Serafina steeled herself against the screeching as she strode down the corridor of the maternity ward. Only one woman would make such a racket. Serafina clenched her jaw and took a fortifying breath as she crossed the threshold into her daughter-in-law’s room. Aside from bigotry, nothing grated on Serafina’s nerves more than weakness. Her son’s wife had enough of both to fill the jagged inlet of Tainheiros twice over.
“Mamãe, please, make it stop,” Cesaria cried, grabbing at her mother’s arm.
What a joke. Jurema da Silva couldn’t help a lazy cat sleep let alone ease her daughter’s pain. The cultured matron had a stick so far up her ass it should have jutted from her pursed, thin-lipped mouth. All she could do was spit venom at anyone she deemed beneath her—in this case, a wizened Afro-Brazilian nurse.
“Idiota. Get her some drugs. Can you not see my daughter is in pain?”
The nurse stumbled away from Jurema and into Serafina.
“Steady, auntie,” Serafina whispered, affording the old woman the endearment to counter Jurema’s disrespect. “She’s nothing but a queen in the belly, full of hot air and her own self-importance. You are a nurse. Act like one.”
The nurse pulled herself together, like a bag of sticks assembling itself into a rod—a very short rod—and turned on Jurema. “I’ll get the doctor,” she said, with fragile authority. “He will tell you what is best.”
“Come back here, you insolent twit,” Jurema said, grabbing for the nurse’s scrubs and seizing a handful of Serafina’s breast instead. She recoiled in disgust. “Put those nasty things away, Serafina. No one here wants to see your ugly flesh.”
“Oh?” Serafina crossed her arms and shoved her offending breasts higher from her already low neckline. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Your husband always takes a good, long look.”
Jurema planted her fist on the pudgy ledge of her hip and arched her back to present her own sizable assets. “I doubt that very much.”
“Why? Because of those saggy things?”
Carlinhos rushed into the room before Jurema could take the bait and slap Serafina with the hand she had raised. Too bad. Serafina would have enjoyed planting the pompous woman on her fat ass.
“You came,” Carlinhos said, rising on his toes to blow a kiss next to her cheek.
Serafina returned the air kiss but kept her eyes focused on Jurema. “How not? You’re about to become a father. That is, if your wife can manage to deliver the baby.”
Carlinhos held out a calming hand to his mother-in-law before she could object. Even at twenty years of age and hours from becoming a father, Carlinhos feared confrontation. Soon life would teach him that parenthood was constant confrontation—an endless battle to protect and control, and one he was ill-equipped to win.
“My wife is suffering,” he said. “Can you help her?”
Serafina softened, not because Cesaria was in pain but because, in spite of his playacting at manhood, Carlinhos still needed her.
Jurema huffed. “I forbid it.”
“And what, exactly, do you forbid?” Serafina asked.
“Whatever slave nonsense you call magic. My daughter needs modern medicine and a reputable professional. Not a licentious charlatan.”
Carlinhos gasped. “She didn’t mean it, Mãe.” He turned to his mother-in-law. “Tell her you didn’t mean it.”
Jurema flicked her painted nails and returned to Cesaria, who had begun her next contraction. Carlinhos grabbed Serafina’s arms and rubbed them as though he could wipe away the offense.
“Stop petting me, Carlinhos. I’m not a dog. Or your wife.”
The hurt in his eyes almost made her take it back. Almost. Whether he liked it or not, his wife, like her mother, was a bitch—pedigree perhaps, but still a bitch.
Cesaria hollered, sending Jurema into a flab-jiggling frenzy of ineffectual motion.
Serafina shook her head and groaned. “Enough. I can stop the pain. I can even make the child come sooner if you just stop that incessant screeching.” She uncrossed her arms to show the light palms of her dark hands. “All you have to do, Jurema, is ask.”
Cesaria whimpered gratefully, but Jurema was unmoved. She held her daughter’s hand and jerked her head toward Carlinhos. “You have been soiled enough by this one. I won’t have his mother soiling you as well.”
Before Serafina could rip the lips from the nasty woman’s face, the doctor approached—dignified and fair-skinned—trailed by the tiny Afro-Brazilian nurse.
Serafina stepped back and bowed. “Your doctor has arrived.” Then she swept her golden skirt and strode from the room. She was half way down the corridor before Carlinhos caught up with her.
“Por favor, Mamãe, please don’t leave. I’m so worried. Cesaria isn’t strong like you. She’s…”
“Weak?”
“I was going to say delicate.”
“Of course you were. Because you don’t deal with things as they are. You never have.”
His eyes filled with fear as if he were five years-old again, crying in the garbage heap after getting his ass kicked by the favela boys.
Serafina sighed, her tough heart melting, as it always did when it came to him. “Is there a lounge?”
Relief spread across Carlinhos’ face. “I’ll show you.”
The waiting area was empty except for Carlinhos’ father-in-law, who sat with his legs crossed at the knee, reading a magazine. Guilherme da Silva represented everything Serafina hated: old money, inherited privilege, and a Portuguese-Brazilian ancestry that traced back to the first plantation owners. She wouldn’t have been surprised if his ancestors had owned hers.
Guilherme looked up from his magazine and nodded politely. “Serafina.”
“Guilherme.”
“So, Carlinhos, how is she?”
“Having a hard time of it.”
Guilherme shrugged. “It is this way with some women. Is that not so, Serafina?”
She smiled, cruelly. “Some more than others.”
Cesaria’s screech interrupted his response and caused Guilherme to cringe as if hearing something distasteful and embarrassing—which, in his social circles, perhaps it was.
A few seconds later, an orderly rolled Cesaria down the corridor on a gurney, led by the fair-haired doctor and his wizened nurse and trailed closely behind by the near hysterical Jurema.
“Are you sure this is necessary? I had hard deliveries, and they never needed to cut me open.”
“Wait in the lounge,” the doctor said, and hurried away to the operating room.
Carlinhos went to Jurema. “What’s happening, Mãe?”
Serafina cringed to hear him carelessly bestow the title she had sacrificed so much to earn, especially when Carlinhos’ wife did not do the same for her. Not only did the entitled bitch not call Serafina ‘Mãe,’ she wouldn’t even address her as Senhora Olegario. Serafina said nothing. She was a woman of action, not complaint. When the time was right, she would make both mother and daughter pay.
Jurema passed Carlinhos without comment and threw herself into Guilherme’s reluctant arms.
“Come now,” he said, clearly uncomfortable with the public display. “She’s not the first woman to need a Cesarean section. The doctor said she would be fine, and so she will.”
Having said his piece on the matter, Guilherme returned to his chair and patted the seat beside him. “Sit. Pull yourself together.”
Serafina shook her head in disgust as Jurema did as she was told. Guilherme had all the power. Without him, Jurema was nothing.
“Will Cesaria truly be okay?” Carlinhos whispered in Serafina’s ear.
“I don’t know, meu amor. I have no knowledge of this operation. Although I doubt it would have been necessary if your mother-in-law had let me treat your wife.”
Her words stung him deeply, but she was too angry to take them back. Carlinhos had been her whole life, her one true love. To have him toss her aside in favor of a whining debutante and her haughty family galled Serafina more than she could bear.
And now, there would be a child.
Serafina turned away from Carlinhos so he wouldn’t see the anger in her eyes—not directed at him but at the bad luck that had ruined his future.
How could she have let this happen? Why hadn’t she forced him to give Cesaria the potion? Or better yet, dropped it in Cesaria’s coffee, herself? After so many years of planning and sacrifice, she should never have let Carlinhos slip so far from her control.
Serafina closed her eyes and sighed. If not for the pregnancy, she could have pulled him away from Cesaria and steered him back on course to become an educated, powerful man. So many dreams. And none of them would come true.
An hour later, when the doctor returned, he shared the happy news—not that Cesaria had died giving birth to a still born baby as Serafina had spent the time wishing—that she had born a healthy baby girl.
Jurema hugged Guilherme. “Did you hear that? Adriana has arrived.”
“Who?” Carlinhos asked.
And just like that, his fatherhood was usurped.