The seamstress by Frances de Pontes Peebles

Author:Frances de Pontes Peebles
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Brazil, Action & Adventure, Orphans, Women dressmakers, General, Romance, Historical, Sisters, Fiction
ISBN: 9780747596868
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 2009-02-02T08:00:00+00:00

2

One month after the contest, the Crisis occurred and Emília’s business plans were stalled. It was a Thursday, the day Dona Dulce set aside to wash linens and air mattresses. The Coelhos’ maids were frantic, stripping sheets from beds and carrying the white bundles downstairs, lifting mattresses and dragging them to the Coelhos’ covered laundry area to be beaten and spritzed with lavender water. From her bedroom, Emília heard the great thwacks of rattan sticks hitting mattress cushions. She heard the washerwoman’s shouts. She took advantage of the commotion and sneaked into the kitchen, where she brewed her special tea and drank until her belly sloshed with liquid. As she took her last gulp, Dona Dulce entered the kitchen. She stared coolly at Emília, then made her way to the laundry area, where she told the maids to stop working.

“Keep quiet,” Dona Dulce ordered. “Dr. Duarte is in a nervous mood.”

Lunch was muted and rushed. Dona Dulce allowed Dr. Duarte to shovel in his food and go to the parlor, to listen to the radio. Degas accompanied his father, leaving Emília alone with Dona Dulce and their dessert—a papaya pudding with blood red crème de cassis swirled on top. Agitated, her mother-in-law also left the table and followed the radio’s static into the parlor. The forgotten helpings of pudding turned warm and runny in their glass bowls. Emília realized that something important and terrible had happened.

The scratchy, faraway radio voices announced that the stock market in the United States had crashed. Dr. Duarte and Degas sat beside the radio all afternoon and into the night. Emília did not understand financial markets. How could things as useful as sugar, coffee, and rubber be valuable one day and worthless the next?

On Friday, the announcers were reluctantly optimistic. All weekend, the Coelhos waited for news. On Monday, papers and radio broadcasts said that markets around the world were crashing in response to the news from New York. They dubbed the day “Black Monday,” and the next was “Black Tuesday,” and afterward the days did not need such labels because all seemed bleak. Recife went into a panic. Businesses shut their doors. The cook complained that the markets had no vendors. Meat became scarce. News announcers said that, in the United States, the crash had led to a depression that would be felt around the world. In Brazil, the economic slump was called “the Crisis,” and in Recife, the Old familes were the first to feel it.

Slowly, sugar-mill owners began to appear at the Coelho house wearing dark mourning suits and carrying sheaves of paper beneath their arms. They were promptly escorted into Dr. Duarte’s office. Some brought their wives with them, as if they were paying a social visit, although Emília had never seen an Old family woman set foot in the Coelho house. Dona Dulce and Emília sat with these black-cloaked women. Emília recognized some from her walks in Derby Square. Most were cordial and smiling. They sipped their coffee and chatted as if they’d been meaning to visit for ages but had never gotten around to it.

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