Chapter One — Emília
Taquaritinga do Norte, Pernambuco
March 1928
Beneath her bed, Aunt Sofia kept a wooden box that held her husband's bones. Each morning Emília heard the rustle of starched bedsheets, the pop of Aunt Sofia's knees as she knelt and tugged the box from its resting place. "My falecido," her aunt whispered, because the dead were not allowed names. Aunt Sofia called him this on her better days. If she woke irritated—her arthritis bothering her, or her mind plagued with worries over Emília and Luzia—she addressed the box sternly as "my husband." If she had stayed up late the night before, rocking in her chair and squinting up at the family portraits, the next day Aunt Sofia addressed the box in a low, sweet whisper as "my departed." And if the drought worsened, or there was too little sewing work, or Emília had once again disobeyed her, Aunt Sofia sighed and said, "Oh my corpse, my burden."
This was how Emília guessed her aunt's moods. She knew when to ask for new dress fabric and when to stay quiet. She knew when she could get away with wearing a dab of perfume and rouge, and when to keep her face clean.
Their rooms were divided by a whitewashed wall that rose three meters from the floor and then stopped, giving way to wooden posts that supported the roof beams and rows of orange tiles. Aunt Sofia's whispered prayers rose over the low bedroom wall. Emília shared a bed with her sister. A dusty beam of light shone through a crack in the roof tiles. It entered their yellowed mosquito netting. Emília squinted. She heard the click of rosary beads rubbed between her aunt's palms. There was a grunt, then the hollow rattle of Uncle Tirço's bones as Aunt Sofia pushed him back beneath the bed. The daily dragging of the box had worn away a path in the floor—two indentations lighter than the oiled brick that paved each room of their house except for the kitchen.
Their kitchen floor was made of packed earth; it was orange and always damp. Emília swore its moisture seeped through the soles of her leather sandals. Aunt Sofia and Luzia walked barefoot on that floor, but Emília insisted on wearing shoes. As a child, she'd roamed the house barefoot and the bottoms of her feet had become orange, like her aunt's and her sister's. Emília scrubbed her soles with boiled water and a loofah in order to make them white, the way a lady's feet should look. But the stains remained and Emília blamed the floor.
That year, the winter rains had been sparse and the January rains had not come at all. Their neighbors' coffee trees had not flowered. The purple blossoms of the bean plants Aunt Sofia tended in their backyard had shriveled and they'd lost half of their yearly crop. Even the kitchen floor had become dry and cracked. Emília had to sweep it three times a day to keep the orange dust from filming up the pots, settling in the water jugs, and staining the hems of their dresses. She was saving to install a proper floor—sewing extra nightshirts and handkerchiefs for their employers, Colonel Pereira and his wife, Dona Conceição. When she had enough money, Emília would purchase half a sack of cement powder and the packed dirt would disappear under a thick coating of concrete.
Luzia's side of the bed was empty. Her sister was praying, no doubt, as she did every morning in front of her saints' altar in the kitchen pantry. Emília slipped under the mosquito netting and climbed out of bed; she had her own altar. On their dressing trunk was a small image of Santo Antônio, clipped from the latest issue of Fon Fon—her favorite periodical, which featured sewing patterns, romance serials, and the occasional prayer guide. Dona Conceição gave Emília backdated copies of Fon Fon and Emília's other cherished magazine, O Capricho. She kept them in three neat stacks under her bed even though Aunt Sofia insisted this would attract mice.
Emília knelt before the old black trunk. Fon Fon instructed you to place the image of Santo Antônio—the matchmaker saint—in front of a mirror with a white rose next to him. "Find your love match!" the magazine said. "A prayer to ensure you find the right beau." Fon Fon assured readers that three Our Fathers and three Ave Marias to Santo Antônio each morning would do the trick.
Emília had placed the saint's image next to her foggy mirror—it was a bit of glass the size of her palm that she had purchased with her savings. It was nothing compared to the full-length mirror in Dona Conceição's fitting room, but Emília could prop her little mirror on the dressing trunk and get a good look at her face and hair. There were no white roses in her town, though. There were no flowers at all. The hearty Beneditas that grew along the roadsides had lost all of their pink and yellow petals and had dropped their seeds onto the hard, dry ground. Aunt Sofia's dahlias hung their heavy heads and disappeared into their bulbs beneath the earth, hiding from the heat. Even the rows of cashew trees and coffee plants looked sickly, their leaves yellowed from constant sun. So Emília had sewn a rose from stray scraps of fabric; Santo Antônio would have to understand. She wrapped her hands together and prayed.
She was nineteen and already an old maid. The town gossips had predicted that she and Luzia would become spinsters, but for different reasons. Luzia's fate had been sealed with the accident she'd suffered as a child: at eleven, she'd fallen from a tall tree and nearly died. The misfortune had deformed her arm and left Luzia—the gossips proclaimed—slightly addled. No man would want a crippled wife, they said, much less one with Luzia's temper. Emília had no physical deformities, thank the good Lord. She'd had many suitors; they had turned up at the house like stray dogs. Aunt Sofia offered them coffee and macaxeira cake while Emília hid in her room and pleaded with Luzia to shoo them away.
Excerpted from The Seamstress by Frances Peebles. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission from HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.
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