The Seamstress (65 page)
“Shhh!” Emília hushed. “Don’t wake him!”
Degas stared at Expedito. He ran a fingertip along the boy’s foot. “You used to wrinkle your nose at the mention of children. Even the Seamstress had a mother’s instinct, but you didn’t.”
“That’s nonsense,” Emília whispered.
“It’s not. She was pregnant,” Degas continued. “That’s what the papers said.”
“She was starving, like those refugees. They all have big stomachs. It’s worms.”
Degas ignored her, moving his finger in circles along Expedito’s bare foot. “I’d assume it’s hard to give birth in the scrub. You’d need medical attention. A doctor—”
“That’s why I don’t want children of my own,” Emília interrupted, determined to divert the conversation. “Births are awful. Mrs. Coimbra said it ruined her figure.”
Degas smiled. “What happened to it, do you suppose?”
“To her figure?” Emília said. “She got thick in the waist.”
“No,” Degas replied. “To the child, the bandit child.”
Emília faced him. “She killed it.”
“What mother would do that?”
“A desperate one.”
Degas clicked his tongue. “We’ve seen proof that that’s not true. Those women in the relief camp were desperate. They were starving, but they kept their scrawny babies.”
Degas reached over Emília’s lap. He stroked Expedito’s head, running a finger across each silky strand of the boy’s hair.
“I think the Seamstress gave her child away. To a coiteiro, maybe. To someone she deeply trusted.” Degas cupped his hand over Expedito’s head. “Father will want to measure him. Once he’s fully formed.”
Emília thought of the Mermaid Girl floating in her jar, trapped in a perpetual sleep. She pushed away Degas’ hand.
“Let him be,” she hissed.
“I can’t,” Degas said. He stared at Emília, his face scrunching as if he was in pain. “I’m his father now, even if it wasn’t my choice, even if you asked Father first and not me. Everyone discounts me, even my own wife. But don’t patronize me, Emília. I know what it is to conceal. I do it every waking hour.”
Her hands felt clammy against Expedito’s skin. The crooks of her elbows were moist with sweat. “I’m sorry,” Emília said. “I should have asked you first. I was scared you would say no.”
“And if I had?” Degas said. “You would’ve taken him regardless.”
“Yes.”
Degas sighed and sat back. He turned his head toward Emília.
“Tell me the truth,” he asked. “What is so special about this child?”
“Nothing,” Emília replied. “If you believe what your father believes, he isn’t special at all. He’s the opposite. That’s why I want him.”
Degas faced the ceiling. He pinched the bridge of his nose. When he stared down at Expedito again, his eyes shone. He abruptly stood.
“I’ll talk to Mother when we arrive,” Degas said. “I’ll tell her I wanted him.”
Emília watched Degas squeeze along the narrow aisle and disappear into the adjoining car. When he’d gone, she held Expedito close. The child woke. He cried but Emília didn’t quiet him. She pressed her face against his, inhaling his milky-breathed sobs and letting her own escape.
1
H
er boy was both obedient and stubborn. Obedient because, during the long walk to Dr. Eronildes’ house, she’d asked her unborn son to stay inside her belly and he’d listened. He’d waited. Stubborn because even after she’d reached the doctor’s house and installed herself in Eronildes’ guest bedroom, the child wouldn’t come out. Luzia’s belly was so heavy that her organs felt pressed against the walls of her stomach and pushed up into her chest. Her back ached. She constantly had to urinate and could not sleep, could not find comfort lying down or standing up. Eronildes’ ancient maid tried everything to coax the child out: tying a sweaty shirt around Luzia’s neck, making her eat raw malagueta peppers, flapping a dusty rag under her nose to make her sneeze. Nothing worked.
When she’d first arrived at Eronildes’ house, Luzia took the doctor’s smooth hand and the maid’s arthritic claw and made them both swear on the Bible. She’d made them swear to the Virgin, the mother of all mothers, that they wouldn’t let her see or touch the child. If she did either of those things, Luzia would want to keep him.
Dr. Eronildes didn’t preside over the birth; that was woman’s work. The doctor and the cangaceiros were barred from Luzia’s bedroom. They waited outside like a group of nervous fathers. Only Baby—Ponta Fina’s wife—stayed with Luzia and the maid.
“It will come in its own time,” the elderly woman said. “The more you want it, the more you will wait. It’s like cooking milk: when you turn your back, it boils over.”
The old woman was right. One afternoon, Luzia’s body moved without her guidance or control. It reared and tensed. Her insides tightened, as if a horsewhip had wrapped itself around her. An invisible hand pulled and squeezed the whip, then released it. Baby placed a warm rag on Luzia’s head. The elderly maid spit out her corncob pipe and pressed her hands to Luzia’s thighs, opening them. She cracked open a clove of garlic and wiped it under Luzia’s nose, then repeated the midwife’s prayer.
“God save us. God save this saintly house. Where did God make his house?”
“Here!” Luzia replied, clasping her belly.
“And where is the blessed chalice?”
“Here!”
“Where is the scared host?”
“Here! Here!”
The maid boiled a pot of water infused with pepper and cumin seeds and placed the fragrant mixture by the bed. Then, she took a white onion, chopped it in half, and rubbed it on Luzia’s thighs. Luzia kicked her away, already nauseous from the scent of garlic and her own sweat. With surprising strength, the old woman held down Luzia’s legs.
“Our Lady of the Good Birth!” she cried. “Help us.”
With each wave of pushing, the whip tightened. It burned. Luzia stared at the ceiling. She felt trapped in a dream, her body so focused on its task that her mind moved away, as if she were watching herself from afar. Her mind was useless. When he finally left her, that great wave of release should have been a relief, but Luzia felt that along with her child, she had pushed out any remaining feeling. All of the goodness, all of the love she had ever felt or would ever feel was in that boy.
She could not look at him. The guest room was dark, the curtains drawn so the child wouldn’t be shocked or blinded when it was born. Quickly, the maid cut the cord, clamped it, and took the child away.
Luzia recalled the oath she’d made the old woman and Eronildes take. “I don’t want my boy touching the handle of a punhal,” Luzia had said when she’d first arrived. “I want him to be called Expedito.” She’d shown Eronildes her collection of newspaper photos of Emília. Luzia made it clear that she wanted her boy delivered to her sister, on the coast, but she did not want to know how or when the doctor would do it.
That was before the birth. Before Luzia heard his cry. It was shrill, like the squawks of the green parrots that flew over the scrub. Her oaths and promises seemed silly then; Luzia took them all back. She wanted her boy. She shouted and her eyes searched the dark room but she could barely sit up. The old maid returned, her arms empty. Luzia tried to move from the bed. The maid stopped her, pushing Luzia onto her side and sitting on her hips.
“My Santa Margarida,” the maid said, bouncing lightly on Luzia’s hip. “Take these rotten meats out of her stomach.”
Luzia spat. She cursed. She plotted all kinds of revenge against the maid—the scissors she’d used to cut the cord, where were they? Could she reach them? Seconds later, she felt the placenta pour out of her, warm and wet. The pillow beneath her cheek was damp with sweat. Luzia’s eyelids felt heavy. She closed them.
When she woke, the room was light. The windows were open. The maid stared at her.
“Your boy’s alive,” she said. “The doctor left with him last night. God will look after him now.”
Usually after a birth, the mother’s house is filled with relatives, cooing over the baby. The proud father serves sugarcane liquor. The relatives bury the baby’s umbilical cord at the door to the house so he won’t travel far from home. But Luzia had no home, and now neither did her child. Just a few days old and Expedito was already a wanderer. Luzia’s tongue felt dry and fat in her mouth. Her fingers pulsed, as if they’d filled with too much blood. Her ears rang. Outside the bedroom window, she heard Sabiá singing one of his ballads. The words were jumbled and indistinct, but the cangaceiro’s voice was mournful. He sang about death. Luzia shivered. All of Sabiá’s songs were death songs—she and Antônio had laughed about this in the past—but this ballad was different. Sabiá’s voice grew softer and closer, until it was a whisper in her ear. When Luzia opened her eyes, no one was there. When she attempted to sit up in bed, she couldn’t. Her body was too heavy to move. Later, she heard hushed conversations between Ponta Fina, Baiano, and Eronildes’ maid.
Fever,
they said.
Blood.
“Whose?” Luzia asked. “My boy’s?”
Ponta Fina, Baiano, and the maid acted as if they didn’t hear her. Luzia touched her lips—had she even spoken? When she closed her eyes, she saw her son in Emília’s arms.
The elderly maid changed the soiled bedsheets. She set lavender seeds over the fire to freshen the room’s smell. She forced spoonfuls of broth thickened with manioc flour into Luzia’s mouth. When her fever broke, the maid brewed a bitter tea. She fed it to Luzia in order to dry up her milk. Luzia’s breasts swelled and ached, like blisters ready to burst. They were mapped with blue veins, the nipples hard and rubbery. The old woman wrapped canvas tightly around Luzia’s chest, binding it so she wouldn’t leak. Beneath the bandages, Luzia felt the surge of milk. She felt its release. When this happened, she knew her boy was hungry. He was somewhere with Dr. Eronildes, crying for food and being fed goat’s milk as a substitute for her own. Luzia knew because her body told her. It was as if an invisible thread hooked her to her boy. The thread could go taut or slack but it could never come undone, it could never reach the end of its spool because there was no end; it bound them forever.
2
New mothers were required to rest for three weeks during their resguardo period. They were not supposed to bathe or leave their beds. As children, Luzia and Emília had accompanied Aunt Sofia on congratulatory visits to new mothers. The women’s rooms were dark and stuffy, like animals’ dens. Bowls of lavender oil were placed under the mothers’ beds but the perfume didn’t mask the overpowering scent. The women smelled of sour milk, of sweat, of stale blood. Luzia knew she smelled just as bad as those new mothers she’d met during her childhood, because each time Ponta Fina came into her room, he wrinkled his nose.
Ponta Fina sat beside Luzia’s bed and told her what went on outside her sickroom. Eronildes’ maid had left the ranch. The old woman had joined the doctor because a man wasn’t capable of looking after a newborn baby. Luzia didn’t know where Dr. Eronildes was, or how he planned to deposit her son in the arms of her sister. Eronildes’ route had to be kept secret—that was what they’d agreed upon before the birth—in order to prevent Luzia from going after him. She might want her child back, but she wouldn’t know where to look for him.
“Food’s scarce,” Ponta Fina said, his eyes focused on the crucifix just above Luzia’s bed. “The beans the doctor left are nearly gone. The Old Chico’s low. We walked five meters in from the old banks and were only ankle deep. Word got to us that there’re trains coming in from the capital. Gomes is sending supplies. He’s building drought camps. Some of the men—Thursday, Sabiá, Canjica—are talking about leaving. They’re wanting to stop the trains. Get some food. Me and Baiano, we told them to wait.”
Luzia nodded. She’d been in bed for four days. If she stayed there much longer, the cangaceiros would see her as a normal woman—not their invincible captain or their vigorous mãe. She’d entered into an agreement with the men, just as Antônio had. She’d cut her hair and called herself captain. She’d frightened them into believing in her, making the men dependent on her leadership, just as they’d felt dependent on Antônio’s. By doing this she’d promised to forgo her personal well-being for the group’s. She’d promised to give the men direction. They, in turn, had promised to give her obedience.
Ponta Fina watched her intently, the way a farmer might watch an ailing cow—worried for the beast’s welfare because he’d genuinely grown to care for it, but also because its well-being determined his own livelihood.
“Wait outside,” Luzia said.
Once he’d left the room, Luzia flung away her sheets. She stepped out of bed and gingerly into her old trousers. Every movement threatened to tear open the wound her days in bed had repaired. Her legs felt wobbly, her stomach too slack, her hips oddly loose, like ropes that had been so badly stretched they’d never recover their original firmness. Luzia bound her breasts. She buttoned her jacket and snapped on her shoulder holster. She placed Antônio’s hat on her head. These few actions tired Luzia and she was tempted to sit back on the bed. Ponta Fina prevented her from doing this; the cangaceiro paced just outside the bedroom door.
“Ponta!” Luzia yelled. The young man entered and stood at attention.
“Round up the men,” she said. “We’re leaving.”
“But your resguardo?”
“I’ve birthed a boy, not an ox. Four days was plenty.”
As soon as Ponta Fina left the ranch house, Luzia walked into the kitchen, rolled up her pregnancy dress, and threw it in the cook fire.
Outside, the men gathered on Eronildes’ porch. Luzia held Antônio’s crystal rock and led them in prayer. As she sealed their bodies and her own with the corpo fechado prayer, Luzia observed the kneeling cangaceiros. The men did not ask about her child. They did not inquire after her health. She understood how Antônio must have felt, surrounded by people yet always removed from them. Removed even from her—his own wife—who’d also considered him a guide, a decision maker. Now Luzia was Captain.
She stared at the gray scrubland. The drought would make the most mundane decisions important: where the cangaceiros walked and how far; what time they woke; what time they slept, if they slept at all, because night was the coolest time to walk through the scrub. Taking the wrong path or making the wrong choice would mean dehydration and death. Luzia’s decisions would determine their survival. Ponta Fina and Baiano could advise her, but no matter how many opinions were shared, the men expected their captain to bear the burden of choice. The trade-off for leadership was loneliness.
Luzia stepped off the porch. The men followed. Before they entered the scrub, Luzia turned and faced them.
“We won’t starve,” she announced, mimicking Antônio’s confidence. “If God wanted us dead, he would have done it a long time ago.”
3
Along the old cattle trail were dozens of shallow graves dug for escapees who’d died of hunger. Some bodies were not buried and in the dry climate they did not decompose but lay openmouthed along the trail, their skins stiff as leather, their hair shining. Only the once soft and wet parts of them—their eyes, tongues, and stomachs—were missing, eaten by desperate animals.
Luzia’s head ached. Dust coated her face like a brown mask. The dirt plugged her nose and ears until all of her senses seemed dulled. After dark, her vision waned and she could barely see. The cangaceiros also complained of such night blindness. Within weeks of leaving Eronildes’ ranch, the cangaceiro group could travel only in daylight.
Water was the agent that coaxed out the scrub’s smells and sounds. Without it, the place was silent. There was only the drone of flies, millions of them it seemed, covering the carcasses of animals and people. Luzia heard their buzzing from kilometers away. At first, Luzia and the cangaceiros smelled the sweet, putrid scent of dead cattle, goats, and frogs. Soon, even that smell vanished. Dead things didn’t have time to decay; they were eaten too quickly.
Luzia and her men found water in the inner folds of bromeliads and the cores of cacti. They pulled young stalks from the spiky caroá plant and sucked on their fleshy ends to trick their thirst. They did not have coffee, so Luzia recalled Antônio’s teachings and looked for losna-da-serra, whose furry leaves did the work of seven pots of coffee. She found macambira plants, cut off their long, spiky spears until she held the medulla, and cooked it over the fire for several hours. After being set in the sun to dry, the yellowed orb was crushed to make coarse flour. The woody mucanã vine that wrapped around scrub trees was also a secret source of water. When Luzia cut the vine in the right place—with one quick slice on top and another on the bottom—there was juice. She and the cangaceiros had to hold the cut ends to their mouths quickly or else they’d lose the liquid.
Hunger numbed emotion. Luzia’s connection to her son became vague, its pull subdued. She and the cangaceiros thought only of food but, because it hadn’t rained during the planting season, there were no crops to reap, no provisions to buy or steal, and few animals to hunt. The cangaceiros’ thoughts focused on Gomes’s supply trains. Each night the men imagined what was inside the Great Western cargo cars: bags of beans turned into bubbling feijoadas complete with sausage and pigs’ feet; cornmeal became steaming cuscuz topped with warm milk; flanks of beef were shredded and served on top of buttered macaxeira root. These dreams made the men determined to endure heat, hunger, and thirst, and to follow Luzia to the nearest Great Western station.