms into the fire. They hooted and sang as the rotten cloth burned.
At six fifteen, Little Ear entered the sitting room. He wore his new uniform. Without his hat, his long hair masked his ears.
“The captain wants you outside,” he said.
“Who?” Aunt Sofia asked, rising from the settee.
“All of you.”
“But we still have work to do,” Emília said nervously.
“Now,” Little Ear said. “Don’t dawdle.”
The men stood in a semicircle in the yard. The bonfire burned alongside them. The Hawk stood in the middle of this half circle and the colonel knelt before him, his head bowed.
“Kneel,” the Hawk ordered.
He motioned for them to take places beside the colonel. The firelight bloomed and faded along the slack side of his face. Luzia helped Aunt Sofia to the ground. Emília knelt on the other side of their aunt. Luzia held her measuring tape, wound into a tight ball, between her hands. She squeezed it. Luzia wanted to speak, to tell him that they were not finished, that they had more to sew. Perhaps he would let them finish the jackets. Perhaps they could take their time, go stitch by stitch without the machines, in order to plan some kind of escape.
The Hawk moved from the center of the semicircle. He stood directly in front of her. Luzia closed her eyes. There was a long silence, then a collective shifting and a great thump. When she opened her eyes, he knelt before her. All of his men knelt in their places in the semicircle. Their heads were bowed. The Hawk held a rock in his open palm—a white pebble, no different from any of the other quartz scattered along the arid pastures below the mountain. He began to speak.
“My crystal rock that was found in the ocean between the chalice and the sacred host. The earth trembles but not our father Jesus Christ. At the altar also tremble the hearts of my enemies when they see me. With the love of the Virgin Mary, I am covered with the blood of my father Jesus Christ. I am bound. Whosoever should want to shoot me cannot do so. If they shoot at me, water will run from the barrels of their guns. If they try to stab me, their knives will fall from their hands. And if they lock me up, the doors will open. Delivered I was, delivered I am, and delivered I shall be with the key to the tabernacle. I seal myself.”
The cangaceiros repeated the prayer, their voices rising and falling like an off-key choir. At the end, they were quiet. Then, one by one, each man spoke.
“I seal myself.”
“I seal myself.”
“I seal myself.”
After the last man, the Hawk looked at Luzia. “Say it,” he whispered.
The colonel kept his head bowed. Luzia looked to Aunt Sofia and then to Emília. They stared back, bewildered. What would happen if she did not speak? Would her obedience save them all?
“Don’t be afraid,” the Hawk said, louder this time, making the words into a warning rather than a comfort. “Say it.”
Luzia stared at his crooked face, at his dark, lively eyes. One teared, the other remained dry. She could not look away. His face had snared her. It made her curious and repulsed her. It made her forget the measuring tape—that perfectly wound, impossibly tight skein of ink and numbers—between her palms. Luzia’s grip relaxed. The tape unraveled in her hands.
“I seal myself,” she said and the left side of the Hawk’s face rose in a smile.
1
E
mília had one night to sew Aunt Sofia’s death dress. It was made of the softest black linen the colonel could find. Dona Conceição gave her four mother-of-pearl buttons and a meter of black lace. Emília sewed the dress on the pedal-operated Singer in the colonel’s house, leaving Aunt Sofia lying stiffly in her bed under the care of Dona Chaves and comadre Zefinha who wept and bickered as they lit candles, muttered Ave Marias, and placed lemon wedges in boiling water to mask the smell. Emília already knew her aunt’s measurements. She was smart with the lace, applying it to the dress’s collar and using the four precious buttons on the bodice, where mourners could see them. When the dress was finished, she soaked it in goma water. Then, despite her fatigue, her numb legs and swollen eyes, Emília lifted the dress from the goma water and prepared the iron. Coals clinked against its metal casing. Emília waved the iron back and forth, as if preparing to fling it across the room. Embers flew. Smoke puffed from its metal nose. When its flat face met the dress, it sizzled. Emília worked fast so that the dress would not dry and the wrinkles set. Sweat stung her eyes. Emília pressed on. Pressed hard. As if each wrinkle, each wet fold was a dark crease within her that needed to be warmed, smoothed, and erased.
She and Uncle Tirço were the only ones present during Aunt Sofia’s last hours. Emília placed the box of bones beside her aunt. She had refused help of any kind. She alone boiled mastruz with milk and spooned it into Aunt Sofia’s mouth to ease her cough. She alone placed steaming towels with hortelã mint on Aunt Sofia’s chest to aid her breathing. She alone scrubbed the soiled bedsheets, held handkerchiefs to her aunt’s nose, and smoothed Aunt Sofia’s chapped lips with coconut oil. In her worst moments, when the cough relented and the fever took over, Aunt Sofia had spoken.
“Tirço!” she screamed at the wooden box. “Those goddamn vultures!” Emília patted her aunt’s forehead with a cool towel. Aunt Sofia grabbed her wrist. “Maria,” she said, confusing Emília with her mother. “You take care of that child in your belly. People will see you, so pretty and pregnant, and they’ll put the evil eye on you. They’ll put it on your girls.”
When Aunt Sofia spoke of her mother, Emília wanted to know more but inevitably her aunt’s eyes closed and she faded into a feverish sleep. There were times when Aunt Sofia was lucid. She smiled weakly at Emília and prayed for the Lord to watch over her girls after she had left the world. Emília shushed her. She assured Aunt Sofia that she would not leave their world, not yet. But one evening Aunt Sofia could not stop coughing. She gulped for air. Her chest shuddered. Then she looked up at the ceiling intently, as if she had caught sight of something in the roof tiles. Aunt Sofia released a long, wheezing breath and grew quiet.
“Tia?” Emília whispered. “Tia?”
In her final fit of coughing, Aunt Sofia had thrown aside the covers. Emília saw a gray stain bloom on the mattress. She felt the sheet; it was wet and warm. Emília rejoiced—if Aunt Sofia had relieved herself, then she was still alive and sleeping. But after an hour, then two, Aunt Sofia remained frozen despite Emília’s calls for her to wake. The spot on the mattress grew cold. Emília lit a candle and wrapped it in her aunt’s hands.
2
The dress was ready in time for the velório. Aunt Sofia lay on the floor, arranged on top of the white funeral hammock Emília had spread beneath her. It was on loan from the colonel and meant to be used at his own funeral when the time came. The canvas was soft and sturdy, bordered with an intricately woven varanda that swished along the ground when the hammock was lifted. According to custom, Aunt Sofia’s feet were bare and they faced the door, so that her soul would leave the house easily. Emília had placed heaps of dahlias around her aunt, and Dona Chaves had sprinkled her body with an entire vial of potent Dirce eau de toilette. Despite the two tufts of cotton stuffed into her nostrils, Aunt Sofia’s face had frozen into a tight-lipped and stern look, as if she did not approve of the perfume she’d been doused with.
The death dress looked elegant. Emília was proud of her work. “Doesn’t she look fine?” the mourners whispered as they knelt beside the body. No one called her “Sofia,” because if the dead heard their names, they would haunt the living world, believing they were still needed.
The next morning, a group of men would lift the hammock with Aunt Sofia cloaked within it and carry her to Padre Otto’s church service and later to the cemetery. Until then, Emília had to greet mourners. It was the eve of São João—an inopportune time for a wake. People wanted to celebrate: to set off firecrackers, light bonfires with their families, and watch their children dance in the local quadrilha. Aunt Sofia had always enjoyed the rowdy holiday. Each year, she and Luzia and Emília had spent a whole week building a fire balloon out of dry sticks and colored scraps of paper. On the eve of São João, they lit the tiny kerosene tin within the balloon and released it into the wind to pay homage to Saint John. They stood side by side and watched the balloon slowly rise into the night sky. First the paper caught fire and then the wood, until the entire contraption erupted in flames and descended, like a comet falling back to earth. That year there would be no fire balloon. There would only be a funeral.
The house was thick with smoke. Candles cluttered the sewing table and the windowsills. The colonel had placed four brass candleholders—as tall as Emília herself—around Aunt Sofia. He had spared no expense. It was his fault, after all. Emília knew that there were others to blame: the cangaceiros who had taken her sister, the cold night air and rain. But the colonel could have prevented it. He could have called upon his farmhands and vaqueiros to go after her sister. He could have found a proper doctor for her aunt. Each time Emília saw his hunched frame or his eyes that would not meet her own, she sensed the colonel’s remorse and blamed him even more.
Mourners entered the house one by one, greeting Emília and then crowding around Aunt Sofia. Xavier, the shopkeeper, lifted Emília’s hand from Uncle Tirço’s box in her lap and pressed it between his own.
“If there is anything you need,” he said, “do not hesitate to order it. I’ll put it on credit.”
His eyes scanned the house. He would find nothing, Emília thought. None of them would. Her home had become a curiosity—the place where cangaceiros had invaded, taking poor Victrola—and nosy mourners looked for signs of struggle. There were none. Even before Aunt Sofia died, people insisted on mourning Luzia, advising Emília and her aunt to schedule a mass and to drape the old Communion portrait—the only photograph of Luzia—in black cloth. Now that Aunt Sofia was gone, they hinted even more strongly. Emília refused to listen. She’d left the Communion portrait on the wall. She’d used the dressing trunk to barricade the door to her bedroom so that the curious could not wander inside. She had blocked the entrance to Luzia’s saints’ closet with a kitchen chair.
The front room was hot with bodies. A group of women recited Ave Marias over and over again, until Emília felt lulled by their voices. Outside, the whinny of horses broke through the chants. Dona Conceição and the colonel had arrived.
When Aunt Sofia fell ill, Dona Conceição sent a box of soaps to express her sympathy. They were round, perfumed balls individually wrapped in pastel tissue. Emília had not used them. Instead, she placed them around Aunt Sofia, between her dahlias and bowls of lemon water. Dona Conceição held a handkerchief in her gloved hands and wore a hat with a black lace veil. Weeks before, Emília would have thought her patroness the height of elegance, but now her stylishness seemed silly, almost callous. Dona Conceição lifted her veil.
“My dear,” she said, taking Emília’s face in her gloved hands, “how can I help?”
The mourners were quiet. The Ave Marias became whispers. Emília was expected to thank her patroness. To beg Dona Conceição for her continued support.
“There is one more sewing class,” Emília replied. Dona Conceição’s eyes widened. “It is the final class,” Emília said. “I cannot miss it.”
Dona Conceição retracted, removing her hands from Emília’s face. She lowered her veil. “Yes,” she said. “Of course. I will give you an escort.”
Emília had missed the May and June installments of her lessons since Luzia had been stolen and her aunt had fallen ill. She’d asked their old chaperone to send word to Professor Célio of her family difficulties, and to tell him that she would not miss their last class. The lesson was in one week and Emília was prepared. When she’d finished Aunt Sofia’s death dress, Emília had stopped by Xavier’s shop and put all of her savings—fifty mil-réis, a small fortune—on his counter. She’d pointed to a cloth-covered valise. It was green, with a horn handle and metal corners. She’d walked home with the death dress in one hand and the valise in the other. There were whispers, of course, but Emília endured them. She refused to run away with Professor Célio with a jute bag slung across her back like some matuta. She, Emília dos Santos, was no coarse country girl.
She’d given her old valise—a scratched, cracked leather bag—to Luzia on the night her sister left with the cangaceiros
.
Afterward, Emília could not think of buying a new valise; just the thought of packing upset her stomach. In the days following the cangaceiros’ departure, Padre Otto headed a search party. Everyone had expected him to return with a body, but when he found nothing, even the colonel was confused. Cangaceiros were rumored to be fickle: sometimes they stole goods, other times they purchased them; some people they killed, others they simply punished; some women they disgraced, others they left alone. No one had heard of them taking a woman and keeping her.
The town hoped that the news of Luzia’s abduction and the two soldiers’ deaths would spread. The colonel telegraphed the coast. The bodies stayed in the square, covered in quicklime powder, as evidence. But the capital did not respond. No regiment appeared. Taquaritinga was too small and far away for such consideration. They would have to fend for themselves.
They buried the bodies. Padre Otto held massive prayer circles for Luzia, performing novenas that lasted nine days and nine nights and then began again. If Emília wobbled with sleep, if her eyes closed or her neck tilted sideways during the prayer circles, Aunt Sofia nudged her and they continued. Emília’s knees bruised. Her neck stiffened. By the time Aunt Sofia’s fever worsened, she could barely kneel.
Emília’s nights were often restless. She slept in a chair beside Aunt Sofia’s bed to soothe her aunt’s coughing fits. She preferred it to her own bed, where she woke confused and startled by the empty space beside her. Had Luzia gone to the outhouse, or to get a cup of water? Then Emília’s mind cleared and within her chest she felt an ache—painful and raw—like a burn moving from the inside out. Luzia was gone. Her body told her this, but her mind would not accept it. Each time Emília cooked or swept, she saw something move in the edge of her vision and expected it to be Luzia turning a corner in the house, or emerging from her saints’ closet, or returning from her morning walk. Emília was always disappointed when she realized that the movement was actually her own shadow, or a moth, or a clear-bellied lizard scuttling after a mosquito. Even after the month of May had passed, after the prayer circles dwindled, after Aunt Sofia’s health worsened and Emília slipped the box of bones from beneath her aunt’s bed, Emília still believed that her sister would return. She dusted Luzia’s saints’ altar. She put her sister’s unfinished embroidery in the sun each week to protect it from mildew and moths.
When Dona Conceição left, the mourners remained quiet. They stared at Emília over their clasped hands and beaded rosaries. Widows could live alone, protected by the memory of their lost husbands. And orphaned men could do whatever they pleased. But an unmarried young woman, an attractive young woman, with no family or income to speak of, was a rare and dangerous thing, ripe for gossip. Emília didn’t broadcast her intentions. She didn’t share her plans with anyone in town, so the mourners watched her, staring from behind their black mantillas and beneath their leather caps, hoping to see a clue. Emília kept her face frozen, composed. She stood, placed Uncle Tirço beneath her arm, and left the room.
People talked about the wooden box. They said it was proof that Emília was unwell. She carried it each time she left the house. She took it to the kitchen when she cooked her meals. To Emília, the wooden box was proof that she was not alone. She still had her uncle Tirço, and his presence soothed her.
Most of the mourners congregated in the front room, but some needed a cup of water or a slice of sticky macaxeira cake to endure the entire velório. Those quickly found their way to the kitchen. They stood beside the extinguished cookstove and around the kitchen table. They tried to keep their voices hushed, but Emília heard them from the hallway. She stood beside the kitchen door, keeping her body angled away from the entrance and her breath quiet, as she’d done a dozen times before when she’d spied on her former suitors.
“Poor thing,” a woman whispered.
“She needs to toughen up,” Dona Chaves interrupted; Emília recognized her nasal voice. “That girl was born with too many knots in her back—always so snooty—and Sofia encouraged it. Now she’ll have to marry a Taquaritinga boy whether she likes it or not.”
“I meant her sister.”
“Oh,” Dona Chaves sighed. “Of course. That poor Victrola! Well, God only knows what they’ve done to her.”
“He should be ashamed of himself,” Mr. Chaves joined in. “Colonel Pontes would never have allowed it in Caruaru.”
“That’s because Colonel Pontes didn’t have everything handed to him on a platter,” another, older man said. Emília could not identify his raspy voice. “When he was a boy, he didn’t even have a stick to beat a dog with. He knows what it means to fight for things.”