The Seamstress (42 page)

They wanted a child. All of them—Degas, Dr. Duarte, Dona Dulce—questioned her each morning, asking how she felt and watching to see if she ate her breakfast. Each month when Emília asked to go to the pharmacy for feminine supplies, she saw Dona Dulce’s back stiffen and her dough-colored lips tighten. Dr. Duarte attributed Emília’s infertility to a uterine disorder. He began to serve her spoonfuls of cod liver oil with each meal. “We will fortify your fragile organs!” Dr. Duarte declared as Emília held her nose and gulped down the pungent yellow oil.

They even called a medical doctor, one of Dr. Duarte’s colleagues, to examine her. The man pressed upon her stomach as Emília lay paralyzed beneath the bedsheet. He declared her healthy and said that perhaps the humid Recife climate didn’t agree with her. He prescribed vitamin pills, which Emília placed under her tongue each morning and later spat out. She filched mil-réis bills from Degas’ trouser pockets and gave them to Raimunda, who secretly purchased caju roxo bark at the market. With the bark, Emília made tea and drank it daily. It was an old trick Aunt Sofia had prescribed for some of her married and desperate clients who didn’t want to bear any more children. Emília had watched those farm girls—her former classmates—grow pale and drained from pregnancies. She saw their breasts become shrunken and oblong, like old papayas. And she recalled her own mother, who’d died because the midwife’s large, capable hands were trained only to save infants. Even Recife women, with their meticulous diets and attentive doctors, died in childbirth at a rate that frightened and disgusted Emília. It wasn’t simply the possibility of death that deterred her; she would gladly have taken the risk if a child was something she wanted. But it wasn’t. Back in Taquaritinga, Emília had always envisioned herself as a dona, never a mother. She’d believed that the desire to have a child would come to her eventually, like a sudden craving for different food. But after a year in Recife, she realized that a child would bind her inside the Coelho house just as she was learning how to slip away from it.

Degas still spent his mornings at the Federal University Law School, his afternoons studying with Felipe, and his evenings cloistered in his childhood bedroom listening to English-language records. Once a week he came to Emília’s bedroom. She wore her slit-front nightgown and when Degas was finished, he returned to his room across the hall. He no longer promised wedding parties or honeymoons, and Emília appreciated this. In public, she and Degas were straightforward and courteous to each other. Each Sunday, they attended the International Club’s dinner dances and during orchestra breaks, when couples came to their table to compliment Emília’s drape-backed gowns with uneven scarf hems, Degas edged his chair closer to hers. Irritated, Emília scooted her chair away. There were times when she felt jolts of anger and loathing toward Degas. Other times she felt pity, and if Degas sensed this he scowled and snapped at her.

“Don’t wear so much perfume. You smell like a flophouse.”

“How would you know?” Emília hissed back, saddened by the way she and Degas interacted. They were like two roosters forced to occupy the same yard: both proud, both bound to peck at each other to maintain their dignity.

All of her life, Emília had been warned by Aunt Sofia that men were brutes. A woman must suffer through her husband’s desires until she became accustomed to them, until they became as natural as washing a shirt or cleaning out a chicken. This seemed plausible to Emília, even tolerable. If one person got pleasure and the other a noble sense of sacrifice, then at least both gained something. But if there was no desire there could be no sacrifice, no righteous surrender. If both husband and wife saw desire as a duty, then there was only dread. There was only a forced, fumbling awkwardness and, afterward, loathing. Settling in their bellies like silt. Accumulating until it became heavy. Until one couldn’t bear the sight of the other. In the cinema, scenes faded to black after couples kissed. Degas said that they never went beyond that for propriety’s sake, but Emília believed they’d done it on purpose. They’d gotten it right. Beyond that first, frightening kiss there was nothing worth showing.

After weeks of the Coelhos’ silent pressure for a child, Emília decided to press back. She hated visiting the dressmaker with Dona Dulce. She was ashamed of her dull outfits. Emília wanted to sew her own clothes. Dona Dulce had taught her the art of asking without seeming to ask, and Emília followed her mother-in-law’s teachings. She told Degas and Dr. Duarte of her homesickness. How she missed the clatter of her old sewing machine, the feel of cloth beneath her fingertips. How she and her sister liked to sew baby bibs and baptism dresses. Finally, Degas understood. He had a pedal-operated Singer delivered to the Coelhos’ house. Dona Dulce did not approve of Emília’s pleated creations. She said they were too athletic. But Dr. Duarte declared them modern and charming, and Degas appreciated the attention they brought. Soon they would be in the Society Section, he said brightly.

He was right. At the parasol contest, before the judges revealed the winner, a
Diário de Pernambuco
photographer guided the contestants onto the beach. He made them stand in a line, their parasols open, in front of a new statue of Our Lady of Boa Viagem. Emília’s feet sank into the beach sand. It felt alive, as if it were moving beneath her. It entered her shoes and made her toes feel gritty within her stockings. She did not like it.

Fishermen had erected a simple Virgin statue years before to bless their voyages. The old statue sat beneath a palm-frond hut, several paces from the new one. The new Virgin was made of plaster and set upon stone. There were starfish carved at her feet and her robe looked like water, foaming at the hem. She had blue eyes and tilted her head to one side, as if she was intrigued by something on the water. She did not look merciful or compassionate, but dull. Blank faced. Emília wanted to inspect the old statue—surely it looked wiser—but the other contestants crowded around her, blocking her path and bumping into her parasol.

Emília turned her head. At the waterline, a group of fishermen’s wives had gathered. Waves lapped their wide, bare feet and sometimes surged up, wetting the hems of the women’s faded skirts. They huddled together, tan arms crossed over simple blouses, and surveyed Emília and the other contestants. The fisherwomen’s faces were creased into expressions of permanent worry. Emília smiled at them. The women looked at her sternly, suspicious of the strange gaggle that had invaded their beach.

“Face forward, ladies,” the photographer instructed. “Face forward.”

The contestants around Emília twittered and smiled. They did not look at their sandy shoes. They did not pick at their gloves. They lived without bearing the marks of life—no sweat stains or mussed hair or bitten nails. Emília wanted to say this aloud. She wanted someone to listen. Dona Dulce would scold her for such a comment. Lindalva would think it cute. Only Luzia would understand.

All winter there’d been articles about the brigade of troops sent to capture the Hawk. It was hard for Emília to read a newspaper in the Coelho house—Dr. Duarte got priority, and he frequently clipped articles related to criminals in order to bolster his criminology theories, and political articles to take to his British Club meetings. When he was finished with the paper, it had more holes than one of Dona Dulce’s doilies. Emília’s mother-in-law was another obstacle. “A lady doesn’t read newspapers out in the open, for all to see,” Dona Dulce insisted. Ladies couldn’t appear to care about vulgar news. Dona Dulce was always the second person to read the newspaper, and she locked herself in the sitting room so no one could see her pore over the Society Section. Degas got his news at the Federal University Law School, so Emília was third in line for the paper, but by the time she was allowed to look at it, it was late in the day and most of the articles that interested her had been removed. Emília couldn’t ask Dr. Duarte for the articles he’d clipped; a lady could not be interested in cangaceiros or their tawdry crimes. So each time Emília visited the baroness’s home, she pored through the week’s newspapers. Lindalva saved the
Diário
s for her friend, believing Emília was interested in politics. But she didn’t care about Gomes or his “New Brazil.” She was looking for Luzia.

News about the troops dwindled as the presidential campaign grew more hostile. Emília believed that Captain Higino and his soldiers were lost in the scrub until, one day, on the paper’s second page, there was an article. “The Vulture,” they’d erroneously dubbed the cangaceiro who’d taken Luzia. They said he’d ambushed government troops on Colonel Clóvis Lucena’s ranch and then escaped to Bahia. Emília clipped the article and locked it inside her jewelry box, along with her Communion portrait. Alone in her room, she read the article over and over again. The reporter stated that among the escaped cangaceiros was a female consort.
Consort;
it sounded seedy. Was this woman Luzia? Was she held against her will? The thought frightened Emília but she could not bring herself to believe it. Luzia’s will was strong, stronger than any Emília had encountered. If she had not died or escaped, then Luzia had stayed of her own accord. This possibility frightened Emília even more.

To drive such thoughts from her head, Emília closed her eyes. Even when she heard the pop of the photographer’s flash, she did not open them. She felt her feet sinking into the sand.

How she would like to have Luzia with her on that sandy stage, their arms linked. All of her life, Emília had been compared to Luzia, defined by her. Back in Taquaritinga, Luzia’s awkwardness brought out Emília’s poise. Luzia’s temper highlighted Emília’s mildness, her sharp tongue Emília’s quiet. In Recife Luzia wasn’t present, but every day Emília recalled her, resurrected her—the smart, strong sister. Although Emília felt herself to be neither of those things, she took comfort in knowing that Luzia was. They shared the same blood; perhaps some of Luzia’s strengths were mingled with her own, so that Emília could cultivate her sister’s strength within herself. But ever since Emília had read the newspaper article about the cangaceiros and their “consort,” she’d felt Luzia’s presence slipping away. Emília’s memories of her sister seemed tarnished. Who had Luzia become? And who was Emília, next to such a woman?

She’d decided to place herself beside another image. The women in Lindalva’s feminist magazines were educated and modern. Lindalva was fond of the
idea
of modernity, but Emília liked its look, its sheen. She appreciated the smart hats, the bold dresses, the triumphant image of herself driving a motorcar, or striding into a voting center with a neatly folded ballot in her hand. Most of all, Emília pictured a many-windowed atelier with a dozen pedal-operated Singers humming to her command.

If Emília took on the sheen of modernity, if she wore the right dresses, expressed the right opinions, acted industriously and creatively, she would win Recife’s admiration. She had let go of her girlish dreams of owning a home and becoming a dona. She’d accepted the fact that Degas would never be a kind teacher or a loving husband. And if she could not be loved, then she resolved to be admired.

“The winner is…Mrs. Degas Coelho,” a woman called out. There was a wave of polite applause and then laughter. “Mrs. Degas Coelho,” the voice called again.

Emília opened her eyes.

2

One month after the contest, the Crisis occurred and Emília’s business plans were stalled. It was a Thursday, the day Dona Dulce set aside to wash linens and air mattresses. The Coelhos’ maids were frantic, stripping sheets from beds and carrying the white bundles downstairs, lifting mattresses and dragging them to the Coelhos’ covered laundry area to be beaten and spritzed with lavender water. From her bedroom, Emília heard the great thwacks of rattan sticks hitting mattress cushions. She heard the washerwoman’s shouts. She took advantage of the commotion and sneaked into the kitchen, where she brewed her special tea and drank until her belly sloshed with liquid. As she took her last gulp, Dona Dulce entered the kitchen. She stared coolly at Emília, then made her way to the laundry area, where she told the maids to stop working.

“Keep quiet,” Dona Dulce ordered. “Dr. Duarte is in a nervous mood.”

Lunch was muted and rushed. Dona Dulce allowed Dr. Duarte to shovel in his food and go to the parlor, to listen to the radio. Degas accompanied his father, leaving Emília alone with Dona Dulce and their dessert—a papaya pudding with blood red crème de cassis swirled on top. Agitated, her mother-in-law also left the table and followed the radio’s static into the parlor. The forgotten helpings of pudding turned warm and runny in their glass bowls. Emília realized that something important and terrible had happened.

The scratchy, faraway radio voices announced that the stock market in the United States had crashed. Dr. Duarte and Degas sat beside the radio all afternoon and into the night. Emília did not understand financial markets. How could things as useful as sugar, coffee, and rubber be valuable one day and worthless the next?

On Friday, the announcers were reluctantly optimistic. All weekend, the Coelhos waited for news. On Monday, papers and radio broadcasts said that markets around the world were crashing in response to the news from New York. They dubbed the day “Black Monday,” and the next was “Black Tuesday,” and afterward the days did not need such labels because all seemed bleak. Recife went into a panic. Businesses shut their doors. The cook complained that the markets had no vendors. Meat became scarce. News announcers said that, in the United States, the crash had led to a depression that would be felt around the world. In Brazil, the economic slump was called “the Crisis,” and in Recife, the Old familes were the first to feel it.

Slowly, sugar-mill owners began to appear at the Coelho house wearing dark mourning suits and carrying sheaves of paper beneath their arms. They were promptly escorted into Dr. Duarte’s office. Some brought their wives with them, as if they were paying a social visit, although Emília had never seen an Old family woman set foot in the Coelho house. Dona Dulce and Emília sat with these black-cloaked women. Emília recognized some from her walks in Derby Square. Most were cordial and smiling. They sipped their coffee and chatted as if they’d been meaning to visit for ages but had never gotten around to it. Despite their cordiality, Emília noticed the careless way the women handled Dona Dulce’s china. They placed their saucers noisily back on the serving tray and clinked their spoons sharply against the cups’ thin lips, as if hoping to accidentally break them.