The Seamstress (27 page)

Across the hall, the phonograph clicked off. Emília felt a flutter in her chest. She carefully tucked the portrait away and ran to bed. The mattress was hard. The sheets were stiff with starch. Emília spread her hair carefully over her pillow and lay very still. When he entered the room, Degas did not turn on the light. He quickly took off his robe and slipped into bed beside her. Emília shut her eyes. She thought of all of those van der Ley women, pallid and unflinching, like Dona Dulce. She thought of the old gossips in Taquaritinga. They had called her ambitious, loose, even demented. But no one had ever called her fearful. Emília navigated her hand beneath the sheet. She clasped Degas’ fingers.

“Emília?” he said, startled.

“Yes?” she replied.

“We’ve had a long day,” Degas said, releasing his hand from her grip. “It’s best we sleep.”

Emília felt her anxiety draining from her, replaced by annoyance—she’d readied herself for this night, prepared herself to perform her duty, only to have Degas shirk his. Of course he was tired, she thought, after staying up late to listen to records. “Why are you studying English,” Emília asked. “If you already know it?”

Degas shifted. “I have no one to practice with here. I want to stay sharp, to keep my pronunciation accurate. If I go back to Britain, I don’t want to be rusty.”

Emília turned toward him.
I
, he’d said, not
we
. “Go back?”

“For a trip.” Degas sighed, as if he’d detected irritation in her voice. “I know you must feel overwhelmed, Emília. It will take time for you to adjust. It took me years when I came back from Britain. Can you imagine, coming back to this dreadful heat? And barely any electricity, my mother still using chamber pots, my father shouting about cranial measurements, and those damned Madonnas everywhere.”

“I don’t mind the Madonnas.”

“Yes,” Degas said. “Perhaps you’ll like it here.”

“You don’t?” Emília asked.

Degas faced the ceiling. He spoke slowly, as if praying. “Each time I return here, I have to relearn the rules, that’s all. No one likes doing that.”

“What kind of rules?” Emília asked, concerned. She’d had to follow so many silly rules in Aunt Sofia’s house; Emília had hoped that in the city things would be less rigid.

“The kind no one speaks of,” Degas replied. “It’s difficult to explain.”

“Then how can you follow them?”

“I don’t think this is something you should worry about now.”

That “now” hung in the air between them like a mosquito, buzzing in Emília’s ears.
Now
she wouldn’t have to worry about Recife’s unspoken rules, but later she would? Emília recalled Dona Dulce’s courtyard speech.

“Your mother doesn’t like me,” she whispered.

Degas sighed. “She dislikes the situation. You must understand: Mamãe is tied to tradition. She wanted a lavish wedding for me. It will take time for her to understand all of this. And even if she didn’t like you, she’d never show it. She’d never treat you poorly, Emília. Mamãe prides herself on keeping her composure. It’s a change, to have another lady in the house with her. She’s always been the dona here. And that’s fine, isn’t it? You wouldn’t want the responsibility of running a house, would you? Let her be the dona. You be my wife. Then she’ll see you were a good choice.”

Degas shifted closer. Emília stiffened. Her heart pounded. She was his wife and would have to perform the main duty that came with that title. She closed her eyes, ready.

Degas squeezed her fingers. “Good night, Emília,” he said, and turned away.

6

A week after Emília’s arrival, the cata-vento stopped its slow rotation. The hot, windless days forced Dr. Duarte to turn off the fountains. The sound of gurgling water was replaced by the buzz of a diesel motor pumping water though the house’s iron pipes. The half horse, half fish in the center courtyard lost his slick shine. The hallway rugs gave off a stale odor, as if all of the residue that had accidentally collected in their woven fibers—dirty footsteps, spilled drinks, overturned breakfast trays—was evaporating simultaneously in the summer heat. The courtyard ferns wilted. Only the thick, waxy flowers remained. The rows of manicured pitanga trees, which hid the ancient-looking servants’ quarters, turned white with blooms. A colony of bees hovered around the trees. Degas transferred their Chrysler Imperial automobile from its usual showplace in front of the house to the shade of the side yard. Even Dr. Duarte’s turtles avoided the heat, chewing their lettuce leaves in the few covered areas of the courtyard.

Only in the mornings, before the sun became too hot to bear, did the Coelho house seem alive. At dawn the ice wagon clambered through the front gates. Emília stood at her bedroom window and watched gloved men heave the great, steaming slabs of ice into a wheelbarrow and cart them into the kitchen. She spied the milk carriage as well, and watched the Coelhos’ maids as they carried the frothy liquid in zinc buckets to the back of the house.

In the side yard, Dr. Duarte performed his morning ritual of toe touches, leg lifts, and body twists. The first time Emília witnessed this, she thought he’d gone mad.

“My calisthenics,” he’d yelled cheerfully when he caught her staring. “Daily exercise oxygenates the brain!”

After his exercises, Dr. Duarte walked outside the gate and inspected the concrete wall surrounding the Coelho house for graffiti, taking note of the placement and size of the drawings. Once, over breakfast, Dr. Duarte spoke excitedly about how he’d caught a boy urinating on the wall. Instead of chastising the child, he’d called the boy over and measured his scalp.

“And what did I find?” Dr. Duarte asked. He sipped his viscous concoction of lemon water, raw egg, and malagueta peppers before informing them. “Asymmetrical ears!”

Her father-in-law rarely spoke of his import business or his money lending. He considered himself a man of science. In the afternoons, after he visited his warehouses and met with his political group at the British Club, Dr. Duarte locked himself in his study and pored over his scientific journals. He received parcels from Italy and the United States every few weeks. Once, the maid opened one of these parcels and Emília caught a glimpse of the journals inside. On the cover was a drawing of a man’s skull sectioned into many parts.

Emília did not completely understand her father-in-law’s ideas, but she nodded and often let her breakfast grow cold so that she could give Dr. Duarte her full attention. He did not slow his pace or use simple words when he spoke to her, as Dona Dulce did. And since returning to the Federal University, Degas barely spoke to her at all. He had become rushed and distracted, leaving each morning after breakfast and returning late for dinner. Degas explained that he spent his afternoons in the legal library and his evenings discussing cases with Felipe and other fellow students in São José. Dr. Duarte tolerated Degas’ long days, as long as it was intellectual stimulation he was after.

“Remember,” Dr. Duarte often warned before Degas excused himself from breakfast, “drunkenness inflames the passions. It obscures mental and moral facilities.”

Dona Dulce spent her days coordinating her staff. There were Raimunda and the young maid who’d escorted Emília that first day. There was a heavyset woman who did the wash, and an elderly cook with thick, swollen ankles. A woman whose skin was as dark and flaccid as a prune’s was responsible for ironing clothing; Seu Tomás was the groundskeeper and carriage driver; and a houseboy ran errands, split wood, and dragged the chamber pots to their mysterious dumping ground each day.

During the long, stifling summer days, the only sound in the Coelho house came from the kitchen. The hallway leading to the back of the house was dark and steamy. It smelled of smoke and garlic, of wet chicken feathers and ripe fruit. Emília often stood in that hallway and closed her eyes just to take in the scents, which reminded her of Aunt Sofia’s kitchen. This was the only similarity between them, however. The Coelho kitchen was large and tiled, and filled with modern contraptions. But despite Dr. Duarte’s insistence on modernity, the kitchen was Dona Dulce’s domain. The gas stove was used only to heat water. Each morning, the cook built a fire beneath the brick-lined cookstove in order to make their meals. Instead of using the electric iron, the prune-skinned servant pressed their clothes with a heavy coal-filled one. Behind the kitchen was a massive tank where the washerwoman, her arms tanned and muscled, scrubbed their clothes. And in the backyard was a small chicken pen and an ancient chopping block, stained black from years of gutting and cleaning.

The swampy grounds of Madalena were prone to mosquitoes, lizards, rain, mold, rot, and rust. Each day, Dona Dulce fought these tendencies. She glided through the Coelho house sniffing the draperies and sheets, her amber eyes scanning for spiders, dust, scuffs, and any other unwelcome elements. Without raising her voice or wrinkling her brow, she guided the servants through their myriad regular tasks and assigned them new ones.

“Maids are like children,” Dona Dulce told Emília. “They may have good intentions, but their intentions don’t matter. They must be disciplined to do things as you like them and no other way.”

In the afternoons, she tied her scallop-edged apron around her waist and headed for the kitchen. She had been raised on an engenho, the daughter and granddaughter of cane producers, and she believed in the necessity of sugar. Inside the Coelho pantry were barrels and barrels of it, their lids sealed in wax and covered in cloth. Even in Taquaritinga’s stores, Emília had never seen so much. Dona Dulce scooped kilo upon kilo into her copper jam pots. Then, with the same ease and efficiency she used when slicing open her correspondence with her silver mail opener, Dona Dulce cut out the insides of guavas. She squeezed the pits from jackfruits. She halved limes and mashed bananas. Then she watched the cook mix the caramelized sugar and fruits, but never went near the steaming pots because, Dona Dulce proclaimed, a lady did not stir.

Emília tried to show interest in Dona Dulce’s household management and jam making. Her mother-in-law believed that respectability began inside the home, but Emília wanted to be outside. She had done enough cooking and cleaning in Taquaritinga. In Recife, she wanted to see the city, to attend luncheons, to stroll through the parks. Dona Dulce insisted that respectable young women did not wander the streets of Recife alone, without a destination. Respectable women had social agendas. Until Emília had an agenda of her own, she had to stay put.

Tired of the kitchen, Emília tried to occupy her time by embroidering in the shaded section of the courtyard. Inevitably she threw down her sewing hoop. The maids dragged the dusty hallway rugs into the courtyard and beat them until Emília’s eyes watered and she began to sneeze. When she tried to find solace in her bedroom, they decided to air out the mattress and fluff the pillows. And if she roamed the hallways, the maids were always a step behind, waxing the floors and rubbing the mirrors with ammonia.

The Coelho house fascinated her with its wide corridors and cluttered rooms. There were massive tables whose feet were carved to resemble bird’s talons gripping wooden balls. There were chairs with cracked leather stretched across their backs, held in place by discolored metal studs. There were glass cases that held ancient crystal bowls and scratched chalices. It frustrated Emília to think that Dona Dulce filled her home with such old, creaking things when she had the means to buy new ones. What disconcerted Emília most was the spotlessness of the place. Emília dropped bits of thread on the floors. She hugged a pillow and placed it crookedly back in its chair. She pressed her fingers to the glass cases. She took one of the leather-bound books from its shelf and slipped it in a new location. But when she returned the next day, the book was back where it belonged. The pillows were straightened. The floors were swept. The glass was wiped clean.

Emília took walks in the garden, under the shade of the pitanga trees. Seu Tomás, the groundskeeper, always lurked nearby. He had strict orders to keep her within his sight, as if she were a wayward child waiting for an opportunity to slip through the main gate. Emília endured this humiliation, and others. At the dining table, her napkins were sloppily folded. Her coffee spoon was often smudged. Her bath towels were never fully dry. The pleats of her dresses were crookedly ironed.

Though she noticed every detail in the Coelho house, Dona Dulce didn’t notice the maids’ sloppiness with regard to Emília. Or she pretended not to. Emília’s mother-in-law didn’t chastise her servants for specific errors, but she insisted that they “treat Degas’ wife with respect and obey her as if she was your dona!” The more Dona Dulce demanded they obey Emília, the sloppier the maids became. Had her mother-in-law been overtly mean to her, the maids might have felt sympathy for Emília; they might have considered her an ally. But the more Dona Dulce put Emília above them, the more the maids hated her. After having worked in the colonel’s house, Emília knew the kinds of petty jealousies a dona could create among her staff and sometimes even her family. She suspected Dona Dulce knew, too. Each time Emília went into the servants’ area, the maids grew silent. Only Raimunda addressed her, asking if there was anything she needed. Emília made things up—a cup of water, more embroidery thread, a slice of cake. Once, after she left, she heard them laughing. “Matuta,” one of them giggled. “Probably never tasted cake in her life!”

Degas had told her that the maids lived in shacks in the flood-prone Afogados and Mustardinha, but they were born Recifians and that fact alone made them hold themselves above her. In the countryside, Emília would have been considered an excellent wife. She knew how to pound manioc root into farinha, how to grind corn until it became fubá, how to plant beans, how to sew a lady’s dress and a gentleman’s shirt. These talents were suddenly handicaps in Recife. Emília had no family name. She was not a colonel’s daughter or a wealthy rancher’s relation. She was no one, and the poorly folded napkins, the dirty spoons and humid towels were the maids’ reminders of this.