Wild and Distant Seas by Tara Karr Roberts

Author:Tara Karr Roberts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2024-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

how was i to know what would surely happen? My education had been not merely limited but deliberately so, under the direction of women who loved me but knew no other way, who either believed I was innocent or feared they would destroy my innocence if they told me the truth. But perhaps I should have known; perhaps I did know. For all my flawless recollection of conversations and faces and stories, my memories are shaped by the person I was when they occurred; when I think of those days I cannot separate the joy I experienced from the lies I must have believed to make it feel so real. I loved Jonas, worshipped him, and he me. We were holy. Naked in the shadows, sweating in the afternoon heat that had no way to escape our tiny room, I asked when we would marry, and he promised to write to the bishop that night, explain everything, leave the path to the priesthood, cleave to me. We would live in the village and continue to care for the recolhimento and Father Matheus. When those duties ended, we could go wherever we wanted. Neither of us had seen a city other than the ones in which we were born. I felt I no longer needed my lost city or anything that had been in it; I had detached myself from my past. I would go where Jonas went. Soon, soon, the whole ripe world would be ours.

When the rains came, Dorotéia insisted Jonas take a break from his work at the recolhimento, and often the road was muddy and impassable, besides. I told the sisters I was studying but spent hours in bed, my body aching from what I thought was his absence. I lost interest in food, able to stomach little more than the tapioca pancakes I had once despised. I had read of women grown weak with love, and I told myself it must be this.

One morning as I lay in my bed, under a blanket despite the warmth of the day, my legs tucked to my chest and my hands pressed over my eyes, I heard Otávia come in from feeding the chickens. I could feel her presence as she stood above me. We had not talked beyond necessity in so long, and I felt sure she was about to laugh at me, to gloat at my pain and her strength, as she sometimes had when we were small.

Instead she stroked my forehead with her dry hand. “You little fool,” she said.

“Something is wrong,” I said. “I have a fever.”

“You’re cool as ever,” she said. “Only more stupid than usual.”

I wanted to sit up, to yell at her, to strike her, but any movement caused waves of pain from my churning stomach. I curled my body tighter. She sat beside me, her hand still on my forehead.

“When was your last blood?” she asked. “Two months?”

I could not remember.

I started to cry. “Am I dying?”

“Maré, Maré,” she said, her voice the singsong she used when telling stories.

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