Dona raised her hand, shading her eyes from the piercing sun, and stared at the rows of corn straight ahead. Marcelo had told her he wouldn’t go to the far field today, so he must be in the closer one, beyond the fence line, beyond the lonely cow that swished her tail as she slowly chewed the tangled weeds. The wind, those dry summer gusts that kicked up the dirt and provoked the leaves overhead, blew her hair away from her face. Squinting, she tried to focus as her eyes traveled toward Mr. Queiroz’s house. Her husband called him “Boss.” Dona called him “Mr. Queiroz.” She patted her bulging belly, felt the squirm of the new life that was growing as fast as a pumpkin sprout inside her, and smiled.
Mariana, the usually sunny girl, the child whose smile could melt any heart, called from inside the house. She sounded hoarse. Or mad. “Mama’s out here,” Dona called back. Her daughter began to cry. She was cranky today. “I’m on the porch,” Dona said over her shoulder.
The screen door squealed open and then slammed shut. Mariana, her hair the darkest mahogany, dragged a ragged green blanket across the concrete and grabbed her mother’s leg. Her diaper drooped to her knees, her tummy was bare. When she released the blanket, it puddled over her feet. She stretched her fingers toward the sky and cried, “Mama.”
The sun had worked its way down to the tops of the mimosa trees along the road. The shafts of early evening light glittered through their branches, then shot like darts between the roof slats over the porch. Dona let out a faint groan as she lifted her daughter to her hip. She combed her fingers through Mariana’s snarled hair and kissed her cheek. It was flushed and warm. Her eyes were still a little gooey, and the white parts still poppy pink. They were better, though, than yesterday. Or the day before that.
Dona spotted movement out beyond the fence. He was coming closer. “Marcelo,” she called. “Dinner.” She opened the screen door and, carrying Mariana, headed to the kitchen.
Dona was eager to eat, to bathe Mariana and put her to bed. The baby inside her would come in about three months and, by the end of every day, Dona was exhausted. The evening heat cramped her muscles, the dusty air clogged her nose. She stirred a pinch of salt into the stew of potatoes, beans, and pieces of chicken, carried the pot to the table, and set it on a potholder over the hole in the tablecloth. The painted roses on the plastic cloth, once ruby red, now looked like overripe mangoes, and the edge nearest the refrigerator had been chewed by a mouse. Someday she would have a proper lace tablecloth, and an oak dining table with six matching chairs, and real china rather than her tomato-stained plastic plates. She glanced around the dreary kitchen. She’d have a broad window beside the stove; a closet for her broom, mop, and bucket; and a toaster, so she wouldn’t have to singe the bread over the gas flame.
She heard the clunk of Marcelo’s boots on the porch. Inside, he yanked his cap off his head and tossed it at the hook beside the kitchen door. As always, it caught. His belt buckle clinked against the front of the sink while he washed his hands. He soaped them three times. Then he pulled the brush from the cupboard and scrubbed his knuckles and under his nails. One of the many things she loved about him was his cleanliness.
Mariana wouldn’t sit on her seat in the empty chair. She kept crawling down to the floor, and Marcelo kept setting her back up on the cooking oil box that they called her throne. “Eat your dinner, little princess,” he said. “The stew will make you grow up to be a beautiful lady, just like your mama.” The girl whined and then threw her spoon across the table. It bounced off the chipped pitcher half full of milk from their cows and landed on the floor with a dull clank.
“That’s enough, Mariana,” Dona yelled. What was wrong with her daughter? She thought it must be the red eye. Mariana scrambled down to the floor once more, crawled up on her mother’s lap, and sobbed into Dona’s neck.
Dona looked into her husband’s weary eyes as she slowly rubbed Mariana’s back. “I don’t know what’s gotten into her.”
“She’s acting like a royal monster.” Marcelo shook his head and shoved another spoonful of stew into his mouth.
Dona’s hand ran up and down Mariana’s spine. “She’s hot. Feels like she has a fever.”
“A bath and a bit of aspirin will fix her right up.”
“I hope so.”
Mariana didn’t want to sit in the bath basin, either. She climbed out once, twice, three times, splattering water and suds all over the kitchen counter. Dona tried to comb the kinks from her daughter’s hair, but the child screamed and swatted at the comb. “What on earth does she want?” Dona asked her husband. Finally, she wrapped the slippery child in a towel and handed her to Marcelo. “Here, you deal with her while I get the aspirin.”
Dona tipped one tablet from the pill bottle, smashed it between two teaspoons, and mixed a quarter of the powder with a bit of strawberry jelly. Then, while Mariana squirmed on her father’s lap, Dona pinched her daughter’s nose shut, murmuring, “Here, sweetheart. A sweet for a sweetheart.” When the child opened her mouth to breath, Dona dropped the jelly and aspirin onto Mariana’s tongue. She clamped her daughter’s jaws shut with one hand and stroked her throat with the other. “There you go, little one. That medicine will help you feel better.” Marcelo loosened his grip on Mariana, and she thrashed against his arms. He held her tight again.
Marcelo carried Mariana to her room. Earlier that week they had moved her crib to the storeroom that was now her bedroom. They wanted her to get used to the different sleeping arrangement before the new baby arrived. Their daughter had accepted the move much better than they expected.
Now he laid Mariana across his knees, pinned a clean diaper on her, and slid her arms and legs into her pajamas. He considered her fresh smell, the velvet of her skin, her baby voice when she called him “papa” to be miracles. He laid her in the crib, sat on a box beside it, and began to sing a song his mother used to sing to him.
“Sleep, baby
“At grandpa’s house.
“Grandpa doesn’t have a mattress …”
He patted Mariana’s head as he sang until she finally drifted off.
When he returned to the kitchen, Dona was scouring the stew pot. He kissed the soft, moist skin along the neckline of her shirt.
She turned to him and said, “That was quite a tantrum. Soon she’ll be a big sister. I wonder how she’ll handle that?”
“She’ll play mother from morning to night. And you, my dear, will teach her to be a wonderful, loving sister.”
At the crow of the rooster, Dona woke up. The sun had barely cleared the horizon. She listened to the wind against the bedroom window and to Marcelo’s soft snoring beside her. Then she heard another sound. A muffled murmur. Sounded like an animal. Had one of the dogs outside gotten hurt? She turned her head on the pillow and heard it again. “Marcelo,” she said, jabbing his back with her elbow. “I hear something. Maybe one of the dogs.”
He rolled over, then sat up. “What the hell …” He shook his head as he padded out the bedroom door.
Dona, too, climbed out of bed. She glanced to the corner of the room, to the place where Mariana’s crib stood before they moved it to the storeroom.
Marcelo wandered around the yard, calling for the dogs. In the kitchen Dona again heard the sound, now a kind of whimper. As she entered the storeroom, the strange noise grew louder.
“Marcelo,” she screamed. “Come here.” Mariana lay in her crib with her limbs splayed like a frog, her face white as cream. Her breaths spurted out in little bubbly moans. “Marcelo,” Dona screamed again. She lifted Mariana, cradled her daughter’s limp, hot body in her arms, and ran back to the kitchen.
Her husband dashed through the back door. Dona sobbed, “Mariana … something’s terribly wrong.”
He ran his calloused hand over his daughter’s fiery head. “We’re going to the clinic.”
Dona, carrying Mariana, climbed into the front seat while Marcelo tried to start the car. She fingered the cross that hung on a chain around her neck—an anniversary gift from her husband—and prayed. For the engine to catch. For Mariana to be okay. She unsnapped her daughter’s pajama tops to scatter the heat. Purple patches, each about the size of a 100 centavos coin, dotted her chest. “Make it go, Marcelo,” she cried. “Now she has a rash. A bad rash.” He turned the key one more time and, finally, the motor jumped to life, and the car barreled down the rut-filled road.
The car jerked to a stop, and they raced across the dusty parking lot and through the door marked “Emergency.” Marcelo nearly ran into a nurse whose arms were loaded with clean linen. “Help us. Our little girl is very sick,” he said.
The nurse handed the linen to Marcelo, took Mariana from Dona, carried her into a white-walled room that smelled of rubbing alcohol, and laid her on a narrow bed. “Please wait in the hallway,” she said to Dona and Marcelo.
“I’m not leaving her,” Dona sobbed.
“I’m sorry, you’ll have to wait outside while we do our work.” The nurse pulled off Mariana’s pajamas. “We’ll get you when we are ready.”
“Where’s the doctor?” Dona yelled.
“Dr. Alancar will be here shortly.” She slapped the head of a stethoscope on Mariana’s chest, set the earpieces in her ears, and began counting.
“Where is he?” Dona yelled again.
“Please wait outside.” The nurse wrapped the blood pressure cuff around Mariana’s arm and pressed the air bladder, over and over, in a clock-like rhythm.
Marcelo pulled at Dona’s elbow and led her out the door. “Come,” he said, “we need to let the nurse take care of Mariana.”
They sat in the wire chairs across the hallway from the treatment room. The bulb in the ceiling light overhead was burned out and the one further down flickered. “It’s so dark in here,” Dona said. “And cold.” Why was she so cold, she wondered? It was summer.
A gray-haired man, the tails of his white coat flapping as he ran, dashed past them with a quick nod and into the treatment room.
“That must be him. The doctor,” Marcelo said.
Dona nodded and tugged at her pendant, the cross of St. Anthony. Because of that saint’s blessing, theirs was a happy marriage. “Please, Holy Father, take care of Mariana and make her better,” she whispered.
They listened for sounds from behind the door. Something rattled. Then quiet. A voice muttered, but they couldn’t tell what it said. Then another voice, this one pitched higher.
“That must be the nurse,” Marcelo said.
“Yes,” Dona said. She sobbed into her handkerchief. “I don’t hear Mariana.”
It sounded as if something fell on the floor. The hallway grew dimmer.
Finally, the door opened. Marcelo sprang to his feet. Dona, unable to breathe, grabbed his arm.
“I’m Dr. Alancar,” said the slightly hunched man with ruminating eyes. He was wringing his hands. He cleared his throat. “I have sad news.” He took a deep breath. “Unfortunately, we were unable to save your little girl. She has died.”