Prose (65 page)

The wedding was day before yesterday. I and Luizinha went to Dudu's house to have our hair arranged, and we left delighted, with hairdos that made us look like young ladies. Luizinha dressed up in her dress and we went to Aunt Madge's; my dress was nowhere to be seen. Aunt Madge said, “There's no hurry, child. It's early yet.” And taking a comb, she said, “Sit here. You're a little girl, why do you want to wear your hair like a young lady?” She wet my hair, pulled out the curls, and let it fall down on my shoulders. Then she went and brought in the dress; a simple dress of navy blue wool with just a row of buttonholes down the back, bound with red ribbon.

Today I think it's a pretty dress; but at the moment I had one of my attacks of rage and I couldn't hold back my tears. Unable to say a word, I kissed my aunt's hands and ran out in the street. Luizinha followed me, in silence. I went up Burgalhau Street, into the Cavalhada Nova, and into Direita Street, running all the way, and blind with rage. I couldn't see a thing. Grandma's been at Uncle Geraldo's for several days, waiting for the wedding. I went into her room and fell on her bed in such a storm of tears it frightened her. But all she said was, “My God! What's happened!” Luizinha came in and grandma asked, “What's the matter?” Luizinha said, “It's because she was longing for a pink dress and Aunt Madge dressed her like that.”

When I break down, it's always with grandma. I feel she's the only one who understands me. Then grandma began with her usual remarks: “Another of Madge's and my trials with this girl! She doesn't understand that we're only trying to do what's right for her. She wants always to be just like all the plain girls!” Then I raised my head sobbing, and said, “I'm the most miserable, the skinniest, the stupidest of them all, grandma, and I always have to be inferior in everything. I'm so envious of Luizinha because Aunt Madge doesn't like her!” Grandma said, “Stop crying over nothing, silly child. Some day you'll see that your godmother, who's so good to you, and I were right. Go wash your face and let's go to the parlor. They're all there already.” Then I showed her my hair and said, “Do I have to go into the parlor with my hair like a lunatic from the asylum, grandma?” She said, “It's pretty, child.” I said, “Grandma, the Senhora just doesn't know what I'm going through. I was looking forward to my pink dress with such pleasure, and today, to dress like a widow, and to see all the rest of them in pink and pale blue and everything? No, grandma, it was too cruel of Aunt Madge. I don't want her to take any more interest in me, grandma. This is the end!”

*   *   *

… If there were diviners of dreams today, the way there were in the time of Joseph of Egypt, what a fine thing it would be! I can never get that story of the seven fat cows and seven lean cows, that meant seven years of plenty and seven years of famine, out of my head.

I suffer a great deal from dreams and one of the worst I had when I was little was the disillusionment I suffered when I died and went to heaven. How horrible heaven was that night! I remember until today the dismal life I led in heaven until I woke up. It was an enormous yard, clean and bare, filled with old women in cloaks, with shawls on their heads, holding their hands up in prayer, not paying any attention to each other. No São Pedro, no angels, nothing. When they were tired of kneeling they walked around in that enormous yard with their heads bent, still praying. When I woke up and saw I wasn't in heaven, what a relief!

Dreaming that I'm at Mass at the Cathedral in the middle of the crowd in my underwear is something horrible that's always happening to me. Lots of times I've dreamed I was at school in my bare feet, without knowing where to hide them. It's a constant martyrdom. But I've had marvelous dreams, too. I can't count the times I've flown, without wings, to Boa Vista or over the houses of the city. It's delightful! Or I was in a marvelous palace, like the little girl and the dwarfs. And I've dreamed of being in a field of peanuts, and I kept pulling up the plants and finding silver coins at the roots.

But last night's dream was horrible. I dreamed I'd turned into a monkey, and in spite of my grief I could have resigned myself to being a monkey if I hadn't had a tail, but my tail was enormous!

*   *   *

… Grandma's been sick a week today and everyone in the house is in a state of the greatest anxiety, because they say that if she shows improvement today by tomorrow she'll be saved.

I don't know why God let me know grandma! I might have been so happy, because my parents are both strong and healthy, if I'd never known her. If only she'd died when I was little the way the other one did!

I'm in agony today! Esmeralda came to help us and taught us some prayers that God can't possibly not listen to. We're all praying with such faith! We've done almost nothing else all day today. There wasn't even anyone to receive the callers.

I spent the day in anguish, seeing grandma in that condition, with nobody able to help her. The doctor comes and prescribes things, and goes away, and then she gets worried about herself!

What mama says is always right. Sometimes I thought it was absurd when she said that life is made up of suffering. Now I see she was right. Life really is made up of suffering. These days since grandma's been sick I've forgotten all the joy I ever had and suffering is all I can think about. And since they said that tomorrow would be the crisis, I've been in such agony that all I can do is stay on my knees with the others, praying. When they get tired I take a walk around the garden, come back through the kitchen, the parlor, and go to every corner of the house, trying to find some peace, but I can't. And if I go in grandma's room, it's worse torture.

Why does God punish us all this way? We never hurt anyone. I wait for the day He'll remember and release grandma and us from this suffering.

*   *   *

… Grandma died!

Oh dear grandma, why has God taken you away and left me all alone in the world, missing you so much! Yes, my dear little grandmother, I'm all alone, because weren't you the only person who's ever understood me up until now? Shall I ever find anyone else in this life who'll tell me I'm intelligent and pretty and good? Who'll ever remember to give me material for a pretty new dress, so I won't feel I'm beneath my cousins? Who'll argue with mama and always try to defend me and find good qualities in me, when everyone else only finds faults?

Why did you love me so much? Me, the most mischievous of the grandchildren, and the noisiest, and the one who gave you the most trouble? I remember now with remorse the struggle you had to get me in from play every evening and onto my knees, when it was time for the rosary. But here in secret I confess now that it was an hour of sacrifice you made me undergo. Even the rage I felt, when after saying the whole rosary and all the mysteries, my aunts and that hypocrite of a Chiquinha used to remember all our dead relatives and we had to say one more Our Father or Hail Mary for the soul of each and every one! I used to think that my prayers might even be sending souls back to hell, because I was always praying under protest. No one else could have made me do it. But I know, grandma, in spite of everything I did, you felt how fond I was of you and you saw the suffering written on my face when I saw you so sick. And I used to see how happy it made you when I came from school and ran to tell you my marks. Now that I'm unburdening myself here I remember all your tenderness, all your kindness. The thought of the day I compared you to Our Lady comes back to me.

On the anniversary of the Proclamation of the Republic two officials came to grandma's to ask my aunts for two little girls, to make up the twenty to represent the States. They needed two more for the States of Piauí and Rio Grande do Norte. The girls were to walk in line, dressed in white, with red liberty bonnets on their heads and wide ribbons across their chests with the names of the States on them in gold letters. I followed all my cousins' preparations with great interest because it seemed to me it was an extremely important occasion. But I got sadder and sadder all the time because they hadn't even considered me.

The day of the celebration came and my aunts put my cousins up on the table so they could work over them better, arrange the dresses and the bonnets and tie the ribbons. They were both very proud, with everyone admiring them, and they were gloating because I was jealous. Somebody said, “How pretty they look!” Somebody else said, “Aren't they sweet!” I looked and listened in silence until I felt a lump in my throat and I ran out and threw myself face down on the grass behind the church. I was crying and sobbing when I felt your cane tap my shoulder. I turned over, frightened, because I was so well-hidden and hadn't expected anyone there. It was you, grandma! You'd been watching me and reading my soul, and you understood what I felt and had followed there in my steps. You'd walked there with the greatest difficulty, holding onto your cane with one hand and the walls with the other. I remember until now the kind words you said to me that day: “Get up, silly! You came here to cry because you're jealous of those homely little girls, didn't you?” I didn't have time to answer, and besides, I already felt comforted, and you went on: “I don't know why a girl as intelligent as you are doesn't understand some things. Don't you see that this holiday is for idiots, and that a girl like you, pretty, intelligent, and of English descent, couldn't take part in it? It's silly to celebrate the Proclamation of the Republic. The Republic is something for common people. It doesn't concern nice people. They know your father's a monarchist, that he isn't one of the turncoats, and he wouldn't let his daughter go out in the streets to play the fool in an idiotic celebration like that. Let the rest of them do it. Don't be jealous, because you're better than any of them.”

Oh grandma, you can't imagine what your words meant to me! You made me get up, took me around by the back door without anyone's seeing us to wash my face, and you made me laugh and waited until I looked cheerful again, so no one would notice I'd been crying.

That was the day, grandma, I remember I compared you to Our Lady and I thought to myself, “She's so good and so holy that she can even guess what I suffer, to comfort me.” But now who will ever comfort me? I have my mother and father, my sister and brothers, but none of them can be to me what you were. Why? Because you were more intelligent? Or because you loved me even better than my own parents?

*   *   *

… Today, Sunday, it's raining in Boa Vista, and I am thinking notalgically of my First Communion. When all the little girls had studied the catechism a year, Father Neves told us that we were ready for our First Communion, which would take place in a month.

I was in raptures at this news and I told mama to begin to get everything ready immediately: the long white dress, the veil, the wreath and the decorated wax candle.

On the evening of the great day, Father Neves brought all the pupils together in the church, and he went behind the grating of the screen to hear our confessions. The little girls knelt outside, confessing and then going away. My turn came and I knelt down with my list of sins all memorized: Gluttony, Envy, Luxury (the desire for pretty dresses), stealing fruit from my grandmother, gossiping. I told everything and made my act of contrition, but I left the confessional with a small nail in my conscience.

There were lots of ex-slaves at grandma's who told nursery tales, tales of the spirits of the other world and the sins that had carried them off to purgatory and hell. If one stole an egg, for example, then the egg would turn into a hen, and one would have to spend as many years in purgatory as the hen had feathers. They also believed that it was an unpardonable sin to think that a priest was homely.

I listened to everything attentively and I couldn't have stolen an egg under any circumstances. But the sin of finding a priest homely haunted me all year long. Every time Father Neves came into church I thought to myself, “Am I really committing a sin? I do think he's so homely!” I kept trying to put this wicked thought out of my head but it kept coming back again, and even at the end of the catechism class it hadn't left me.

When I went to confess that day, I reasoned, “No, I haven't committed a sin because I've never told anyone I think Father Neves is homely. It's better not to think about it any more.”

I left the confessional very penitent but not quite as peaceful and relieved as one should be. I made a retreat all that day with as much contrition as a seven-year-old girl is capable of.

On the next day, the great day, mama woke me up early and helped me get dressed, giving me some last bits of advice on how to make a good communion. When I got to church I found all my playmates already in their places, just waiting for me for the priest to begin the sermon.

To give this sermon, Father Neves had asked an Italian priest, rather fat and red, who knew how to shout and make a big impression on little girls. The priest began:

“My children, this day is the happiest and most important of your lives. You are going to receive the body, blood and soul of Jesus into your hearts. It is an amazing grace, my dears, that God grants you! But to receive it you must be prepared, and contrite, and you mustn't have concealed any sin whatsoever in the confessional. To hide a sin and then to receive communion is an abomination! I know of many horrible cases, but I am going to tell you just one as an example.

“Once a group of little girls were making their First Communion just the way you are making it today. They received the host and went solemnly back to their places, and at that very moment one of them fell down and died. The priest said to the little girl's mother, ‘God has taken her to Glory!' And all the others were envious of their playmate who had died in the grace of God. And then, what do you suppose they saw? The devil dragging the body of the miserable little girl behind the altar. Do you know why? Because she had concealed a sin in the confessional.”