The Air You Breathe

by Frances De Pontes Peebles

  “Tell your little friend that her daddy better stop wasting the last of the Senhora’s money on nonsense!” Nena growled.

  She never expected me to tell Graça such things, and I never did. Masters know little about their servants, but the reverse is never true. When you work in a house, you see every stained bedsheet, every pillowcase flecked with hardened snot from a night’s tears, every article of trash, every bit of food left uneaten on its plate, every pill in a medicine cabinet, every book left open at the last page read. You learn your masters’ habits and routines because you must. And, in doing so, you learn when these routines go unfollowed, or when new habits are acquired.

  Senhor Pimentel let his beard grow and his boots go unpolished. He emptied half a bottle of cane rum at each meal, then stumbled to his mill office. He visited the little chapel and returned red-eyed and sharp-tongued, snapping at whichever maid or stable boy was unlucky enough to cross his path. Some maids he followed relentlessly, courting them with words and caresses until they capitulated to him; without the Senhora around to curb his appetites, the Senhor had free rein. Sometimes he led a maid into a linen closet, or his private sitting room. Most of the maids were at least eighteen, if not older. But some were fourteen—the same age as Graça and me. It was an unspoken rule in the Great House that we open no door without knocking first, even if it was to the pantry or a broom closet.

  Mornings were the safest times to be in the Senhor’s company; though he was groggy, he hadn’t had a drop to drink. These were the moments when he was patient and even kind to his daughter. At breakfast he asked Graça to tell stories and listened with rapt attention. He said she was beautiful and called her his treasure. Evenings were less predictable. At dusk he ordered Graça to the parlor and told her to sing.

  I was not allowed to join them, but watched whenever I could, cramming myself into one of my old hiding spots. I sat wedged between the phonograph and the wall, my shoulders hunched, my legs going numb beneath me. Usually, Graça sang and the Senhor put down his drink and closed his eyes. Sometimes he fell asleep and Graça tiptoed away. Other times he woke from his trance and had harsh words ready, as if he’d been dreaming them.

  “You bored me right to sleep,” he’d say. Or: “I’m not sure why your mother encouraged you.”

  On those nights, Graça retreated to her room and cried behind her locked door, with me on the other side, waiting. Then she would open the door, wipe her eyes, and take my hand, our fingers intertwined, and we would tiptoe to the cutters’ circles. There were other nights, however, when the Senhor gave her compliments and, upon leaving the parlor, Graça was giddy and flushed. When we sneaked to the cutters’ circles later in the night, she nearly skipped down the dirt path without me.

  “Your mother was right,” Senhor Pimentel said once. “You have a beautiful voice. I’m going to miss it.”

  Graça stood very still before him. “Where are you going, Papai?”

  “I’m not going anywhere, querida. You’re getting married.”

  * * *

  —

  Marriage was an inevitability that loomed over Graça’s future but never with an exact date or time, like death. We knew it would happen but convinced ourselves that it wouldn’t happen anytime soon.

  A year after the Senhora’s funeral, Senhor Pimentel traveled to Recife and stayed a week. When he returned, he’d shaved his beard and parted his hair differently. On another Recife trip, he ordered a dozen new suits in the latest fashion. One day he returned to Riacho Doce driving a new automobile with a convertible top.

  “The rooster’s out of the coop,” Nena said each time Senhor Pimentel’s car bounded out of the Great House gates. The kitchen girls whispered rumors about Senhor Pimentel’s finances. Sugar’s price hadn’t risen after the Depression, and even the best planters were struggling and deep in debt. Some had burned their crops to try to drive the value up. A few maids wondered if they should leave Riacho Doce and trek to Recife to find work before the Senhor went bust, or before a new, meaner Senhora arrived. The rumor was that the Senhor was sniffing around for a rich young wife.

  Graça and I didn’t mind Senhor Pimentel’s absences, and when he returned from Recife he drank less and was more cheerful. But a new Senhora meant trouble—no young wife would want a surly teenage daughter, a sourpuss governess, and an overeducated kitchen girl to contend with. She would want to populate the Great House with new children and trusted servants, and expel any reminders of her husband’s former life. But after many trips to Recife, a prospective wife never appeared. Instead, Senhor Pimentel began to lavish his attentions (and whatever remained of his money) onto Graça. He returned from his trips with silk gloves, gold pendants, and expensive dresses. One day, a large truck barreled through the Great House gates and stopped at the front door. Two millworkers carried from the truck a machine wrapped in blankets and tied to a board, like some kind of beast. Unwrapped, the machine was made of wood and arched on top like a doorway. Senhor Pimentel slapped its side as if testing the fitness of an animal. Then he looked at Graça and said:

  “Every respectable house in Recife has one of these. We must show our guests that we’re keeping up with the times.”

  Graça and I were so entranced with the delivery that we failed to ask which guests Senhor Pimentel hoped to impress. I’d heard the word radio many times—the Pimentels’ cousins visiting from Recife had boasted about being members of the Recife Radio Club, with monthly subscriptions that let them hear shows and music. The idea of voices moving through the air and finding their way into a wooden box seemed like one of the biblical miracles that Old Euclides talked about. Except that this miracle was happening every day, all around us.

  After the radio arrived in the Pimentels’ parlor, the staff was allowed to gather and watch Senhor Pimentel turn on the machine for the first time. The buzzing that erupted from the speakers sounded like a swarm of angry bees. I later learned that this noise was static. Then Senhor Pimentel slowly turned the knob, and a woman’s faraway voice sang through the mesh speaker:

  “Oh! Baker on the corner,

  who rolls dough every hour,

  don’t bake me bread

  unless you use Bragança Flour!”

  Everyone crammed into that parlor disappeared. I closed my eyes and felt only the presence of that radio woman, her voice, and my own questions: What exotic place was this where flour was called not simply “flour” but “Bragança flour”? Where did such things make a difference? Where did people notice these differences enough to sing about them? Graça grabbed my hand. I opened my eyes and saw her beside me, her mouth open, her cheeks flushed, her breath heavy. She looked as if she’d just raced up and down the Great House steps a dozen times, but she hadn’t moved an inch since the radio had been unveiled.

  Now, instead of our records we had the five-o’clock radio hour. Each evening Graça and I raced to the parlor, Bruxa at our heels telling us to slow down, and clicked on the machine.

  The five-o’clock program consisted of a news segment, a few dramatic skits, jingles for the Radio Club, and a music interval. The music was the only part of the show that I truly liked, but Graça loved it all. Each time we sat in front of the radio, Graça gripped my hand and shut her eyes very tightly, as if she were willing herself away from Riacho Doce and to the Mayrink radio station in Rio de Janeiro. My hand seemed to be the only thing keeping her grounded beside me. I held on tight.

  I went to sleep thinking of the radio and its music and woke every day excited for five p.m. Nothing else felt important. Even Bruxa’s lessons, which I’d once loved, became agonizingly boring. I felt obligated to mask my impatience and boredom during lessons, but Graça did not. She daydreamed, raced through her homework haphazardly, made no effort to learn. Bruxa called Graça impertinent and spoiled. The tutor flicked Graça’s forehead hard with her finger each time she neglected to answer correctly. One afternoon, Bruxa b
oxed Graça’s ears.

  Graça ran to the mill office, where she burst into tears and showed Senhor Pimentel her red ears. He shook his head. “It’s time you learned to respect your teacher, Maria das Graças. You’ll have to respect a husband soon, and he’ll do much worse if you don’t listen.”

  Graça stumbled from the mill office, her face pale and eyes glazed. We walked together to the river and sat on its bank.

  “I hate this place,” she cried.

  “Me too,” I said, even though I had nothing better to compare it with, and no real hope of ever leaving. My only escape was the music we heard in the Great House parlor by day, and the cutters’ circles at night.

  * * *

  —

  One night, at the circles, Graça and I crouched so close to the cutters’ fire we could almost feel its heat. In the middle of a song, Old Euclides was suddenly beside us. He grabbed my arm roughly and pulled me from my hiding spot.

  “Jega! Take her back,” he ordered, nodding at Graça. “She can’t be here.”

  “You’re not supposed to be here, either,” I replied.

  Euclides raised his withered hand. I pressed my eyes shut, steadying myself for the blow. But before he struck me, Graça spoke.

  “Go away,” she ordered. “You’re ruining the music.”

  The cutters had stopped their singing. The group stared in our direction. Several housemaids stepped away from the fire and ran back to their quarters behind the Great House, afraid Graça would snitch.

  Euclides released my arm. He smiled at Graça. “I’m sorry. Is the noise bothering you, Miss? We’ll quiet down so you can sleep.”

  “I don’t want to sleep,” Graça said. “I want to hear them.” She adjusted her shawl and strode next to the fire. “Go on,” she said to those cutters, their wives and children. “Pretend I’m not here.”

  The cutters obeyed. They chose songs with boring lyrics praising their work and God. They sang stiffly, as if in a church. The circle broke up earlier than usual. As we walked back to the Great House, Graça knotted her shawl tightly around her shoulders.

  “I hate that stupid Euclides,” she said. “Now we have to sit and listen to church music. They’ll never sing like they used to.”

  “Maybe we don’t just sit there,” I said.

  “I can’t stop going now, Dor. It’ll look like I got scared off by that old donkey.”

  I shook my head. “We’ll still go. But maybe we don’t sit there like little spies. Maybe we sing, too.”

  Graça stopped walking. “Every night they do different songs. I can’t remember them well enough to sing along.”

  “We don’t do their songs,” I said. “They sing for us, give us what we want. And then we give them something they want.”

  “Like what?”

  “The radio hour,” I replied.

  The Great House staff was not allowed to sit in the Pimentel parlor and listen to the nightly radio show. Some of them hid near the parlor door, hoping to overhear a segment or two. Others accosted me in the kitchen and asked about the day’s news segments: Was it true women would get to vote soon? How many had perished in the landslides down south? Were the stories of an underground metro in São Paulo real? The cane cutters were even farther removed from the Great House’s radio, but they knew of its existence and had just as many questions about the world outside Riacho Doce.

  The next day, Graça and I listened to the radio hour more intently than ever before. Then we went to the cutters’ circle and re-created as much as we could remember: the dramatic monologues, the jingles for Dr. Ross’s Vitamin Pills, the news segment, which we repeated like real newscasters, and the musical interludes. During these songs, my and Graça’s voices were an odd mix of hard and soft, of ease and exertion. I closed my eyes and pretended Senhora Pimentel was there, sitting beside the fire, gathering all of her energy to stand up at the end of our song and cry, “Bravo!”

  After a few weeks, others from the Great House—maids, houseboys, kitchen helpers—who hadn’t been to the circles before began to appear beside the fire. Whether they came for the novelty of seeing the Little Miss and Jega perform, or simply to hear the radio hour, I wasn’t sure. And I didn’t care. They clapped for us. They asked us questions. They did not make fun of me for performing beside the Little Miss. I belonged in front of that crowd as much as Graça did. The heat of the cane cutters’ bonfire shone on my face like a thousand stage lights. I never wanted to leave it.

  * * *

  —

  That summer, Graça and I took refuge in the cutters’ circles at night and in Senhora Pimentel’s abandoned room by day. Senhor Pimentel hadn’t bothered to sort or pack any of the Senhora’s things, so Graça and I were free to try on her veiled hats, silk gloves, and beaded bags. Once, Graça tugged a tin of red lip paint from her dress pocket.

  “Turn to me,” she ordered.

  “Where’d you get that?” I asked.

  “I paid one of the maids for it. Pucker up, Dor.”

  I shook my head. “Only loose women paint their lips.”

  Graça sighed. “Don’t be a bore. In real cities, all the ladies paint their faces. Especially if they’re going to be radio stars, like us.”

  Graça peeled off her mother’s gloves. She rubbed a finger in the lip paint and then dotted my mouth with the red stuff. Her breath felt warm and smelled of coffee. She rubbed some paint onto my cheeks, then onto hers. We kept our backs to the room’s door; when we heard it open, we believed a maid had come to dust.

  Graça rolled her eyes. “Not now!” she called. “We’re busy.”

  The door did not shut. We heard heels click against the stone floor. “Your father has asked me to prepare you for lunch,” Bruxa announced. When we turned toward her, her mouth fell open. “Wipe your faces! You look like common hussies.”

  Graça laughed. “Are there uncommon hussies?”

  Bruxa grabbed her arm and tugged her to standing. “You will have an important visitor today.”

  Graça’s eyes widened. I hopped up from the floor. Neither of us had expected a Senhora candidate.

  “Dores, you will stay in the kitchen,” Bruxa said. “And don’t even think of cramming into one of your hiding places.”

  Curiosity made us obedient. We washed the rouge and lip paint from our faces, and Bruxa riffled through Graça’s armoire and made her try on several of the fancy dresses the Senhor had bought her in Recife. Each time I helped Graça button the back of a gown, Bruxa shook her head.

  “Too tight,” she declared after the fifth attempt. “Your figure could make a nun’s smock look vulgar. What is your largest dress?”

  I found a boxy sheath in powder blue at the back of the closet. Graça reluctantly slipped it on and Bruxa approved. After tying a ribbon in her hair and spraying her with lavender water, our tutor ordered me to the kitchen and escorted Graça downstairs.

  A few minutes later, I crept out the back door and leaned against the Great House’s far wall, closest to the gate. Senhor Pimentel waved from the porch; an automobile had arrived. As soon as the motor cut off, a young man emerged from the driver’s seat and peeled off his leather driving gloves. A watch chain glimmered at his midsection. His hair was slicked back with so much Brilliantine, he could have oiled every machine in the mill. I suppose he was handsome, insofar as he didn’t look ill or bloated or prone to drink. Graça appeared on the porch beside her father, her gloved hands clasped chastely at her waist. Her cheeks were very pink, and any fool might have mistaken this for a rise in her color upon seeing a young man. But I knew it was the rouge I’d wiped away with a rough towel.

  There was pressure on my shoulder. It wasn’t painful, so I knew the touch could not be Nena’s.

  “I told you not to spy,” Bruxa said. The noonday sun made her squint. Her upper lip glistened.

  “You told me to go
to the kitchen,” I replied. “Not to stay there.”

  She could have boxed my ears for speaking to her this way. Instead, she ordered me back upstairs, to help her straighten the schoolroom.

  “We won’t study today,” she said, arranging the books on her desk. “Does that disappoint you?”

  She had never asked me a direct question before.

  “I don’t like missing lessons,” I replied.

  Bruxa nodded. “You’ll be wasted working in a kitchen. I’ve said as much to Senhor Pimentel.”

  Bruxa’s cheeks had color and her eyes shone; she almost looked excited.

  “You’re a bright girl,” Bruxa said. “That is a rare gift. It has been rewarding, teaching you these past years. I used to think it wasn’t right, letting you have lessons, giving you hope when there was none. I thought it was cruel of the Senhora. But she must have sensed you were sharper than most. Certainly brighter than the Little Miss, who is spoiled beyond comprehension. I pity the man that marries her. But I suppose most men want a pretty wife, not a bright one. That’s how it was in my day; pretty girls could get away with any vice, while the rest of us had to have talent.”

  “She’s got talent,” I said. “She sings. We both do.”

  “Singing is a useful skill for parties and entertaining guests,” Bruxa replied. “If her husband provides some musical training, I’m sure she’ll be a hit in Recife’s parlors.”

  “She doesn’t want a husband,” I said, my voice so loud it made Bruxa’s eyes widen.

  “Who does?” the tutor snapped. “The Little Miss gets everything she wants, but in this case, the choice isn’t up to her. You have a choice. You were brought up in the kitchen, and that gives you certain advantages even a Little Miss doesn’t have. No one expects you to wed or make a family. I hope you don’t expect that of yourself.”