‘You’re an angel who appeared in my life,’ Filomena would say, her mouth full of the new dentures she had bought with the additional money that was now coming her way.
‘You’re the angel, Filomena,’ Guida would answer.
Guida and Filomena bought a General Electric radio. They gave the sofa new upholstery, since the old one was threadbare. They fixed the water leaks in the bathroom and on the roof. They painted the front of the house and replaced the broken window. Guida decorated her bedroom using wallpaper with stripes and country flowers just like the design she’d seen in the Young Ladies’ Journal. The new curtains were made of light-blue voile, the same color chosen for the ruffled bedspread. She bought a dressing table and covered the tabletop with perfumes from the department store. In one corner of the room, clashing with the decor, was little Chico’s bed, covered with a white piqué bedspread.
During the day, Guida liked to peek her head through the bedroom door to admire her decorating work and consider whether things were good as they were or if a little something more was needed. That’s how she acquired three small paintings of tulips and a little desk for Chico to do his homework. She decided that some pink pillows for the headboard of her bed would provide the finishing touch.
‘Salmon-colored pillows,’ Guida said, standing in the door and repeating an expression she’d just heard on the radio (she herself had never seen a salmon).
The following day she went to the fabric stores on the Rua Buenos Aires. She chose the biggest one of all, walking right past the fabrics lying out on the sales counter. She looked for the shelf with the highest-quality fabrics and called to the salesman.
‘Could you please give me three meters of this silk grosgrain in a salmon color, senhor?’ she asked the man, whose jaw had already dropped as he looked at the gap between Guida’s front teeth.
‘You mean this light-pink, senhora?’
‘Yes, this salmon-pink.’
She watched Euridice enter the store. A Euridice looking every bit her own woman, but with the same fixed air she’d always had, which she now used to peruse the fabrics on the sales counter. She recognized that gaze. When Euridice set her mind to something, the rest of the world became smoke. Guida could have stood there, right next to her sister, and she too would be nothing more than smoke. Euridice looked at each bit of fabric, took a tiny notebook from her pocket to verify what appeared to be measurements, and asked the salesman to cut her half a dozen lengths of fabric.
Guida leaned up against a pillar, unsure what to do. She could see the chickenpox scar on her sister’s temple. She could smell the Leite de Rosas cream that Euridice still applied to her face. She could see the pendant of Our Lady her sister wore across her chest, identical to the one that hung at that moment across her own chest. If she had reached out, she would have been able to touch her. Was it right to wake her sister from her trance? She missed her immensely, but her desire to appear victorious was greater still. Even though it was beautifully decorated, her room was still in Estácio, and her son had no father. Her painted red fingernails were still employed changing the diapers of other people’s children, and her survival still depended on a partnership with a former prostitute. She believed that one day all this would change, and that it was not the moment to walk up to her sister. She waited as Euridice paid for the fabrics, followed her to the city center, and sat in the last seat on the trolley her sister took.
‘And that’s how I found out where you lived,’ Guida said.
‘How long ago was this?’
‘Not so long. It was last year. You were wearing a light-yellow dress with white stripes along the hem.’
‘I know which one you’re talking about. I made it, that dress.’
‘You made that dress? When did you learn to sew?’
‘Just last year, actually.’ Euridice looked towards the bookshelf in front of her. ‘But now I’ve set that aside.’
While Guida recovered from her abandonment, Chico continued to grow, a happy child in his early years, and not so happy in the years that followed.
When he was still very young, Chico thought that all other families were just like his. All children had two mothers, and their mothers were as sweet as his (but his mothers were the sweetest of all). He believed that if he ate up the ants that crawled around his fish mush he would gain superhero eyes, because ‘ants are good for the eyes.’ He thought that when he got a bump on his head a little chick would emerge from behind the lump. He thought the kettle whistled because it was alive, and that if he ate too many lollipops his tongue would turn red forever. He believed that Captain America lived in a faraway land behind the nearby mountain.
As he grew up, he began to realize things weren’t quite like that. Families like his did not exist. He had to have a father, like the one in his schoolbooks, with a dark suit and slicked-back hair. People only had one mother, and siblings could come in great numbers, but they didn’t come and go like his. He started to suspect that ants were only good for the eyes when one or two fell into the porridge and Guida was too tired to pull them out. The bumps did nothing but hurt, though he still secretly hoped that one day he’d see a chick hatch from them. Why the kettle whistled he still didn’t know, but it certainly wasn’t alive. His tongue would indeed turn bright red forever if he ate too many lollipops, and this, his two mothers swore, was the absolute truth. As for Captain America, he didn’t live behind the mountain. He lived in a place that could be reached only by plane. The man who lived behind the mountain was Saci-Pererê, the one-legged devil in the red cap who always went missing with some household item or another.
By the time he reached the age of ten, Chico was sure he knew everything. His two mothers were tarts, because that was the word he’d heard from one of his classmates, who Chico challenged to a fight even though he wasn’t sure what a tart was. He arrived home covered in blood and got an earful from Guida, who later regretted her words and made him some porridge. Guida was so worried about her son’s swollen face that she herself removed the ants from his bowl. ‘This thing about ants, it’s a lie, isn’t it, Mama?’ She changed the subject. By now Chico knew that no chick would come from the bump that formed on his forehead after the fight, and that the kettle whistled because of the steam, as it did that night. Aside from his wounds he also had a chest full of mucus, so Filomena boiled some water with eucalyptus extract. Then she gave him a lollipop and didn’t even bother to say that his tongue would turn bright red forever. How good were those nights when he was feeling sick; his mama Guida would let him sleep in her bed so that he wouldn’t be afraid of all those monsters who lived behind the mountain, since he already knew that Captain America lived far away and would never arrive in time to save everyone.
In spite of the lollipops, affection and bowls of porridge, Chico grew up a bit resentful that, while his life was very good, it wasn’t life as it was supposed to be. That he had two mothers who were as sweet as they were scorned. Why had a woman crossed the street and spit as she muttered harlot when she saw Filomena walking by? Why had they called his mama Guida a lady of the night, if he had never seen his mama outside the house after 6 p.m.? Why could Filomena only arrive at church after Mass had begun and leave shortly before it ended? Everything was wrong, he thought, and the more he learned about the world the angrier he became.
When he was eleven, Chico turned from a bit resentful to extremely resentful. Filomena, his mama Filomena, began to feel a pain in her breast, caused by an enormous lump. One afternoon she came back from the hospital without a smile on her face, and cancer became a term even more unwelcome than tart, harlot, and lady of the night. Seeing the despondency in Chico’s eyes, Filomena began to smile again. ‘Don’t you worry, it’s nothing!’ She tried pulling the boy on to her lap but gave a yelp as soon as their bodies touched. The pain in her breast was greater than her ability to disguise it.
Guida and Filomena sent away half of the children who had been coming to the house. Filomena spent days moa
ning in the bedroom while Guida grew new arms and legs to be able to care for both the children and her friend. Chico asked to help, but was ignored by his mother. ‘Your job is to study and get good grades.’ The boy sank his head into his books and lost himself in the stories. Whenever he looked up he decided everything around him was awful, so he disappeared back inside his book.
Little by little: that’s how Filomena passed away. The radiotherapy served only to leave burns on her arms, the breast surgery served only to make her even weaker. The cancer spread through her organs like mercury through a thermometer; not a single doctor managed to wrench it from her. Filomena and her cancer inhabited the same body, but the cancer only gained space, whereas Filomena lost it. She knew that she was departing, it was only a matter of time. The problem was that time was passing slowly.
‘Oh for criminy, I’m still here!’ Filomena would say when she woke from a disturbed sleep.
The cancer had spread to her head, her legs, and between her ribs. The doctors could do little but save her some time in the waiting-line and provide words of encouragement in which they did not believe.
Death would not come. The woman was not so much a woman anymore, rather a pile of wounds sprawled across the bed, but death refused to come. During the day she did not speak, at night she only moaned, and the death that would provide release was nowhere to be found. When Chico was at school, she’d repeat, ‘I want to die, I want to die!’ God heard her words and would respond, ‘That’s fine, but not today.’ Filomena would ask, ‘If not today, when, my God?’ God would respond, ‘When the time is right.’
The right time was a time that never arrived. Whoever saw Filomena on her way to the hospital turned the other way so as not to see her; those who lived nearby covered their ears so as not to hear her. Mothers began to pull their children from her care, and in the end the only people remaining in the house were Guida, Chico with his head stuck in his books, and thirty percent of Filomena.
The savings put away in the flour jar would be enough to sustain them for a few months of eating chickpea soup, but Guida had more important matters to worry about.
‘Give me the injection, give me the injection,’ Filomena implored between moans.
The daily dose of morphine given to her at the hospital couldn’t keep up with so much cancer. Guida counted the money in the jar and went to the pharmacy.
‘Good morning, Senhor Pedro. Could you get me a few vials of morphine?’
‘Morphine? That I can’t do, Dona Guida. Only with a doctor’s authorization.’
‘I’ll pay well, Senhor Pedro.’
She tried to convince him with a report on the previous night at home.
‘It’s for Filomena. She got up in the middle of the night and tried to run away from home, said she wasn’t going to bring us so much sadness anymore. She passed out in the hallway and we had to carry her back to bed. She woke up delirious, saying that they’d shut the gate to heaven, and that she could see her eight children on the other side. That no matter how much she shouted and shook the rails, no one came to open it.’
‘It’s an addictive drug, you know, senhora…’
‘How much, Senhor Pedro? I’ll pay anything.’
The extra dose cost half of their savings. The second cost the other half. The third cost the necklace with the medallion of Our Lady that Guida never removed from around her neck. The fourth dose cost Guida sprawled across the rug in the back of the pharmacy, with Senhor Pedro panting above her. The fifth dose cost the same thing, and the sixth dose wasn’t necessary. Filomena left the world in the midst of morphine dreams, the way Guida had wanted it.
Filomena arrived in heaven, still high from the morphine, and finally found the gate was open. With each step she took she felt a bit better. After a few meters, she was as strong as she had been as a fifteen-year-old girl.
‘So beautiful,’ said an angel standing nearby.
‘Me, beautiful?’ Filomena asked, and the angel responded, ‘Yes, you. Beautiful,’ and handed her a mirror. Filomena saw her perfect skin and white teeth. She was so happy that she gave a kiss to the first person she saw in front of her.
‘What kind of manners are those, Filomena?’
‘Good manners, senhor!’ she said, and laughed out loud.
‘All right, Filomena,’ said Saint Peter. ‘Welcome. Your three little angels are over there waiting for you.’
Saint Peter knew that hers were good manners there in heaven. He had also laughed out loud when he’d arrived and seen his own face as good as new. You need to have seen what his teeth were like on earth. Or his syphilis scars.
Chapter 9
During the final days of her cancer, Filomena became addicted to morphine, and Senhor Pedro to Guida. Even after Filomena’s burial, the pharmacy owner never tired of seeking out the young woman to conclude unfinished business in the back of the pharmacy. Since Guida no longer had any need for morphine injections, and needed a great deal of peace, her responses to Senhor Pedro were variations on ‘No’ in the beginning and threats to file a complaint in the end.
‘If you keep this up, senhor, I’m going straight to the police to speak with the commissioner.’
‘Go ahead. The commissioner’s going to laugh in your face, that’s what’s going to happen!’ And to reinforce his point, Senhor Pedro laughed in Guida’s face right then and there.
Guida turned her back and tried to think about other things. She was Guida Gusmao, the woman who only slept with those she wanted to sleep with, and when she wanted to sleep with them.
After Filomena’s death, Chico grew so resentful that Guida allowed him to sleep in her bed once again. A mother’s body is an excellent remedy for rage. They held each other beneath the covers, Guida believing she was protecting her son, her son believing he was protecting his mother. Guida breathed deeply so that Chico would think she was sleeping, Chico breathed deeply so that Guida would think he was sleeping. They would fall asleep together. Guida would wake up after a short while and resume taking shallow breaths.
It was no use spreading the news through the neighborhood that she was once again accepting children under her care. The mothers of Estácio had found other babysitters, for better prices than those demanded by Guida. The flour jar where she put away money contained neither money nor flour. The end of the month was arriving, and the landlord had already begun to look at Guida with hungry eyes.
She found work as a cashier at a haberdashery in Rio Comprido. It was a narrow and dark store that received its share of dust from the trolleys and buses going up and down the Rua do Bispo. The store belonged to a Turkish lady with enormous breasts, which appeared even larger in the printed dresses she wore. Dona Amira had been a widow for years, and in order to survive as the owner of her business and her fate she’d discovered she needed to act like a man. Not even the teardrop earrings and long nails managed to give her the slightest feminine air. Everyone in the neighborhood showed respect for her unsmiling Good mornings, her pursed lips and her complete lack of interest in anything other than needles, scissors, and thimbles.
The tiny store on the Rua do Bispo was Dona Amira’s estate. There, she gave orders and bellowed commands. A few minutes’ lateness would be docked from Guida’s paycheck. Free time at the cash register was time that could be spent doing other work, so Guida had to make the rounds through the store with the duster. Or the broom, or a damp cloth over the glass showcase, and what did that bird-brained Guida think she was doing with the duster on the other side of the haberdashery? There’s a woman at the cash register trying to buy bobs of thread! Incompetence was something that irritated Dona Amira to no end, and since she needed motives for irritation in order to feel alive, Guida soon became incompetent. ‘You’re incompetent!’ she would say, and Guida would lower her head.
Guida knew that her incompetence was related to the lack of love in Dona Amira’s life, so she didn’t think much of it. She knew that her work was related to her son�
��s wellbeing, and so she accepted the situation. Guida also knew that it was better to have a woman as a boss than a man, even if this woman was capable of transforming a haberdashery into purgatory. Better to be in purgatory than in some back room sprawled beneath her boss.
What’s more, everything was going to get better the following month, when Guida’s ‘training period’ would come to an end and she would finally earn a full minimum wage and have her work documents signed. Dona Amira had hired Guida on the condition that she undergo a three-month tryout period, earning only half the salary. According to the Turkish woman, ninety days were what was needed to ensure that she could use the cash register. Guida had accepted. Not only because there were no other conditions to be accepted, but because this Dona Amira, so versatile in the art of keeping employees under her thumb, gave Guida an advance, which allowed the young woman to pay the month’s rent and made her feel indebted to her boss from the outset.
After spending days receiving orders Guida would return home wiped out, her skin covered in a dusty film. Chico would either be reading a book in the living room or reading a book in the bedroom. Mother and son ate dinner together and in silence. Guida had nothing to say about work, and Chico didn’t want to talk about school. They felt the absence of the noise of children and of Filomena’s laughter. Eating in silence was like eating with Filomena, the emptiness reminding those left behind of the space she had once occupied.
One July night Chico complained of a sore throat, and Guida prepared a saltwater rinse. He had a bit of fever, so Guida gave him aspirin. A few days later, the boy couldn’t get out of bed. He spent the morning in a fetal position beneath the sheets, trying not to moan.
Chico had contracted rheumatic fever. He would need injections of Benzetacil, cortisone, and heart medicine.
‘How long will the treatment last, doctor?’ Guida asked, wringing her hands.
‘Until he turns eighteen.’
The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao Page 11