Crooked Plow

by Itamar Vieira Junior

they sold the entire property, including our mud houses, including our very bodies as furniture.

That’s how it used to be; but fear travels across time. It has always been part of our story.

It was their destiny to be buried in that ground, beside their family members and compadres.

If we couldn’t bury our dead at Viração, it meant that very soon we wouldn’t be allowed to remain on the land at all.

We want to take care of the land where we were born, the land nurtured by our sweat.”

I didn’t fear the living; I wouldn’t fear the dead.

work is what kept me alive. I saw things revive in my hands,

Those walls of earth, made from the mud of Água Negra, became earth once again.

My horse was a woman named Miúda, but when I possessed her flesh, she became Santa Rita the Fisherwoman.

I’ve found refuge in many bodies, long before Miúda’s, ever since humans began penetrating the forests and rivers, mountains and lakes; ever since human greed began digging those deep holes, with people clawing at the earth like armadillos, looking for the shining stones.

Diamonds cast a terrible spell, for everything beautiful carries within it a curse.

But what most of them found was a chimera; what most of them found was madness, dread, disquiet, hurt, violence. So many were broken beneath their own illusions, defeated, buckling under a heap of gravel.

A worker can’t have a house like the owner’s house.

I protected my horse. My horse who danced, casting her net in the house of Zeca Chapéu Grande, the healer. She didn’t wear shoes, for her feet were my roots connecting me to the earth. Her arms were my fins, propelling me through the water. I’ve ridden my horse for so many years, I’ve lost count. But now, without a body to possess, I wander the land.

He wanted their rights to be recognized, the rights of families who’d lived for so long on that land, where children and grandchildren had been born whose umbilical cords were buried in the earth of their backyards.

Through Água Negra, a river of blood was running.

Bibiana, who’d said nothing for most of the day, asked them to open the gate, in a voice so quiet that most of them couldn’t quite hear her. They obeyed what they thought they’d heard.

He’d often point to his skin color when arguing with Severo and the other workers, to indicate that he wasn’t prejudiced, that he himself had Black ancestry and was proud of it.

They wanted to destroy the things that had been denied them.

Ana was asking about her father. Where is he? If he’s under the ground, will he feel cold and wet when it rains? Will he get hot beneath the noon sun?

Bibiana felt her son’s tears falling on her own hot tears that wouldn’t stop trickling from her eyes. He begged her not to worry; he’d take care of her. His words demolished what was left of Bibiana’s composure. Inácio was already a young man, a bit older, in fact, than Severo was when he’d left Água Negra with her.

She discovered, however, that life beyond Água Negra wasn’t so very different after all; she was still being exploited. But she had Severo, and the dreams they shared, and everything they’d already built together.

Everything you see around you exists because of your hard work.

The same slavery as before, but dressed up as freedom. What freedom is that?

They plucked one fruit from the branch, but the tree remains. With roots too deep to be wrenched from the soil.

“Severo and I lived in the city for a while, on the outskirts, where the police used the same excuse to break into homes and kill Black folks. Those cases never even went to court. The cops can kill anyone they like, they just say it was in self-defense. It wasn’t self-defense, it was murder.”

“They want to dishonor Severo, because to dishonor his name undermines our struggle.

Whoever did this to Severo is going to pay. The justice of men might fail, but no one escapes the justice of God.”

Belonísia walked around Salomão’s shadow in the dirt and spat into it the venom she’d been holding in her mouth.

was part woman, part fish. She liked fishing and swimming in those waters. Mornings would find her asleep on the riverbank. She’d imitate the subtle sounds fish make.

Miúda’s hands were enchanted; they cast a spell on the fish. She’d reach into the river without disturbing the water. You only needed to watch her on the riverbank to see how cunning she was. The fish wouldn’t even struggle to get free; they surrendered to her hands.

I’ve stopped dancing because no one remembers Santa Rita the Fisherwoman. Because the healer of this land is dead, his powers gone, his house demolished by time. I rise like air, I come down like rain on the land. I come down to wash away the blood that has been mercilessly shed. The blood of history flows like a river. First, it flows through dreams. Then it comes galloping as if on a horse.

I gave birth to this land. You know what it means to give birth? You’ve got children, but do you know what it means to give birth? To feed new life, to bring it out from inside of you?

This land lives in me,” she pounded her chest, “it sprouted within me and took root. Right here,” she pounded her chest again, “right here is where the land lives. I’m part of this land, with all my people. Água Negra lives in my heart, not on that piece of paper that belongs to you and your husband. You can yank me from this land like a weed, but you’ll never take the land from me.”

She felt ashamed to be nosing through her sister’s things, but she couldn’t help herself, surprised to encounter something so deeply buried in memory. The scar on her tongue began aching from the recollection, even tingling, returning Bibiana to the day of the accident.

The edge of the blade seemed to vibrate, eager to rip through the surrounding atmosphere as if splitting a silk scarf with one slice.

Bibiana asked if Salu knew about the knife. She indicated no. Why not? Salu would get needlessly worried; Belonísia didn’t want to go back to being treated like the problem child, the one who’d mutilated herself.

The intense brilliance, the mystery surrounding it, her desire to discover what it tasted like and her constant bickering with her sister, all had led to the outcome that silenced her to the world.

She heard her sister say that even after so many years, the knife looked like it had just been taken from Donana’s suitcase. The suitcase with which Bibiana had left home, and with which she’d returned. “Watch out for Ana, don’t let her near that thing,” Bibiana said, handing the knife back to her sister. “She’s curious, like we were.”

“It was never the knife hurting us that worried Grandma. She was afraid of some secret she was hiding.”

That’s the decision Donana reached after seeing one of her granddaughters lose her tongue. God had not forgiven her. Worse, God had wounded the flesh of her flesh, a granddaughter she’d watched over and prayed for, protecting her from curses and the evil eye.

From plantation to plantation, from Caxangá to Água Negra, Donana had lived as a captive. She wanted those girls to grow into women in charge of their own destinies.

And so she found herself living with him, this man whose name Donana would erase from her memory, rendering it unspeakable.

Donana would spend the final years of her life seeing Carmelita’s face in the faces of her grandchildren.

God would never forgive her wickedness. Worse, he’d pay her back twofold.

When you manage to sleep, you awaken slowly as if coming out of a long dream and hesitate to reach your hand over to his side of the bed. You’re reassured by a familiar smell, by the soft gust of breath, by the warmth emanating from the person beside you. You reach out your hand, not daring to open your eyes, and find your sleeping daughter.

But you won’t tell her that he’ll come back; it would be too cruel. Even a girl that young shouldn’t cling to a promise that can never be kept.

After you were silenced, you missed being able to sing.

When you were able to make sense of what had happened, you asked yourself, why do we want the things that are most unattainable?

The land was your treasure, part of your body, something very intimate.