Chapter 38
Alive.
Awake.
Mother sits in bed. Brown eyes wide open.
Not the white pupilless eyes of the dead, of last night, but the bright eyes of the living, shining and full of life.
Her skin is not gray and ashen but warm hued and healthy.
She is not lying down face up like a corpse.
She sits up against the bed frame, posture upright and relaxed.
Her hair the same dark hazelwood waves, brighter than when she slept.
Her head tilts as she regards me, and she blinks, then lifts her brows, as if equally stricken by the sight of me as I am by her.
“Leandro!” she calls out.
I am unable to react.
Mother endeavors to push the covers off her, wincing with pain.
Doctor Lobo assists her while I watch in total dismay.
Each micro-movement stuns me completely: swiveling on the bed, raising her arms up for the doctor to help her, pushing her legs out so they hang, and finally standing on her own, albeit with Doctor Lobo’s help.
I am beside myself. I fear that it will all go away if I blink, so I stare.
Slowly, with effort, she steps forward, in my direction. I hold my breath, terrified that she’s going to collapse, that her pupils will roll backward into her head, that her head will slump limply on her shoulder, that her heart will give out.
I glance at Doctor Lobo, and we exchange a look. He looks placidly pleased, as if this is all expected, as if she is simply one of his patients awakening from a routine procedure.
She takes slow steps toward me, eyes filled with emotion.
She reaches out her hands, smiling. I don’t know when I last saw her smile.
She looks utterly unlike the ghostly creature I’ve become accustomed to.
I almost forgot what she looks like—the real, living her.
Healthy. Breathing. Conscious. Thinking.
Behind her eyes, her soul, her mind, her living consciousness flows.
When she embraces me, she’s not cold and languid but warm and firm. I cannot return the embrace, for fear that she’ll break into pieces at my touch.
I thought I would never see her alive again.
I thought I killed her.
But this time, it’s real.
Emotion clogs my throat and a sob erupts.
“Oh, my dear Leandro…”
Her hands cup around her mouth. She and Doctor Lobo stare at me. I’m racked by uncontrollable hiccups and streaming tears. A lump forms in my throat. I taste salt on my lips.
“How are you feeling?” Mother asks me.
“I…uh…”
I start, then stop. I wipe my cheeks with the back of my hand, try to collect myself. It feels like a rock is lodged in my throat, making it hard to speak. I also don’t know how to answer the question: How do I feel?
I cannot possibly say.
I start: “I thought you were—”
“It’s the work of God,” Doctor Lobo interrupts.
“My dear…” She starts bringing her face to mine as if to kiss my cheek, but Doctor Lobo speaks abruptly and she draws back.
“Leandro”—he clears his throat—“why don’t you go fetch some water?”
Maria das Dores looks startled to see me in the kitchen, and even more shocked when I embrace her.
“A miracle has happened, Maria das Dores.” I wipe the corners of my eyes with my knuckles. “A miracle!”
It is a miracle. Mother was so close to death that Doctor Lobo was talking about her funeral yesterday. It seemed inevitable. But now she is awake!
This doctor, he is a miracle worker.
“Mother has recovered! She’s moving, speaking, as living and conscious as you or I!”
“This is great news, Senhor Neves! So you visited her?”
I remember she does not know Mother has been in the house this whole time, in the senzala. Instead of answering, I kiss her on each cheek, and she laughs.
“You are wonderful, Maria das Dores! Wonderful!”
I fill a glass with water and drink it all. Then I fill another for Mother. As I climb the stairs my hands shake and I spill most of it. I return to the kitchen to fill the glass once more.
Not only is Mother alive, but her affectionate way of greeting me shows she’s not angry with me. She has no idea of the things I’ve done. She doesn’t remember any of what I told her, doesn’t know what has taken place in this house while she slumbered.
I feared she would just know, in a mother’s-instinct sort of way.
When I return to the room, Doctor Lobo is examining Mother.
He speaks with such ease, as though she is a regular patient and this is a routine examination.
I am amazed at his self-mastery and presence of mind.
He has her raise her arms, bend down and touch her toes, and a number of other tasks, all the while asking, “Does it hurt here?” and “How does it feel?” and sometimes she says it feels fine, but most of the time she says that it hurts.
Doctor Lobo speaks of her having experienced a traumatic event. I suppose he means being so deathly ill, then being in the deep slumber for so long.
Mother glances at me warily, then looks away.
Something feels different about her.
It’s strange that she’s hardly addressing me.
She hasn’t asked the questions I would expect her to ask upon awakening: How long has she been asleep?
Is she recovered from the yellow fever? Why is she in the guest room and not in her own room?
What procedures were done to her? What happened while she slumbered? How much time has passed?
Maybe she has already had this conversation with the doctor while I slept, before I came in. They were talking when I arrived. Or maybe she’s still getting her bearings.
I remember the warning that Doctor Amado gave me initially: Even if she does wake up, she may not be the same.
“I’ll give you some laudanum for the pain,” Doctor Lobo says, “which can be supplemented with willow bark tea and hot baths infused with eucalyptus and hortel? leaves.”
Mother drinks the draught, then lies down. The back of her head rests on the pillow, eyes facing the ceiling. Then she closes her eyes.
Her face takes on the ghostly appearance it had when she slumbered. The shadowed cheekbones, the squared jaw and flat lips. The heavy-lidded, gaunt cheeks, the shadows beneath the brows. That spiraling, endless, tortured sleep that never ends.
“Wake up!” I cry. I startle even myself. Mother’s eyes fly open as she sits up. She and Doctor Lobo gape at me, alarmed. My whole body is shaking. I cannot help it, though I know my behavior is bizarre. Still I am relieved—she was only sleeping after all.
“For God’s sake, what’s the matter?” Mother asks.
“Nothing, I…I am sorry.”
“All is well,” Doctor Lobo says in a reassuring tone, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Let’s give her leave to rest now.”
I am reluctant to leave Mother alone, but Doctor Lobo practically drags me out of the room.
“Why is she going back to sleep already?” I ask as we head downstairs. It doesn’t sit right with me that she should go back to sleep so soon. It makes my blood squirm. “What if she doesn’t wake up?”
“She needs rest after waking up from such a deep sleep. Nothing to worry about.”
“How do you know? Are you absolutely certain? Did you check her pupils?”
He laughs. “She can’t stay awake forever. She must sleep.”
In the kitchen, Maria das Dores prepares a cafezinho for the doctor.
Doctor Lobo reassures me repeatedly that Mother is merely resting and will wake up before dinner, that he examined her fully.
He said it will take a few days for her to feel better, and she may have bouts of unease in the meantime.
But he assures me she will not fall back into that terrible deep slumber, and that the pains and ailments she’s experiencing will subside eventually.
I look around the kitchen. Joaquina is nowhere to be seen. The door of the servants’ quarters is ajar. “So Joaquina’s been dismissed?”
He regards me flatly. “Who?”
I blink. Then I remember what he told me last night. I must not acknowledge her, I must not think about her. The mere thought can attract the evil spirits.
I shake my head. “Never mind.” I suppose this means she’s gone. Doctor Lobo did as promised.
What a relief. He solved all of my problems at the same time. The terrible noises I heard…They must have been him purging the dark spirits.
“So you see,” he says, “there is nothing in life a game of truco can’t fix.”
“I don’t have much money, but whatever I have, it will be yours—”
“I did not ask for money. Now”—he pats his vest and puts on his graphite bowler hat—“let’s go for a walk. There is something important we must discuss.”
We stroll in the yard amid the guava trees.
Most are overgrown and cast a blanket of shade over our heads.
We pass the stable on the right, the log warehouse with its slanted shingled roof, and the carpenter’s shed.
Lobo starts speaking only when we reach a safe distance from the house, where there is no risk of anyone overhearing us.
“The night we first met, in the gambling parlor,” he says. “You told me your father passed away. That you’ve never met him.”
This sudden mention of my father catches me by surprise. “Yes, a long time ago.”
“Did he die when your mother was pregnant with you?”
“Yes…”
“In a carriage accident?”
I round to stare at him. I am quite sure I never told him about the carriage accident that killed my father.
“How do you know—”
“Your mother survived,” he repeats, as if reviewing the events in his head. “As did you, a babe in the womb. But your father died that night.”
“What does this have to do with anything?”
“Without him she no longer had a father for her son, or a family who would claim her. Isn’t it so? How did her family take it?”
“Not well. Her family cut ties with her when she decided to keep me against their wishes. They wanted her to give me away, but she refused.”
“So then, without a father to provide support, and now a single mother without her own family or support structure, her life slips into poverty and social isolation.”
He finishes his cigar, lets it drop to the grass, and stomps on it. “Your mother slept for a long time. It is quite a shock to wake up from such a state. It is not uncommon for people to wake up disoriented, confused. Or even…”
“What?”
“With memory loss.”
“Memory loss?”
“It happens not infrequently.”
I think of how her demeanor was different. All the questions she didn’t ask me.
“It seems the carriage accident,” he says, “and subsequent loss of your father caused a rift in your mother’s life, a great trauma that changed the course of her life forever.” He pauses. “It appears she has forgotten all the years since the carriage accident.”
I stare in dismay. “No, that can’t be. That was two decades ago.”
“Maybe not.”
“What do you mean?”
“If the last thing she remembers is the carriage accident, then maybe it wasn’t such a long time ago to her. Maybe in her mind, it was only yesterday.”