Earth: a creature that eats people.

  Childbirth: the body turned inside out.

  Twice-born

  In Vilaboinha there are hardly any little children, except for Old Penha’s great-granddaughter. It isn’t hard to be born in Vilaboinha, but there hasn’t been a midwife here for a while. Only the child who feels its way to the edge, tireless, the little one who comes feeling feeling its way til it reaches, through the flesh, life this immense hole. The others are lost, the umbilical cord around their necks, too listless to leave the womb, wanting to sleep in there a little longer. Penha’s great-granddaughter found a way… her mother Maria de Fátima said so. Look, look what a beauty she is little creature.

  Dona Penha enjoys her, she likes taking her great-granddaughter on her lap and squeezing the baby flesh between her fingers, feeling for the tiny bones, the small ones in her arms and still smaller ones in her tiny fingers, they almost look like a baby bird’s feet. Penha murmurs Maria, Maria, she calls her little grandchild, like she used to call Maria Aparecida, when Penha’s daughter was still alive. Maria, Maria, Maria doesn’t look a month old, all shrivelled, poor little thing, the worn flesh leaves it all on show, veins, nerves, parades of ants. She won’t cry for anything, what luck, but Fátima, her mother, poor thing, the moment she gave birth something in her collapsed.

  Her grandma shows the tiny smidgeon of a person her arm as though it were a toy, her grandma leaning against the sink shows her great-granddaughter her own little arm all skin and tiny bones, time a nest of ants inside her darting this way and that. The little thing’s already suffered so much, can you believe she was born without the belly showing? And don’t go saying it runs in the family. It wasn’t wickedness like it was with her other granddaughter, the girl, Penha never tires of saying it, every day, it wasn’t any wickedness that Maria was born without you getting a belly, Penha tells Fátima, the two women pacing the kitchen floor. What does it matter if our Maria arrived incognito?

  ‘Her name is Scarlett,’ Fátima says, sulky, not taking her eyes off them outside, so’s not to lose sight of her sister.

  Maria, Maria… Penha’s mother dumped her own grandma’s name on her third child, yes she did, the size of a fist and already she had wrinkles on her forehead, give the creature an old lady’s name, that’s it, give her Maria da Penha. To have a child Penha vowed, she promised, that’s why when Cida was born she quickly tacked on the saint’s name. Maria, Maria Aparecida… Don’t tell me that’s a kid’s name. When Fátima was born, her mother Cida had a whole list of names, but Penha didn’t want to leave it to fate. She placed her granddaughter in the care of the Virgin Mary, just so happened that kid never did have a decent guardian. Penha hopes for her sake that no one will speak ill of the child with the saint’s name.

  Maria, Maria… Maria de Fátima had only to hear her daughter’s name once and she knew. Scarlett, Scarlett, Scarlett… A film star name, far away, an artist. Nothing like Maria, goddamnit, a child with that name is born into pain, whimpering, tainted. Imagine when Penha found out. To leave her daughter in the lap of the gods, without protection, can only have been bloody-minded ignorance. Why should the child — poor little thing — be caught up in all Fátima’s foolishness? It was uncalled-for. This is why, whenever she can, Penha calls her granddaughter Maria, Maria, Maria… Already Penha’s other granddaughter, Fátima’s sister, Scarlett’s aunt, already she is nameless. But that’s another story.

  There’s very little left of the sun in Vilaboinha, where midday is as terrible as midnight, and Fátima’s sister remains outside, fried to a crisp, but the earth never is ready. The wind has a mind of its own and wheels back round. Maria de Fátima watches her devour everything with her eyes, the dog calmly drawing closer and casually poking her muzzle where she shouldn’t to smell her bum right through the hole in her dress where her underwear shows. Goddamn, what is it that girl won’t stop snooping at with those eyes?

  Fátima’s sister sticks her nose into everything she can. There’s no shame, no reason for it, but Fátima is trembling all over, already she wondered could her daughter have been born with roving eyes, like the girl’s? Fátima doesn’t even want to think about it, holy shit, can you imagine Scarlett, poor little thing, can you imagine the little mite going off to see life with eyes not even her own? To hell with that! The girl is silence made flesh, so quiet, doesn’t even make a peep, poor little thing. Fátima’s daughter is an angel, can only be an angel, a saint, a miracle. Her daughter can only be a gift from God, a blessing, a knife in the guts, a knife.

  Fátima swallows down dry, she swallows dry and feels the quiet hunger, the tame hunger, her yearning for the searing hunger that was born along with the child. Nothing makes Scarlett cry, poor thing, she’s just a poor little glance on the horizon of her grandma’s lap, newborn, while the sun keeps time. Inside she was more, much more, a silent herd, flock, windstorm, and her hunger like the wretched of the earth. Fury that, concealed by Fatima’s absent bump, nobody even knew she was there.

  God-damn! Never had the sun leered so low over Vilaboinha as during those sickly months before Fátima’s daughter was born. All of us arid and ambling across the earth to make sure we were still alive and Fátima, with her affliction of two hearts, trying to see what her sister saw so much. Since she was young the girl confronted the world like this, consuming it with her gaze.

  She was watching the wind far away and Fátima sat close to her grandma, avoiding the itch, saying it’s nothing she’s just watching her little sister. The girl far away, stirring the earth, and Fátima watching the chickens all on edge with the sun so low overhead and trying not to feel the hunger she felt. Fátima watching the chickens, the stones everything and the stirred earth that the girl is cooking up for her mouth-watering.

  There could only be something terrible in wanting to devour the earth that one day will devour us all. There could only be something terrible in wanting to eat this sure-fire creature lying in wait for every death, this sure-fire creature gnawing on bones, tempting fate. It could only seed something terrible.

  Never had the sun loomed so low over Vila Marta as during the excavation, by the third day. All those people sifting through the earth for what Fátima didn’t know and she knew it wasn’t a fever: it was summer over in Vilaboinha. The digging was unceasing. Fátima saw everything through the gaps in the slats, goddamn, the excavation never slept, and so much had already come out of the earth: summer, dry air, restless earth. And still these people won’t stop cordoning everything off with yellow tape, my gosh, not to mention the dogs barking in her ears. Holy Mary Mother of God!

  If Fátima could have buried the whole of Vilaboinha in the earth of Vila Marta, hell, she would have buried it. She let go. But with the fever and the summer in Vilaboinha came the memory of what her grandma used to say when Fátima was still very young: the earth eats up everything. Even our hunger the earth eats, but the earth doesn’t keep it all down inside, no ma’am. The earth doesn’t like keeping secrets: it chews over all that’s for forgetting and leaves the bones for later. Any secrets the earth will vomit up, leave our doorsteps blocked with bodies.

  Hell, why this obsession with waking the earth where nothing will stay put? While in Vila Marta the earth is settled and calm, in Vila Marta the earth is secret, guarded. Why this obsession with waking earth that’s so forgotten? It can only be earth they’re looking for, and digging, and cordoning off with tape. It can only be earth they’re finding til even the earth in Vila Marta is exhausted. And they’re unearthing. Goddamn. Earth is spitting it all up.

  Like a child with a twisted gut. Have you noticed how babies newly born are just a heap of people thrown together? Fátima’s watching the girl, her sister, and she can’t stop thinking this. Her grandma’s bones, clawed nails like all the cousins, the worn clothes, the family nose. That way of looking at the world like her aunt. Have you noticed that babies are born flesh-and-bone uniting lost parts of the dead? Unearthing the family bones? A club foot just like her grandfather, the freckles on her back, the well-worn ears, forgotten, folded away, that nose fit for two armadillos, the eyes…

  Fátima’s sullen, on the verge of tears, she’s stung, her grandma soon notices.

  ‘A hungry face is an ugly face, Fátima. Thinking about life again? Don’t come to me with this, your mother had a child like that, no showing. Not you. You were born from a big stomach and well-fed earth. Round belly like a nice loin of beef, poking out, course it wasn’t a boy. But your sister… your sister, the girl, came without warning, she just came right out, little demon. To this day I don’t know if Cida knew, imagine. But it’s God who won’t let me know, see, little creature, because I found the girl right in her mother’s guts, and if I’d known for sure Cidinha wouldn’t see the girl before she died… God who won’t let me know, imagine, because I had… an end was put to what didn’t yet exist. Whoever heard of that? A cursed darkness in broad daylight, you remember, Fátima? A darkness and me asking where’s Fátima, Cida? And neither your mother nor you replied. A darkness, no one seeing nothing, you remember that? And the girl was born, fat, I’ve never seen bigger, tied to the body of my little baby. She was hiding in her stomach cramps, because for some days she’d always eaten something that didn’t go down right, she who hardly ate anything, poor thing. Afterwards everything in Vilaboinha went dark, goddamn, everything went dark and the girl was born… Wasn’t time even for Aparecida to name her. There she was, hiding, a hole in the stomach, like a frightened animal. And you still came sobbing to my side. Not like Scarlett Maria…’

  ‘Granny, you’ve already told me this story.’

  ‘I know, Fátima, and I’ll tell it again, God willing. I was just saying…’

  ‘I’m nothing like Ma, Gran. Ma’s dead.’

  Dona Penha rocks the child in her good arm and lets the other one hurt next to her body. She fixes her eyes on Fátima, devil-child, stubborn, ungrateful. Scarlett watches, small, baby, eyes even smaller, two blessed warts. Making ready to cry. It’s a way of breathing, it looks like she’s going to burst into tears, but no, she just looked that way. Or the dog passing amid gasps outside below the window, lamenting the time, preparing the hour, casting about til she finds her way in by the door. With her comes Fátima’s gaze.

  ‘Your mother’s dead? And you’re what — alive?’

  Fátima makes like she doesn’t hear.

  ‘There’s a way of dying same as a way of living, Fátima. Nobody even knows you’re dead until they see alive is what you aren’t. Sometimes death comes with a big belly, plenty of warning, other times it just comes, a good thing for you to know.’

  Talking of Cida, Cida when she was alive, listen now, Cida stopped sanding her feet because she dreamed about her grandma she never even met her grandma, Old Penha’s mother, but she stopped filing the calluses on her feet, gathering up the little flakes of skin, burying them, unburying them long after just to see how they looked, she stopped it all when her grandma appeared in white, in her wedding dress, feet hovering two inches off the floor, when her grandma appeared with a voice like a thunderclap and said, Cida, my girl, stop this vile habit of sanding your calluses, Cida, calluses are part of your family legacy. Every time you sand your calluses my spirit suffers, Cida.

  Cida always got messages from the family. When she was young, very young, she dreamed of her grandmother, great-grandmother, great-great-grandmother, three scowling stony-faced figures, baring their teeth at life. She used to dream about the three of them cantankerous as you please, only Penha didn’t scour the pans and Cida was dreaming, only Penha didn’t line the pans up straight. Cida didn’t want, the last thing she wanted was to defy her elders. But when she was in a bad mood sometimes, pretending not to hear advice, when she hid, and forgot, then a strange dream would come, teeth shaking, all colours, like midsummer bunting, falling, falling. And behind it all a low din: Cida’s grandmothers, laughing.

  Cida was always like this, she lived dreaming of Sundays. But she understood everybody’s dreams, of earth, of death, of kid goats. She understood our dreams better than anyone else alive in Vilaboinha, bloody hell, dreams were one thing Cida understood. That’s why if someone woke up frightened, if someone stopped sleeping afraid of waking on the other side, if they were dreaming about things they shouldn’t, a brother’s passion covered up by a fight, family hatred, that’s why everyone said call on Cida, like they call on Zefa the healer when a child gets sick. Call Cida, go on, Cida knows her dreams.

  It’s worth saying that Cida when she was alive had this obsession: finding the truth in all our dreams, in her dreams and everyone else’s. This obsession and also another: keeping the hair she combed out, the hair left in her comb. She kept collecting the strands even when she was dreaming about wood-chipped branches strewn across earth, masses of matted hair, the whole world, and her mother shouting at her to sort it out. But the worst dream of all, the very worst, if we tell it no one believes us. But it’s not yet time to talk about the girl.

  When she went to the circus in Vilaboinha for the first time, Maria de Fátima wasn’t yet dreaming about gorillas. She was pregnant, but she didn’t know it. She had fallen pregnant, but her belly wasn’t growing, did you ever see such a thing? Heaven forbid. Mary mother of God. Fátima sold so many saucepans, all her sister’s clothes, the picture frame she won in the church raffle, and put it all together with a few coins, hardly anything, she picked up on the town’s streets when she went with her grandmother to exchange what she stood to lose for what she was to gain. She took all the cash and bought a ticket, joined the line all hunched, a cursed chill in her stomach, like an armadillo sat coiled around her insides, so no one would notice her poorly-cut clothes. There was no other way: Fátima was set on seeing the fantastical metamorphosis of the gorilla-woman.

  The man at the door, moustache bigger than his face, in a top hat fit for three, four, five rabbits, was stunned to find Fátima wasn’t another skinny chancer, you know the type? The shameless ones who pretend they forgot their ticket so’s to steal the carved wooden plantains, so prettily painted. It’s incredible, these people only think about food! Did you ever see people so hungry they’ll eat the decor? If I say it, no one believes me!

  On stage the woman appeared wearing hardly anything, gleaming and forgotten, a sequin missing at nipple height, another dangling to the side, hanging over her a huge bunch a bunch bigger than everything a fantastic bunch of painted bananas. Goddamn, does it reek of paint. Everyone frightened and Fátima too, can you imagine? Gnawing on the wooden yellow plantains teeth gnashing away, gnawing, gnawing, gnawing til they could hear the scratched scream of the wood. Everyone running away from the gorilla running help, help and Fátima is almost trampled, goddamn, they damn well nearly carried her off: she lay there remembering the taste of the rough, the bitter paint, help, of the layers, her teeth, the splinters, grown-ups’ bullshit, this is bullshit.

  She went home trying to forget the bananas, she went to sleep and dreamed about gorillas, honestly? Grown-ups’ bullshit, but after she saw the gorilla all night she had a dream about the woman appearing with clothes on, the sequins seeking to fall, some already fallen, this dream about the woman coming on stage to become a gorilla, wearing the girl’s sold-off clothes, imagine, now Fátima’s sister’s cast-offs. This was too much. And when Fátima went to look for a banana, she found only the gorilla’s, large, hairy, erect, making curtains of the clothes. And Fátima’s mouth ah Fátima’s mouth salivating, the little scabs of paint making a moustache around it, and between her front teeth a curly hair a little curl and she didn’t even notice.

  Every night she dreamed about the woman turned gorilla and Fátima was so ravenous, my God, ravenous, she wanted the gorilla like a dog, wanting with her gorilla hunger. The gorilla hunger was so strong, even a banana would do: stolen, when she could get it, when they were good, one a day. It was such a deep gorilla hunger, even in the dream they would do: bananas by the bunch, greenish, all sprouting from Fátima like thorns. Bananas under her arms, between her breasts, brazen goddamn pendant, when she went to see them they were already everywhere that there was. She who knew how to take it dreamed of having the sweet animal member in everything under the sun: grown-up bullshit, nicely peeled.

  This dream of the banana between her legs, her legs licking each other, the banana almost not going down her throat. This dream of a banana all her own, all sweaty, the banana her hairy animal member, sliding everywhere, wanting to go in deep. This dream of the slippery banana was her hunger, it was big, yellow, erect, the member Fátima didn’t have. This dream entering the flesh of unconscious Tonho, this dream invading the flesh of barely sleeping Tonho, and little by little deeper she was going in, and little by little just a little more… Look, you can only see the tiny hairs… That dream… Was it a dream?

  Fátima wasn’t sleeping any more. She didn’t want to dream about the gorilla. She didn’t want to. She swore she didn’t want to. But the gorilla still came. Ah, it came. The gorilla in the girl’s clothes. The big yellow erect banana. Hairy, my God, so hairy. Fátima went and tried to take the clothes back. She couldn’t. They’d already been sold. She didn’t know what she was doing. She promised. She prayed. Over a thousand Hail Marys. And she only got the dreams to fade when she swore blind she would take her sister to see the gorilla-woman’s metamorphosis. From then on Maria de Fátima kept her gorilla-hunger at bay dreaming of eating bananas and lots of yellowing plantains.