Chapter 29
A week later, I’d been out running errands in town and arrived home just past dusk. As the servants leave at sundown, I expected the house to be empty. Yet as I reach the second-floor landing, I hear a woman’s humming.
I freeze. I listen. Could it be my imagination? Then I hear it again. I follow the sound, and it leads me to Mother’s room.
I can hardly believe it. She must have awakened in the senzala, then made her way into the house and up the stairs to her room. And now she’s in there, humming. I am beside myself with joy; Mother is back.
I hesitate just outside her door, which is slightly ajar.
The humming is eerily upbeat. I’ve never heard Mother hum before.
Could she be sleepwalking? I have never known her to sleepwalk, either.
There is a levity to the tune that seems unlike her.
I recall something else Doctor Amado said by way of warning: Even if she does wake up, she may not be the same.
I gently nudge the door open and step forward.
She sits at the vanity facing the mirror, with her back to me.
She is powdering her face, unaware of my presence.
Her hair is pinned up so that the back of her neck is exposed.
Small ornate hair clips I have never seen before are tucked into her hair.
Her things are spread out on the walnut vanity: pearl earrings, sparkling bracelets, ruby necklaces, and powders I could not name.
Her arms, knuckles, and earlobes are adorned in gleaming pearls and bright gemstones.
Even more disorienting than that is the lavish dress she has on.
Not any of her normal gray dresses, but an extravagant golden-red evening gown with details of lace.
Red high heels. Golden rings and bracelets. As if she’s going to a ball.
I freeze with dread. Mother has woken up mad as a hatter. Or perhaps it is her ghost I am looking at; she’s died and now her spirit is humming and putting on jewels. If I were to go to the senzala now, would I find her corpse lying on that chaise longue?
She picks up a rouge. I step forward and my heart stops in anticipation of seeing her reflected in the mirror. It is then that I see her face.
She sees me, gasps, drops the rouge, and springs to her feet. The chair nearly topples over.
“How long have you been standing there?” she cries.
The voice is awfully wrong. Too high-pitched and abrasive. Her face, too, is wrong. This tall, thin stranger is not Mother at all. It is not even a woman, really, but a girl my age. My disappointment sinks deep into my bones.
It takes me a moment to recognize her.
“Joaquina?”
Joaquina, the new chambermaid. When we found ourselves without a chambermaid a week ago, Maria das Dores recommended some distant relation, her friend’s cousin’s daughter, I think, who turned out to be this young woman.
She wore her long wavy hair parted in the middle and tilted her head down so her hair curtained half of her face.
She had no prior experience or references other than Maria das Dores’s friend’s cousin’s daughter, but I decided to take a chance on the girl anyway.
“I thought you were out,” she mutters. “I am terribly sorry.”
When she stands before me, Mother’s golden dress looks even more dramatic as the skirt flares out in a wide radius.
“What are you doing wearing my mother’s clothes?”
“I know how it looks, but I swear I wasn’t going to steal anything.
” She bites her lip, looks everywhere but at me: at the vanity, at the bed, then behind her, at the open wardrobe where the dusty dresses hang, as though the inanimate objects will intercede on her behalf to rescue her from this predicament.
“I only wanted to try on a beautiful dress. I’ve never worn anything like this in my life.
I thought you had gone to town, thought you would be back later.
I didn’t think there would be any harm in just trying it on. ”
“Luckily for you, it wasn’t Mother who found you.”
She laughs, thinking I’m joking. “I’m sure your mother is a kind woman.”
Mother would be pulling her out of the house by the earlobe and batting her with a shoe.
“Maria das Dores said your mother is sick and was sent away for treatment,” she says, echoing the half-lie I told Maria das Dores. They don’t know Mother is still in the house, slumbering down in the senzala.
She returns her attention to the vanity and starts putting the jewels back into their cases. Her slender fingers move in a frantic manner and the small items keep slipping from her grip.
She takes off the rings, then the bracelets and necklace come off.
Then the white velvet gloves and the chest pendant come off.
She glances over at me, flushed. I have a vague sense I should leave now, but I can’t look away.
The scent of rose and lavender wafts over me and I spot the round glass bottle with a balloon spray on the vanity. Mother’s perfume.
Suddenly it is Mother I see taking off her earrings and gathering her jewels into the case. I had felt happy for a brief moment but now I know she still lies in the dark below, unaware. I feel her absence like the pit of a plum taking up space in my middle, pushing into my organs.
The light from the setting sun settles upon Joaquina and highlights the gentle curve of her neck.
There is something poetic, something pleasing about her—she emanates softness if not brightness necessarily, and her skin is a perfect golden hue.
How have I never noticed how lovely she is?
The very first time I saw her, in the kitchen, she seemed plain and dim like a dull painting.
Her eyes were downcast. In the days following, I suppose I must have never really looked at her.
She would glide silently through the hallways carrying a bucket and a mop or a duster.
It is startling to think that underneath that was such a gem.
Perhaps the glamorous clothing brought out her brightness.
The longer I regard her now the more mesmerized I am.
Her collarbone, her long neck, her cheekbones, her chestnut hair and bright eyes…
“Senhor Neves?”
“Uh…the hairpin.” I point to the crown of her head.
“Oh.” She startles, then pulls out the hairpin.
Her chestnut hair falls down in cascading waves over her shoulders, long and full.
Mother does not approve of unmarried women wearing their hair down, saying it is the way of harlots.
I see her meaning now, judging from the way it makes me feel.
Joaquina sets the hairpin down on the vanity carefully, with the other objects.
I’d like to freeze her in this moment in time, with sunlight falling over her bare neck and shoulders and soft-knuckled hands. With her face turned away, just slightly so. I imagine her delicate hands on her knees and her chin pointed away. She can become ephemeral as a moment.
“I will change now,” she says. “I will leave the room as I found it.”
“Don’t.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I don’t want the room as you found it.”
“I don’t understand—”
“I like it with you in it.”
I am as surprised by the words as she is. But Joaquina has changed something about this room, filled it with life and light.
“I’m sorry,” I add quickly. “I didn’t mean…”
She stares at me and I can’t take it. I turn around abruptly and leave without a word.