‘Dreaming about animals, it depends…’

  ‘Depends on what? For God’s sake, Cidinha!’

  ‘What animal was the animal, Zefinha?’

  ‘If I tell you, you’ll keep it to yourself?’

  ‘I’ll take it to the grave, by the Holy Virgin!’

  ‘It was a kid goat. With spots. Strong as a gorilla.’

  ‘What else was there?’

  ‘If I tell you, you’ll keep it to yourself?’

  ‘I keep everything to myself, Zefinha, every last thing.’

  ‘Do you swear? On your dying mother’s life?’

  ‘On everything that’s most sacred, Zefa, tell me!’

  ‘The goat was my husband, Cida, I swear it was him.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I saw on the animal’s back, it had freckles just the same as his.’

  ‘It had freckles like Tonico’s?’

  ‘But it wasn’t my husband… Ah, what he did to me, Cida…’

  ‘What did he do to you, Zefinha?’

  ‘There’s no way I’m telling you that.’

  Look at the dog. What is that… they’re pulling something out of the earth. But it’s small, it’s something… a cup. Crocheted cloth full of earth. Straw seat cushion. Look at the dog. A pan. Clump of hair. A doll’s leg. Rib bone. Look at the dog barking, what else is coming? It looks like they’re pulling something out of the earth. Something big. It’s… it’s a body. Limp like that it can’t be a body. Looks like there’s nothing inside. Boneless body. It’s hairy, there’s no head. What is it…? Looks like they’re pulling something from the earth. Round. Wrinkled. It’s a head. It can’t be a head like that with so much hair. Yes it is, it’s a head. The head of a… my God, the head of a gorilla. In Vila Marta. And the body, a whole gorilla.

  Before telling the story of the girl, it’s worth saying that Maria de Fátima wasn’t born like her sister, without giving Cida a belly. Quite the opposite, Cida was huge-bellied, round, she even had people saying she had a tapeworm, look, look at the size of Cida’s belly. She even had people making up reasons to visit her, come on, let’s go and see it up close otherwise you won’t believe it. Fátima in her mother’s belly was stretching and somersaulting, kicking her legs flailing her arms, where was she trying to go, my God? Cida cried at anything. She spent all those months choosing her daughter’s name, casting her memory far back, writing a list. Penha already knew long before, of course she knew.

  She saw Cida’s belly swelling itching like a nostalgic fruit-pit. Offer your daughter to the saint, Penha said as soon as the child was born, she shouldn’t be without the decision or the memory, you hear me, Maria Aparecida? A saint’s name. All the months before her granddaughter was born Penha saw her daughter staring into the distance, waiting for the arrival. What’s taking so long, my God? Penha didn’t ask questions, she knew Cida. She didn’t make a thing of it. She made soup. She made all the black-bean feijao she could. She kept her company. She asked for compassion. She asked for good health for the coming newborn. And she never knew for sure who the child’s father was.

  What happened beforehand nobody would believe. Cida’s grandmother, great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother had made the poor thing go digging all around the house digging for some heirloom, who knows if she found something? She dug the whole place up, Penha complaining about the shame of it all, but the matriarchs were sniggering over this granddaughter wasting her time on a red herring. Family heirloom my arse! When Cida realised she stopped she was angry, she marched out stamped the streets, cursing her grandmothers, her mother, even those she couldn’t remember, goddamnit, she cursed the whole family, until she realised she was lost. That’s always the way in the streets of Vilaboinha: any strong wind and they tangle up like string. And then only the devil can comb it out.

  Only this time Cida wasn’t alone. The stranger with a moustache and hunchback, daylit eyes she didn’t recognise, a goddamn ant nest in his fair skin, the fellow didn’t speak our language. He was clean-shaven, a cane for the sheep he counted before falling asleep, hair dozing in his aviator’s hat, the fellow tried to tell Cida tried tried and couldn’t say what he so wanted. Cida, strange woman, with her hair like a tree and clapboard arms, she heard everything and understood nothing. It was a prayer, could only be, the fellow was blocking her path with his teeth, Cida couldn’t understand any of it, the fellow’s teeth were trotting about, imagine that, he was pecking with his tongue. He went to peck at Cida’s neck her lips her breasts. Fátima’s father.

  Whenever Cida thought about running away, pregnant, whenever she thought about going after her little girl’s father, running, running, each time her grandma returned, with her great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother in tow, all three scowling, furious. When Cida, resolute, was about to put her bundle together, she dreamt about her grandfather, whom she’d never seen not even in photos, he was shrunken, all shrunken down, poor man, trying to shoulder his womenfolk’s sourness. When she was about to leave, ready, nothing to call her back, her great-grandmother appeared, in long flowery cotton and long saintly hair, and whispered in Cida’s ear. She couldn’t hear anything her great-grandmother spoke so softly, Cida couldn’t hear a thing, but she understood everything every little thing and she went back inside full of remorse.

  If she’d heard what her great-grandmother said, if she’d listened to what she whispered, Maria Aparecida would’ve known what life had in store for her ma. But Cida’s great-grandmother whole before her didn’t require a message. Cida trembled all over, afraid she’d woken up on the other side. The whole great-grandmother, no shadow, no wind, only her great-grandmother before her, like the lost image of a saint, Penha’s grandma. She thought this must be the worst nightmare of her life, just to look at her arms her hand was shaking, and after she would cross herself every time she remembered. If only it had been Cida’s worst nightmare. Poor girl.

  The day she gave birth to the child, Fátima rose eating earth. It wasn’t the first time in those sickly days of the sun leaning hard on the ground, but she knew instantly: it would be the last. She ate so much earth and it was so hot that she almost hit a well. She ate so much earth that she started feeling earth coughing up earth and even breathing like earth through everything that sprouted from her.

  In the earth she ate the insects, the expired bones and thriving plants. In the earth she ate the forgotten water, the stones, lost things, precious metals and even an old sea shell. Everything that tasted like it wasn’t earth she buried deep inside herself, muddy, like what the earth has to eat. And she ate always thinking, contented, that this was what men were reduced to in the face of a summer she’d never known to be so hot.

  But in amongst everything, teeth, scorpions, harrowing arid clouds, in amongst all the things blistering in her dry throat, nothing went down so well as earth in Fátima’s rock-ribbed throat as the stony foreboding that something was going to end up sprouting up from all that earth.

  ‘All of them, Carminha?’

  ‘All of them Cida, all at once.’

  ‘How did that happen?’

  ‘I don’t know, they were all lined up, trying…’

  ‘And did they manage?’

  ‘Somehow or other, people I didn’t even know…’

  ‘Carmem, you know what this means, don’t you?’

  ‘Oxe, I don’t know.’

  ‘Dreaming about earth…’

  ‘Yes, it was like I was made of earth.’

  ‘And they were all digging you up, all of them?’

  ‘Every way they could.’

  ‘Goddamn, but is there anyone who doesn’t wish you well?’

  ‘All those people on top of me…’

  ‘What was up with them, Carminha?’

  ‘All of them wished me well.’

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘What does it mean, Cida? Is it something terrible?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘I’ve always said you can never have too many cuddles.’

  The worst dream of Cida’s life wasn’t the one with the stars falling, falling, being sucked into her nostrils, clogging everything, and Cida sneezing like a madwoman. Certainly not the one with the stars raining down taking over Cida’s body, and Cida in devilish glee, her body taken over, she quite liked that dream, even with her grandmothers hidden, watching everything and laughing. Nor was it the one with the earth opening up beneath Cida’s feet, she always had that dream about the earth opening and her falling slowly ever so slowly until Penha woke Cida shouting girl, girl, you’re doing it again, Maria Aparecida.

  She also had dreams Cida did where she was tripping over stones unable to walk, she was trying to talk to her Ma and she could only make a cheep, cheep, cheep. Cida used to dream about ants from time to time, and that she had a slug for a tongue. She’d dreamed of mosquitos living inside her ear, softly telling her a story, and Cida wanted to know what happened, but the mosquito bard just buzzed and buzzed for hours and hours. Sometimes the ants were hellbent on living under Cida’s nails, where it was warm protected forgotten, and she’d spend dreams and more dreams cracking open the holes they left in her toenails.

  Cida had dreamed about birds pecking at her armpit hairs, pulling them out one by one, she dreamed about goats that realised they were shorn, and about her mother crying raining hanging in a tree that was still growing, and about a convoy that travelled around to sew up the earth’s cracks with thread. Cida dreamed so deeply that she even thought about joining the convoy out on the road, and also dreamed of all Vilaboinha in a hasty fling in the darkness, the whole townful, funny, she couldn’t see anything, she could just hear us all happy with our flesh out celebrating, and she sat there ashamed of her grandmothers, quiet, pretending she wasn’t interested. None of these dreams was her worst.

  Months before she died Cida had a dream about dogs a horde of dogs coming starving smelling her body, sticking their snouts in, to see if she was alive. The grandmothers behind the door, hiding, and Cida couldn’t even move, she could just see the dogs sniffing, licking her feet, the dogs coming in, ears pricked, the dogs they smell like her husband, the dogs not clocking the grandmothers in the next room, the dogs climbing Cida’s legs, mounting her arms, the dogs looking for any gap in her body, the dogs humping Cida in packs, and Cida frozen, as if she were asleep. It was terrible. But it still wasn’t the worst.

  ‘Did you dream about teeth again, Ma?’

  ‘More this time, Cida.’

  ‘Were they loose?’

  ‘At least they didn’t fall out, darn things.’

  ‘Did you have the ones that grew in the roof of your mouth?’

  ‘No, Cida, this time they were all canines.’

  ‘All the teeth? Canines?’

  ‘Yes, like these, all of them like these two.’

  ‘Were any of them broken?’

  ‘No, they were all intact and very sharp.’

  ‘I suppose the canines…’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘The canines know what they want.’

  ‘What’s that to do with me, my girl?’

  ‘They sprout from our mouths, budding out of us…’

  ‘Are you trying to scare me, is that it? Oxe, girl!’

  ‘Did you notice that canines look like the tips of ribs?’

  ‘And what does that mean? Go on.’

  ‘There’s no need to worry, Ma. But dreaming about teeth means death.’

  Cida’s very worst dream: if we tell it no one will believe us. She’s pregnant, big-bellied, ready to pop, she feels her own stomach between her hands, runs her fingertips over it, gathers dirt under her nails, it’s all dark so she can’t see anything, she just feels the curve of her skin, the navel, the raised hairs, she feels her stomach growing, growing, she feels the child inside. Fluttering. If we tell it no one will believe us, but Cida was waking from this dream every day, she woke up believing she was pregnant, her navel standing up on her rounded belly, she was sure that soon soon she was going to have a child, she wakes up searching and searching for her belly and she doesn’t find it.

  If we tell no one will believe it, but in Cida’s worst nightmare her belly was growing, not even Cida believed it, the child was growing in the dream, and faded away when Cida woke up. She could have sworn, before she opened her eyes she could have sworn the belly was there, huge and round, she could’ve sworn on her mother, on Fátima, on everything that was hers. But her fingers went looking for it, she couldn’t believe it when she ran her fingers over her stomach and found nothing. Cida all quiet so as to not wake her husband snoring like a dog, Cida curled up tight so as not to frighten Maria de Fátima, cried and cried in secret, goddamn, what sadness for something she didn’t even have, goddamnit, where did her belly go?

  In Cida’s worst dream she was afraid, every day, she was afraid her daughter might be born with the plague in Vilaboinha, with two faces, she was afraid of her daughter being born divided. Pregnant in her dream she woke up without the belly and she wept and gave thanks, in her fear of the plague taking her newborn. With no belly to speak of she asked everyone the story of this disease from the sertão scrublands, to be born with two faces, my God, not that. Nobody understood why Cida was so worried, not even Penha, she didn’t understand any of this. Nobody understood, but Cida when she had the chance she asked and everyone answered, goddamnit, Cida, are you pregnant or not?

  On the day of the eclipse in Vilaboinha, almost on the hour, Cida went to sleep to dream about the child. She closed her eyes and slept and, outside, the day darkened. The eclipse seemed like a dream, Cida said as much. The child soon came like it did every day: in the huge stomach, big enough to blot out the sun. The same dream, Cida running her fingers over her stomach, feeling the hairs, the navel standing up, the same dream until Cida, who went to take a nap like every day, the very same dream until Cida, if we say it no one will believe it, until Cida dreamed about giving birth and woke up on the other side. She stayed asleep. Quiet. Cold.

  The dream came the same the same, Cida felt the child fluttering, the weight of her stomach, the child calm like every day, suddenly wanting to come out, the child wanting to come out of Cida, suddenly the sun and the moon and the stomach, bursting forth, goddamnit, an eclipse cast the mother in darkness and illuminated the daughter. You could almost say that the sac was the dream, even say the child burst out of the dream, was born from the waters of the dream to live on this side, nobody believes it when we say, but you could. Because Cida died dreaming of giving birth and there was the girl, quiet as could be between her mother’s cold legs, tiny, tiny, confused flesh like guts. Maria, Maria, Maria Aparecida… she died and couldn’t even give her daughter a name.

  In Vila Marta, the shovels are resting at last. Dust-covered, the excavators place the pieces of gorilla in zip-up bags. The limp body, with the head to one side. The earth goes in too, into the gorilla’s fur, into the eyelids of its empty eyes. It goes in the wrinkles on its face, under its nails, in every crevice. The excavators put the material collected to one side and take out the plastic gloves. Shovels in hand, they’re preparing the earth for a new birth.

  One of the excavators puts something he found in his jacket pocket: a photograph. In the midst of the upturned earth, people were photographed, barefoot, scattered on the faded paper. In the middle of the picture, a child in arms, bodies fluttering, eyes at the ready, born, a cursed fear, everything quiet, reserved, everything recorded in this picture, the people more to one side, my God, everything buried. Someone bangs on Fátima’s door.

  The first time Fátima saw the child, she was just one great wart. She was frightened of what might not have been done right, of what could have left the little girl as this heap of rumples, poorly stitched offcuts. She gave a nervous giggle: a fear that the wart was hers. The child, a surprise. One more pain, that was her daily way of knowing the body within, the child just one more pain and she didn’t even notice that her pain was people.

  She took her little wart in her arms, trying to be motherly. She took her in her arms and smiled and went to show her grandma, just look what I found in the midst of my insides. There was no malady, the pain was the baby. She took her in her arms and tried to get up, then shouted Grandma, shouted Grandma so as to drown out her wish to pick open the child right there to open up the child in the middle to see what would come out from inside her. Outside, she was this wart.

  ‘I’ll call you Scarlett.’

  The first time Fátima saw her daughter grown up, twenty years older, with her bundle of clothes from Vilaboinha, she was still a wart, now sprouting up in Vila Marta. All filthy with earth, her feet dry, cracks in the corners of her nails, glazed with sweat, Fátima was frightened, she was frightened of the door’s opening. She gave a nervous giggle, my God, it was indeed her daughter, it could only be her, she knew. The daughter she’d left in Vilaboinha, along with the junk, the pans, the man she’d cut out of a magazine, goddamn, everything that didn’t fit. The daughter who broke out of herself when she escaped to São Paulo.

  She was scared of what the child would bring: she saw in her almond-shaped eyes everything she’d left behind in Vilaboinha, the narrow strips of earth, the family remains, my God, the midday heat. She could hold back tears one eye at a time, pull out what came with her fingers, each thing, the locks of hair her grandma kept, everything time didn’t eat. She could gather it all up and keep it all nicely hidden in the earth. It could only be someone else, it must be the fever the Vilaboinha summer, it could only be: because her daughter was quiet about everything, Scarlett was the quietest woman on earth. The best place for a burial was her.