The Devil on Her Tongue (17 page)

“How is your mother?” he asked.

“She is as before.” I didn’t take the basket, and gave him no invitation to speak further.

“I understand from Father da Chagos your father is no longer on the island.”

I didn’t answer.

“Will you not accept the basket?” he asked. “I only brought it as a further gesture of apology, for your turned ankle.” He leaned forward just the tiniest bit as he spoke, inclining his head as if encouraging me to speak towards his ear. Perhaps he was slightly deaf. Today the smell of incense was stronger, the skin under his eyes darker. He set the basket on the ground between us, then went back to the cart.

“I will return to Madeira on the afternoon boat tomorrow,” he said, climbing in. “May I pay you another visit before I leave?”

“Why?” I asked, frowning.

His throat flexed as he swallowed.

There was no wind, and the sky was blue and clear. Gulls hung low, gliding soundlessly as they watched the water for movement.

“I don’t know what you think of me, Senhor Rivaldo, but I want you to know I am a respectable woman. I thank you for the gift, but to suggest you would wish to come back again is … There is nothing for you here. Nothing. Do you understand?”

His narrow face darkened, and his hands went to his waist in a
practised gesture, as if searching for something that wasn’t there. “I’m sorry, senhorita. I meant no offence.” But his expression didn’t indicate that he was sorry, and his tone verged on anger.

Before he had climbed into the cart, I was inside my hut, the door firmly shut. I set the basket on the table and unpacked it. As well as the food, there was a paper with a verse written in a tight, careful hand:
The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe. Proverbs 18:10
. Underneath it, Senhor Rivaldo had drawn a small circle with rays being emitted from it. Inside the circle was a cross, and the letters
IHS. In the name of the Jesuit Brotherhood
, he had written underneath. I took out a candle; it too was marked with the Jesuit symbol.

My mother got up from her pallet to stare at the symbol. “You see?” she said.

“What?”

“The flaming sun.”

I frowned and turned from her. “Just misplaced religious fervour. It appears he thinks we need saving.”

Late the next day, after the packet had left the wharf, I was washing the stoop of the inn.

I looked up to see Father da Chagos walking purposefully towards me. He held out a square of paper. I dropped my dripping rag and scrambled to my feet, running to him.

“At last,” I said, my eyes filling with tears. I took the paper from him, my hands trembling, and stood in the hot afternoon sunshine as he walked away.

I went into the inn and sat on a bench, pressing the letter from my father to my chest, savouring this moment. My hands shook so badly I tore the thin paper as I broke the wax seal.

Under his signature he had drawn the same Jesuit symbol, and written,
What if some did not have faith? Will their lack of faith nullify God’s faithfulness? Not at all! Romans 3:3–4
.

I dropped the paper. It lay open at my feet, the crabbed copperplate mocking me.

I stepped on it, pushing it back and forth with my foot until it was torn through. Then I picked it up and crumpled it. I took it back outside to the stoop and threw it towards the wharf, as hard and as far as I could, too disappointed and angry to cry.

I
t had been three days since my mother had eaten. I made a rich
fragateria
, filled with pieces of fish, tomato, onion and potato. I sat down at the table across from her and picked up my spoon.

“Mama, why won’t you eat? You keep saying you aren’t ill, and yet you look ill.”

“I am changing into my old form, readying myself. That’s what you’re seeing.”

I put down my spoon. “Readying yourself for what?” I asked, although I knew.

“It’s almost time for me to leave you. It will be a time of great peace for us both.”

“Mama,” I said, swallowing. “Don’t talk like that. And don’t say I will be peaceful when—”

“There’s no reason for fear,” she interrupted. “It’s as the fates determine. It’s as it should be.” She rose then and lay on her bed, smiling at me as though I were a small girl and had done something to please her. “It’s a time for celebration, and for truths,” she said, and then turned on her side. In a few moments she was asleep.

“Mama,” I whispered, and then I put my face into my hands and wept.

The next morning, my mother was awake when I arose and uncovered Zarco and Blanca, and as usual they immediately called joyously
of their love, preening each other’s feathers with enthusiasm. I filled their little bowls with seeds and bits of fruit and fresh water. My mother watched me, sitting on the edge of her pallet. “Is there any honey? I would like a hot drink,” she said.

“Yes, we have honey,” I said, pleased she wanted something.

When I brought her the cup, she said, “Sit beside me.” After she had taken a few sips, she said, “You know how your father came to me from the sea.”

I nodded.

“His hair was dulled by the salt water, but I knew that when it dried it would be as golden as the sand. Like yours.” Her voice was stronger than it had been in some while, and a tiny flush had come to her cheeks and lips. “I touched him with my pole, and he opened his eyes. Do you know what he thought of me, Diamantina?” She smiled.

I shook my head.

“He asked me if he was in Heaven. He thought I was an angel, with a halo of coloured jewels. He thought I was a glorious angel, Diamantina.”

Tears came to my eyes, thinking of that moment, of my father seeing my mother and thinking she was an angel. I remembered what she looked like when she was her old self, her hair thick and so black it shone blue as it swung freely about her. I could see her as clearly as my father must have seen her that morning, with her glittering corona of sea glass. For one moment, she was seen as a beautiful, unearthly angel.

Now she fell silent, staring at the wall behind me.

“Mama?” I said.

She looked back at me, and again smiled. “When Arie knew he was alive, he told me he thanked his God for allowing him to survive his ordeal. But I knew why he had lived, and why he came to me from the sea. I had seen the vision in the candle flame.”

“You saw him in the flame before you found him?”

“No. I saw you, Diamantina. He was brought to me so I could bring you to the world.”

The gulls were screaming over the water and a cool breeze blew
through the open doorway. My mother lay down, and was soon asleep again.

I lay beside her, listening to her soft breathing.

That evening, I was shocked to see that my mother’s feet were badly swollen, her toenails purple.

“Are your feet sore, Mama?” I asked. “Surely they pain you. Let me rub them, or make a cooling poultice.”

“Don’t put me in the earth when I’m dead,” she said. “Put me in the water.”

“Mama,” I said, fighting the ache in my throat. “Please. I don’t want you to talk about—”

“I am a woman of the earth only while my spirit lives. When it leaves my body, I don’t want my shell trapped under the soil. And I don’t want to be burnt, my ashes scattering into the wind.”

I was swallowing and swallowing, trying not to cry. My mother thought tears were of no use. To hide my wet eyes I knelt beside her bed, my hands clasped and my forehead resting on them. And I realized I was praying, which I had never done. I prayed to the Unknown for my mother not to die, not to leave me alone.

She put her fingers on my wrist, and I lifted my head and looked at her. “You will not be alone,” she said, and it didn’t surprise me that she heard my thoughts. “I will always be with you. You and those who come later—your own daughter and her daughter and so on—are tied to me forever. I told you, the night you became a woman, that it is your duty to pass on the power. My job was to protect you until you no longer needed me. You don’t need me any longer, Diamantina. It’s your time now.”

My face was wet. “Time for what?”

“Your life will truly begin when you follow the flaming sun,” she whispered. “As I followed the moon to my destiny, you must follow that sun to yours.” She stared into my eyes with a look that was frightening in its intensity. “I have held you here long enough, Diamantina. When I am gone, you must leave Porto Santo.”

I wiped my cheeks with my palms. “I’ll go to Brazil, and find
Vader
.”

“Maybe Arie could have given you a better life than what you had here. I know what you have sacrificed in order to care for me. I know what you’ve given of yourself.”

“I chose to stay with you, Mama.
Vader
gave me the choice, and I stayed.”

“It wasn’t right of him, or of me, to make you choose. I have suffered guilt over this ever since he left. As I know he suffered for leaving you.” She was so fragile now, and so agitated. “But I saw that he needed to go. We’d grown bitter with each other. It wasn’t his fault. He knew that I was so firmly rooted that to tear me away would cause me to wither and die. In the same way, I knew that Arie trying to root himself here was causing his own slow death.”

She lifted her hand from my wrist, and her fingers trembled in the air. I put my own around them.

“I loved you too much,” she said then, and I held my breath. “My love kept you from a better life. I shouldn’t have loved you so much.” The only time I’d seen her cry was the day my father left us, but she was crying now.

Why could she not have shared these thoughts and feelings with me earlier? For these last years, I had seen a sadness, or perhaps longing, on my mother’s face. I thought she longed for my father, or for her past. I thought I couldn’t make her happy.

“I couldn’t show my love for you because too much love makes a person soft,” she said, again answering my unspoken question. “I knew you would need strength for what lay ahead. I had to keep you strong.”

I carefully rested my head on her chest. I heard the steady beat of her heart, but also a murmuring as though something else lived under her rib cage. She rested one hand on my hair.

“There is one more thing you must know,” she said. “It is important you speak my true name when you put me in the sea, so that those who wait for me will know it is I, coming back to them.”

I lifted my head and looked at her. I thought of my father’s long-ago disclosure that my mother’s name was not truly Estra.