The Seamstress (59 page)

“We shouldn’t depend on colonels for bullets,” Little Ear said. “We should find another way. That doctor could get guns for us.”

“No,” Antônio said.

“We can burn their houses,” Little Ear persisted. “Show the colonels we don’t want them back here. We can punish their vaqueiros, their maids. The ones who take care of things for them. It will teach people to be loyal to us, and not to the colonels.”

“It’s not the people’s fault,” Antônio said, shaking his head. “Their masters left them, scared of a drought. If the drought comes, we can help them. Get them food. Teach them to scavenge. They’ll be grateful to us. They’ll owe us, not the colonels or Gomes. That’s how we’ll earn their loyalty. And we’ll need it, when the roadway comes.”

Recently, Antônio had confided to Luzia that he saw the drought as an opportunity. It would be his chance to truly earn the trust of struggling tenant farmers, merchants, vaqueiros, and goat herders. He resolved to nourish them through the dry months in the hopes that they would take his side in an even bigger fight: the one against the Trans-Nordestino.

“The roadway,” Little Ear said impatiently. “It’s not real. They won’t build. If there’s a drought, they won’t waste their time.”

“They will build,” Antônio said, raising his voice. “You think they’ll come here when it’s wet? Build in the mud? What farmer makes a house during the rains? Gomes wants the dry times. It’ll make things easier for them. And they’ll bring monkeys along.”

“Monkeys,” Little Ear repeated. He nodded toward Luzia. “Will we be allowed to fight them?”

Ponta Fina bowed his head. Baiano sighed. They all harbored the same worries, the same doubts. Even Luzia. Would they be able to fight with her present, or would she hold them back, make them vulnerable? She’d seen her face printed in the newspaper. Her portrait had been magnified to show only her head. Above the modified photograph was the word “Wanted” and the offer of 50:000$00. Below were the words: “Mother and Child.”

Luzia shifted her place on the ground. The little food she’d eaten settled in her chest and burned there. The child pressed against her organs, jostling her insides. She was in her seventh month. Beneath her shawl, Luzia’s belly was round but not soft. It was taut and hard, like a water gourd. Her ankles were shapeless and swollen, as thick as ouricuri palm trunks. She’d had to cut open her alpercata sandals to fit her feet. In her bornal was a collection of materials she’d need for the birth: a thick needle, a small pair of sewing scissors wiped free of rust, a mixture of crushed malagueta peppers and salt to place in the umbilical wound, and several scraps of clean cloth. Luzia had even decided on a name. She’d made a new promise to her childhood protector, Expedito, the patron saint of impossible causes. She’d broken her first promise to him; she would not break her second.

“My belly doesn’t affect my aim,” Luzia said. “And it’ll be gone soon.”

Gone.
It sounded as if her belly were a nuisance, a temporary ailment, like a blister or a bee sting. To Little Ear and some of the cangaceiros, it was. To others, Luzia’s massive belly was proof of her good luck, her strength. What other woman could carry a child through the scrubland? What other woman could survive such long walks and such dry times, and still look so plump, her stomach so round and full? Only the Virgin Mother herself.

“The child will be a giant, praise God,” Baiano often said. Others agreed. Each day, Antônio gave Luzia half of his share of food in addition to her own. Ponta Fina divided his food with her as well. Of all the cangaceiros, Luzia felt the least hunger. To make up for this, she helped the men find dried gullies and streams. When they lacked energy, Luzia burrowed in the hot sand until water bubbled up. She dug around the bases of umbuzeiro trees and pried out round, tuberous roots as big as an infant’s head. The water stored inside these roots was cloudy, resinous, and always warm. The work exhausted her, but Luzia had to make herself useful, to prove she was not a burden.

Gone
. She could not say
born
because she didn’t want to think of the birth. As a young man, Antônio had birthed plenty of cattle and goats. So had Ponta Fina. They would help Luzia if the child came earlier than expected. The next day, their group would stop at a colonel’s abandoned house to pick up supplies, and then they would make their way to Taquaritinga. There, Luzia would find a midwife to perform the birth. After that, her boy really would be gone—delivered into the arms of Padre Otto.

Little Ear looked at Luzia. His lips were pinched together. Slowly, they relaxed and parted. He let out a breath, as if he’d had a realization.

“That’s another reason we should go after any colonels’ people,” he said. “We should frighten them. They can’t be trusted. They’ll try to take her head, for the reward.”

“You’re like a dog,” Ponta Fina said. “Sniffing after blood.”

Little Ear stood. Ponta Fina followed. Antônio got between them, his arms outstretched, a hand on each man’s shoulder. He faced Little Ear.

“We won’t frighten anyone,” Antônio said, his voice stern. “We won’t go after anyone unless they go after us first. Save your energy. When the roadway comes, there’ll be plenty of monkeys for us to fight. Right now, we have to win loyalty. We have to keep calm.”

Little Ear shrugged off Antônio’s hand. “I don’t want calm.”

“It doesn’t matter what you want,” Antônio said. He grabbed Little Ear’s red neckerchief. “Take this off.”

Little Ear’s eyes widened. His mouth opened but he did not protest. He untied the neckerchief ’s knot and slipped the sweaty cloth from around his neck. Antônio took it from him.

“Control your temper,” he said.

Little Ear nodded, bowing his head and extending his hands, ready to receive the red cloth back. Antônio ignored him. He handed the neckerchief to Luzia.

“Put it on, my Saint.”

Luzia hesitated. The red scarf in Antônio’s hands was stained with Little Ear’s sweat. She could not wash it, could not waste water for something so trivial. Little Ear pressed his lips together tightly, as if afraid of the words that might escape from them. He didn’t want her to be a subcaptain, to take his place. Luzia didn’t want those things either. She wanted rest, not responsibility. In many ways, Little Ear was right: she was a burden, the colonels and their employees couldn’t be trusted, the roadway was a dangerous obsession.

“Luzia,” Antônio said, sternly this time. “Wear it.”

In the dying firelight, she could see the outline of iris and pupil through the film of his dull eye. He knew something she didn’t. That’s how she’d felt these past months. His sleeplessness, his suspicions, his aches and pains were all things he tried to hide from her. They were signs of the distance that had grown between them. Luzia believed it was her pregnancy that had made Antônio remote. Now she saw that it was something else, something she couldn’t decipher. It seemed Antônio had been waiting for this chance—for Little Ear to commit the smallest infraction so that Luzia could inherit his red scarf. She wouldn’t have taken it otherwise. She wouldn’t have chosen the role for herself. If a serious drought came, the cangaceiros would have to break into small groups in order to survive. Antônio expected his subcaptains to be leaders, to understand the caatinga, to be able to live without him. As he pressed the red scarf into her hands, Luzia understood that he expected the same things of her.

9

The next day they raided a colonel’s abandoned house. Antônio, Luzia, and the cangaceiros often stopped at sympathetic colonels’ ranches only to find the main houses closed. Vaqueiros, maids, and tenant farmers were ordered to remain and protect the ranches. They stayed for fear of losing their jobs. The men and women put up no resistance when Antônio opened the colonels’ abandoned houses. He and the cangaceiros searched for food, newspapers, weapons, ammunition, anything useful.

Flanked by Ponta Fina and Baiano, Antônio spoke to the property’s remaining farmhand. Little Ear and Luzia stood close by. The farmhand was stooped and toothless, but his hair was black. He wore a bowl-shaped vaqueiro cap pulled far forward on his head so the short brim shaded his eyes. The hat’s leather chinstraps hung loosely below the man’s lean face. His wife stood beside him, her hair hidden beneath a faded head scarf. Her chin was as round and brown as a sapoti fruit and jutted sharply beneath her mouth. Next to her was their daughter. The girl was young—no more than fifteen—and pretty. She propped a bare foot against her shin, balancing on one sinewy leg like the white-winged garças that followed cattle during the rainy seasons. Her dress hit midcalf, its fabric a jacquard—expensive and thick, with a pattern woven into the cloth. It had grown whiskery with wear. The dress’s modern cut and style made Luzia believe that it had once belonged to a colonel’s wife or daughter, and the farm girl had stolen it in their absence. The girl glanced at Ponta Fina, then bowed her head coquettishly.

Antônio spoke respectfully to the farmhand, and the man allowed the cangaceiros to camp nearby and to search the colonel’s house. Antônio assured the family that his group wouldn’t take all of their food reserves, just some. While the other men made camp and searched the ranch for ammunition and supplies, Ponta Fina volunteered to separate food from the colonel’s pantry. When he and Luzia stepped into the kitchen, the farm girl blushed and covered her mouth. Luzia left the room.

The house’s furniture was covered in white sheets, its beds stripped, its mosquito nets untied from the roof beams and neatly folded. Everything inside was carefully preserved, which didn’t suggest a hasty exit. It was as if the colonel and his family had not escaped the drought, but had gone on a vacation and were determined to come back. Luzia made her way to the colonel’s bedroom; she hoped to find a blanket for her boy. Something soft, something she could embroider in the weeks to come. When people spoke of giving birth, they said it was to
dar à luz
—to give the child to the light. Luzia’s boy would leave the comforting darkness of her belly and be exposed to the bright immensity of the world. When this happened, Luzia wanted him to be wrapped in something soft.

There were no linens in the colonel’s house. The master bed was stripped bare. Beside it, stacked next to a mound of fashion journals, was a mound of
Diário de Pernambuco
s. Luzia sifted through them. There were dozens of pictures of Gomes, articles on Green Party reforms, and photos of countless Recife society women. Luzia nearly gave up her search, then spotted an article on the opening of Recife’s Criminology Institute. Buried inside the newspaper’s local section were several photographs; Luzia focused on only one. The caption read:

Mrs. Degas Coelho tries her hand at science in Dr. Duarte Coelho’s new Criminology Institute.

 

Emília cradled a glass jar. Inside, floating in cloudy liquid, was an infant. The child’s eyes were closed. Its face was perfectly formed but its body was stumpy and misshapen, like a clay saint left unfinished by its sculptor. A group of dark-suited men circled Emília, laughing. She seemed unaware of their presence. She stared at the child in the jar. She did not smile. Her face resembled a Madonna’s, frozen in an expression of affectionate sadness.

The newspaper fluttered to Luzia’s feet. She leaned against the wooden bed frame. Emília’s pose with the jarred child unsettled her; perhaps this was her sister’s aim. Luzia sensed a warning in Emília’s photograph, but wasn’t sure if she should trust her senses. She was becoming worse than Aunt Sofia, seeing dark omens everywhere.

Luzia heard a giggle. Forgetting the newspaper, she moved toward the sound. The kitchen was empty. Ponta Fina and the farm girl had disappeared. The pantry’s slatted door was closed, and behind it, Luzia heard whispers, fumbling, and then more muffled laughter. She moved toward the pantry door, prepared to interrupt them; Antônio wouldn’t like that behavior. Before her hand touched the wood, Luzia stopped. The girl seemed willing. Ponta Fina rarely accompanied the other cangaceiros when they visited women-of-the-life. He’d had so few pleasures in his short life, Luzia thought. Let him have this one.

That evening, the cangaceiros prepared a feast. Baiano and Inteligente caught several preá as wide as their hands; the rock-dwelling animals were meaty even after removing their fur. On the fire, Canjica prepared a small vat of beans. Next to him, piled carefully on a rock, was a stack of rapadura squares. A gray cloud of flies hovered above the sweating molasses blocks. Periodically Canjica waved his tan, four-fingered hand, and sliced the insect cloud apart. Antônio sat with the farmhand and his wife. He presented the couple with a wad of mil-réis in exchange for food and supplies. The farmhand massaged the money in his hands. He would save it, he said, and if the drought worsened, he would use the funds to escape to the coast.

Luzia sat apart from the group. Antônio had uncovered a wooden chair in the colonel’s house and brought it outside for her to sit on. Luzia’s belly had become so big, it was hard for her to lower herself to the ground without help. It felt good to sit upright, in a chair instead of on a blanket. In her lap she held the yellowed sheet that had covered her chair. The fabric was coarse, but could be made into a pretty blanket with the right embroidery. Luzia took out a needle and thread and began to work. Before she’d finished one flower, she heard footsteps and whispers near her. Luzia looked up from her sewing to see the farm girl, brown skinned and pretty, and Ponta Fina. They stood side by side, watching Luzia. Ponta Fina walked toward her. The girl stayed behind, fidgeting with the skirt of her stolen dress.

“Mãe?” Ponta Fina said as he approached her, his hat in his hands. Sweat beaded his forehead.

“Are you sick?” Luzia asked.

Ponta Fina shook his head.

“What is it then?”

He looked down. Luzia stared at him. She’d learned this tactic from Antônio: never say too much. People will inevitably speak and reveal themselves.