Her Mother's Mother's Mother and Her Daughters

by Maria José Silveira

  At fourteen, Jacira was spindly and boasted few attractive features. Yet when one Captain Dagoberto made the settlement his last stop before setting off on an expedition into the country to find lands that would bring him wealth and importance, it was the corporal’s adopted daughter whom he thought to take with him to start a family. It’s true that the captain’s options were limited, but it’s also true that he could have soldiered on alone. But again, don’t romanticize a simple calculation made by a pragmatic man. What he saw in Jacira—and he was right to see in her—was an inner strength, an energy that was not easy to find in others. The girl had a confident stride, a reflective gaze in her big dark eyes, a sure sign of intelligence and learning, and she was always busy: sweeping the house and the porch, fetching water from the river, stirring the coals in the oven, washing clothes in a stream, feeding the chickens and the pig, shucking corn, preparing food—food that was simple but abundant, thanks to the initiative of that very same girl, who had substituted her crippled mother in practically everything. Dagoberto sensed she would be a good acquisition for his ends and went to communicate his decision to the corporal, who evidently responded positively, as expected, and simply said: “I’m very honored, dear captain.”

  As for Jacira, marrying the captain or any other man was all the same, since at that time and place these things were considered commonplace, as they had been in her mother’s and her grandmother’s time, much as one accepts a rainy or a sunny day, or the arrival of night or day. But setting off on an expedition—that indeed was an unexpected bit of news and it left her slightly agitated and feeling something she had ever felt before—an inner restlessness that she couldn’t put her finger on and which, for the first time in a long time, kept her body from sleep that night, her eyes wide open in the dark of her corner of her family’s hut. It wasn’t a bad feeling, on the contrary. It was good to feel the subtle itch of curiosity, that unfamiliar agitation breaking into a slight smile that she found silly, but which stubbornly loomed on her lips, expectation opening tiny wings inside her chest.

  CAPTAIN DAGOBERTO

  Dagoberto da Mata had come from the far away Captaincy of Ceará in the Northeast, where his father had settled along the Rio São Francisco, becoming a rich cattle rancher. The fifth child from a large family, Dagoberto decided to strike out on his own and left for Rio de Janeiro, where he thought of enlisting to tame the backlands in service of the king. His passion for gambling, however, led him to give up on a military career, taking nothing with him but the nickname “Captain.”

  He was a just man, clear-headed, magnanimous, with an impressive ability to read people’s faces to decipher their character and emotions, a talent that was evidently at the root of his formidable skill in gambling and which also brought him to choose Jacira as his wife.

  Despite his love for gambling, it was not his only or his greatest passion: the young man from Ceará had always aspired to conquer new lands. The exploration and conquest of the unknown territories were his sirens’ songs. In the beginning he had thought to do this exploring in the name of the king, but during the conversations he had over the months of travel between Ceará and Rio, he became convinced that he could do everything he wanted for himself.

  His gambling in Rio served to multiply the banknotes his father had given him as an advance on his inheritance and to build the necessary capital to buy slaves, animals, arms, and supplies. Preparations lasted nearly a year, and only came to an end in the village where he was making his final arrangements—where he met Jacira, and asked Corporal Jesuíno for her hand.

  On the exact day he turned twenty-five, Captain Dagoberto da Mata set out to conquer his dream of venturing into the rugged backlands to put down roots.

  That same day, in the chill of a foggy morning, Jacira left with her husband the Captain, each of them on their own horse, accompanied by twenty mules carrying provisions, supplies, and munitions, four mulatto foremen, and thirty slaves (twenty-five men, five women, all of them black). They were heavily armed, and full of enthusiasm as they headed toward the Captaincy of Goiás, a place that was still little-explored, and where it was said there was much gold and plenty of good land.

  After more than eight months of traveling, they came to a field near a river with lead-colored waters, lush trees, and fertile soils of humus. They had arrived in the deep backlands of Goiás; an imposing jatoba tree lifted its branches skyward in its stubborn desire to touch the bright blue cloudlessness. They had been camping in that spot for a few days when the Captain told her that it would be the spot where they would build their house and sow their crops. Whether there was gold close was anyone’s guess, but the soil was good for farming, and that was the Captain’s priority. There weren’t any Indians for miles and the local tribe wasn’t violent, and didn’t seem to pose a threat. The Captain and Jacira would settle down here. The next day they would begin to clear a plot for the house and the crops.

  Jacira was filled with peace as she listened to the news. She had also liked that spot. A short distance from there, the river broke off into a separate branch until it reached a pool of water that, it seemed to her, would be very useful. The land was indeed good and their crops were sure to grow. She would plant rice, beans, cassava, and corn. Lots of corn. Dagoberto had been advised by Paulistas he’d come across in his travels to bring corn, whose kernels were easier to carry on long journeys than cassava cuttings. They would raise cattle. Jacira knew the Captain also had plans to grow sugarcane. They would irrigate the land with water from the nearby river. They would build a gristmill. There she would have their children; her belly had already begun to show signs of the first. Yes, that would be her land, her home. She was at peace.

  The time passed quickly, and within four years the house, with its five bedrooms and a beaten-earth floor, was at the center of a small plantation. The sugarcane was profitable. The gold the slaves had found in nearby riverbeds—it wasn’t much, but it also wasn’t a pittance—was dried in cow leather and stored in tiny leather bags that Jacira had sewn, which the Captain stored in a location known only to the two of them.

  Jacira had become her husband’s right hand. He respected her and treated her with great consideration, admiring her tirelessness and the authority she wielded calmly but without hesitation. On cold country nights, they would sit around the copper pot where the Captain leisurely tossed corncobs that slowly transformed into burning embers, consumed in the fierce and corrosive red flames. It was at such hours that the Captain would tell her of his plans in slow, thoughtful sentences and wait for her opinion, which, without his fully realizing it, he had come to consider essential. Her eyes fixed on the embers, where it seemed she saw beyond the crimson incandescence, Jacira would deliberate as long as she needed. She would only offer her opinion when she thought she had something important to add, otherwise she merely assented: “Good thinking, my Captain.”

  When the Indians, who until then had been friendly, began to adopt more hostile attitudes, neither of them considered it grave. Since they had first settled there, the natives had been a constant presence, sometimes looking at them from a distance for days on end, sometimes disappearing for months at a time, other times one or two would sneak up close to nab a piece of clothing from the line, a round of ammunition or something of the kind, either out of curiosity or for fun, Jacira imagined, since they always did this in broad daylight, darting joyfully about, drawing attention to themselves.

  Nearly all the other farmers who had recently established themselves in the area around the same time or a little after Jacira and the Captain were violent with the Indians, trying to drive them far from lands the farmers now considered theirs. The Captain was one of the few who had given orders to his slaves and hired hands to leave the tribe alone. Not because he was especially virtuous, for, like everyone else, he too thought there was little difference between an Indian and any other beast, but rather as a question of style; the Captain was more accustomed to dominance through the force of o
ne’s character than with violence and disorder. As for Jacira, she also thought it only natural that Indians were considered more closely related to beasts than to people. Her generation of Brazilians, after fewer than two centuries had passed, had forgotten entirely who their ancestors were. Besides not being considered fellow human beings, the Indians incited fear and—worse yet—disdain. Were you to tell Jacira that she had Indian blood running in her veins, were you to tell her about Inaiá, Tebereté, and Sahy, her deep dark eyes would light up in shock.

  At that time, everyone thought that was the ways things were: the white man in command, the slaves doing the work, the Indians and animals in the forest. Jacira never thought to question this as she sat around the burning embers on chilly nights. It wasn’t worth thinking about. But just as she didn’t mistreat animals, she also thought it wrong to mistreat the savages. Besides, much was said about their vengeful spirit, and this, yes, was often the topic of conversation when sitting around their copper pot: tales of revenge, cruelty, and savagery that served as warnings against the foolishness of provoking them.

  The danger gradually became noticeable. First, the episodes even seemed like nothing more than horsing around, the deeds of snot-nosed little kids. In the middle of the night, they would wake up to the panicked whinnies of the horses or the terrified grunting of the pigs, who had been tied in groups of two by their tails and chased around by the Indians. Or it was the large mortar found full of manure the next morning, the irrigation ditch gone dry, the river’s course altered upriver, the gristmill jammed, small animals missing.

  Soon men brought news to Captain Dagoberto that the farm of Senhor Jahudehir had been attacked, some fifteen leagues away. His head and that of his wife, two foreman, and five black slaves had been mounted on the pointed fence-tops protecting the fields. When her husband returned home that night, Jacira was mute as she listened to the news.

  Jahudehir had never been easy to get along with. He was well known for the violence he inflicted on the Indians, the way he burned their villages and their crops in his zeal to chase them to the ends of the earth. The local tribes, which weren’t violent, saw themselves forced to respond to the attacks of Jahudehir and his men, but this business of attacking a farm and killing families was something new entirely. In addition, the latest news they’d had of their avaricious neighbor was that he had emptied rat poison into the natural well where the Indians got their drinking water.

  Captain Dagoberto announced that, early the next morning, he would set out with five men to gather more information with the other neighbors and stock up on ammunition. Jacira was to be careful and keep the slaves close to home. No one was to wander far and they ought to always walk in pairs, guns in hand, even if it was just to retrieve water from the well or the nearby channel.

  He would return as soon as possible.

  Morning greeted them with a tense and threatening silence. There was an unfamiliar and palpable weight in the air, a warm mass condensing around a nucleus of cruelty and danger that hovered heavily, quietly above them. The animals, also much quieter than usual, stood at attention, their senses sharp and alert.

  Jacira ordered a group of slaves to reinforce the doors and windows with wooden crossbars. She sent another group to make sure the animals stayed close together. A third group she sent to bring back every stick, rock, and whatever else might be employed as a weapon. The black women were to continue their work in the kitchen.

  It was early afternoon when the group in charge of protecting the animals came to sound the alarm. They had seen Indians armed with arrows stirring in the bamboo trees. Jacira ordered them to immediately sound the bell warning everyone to come inside the house. Within minutes, the slaves came running from every corner of the yard and arrows skidded onto the veranda, as though the two movements were part of some strange choreography. The doors and windows were quickly bolted. Jacira gave the order for them to fire from the two rifle holes in the front and back doors, warning them to aim carefully because they couldn’t afford to waste the little ammunition they had.

  She was certain of one thing: the Indians lacked numbers. She knew that there were more women and children to be found in their villages than men. There was no doubt the women would not be on the front lines. Sitting there locked inside her house, Jacira couldn’t be sure of how many were outside. But judging by the howling and the quick glance she took before closing the last window just before the tribe attacked, she was certain they were no more than two-dozen men. At her side, meanwhile, were twenty male slaves and five women who were also capable of mounting a defense. She would send some of them to stay with the children in the large, windowless middle bedroom, and the rest would stay to help as necessary. The Captain would be back soon, she only needed to hold out until he arrived with more men and more weapons.

  The savages’ strident howling, the sound of their clubs beating against the doors and windows, the desperate panic in the slaves’ eyes were only interrupted by the gunshots coming from the holes in the doors, shots that, in reality, had not been much more effective other than to frighten the Indians. As the attackers had already reached the building, they were outside the line of fire except for when they passed directly in front of the holes in the doors where the bullets escaped.

  Jacira’s composure was admirable, but she knew they would not last long that way. That’s when her eyes fell over the stove; a simple idea came to her when she saw the large copper pan forgotten in the hearth.

  “Light a fire to boil the animal fat,” she immediately ordered her two quickest slave women, and within minutes the crackling flames were spitting forth scalding bubbles that began to burst from the pan like the fiery mouth of a tiny erupting volcano.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “Fill the ladles carefully and throw them on the Indians through the openings in the doors and windows. And you two”—she turned to a pair of male slaves—“pay attention, and when you see they’re close, open the wickets quickly and throw the pans right in their faces.”

  Immediately grabbing spoons and frying pans, the slave women began to pour out the boiling slime on any Indian who came near the gaps in the doors and windows, following Jacira’s orders: “Get them in the eyes and hands. Don’t waste time on other parts of the body.”

  The cries of pain and surprise multiplying outside filled the house with joy. They soon realized that the unorthodox tactic had rebuffed the Indians’ attack until the Captain returned.

  With her extraordinary composure and a triumphant smile on her lips, Jacira sat in her chair in the middle of the living room and savored her bizarre victory.

  After that day, once she had felt enormous satisfaction at discovering her own strength, something inside Jacira changed. Something subtle, deep down, something that not even Captain Dagoberto, an astute reader of others, realized at first. Something that might have been translated as an almost natural passion for power and the conviction that to obtain it, she would find the right path, by stealth or by force.

  Thanks to the energy of Dagoberto and Jacira, the plantation grew into a source of enormous prosperity. The number of slaves and cowhands, who were paid in money, products, or livestock, also grew, and day-to-day operations entailed a great hustle and bustle. The livestock soon stretched further into the backlands, and the fields of corn, sugarcane, and cotton also expanded—the land was endless and open, and Captain Dagoberto’s property continued to spread through the uninhabited expanse. In his travels to Rio de Janeiro, he had managed to double the size of the allotment he had originally asked of the Crown. And there was barely any more talk of Indians.

  Jacira oversaw the production of cassava and tapioca flour of an unrivaled whiteness, and of marmalades and guava pastes prepared with enormous quantities of fruit and sugar, which the slave women stirred without rest and for hours at the stove, in large copper pans that were black as coal on the outside and shiny like gold on the inside. At the foot of the giant clay ovens in the covered sheds behind the house, mo
re black women stirred the mixture until it began to thicken and slowly erupt in viscous and noisy, plopping bubbles. Packaged in tiny wooden boxes before they could cool, they soon made their way to fill customer orders in Rio de Janeiro and Bahia. The sweets produced at the Jatoba Plantation had become famous.

  Jacira also ordered a shed constructed for housing looms and increased the quantity of cotton planted, sending the slaves to spin the cotton into thread and stitch white clothing for everyone on the plantation.

  When the storehouse became full, Dagoberto would send one of his foremen out with a barren of mules to the stores of Rio de Janeiro.

  Over time, the couple also began expanding and repairing the old mud house with its beaten-earth floors, whose furniture consisted of the hammocks, boxes, and trunks they’d brought with them, and a single long table and two matching wood benches they’d made soon after they had arrived.

  Dagoberto brought a bricklayer and a carpenter from the regional capital, Vila Boa de Goiás, and constructed a large house made with bricks and roof tiles, a house with many bedrooms and an enormous veranda, with ceilings more than twelve feet high to ensure the house stayed cool. They no longer had a beaten-earth floor but one of long wooden boards. Later, he sent for two beds with ornamental headboards from Rio de Janeiro, lace curtains for the living room, and a blue taffeta curtain with red and yellow tassels for the bedroom. He also bought silverware for special occasions.