The Seamstress by Frances de Pontes Peebles Read Free Book Online Page A

hands before bed. Aunt Sofia’s massage invariably became halfhearted, her touch lighter and less concentrated as she became lost in her memories. Her falecido liked black coffee. Her falecido combed his mustache before church. Her falecido protected the colonel’s cattle as if they were his own. And one day, he did not come back with the herd. No one knew what had happened to him: if cangaceiros caught him, if he was bitten by a scorpion or a snake, or if he had simply died of exposure.
    The colonel sent two other vaqueiros to find him. They walked through the caatinga scrub below the mountain. They called his name. They scanned the horizon for vultures. Three days later they found him deep in the arid pasture, his body picked clean . The first colonel commissioned a portrait and a wooden box for the bones. Padre Otto blessed the box, agreeing that as long as Uncle Tirço was buried eventually, it would not hurt to keep him near his loved ones. Luzia found the box of bones romantic, but Luzia knew nothing of romance. Pinning your lover’s handkerchief to the inside of your blouse was romantic. Exchanging perfumed notecards was romantic. Living with the flame of unreturned love in your heart, as the women in the Fon Fon serials did, was romantic. Keeping bones, Emília thought, was something dogs did.
    The third and final portrait nailed to the front wall was a photograph of her and Luzia. It was a portrait of their First Communion. Padre Otto stood between them, resting a white hand on each of their shoulders. Aunt Sofia said that Padre Otto had been a spectacle when he first came into town, riding up the mountain on an oxcart filled with books and trunks and rolled-up maps of the world. He smiled and sweated, his face bright pink above his priest’s collar. Aunt Sofia had never seen a man that color—like the insides of a guava. He didn’t come out pink in the photograph though; in the portrait he was as white as their Communion dresses.
    Padre Otto had come from Germany during the first Great War. Each morning he rang Taquaritinga’s church bells and waited for his school’s few students to file inside. Padre Otto’s was the only school in town, but its seats were never full. Colonel Pereira hired private tutors for his children, and many other residents of Taquaritinga believed schooling was a waste. Boys would inevitably become what their fathers had been: farmers or vaqueiros or the next colonel’s capangas. They did not need to read or write. And for farm girls, literacy was a barrier rather than an asset. Wives who could read would put on airs, trick their illiterate husbands, and worst of all, be able to write love letters. There were a few residents, however—merchants, carpenters, and other tradespeople—who valued Padre Otto’s school. Even though she didn’t know how to read or write, Aunt Sofia was one of these. Printed dress patterns were becoming more and more popular, and most sewing machines came with thick, detailed instruction manuals. Aunt Sofia wanted Emília and Luzia to keep up with the times.
    Geography was Emília’s favorite subject. Below Jesus was a map of the world with countries painted in pastel colors and their names written in calligraphic script. Padre Otto quizzed the class daily, and all of them, except Luzia, recited the countries’ names in unison. When they shouted Germany! Emília always pictured it as a place filled with Padre Ottos—short, stout men and women with pink faces, blue eyes, and hair that was so thin and blond it looked as white as manioc flour .
    There was a large map of Brazil, too. Padre Otto pointed out their state of Pernambuco many times during each lesson. It was near the top of the republic, longer than it was wide. Emília thought it looked like an outstretched arm reaching toward the coast. At the shoulder was the caatinga scrubland—often called the sertão—where water was scarce and only cactus grew. Padre Otto said that runaway slaves and