The Seamstress (9 page)

Some people suspected Luzia. But just as she had been disqualified from marriage and, in turn, from any chance of a productive life, Victrola was quickly discounted. Thievery—much like being a wife and bearing children—required a certain amount of bravery and skill. How could Victrola silence dogs and unwire cage doors? Also, she kept birds at home. Or Emília did. Their father had given her three azulões, whose feathers molted from black to iridescent blue once a year. Like the other birds in town, they had once been wild, and had been tricked into a too small cage. Still, Emília loved them. Each day, she gave the birds eggshells and cornmeal. Each night she placed them beneath their parents’ portrait and gave Luzia a stern look. Emília, unlike everyone else in town, did not underestimate Victrola’s capabilities.

A low-lying mist covered the top of the mountain. The air was humid. The trail was slick. Luzia moved up the hill faster. Her leg muscles burned. When she exerted herself, a deep calm overcame her. She felt none of her childhood bitterness. Each September, when manioc was harvested and everyone in town congregated at the mill to pound and press the tubers into flour, Luzia was the one who stayed the longest. She scraped and grated until her good arm burned. On regular days she washed clothes, sewed, and hoisted water jugs to and from the spring. Most days she gladly took on Emília’s chores. The work soothed her. She loved the slap of wet laundry against rocks. Loved wringing the clothes so tightly that when they unwound, they squirmed and writhed in her hands, as if alive. She loved pressing the water jugs’ cool clay against her arms. Loved the metallic smell of her hands after cranking Aunt Sofia’s rusted sewing machine.

When she sewed, no one interrupted Luzia’s work. No one corrected her. Even Aunt Sofia looked on silently, nodding her head in approval as Luzia attached lace to the skirts of Communion gowns, made the angled lapels of death suits, or embroidered rows of somber black and purple flowers onto Padre Otto’s Lenten robe. When Emília turned the robe inside out and saw that the embroidered stitches were so small and even, the knots so well hidden that the back of the robe was almost as perfectly wrought as the front, she kissed Luzia’s cheek and asked for help on her own projects. Emília was a skilled seamstress, but she was more interested in drawing dress designs inspired from her
Fon Fon
s than embroidering dish towels or sewing death suits. When she sewed, Emília did it quickly, impatient to see the final product. Emília liked the results of her work. Luzia liked the work itself. She enjoyed the exactness of taking measurements, the challenge of translating those measurements onto cloth, the precision of cutting that cloth into individual pieces, and the satisfaction of joining those pieces together into a whole.

During her morning walks, Luzia took the steepest trails to the mountain ridge where, before sunrise, she looked over the edge and saw the scrubland below. In the past week it had turned from gray to brown, a sign that the recent rains had trickled down the mountain. The summer drought had stretched into March, then April. Streams had vanished. Dams had emptied. The spring where she and Emília fetched drinking water grew so dry that they had to lie on its edge and scoop out the silty water with tin cups. People were forced to sell their best goats and heifers because they could not sustain them. And Taquaritinga still had water, which was more than most places. On their rides to sewing class, she and Emília passed animal carcasses alongside the road. Farmhouses below the mountain—houses where laundry used to swing from ropes between the spindly juazeiro trees and where children once played in the dusty front yards—were slowly abandoned. People flocked up the mountain to Taquaritinga, where they could get water. They set up tents along the mule trail. Once, these tents were burned in the night. Drunks were blamed, but Luzia heard whispers that it had been locals hoping to protect their water. Everyone was thirsty, including the Hawk. His group had been sighted along the mountain range. They’d attacked Triunfo, a twelve-day trip from Taquaritinga. There were rumors that the Military Police had been dispatched to the area. People in town were nervous, hiding valuables from the police and the cangaceiros. Their sewing professor panicked and spoke of canceling class. He fretted at his desk and did not pass Emília any notes. Emília blamed his disinterest on her short haircut, but Luzia knew better. It was the lack of rain. Everyone was haunted by the prospect of a drought, especially strangers. Those with means had left. The colonel sent his wife, Dona Conceição, to Campina Grande. She made no dress orders. Luzia, Emília, and Aunt Sofia sewed kitchen towels, handkerchiefs, and an occasional shirt for the colonel, but it was barely enough to sustain them.

The colonel gave them goat’s milk to make up for the lack of sewing duties. They had grown beans on the tiny strip of land behind their house, and manioc flour was affordable. But they had eaten all of their guineas during the dry months and fresh meat had become a luxury. They could only afford strips of dried, salted beef and Luzia was sick of it—sick of eating cornmeal for breakfast and beans, manioc, and that tough carne-de-sol each afternoon for supper. She craved a bit of steamed pumpkin or a flank of goat, the meat so tender it fell off the bone.

And then it rained. One afternoon, clouds—dark and looming—hung over the mountain. Luzia ignored them. She’d seen many clouds over the dry months, clouds that had darkened the sky and brought the hope of rain, only to sweep past and disappoint her. But Luzia’s stiff elbow began to ache, and then the frogs emerged from their dirt tunnels and called out, answering one another’s soft croaks. When the rains hit, the ground sizzled. Dust rose, and with it came a scent. Luzia loved the smell of winter rains. It was as if all of the withering plants—the wilted coffee trees, the brown banana palms, the tufts of manioc and stalks of stunted corn—let out a perfume to celebrate. She and Emília abandoned their sewing and ran outside. They dragged the empty clay water jugs outdoors one by one and watched the rain fill them. They laughed and turned their mouths toward the sky. Emília grabbed her special bar of soap and they stood, their dresses wet and clinging, under the dented aluminum drainpipe and washed their hair as they used to do, when they were girls. Even Aunt Sofia laughed and clapped in the open doorway, thanking Jesus and São Pedro. It had been a wonderful afternoon.

Luzia shivered. Her breath was quick. She patted the dried meat in her pocket. Before her stood a clay house. Young plants grew from the muddy ground around it. The roof tiles were slick with moss. Near the house’s front window hung a covered cage, its white sheet hovering over the ground like a ghost. Luzia heard no growling, saw no dog post or chain. She edged closer and lifted her good arm. She did not have to strain to reach the cage. Beneath the sheet were tightly woven reeds, their pattern broken by two rope hinges and a latch. Luzia’s fingers twisted the wire latch loose. Inside, the bird shuddered. Wire nicked Luzia’s finger but she twisted harder. The sheet draped over the cage suddenly slid off. Uncovered, the bird chirped. Luzia tugged the reed door open and ran.

The trail was slick from rain. Her smooth-soled alpercata sandals slid, making Luzia fumble for balance. She fell. Clay covered her hands. Last winter, in that same spot, she’d come across a brick pit. Several men from town had crouched beside the pit, shaping mounds of clay into blocks and setting them to dry. The ground was soft from the rains. The men within the pit had dug past the soil’s rocky layer to reach clay. They heaved up large, orange shovelfuls. Their hair had disappeared, slicked back beneath a thick layer of clay. They wore no shirts; their arms and chests were coated in orange earth. Their pants clung, heavy and wet, to their legs. Their feet disappeared into the pit’s soft bottom. The diggers had no features, no hair, no scars, no brows or lids. The clay had covered them and erased everything except the clean lines of their bodies. Only their eyes appeared, glistening and dark, standing out against their orange skins. Luzia had not thought that those common farmers—boys she had known in school and men she had often ignored—could be so lovely.

Luzia blushed at the memory. Heat rose in the pit of her stomach. She wiped her hands across her skirt and moved on. The sky was changing; soon, the sun would break over the horizon. Luzia quickened her pace. She had one more house to visit.

Away from the main trail, near the ridge, lived a widower who loved catching sofreus
.
They were scrubland birds, trapped below the mountain and brought to live in Taquaritinga. They were lovely, with red-crested heads and black wings. But they weren’t hardy like sabiás or aggressive like canaries. Their name came from the fact that they suffered in cages, and if caught, they almost always died. Still, the widower on the hill continued to snare them, hoping to prove the legend wrong. Each time Luzia saw him at the weekly market she had the urge to twist his neck.

His house was similar to the first: simple, clay, with closed shutters and surrounded by banana palms and coffee trees. But he had a dog. It was a skinny gray mutt roped to the front porch, beneath the birdcage. When Luzia arrived, the dog stood stiffly at attention. Luzia cut a bit of dried beef with her penknife. She threw the meat to the dog. It sniffed the beef and then the air, as if it did not know which deserved its attention. Luzia smelled it, too. She tried to define the scent around the house but could not. It was musty, like wet chicken feathers, but with a rank sweetness like rotten melon. And something else, something heady and lingering, like billy goats at the market.

The dog took the beef and chewed gingerly, its old teeth rotted. Luzia cut away another piece of meat and stepped toward the house. The sofreu hung on the side eave. There was no cloth over its cage and the bird looked limp, its crest bald and discolored. Luzia moved forward. The dog sniffed the air and circled nervously. She threw it more beef. The mutt snatched it up, then cocked its ears and dropped the meat. The smell grew stronger. The dog let out a low bark. Luzia turned around.

Three men had emerged from the banana palms. The center man wore a large-brimmed leather hat, like a rancher, but with a gold chain around the brim instead of a cloth hatband. His hair settled around his shoulders. He held a thick-barreled pistol. The men on either side of him—one tall, one short—wore leather hats with the brims cracked backward to form half-moons. Only cangaceiros wore such hats. Rifles sat stiffly in their hands. The sun slowly rose behind the men; Luzia could not see their faces. But she could smell them. The animal strength of their scent surprised her. She raised her hand to cover her nose.

“So,” the man in the middle said, “you’re the bird thief?”

Luzia shuddered at the sound of his voice. It was deep and thick, as if his throat was coated in molasses. He moved closer. There were gold rings on all of his brown fingers. Luzia wondered how he could grip the gun with so many jewels loaded onto his hands. Their clothing was ragged and soiled, but thick cartridge belts circled their waists, each strung with brass-tipped bullets that glimmered in the morning light. Stuffed prominently between their leather belts and the waistbands of their pants were silver knives. The handles had circular knobs that tapered into narrow throats, where the men’s hands could grip them. The tall man was a dark-skinned mulatto with finely carved features. The shorter man had kinky hair. And while most men wore beards, these had shaved faces, like priests.

“Are you mute?” the deep-voiced man asked.

His kinky-haired friend giggled and Luzia realized he was not a short man, but a boy.

“No,” Luzia said. Her voice trembled and she cleared her throat to remedy it. “I don’t steal them. I just open the doors. It’s the bird’s choice to stay or go.”

The central man laughed. His head tipped backward. The shadow cast by his hat brim vanished, revealing his face. Luzia took a breath. On his right cheek was a scar, two fingers thick, which roped from the corner of his thick lips and disappeared beneath his ear. The scar’s flesh was lighter than his skin, like a crack in the top of a cake when the batter rises and splits the browned crust. The left side of his mouth opened in a smile, but the scarred side remained serious, paralyzed. He pushed his hat farther back. His fingers were short and thick, like a cluster of bananas.

“This farmer,” he said, pointing to the house, “is a friend. He lets us camp here. Gives us water. I do favors for my friends. He has a bird problem. I promised him I’d solve it. I told him I’d shoot the thief, and I’m a man of my word.”

Luzia’s hands felt cold. Her underarms were wet. Ever since she was a girl, ever since the children poked and prodded her bent arm in the church schoolyard, Luzia had learned what to do when tears threatened. She pressed her lips together, hard, until they grew white and bloodless. Then she released them and the blood rushed back, warm and tingling. She did this over and over, focusing on the pain and the release, and not on her dry throat and stinging eyes.

“You may be lucky,” the scarred man continued, “I’m a great respecter of ladies. I don’t shoot them. But not all women are ladies. So what are you?”

Luzia’s heart drummed against her chest. She was not a lady, not a dona or a senhora. But she certainly wasn’t the other kind of woman—the kind Aunt Sofia warned her against. She was Victrola. Useless. Purposeless. She had never called herself by that name, had never said it aloud. Luzia lengthened her neck, pulled back her shoulders, and stepped into the sun.

“I am a seamstress,” she said, and the man put down his pistol.

3

As she started down the trail, it began to rain. It fell softly at first, then thickened into large, slapping drops. Luzia would not run. She kept her pace steady, allowing herself to look back only twice. Her heart felt as if it wanted to push through her skin.

Both times she’d turned around, the path was clear. She didn’t expect the scarred man to be there. Yet she felt he was everywhere. Hidden. Invisible. Watching her as she made her way home. His smell lingered in her nose. She wanted to sprint, to slide down the slick trail and lock herself in the saints’ closet. But she would not give him that satisfaction. He had released her and she had thanked him, but she would not run. Not for his sake.