The Seamstress (14 page)

“If Colonel Pereira had a backbone, they wouldn’t have come here in the first place.”

“Yes, but if she was his daughter, they would have found her body by now. She would be properly buried.”

The old man grunted. “If it were my daughter, I would have shot her, right in front of those bastards. I’d rather have a daughter of mine dead than carried away by a horde of men.”

Emília entered the kitchen. The mourners fell silent. She placed Uncle Tirço’s box in the center of the table. Dona Chaves and the rest of them did not look at Emília; they kept their eyes on the box. One by one, slowly, they left the kitchen. Emília sat. She poured herself a cup of water and cut a slice of cake. She heard voices from the front room. It was not the monotonous drone of prayers, but hasty, overlapping chatter. Emília ignored it.

Later, when the sky grew dark and Aunt Sofia’s mourners left to light their São João bonfires and eat their cobs of grilled corn, only Emília and Uncle Tirço remained. While she sat, slumped in a chair beside her aunt’s body, and the firecrackers outside startled her from sleep, reminding her to rise and light more candles, her Uncle Tirço was there, steadfast in the box beside her feet.

3

Emília had feared the cangaceiros would harm her, not Luzia. When she walked up and down the row of men in the colonel’s yard, jotting down their measurements, Emília had stayed close to Aunt Sofia. She’d hunched her shoulders and held her writing tablet high, to hide her chest. She did not meet their eyes. And when the Hawk called out, “You!” Emília had turned around. She’d steadied herself, then looked up from her writing tablet. When she realized that he was looking at Luzia and not at her, Emília felt both startled and relieved.

The man unnerved her. It was not his looks—he would have been handsome if it weren’t for his poor hygiene and scarred face. It was his manner that bothered her. Emília was accustomed to loud men: farmers who screamed at each other across fields, butchers and shopkeepers who greeted each other at the weekly market with booming voices and violent thwacks on the back. Only men of higher station, like Professor Célio, were subdued. But the Hawk commanded attention silently—moving the good side of his face, tilting his head, or pointing his thick finger. His men constantly looked down the measuring line at him for these quiet cues. He fooled most into believing he was discreet and subdued, but not Emília. His voice betrayed him. He rarely spoke, but when he did, his voice thundered out of him and startled everyone to attention. He was just as uncouth as any poor farmer. Worse, in Emília’s eyes, because he tried to mask it.

She’d watched her sister measure him. She’d looked up from her writing tablet and seen Luzia drop her tape. It was unlike her. Ever since her accident, Luzia had lost all sense of nervousness or shame. If a person displeased her, Luzia loomed over them, taking them in from her great height, like a bird, as if they were not a part of her world but something lower, lesser. The Hawk, too, acted strangely. When Luzia stepped behind him to measure his back, she ran the tape across his shoulder blades and smoothed it out with the palm of her good arm. As she ran her hand along his back, the Hawk closed his eyes. Emília saw him. He looked as if he was savoring a bite of food. And when her sister stepped back around, he opened his eyes and stared down the row of men, pretending he was not interested in her measurements at all. He was unhinged, Emília decided. Absolutely unhinged.

She said this later, to Luzia, as they walked home. It was well past ten at night. Emília walked between Aunt Sofia and Luzia, holding their arms. Their dresses smelled of sweat and smoke from the bonfire. Emília’s eyes burned. Her legs ached. Luzia was very quiet, until Emília whispered about the Hawk.

“He’s not well,” she said. Aunt Sofia grunted in agreement.

“You didn’t even talk to him,” Luzia mumbled.

“I didn’t have to,” Emília said. “He frightened us to death, making us kneel in the garden. And for what? For a prayer about a rock, of all things.”

“At least they’re God-fearing,” Aunt Sofia said, then hushed them, worried someone would overhear.

Emília did not have the energy to argue with her sister. When they arrived home, she and Luzia helped each other out of their dresses and fell into bed wearing only their camisoles and knickers. Emília slept deeply. So deeply that, hours later, she did not hear twenty-one pairs of sandaled feet march down the muddy road. She did not see the glow of kerosene lanterns surround the front of their house. And when she heard the voice—a man’s voice, smooth and stern—she thought it was in her dreams. Emília shifted and smiled, believing the voice belonged to Professor Célio and that he’d traveled all the way up the mountain to wake her.

Luzia.

Emília sat up.

Luzia.

Luzia lay with her eyes open and the quilt pulled down to her waist, as if she’d been expecting this strange visitor.

Luzia,
the voice called again.
Come outside.

Aunt Sofia reached the door first. Emília and Luzia huddled behind her. A fine rain blew through the slats of the window shutters. It was the kind of winter rain that Emília hated—deceptively light, but so persistent that it soaked through hair and clothes and soil, making everything a muddy mess. Emília pulled a shawl over her shoulders. Luzia had tugged the quilt from their bed, upsetting the mosquito netting.

“What kind of interruption is this?” Aunt Sofia muttered. “At this hour!”

Emília peered through the window slats. Outside, the colonel stood, shivering, beside the group of cangaceiros.

“Sir?” Aunt Sofia asked. She opened the front door. “What’s the matter? Are the uniforms all right?”

The colonel nodded. Emília saw only the front row of cangaceiros, the ones who held lanterns. The rest were shadows; she saw the silhouettes of their half-moon hat brims. The men seemed larger, bulkier. They wore their new uniforms, but with a padding of blankets sloppily wrapped in oilcloth and tied around their torsos. Over this, each man had two canvas packs slung across his body, so that the straps crisscrossed his chest. The straps were thick—at least a palm wide—and decorated with metal rivets that shone in the lantern light. Their rifle straps, too, had metal rivets that glittered on their shoulders. Their pants appeared cropped at the knees, but when Emília looked more closely, she saw that the men wore leather shin guards, strapped with crisscrossed cords, around the bottoms of their legs. Thick cartridge belts, wet and shining from the rain, surrounded their waists. And shoved at an angle into their belts were long, gleaming knives. The Hawk’s was the longest.

“Dona,” the Hawk said, addressing Aunt Sofia, “I came to speak to Miss Luzia.”

Beside her, Emília felt her sister tense at the sound of her name. The Hawk carried a bundle beneath his arm. He wore a plain rancher’s hat and the shadow cast by the brim hid his eyes.

“What do they want with my child?” Aunt Sofia asked the colonel. He lowered his head.

“We won’t hurt her,” the Hawk said. “I assure you.”

Emília held her sister’s locked arm. Aunt Sofia held the other. They stepped outside together. The front yard was muddy and pocked with puddles. The ground felt cold beneath Emília’s feet. The Hawk motioned for Luzia to step forward. When Emília and Aunt Sofia moved with her, he raised his palm, telling them to stay back.

“It’s fine,” Luzia whispered.

She gathered the quilt around her body and pulled her shoulders back, straightening to her full height. The quilt trailed behind her like a cape. Rain glittered in her hair. The Hawk lifted the brim of his hat and raised his head to face Luzia; he seemed no match for her. Emília felt relief. She could not see her sister’s face, only her long, dark braid. The Hawk whispered something. His lips moved crookedly. He handed her the bundle beneath his arm. Luzia stayed rigid. The Hawk’s mouth moved once more. Luzia took the bundle and turned around. She walked toward the house, past Emília and Aunt Sofia, her stare focused on some faraway point. Her lips were pinched tightly together. Emília recognized this face—Luzia had made it years before, when they took her arm from the paletas and told her it would never again straighten. She’d made it when their father’s bloated body was carried down the mountain and into town. She’d made it before each school-yard fight, when her classmates’ teasing threatened to disturb her rigid composure.

“You,” the Hawk said, disrupting Emília’s thoughts. “Come here. Please.”

Emília stepped forward. The shawl around her shoulders was heavy with rain.

“Go inside and pack her things,” he said slowly, as if coaxing a small child. “Not too much. Just what she can carry.”

Baiano, the tall mulatto, accompanied Emília into the house and stood guard at their bedroom doorway. When Emília entered the house, their room was empty, as was Aunt Sofia’s. No noise came from the kitchen. Emília quietly rejoiced—her sister had hidden, or escaped through the back door! Emília would move slowly, to give Luzia more time. Her hands shook. She carefully pushed aside the mosquito netting and placed their old valise—its latch rusted and loose—on their bed. Emília sifted through their dressing trunk, plucking out Luzia’s oldest slip, her rattiest knickers. If Luzia had escaped, she would not need those things. Still, Emília folded each item carefully before placing it in the valise, wary of the cangaceiro’s gaze. She packed her sister’s faded cotton dress, a broken barrette, a ripped nightgown, some odd-colored spools of embroidery thread, an old needle cushion.

“What are you doing?”

Emília froze; Luzia stood in the doorway. Her camisole was bunched at the waist, sloppily tucked into tan trousers. The pants cuffs were too short, exposing Luzia’s ankles and her long, sandaled feet. Unbuttoned over the camisole was a tan jacket. Emília recognized the cloth—it was the thick bramante she’d slid through the Singer’s needle that afternoon. The jacket’s canvas sleeves exposed Luzia’s wrists. The cloth was creased and tight at her bent elbow.

“Why are you here?” Emília asked. “Where were you?”

“In the saints’ closet,” Luzia replied. “Praying.”

Emília steadied herself against their dressing trunk. Her chest felt tight, her breath too short.

“He told me to pack your things,” she said.

Luzia nodded. In the candlelight, her thick brows glistened with rainwater. Her eyes shone. Emília could focus on nothing else. When they were children, they used to lock arms and spin, turning round and round in the front yard. They moved so quickly that Emília felt powerless and frightened. The world went out of focus and the only thing she saw clearly was Luzia’s face before her, her green eyes reflecting Emília’s dread. There was comfort reflected there, too, because if they fell, they would do it together. And there was wonder—a strange, anxious delight—at the knowledge that they had set something in motion that they could not stop.

Outside, there was a whistle.

“Time to go,” Baiano ordered.

“Wait,” Emília said, focusing again on the room, the bed, the open valise filled with rags. Luzia’s penknife sat where she always placed it before bed—on the dressing trunk between her measuring tape and Emília’s stack of hairpins. In one fluid motion, Emília scooped up the knife along with the pins. She dropped them into the valise and quickly shut the lid.

When Aunt Sofia saw Luzia in the cangaceiro uniform, she placed her hand to her chest. The rain had thickened. Aunt Sofia’s white hair looked translucent against her scalp. Emília saw flickers of candlelight behind the shutter slats of houses across the road. The town was watching.

“Stop this craziness,” Aunt Sofia said to the colonel, who stayed very still except for his chattering teeth. “Get your men!” she yelled. “Call your vaqueiros, or your other capangas!” When he did not respond, Aunt Sofia raised her arm and pointed two shaking fingers at the Hawk. “I curse you,” she said, then mustered the energy and stepped forward. “I curse you!”

The Hawk walked toward her. Emília tried to push her aunt’s hand down.

“You’re old,” he said, his face nearly touching the tip of her outstretched fingers. “Get out of this rain.”

Two cangaceiros flanked Luzia, holding her arms. She did not struggle or shout. She stood rigid and erect, as if posing for a photograph. Luzia was taller than all of the men who surrounded her, and for the first time Emília wondered what it must be like to have such a view—to see the scalps of men, to know that people must lift their faces to speak to you, making everyone look childlike and worshipful. And how far away everything must seem: the muddy ground, the men’s wet sandals, the pistols and knives harnessed around their waists. As they walked away, Emília knew that she should speak. She should stand in Luzia’s place. Emília was the oldest, with two good arms and legs. But she did not want to go with those men, and was afraid that if she offered herself in trade, they would take her without hesitation.

“Luzia!” Emília yelled suddenly, surprised by the sound of her voice. The men’s marching slowed. Luzia craned her head around. Wisps of wet hair clung to her face. Luzia had always been good with words, unlike Emília, who grew tongue-tied and ineffectual during any conflict. She’d called her sister’s name without knowing why, or what to say next.

“I’m sorry,” Emília sputtered, straining to see her sister’s face. “I packed all the wrong things.”

4

For the last sewing lesson, Emília had to wear a mourning dress. She’d sewn two after Aunt Sofia’s funeral—one black, one gray—both made from a dull, itchy fabric Dona Conceição had given her. Emília had tried to make them stylish, capping the sleeves and lowering the waistline into a long, tubular skirt like the fashionable dresses she’d seen in
Fon Fon,
but there were limits to her talents. The fabric did not fall well, and tradition dictated that mourning dresses were supposed to be practical, not stylish. Her official luto for Aunt Sofia was required to last a year. A year of itchy dresses. A year in a darkened house, the shutters drawn and any mirrors covered with cloth. A year of regimented piety that Emília could not stomach. She missed Aunt Sofia terribly, but luto would not bring her back. The dark dresses and somber house only served as reminders to others to extend their smug condolences to Emília, who did not need reminding of her losses. She did not need peoples’ sharp-tongued advice, telling her to stop living alone and to get married, or else she would become a ruined woman. Emília ignored them; she refused to be trapped in the countryside and wouldn’t follow its petty rules. She would leave Taquaritinga, and every whisper, every stern look, every shaking head hardened her resolve.