The Air You Breathe

by Frances De Pontes Peebles

  Big Foot. I’d heard the slur before, just never aimed at me. My arms felt very heavy. I tightened my grip on Aracy.

  “Forced you?” I said, attempting to laugh. “I’ll tell everyone what a wild time we had together in here. So wild, you forgot to go onstage. We’ll see how your fans feel about a Big Foot singer.”

  Aracy was quiet after that, and her silence made the minutes feel like days. My arms burned and cramped. My legs shook. But I held Aracy until I was sure the show was over. All the while I imagined Graça and the boys onstage, waiting for the MC to direct them off and, when he didn’t appear, how they would look at each other and play the first notes of their next song without guilt or hesitation.

  Anaïs watched their entire set from the wings. Later, she told me how, after those first few rocky notes, Graça’s voice relaxed. She moved her bracelets in such a way that they became instruments. She swayed and shimmied near Vinicius. She used the tone of her voice to challenge him to play quicker, then coax him to go slower. Vinicius never lost track. He played his seven-string guitar, and that extra string added a deep bottom to his playing. Those low notes buoyed Sofia Salvador, helping her voice rise higher and brighter. And the audience heard this wide spectrum of sound and it did not sound dissonant or odd, but like a perfect dialogue.

  Waiters stopped their service. Coat-check girls congregated in the Grill Room’s dark patches. Somewhere in this crowd a pair of hands clapped in time to the music, then another. Graça’s eyes darted toward this noise. She sang louder, danced faster. By the middle of “My Mutt,” it seemed as if the whole room had let out a great breath of relief. A few of the society ladies tapped their fingers on the tables. Some of the gentlemen shook their heads and smiled. I can imagine them thinking: What pluck this little bird has! What charm!

  The show closed. Sofia Salvador bowed. The crowd cheered and stomped their feet until the entire theater shook beneath us. Aracy and I felt the vibration as far away as the dressing room. I loosened my grip. Aracy wrenched herself away.

  “You won,” she said. “It’s over.”

  The applause stopped. There was music again—an encore. I pulled the chair out from under the knob and flung open the dressing room door. Aracy was wrong: nothing was over. We were just beginning.

  * * *

  —

  Everyone in Brazil who’d tuned their radios to the Mayrink Showcase that night heard Sofia Salvador bring the house down. And, it seemed, all of Rio wanted to see her in person.

  We became exclusive players at the Grill Room. The ambassador of Spain came to see our show and kissed Sofia Salvador’s hand afterward. Their photograph appeared in the national papers. Rolla paid us enough to make us feel rich, even though we weren’t. We paid Madame L. back for our fancy clothes. The boys bought nice suits and ate better meals. Graça and I rented a swanky room complete with a claw-footed bathtub. The day after the Mayrink Showcase, we went to a beauty parlor and lopped off Graça’s burned hair. She wore hats until her bald spots grew back, and after that she skipped around Lapa looking like a beautiful, rascally pixie.

  The more success we had, the smaller our world became. Cafés and bars became tiresome places for us because young musicians bombarded Graça and the boys with requests for favors and loans. We couldn’t go to any beach or cabaret in the city without getting mobbed by Sofia Salvador’s fans—male and female alike. Every fashionable girl in Rio wore Sofia Salvador’s signature red lipstick, until Sofia changed hers to mauve, then coral, then electric pink. Her hair remained pixie short and very blond. Sofia Salvador quickly ditched the turban, in part because Bonito and Banana had asked her to, out of respect for real Baianas, and in part because Graça couldn’t stand the thought of being an imitator. Her dresses grew more like pillars than like bells, their slits higher up her thigh. Their colors were ones you’d find in a jungle, not in an elegant theater: banana-leaf green, butterfly-wing blue, passionflower purple. She was a chameleon: tiny, colorful, and constantly changing. Her fans and competitors ruthlessly tried to keep up.

  By 1940, Auntie Ciata’s yard was no longer safe. Samba bands competed for gigs, record deals, and radio play. Good songs were a commodity, and, Lapa being Lapa, there was no shame in eavesdropping on another band’s roda, memorizing their songs, and then running to a studio before dawn to record the tracks as your own. This was how lesser bands stole several of our sambas, and forced our rodas out of Ciata’s and into cramped boardinghouse rooms. We made some of our biggest hits in those rooms: “Crying for You,” “Sweet Moreno,” “My Nêgo,” “Just a Little Taste,” “Win You Over,” “Ache in My Heart.”

  There were still dozens of good samba bands out there, but none had a person dedicated to making them great—except ours. If a stage floor was too slick, if someone tried to skimp on our fee, if they did not provide the band with hot water and face towels, if a dressing room was dirty, then I set things right. Cabaret owners, recording technicians, talent managers, rival bands, and all sorts of other small-minded Lapa nincompoops who hoped to take advantage of Sofia Salvador and Blue Moon called me names behind my back: Guard Dog, Vulture, Bitch, Big Foot, and worse. People thought they were clever with their secret insults but I always eventually heard what was said about me and, to their great dismay, I wasn’t upset. Not outwardly. I recalled the names that people had called my mother—what had she done to deserve them? She’d been a child forced to endure the attentions of the Little Senhor and his friends. She’d refused to starve after being kicked out of the Great House and became a cane cutter. She’d refused to be married. She’d refused to be shamed. So they called her names out of fear, and made her well-known. I did not sing onstage beside Sofia Salvador like I’d once dreamed of doing, but I earned my own kind of fame.

  I set things right within the band, too. When Tiny, Banana, and Bonito argued over a cocktail waitress, I got the girl fired from Urca and brought three stunners backstage after our show—one for each of the boys. When Little Noel got pneumonia, I convinced Joaquim Rolla to pay for the casino’s fancy doctor to care for him. Mostly I settled daily riffs between Graça and Vinicius. When he chastised her for being lazy or questioned her taste in music, I spent our taxi rides home building her up again, showering her with compliments, and poking fun at Vinicius the way we had with those long-forgotten knuckle draggers, calling him “Dinosaur” and imitating his scowling face until Graça cried with laughter. When Graça riled Vinicius on purpose, calling him “old man” or telling him his hearing was going bad, I took Vinicius on walks along Urca’s beach to calm him, listening as he called her unreasonable and selfish, and then working those grievances into lyrics we could use later, in our songs. I was, like Kitchen in our roda, the one who kept the band’s beat steady, and who guided Vinicius and Graça into a delicate harmony.

  * * *

  —

  It was in the middle of a performance at the Grill Room when one of Urca’s bouncers informed me that we had a visitor.

  “He says he’s Miss Salvador’s father,” the bouncer said.

  I remembered the day, long before, when the growling automobile had made its way for the first time into Riacho Doce and I’d felt both panic and curiosity. I stared into the dark backstage corridor and told myself: this is a trick. The man was a fan eager to meet Sofia Salvador, or an agent from a rival casino trying to outbid Urca.

  “Send him back,” I replied.

  The man who made his way toward me was too short to be Senhor Pimentel. His hair was gray and thin, his brow deeply furrowed. But when he turned for a moment to the side, confused by the labyrinth of dressing areas and props closets, I saw the sharp Roman profile. And, in the middle of his chest, the diamond sugar cube glittered.

  “You’ve grown, Jega!” Senhor Pimentel said, and smiled as if we were old chums. His eyes scanned my high heels, my trousers, my suspenders and silk blouse.

  “I’m not Jega.”

  S
enhor Pimentel swayed closer. I smelled a sweet rankness, as if he’d been pickled in rum.

  “Seems like everyone has made-up names around here. What do you call yourself now?” he asked.

  “My name’s Dores. Like always.”

  “Is that so? Well, Dores, I saw my Graçinha in the papers, shaking hands with an ambassador. She had that ridiculous thing on her head, and more makeup than a decent girl needs. But I knew it was her. I’d recognize my Graçinha anywhere.”

  We could hear Sofia Salvador and Blue Moon singing the final song of their act. Once they got offstage, they’d have thirty minutes to rest and change clothes before going on again.

  “It took you a while to come looking for us,” I said.

  “For her,” Senhor Pimentel corrected. “Everyone thought she was dead. And for a time, I would’ve rather she’d been dead than living as some cabaret girl. Or worse.”

  “And look at us now: in a fancy show. It’s the perfect time to find us.”

  Senhor Pimentel smiled. “We hear her on the radio sometimes, in Recife. No one knows it’s her, and I don’t tell them. Her mother would roll over in her grave if she saw her dressed like some voodoo woman, on a stage in front of important people.”

  “So you came to scold?” I asked.

  “Every girl needs a father to guide her,” Senhor Pimentel replied.

  The stage lights brightened and pulsed, illuminating the backstage corridor more than before. The elbows of Senhor Pimentel’s suit were shiny with wear. The lapels of his jacket were frayed. The tie beneath the sugar cube pin was mottled with stains.

  “How’s the sugar business?” I asked.

  His eyes met mine. “The market’s not what it was. The smart ones diversified. Graça was right to leave. What would she have done? Married another planter who would have gone broke?”

  “That’s what you wanted her to do.”

  Senhor Pimentel shook his head. “I wanted to give her an honest future. Love blinds you when you’re a father. You wouldn’t know about that, being what you are.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  Senhor Pimentel shrugged. “Discarded. Don’t take offense now, Jega! You couldn’t help it. It’s what your lot do: pop out children and then leave them for us to feed, clothe, send to fancy schools. You’re a lucky one. Not every patrão would’ve been as kind as me.”

  “I was lucky to have Nena,” I replied.

  Senhor Pimentel looked pained. “She was a good old girl.”

  “Was?” I asked, staring at his craggy face.

  “Nena fell over one day in the kitchen, not long after you two disappeared. I called in a doctor for her, she was special to me, you know. He said it was her heart.”

  The heels of my shoes seemed to give out beneath me. I stumbled and reached for the dark wall. There was a wooden beam; I braced myself against it. I’d wanted to send Nena money to show her we’d succeeded in Rio, but I hadn’t even written a letter or given her a sign of life. In part because I was selfish and young, and in part because I’d been afraid of being caught by the man who now stood before me. He was not the handsome, menacing Senhor of my memory but a small man in a ragged suit. Who was the real Senhor?

  The show ended. Graça and the boys filed backstage, giddy with exhaustion. She saw him then, and there was nothing I could do. Senhor Pimentel yelled “Graçinha!” and opened his arms.

  Graça stopped. Her smile disappeared and her face became like a mannequin’s—placid and unreadable. I knew better than most that Graça had a profound capacity to wound, and an equally astonishing and unpredictable ability to dole out kindness. In that moment backstage, I wondered which would win out.

  Senhor Pimentel’s arms fell to his sides. “It’s me, Papai.”

  Graça eyed him. “It took you long enough.”

  The Blue Moon boys stared, confused. In the front of the house, we heard laughter and chairs scraping. The Grill Room’s audience headed back into the casino; Sofia’s shows were short enough to get people drunk and happy, but not so long as to keep them from gambling their money away.

  “You saw the show?” Graça asked.

  “Not yet,” Senhor Pimentel replied. “I came straight back to see you.”

  Graça blinked as if startled from a long sleep. “We go on again in thirty minutes,” she said. “I need to rest.”

  “Maybe you can get me a front-row seat?” Senhor Pimentel asked.

  “Do you have a tux?” I interrupted. “They won’t let you out front without one. There’s a dress code here. It’s a respectable place.”

  Senhor Pimentel’s expression darkened and it was as if I was back in the old parlor, face-to-face with Riacho Doce’s master, bracing to receive my punishment. But just as quickly the Senhor closed his eyes, and when he reopened them, his face lit up in a smile.

  “I’ll watch my girl from back here, then,” he said. “With you, Jega.”

  Vinicius and the boys glanced at me, curious. I looked down at my silk blouse, at my trousers with their crisp creases running along each leg, at my expensive heels. None of them seemed to belong to me. It was as if I was a stagehand who had put on a main player’s costume and, just before curtain, I’d been unmasked.

  WITHOUT REGRET OR VIRTUE

  Each time I swim in the ocean,

  I think of our night on the beach.

  How you ran along the sand,

  your body just beyond my reach.

  Each time I wade into the water,

  I feel the waves’ gentle hits.

  I think of how I finally caught you,

  how you tried to resist my tricks.

  Each time I dive,

  I think of how our mouths met.

  How like the tides we moved,

  until we couldn’t tell water from sweat.

  Each time I crawl back to dry land

  I think how like an animal I was, loving you.

  And I wish we would’ve drowned that night,

  together, without regret or virtue.

  Together,

  without regret or virtue.

  Together,

  without regret or virtue.

  If remembering tells us who we are, then forgetting keeps us sane. If we recalled every song we’d ever heard, every touch we’d ever felt, every pain no matter how small, every sadness no matter how petty, every joy no matter how selfish, we would surely lose our minds. I learned this after Graça died and I spent time in a Palm Springs clinic too fancy to be called a nuthouse. You see, I felt all of my memories very keenly—almost as if I was reliving them—and I drank in the hopes of wiping them away completely. My memory, however, was quite stubborn. It was Vinicius who eventually had his slate wiped clean.

  It began innocently. He would look at a clock and be unable to decipher the time. Or I’d find him frozen in the middle of a room in our Miami house and he’d laugh and say that, for the life of him, he couldn’t find his way to the kitchen. He’d be embarrassed and frustrated, so I’d pretend to forget things, too, and we’d laugh about growing old.

  If you forget something completely, there is no missing it because you aren’t aware of its existence anymore. But if you forget something and know you’ve forgotten, well, that’s where suffering arises—not in the loss itself, but in the awareness of loss. You grieve without knowing what you’re grieving for.

  They say when you grow old, you return to the places you loved as a child. Vinicius played piano in movie houses when he was a little boy; his aunt stood nearby and if he even glanced at the screen, she’d slap the back of his head so hard his ears rang. Despite this, Vinicius adored the movies.

  When he began wandering away from our house on Miami Beach, the first place I looked was the movie theater nearby. I’d find Vinicius in the middle of an empty row of chairs, watching the show. I’d sit with him and smell bu
ttered popcorn, and the cigarette smoke from Vinicius’s clothes. Then I felt his arm pressed against mine in the dark as we waited for the movie to begin, and suddenly it was 1940 again, and the two of us were back in Rio at the Odeon theater.

  That year, Vinicius and I caught a picture nearly every day. They were our escape from samba’s vicious competitiveness, from Senhor Pimentel’s stifling presence in our lives, and even from Graça herself. Together, Vinicius and I gaped at Rhett Butler carrying Scarlett up winding stairs. We laughed ourselves to tears at Chaplin playing the Great Dictator. Our jaws dropped and we clasped hands when Dorothy entered a Technicolor Oz.

  Movies had none of the snobbishness of the theater, or the opera, or the Copacabana Palace. The movie house was noisy and crowded with every color and class of person. The films themselves—most out of Hollywood—had scrappy heroines full of ambition and pluck. Of course, any character from south of the United States was always a bandit, cantina tart, or mustachioed villain; Vinicius and I avoided those kinds of films at all costs, so as not to break the spell of the movie house.

  What we could not avoid were the newsreels before shows. Hitler invaded Poland, Denmark, and Norway. Mussolini’s fascists declared war on Great Britain and France. There wasn’t yet a war between the United States and Germany, but relations were frosty. At home, the newsreels called Old Gegê “the Father of the Poor.” He required neighborhood samba clubs to formally register as samba “schools,” or they were not allowed to play in Carnaval’s parades. He banned sambas from having wind instruments because they were too foreign, creating the samba school mantra: “If it blows, it don’t go.” And so Carnaval, once a chaotic street party, became an official competition, where every song had to be about Brazil’s greatness. We had rubber and steel, after all, which both Germany and the USA badly wanted. So Old Gegê and many of his cronies flirted unabashedly with Hitler and Roosevelt, seeing which suitor would win out.