The Devil on Her Tongue Read online

  In a whisper of cloth, Sister Amélia was gone.

  I stood looking around me after she left, the bucket and mop at my feet. Ignoring the woman kneeling in prayer, I walked around the church, staring at the ceiling, which I now knew symbolized charity. The floor, Sister Amélia had said, represented the foundation of faith and the humility of the poor. I ran my hands over the columns, representing the Apostles. I studied the saints, imagining them whispering to each other from their niches in the empty church as I whispered to my absent father on the beach or on the cliffs.

  I was happy to be surrounded by such beauty, and as I mopped and polished I hummed my father’s sailing tunes under my breath.

  When I came into the kitchen a few days later, it was empty, and the fire out. I quietly called Sister Amélia’s name, and at her murmur, I went to the doorway beside the fireplace. Her room was tiny and steamy, little more than a closet, with a slit of a window covered with a wooden grille. Sister Amélia was curled on her side on a pallet on the floor. A large, rough wooden cross hung on the whitewashed wall over her.

  “Are you ill, Sister?”

  She slowly sat up. She wore a plain white dress with long sleeves and a high neckline. Her head was still covered by the white cap, but without the black veil. Her dark eyes glistened, perhaps from sadness or perhaps because they weren’t shadowed by the veil. By the way the wimple fit snugly on her head, I could tell that her hair was cut short; only a few dark wisps showed at the hairline. Her heavy crucifix hung on her chest, and I tried not to stare at the high mound of her breasts, which were unnoticeable under her robe. I hadn’t really thought of her as a woman before, with a woman’s body and a woman’s miseries.

  “Is it your monthly time?” I asked. “I can run home and bring you back some dried chasteberries. They will ease your cramping.”

  “No. It’s not that. I have a melancholia that comes some days. It will pass. It always does.” She tilted her head. “Why do you stare so, Diamantina?”

  I smiled at her, wanting to heal her, to make her feel better. “You’re pretty, Sister Amélia,” I said.

  She frowned as if my compliment had upset her further instead of pleasing her. “You mustn’t say that. I must not know any pride.” She rose and smoothed down the white dress.

  “Where is your habit?”

  “This is my sleeping gown.”

  “Are sleeping gowns only for nuns?”

  “No.”

  It struck me as strange that someone would wear different clothing to sleep. “Does Father da Chagos wear a different gown for sleeping?” I asked.

  Sister Amélia’s cheeks coloured. “Really, Diamantina. That is an unspiritual thought.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, but not sorry about my unspiritual thoughts about the fat priest. I was sorry for Sister Amélia’s state of mind.

  “Please go to the kitchen and start preparing the fish you’ll find in the basket by the door,” she said, “while I rouse myself from my bout of self-pity. And later we’ll make banana flan. It’s Father da Chagos’s favourite.”

  As I turned, she added, “Take a banana for yourself before you start.” I smiled at her again, grateful for her kindness.

  When she came out a few minutes later, dressed in her habit, I said, “I delivered a baby to Ana de Mendonça yesterday.” I wanted to cheer Sister Amélia with an interesting story. “It was an easy birth—her ninth, so the little girl almost slid out. She’s a sweet baby, pink and healthy. Ana thanked God that she didn’t have the split upper lip, like two of her others.” Again I smiled at Sister Amélia as I filleted the long black scabbardfish, but she was silent, her lips trembling.

  I had said the wrong thing. “I’m sorry, Sister Amélia. I shouldn’t have spoken.”

  She took a deep breath and her lips grew firm. “No,” she said, swallowing and then briskly rubbing her eyes, as if annoyed by her own tears. “I must be thankful for the path God has chosen for me. There are two paths for a woman: wife or nun. I am a nun.”

  I was silent for a moment. “I will never be a wife either, Sister Amélia.”

  She frowned. “Why not?”

  “Who would marry me? I’m an outcast, looked down on as my mother is.”

  “But … Father da Chagos said your mother was a healer. And that you carry on her role.”

  “Teresa Trovão is the island’s curandeira. We perform the same duties as her, but we’re called witches, because we’re heathen.”

  She shook her head and made a sound with her lips. “People are afraid of what they don’t understand. You strike me as a clever and resourceful girl,” she said. This was the first compliment I had heard since my father had left, and it filled me with a soaring pride. “I’m sure your future will unfold in ways you never imagined.” She put her head to one side. “It appears to me that a young woman like you will not be without a man.”

  I wasn’t sure how she meant this. The glow I felt from her earlier comment faded.

  The few réis Father da Chagos gave me every week were enough to survive on. I always looked into the shops as I walked home, imagining the pleasure of cloth for a new skirt or blouse, or a new book, or even the smallest of sugar loaves, but I had no means for anything more.

  I came to clean early on Mondays, before Mass, so later I could listen to the service at the opening in the carved doors. I also peeked at the congregation in the pale light falling through the windows, at the altar boys with their candles, and at the pious saints in their niches, looking down on the kneeling figures. I breathed in the fragrance of the incense from the censer and waited for the chime of the Sanctus bell. From my position I couldn’t see Father da Chagos, but I felt as though the Latin words intoned by him were like my mother’s magical incantations. As I’d memorized hers, I memorized what the small congregation repeated after him. I wondered if the words themselves contained some healing power, something to help the women who wept as they prayed, poor things.

  Sister Amélia and I slowly learned about each other. She had never seen my father, but she knew of his work on the bells. I told her about his leaving, and about the life my mother and I now lived.

  She had come from the convent of Catarina of the Cross in Funchal Town, and was a discalced Carmelite, meaning she was barefoot; part of the penance of her order was to be unshod. The Carmelites, she said, were enclosed nuns, freed of all attachments by separation from the world. “My order dictates that we do not see anyone from the outside world, and speak only for specific purposes. That’s why I can’t be seen by anyone, or have any communication, apart from Father da Chagos. And he only speaks to me once a day, to give me instruction. I’m not allowed to speak to him, except when he hears my confession.”

  She was beating eggs, her habit tied out of the way by a piece of twine. I tried to imagine never seeing or speaking to anyone. I said, after a moment, my hands in a tub of water as I scrubbed the dirt off whiskery carrots, “But you can see and speak to me.”

  She looked at me for a long moment. “It’s because … Father da Chagos thought … as you are …”

  “An unholy bastard?” I offered helpfully.

  Her face flushed. “It’s very sad that you’re not a child of God. But I sense that Father da Chagos, in spite of his gruff demeanour, has allowed you in the kitchen to help me as well as you.” She stopped beating and took a deep breath. “I miss the cloisters in Funchal,” she said, “and the other Sisters. Once a year I was allowed to see my family through the grille.” She stared down at the eggs. “But I will never see them again. I have been affected by sadness, and my work suffers. I think the Father saw your presence as a way to … to perhaps encourage me. To remind me of my purpose.”

  The carrots were clean, but I kept my hands in the cool water. I tried to think of a potion my mother used to treat melancholia. “Why are you here, if you were expected to remain cloistered for life?”

  “I was sent to Porto Santo as punishment.” She set aside the bowl and untied the twine fr
om her waist. As had become her custom, she put a few pastels de nata in the charity basket she gave me each week. They were special convent pastries, filled with heavy cream, sugar and egg yolks, with more sugar caramelized on top. She had told me the pastries originated when nuns searched for a way to make use of all the egg yolks left after the whites were used to starch their wimples. I could smell the warm, fragrant pastry with its rich filling. The tarts were kept only for Father da Chagos and any special guests he might have—definitely not for the charity baskets. She also put a few altar candles in the basket today. From the furtive way she always hid the small extras, I knew she did not want the priest to find out.

  “What did you do?” I thought of broken plates and burned bread, perhaps falling asleep during prayers.

  “I used to have a daily struggle with obedience and humility. I found it difficult not to question,” she replied, still looking down into the basket. “Perhaps in that way—needing to question what we hear, and see—we are a little alike, Diamantina.” She finally looked up at me. “I tried to help a novice escape from the convent to run away to the man she loved.”

  I didn’t move.

  “I knew what she felt like. I wasn’t brave enough to do it myself, but I helped her. She was caught, as was I.”

  “You were in love with someone?”

  She waited a moment before speaking. “I was much younger when I imagined myself in love. I didn’t fully understand what was best for me. I wasn’t able to see the dangers, and wasn’t ready, then, to accept the path God had chosen for me.”

  “And now you do?”

  “And now I do,” she said firmly, once more busying herself with arranging the contents of the basket. “And I will be here, serving out my penance, for the rest of my life.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Marco Perez died just after harvest that year.

  It was said that Abílio had witnessed his father falling from his boat and cracking open his head on a rock. Few cared for Marco while he was alive, and even fewer mourned his death. I watched from under a dragon tree as his coffin was taken from the church to the graveyard. Abílio and his uncle, Marco’s brother Rodrigo, walked behind the coffin, and I followed the handful of mourners. I had never been told I wasn’t allowed in the graveyard.

  On my way to work at the church the next day, I saw Abílio sitting on the bench outside his hut. He just sat with his hands on his knees. I had rarely seen him so still. He looked up at me as I passed, and I went to him. “I’m sorry about your father,” I said.

  He made a sound in his throat. “Are you really?”

  I swallowed.

  “I’m not. I should have …” He stopped, and lifted his hand to push his hair from his forehead, and I saw that all his knuckles were bruised and scabbed. I had a vision of Abílio refusing to take any more of his father’s beatings.

  “You should have what?” I asked. No. He couldn’t have killed him, no matter what misery his father had brought upon him.

  “He should have died a long time ago,” Abílio said. “And I should have left a long time ago, like my brothers. But I couldn’t leave my mother.” He stood, and his jaw clenched. “Not that it did any good. I wasn’t able to help her.” He turned from me. “I’m not like him, Diamantina. And I’m not like my brothers, willing to take whatever work they can just to feed themselves.”

  “Where are your brothers?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. We never heard from them after they left.”

  “So they don’t even know your mother died.” I felt a sudden shiver, imagining someone you loved dying, while all the while you thought them alive and well.

  “Do you believe that I’m not like them, Diamantina?” he asked.

  “I always thought you were like your mother,” I said with sincerity.

  “I learned to read, and will do more than work with my hands all my life. I’m not going to live the way my father did.” His voice was hard, angry. “I hated him.”

  Coughing and throat clearing came through the open door of the hut, then the sounds of spitting. Abílio frowned. “My uncle Rodrigo. He’s staying a few more days, and then he’ll go back to Madeira.”

  I didn’t know what else to say. I turned to leave.

  “I’ve heard you’re cleaning the church now,” Abílio said, and I looked back at him. “It must be hard for you to dress that way. You almost look like the other girls of Vila Baleira. Almost.” He still had that strange, rough tone, which maybe was grief, masquerading as anger.

  I ran my hands down my skirt.

  “You like being paid to go to your knees to clean the church you’re not allowed to attend?”

  My cheeks were hot. “It’s a way for us to eat, Abílio.”

  “I saw you, filing into the graveyard at the end of the procession. Will you always accept that you stand behind everyone else on Porto Santo? That you’re considered of little significance? Do you like it? Why don’t you have Father da Chagos baptize you and be done with being treated like an outsider in the community?”

  His uncle came to the open door to lean against the frame, watching us as he dug in one ear with a piece of wet flannel.

  “I don’t believe a few words uttered by Father da Chagos will change anything for me. And I don’t care. I am who I am,” I said, and turned and left.

  “Diamantina,” Abílio called after me. “I’m sorry.”

  That was the last time I saw Abílio for the next few months. His fishing boat remained on the beach, and the door and windows of the hut were tightly closed. I heard in town that he had gone to Madeira with his uncle. I wanted to ask if he was coming back, but didn’t want anyone to know I was interested.

  As drought had ruined our summer, now the rainy season, usually the most temperate time of year, abundant with plant and animal life, was worse than usual. Day after day clouds blew in from the ocean, catching on the cliffs above the beach, opening to rain down torrents, and the world took on a sodden and dark heaviness.

  My mother and I awoke shivering many mornings, our blankets smelling musty. Mildew grew on every surface, and the driftwood was perpetually damp. I couldn’t start a fire to cook or to dry out the hut. Within a few short weeks I feared that all our belongings would be ruined, including my beloved collection of foxed, warped books and passage charts.

  Our roof started to leak. When the weather was the most arid, cracks opened in the clay, letting in air. In the winter rains the cracks usually closed and the clay absorbed the water, keeping us warm and dry. But our hut roofs, unlike those of terracotta tiles that graced the houses in town, only lasted a few seasons. I had helped my father mix new clay and slather it on the cracks the year before he left. Now I would have to do it on my own.

  Waking into the sodden, stinking wetness of our home, my mother cleared her throat; a cough and sore throat had been plaguing her. “We could move up into the cliffs and stay in a cave until this rainy time has passed,” she said.

  “A cave?” I said as I dressed for work. “Like animals?”

  “The caves are dry,” she answered, coughing. We both knew a tea of sweet violet would help her, but without a fire I couldn’t boil water. “You were born in one.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “Even though I helped the women of the beach, when it was my time all of them were frightened to come to me, frightened that they might help to birth another witch and be forever cursed. It was a night when the ocean turned into a dangerous beast, gnashing its teeth and roaring. The storm brought lightning and thunder such as I’ve never experienced. I had a premonition that the beast would wash over the beach and our hut would be swept away. I had to protect you, waiting so patiently to come to me. And so your father took me up the cliffs, with the wind howling and the trees bent to the ground. He knelt at my side as you came into the world.”

  I watched her. Her face had a faraway look.

  “And with your birth the world grew calm again. The beast retreated. The next
morning I carried you back to the hut, which was still standing firm and strong. My premonition had been wrong. The beast hadn’t been looking for you after all. You were safe from it, Diamantina, and always will be.” The dark green of her eyes glistened with either tears or the pain of speaking with her sore throat.

  I smiled at her, grateful for this memory of my birth. “I’ll ask Sister Amélia to let me bring home a flagon of hot water and I’ll mix you up a soothing drink,” I said. “But I won’t live in a cave. I’ll fix the roof.”

  I wrapped a shawl over my head and ducked out the door. Water dripped from the edge of the roof as I went behind the hut and pulled out the ladder my father had made. The middle three rungs were rotted through. I would have to borrow one to climb onto the roof.

  I walked up the beach in the still, grey air, looking at the fishing boats bobbing on the water. And then there he was: Abílio, coming up from the sea.

  I tried to keep my breathing even, my face calm, although I wanted to run towards him. I wanted to demand, Where have you been, and why didn’t you tell me you were leaving? But he owed me nothing.

  He was carrying a long, stout fishing pole with a dangerous hook on the end. He’d harpooned a good-sized tuna. He smiled his warm smile. “You’re looking very pretty today, Diamantina,” he said. I studied the rise and fall of the sea over his shoulder, remembering the last time he had called me pretty. “Your eyes are the colour of the silvery porpoise that swim alongside the ships.”

  My cheeks were hot, and I didn’t take my gaze from the sea. “You were in Madeira?”

  He nodded. “In Funchal Town, working for my uncle.”

  I finally looked at him. “What’s it like?”

  “It’s Madeira’s jewel, very fine, with wide streets and busy squares and tall buildings. All of Madeira is green and beautiful.”

  I thought of the island’s misty outlines, which I could see from the point on a clear day.