Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 294 – Follow the Monkey by Jamie McGhee

Saturday, August 31, 2024 - 07:00

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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 294 – Follow the Monkey by Jamie McGhee - transcript

(Originally aired 2024/08/31 - listen here)

This quarter, I am proud to be able to present to you the story “Follow the Monkey” by Jamie McGhee, narrated by Cláudia Cruz Machado. This is a difficult story, set in colonial Brazil of the 1670s, with an unflinching look at the experiences of enslaved people on a sugarcane plantation. But it’s also a story of love, of loyalty, of hope, and of hard choices.

The author, Jamie McGhee is a novelist who aspires to build interactive spaces of resistance and experimentation, through language. Her books include You Mean It or You Don’t: James Baldwin’s Radical Challenge (co-authored with Dr. Adam Hollowell of Duke University) and What I Must Tell the World: The Story of Lorraine Hansberry. She is based in Berlin, where she instructs Ph.D. students at Humboldt University. You can find a link to her website with more information about her work in the show notes.

When I bought this story, I knew that it would challenge me to find a narrator with the right skills and background, but through professional connections I was able to find Cláudia Cruz Machado, who usually goes by the nickname Claw. As a multipotentialite, Claw is always involved in at least one creative project, and this is her first work as a narrator. Once chronically online, now a bit absent from the webs, she’s trying to find a way to navigate the current social network landscape in a way that feels authentic. She teaches English as a foreign language. Her Instagram and email links are in the show notes, and she also welcomes contacts for future game development projects through her itch.io account.

This recording is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License. You may share it in the full original form but you may not sell it, you may not transcribe it, and you may not adapt it.

FOLLOW THE MONKEY

By Jamie McGhee

She runs in circles without the faintest idea that today is her last day on earth.

A final feast pours down from heaven: her weight in corn.

Right as she stretches her downy feather neck to snap up a kernel—shink! The blade slices.

She leaps away in a bawking flutter of feathers—and, finding herself alive, swivels back and forth between the hatchet and the corn, between death and dinner, before finally clucking curiously over to the hatchet. Her reflection shimmers long and distorted in the polished iron.

“Not afraid of being sacrificed, hm?” I run a gentle palm along the chicken’s back until she coos. Petting her reminds me of tending eiyele funfun in my home across the ocean, of grooming their cream-colored feathers and watching younglings sprout into full pigeons. “Does it bring your life meaning knowing it will be traded for something better?” Instead of answering, she purrs against my fingers.

Crack!

I dive behind a mountain of ox feed.

In the distance, a whip pops again: Crack! “Oi! Why are you animals lazing about?”

A wavering voice. “Sinto muito, Mãe da Silva.”

“Certo, you’d better be sorry.”

I peer through slats in the barn wall. Escravos—that’s what they call us—are unloading stalks of sugarcane from an oxcart. One escravo, however, rocks on all fours, moaning; the overseer’s whip has opened his back into a puckering wound. Even from far away I taste metal and blood in the air.

The head overseer muscles another escravo into a shoulder-lock. The plantation mistress, Mãe da Silva, wrinkles her nose. “Have you seen the macaquinha?”

“N-no, Mãe da Silva.”

“Where is that little monkey?” She all but stamps her foot. “If I have to delay the exhibition—! Ai, ever since those rebel brutes in Palmares learned to hold a musket, escravos believe they own the world.”

The overseer tosses the man aside like animal fodder. “I’ll put my men on alert.”

They vanish: Within seconds, the whip cracks! again. I shiver, massaging the knotted stripe that travels from my shoulder to hip, where Mãe da Silva marinated the wound with salt to ensure a fleshy scar. It throbs with the memory of pain.

The hen, meanwhile, pecks a kernel from my palm. “The trouble with sacrifice,” I mutter, “is that you rarely get what you want. Tomorrow, we’ll pray for those ‘rebel brutes’ to be victorious, but if they aren’t, was it worth your life? Is sacrifice worthwhile even if it fails?”

I peer the chicken in the eye, and she peers back. “Or in other words, should I actually risk telling her how I feel?”

“Do it.”

I spin. “Dandara!”

Dandara stretches into a lunge, her dress rumpling over the breeches underneath. “I don’t know what you’re asking the chicken this time, but whatever it is, I have faith in you.”

“Meu Deus!” I wrench her wrist into the light. “What happened?”

She yanks down her sleeve. “Nothing. I was practicing, and you know I earn more money when I incorporate flips, so—never mind that. I want to show you something.“

“Later.” I point. “Dê.”

She kneels and surrenders her arm, where a wound winds into a scarlet river from elbow to thumb. I snap an aloe leaf. “I despise Mãe da Silva for making you do this.”

“I know, but—ah!” Dandara jerks as I smear the cold liquid over her inflamed skin.

“Stop talking. I’m concentrating.” I uncoil a cloth strip. She’s so small she hardly grazes my shoulder, but years of performing have thickened her muscles into tree trunks. She could wrap them around my waist the same way I’m bandaging her forearm.

Tell her.

“Dandara, I—”

“Macaquinha!” A shrill cry. The ting-ting of a bell. “Little monkey!”

“Ah!” Dandara springs up. “Where’s my tail? And about that thing I wanted to show you—meet me after.”

I skid in front of the barn doors. “No!”

“I promise I’ll be more careful.”

“That’s not it. I need to tell you—”

“Macaquinha!”

Mãe da Silva’s footsteps grow louder. She’s coming.

I seize Dandara’s hand and take off at a sprint.

“Agostinha! Are you crazy?”

Her heartbeat drums in my palm. I tighten my sweaty grip. “Today I am.”

We dart through the corners and crevices of the engenho, the plantation, bolting beneath rusted machines in the casa de máquinas, dodging dripping sugar jars in the casa de purgar. Around us, iron gears clank, wooden wheels rattle, aging furnaces sigh.

We dash past the moenda, teeming with overseers. The escravos who work the mill shudder with exhaustion, sweat salting their burned faces as they churn rattling metal grinders. If we’d been assigned here instead of the casa grande, the manor, then we’d be toiling beside them—but even escravas domésticas like us will be whipped if caught ignoring Mãe da Silva.

We roll behind an oxcart. “Where are you taking me?”

I crouch to peer around the corner. I admit: “No idea.”

Something chatters overhead. Atop the oxcart, a marmoset plucks at a sugarcane stalk until it splinters. It grinds the hard fibers in its jaws and bounces away.

Dandara lights up. “When in doubt, follow the monkeys.”

The creature bounds towards the river. We scamper after it, ducking into the shadows of the jatobá trees. The drought has sharpened the riverbank into a steep cliff, a sudden drop into a dying trickle of water. Dandara clambers down and reaches up. “I’ve got you!”

I creep to the ledge. “Are you sure?”

I edge my way down slowly, slowly, slowly.

“You’re doing fine,” she calls.

That is, until I notice the warm, sun-brushed glow of her cheeks from this angle—and my foot slips.

The world topples, and I’m falling, then she’s falling, and we crash and tumble and bounce and bump and scrape over weeds and rocks, the sky becoming the ground becoming dirt in my mouth. When we skid to a stop, Dandara lies on my stomach.

An overseer’s growl: “Did you hear something?”

I press a finger to Dandara’s lips as she presses a finger to mine: “Shh.” Our eyes meet.

The footsteps of a second overseer. “Someone spotted the macaquinha near the barn. All I hear is, ‘Extra cachaça to whoever nabs her first.’”

Both men retreat, but Dandara keeps her voice low. “And I can hear the blood rushing in your veins.” She presses an ear to my chest. “Is this how the ocean sounds?”

Of course not, I want to say. But there’s so much I want to say. Such as, I’ll take you to the ocean. One day. When we’re free.

When she raises her head, she’s so close that her breath tickles my lips. My mouth moves closer. I swallow.

The trouble with sacrifice…

What if I tell her, and she never looks at me again? Is the risk worth killing what we have now? In my home across the ocean, love took no solid shape, yet here, to kiss her would be called sin. And Dandara was raised here.

I roll her off of me. “Your sapatinho!”

“Pardon?” She smacks soil off her dress.

Coins dot the riverbank like dew on grass. Silver vintéms peek out from between red hibiscos, copper quartãos hide among lilac bromélias. We scramble to collect them before the glinting metal draws overseer eyes. I dust off her sapatinho, the makeshift purse she created from a baby bootie, so that she can funnel the coins inside. “Então, Dandara, what did you want to show me?”

“This is what I wanted to show you.” She cradles the sapatinho. A shy red tint rises to her ears. “I think… I think I’m nearly there.”

“Wait—”

“Yes.”

“Yes!” I snatch her waist, and I swing her around, and I fling her in the air. “Graças a Deus!”

Her feet kick. “Put me down!”

The coins clink as we twirl. “Dandara, that’s incredible! You’re incredible! I love—how incredible you are!”

“Shh!” But she’s laughing.

“Shh? Forget the overseers.” I cup her cheeks. “We can finally start imagining what freedom looks like.”

“We know what freedom looks like.” She weaves her fingers into mine. “It looks like a casa pequena. Having our own little house in the rainforest, as far away from this engenho as the moon is from the sun.”

“Exac—”

She wouldn’t.

She wouldn’t want to build a house with you if she knew how you felt.

She wouldn’t, wouldn’t, wouldn’t.

Dandara frowns. “Your face changed.”

“Mine? Ah.” I trace her bandages. “I just—I’m remembering how many years I lost worrying about your exhibitions. Every time you go up, I fear how you’ll come down. You’ve sacrificed so much.”

“We each play our part.” She drops my hand. “Speaking of which… Sargento Pereira is attending.”

Acid bubbles in my mouth. “Oh.”

“I hate to ask, but—“

“I’ll occupy him.” I cross my legs, flutter my lashes. “And he’ll leave with empty pockets.”

A shrill and distant cry: “Macaquinha!”

I smooth Dandara’s hair. “Rest your arm for a few more minutes. I’ll tell Mãe da Silva you’re in the casa grande, then while she’s checking the house you sneak in through the courtyard.”

I turn to leave, but she whirls me around. “There’s one more thing.”

“Anything.”

“I’ve heard rumors.“

About me? My tongue goes dry. “Say it.”

“Fortunato.”

I exhale. “The deluded revolucionário.”

“He’s been—well, he’s sharpening rocks again, and the last thing we need when we’re so close to freedom is for him to attack someone. Mãe da Silva’s friends won’t donate if they feel threatened.”

“I’ll take care of everything.”

“You always do.” She seals her words with a kiss to the inside of my wrist. I melt into sunlight.

Why did I ever want more? It’s better this way. It’s better if I never tell her, better if we keep our friendship just as it is.

Sacrifices aren’t worth the risk.

Pleasure the sergeant, calm the rebel. I join the escravas trooping into the sala do jantar, balancing a tray of brigadeiros as I scan the dining hall. Easy.

Of all the guests—slaveowners who breed and slaughter us like chickens; priests who swear that Deus wants them to; generals who massacre resistance—military men are the easiest to manipulate. Soldiers see escravas as spoils of war and they expect their spoils to spoil them in return. I despise it, but it’s child’s play.

Ting-ting! Mae da Silva strikes a bell. “Feliz Entrudo! I, mother of the faithful, welcome you to rejoice on this sacred holiday.”

Sparse applause.

Doors slam open.

“Hooh-hooh, ah-ah-ah!” Primeiro Sargento Pereira swaggers inside, beating his chest; an escravo trails him with a bowed head and a covered tray. “I learned that little tribal call in the jungles of Nordeste. African women are truly wild, rather like you in your younger days, Ana.”

Mãe da Silva flushes. Guests titter.

Sargento Pereira whisks the cloth off the tray. “And in memory of those days, a gift.”

A crystal decanter twinkles sunset pink, composed of glass so delicate a high note could leave cracks. Guests lower their masquerade masks for a closer look.

Sargento Pereira installs himself at the head of the table. “Sede.”

The other escravas pace backwards; they know where his hands wander. I swoop in to accept the decanter. “As you command, o Primeiro Sargento.”

Mãe da Silva prefers us to dilute the cachaça, so in the dispensa, the storeroom, I fill it to the brim instead. The tang of pure alcohol pricks my eyes.

“Oh! Joana-Vitória!” I tug an escrava’s sleeve as she passes. “Have you seen Fortunato?”

She glares.

She keeps walking.

I toss my braids over one shoulder. Well, then.

A gaggle of soldiers swarms Sargento Pereira by the time I return. “I pried that decanter from the twitching fingers of a guerreiro beast!” he bellows. “The African was ten years old but possessed the strength of a demon.”

I drop my voice to a low purr that only he can hear. “Minha nossa! Primeiro Sargento Pereira, is your generosity any match for your immense bravery?”

This cachaça is meant to be sipped, so he swigs. “Exceedingly so.”

I refill his glass. “Then I look forward to the macaquinha’s exhibition.”

A smirk distends his lips. “Ah, macaquinha, macaquinha! She’s especially lithe tonight, isn’t she, boys? As if she sprung out of the Amazônia this very morning. It reminds me of when I led my men into that jungle’s black folds…”

I shudder.

“Speaking of tonight’s entertainment”—Mãe da Silva stands—“excuse me.”

I monitor the courtyard through the window. Outside, Dandara balances on a high rope. She twirls once, extends a leg, twirls again. Beams.

But everything changes once Mãe da Silva tugs her down. As they speak, Dandara shifts her back towards me, but I mark the sudden straightness of her spine. When she returns to the rope, she’s rubbing red eyes. What the devil did Mãe da Silva say?

“Be a dear.” Sargento Pereira elbows me. “And cut my pig.”

Instinct tells me to run to Dandara’s side, but experience tells me to stay put.

“I’d be honored.” I bend over his plate of leitão à bairrada and carve a knife into the suckling pig’s neck. Its pleading eyes are glassy with death, its mouth frozen into a toothy screa—“Oof!” The fork and knife clatter to the ground.

“I’m so sorry!” Joana-Vitória scrambles to pick them up. “I bumped you. I’m deeply sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“Really?” Her lip quivers as she wipes the fork on her dress. “Have I mentioned, Agostinha, that you are a creature of grace?”

“I, ah—well, do continue.”

She dashes off. I rub my chin. Has she fallen for me? Well, it’s to be expected. No wonder she was so cold earlier; she was nervous. Ha. I’ve turned the sergeant’s head, I’ve turned Joana-Vitória’s head, so why can’t I turn Dandara’s—wait, where’s the knife?

I duck under the table. I frisk my own pockets. Gone.

“Something amiss, escrava?”

“Of course not, Segundo Sargento Pereira. Let me attend to your glass.”

Diacho! Knives are a nightmare to replace. Ever since escravos started building armed communes, Mãe da Silva stores them under lock and key. This evening is becoming a headache.

In the meantime, I keep the sergeant talking. “Então, Primeiro Sargento Pereira, is it true you’ve never lost a man?”

“I have now!” He slams the table. The glasses jump. “Damn Palmares!”

“Now you’ve done it,” a priest mutters.

“Those savages ambushed me!”

“They sound barbaric,” I say quickly. I stroke small circles along his neck where the other soldiers can’t see. The motion makes him unclench. For now.

“Were you were ambushed?” The priest saws the leg from his suckling pig. “Or were you caught fleeing while you abandoned your men to die?”

Out of the corner of my eye—a dark flash. I snap around.

“Monkeys play dirty.” Sargento Pereira starts to stand until I touch his back.

Near the door, another glint. This time, silver.

I curtsy. “Excuse me, Sargento.”

In the corridor, I catch the shadow flitting past the dispensa. “Fortunato!”

I pin him to the wall. Fortunato’s arm snaps up—the knife glints—he could whip the blade across my throat.

“Oh! It’s you.” He laughs.

“I’ll murder Joana-Vitória.” I confiscate the knife. “If you hurt anyone, Mãe da Silva will hang all of us. Do you understand?”

“Entendí.” He delivers a mock solute. “But may I ask a question?”

I nod.

“Do you care about Dandara?”

“I—what? I—lower your voice!” I shout. “Of course I do.”

Yelling bursts from inside the sala do jantar.

“Are you a coward, Pereira?”

“By all means, drop your crucifix and find out!”

Fortunato pinches my chin and swivels my attention back to him. “Then why do you let her perform when it could kill her?”

“We’ll purchase our way off the engenho soon.”

Fortunato snorts. “Do you honestly imagine da Silva will relinquish her prized macaquinha? Her sacrificial little monkey?”

In the sala, wood scrapes, clatters—someone’s overturned a chair. A woman shrieks, “Keep them apart!” Glass shatters.

I wheel around. “I have to go.”

“Agostinha.” His breath chills my neck. “We both know that Dandara is headed for an unmarked grave.”

I’d like to prove that’s not true. But what did she tell Dandara that made her cry?

“I can save her life, Agostinha.”

“I…” I shiver. “Let’s talk about this later?”

He strolls off. “Later, I’ll be gone.”

When I return to the sala, the sergeant and the priest have knotted themselves together, flinging fists. Mãe da Silva shouts, “Senhores, calm down!”

“No, no, no!” I rush forward. I was supposed to keep the sergeant happy. It’s okay, I can salvage this. Perhaps. A furtive touch, several rounds of cachaça, and I can goad him into donating at least a quartão.

So Dandara can break her neck for a few copper coins?

I stop short.

Bawk!

“Oi, come back!” Joana-Vitória darts past, chasing a speckled rooster. She scoops it up by the legs as it flaps wildly for its life. “Let’s get you into your pot.”

Am I being too naive?

“Fortunato!”

He’s pocketing food scraps when I charge into the dispensa. I clamp his shoulder. “Speak fast.”

“Ah!” He jerks. Where I touched him, his shirt darkens with blood.

I startle. “Did I—”

“My plan,” he says, waving it off with a grimace, “begins tonight.”

“Your plan for Dandara?”

“For everyone.” Fortunato crouches between two barrels as escravas rifle through nearby shelves. “Because I’m escaping to join Palmares! You heard the soldiers. Escravos are waging war, and they’re winning. With a few more fighters, Palmares could end slavery within a month, two at the most. Come with me. Become guerreiras. Warriors.”

I gape.

“Say something,” he says.

“I will kill you.”

“Around so many witnesses?”

“That’s your plan?” I knot my fingers through my hair. “You won’t make it off the engenho. Dogs will hunt you down if overseers don’t shoot you first. If you do reach the river, you’ll drown. If you reach the forest, you’ll be eaten by jaguars. If you reach the caatinga, you’ll choke in a desert sandstorm. And if—if!—by some miracle you reach Palmares, Portuguese soldiers like Pereira will skin you from scalp to sole.”

“Now you see why I needed that knife.” He cocks his head. “Wait, I thought you supported Palmares.”

“I do! But I’m sacrificing a chicken, I’m not going there.”

“Look, Agostinha, for years I tried to earn my freedom through good behavior. Do you know where it got me?” He unbuttons his shirt: Raw scarlet stripes stretch from shoulder to spine. “Liberation only comes when you seize it yourself. ”

“I won’t risk Dandara’s life for a platitude.”

He shrugs his shirt back on. “Then what about your life?” He flicks my medicine pouch. “You could heal a lot of guerreiros.”

“You’re mad.” I shift the pouch to my other hip. “Besides, if Palmares will win within two months, they don’t need me.”

“If everyone thinks that way, Palmares will lose.”

“If Palmares loses, me dying in battle won’t help Dandara.”

“Pelo contrário, your death would help more than your life,” he says. “With you gone, suddenly freedom becomes half as expensive.”

It’s an awful truth. But it’s the truth.

“After all these years, you still can’t tell her how you feel.” He scratches dried blood off his hand. “Perhaps this is how you show it.”

I attempt to swallow, but my throat closes up.

In the distance: “Step aside!”

I stagger back to the sala do jantar just as Sargento Pereira storms out, clutching his nose. What happened? No!

I jog at his heels. “Primeiro Sargento, please stay for Mãe da Silva’s sake. It’s a sacred holiday.”

He shoves past. “Move, escrava.”

I almost shout, “Wait!” but he might shoot me for insubordination. All I can do once I reach the courtyard is hang my head. A cold breeze ripples the grass.

My skin prickles: Behind me, Dandara crouches underneath the hulking mogno tree with her legs pulled to her chest. Her face folds in disappointment.

One thing. She asked one thing, and I failed. She turns away.

Fool, fool, fool. I ladle guarapa and squeeze limes as if it’s the only task in the world, anything to avoid Dandara’s gaze. Near the tree, guests deposit coins into pouches connected by a string. The pouches look light. If the sergeant were here, he’d fatten them with gold dobrãos.

Mãe da Silva claps. “Despite the…excitement of earlier, we must celebrate. Deus has trusted me to civilize the savages of these dark lands, yet like many of you, I often wake up doubting my impact. In those moments, my macaquinha reminds me that without my guidance, she—like all escravos—would revert to barbarism.”

Dandara adjusts her cloth monkey ears, balancing on the rope connecting the tree to the casa grande. The priest spins the pouches above his head like a boleadeira until they soar into the tree, where they wrap around the topmost branches. Oh no. Although Dandara’s small, those branches are twigs. Please don’t break.

Ting-ting!

Dandara sprints along the rope so fast her feet flicker. She leaps off, somersaults midair and catches a low branch in a single smooth motion. In the same breath, she hooks her legs around the branch and flips upside down, beating her chest.

Beside me, a guest halts her cup halfway to her mouth. “Minha nossa, the macaquinha is something after all.”

“Perhaps da Silva knows her way around discipline,” says the man beside her. Mãe da Silva beams. This is what she lives for.

And Dandara, she lives for the trees. She springs to another branch and arcs her legs into a handstand. Maybe she could be a guerreira.

Where did that thought come from?

Guests crane their necks as Dandara monkey-swings higher and higher, from branch to branch to branch, on the back of the wind. The pouches dangle just above her head. She extends an arm.

Click-bang!

Metal splits the air.

We all hit the ground. I slap my hands over my ears. Someone shrieks. Gunpowder billows.

“Dandara!” I bolt upright. She’s wrapped herself around a branch, eyes squeezed shut like a trembling baby animal.

Primeiro Sargento Pereira struts forward, reloading his musket. “Am I still a coward?” Plaster covers his nose.

Mãe da Silva edges towards him. “No one believed that.”

The sergeant rams a musket ball down the muzzle. “I’d like to dispel all doubts.”

He aims straight at Dandara.

“No!” I cry.

The second blast tears the branch like a black powder bomb.

Splinters explode.

She screams.

Smoke whips my eyes.

I smell burnt paper.

Taste sulfur.

Hear wood snap.

Through the haze, I see Dandara scrambling to grasp another branch.

Missing.

Her hand swiping empty air.

Her eyes flying open. Her body contorting into a tumble.

“Dandara!”

She crashes down.

Down.

Her head slams into one branch.

Another lashes her neck.

Her arms go limp.

“Dandara!”

Ground.

When I was a child, I loved tending the eiyele funfun but I couldn’t watch the sacrifice. My mother promised their lives were an offering for something greater, yet after we ate the cooked pigeon meat I swore I tasted feathers.

I trace Dandara’s weeping wound. It opens like a fleshy smile across her neck, and only my bandages seem to keep her head attached. I tuck the sapatinho into her fist.

Through the curtain separating this makeshift infirmary from the kitchens, I hear dishes clink and escravos chug leftover cachaça, smell cinnamon soap and sun-rotting pork. However, as Mãe da Silva repeated, Dandara is blessed, because she’d have flung any other escrava into an unmarked grave.

Clammy fingers brush my wrist.

“You’re awake!” I mop her forehead.

She blinks blearily. “I…”

“Shh.”

“I’m sorry…”

“You have nothing to be sorry for.” I dip the rag in fresh water and run it over her cheeks. “We’ll be rid of this engenho soon.”

“Yes.” Light comes to her eyes. It’s dim, but it’s light. “Only a few more years.”

My toes curl. “What?”

Dandara’s smile flickers. She fidgets with the sapatinho. “I showed Mãe da Silva, and she said a few more years.”

The room plunges into darkness.

Sacrificial little monkey.

Her eyes are foggy, her pupils darting. She won’t survive three years.

“I…” I wring the rag and dunk it and wring it again. “I can’t let you do this anymore.”

“Pardon?”

“What if…” I say slowly. “What if perhaps, perhaps, we joined Palmares?”

She manages to sit up. “Y-you’ve lost your mind. At least my exhibitions only kill one of us.”

“So you admit they’re killing you.”

“You won’t even make it off the engenho. The second you run, overseers will—”

“Shoot me.”

“Then you’ll—”

“Drown.”

“And—”

“Jaguars, sandstorms, soldiers.” I pass her a cup of camomila. “For the pain.”

She glowers into the tea. “The risk isn’t worth it.”

I lower myself onto the mat beside her. “Dandara, you don’t know the agony of watching the person you love kill themselves.”

“Of course I do. I see the engenho eat you alive, but that doesn’t change the fact that—”

“Do you know the love I mean?”

Dandara blinks. After a long time, she lifts the camomila to her lips and winces as she sips.

“If you do care for me,” she says finally, “then don’t mention Palmares again. No running, no armies. Just you and I in our casa pequena. Claro?”

When I don’t respond, her nails trail clumsy lightning bolts up my thigh. She gives me a look, a look that unsettles, biting her bruised lip and lowering her lashes. This isn’t her, and yet it feels familiar. Why?

It’s the same one I give Primeiro Sargento Pereira.

I pull away. “You almost died today.”

She darkens. “I’m fine, Agostinha.”

To prove it, she stumbles into the kitchen with halting, crooked steps. The other escravos fall silent. She cleans as if they don’t exist, scraping unfinished pig carcasses into a feeding trough. But by the time she lifts a second stack of dishes, the bandages around her neck are thick with blood. She sways on her feet.

“Dandara,” I say, “please lie down.”

“I can do it.” Her knees knock.

I open my arms.

For a moment, she bear-hugs the plates as if she’ll never let them go. But the next, her eyes roll into her head. She staggers sideways, grabs a table, and the entire wooden structure collapses.

Crash!

My stomach drops.

“Dandara, that was…”

“I know.”

No, no, no. We scramble to salvage the crystal shards. My mind goes blank. The glass bites my palm.

Only Mãe da Silva’s cold shadow forces us to raise our heads. Her blue eyes reflect black.

I manage a curtsy. “Perdão, Mãe da Silva. Your decanter fell when I bumped the table.”

Dandara steps forward, but I tread on her foot to keep her quiet.

Mãe da Silva towers over me. “Destroying property?”

Behind her, the head overseer fingers his whip. “Didn’t we hear that one escrava was overly familiar with Pereira? Twenty lashes is a good start.”

I swallow. “Yes, Mãe—”

“Don’t!”

“Dandara!” I hiss.

Dandara wedges herself between us. “D-don’t whip Agostinha. I broke it.”

Mãe da Silva halts. “You?”

“Accidentally.”

“I see.” The woman examines a shard, tosses it back. “Nevertheless.” She extends her hand.

Dandara frowns.

Mãe da Silva raises her eyebrows.

Slow horror creeps across Dandara’s face. “You don’t mean…”

It hits me next. “Mãe da Silva, that’s unreasonable!”

Mãe da Silva plucks the sapatinho straight from Dandara’s pocket. “This might pay for a new decanter.” I could swear she’s biting a smile as she vanishes up the stairs.

Dandara’s eyes flash. Her fists tighten. The macaquinha is ready to bury a blade in Mãe da Silva’s neck, and I will not stop her. But all moments pass, and eventually her shoulders droop. She stares into some unseen distance with sunken, sallow eyes. Then she strains a smile. “I’ll start over.”

“And what happens when Mãe da Silva confiscates it again? What if she never lets you leave? ”

“I don’t know!” Dandara snaps. “Não sei, all right? But we can’t run to Palmares, because I can’t lose you. So can we please, please stop talking about the future?”

I kneel, and she follows. “You’re right, Dandara. Let’s stay in today.”

She slumps against me. I bury my nose in her hair. And I slip a shard of the decanter into my medicine pouch.

Maybe this is how you show it.

Shadows creep along the ceiling. I count her sleeping breaths and wish I could stretch this moment into forever. “Is there really no other way?”

The chicken opens a single groggy eye, fluffing her feathers.

I brush my fingers along Dandara’s jaw, tracing the map of her skin. She burrows herself into my hand, resting her cheek on my palm.

Tell her.

“Dandara.”

The next time I see you, I’ll swing you on my shoulders and whisk you off this engenho. The next time I see you, we will both be free. And if I don’t return, build the house we imagined.

I withdraw slowly, so as not to wake her.

“Hmm?” Dandara murmurs, shifting.

I freeze. What am I doing? Can I really leave? What if I’m making a mistake?

Clouds shift. Moonlight soaks into her scarlet bandages.

This is why I have to go.

I start to stand when Dandara’s arms sleepily ring my neck. She cups my cheek and tugs me in and kisses the corner of my mouth. Camomila tea wafts faintly on her breath, for the pain. I pull away.

Her arms fall as she drops back to sleep.

I scoop up the chicken and climb onto the windowsill. Just outside, perched in the mogno tree, a marmoset chatters as it gnaws on sugarcane. It cocks its head. I cock mine. It leaps to the ground and scampers across the engenho.

When in doubt…

I take one final look at Dandara.

Then I follow.