The Seamstress (64 page)

“Pay a visit to our doctor!” Dr. Duarte said, grasping Eronildes’ shoulder. “He’ll cure you.”

4

The doctor lowered three flaps of his medical tent in order to give Emília privacy. Decency, however, demanded that one flap stay open. A soldier stood near this opening, his back to the examination area. He’d been ordered to keep the line of sick flagelados at bay until Dona Emília Coelho had been treated. Eronildes’ nurse remained in the tent as well. She placed a wet cloth across Emília’s neck and poured her a glass of yellow, bitter-tasting water. At lunch, Emília hadn’t contradicted Mrs. Coimbra’s concerns about her health. Emília said she felt dizzy and had a slight headache, but made sure not to exaggerate her ailments—if she felt too ill, Degas would have to accompany her to Eronildes’ tent.

She sat on a stool. The wet cloth on her neck cooled her. Its moisture seeped into the back of her dress, making the fabric stick to her skin. When she’d finished her water, Dr. Eronildes took the glass.

“May I?” he said, pointing to her forehead. Emília nodded.

He pressed his long, cool fingers to her brow.

“You’re sweating, that’s a good sign. Your skin isn’t red or dry.”

The nurse handed him a stethoscope.

“Please,” he said, indicating the top buttons of Emília’s dress. Emília undid two of them. The stethoscope’s round, metal device felt cool on her chest. Dr. Eronildes listened.

“Your heart’s beating fast,” he said, removing the stethoscope’s ear buds. “I think you need rest and—”

A cry came from the doctor’s adjoining tent. It was shrill and urgent. Eronildes straightened. The nurse left their tent and entered the residential one. As she drew apart the flaps, Emília saw an old, pipe-smoking servant cooing to a bundle in her arms.

“I’ve taken on a child,” Eronildes said.

“That’s kind,” Emília replied. “Did its mother die?”

“No. But I assume it’s like death, giving up your only child.”

Emília’s head began truly to hurt. “Why would she do that? The mother?”

“She knew he wouldn’t survive with her. It was too dangerous.”

“It’s not dangerous with you, in this camp?”

“He can’t stay with me for long,” Eronildes replied. “I promised to deliver him to his aunt.”

The nurse returned. She nodded to indicate that the child was fine. Emília stared at the gap between the two tents, at the crooked line of the cloth flaps.

“How will you find her?” she asked.

Without asking permission, Dr. Eronildes gently pressed his fingertips to Emília’s neck, feeling the glands beneath her jawbone. He leaned close.

“I already have,” he whispered.

The child let out another cry. Emília stood. The damp cloth slid from her neck and flopped to the floor.

“Would you like to meet him?” Eronildes asked.

“Yes.”

Dr. Eronildes strode to the tent flap and folded it open. Emília hesitated.

“He’s already five months,” Eronildes said. “I wasn’t sure he’d survive, but he has. He’s stubborn. Willful, like his mother.”

Emília glanced back at the nurse, at the guarding soldier, at the tent’s thin walls. She silently cursed them all. There were so many questions she wanted to ask, but couldn’t.

“You knew her well?” she asked. “The mother?”

Eronildes dropped the door flap. He stared at his dusty rancher’s boots. “Some people you can never know. Not truly. But I admired her, and pitied her.”

Emília nodded. Quickly, she opened the flap and ducked inside.

It took several seconds for her eyes to adjust to the room’s shade. A few paces in front of her, the boy wiggled in his nursemaid’s arms. He was red faced and crying. Emília felt as if she was back on that Great Western train, moving forward yet not knowing why or how. Suddenly she was in front of the maid. The baby’s whole body seemed flushed, his skin thin, like a film. On his eyelids and across his belly, Emília saw a webbing of veins, threadlike reds and thick blues. He balled his hands into fists. His lips trembled and then opened, releasing a cry so shrill and loud it startled her. The maid plopped him in Emília’s arms. She removed the corncob pipe from her mouth and spoke over the boy’s racket.

“Name’s Expedito,” she said. “That’s how his mother wants it.”

5

Mrs. Coimbra called him a child of the drought. The nuns called him an orphan. The delegation’s reporters dubbed him “the foundling.” Photographers used their last rolls of film to capture Emília cradling the infant on Rio Branco’s platform. Mrs. Coimbra stood on one side of her, Dr. Duarte and Degas on the other. Behind them, shuddering like a horse ready to charge from its stable, was the Great Western train that would return them all to Recife.

The trip had been a success. Two days in the Rio Branco camp gave Dr. Duarte hundreds of cranial measurements to compare and analyze. The trip gave President Gomes a positive image in the minds of the camp’s residents, who’d pinned photographs of the “Father of the Poor” on their tents. The nuns from Nossa Senhora das Dores had fulfilled their goal of serving the poor, and Mrs. Coimbra had done her duty for the Princess Isabel Society. The government delegates returned to Recife with a plan to restart the roadway project: put the relief camp’s men to work. There were thousands of able-bodied husbands, fathers, and sons pouring into the camps and receiving free food and shelter. Once these men had recovered from starvation, why not put them to work? Tools could be included in the government’s weekly shipments of tents, food, and barbed wire. Soldiers were already on hand to protect the camps. If native sertanejos worked the roadway, there was a chance the cangaceiros wouldn’t attack—the Hawk and the Seamstress wouldn’t have the audacity to kill their own people. Relief-camp workers could build the Trans-Nordestino from the inside out, working from the interior until they reached the coast. The government men were excited to present their plan to Tenente Higino.

Everyone in the delegation knew that Emília had pushed for the trip. Dr. Duarte, the nuns, Mrs. Coimbra, and the government men all had her to thank for their successes. Because of this, on their last morning in Rio Branco, when Emília left the relief camp’s barbed-wire confines carrying a refugee child in her arms, no one had the nerve to dissuade her. She’d spoken to Dr. Duarte about the child beforehand. Her father-in-law had frowned and fondled his mustache, a habit of deep contemplation. Dr. Eronildes vouched for the child, attesting to its health. Finally, Dr. Duarte placed his hand on Emília’s shoulder.

“I’ll let you have him,” he said, as if Expedito were an expensive and impractical whim, like a fur stole.

“We’ll take care of the adoption papers in Recife,” Dr. Duarte continued. “It will be an example to others, Emília. Modern nations—the United States, Great Britain, France—all have a spirit of charity. ‘Fidelity, Equality, and Fraternity’ as they say! Care for your brother! Brazilians should do the same. We Coelhos will be the first.”

Before leaving the medical tent, Dr. Duarte invited Eronildes to Recife. National elections were coming up in May, Dr. Duarte announced. There would be many high-paying positions for bright, resourceful men like Eronildes. The doctor declined the invitation. He would stay in the Rio Branco camp until the drought subsided. Dr. Duarte smiled and slipped Eronildes his business card. Before they parted, Emília’s father-in-law whispered something in the doctor’s ear. Emília couldn’t hear exactly what was said; she could only catch the word
trouble.
Dr. Eronildes reddened and shook Dr. Duarte’s hand. When he said good-bye to Emília, Eronildes was reserved and formal.

“You’ve changed this boy’s fate,” he said. “Let me know of his progress.”

Emília nodded. She had many questions for Eronildes, many messages to relay to Luzia, but she could do neither. Dr. Duarte waited impatiently by the medical tent’s open flap.

“I was raised by my aunt,” Emília said. “There’s no replacement for a mother. My aunt knew this. She did her best.”

Dr. Eronildes smiled. He pressed his long hand to Expedito’s skull. The baby yawned and wiggled in Emília’s arms.

Only Degas voiced concern about the hasty adoption. Before they left Rio Branco, he stared warily at the child. “Mother won’t like it,” he said.

Mrs. Coimbra, who’d taken a protective stance toward Emília, gave Degas a stern look.

“Your mother had a child,” Mrs. Coimbra said. “She knows the joys of it. Nature’s denied your wife those joys and she’s found another way of having them. Your mother will understand.”

Mrs. Coimbra, the nuns, Dr. Duarte, and everyone else in the delegation were convinced that Emília had found a natural solution to her barrenness. Emília let them voice the beliefs they’d always had: that her obsessions with fashions, the atelier, and suffrage were all empty endeavors used to cover up a larger, instinctual need. By adopting a child—even a refugee child—this need had finally been met. As Mrs. Coimbra whispered to Emília before they stepped on the train platform:

“The child’s healthy and light skinned. No one can blame you for wanting him.”

As the train left the Rio Branco station, Expedito let out shrill, accusing cries. He wiggled in Emília’s arms, beat his tiny fists against his stomach. At her feet, Emília had a heavy leather bladder filled with goat’s milk. She forced the bladder’s nipple into Expedito’s mouth. He quieted and drank, staring fixedly at Emília. His brown eyes were wet and shining with tears, their look so stern that Emília believed the boy was assessing her, wondering where his faithful nurse with the corncob pipe had gone and why he’d been abandoned yet again. Expedito sucked so determinedly on the bladder that Emília was afraid he’d drink up all his milk before the trip was finished. She pried it from his mouth. The boy’s brow scrunched and he began to wail again. At the far end of the cabin, the government men stared. They’d laughed at Expedito’s first cries; now they seemed irritated by them. Following Mrs. Coimbra’s recommendation, Emília and the boy moved to an empty second-class car. The nuns and Mrs. Coimbra went with her.

There was no nanny to feed and burp the child, no maid to hustle him away when he soiled his cloth diapers. In camp, he hadn’t worn diapers. There was no way to clean them—water was too precious to waste on boiling diaper cloth. So Eronildes’ pipe-smoking maid had done what many caatinga mothers did: she’d watched the child closely, looking to see if he frowned, tensed, or squirmed. If he did this, the nursemaid rushed Expedito to a clay chamber pot and held him over it, doing this ten, fifteen, sometimes twenty times a day. There were no chamber pots on the train. Emília had a stack of coarse cotton strips. During the beginning of the trip, the nuns and Mrs. Coimbra helped Emília change Expedito. They squeezed into the train’s small restroom and taught her how to wipe the baby, how to fold and pin a fresh diaper on him. They handed the soiled diapers to the train’s waiter, who reluctantly disposed of the malodorous wads of cloth. Emília believed he threw them out the window.

By nightfall, the other women had moved back to their seats in the delegation car. They had the freedom to walk away from the child, to sleep, to eat leisurely dinners. Emília could do none of those things. She sat, frazzled. Her dress smelled of spilled goat’s milk. Her bolero jacket was spotted with Expedito’s spit-up. Her hat was crushed. In that empty train car, Emília understood the loneliness of motherhood.

Expedito slept in a bassinet woven from caroá fibers. Emília lifted him from it. The boy lay in her lap, his face soft with sleep. Sometimes he shook his tiny hands, as if batting away dreams. Each time he moved, Emília tensed. She worried he would wake and cry and she wouldn’t know how to soothe him. He terrified her. But beneath her fears she felt a fierce affection. It grew within her, making her overlook her dirty dress, her cramped back, her loneliness. There was a satisfying liberation in forgetting herself and caring instead for this child.

Under the bassinet’s blankets was a small canvas sack Dr. Eronildes had given her. “It’s for the boy,” he’d said. “His mother wanted him to have it.” The sack contained a penknife. There was the image of a bee sloppily carved on its wooden handle. Earlier, Emília had removed the knife from its hiding spot. She’d fingered its dull blade.

At the end of the car, a door opened. Wind rushed between the train’s compartments. Emília glanced at Expedito. His lips puckered, wrinkling his small chin, but he did not wake. Degas strolled down the car’s aisle. He took the seat beside Emília.

“You and I, we’re the only ones who don’t sleep,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “Why is that?”

Emília shook her head, careful not to disturb Expedito. “A guilty conscience keeps you awake. That’s what my aunt Sofia used to say.”

Degas cocked his head. “What are you guilty of?”

Emília stared out the train’s window. The glass was dirty. There was no moon, making it too dark to observe the scrub. Emília studied her reflection instead. She hadn’t taken care of her younger sister, hadn’t protested when the cangaceiros took Luzia away. Afterward, she hadn’t tried to rescue Luzia. And later, she’d tried to forget her sister, to deny their connection.

“Escaping,” Emília finally said. “Forgetting.”

“That doesn’t make you guilty. That makes you smart,” Degas said. He pointed a finger toward Expedito. “What will we name him?”

“He already has a name.”

Degas pursed his thick lips. “I don’t get a say in that, either? I should have known. Did you and Father come up with a name?”

“No. He already had one.”

“What is it?”

“Expedito,” Emília whispered. The child shifted in her arms.

“That’s a matuto name if I ever heard one,” Degas said. “His mother must have given him that.”

“I don’t know,” Emília replied, wishing he’d leave. “It may have been the doctor’s choice.”

Degas shook his head. “He’s a strange bird, that doctor. He gives out infants. He associates with cangaceiros. I understand why they’d associate with
him
—a doctor’s a useful friend to have when you’re a bandit. But I can’t see why he risks associating with them. No one condemns him for it, either. Coiteiros are being taken into custody left and right, but not our Dr. Eronildes. His criminality makes him interesting. An asset. Did you see Father praising him? Inviting him to Recife?”