The Air You Breathe Read online

  “They’ll be back,” Nena said of the Pimentels. “No one leaves their land. And when they do come back, they’ll remember who was loyal and who wasn’t.”

  Nena was driven by loyalty and fear. She and Old Euclides had been born on Riacho Doce before slavery was banned in Brazil in 1888, and had stayed on even after they were freed. During the abandonment, Old Euclides took care of the grounds, making sure no one took animals from the stables or stole fruit from the orchard. Nena wouldn’t let her copper pots and iron pans fall into the hands of looters or bill collectors, so she hid anything of value. Porcelain dining sets, silver platters and tureens, pure gold cutlery, a bowl made of mother-of-pearl were stashed under the Great House’s floorboards. We ate whatever food was left in the pantry and then, because none of us had been paid since the Pimentels left, began to trade at the local market. Eggs for flour, star fruit from the orchard for a bit of salted meat, bottles of molasses for beans. These were lean times but not unhappy ones. Not for me.

  For many months the Great House was empty and I spent my days inside it. I skipped across its stone floors. I slipped my hands under dust covers and felt cool marble, the slopes and curves of table legs, the gilded bevels of mirrors. I pulled books from shelves and opened them wide to hear their bindings snap. I walked proudly up and down the wide wooden staircase, like I imagined the lady of the house would. For the first time in my nine years of life, I had the luxury of time and freedom—to explore, to pretend, to play without fear of being hit or scolded, to live without the constant worry that I would be cast out of Riacho Doce for some small infraction. I was allowed to be a child, and began to believe that I would always have such freedom. I should have known better.

  One day, as I sat in the library and tried to decode the mysterious symbols inside the Pimentels’ books, I heard a terrible growling outside. It sounded as if there was a giant dog snarling at the Great House gate. I ran to Nena, who opened the front door.

  A motorcar rumbled outside the front gate. Old Euclides scrambled, suddenly as spry as a puppy, down the drive and pushed open the gate. The car stopped and a man emerged from the driver’s side. He wore a hat and a long canvas coat to protect his suit. He opened the passenger and back doors. Two women emerged: a pale one also wearing a driving coat, and another in a maid’s striped uniform and lace cap. The maid attempted to tug something from the backseat. There was a hiss and a screech. For a moment, I believed there was an animal in the car—a cat or some kind of possum—until I saw the maid’s hands wrapped around two tiny feet in patent leather boots. The boots kicked free of the maid’s grip. The woman wedged herself deeper into the car’s doorway. Then there were screams, grunts, a swirl of white petticoats and, finally, a cry. The maid jumped from the automobile’s backseat, her eyes watering, her hand pressed to a fresh scratch on her face.

  “Leave her inside!” the man snapped. “She’s old enough to climb out herself.”

  The maid nodded, her hand still clamped to her face. The other woman sighed and unbuttoned her canvas driving coat, revealing a silk dress and a tangle of pearls at her neck.

  A halo of red curls surrounded her face. Her skin was what we called “mill white” because that was the prized color of sugar. The sugar we used in the Great House kitchen was the mill’s seconds—raw and muddy-colored, not white but not quite brown, just like me.

  “It’s better she doesn’t come outside,” the man said, staring at the dirt road. “She’ll get herself filthy.” He had darker coloring, a square jaw, and a Roman nose that sloped like an arrow pointing at his full mouth.

  “We’ll all have to get used to a little dirt from now on,” the mill-white woman replied, and her lips pursed as if she was holding back laughter, as if she’d told herself a naughty joke.

  At the mention of dirt, a girl my own age wiggled from the backseat. She wore a dress the color of butter, and white gloves. A bow sat crookedly atop her head; the girl snatched it from her hair and flung it to the ground. She kicked at the dirt, scuffing her boots, and then glared at the adults around her, daring them to tell her to stop. Then she saw me, and stood still. To her, I was not invisible.

  Her eyes were the color of cork. Her mouth looked as if it had been painted onto her face, like a doll’s. I don’t know how long we stared at each other; I only remember not wanting to break first, determined not to let her win.

  Still staring at me, the girl pressed her gloved hand to the car’s body and dragged it across the entire side. Then she raised her hand. The glove’s palm was as red as the earth under my bare feet. The girl smirked, as if sharing a joke, but I knew she didn’t intend to amuse me. Gloves were for the rich. They were expensive and delicate. Some poor laundress would have the unenviable task of trying to clean that soiled glove, so small it would bunch in her hands and make her knuckles scrape against the washboard until they bled. But the girl didn’t care about the glove, or the laundress, or anything. She would ruin something perfectly good, for no reason at all. I felt both respect and revulsion.

  “Graça!” the man shouted.

  The man and woman bickered. Nena, Old Euclides, and I kept very still, waiting for them to acknowledge our presence. Only when they needed help did we become flesh-and-blood to them—the man ordered Euclides to get the bags from the car’s trunk; the pale woman dropped her driving coat into Nena’s arms. This is when I knew that those people were not visitors but owners, come to claim Riacho Doce and the Great House for themselves.

  They were also Pimentels—cousins of the previous owners. As we walked through the Great House together, Senhora Pimentel moved languidly alongside her husband, looking tired as she pointed out leaks and cracks, peeling paint and rotted wood. Her husband, Senhor Pimentel, yanked dust covers from the furniture, like a magician revealing his trick.

  “I remember my grandfather using this desk!” he cried. And, later, “I was the one who spilled ink on this chair!”

  The giddy freedom I’d felt over several months leaked away in the single hour after those new Pimentels arrived. All of the books I’d slipped from the shelves, all of the ivory and glass knickknacks I’d polished and stroked, all of the tables I’d hidden under, pretending I was in a tent in some exotic land, all of the mirrors in which I’d studied myself, would never again be mine to play with. I would once again have to be useful and invisible, to obey or be cast away. When her parents weren’t looking, the cork-eyed girl stuck out her tongue at me. It was as pink and slick as a jambo fruit. I had the urge to bite off its tip.

  Finally, the new Pimentels pulled the covers from two armchairs and sat, exhausted, in the formal sitting room. They ordered Nena to make coffee. We raced to the kitchen, where Nena grabbed my arm and told me to get the last, precious beans she’d hidden under her cot. Back upstairs, I peeked through the slatted door of the sitting room as Nena served coffee to the new Pimentels. They waited to drink until she’d left the room; I did not follow her to the kitchen.

  Senhor Pimentel took a sip from his cup and made a face. “Did she use an old sock to strain this?” he asked.

  Senhora Pimentel shook her head. “We’ll have to train a new staff. How exhausting.”

  “Nena’s a good cook—you’ll see. She’s been here since I was a kid,” Senhor Pimentel replied.

  “You think she and the old man had that child together? Poor little ugly thing.”

  Senhor Pimentel laughed. “Nena’s as old as the hills. And the girl’s too light-skinned to be theirs. I bet she’s not so ugly under all that dirt; she just needs a good scrubbing.”

  “She’ll stay in the kitchen,” Senhora Pimentel snapped. “If she grows up to be decent-looking she can serve the table.”

  Senhor Pimentel took his wife’s hand. She fixed him with the same weary expression she’d had when she’d inspected the Great House. They discussed their plans for the house. Furniture that was upstairs would go downstairs. Rugs would be thrown
out. Curtains replaced. Water pipes and a flush toilet installed, which meant hacking into the house’s thick white walls.

  There were footsteps behind me. Before I could hide, I felt a terrible stinging on the back of my arm. The cork-eyed Pimentel girl pinched the skin above my elbow. I glared and shook her loose.

  “Marta always cried when I pinched her,” the girl said.

  “Who’s Marta?”

  “The kitchen girl at my other house, in Recife. It’s a mansion. Better than this pigsty.”

  “This is the best house of any plantation,” I said.

  The girl shrugged. “You must die of boredom out here.”

  “Do I look dead?”

  “It’s a way of talking. Are you dumb?”

  “Not half as dumb as you look.”

  The girl’s eyes widened. “You can’t talk to me like that.”

  She was right—I was risking my place in that Great House. I blame those many months of freedom for my boldness, and for what happened next.

  “This is my house now,” the girl said.

  My hand made a crisp, exhilarating slap against her cheek. The girl gasped. I ran.

  The kitchen pantry was an empty, cool space. I sat inside, waiting. My fingers throbbed from the slap I’d dealt. I had sickening thoughts of Nena finding me and giving me the worst thrashing of my life. Or, worse, Senhor Pimentel stalking into the kitchen and casting me out of the only home I’d ever known. After what felt like an eternity, there were footsteps and chatter, then the automobile growled again and the new Pimentels left with a promise to return and begin renovations.

  I was impressed that the Pimentel girl hadn’t snitched; it made her tolerable to me, but also dangerous. What would she want in return for her silence? What would I owe her? These were the questions I asked myself in the weeks before the new Pimentels returned, while carpenters and stonemasons and plumbers sawed and pounded and pressed copper pipes into the Great House’s walls.

  Years later, I asked Graça about the day we met and she laughed. I remembered it all wrong, she said. She’d slapped me.

  * * *

  —

  I knew every dusty corner of that Great House, every empty armoire, every sideboard big enough to hide inside. When the new Pimentels finally moved to Riacho Doce, I waited for moments when Nena was distracted and left the kitchen. I hid and watched Graça dress and undress her dolls, biting her perfect pink lip when she couldn’t match a dress to an apron. I watched the maid brush Graça’s hair until it was as glossy as the melted chocolate that Nena poured over the Pimentels’ cakes. I watched as Graça ate lunch at the formal dining table, her tiny foot kicking against the chair legs until her mother snapped at her to stop. Graça wore lace-lined socks and petticoats and dresses with frilled aprons. By the end of the day her starched clothes wilted from the heat. Once, I went into the laundry and found her dirty clothes. I held one of her dresses to my own body, and then to my face. The laundress caught me and, her chapped hand like a leather strap around my arm, dragged me to Nena. The laundress said I was trying to wear one of the Little Miss’s dresses, which was a lie.

  “I don’t want her stupid dresses,” I said, pleading my case to Nena. “I wanted to know what her sweat smelled like.”

  “And what does it smell like?” Nena asked, laughing. “Roses?”

  “Just sweat,” I replied.

  Nena shook her head and then beat me with an old belt.

  One afternoon, not long after the laundry incident, Graça sneaked into the kitchen. I was alone near the pantry, peeling potatoes. She tugged my braid. I was happy to see her, but did not smile.

  “Come to my room,” she ordered. “Now.”

  “I’m working.”

  “You have to do what I say.”

  I pressed a wet potato to her perfectly upturned nose. “I do what Nena says.”

  Graça stepped away, rubbing potato juice from her nose, and then ran.

  I felt a secret thrill at having won that contest, and then immediately regretted it. This was not a match of equals; Graça was the Little Miss and could easily punish me in ways that I could never punish her. Yet denying Graça my company was the only power I had.

  The next day, Senhora Pimentel appeared in the kitchen. She wove around the tables, pausing at each workstation and pretending to inspect each girl’s work. Sternness did not come naturally to her. All of us working in the Great House had been born into our roles as servants, taught since childhood to be attuned to the habits and moods of our masters, so we sensed Senhora Pimentel’s weakness before she ever issued a single order, and many used it to their advantage. Nena did not allow anyone working in her kitchen to shirk their duties, but the maids at the front of the house weren’t under her command. They didn’t dust behind armoires, left fingerprints on the silver, and sat on the Pimentels’ furniture when no one was looking—all behaviors that a capable Senhora would have noticed and quickly punished. Senhora Pimentel was not capable. Like many women of her time, she’d been trained to be meek and decorous to everyone except servants, with whom one had to be forceful and self-assured. She was expected to be two women at once, which, I think, is what caused her frail health.

  Thinking of the Senhora now, I can’t recall her face exactly. Did she have brown eyes or blue? Did her front teeth overlap or were they as straight and even as a comb’s? When I think of Senhora Pimentel, I think of a fado—its sadness obvious, but with such depth and voluptuousness, you can’t help but want the melody to wrap itself around you. Fado doesn’t have the sly humor of the blues; its laments are painfully earnest. This makes some dislike fado, disgusted by its vulnerability. Others of us feel protective toward it.

  Today, I’m sure a doctor would diagnose Senhora Pimentel with depression or anxiety or low self-esteem or any one of those mental ailments that have become so popular. She would be told to take pills, and read books about living her best life, and would pay someone to listen to her talk about her feelings. Maybe such things would have helped Senhora Pimentel, but they didn’t exist when she was alive. Doctors visited Riacho Doce and each diagnosed Senhora Pimentel with a nervous disposition. Back then it was fashionable for women of a certain station to suffer from this kind of illness.

  If the Great House’s new Senhora was a living, breathing fado, then its Senhor was the opposite: he was a jingle. The kind of music made not to satisfy our deepest desires but to cajole us into buying a certain brand of chewing gum; the kind of tune whose catchiness and charm make you believe it is harmless at first, even as it worms its way inside you and coerces you into believing that you should want exactly what it tells you to want, that you should open yourself to it and let it stake its claim. And by the time you realize the jingle’s intentions, it’s too late. You can’t escape it, even decades later, no matter how hard you try.

  Senhor Pimentel was handsome for a married man of his status; he hadn’t allowed rich meals and heavy drink to bloat him. Each morning he had Old Euclides polish his riding boots until they shone like mirrors, and, after allowing the old man the pleasure of tugging the boots onto his feet, Senhor Pimentel mounted his horse and rode the cane fields with his foreman, which made him seem industrious. He often kissed his wife’s hand and helped her to the table for meals. If she was too tired to go downstairs to eat, he visited her rooms. He treated the Senhora as if she was an older, more powerful relation—ingratiating and kind while in her presence, and then, whenever she left, letting out a small sigh of relief. Maids gossiped that it was the Senhora’s fortune that kept them afloat and allowed them to save Riacho Doce from ruin. But it was Senhor Pimentel, being the man of the family, who held the reins of the plantation. He had a smile for everyone, even me, and especially for the young housemaids. More than once, I spotted Senhor Pimentel chatting with the youngest of them—farm girls of thirteen and fourteen who were awed by his fancy clothes and, most of all, his
interest in them. He made them giggle and blush.

  “Better keep out of the Senhor’s way,” Nena warned me.

  I believed her warning was simply a repetition of what she’d already hammered into me: keep to yourself, stay out of sight. And later, when Senhora Pimentel insisted that all maids work in pairs—one older, one younger—I thought she was simply trying to show us all who was boss.

  On the day Senhora Pimentel appeared in the kitchen, we kept our heads down and continued our peeling, scraping, mixing, or washing. But we kept track of her as she wove past the stoves and the cutting tables, and finally stood beside me. She watched for what seemed like hours as I sorted dried beans, removing pebbles and shriveled sours. Then she did something I did not expect—she reached out and held my braid in her pale hand, as if she were weighing a length of rope.

  I froze; until that point, the gentlest touch I could remember was Nena prodding me with a wooden spoon. The fact that the Senhora did not yank me backward confused and startled me.

  “Hair as straight as a little Indian’s,” she said, smoothing the end of my braid with her fingers. “Girls in Recife would pay a fortune for hair like this.”

  Senhora Pimentel stepped away from me and spoke quietly with Nena.

  “Jega!” Nena called as soon as Senhora Pimentel had left. “Wash your hands and behind your ears and go put on your good dress. The Senhora wants you in the front of the house.”

  My hand fluttered to my braid and held it. “Why?”