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

Dutch soldiers and Indians retreating from the coast had all settled there, protected by the harsh desert climate. Emília pictured these dark and light tribes of men living together, spearing snakes and hawks for their dinners. At the elbow of the state was her town of Taquaritinga, set on a small mountain range that was the gateway to the scrubland. At the wrist were the plantations, the stretches of Atlantic forest that had been slashed and burned to grow sugarcane. At the knuckles was the capital—Recife—with its cobblestone streets, its rows of tightly stacked houses, and its immense port that Emília pictured filled with warships and smoking cannons because of the paintings depicting the Dutch invasion she’d seen in one of Padre Otto’s history books. And at the fingertips of her state was the ocean. Emília dreamed of visiting that ocean, of putting her toe in its saltwater. She pictured it as green, dark green, even though the oceans on the map were all painted a powder blue.
    Taquaritinga was a week’s journey from the coast, on a mountaintop near the state border with Paraíba. The first thing people saw as they hiked up the curved mountain trail was the church steeple; but in the rainy winter season they could see only a mist of clouds. The town square around the church had been dirt until the colonel commissioned it to be cobbled, and for months there were piles of rocks and the sounds of workmen heaving sledgehammers, pounding stone against earth. Emília often asked Padre Otto what real cities were like. Crowded, he said, and Emília imagined him in his dark priest’s cloak, making his way through masses of women and children who all wore bright clothing and hats decorated with ostrich feathers. Crowded and not half as beautiful as Taquaritinga, Padre Otto assured her. Emília did not believe this.
    On their First Communion, Padre Otto had given Emília and Luzia two white, palm-size Bibles specially ordered from Recife. They’d held the books to their chests when they posed for their Communion portrait. Aunt Sofia had saved for three months in order to pay the photographer. The skinny man would take only one shot. Emília wanted the portrait to be perfect. She stood for what seemed like an eternity, waiting for the shutter to click. The corners of her mouth shook. She tried to keep perfectly still so that the rosary dangling from her hands would not sway. Luzia did not keep still. Perhaps she was ashamed of her bent arm, which the photographer had concealed by draping a scrap of lace over it. Perhaps she disliked the mousy man hidden beneath the camera’s black cloth. Or perhaps it was because Luzia didn’t realize, as Emília did, that they had only one chance to get it right, that with one click they would be framed forever.
    Just as the flashbulbs popped, Luzia shifted. Her rosary swayed, her Communion veil went crooked, and the lace drape slid off her locked arm and onto the floor. When the portrait came back from the photographer’s laboratory, Emília was bitterly disappointed. In it, her sister was blurred. It looked as if there was a ghost moving behind Luzia, as if there were three little girls in the portrait instead of two.
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    The sun rose slowly over the church’s yellow bell tower. Luzia walked fast. She hooked her sewing bag on her bent arm. She had found subtle ways to make her Victrola arm useful, as if she preferred it that way. Emília tried to keep up with Luzia’s long strides, but her feet ached. She wore a pair of black patent pumps that had once belonged to Dona Conceição. The shoes’ straps and narrow sides cut into Emília’s feet. She stepped gingerly along the dirt path.
    Their sewing lessons were in Vertentes—a real town. It had a narrow dirt trail connecting it to Surubim and beyond. It had the first official doctor in the region and the first lawyer—both with diplomas from the Federal University in Recife. Emília knew that Vertentes people judged you by