I shook my head.
Bruxa allowed herself a smile. “There are many capable young women becoming clerks and typists now. There are typing courses in Recife. The Senhor could pay for your coursework, and you could return and work in the mill’s office until your debt’s been paid. After that, you’d have a profession. You could move to Recife if you wanted. You don’t have to follow the Little Miss when she leaves.”
“Where’s she going?”
“She’s fourteen. She could stand to mature a bit more, but the Senhor . . . Well, I’m sure you know the price of sugar isn’t what it used to be. He has hundreds of employees to think about. I’ve been . . . Well, I must leave here to work with another family in Recife, one that can pay me what I’m worth. It isn’t wise to let the Little Miss stay idle here. Young girls like the Little Miss can find trouble quite easily if left to their own devices. If her father waits much longer, she might not find a proper suitor like that young man downstairs.”
My stomach felt hollow, as if my insides had been scooped out with the spiked spoon Nena used to scrape coconut meat from its shell. The playroom door was open and I wanted to push past Bruxa and downstairs, into the parlor, to warn Graça, to tell her to run.
* * *
—
When Graça and I were girls trapped in the cane fields of northeast Brazil, marriage was a way for the rich to keep their fortunes within a tiny, acceptable group. And love? Love was only something you heard about in songs.
Growing up far from any city had its advantages in Graça’s case—suitors could be led to believe that she wasn’t exposed to temptations or tainted by modern notions. And she was quite pretty. I suppose this was how Senhor Pimentel advertised Graça to her suitors: an innocent girl, a bud ready to bloom. Whether he did this for her sake or for his own, we’d never know. If Graça married well, Senhor Pimentel would certainly benefit, whether by loans from his wealthy new son-in-law, or by being able to start his own marriage search, this time with an empty house and fancy new family connections. Or, as Graça came to believe years later, after she forgave Senhor Pimentel, maybe her father intended to care for her in the only way he knew how: by placing her in a wealthy house. But even the best intentions can be born of selfishness. Mine were.
A part of me has always believed in suffering: that suffering is a duty, and we are made stronger for it, like clay in the fire. But losing Graça to a husband was a blow I was not willing to bear. She could not leave Riacho Doce on a stranger’s arm. She could not become a wife, and therefore be lost to me forever. Even though the notion of our running away together to become radio stars seemed as impossible to me as building a ladder to the moon, I wasn’t ready to relinquish our shared dream, or our shared life.
So, that afternoon as Graça had lunch with her first suitor, I lingered upstairs in the schoolroom. I straightened books and shaved countless pencils. All the while hoping to hear a racket downstairs in the dining room: the breaking of glass and toppling of chairs; Senhor Pimentel yelling; Graça talking back to him, protesting her fate, re-creating our radio heroines in her most dramatic fashion. But all was sickeningly quiet.
When it was time for the radio hour, after the young man had left and the lunch plates had been cleared, Graça was not in the parlor. I found her in her mother’s room, a blue velvet baggie in her hands.
“He gave me this,” she said, opening the bag’s drawstring mouth and removing a strand of pearls. Graça examined the necklace, eyeing each creamy circle.
“And you kept it,” I said.
Graça looked at me, surprised. “Sure. It’s nice.”
“So you liked him?” I asked, feeling short of breath.
She eyed the pearls again. “His hands were like frog’s skin—so sweaty and cold. But he said I was a real beauty. He’s coming back next week.”
“Do you want him to?” I asked.
Graça looked up. “It’s a way out of here,” she said. “Papai thinks it’s the only thing I’m meant for. Do you think so, Dor?”
We stared at each other until it seemed as though the room, the Great House, and all of the fields of Riacho Doce dimmed and disappeared, leaving only the two of us in that moment, which felt so wide and so deep it has lasted for decades in my memory, so that if I close my eyes I can still see that Graça of fourteen in front of me, her face round, her eyebrows thick and unplucked, and her gaze electric in its ferocity.
“No,” I whispered.
Graça dropped the necklace into its bag and shut the mouth tight.
* * *
—
A week later, that suitor returned to Riacho Doce with a valise under his arm. He would stay overnight. Graça was serious and unsmiling in his presence. That night, after the suitor had retired to his guest room, I watched from my hiding spot in the parlor as Senhor Pimentel caught Graça’s arm.
“Show him some charm,” he coaxed. “Let him see that smile of yours. Next week we’ll host another guest and get them fighting over you. So give him a little something to fight for, querida.”
Graça nodded, then excused herself. Later, when the Great House was dark and the cane cutters’ drums sounded, I waited in our usual meeting spot on the porch. She arrived wearing her mother’s old driving coat.
“You taking the car for a spin?” I whispered, nervous.
“It can’t be hard. It’s just pressing a few pedals,” she replied. Then, seeing what must have been panic on my face, Graça shook her head. “The gates are all locked and Euclides has the keys. Even if I knew how to drive, we couldn’t bust through them. Come on.”
She took my hand and we walked away from the Great House and toward the cutters’ fire. But instead of going to the circle, Graça continued down a different path, away from the music.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
She tugged me down the dark trail. “To the river.”
There was a sliver of moon suspended above us. The river was a wide, glossy ribbon. At its bank, Graça let go of my hand and began collecting rocks—big ones—and dumping them into the driving coat’s deep pockets. Behind us, the cutters’ drums pounded.
“Those stones are too big to skip,” I said. “They’ll sink right away.”
“That’s what I want,” she replied.
Frogs hooted to each other from opposite ends of the river, their calls high-pitched and frantic. Graça stopped searching for stones. She looked at me, then at the water.
“Remember that ghost you told me about? The one who lives in the water. She was real once. She was a girl, living here, just like us. And people still talk about her. She’s a story, and I will be, too.”
“What kind of story?”
Graça smiled, her teeth gray in the dark. “The crazy Little Miss—a nervous girl, like her mother—who walked into the river with rocks in her pockets.”
“You’ll drown.”
“I won’t,” Graça said. “You’ll save me.”
I shook my head. Graça sighed, exasperated, as if we’d already gone over this plan a dozen times.
“You followed me down here because you were worried about me. You saw what I was doing and dove in. You pulled me to safety! Make sure to scream and make a big event of it, Dor, so the cutters can hear. I’ll scream, too. We’ll wake up the Great House.”
“Why?” I asked.
Graça crossed her arms. “Everyone says you’re so smart, but you act like a numbskull. Don’t you see who’s sniffing around today?”
Numbskull. Sniffing around. We’d heard those words on the radio, said by smart-aleck heroines with more pluck than sense.
“I’m not some ninny. I’ve been thinking about this a lot,” Graça continued. “No one wants to buy a bruised fruit. Well, now we’ve got to put some bruises on me. If we really want to nip this marriage business in the bud, I’ve either got to be crazy or a puta. An
d I sure don’t feel like opening my legs for some stable boy or cane cutter. So this is it, Dor. This is our chance. No man wants to marry a loony, no matter how pretty she is. Gossip gets to Recife, and I’m as good as a spinster.”
“Can’t you just splash around and scream?” I asked. “Without the coat. Without the rocks?”
Graça shook her head. “They won’t buy it. I won’t go in too deep. And you’re as strong as an ox.”
“And if I’m not?”
“Then we’re both goners,” Graça said. “Either way, we’ll be the talk of Riacho Doce for a long time.”
I shook my head. “I can’t.”
“You have to,” Graça said, her voice suddenly stern. “I’ll leave this rathole no matter what, whether it’s on some dumb husband’s arm, or all on my own. But you won’t. You need me to drag you out of here. You save me now, and I save you later.”
So that was how I found myself wading waist-deep into Riacho Doce’s namesake, hand in hand with Graça. If I hesitated, she pushed forward.
“A little farther now,” she said, fighting the weight of her coat. “Then scream and tug me out.”
Graça looked back at me and smiled. I smiled back, gripping her hand so hard my fingers ached. She lost her footing. Water rushed over her neck, her hair. Her eyes were wide with panic. The river’s current was stronger than I expected. I held fast to her, but the weight made my knees buckle, tugging me under, too. Graça clawed at my nightgown, my neck, my arms. I heaved her up and she gagged, then frantically tried to tug off the coat before sinking again. I pulled her up again and tried to move toward shore but made no progress. I was wading in concrete. I gnashed my teeth and took one step, then another, my toes barely touching the bottom. All the while I kept my grip on Graça, who’d calmed enough to take deep, gulping breaths. The shore was not far, but in the dark we’d waded deeper than we’d imagined. A stone under my foot shifted. My legs gave out. Water slapped my face. I didn’t know which way was up, which was down. I held Graça under her armpits and paddled, frantic, until we surfaced. I heard the cutters’ drums. I thought of that fado singer onstage in Recife and how her song had reached so far, so fast. I took a breath and cried out until my voice filled the darkness.
* * *
—
There was a splash, a groan, a gurgling breath. I was no longer burdened by my body or Graça’s. There was no grasping or fighting. I was weightless. Was I ascending? Was I making my way, like a saint or a cherub, into the heavens? I opened my eyes and saw a cane cutter’s face. Then I was on the muddy bank, where I rolled onto my hands and knees and vomited river water and bile.
My nightgown stuck to my chest like a wet napkin. My stomach ached from so much heaving. How long had I been on that bank? I looked around then, frantic, remembering Graça.
“They’ve got her,” the cutter said.
Ahead of us, far up the dirt path, a dark knot of cane cutters carried Graça to the Great House. Many hands held her, as if she was a saint’s statue in a parade, or a coffin.
The lone cutter held my arm to steady me as I stumbled up the path, after Graça. Before us, an automobile growled to life. Its headlights made me squint and stop just before the Great House gate. The suitor, in his pajamas, held the steering wheel with both hands as if he was just learning to operate the machine. Old Euclides occupied the passenger seat beside him, pointing at the road like a nervous teacher. Behind the car was Nena—in her nightgown and shawl, a cloth knotted tightly around her hair. She strode past the open gate, toward me.
“Now you’ve done it,” she said, taking my arm from the cane cutter, like guards handing off a prisoner.
The Great House was alight as if the Pimentels were hosting a ball. Nena tugged me around back, to the kitchen.
“Euclides was in the car,” I whispered, my throat raw. “With that man.”
Nena kept walking, her wide hand encircling my arm. “To get the doctor. That city boy made a fuss of helping and the Senhor wanted him out of the house. Euclides is showing him the way.”
I stopped. “The doctor?”
Nena tightened her grip on me. “She’s still on two feet. No thanks to her, or to you. She wanted attention and now she’s got it.”
Stable boys lingered out back, near the chopping block. Inside, all the maids and kitchen girls stood shoulder to shoulder in bare feet and nightgowns, whispering. As soon as Nena walked in with me, they quieted. My nightgown was still wet and clinging. I covered my chest with my free arm and stared straight ahead, believing that Nena would take me to our shared room and beat me. No one was treating me like a hero, like the Little Miss’s savior, the brave kitchen girl who’d stopped a tragedy, because I hadn’t stopped it, the cutters had. I was, if anything, a failure. The maids would stay outside our room and listen to my punishment. I resolved not to make a peep.
I was confused when Nena pulled me out of the kitchen and into the main hall, under the blazing lights of the front of the house. My nightgown was streaked brown. Mud on my elbows and forearms had dried to an itchy crust. Outside the parlor’s closed doors, Nena took off her shawl and covered me with it.
“If you have any good sense left, you’ll keep quiet,” Nena whispered. “Everyone knows you follow her like a lamb.”
Then she made a fist and rapped on the parlor door. Senhor Pimentel opened it.
His hair was uncombed. The top three buttons of his shirt were undone, its tail untucked, as if he’d dressed hastily. As soon as he saw Nena and me he turned on his heel and walked to the other side of the room, beside the radio. Atop the machine was a half-empty bottle of cane rum.
Graça sat in the Senhora’s old chair with her knees tucked under her chin, a wool blanket wrapped around her so only her head appeared. Her hair was wet and matted, making her face and eyes look enormous, like a cat that had been dunked in a bath. Beside her chair was a chamber pot filled, almost to the brim, with watery vomit.
Senhor Pimentel closed his eyes and massaged the lids with his fingertips. “Whose idea was it?” he asked.
Graça and I glanced at each other.
Senhor Pimentel opened his eyes. “Speak up!”
My hands shook though I wasn’t cold. The parlor pulsed with color: Graça’s blue blanket, the footstool’s green velvet, Senhor Pimentel’s blindingly white shirt, the radio’s chocolate wood. Every corner seemed sharper, every curve more swollen. I felt a crackling, restless energy within me, making it hard to keep my thoughts straight. Years later I’d feel this again, only it wasn’t the remnants of adrenaline that caused it but pure Benzedrine from the bennies we swallowed to pep ourselves up for long movie shoots. I shifted my feet. The Senhor looked at me.
“This is your repayment for everything I’ve given you?” he asked. “You encourage her schemes instead of doing your duty and stopping her, or telling someone?”
“Dor saved me,” Graça said.
“The cutters saved you,” the Senhor snapped. “Old Euclides saw you two walking into the water. Holding hands.”
His cheeks flushed. Nena’s grip tightened around my arm. The Senhor stared at Graça.
“So you’ve disgraced yourself—is that what you wanted? Every cutter saw you practically naked in that wet gown. Everyone thinks you’re a half-wit who can’t even drown herself.”
Graça wrapped the blanket tighter around herself. “I don’t care what anyone here thinks. I won’t be here much longer.”
“No,” the Senhor replied. “You won’t. Recife isn’t the only city in the world, and that man”—he pointed to the ceiling, as if the suitor was still asleep in the guest room above us—“isn’t the last husband on earth. But he was the best you could do. All those weeks I spent in Recife courting him for you, convincing him to travel here and meet my sweet daughter. And then you go and act like a lunatic. All you’ve done with this stunt is make your life harder.”
The Senhor laughed.
Entertainers weren’t respected then as they are now. Radio singers, circus people, showgirls, cabaret dancers were all considered to be the same kind of people: transient, licentious tricksters. For a Little Miss to want such a life was so incomprehensible it was comical. Senhor Pimentel’s laughter filled the parlor and seemed to smear itself across us like mud from the riverbank.
“Did you hear that, Nena?” the Senhor said, chuckling. “My only child wants to sing jingles about butter and face powder.”
Graça’s cheeks were wet, her upper lip slick with snot. “Mamãe said I have a magnificent voice.”
The Senhor sighed. “Every mother tells her children they’re exceptional even when they’re not.”
His mention of Senhora Pimentel brought her back as if she was still there, sitting where Graça now sat, ready to hear our voices.
“She is exceptional,” I called out, startling myself. “We are.”
The Senhor looked in my direction, appraising me as if seeing me for the first time. If, prior to that night, I was simply an ugly foundling who followed his daughter everywhere, then, on that night, I became something else to the Senhor, something more. Nena’s grip on my arm was so tight my fingers tingled.
“Jega,” she said. “Be quiet.”
The Senhor held up his hand, palm out, as if taking an oath. Nena hushed. The Senhor moved toward us.
Behind me, Nena held my arm and pressed the toes of her feet hard against my heels, ready to prop me up from whatever blow he might administer. The Senhor extended his hand and stomped his foot. I squeezed my eyes shut, ready for him to strike. I was the trunk of a tree, thick and rooted, my skin a bark that grew in rings around me. I was the steel toe of a boot, impenetrable. I was Jega, and she had been beaten many times before.
I waited to feel the sting of his hands against me, triumphant, as if I’d already won. But there was no slap, no punch, no knock to the head. I opened my eyes.
The Air You Breathe Page 8