Why did you love me so much? Me, the most mischievous of the grandchildren, and the noisiest, and the one who gave you the most trouble? I remember now with remorse the struggle you had to get me in from play every evening and onto my knees, when it was time for the rosary. But here in secret I confess now that it was an hour of sacrifice you made me undergo. Even the rage I felt, when after saying the whole rosary and all the mysteries, my aunts and that hypocrite of a Chiquinha used to remember all our dead relatives and we had to say one more Our Father or Hail Mary for the soul of each and every one! I used to think that my prayers might even be sending souls back to hell, because I was always praying under protest. No one else could have made me do it. But I know, grandma, in spite of everything I did, you felt how fond I was of you and you saw the suffering written on my face when I saw you so sick. And I used to see how happy it made you when I came from school and ran to tell you my marks. Now that I’m unburdening myself here I remember all your tenderness, all your kindness. The thought of the day I compared you to Our Lady comes back to me.
On the anniversary of the Proclamation of the Republic two officials came to grandma’s to ask my aunts for two little girls, to make up the twenty to represent the States. They needed two more for the States of Piauí and Rio Grande do Norte. The girls were to walk in line, dressed in white, with red liberty bonnets on their heads and wide ribbons across their chests with the names of the States on them in gold letters. I followed all my cousins’ preparations with great interest because it seemed to me it was an extremely important occasion. But I got sadder and sadder all the time because they hadn’t even considered me.
The day of the celebration came and my aunts put my cousins up on the table so they could work over them better, arrange the dresses and the bonnets and tie the ribbons. They were both very proud, with everyone admiring them, and they were gloating because I was jealous. Somebody said, “How pretty they look!” Somebody else said, “Aren’t they sweet!” I looked and listened in silence until I felt a lump in my throat and I ran out and threw myself face down on the grass behind the church. I was crying and sobbing when I felt your cane tap my shoulder. I turned over, frightened, because I was so well-hidden and hadn’t expected anyone there. It was you, grandma! You’d been watching me and reading my soul, and you understood what I felt and had followed there in my steps. You’d walked there with the greatest difficulty, holding onto your cane with one hand and the walls with the other. I remember until now the kind words you said to me that day: “Get up, silly! You came here to cry because you’re jealous of those homely little girls, didn’t you?” I didn’t have time to answer, and besides, I already felt comforted, and you went on: “I don’t know why a girl as intelligent as you are doesn’t understand some things. Don’t you see that this holiday is for idiots, and that a girl like you, pretty, intelligent, and of English descent, couldn’t take part in it? It’s silly to celebrate the Proclamation of the Republic. The Republic is something for common people. It doesn’t concern nice people. They know your father’s a monarchist, that he isn’t one of the turncoats, and he wouldn’t let his daughter go out in the streets to play the fool in an idiotic celebration like that. Let the rest of them do it. Don’t be jealous, because you’re better than any of them.”
Oh grandma, you can’t imagine what your words meant to me! You made me get up, took me around by the back door without anyone’s seeing us to wash my face, and you made me laugh and waited until I looked cheerful again, so no one would notice I’d been crying.
That was the day, grandma, I remember I compared you to Our Lady and I thought to myself, “She’s so good and so holy that she can even guess what I suffer, to comfort me.” But now who will ever comfort me? I have my mother and father, my sister and brothers, but none of them can be to me what you were. Why? Because you were more intelligent? Or because you loved me even better than my own parents?
* * *
… Today, Sunday, it’s raining in Boa Vista, and I am thinking notalgically of my First Communion. When all the little girls had studied the catechism a year, Father Neves told us that we were ready for our First Communion, which would take place in a month.
I was in raptures at this news and I told mama to begin to get everything ready immediately: the long white dress, the veil, the wreath and the decorated wax candle.
On the evening of the great day, Father Neves brought all the pupils together in the church, and he went behind the grating of the screen to hear our confessions. The little girls knelt outside, confessing and then going away. My turn came and I knelt down with my list of sins all memorized: Gluttony, Envy, Luxury (the desire for pretty dresses), stealing fruit from my grandmother, gossiping. I told everything and made my act of contrition, but I left the confessional with a small nail in my conscience.
There were lots of ex-slaves at grandma’s who told nursery tales, tales of the spirits of the other world and the sins that had carried them off to purgatory and hell. If one stole an egg, for example, then the egg would turn into a hen, and one would have to spend as many years in purgatory as the hen had feathers. They also believed that it was an unpardonable sin to think that a priest was homely.
I listened to everything attentively and I couldn’t have stolen an egg under any circumstances. But the sin of finding a priest homely haunted me all year long. Every time Father Neves came into church I thought to myself, “Am I really committing a sin? I do think he’s so homely!” I kept trying to put this wicked thought out of my head but it kept coming back again, and even at the end of the catechism class it hadn’t left me.
When I went to confess that day, I reasoned, “No, I haven’t committed a sin because I’ve never told anyone I think Father Neves is homely. It’s better not to think about it any more.”
I left the confessional very penitent but not quite as peaceful and relieved as one should be. I made a retreat all that day with as much contrition as a seven-year-old girl is capable of.
On the next day, the great day, mama woke me up early and helped me get dressed, giving me some last bits of advice on how to make a good communion. When I got to church I found all my playmates already in their places, just waiting for me for the priest to begin the sermon.
To give this sermon, Father Neves had asked an Italian priest, rather fat and red, who knew how to shout and make a big impression on little girls. The priest began:
“My children, this day is the happiest and most important of your lives. You are going to receive the body, blood and soul of Jesus into your hearts. It is an amazing grace, my dears, that God grants you! But to receive it you must be prepared, and contrite, and you mustn’t have concealed any sin whatsoever in the confessional. To hide a sin and then to receive communion is an abomination! I know of many horrible cases, but I am going to tell you just one as an example.
“Once a group of little girls were making their First Communion just the way you are making it today. They received the host and went solemnly back to their places, and at that very moment one of them fell down and died. The priest said to the little girl’s mother, ‘God has taken her to Glory!’ And all the others were envious of their playmate who had died in the grace of God. And then, what do you suppose they saw? The devil dragging the body of the miserable little girl behind the altar. Do you know why? Because she had concealed a sin in the confessional.”