“Salvator mundi,” she said.
“Salva nos,” we were required to reply.
Those who didn’t respond fast enough went without breakfast. That was how they punished us at Sion—denying food for little infractions, caning for more serious ones.
I enjoyed Sion’s strict schedules, its uniforms, our morning prayers, and the habit of bowing to the Mother Superior each time she passed. I enjoyed the predictability of life there. No day was different from another. Masses were tedious, but the Latin chants! The way the entire chapel seemed to vibrate with all of our voices made me feel the way a bird must feel when it sings with its flock.
The unforgivable part of Sion was that I barely saw Graça. I held her dirty skirts and slips and blouses to my nose, hoping to smell her on them. I noticed the shiny crust of dried snot on the sleeves of her nightgowns, and knew that she’d been crying. Lots of Sion helpers cried into their pillows. Our beds were set close together, close enough that some girls reached out to one another and held hands. Some nights, I heard the creak of bedsprings and the wet clicks of kisses. I missed Graça terribly then, and wondered if she missed me. I pictured her asleep in the student dormitory, and then I pictured her awake, moving across the room at night, into another girl’s bed. Then there was always a horrible knotting in my stomach and I could not stop my tears.
We changed clothes under the covers and bathed in our nightgowns, reaching under the wet cloth to soap ourselves properly. There were rows of shower spigots that spat out cold water. It was only afterward, as we toweled off, that I paid attention to how the nightgowns stuck to skin and how, through the cloth, you could detect dark patches of hair, the twin points of breasts. Many of the girls in my dormitory talked about “melting”—how they could make themselves melt, and make others, too. Soon enough I discovered what this melting business was, and tried it for myself at night, in the dark privacy of my bed. What a wonder our bodies are! What pride I had that I could give myself such feeling! And what odd shyness I felt each morning, believing the girls in the beds beside mine knew what I was doing under my blankets. The only person I wanted to share this discovery with was Graça. Did she know how to melt? Had she done it, too?
All of her life, Graça made people overlook her tiny stature, her strangely upturned nose, her lack of formal music and dance training, her accent, her tantrums, her addictions. At Sion, she somehow made those snobbish students overlook her origins and want to befriend her. Once, I walked down Sion’s main hall and saw Graça in the courtyard, holding court over a group of Sion girls. Graça spoke and they listened. She laughed and they laughed. The girl who sat the closest to her and laughed the loudest was a thick-ankled blonde. I wanted to rush into the courtyard and pull out that girl’s yellow hair.
On Sundays, helpers and students celebrated mass together. We sat in different sections of the chapel, but filed in and out together in neat lines. One Sunday in September, Graça’s blonde friend walked beside me as we left the chapel. Before I could quicken my pace, the girl grabbed my hand. If the Sisters caught her, we would both be caned. The girl’s grip was tight, her fingers as wet and firm as peeled carrots. She pressed a bit of paper into my palm. Half an hour later, alone in the toilet stall where no one could see me, I opened the note and recognized Graça’s round, curly script. Pray at 5, the note said, in English.
I nearly swooned inside the wooden box of that toilet stall. Not only had Graça sought me out, but she’d done it in a language most of the Sion girls and the nuns themselves could not decipher. I couldn’t bring myself to throw the note away. From that day forward, our stilted and paltry English became a code between us—a puzzle that, until we found ourselves in Los Angeles many years later, Graça and I believed only we could decipher.
* * *
—
Sion’s only common area was the chapel, where students and helpers were supposed to perform thirty minutes of daily, solitary prayer. At five p.m. I met Graça in the chapel. Her brown eyes bulged; her cheeks were concave as if she was constantly sucking them in. She had clearly been punished, her food taken away, but for what?
“We’re leaving,” she said.
“Who’s we?” I asked, my mouth suddenly dry. Graça and the blonde girl will run away, I thought, and she’s telling me first, so I won’t be surprised when they’re gone.
“You and me,” Graça said, threading her fingers through mine. My hands were as rough as oranges from doing her laundry. “You’re not a maid, Dor! And I’m not a nun. I’m an artist. I’ll die if I stay here!”
I nodded. Did I truly think Graça and I could make our way past every watchful nun, scale Sion’s brick fence, navigate the pine forest, and somehow arrive in Rio, unscathed? As Nena would say, a dog that’s been beaten enough knows how to walk without a leash. So I felt tethered to Sion, but could not see the harm in joining Graça in the chapel each day to plan an escape. Even if the Sisters caught us whispering and not praying, even if I had all of my meals taken away for the next year, it wouldn’t have mattered, because Graça had chosen me and no one else.
Every day afterward we knelt side by side in the chapel and spoke into our cupped hands, as if we were praying. The more we met, the more our imaginary escape became a very real possibility, and the more I realized how much trouble we would find ourselves in if we were caught. Actually, I’d be the one in trouble. The Little Miss might get her food taken away or her hands caned, but an unruly helper would be turned out on the street, with no objections from Senhor Pimentel. Meanwhile Graça talked about getting to Rio and finding the Mayrink radio station, and which songs we’d sing once we got there. The radio station’s owner would hear our voices and sign us up immediately to sing jingles, Graça said. With a job on the radio, we’d be set. Before long, we’d be the stars of the daily radio hour.
I was the one who steered us out of dreams and back to Sion, who talked about the kitchen door and the deliveries that came each day. Could we hide in a truck? Could we use the pocket money Senhor Pimentel sent her to bribe the boy who delivered milk to take us away in his donkey cart? Could we steal the gardener’s ladder and prop it against the school fence in order to climb over? Could we save bits of bread from lunch and hide them in our coats, so we’d have food after our escape? On and on I went, while Graça yawned into her hands.
“Should we sing a tango? Or a fado?” she asked. “A fado might be too dull. We need something peppy.”
“Are you listening to me?”
“Yes, but I want to talk about the important stuff.”
“Getting out isn’t important?” I asked.
“You’re like one of those girls that only thinks about pushing a baby out and how much it’ll hurt,” Graça said. “But I’m thinking about after. I’m thinking about taking care of the baby, Baby.”
“This isn’t funny.”
“I’m not laughing. We can yak all day long about locks and bribes and fences, but what we really need to do is be ready. One of these days, a nun’s going to take a nap at the wrong time, or a door’s going to be left open, or the gardener’s going to forget to lock the gate, and we’re going to have to be quick. Opportunity’s going to knock, and we’re going to have to answer.”
“What if it doesn’t knock? What if we have to make it ourselves?”
Graça glanced at the nun at the back of the chapel, then leaned ever so slightly toward me and planted a kiss on my knuckles. “We’re not supposed to be here. We’re meant for greater things,” Graça said, and cocked her head toward the Jesus on the cross before us. “Even He knows that.”
* * *
—
A few weeks later, Graça practically skipped into chapel. As she knelt to pray, she pressed her elbow into mine, knocking my arm from the pew.
“You hear that, Dor?” she asked.
“Hear what?”
She tapped her foot against the floor, making
three quiet knocks on the tile. “Opportunity’s knocking. The Holy Sisters are taking us on a trip.”
The Sisters planned an excursion to Rio to see the famous Christ the Redeemer statue. Back when Graça and I were still going to the cutters’ circles in Riacho Doce, a new president had taken over the country. We were too young to care, but the adults around us seemed worried. Getúlio Vargas was the president’s name, and though he’d lost the official election, he’d banded together military friends and popular support to oust the rightful winner. It was a revolution, although at Riacho Doce we were too far away to feel its effects. This revolution lasted only four days; by the time we heard the news out in Riacho Doce, fighting in the capital cities was over and Getúlio was president.
Everyone, even the Sisters at Sion, called our self-made president by his first name, as if he were a long-lost brother or cousin. After he installed himself in the presidential palace, Getúlio ordered a flurry of public works projects to put people at ease. One of these projects (started years before Getúlio took power but which he, wisely, took all the credit for) was a thirty-eight-meter-tall statue of Christ set on Rio’s Corcovado Mountain, in the middle of Tijuca Forest.
The trip to Corcovado was considered very important to the nuns at Sion. Only older girls were invited on field trips, but helpers were also allowed to go. There would be seventy-five of us going to see Christ the Redeemer with only five nuns as chaperones.
“This is our chance,” Graça said, nearly squealing. “We’ll be in Rio. It’s like they’re delivering us there.”
“We’ll be in a forest, on top of a mountain. Rio’s kilometers away,” I said.
“Well, it’ll be closer than it is now.”
“How would we even get down the mountain by ourselves? Hike? It’ll take days. We’d need food.”
“Stop it,” Graça whispered. “You’re complicating everything. We go, and then we ditch them. That’s all.”
I laughed.
Graça looked up at the chapel’s Christ. Her hands were clenched together so firmly, the knuckles were white.
“You think you’re so smart,” she said. “Well, you weren’t smart enough to get yourself out of Riacho Doce. I had to nearly drown us in the river to do that. So stop treating me like a pea-brain and questioning every little thing I say. Just follow orders like you’re supposed to, and I’ll get us out of here, too.”
“Like I’m supposed to?” I asked.
“That’s right,” Graça said.
“You didn’t get me here, Nena did,” I said. “The only reason I’m in this chapel is because Nena said she’d leave the Great House if I didn’t get to go to school, too. Your papai doesn’t care if you’re two thousand kilometers away from him. He doesn’t even notice you’re gone. But he sure didn’t want to lose his cook.”
Graça looked at me, startled. Then she stood, made a great show of crossing herself, and left the chapel.
The next day she didn’t appear for five o’clock prayers, or the next, or the day after that. I knelt alone in the chapel’s front pew, groggy from sleepless nights thinking of Graça and if she would really run and, when she did, if she would take me along. On the day of the Redeemer trip, I could barely spoon breakfast’s watery oats into my mouth, my hands shook so badly. Before we left Sion, I grabbed my little notebook from my trunk and slipped it into my skirt’s pocket; it was the one thing I wouldn’t leave behind.
* * *
—
At Corcovado’s base, there was an electric railway that took visitors up and down the steep slope to the Redeemer. We rode up in separate cars—students and Sisters in the first few, helpers on the last. The train lurched through the thick tangle of trees and palms that was Tijuca Forest. Every year, hikers and tourists were lost in that forest. Many died.
Near the top of the track, we saw Rio in the distance. There was the semicircle of Guanabara Bay, the white dots of passenger ships arriving at port, the domed roof of the Senate, the glinting bronze eagles of Catete Palace. My palms sweated, making the handrail rail slick. I was in the last car, the conductor barely visible in the first. Near him, staring placidly at the mountains, was Graça.
At the statue’s base, the Sisters made us all kneel and pray. The Redeemer statue was made of white soapstone. He was so impossibly tall it made me dizzy to stare into His calm face. After prayers we had thirty minutes to roam around the statue.
I watched as Graça and Rosa, the blonde girl, sidled up to each other. The girl spoke. Graça nodded, her expression grave. I felt my insides go as cold as that statue’s soapstone. They are escaping without me, I thought. And then, without a moment’s hesitation, I turned to find one of the Sisters.
I was going to snitch. Better Graça captive in Sion with me than wandering Rio without. Before I could find a nun, Graça blocked my path.
“Ready?” she asked, in English.
Back at Sion, she’d traded her blonde friend three silk camisoles in exchange for a favor: blondie would hide a bottle of castor oil in her school bag, then drink half of it before they boarded the train. Ten minutes after prayers at the top of the mountain, the blonde doubled over howling. She was sick in the bushes near the statue’s feet. Our five chaperone Sisters blew their whistles and ran to her aid.
Graça grabbed my hand. “Now!”
Together we ran toward the empty train.
The contraption was attached to electrified cables, with ascending and descending cars counterbalanced. This meant that one set of cars regularly went up the mountain while the other set always went down, whether there were passengers or not. Without the conductor registering our presence, Graça and I slipped into the last, empty car and crouched behind its wooden benches.
She’d stuffed the little spending money her father had sent her into her brassiere. And she’d worn an extra blouse under the Sion uniform’s shirt, which had the school’s patch affixed to it. Halfway down the mountain, Graça unbuttoned her school shirt and flung it off the train and into the forest. She ordered me to take off my school shirt and turn it inside out; this way, no one could immediately associate us with Sion.
I fumbled with the buttons, my fingers bumbling, my breath short, my legs already burning from their awkward crouch.
“Here,” Graça sighed, and began to undo my blouse for me.
The train groaned. We swayed back and forth. Graça’s fingers were quick and steady. She bit her bottom lip, concentrating. When she was done, my blouse flapped open. Graça held both sides and gently tugged it off my shoulders. Then she smiled.
In that moment, only Graça and I existed. We were the first and the last of our kind. We were all of creation. Of course she would be a star. Of course she would find her way to Rio. Of course she would make the seemingly impossible possible. How could I not be taken hold by such confidence, by such unbridled belief?
I put my blouse back on, inside out. The train lumbered down the mountain. Graça and I held each other close. Around us was jungle. Before us was Rio de Janeiro, the sprawling capital of Brazil. We were fifteen years old; runaways who had never lived in a city. We had never been without the protection of adults. Was I afraid? Did I have doubts? I don’t remember. All I can recall is feeling Graça’s warmth against me and thinking of Riacho Doce, of the cane fires and the way hawks would circle the burning paddocks, waiting for mice and snakes and any other animal that tried to escape the flames. The birds swooped in and carried their catches away. They wouldn’t kill them immediately; they’d fly with them first. So the animal’s final moments were in the air, far from the world it had known, suddenly seeing everything from above. How terrifying that must be! How wonderful. I felt like that, on the train—caught in the grips of something larger, wiser, more powerful than myself, flying toward a fate that was frightening, yes, but now that I’d caught a glimpse of the world from above, how could I possibly go back to living in the dirt
?
THE AIR YOU BREATHE
Here I am, Love.
Always by your side.
I buy your food.
I make your bed.
I place the pillow
under your head.
But you don’t notice.
You don’t care.
You seem to think,
I’ll always be there.
What would happen if I were to leave?
No one notices the air they breathe.
What do feelings matter,
as long as your stockings are new?
As long as your baths are hot,
and every door’s opened for you?
What would happen if I were to leave?
No one notices the air they breathe.
We all take for granted
things that come too easily.
That’s why I can’t let you go—
you’re always a challenge to me.
Here’s my vow to you, here’s all I believe:
For you, I’ll stay invisible. I’ll be the air you breathe.
Her costumes occupy an entire room in my house. I’m still surprised by how heavy the dresses are; I no longer have the strength to remove them from their bags. All of those rhinestones and beading make some weigh as much as six kilos, some twelve. It’s a wonder how Graça ever danced in them, let alone stood for hours on set, propped up by an ironing board at her back so she would not be tempted to sit and possibly ruin her costume.
What’s astonishing wasn’t the costumes, but the fact that Graça was not swallowed up by them. Any other woman would have seemed invisible beneath the sequins and stones, but Sofia Salvador made them seem natural, almost necessary—the glittering carapace that protected everything vulnerable underneath.
Being a woman is always a performance; only the very old and very young are allowed to bow out of it. The rest must play our parts with vigor but seemingly without effort. Our bodies must be forms molded to fit the requirements of our times: pinched, plucked, painted, not painted, covered, uncovered, perfumed, dyed, squeezed, injected, powdered, snipped, sloughed, moisturized, fed or unfed, and on and on, until such costumes seem innate. Everywhere, you are observed and assessed: walking down the street, riding a bus, driving a car, eating in a café. You must smile, but not too widely. You must be pleasant, but not forward. You must accommodate and ingratiate but never offer too much of yourself, and never for your own pleasure. If you do this, it must be in secret.
The Air You Breathe Page 10
