“We saw a two-headed hawk!” she said. Or, “There was a ghost in the river!”
After such stories, Senhor Pimentel shook his head and, inevitably, looked at me. Both he and Graça waited for my obedient nod. No matter how ridiculous the tale, I always agreed. We went on with these terrible visits for months; as long as I never contradicted the Little Miss, I would be allowed to stay. But Senhor Pimentel always pushed Graça from his lap and shooed her away, declaring he was too busy.
“I can help you, Papai,” Graça said, pointing to the papers on his desk. “I can sort things. I can stamp those papers, or fill your ink pot.”
Senhor Pimentel shook his head. “You’d make a mess of things, querida. Go tell your mother to give you a little brother. He can help me, and you can help take care of him.”
I began to despise Senhor Pimentel then, not for making me lie but for taking Graça’s attentions and then throwing them away. Still, Graça persisted in her visits. In the weeks before the sugar harvest, bills piled high on his desk and workers began to crowd the mill. One day, Senhor Pimentel yelled at Graça as soon as she opened the office door, screaming at her to leave, calling her a useless nuisance.
We ran to the river. There, on the banks, Graça gulped back sobs and declared that we would never, ever set foot in the mill again.
I was happy; she had said “we.”
* * *
—
After a year of letting Graça run wild alongside me, Senhora Pimentel hired a private tutor. The woman was a widow who wore only black dresses and thick-soled shoes. Graça and I nicknamed her Bruxa, though she did not look like the witches in Senhora Pimentel’s fairy-tale books, with their warty noses and knobby fingers. As a child I believed she was ancient, but I realize now that she must have been in her thirties, with dark hair pulled into a tight bun, and eyes so large and brown they resembled those of a horse. She might have been pretty, if she hadn’t had a witch’s spitefulness.
When Graça discovered I wasn’t included in the lessons she shouted, cried, flung a set of porcelain angels to the floor, and stomped them to bits under her boots.
I quickly became the second pupil in Bruxa’s class.
I received seven new dresses (one for each day of the week) and was taken off kitchen duty during lessons, but Bruxa never let me forget that I came from the kitchen. I was not allowed to speak during lessons. During the midmorning snack, I watched Graça and Bruxa drink coffee and eat cookies but was never allowed to have any myself. And if I had a question I had to whisper it to Graça, who would then ask Bruxa.
The tutor occupied a small, airless guest bedroom in the Great House. Bruxa was not allowed to dine with Graça and her family, but was allowed to have meals in her bedroom, delivered on a tray. This made her different from the other servants, and any variation in Riacho Doce’s hierarchy was met with suspicion. The laundresses were expected to wash and iron Bruxa’s clothes, and they often put extra starch on the tutor’s black dresses and laughed at her yellowed camisoles and ratty underwear. The kitchen maids who delivered her food trays tried to engage Bruxa in conversation, but could not and quickly proclaimed her “high and mighty.” There were rumors, most of them vicious, about why Bruxa wore only black shoes and dresses: she was in mourning for a husband who’d jumped off a bridge to escape her; she’d poisoned her entire family and gotten away with it, and continued to wear black as a kind of penance. Nena warned me never to eat food offered to me by Bruxa, as if the tutor even acknowledged my existence. But I was happy to endure Bruxa’s slights if it meant I could be a part of her lessons. Unlike Graça, I liked learning to count and write and speak proper English and Portuguese. I liked how each letter of the alphabet had sounds that, when joined with others, became words. And how English words were short and to the point, while Portuguese had more melody to it, with words that had seven and even eight syllables, and masculine and feminine words (the moon is a woman, the sun a man; the land is woman, the sky a man; and on and on without logic or neutrality).
Mathematics came easily to me and I began to help Nena by keeping track of the pantry’s stock—counting jars of jam, bottles of palm oil, the hundreds of onions and carrots and other vegetables. I counted each morning and each evening, and this way we knew if we had to order more supplies and, more important, if any had been filched during the day by the housemaids. As long as my learning was applied to something practical—inventory, reading the labels of the fancy flavored oils Senhora Pimentel brought from Recife, adding the butcher’s bill to see if he was cheating us—it was accepted, praised even. Each time I double-checked a bill, or challenged a peddler for charging us too much, Nena’s chest puffed up and she patted my back with her enormous hand, nearly making me fall forward. “Can’t fool this one!” Nena said, smiling, while the kitchen girls stared, openmouthed, as if I’d just been nominated as president of the Republic.
Whenever I kneaded bread I wrote in the layer of flour that coated the table: Maria das Dores. I shaped the leftover bits of dough into Ms and Ds. Each time I stirred jam and the syrup thickened, I wrote my real name over and over again in the jam with my spoon. Once, in the orchard, I took a rock and carved my name into the trunk of a lime tree. When Nena found out, she took a branch from that tree and whipped me, but I didn’t care. For months afterward, each time I walked by that tree, I saw myself there. I was not Jega, the puta’s girl, the kitchen maid who would live and die forgotten in Riacho Doce. I was Maria das Dores, a girl who would leave her mark on the world. A girl who would be remembered.
I began to copy many-syllabled words into my little notebook. Some of their ending sounds corresponded: consummate, negate, infatuate, consecrate, innovate, undulate. I had known about rhyme before, of course. I’d heard the housemaids singing love songs with simple, rhyming verses. And it is human instinct to try to match things, to attempt to find likeness where there may be none. But this rhyming felt different to me; I was understanding the music held within words before I truly understood music itself.
After a year of lessons, I could read whole passages aloud from Bruxa’s books better than Graça could. During class, Graça looked to me for help with her lessons and I’d whisper her the answers. Then I watched as Graça was praised for my cleverness.
* * *
—
One afternoon, Senhora Pimentel left her bed, collected Graça and me from the playroom, and escorted us across the Great House lawn to the mill, where Senhor Pimentel kept his office. Senhora Pimentel had put on a dress and pearls, and pinned her hair for the occasion, and the effort of making herself presentable coupled with walking across the lawn sapped her strength; the minute Senhor Pimentel opened his office door, she sank into a chair.
Senhor Pimentel greeted her stiffly. He wore a tie and, dimpling its center, a golden sugar cube encrusted with diamonds. It was new, a gift to himself I suppose, to make him feel like a real sugar baron despite the plantation’s steady losses. Senhor Pimentel spoke again to his wife but I did not register what was said. I watched the tie pin shimmer with each rise and fall of Senhor Pimentel’s chest.
What did a diamond mean to me then? If someone had asked me what a diamond was, I wouldn’t have known. But seeing that cube with its hundreds of glimmering stones, white like real sugar but shinier, more lovely, made me want to reach across Senhor Pimentel’s massive desk and snatch it, put it in my mouth and see if it was sweet, if it would break apart on my tongue. Thankfully, before I could act on this urge, Senhora Pimentel spoke.
“I’m taking the girls to a concert,” she announced. “In Recife.”
“The girls?” Senhor Pimentel asked.
Senhora Pimentel sighed. “You can’t expect me to entertain Graça the entire ride to Recife and back? She and Dores will play.”
“You mean old Jega there?” Senhor Pimentel said.
“Nicknames are vulgar, Miguel,” Senhora Pimentel replied.
“The kind with music. Real music, not the lunduns the maids sing.”
“Can you make the trip?” Senhor Pimentel asked.
Senhora Pimentel straightened herself in her chair. “Of course. Graça needs to be exposed to art.”
“So have that tutor show her some books, or make her draw a few sketches of flowers in a vase. What use is a concert?”
“Not everything has to be useful,” the Senhora said.
“It does if I’m paying for it,” Senhor Pimentel replied.
His wife shuddered. People in their set, no matter how indebted they were, never spoke of money. But the money was originally hers, not his, which is why, I think, the Senhor suddenly softened his tone.
“She’s growing up with fresh air and hearty food, without any of the distractions of the city,” he said. “She’s as pure as a little flower bud. That’s what’ll matter to her husband, not all those other things that those so-called sophisticated girls have. She’s our little flower.”
Senhor Pimentel cupped his hand to Graça’s cheek. She closed her eyes, as if she was about to swoon.
“She’ll turn into a heathen out here if we’re not careful,” Senhora Pimentel said. “Any husband worthy of her will move her to a city, and she’ll be a laughingstock who doesn’t know a symphony from a cantiga. They’ll call her a matuta behind her back.”
Art, to me, was the dark oil painting that hung in the Great House parlor. It was strange that Senhora Pimentel believed that little girls needed such a thing. Even stranger that Senhor Pimentel finally agreed with her.
That was how, at twelve years old, I left Riacho Doce for the first time and found myself in Recife, the capital of our state. We stayed in the Pimentels’ former home. They’d left the place closed and its furniture dust-sheeted, with only one maid to care for it all. On the day of the concert, this maid clumsily unpacked our formal dresses. Senhora Pimentel had a fancy dress made for me—a simple sheath of blue silk, which was quite plain compared with the tiered, ruffled creation Senhor Pimentel had bought for Graça as a surprise. Despite my dress’s simplicity, I’d never worn something so fine and was petrified of wrinkling or staining the dress before we arrived at the theater.
A famous fado singer from Portugal was touring Brazil and had stopped in Recife to play at the Saint Isabel Theater. Until that night, I’d believed the Riacho Doce mill the largest building on earth. The Saint Isabel made the mill seem as small and decrepit as a cane cutter’s shack. Walking through the theater’s crowded lobby, with its staircases as wide as roadways, I felt dizzy and afraid. How could such a structure stay upright? How could the ceilings hold such massive chandeliers? My heart beat as fast as a bird’s. Surely the theater walls would buckle and collapse at any moment under the weight of so much glass and stone, I thought. I grabbed Graça’s gloved hand and did not let go until we found our seats.
I wasn’t a complete heathen—I’d heard singing and instruments before, at Riacho Doce. Once a year on Saint John’s Day the Pimentels allowed a bonfire and asked workers to play tunes on wheezy accordions. And every night, there was the sound of drums and faraway voices from the cane cutters’ shacks. They had circles there, I knew, but no one from the Great House was allowed to fraternize with the cutters, much less sneak off in the middle of the night to hear them sing. Some nights I woke to their drumming and believed it was the beating of my own heart.
The theater’s lights dimmed. There was applause. A woman waddled onto the stage, lifting the heavy skirt of her evening gown so she would not trip over its hem. Her ankles were as thick as my thighs. Her tiny, heeled shoes seemed as if they might snap under her weight. A lone guitarist accompanied her. As soon as the applause finished, the guitarist plucked his first notes. The singer’s voice rang like a bell—sharp, powerful, alarming—across the theater.
“At the end of my street,
the ocean laps,
the ocean laps.
Above it I see a piece of the moon,
a sliver of my destiny.”
I closed my eyes. I saw an ocean as dark as the cane fields at night. I saw stars sparkling more than the diamonds on Senhor Pimentel’s sugar cube pin. The singer continued.
“Where is my destiny?
Where is my home?
Will I never have a place in this world?
Will I always be alone?”
I felt as if a hand had wrapped itself around my heart. With each note of the singer’s song, the hand squeezed harder.
“Oh, dear,” Senhora Pimentel whispered. “Let’s clean you up.”
She removed a handkerchief from her beaded purse and stuffed it into my hands. When I did not wipe my wet cheeks or the snot running down my chin, Senhora Pimentel took the handkerchief and wiped for me. She was gentle, but I hated her for distracting me from the singer. I hated Graça for shuffling in her seat. I hated the man behind us for coughing. I hated my life up until that point—to think of all of those evenings I’d wasted peeling potatoes or listening to maids’ gossip when someone, somewhere, was singing such music! Why hadn’t I heard this music before? And when would I ever hear it again? My insides felt very heavy, as if I’d drunk a pitcher full of concrete and it was hardening within me.
I eventually learned to identify this feeling as regret. But at the time I was twelve years old and believed I was deathly ill. Music had triggered this sickness but it was also my only cure. Sitting on the edge of that red velvet seat, I believed my condition was grave—I would die as soon as the concert was over, as soon as the music stopped.
To my surprise, I lived. At the end of the show Senhora Pimentel led us through the crowds and into our hired car. There, she removed her gloves and placed a cool hand on my forehead.
“She’s not sick,” Graça said.
Senhora Pimentel shook her head. “I should’ve known the city would overwhelm her, poor thing.”
“It’s the songs, Mother,” Graça snapped. “The songs are still inside her.”
Senhora Pimentel looked at her daughter as if Graça had spoken in tongues. But Graça’s words—her complete understanding of how I felt—made my eyes well up again. Ashamed, I covered my face in my hands.
“She’s having a nervous attack,” Senhora Pimentel said. “If you have to vomit don’t do it in the automobile.”
During the ride back to the Pimentel house, Senhora Pimentel shut her eyes, a sign that the trip to the theater had worn her out and she could pay me no further attention. Graça squeezed beside me. She smoothed my hair. My head fell into her lap. Her hands were soft, her dress slippery under my cheek. My ear fit perfectly in the hollow between her legs. I fell asleep listening to the ruffles of her dress shift beneath me.
That night, Graça insisted I sleep in her room and not in the servants’ area behind the kitchen. As soon as Senhora Pimentel bid us goodnight, Graça crawled out of her bed and onto my small mattress on the floor. She wore a scarf over her hair to keep her curls springy. Her arm felt very warm against mine.
“I’m going to sing on a stage like that,” Graça said. “I’m going to make people swallow my songs and hold them inside. I’m going to be known. I’m going to be seen.”
“Me too,” I said, and steeled myself for Graça to make fun, to tell me I could never do such a thing.
“We’ll have to get a phonograph,” she said.
“A what?” I asked.
“A machine that plays records. I’ll ask Mamãe for one. She gets me whatever I want.”
“All right,” I said, as if I understood Graça’s plan.
I’d never even seen a record, much less heard one, but I was giddy despite my ignorance.
That night, I barely slept. Even then, I knew that there are few certainties in this life—one action can have a dozen interpretations, one word
a dozen meanings depending on how it’s spoken. Everything can be questioned, picked at, and scrutinized, even one’s own feelings. How miraculous then to hear something and know, without any doubt, that it is beautiful.
I was luckier than most orphaned bastards: I hadn’t been thrown into the cane to die; I’d had Nena as teacher and protector; I’d become the Little Miss’s favorite and was given an education. But if the winds shifted and Graça grew bored with me, or the Pimentels tired of feeding and clothing me, or if I made a mistake that would bring disfavor, I would lose any good fortune I’d gained. Nothing in my life was certain, and nothing was mine alone. How incredible then that, despite the precariousness of my existence, despite the coarseness and violence that always threatened to suffocate me, there was this beauty, this grace, that had found me through music, and that no one could take from me. This was the gift that music gave to Graça and me that night, and every night afterward: we had something of our own to truly love, and we had each other to share it with.
* * *
—
Senhora Pimentel’s health worsened after our trip to Recife. She stayed in bed as she had before, but didn’t have the energy to braid our hair or tell us stories. The tiny gold bell the Senhora kept beside her bed and rang constantly to call the housemaids and order them to bring her water, or a new book, or lunch on a tray, stayed silent. The bell was too heavy to pick up, Senhora Pimentel complained. A doctor visited, locking the bedroom door behind him. When he left, Graça sprang into action, slipping into her mother’s room before a maid or her father could stop her.
Inside, Graça gripped her mother’s fingers so hard I saw Senhora Pimentel flinch. “I need that phonograph,” she said, as if she’d made the request to her mother many times before. Senhora Pimentel smiled.
A week later, the machine arrived at Riacho Doce. It sat in a tall wooden cabinet in the Great House parlor. A box of records arrived with it. Graça and I took each record from its paper sheath and put them, one by one, on the phonograph’s turntable. That first day, we listened to the Moonlight Sonata, Enrico Caruso, Heitor Villa-Lobos, and others. We played that first batch of records so often, Senhor Pimentel complained about the noise. But he could not keep us from that mournful fado, or from Caruso’s bottomless, unyielding voice, or from the guitar concertos where the ringing of the plucked strings felt as crisp as biting into a ripe star fruit.
The Air You Breathe Page 4
