PART II

1956

February 20, Monday

The Mendes Mercadinho has almost anything you could want. The shop has hardware, farm tools and animal medicine, dishes and pots and pans, fabric and laces and thread, vegetables and fruits and food in tins. And my sweets and savory salgados. I bake new items for Senhor Mendes every other day. They sell out the first day but I don’t have time to bake more often.

The shop faces the main square of Picuí, and this morning the only light in the shop is filtering in from the praça. Antônio Mendes is tight with money, and if he can see well enough to count it he doesn’t need electricity. The light is dancing with fine dust as I enter the shop.

“Seu Antônio, bom dia!”

“Bom dia, Eva, all good with you?”

“Yes, thank you, Seu Antônio. I have fresh sweets and salgados for you.”

“It’s a good thing, because they fly out of the shop. For the last batch, do you want cash?”

“Thank you, but this time I’d like to use store credit. I’m ready to make myself a new dress, and I have my eye on that flowered fabric up there.”

He looks up at the top shelf of the fabric section.

“You have very good taste as always, Eva. That is my most expensive bolt, viscose imported from Italy.”

“I love the way it drapes, and I have just the style to set it off. Two meters please.”

Senhor Mendes takes my tray and hands me back the empty one. He moves the ladder so he can reach the bolt of fabric. He carefully measures and cuts, then calculates the amount on a scrap of wrapping paper and I add enough cash to cover the cost.

“So you are the angel who makes those sweets!”

A deep voice like a panther purring. A man in the shadows where I can’t see him well, leaning with one elbow on the counter in the hardware area. I didn’t notice him when I came in. Senhor Mendes looks over at him.

“What can I help you with, Luiz?”

“Electrical supplies, as usual. But go ahead and help the young lady, I have a long list.”

Senhor Mendes wraps my fabric carefully in paper. I put the package on top of my tray and thank him, then walk out squinting into the sunlight. A shadow blocks the sun and I look up. The man is tall. I cover my eyes with my hand.

“I’m not usually one for sweets, but I can’t get enough of those cocadas. The coconut just melts in your mouth.”

His voice is like warm molasses in my ears. He turns to face the sun and I turn to look at him. He’s young, but his black hair is already going silver. His dark eyes crinkle like a smile, but his mouth is serious, like someone who is keeping a secret.

“Excuse me, Sir, I cannot talk with you in the street like this. We have not been properly introduced.”

He laughs delightedly. “Goodness, where are my manners! Luiz Carlos Caetano Lima; it’s a pleasure to meet you.” He bows his head slightly.

I just stand there staring at him. Thinking.

“And you, Madame, are . . .?”

“Eva.”

“Eva who?”

“Just Eva. I have to go.” I turn and head toward home, stumbling a little on the cobblestones. He calls after me.

“I hope to see you again soon, Eva! A good afternoon to you!”

My face is hot. As my feet hit the soft dust of the small streets closer to home my thighs start to tingle and zing up through my tummy. I have to stop and lean on a wall to catch my breath. I wait there for a few minutes, clutching my package to my chest. After a long while my breathing slows and I put one foot in front of the other, making my way home.

“Eva, is that you?” Madrasta calls from her bedroom in the newest part of the house.

“Yes, Senhora.” I put down my package and tray in the kitchen.

“I got my hands full here, come help me!”

The addition to the house added four bedrooms, very important because the house was bursting at the seams with fourteen of us now. Madrasta is giving mamar to Deborah, who is almost a year old, and Mordecai, two, obviously has a dirty diaper and is lurching around and giggling as he upends things around the room. I scoop him up and change his diaper as he protests.

“What took you so long?”

“Senhora, I wasn’t gone that long. I bought some fabric to make a dress, I’ve been looking at it a while and I wanted to get it before someone else bought it.”

“Well, I guess you can buy what you want with the money you make from baking. But I don’t know why you need a fancy dress.”

“Who said it will be fancy?”

“I know your taste, you’d think you lived in Paris.”

“I’d love to live in Paris!”

“Yeah, you think it’s funny. But you need to be more realistic about your future.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ana is married already, but you are eighteen years old. You can read and write, but just barely. You will live here with us and help with the kids, but your chances of getting married are slim to none at your age. Besides, as the oldest girl you have to take care of us when we are old.”

I turn and look at her, and let Mordecai slide down my legs and run off.

“How can you know what God has planned for me?”

She gives me an exasperated look. “Eva, I’m sorry, but you know you won’t be allowed to marry outside the church. And the only place you would meet a suitor is at church. And there is no one your age who isn’t already spoken for.”

“Very well, Senhora. I will keep that in mind. Thank you.” I head to the old part of the house, where I share a bedroom with the two other girls, Miriam, who is nine, and Raquel, six.

Just because Madrasta got married at fifteen doesn’t mean it is the right thing to do. I was very unhappy to see Ana get married this year, though she waited until she was sixteen. She is very smart and could have gone on in school but she fell for a boy in church and that was the end of that.