The Seamstress by Frances de Pontes Peebles

We had to drive forty-five minutes just to find a bakery for fresh bread. There were no high rises, no Avenida, like today. “What a waste!” he muttered each time we passed it in the car.īack then, Boa Viagem was deserted except for those old homes. It was five doors down from the Heráclios’ house, and two doors down from the Brennand family’s sprawling mansion, which my father detested. Our house was in between our Aunt Anali’s and Aunt Gilmara’s houses. All of the respectable Recife families did this. We spent our summer breaks-from December until after Carnaval in February-at this house. Our house was in Boa Viagem, near Piedade. It was a only a dirt path back then that separated our house from the beach, and the only car that passed was our own, but our father was concerned with decorum, not safety. He yelled at us to be careful crossing the road. My father followed with Dorany at his side. With that we bolted from our chairs and ran from the house.

“Let’s have a look, then,” he said slowly. I squirmed to the rim of my chair, making my skirt hike above my knees. My brothers and I stared at my father expectantly.

My mother ate plain rice, steamed pumpkin, and black beans, all in separate piles on her plate. They were white and covered with tomato sauce, which looked to me like chunks of blood. My father’s untouched serving of calf brains steamed on his plate. Looking back I realize we were well fed, even healthy. Every once in a while my mother made us a plain yellow cake with a small swirl of chocolate in the center, which was a luxury. Dinners were always some kind of soup: black bean, or vegetable, or chicken, with a cup of cold milk. In our house, the children ate first and always at a separate table. He put down his napkin and slid out from behind the table where he and my mother had just begun their meal. My father would have never allowed Dorany into the dining room like that under normal circumstances. I remember there was sand stuck to the hairs on his chest. “They just found a dead woman on the beach,” he panted. Our cousin Dorany ran into our dining room. We were finishing lunch when the body came ashore. Her body was bloated and stiff, and one of her arms stood straight up in the air. She wore a flowered dress and her shoes were missing. It was the summer when my grandmother’s nurse washed ashore in front of our beach house. The summer when someone mysteriously opened all of the birdcages at the Madalena Market, and for an entire Saturday morning canaries and parrots and sabiás flew free in the square as the vendors waved their hats and makeshift nets and tried to reclaim the birds.

It was the summer of the year Juscelino Kubitschek was elected president of the republic, the summer when the drought in the farmlands got worse.

The Seamstress by Frances de Pontes Peebles