Page 49 of An Immaculate Deception

She sees me, gasps, drops the rouge, and springs to her feet. The chair nearly topples over.

“How long have you been standing there?” she cries.

The voice is awfully wrong. Too high-pitched and abrasive. Her face, too, is wrong. This tall, thin stranger is not Mother at all. It is not even a woman, really, but a girl my age. My disappointment sinks deep into my bones.

It takes me a moment to recognize her.

“Joaquina?”

Joaquina, the new chambermaid. When we found ourselves without a chambermaid a week ago, Maria das Dores recommended some distant relation, her friend’s cousin’s daughter, I think, who turned out to be this young woman. She wore her long wavy hair parted in the middle and tilted her head down so her hair curtained half of her face. She had no prior experience or references other than Maria das Dores’s friend’s cousin’s daughter, but I decided to take a chance on the girl anyway.

“I thought you were out,” she mutters. “I am terribly sorry.”

When she stands before me, Mother’s golden dress looks even more dramatic as the skirt flares out in a wide radius.

“What are you doing wearing my mother’s clothes?”

“I know how it looks, but I swear I wasn’t going to steal anything.” She bites her lip, looks everywhere but at me: at the vanity, at the bed, then behind her, at the open wardrobe where the dusty dresses hang, as though the inanimate objects will intercede on her behalf to rescue her from this predicament. “I only wanted to try on a beautiful dress. I’ve never worn anything like this in my life. I thought you had gone to town, thought you would be back later. I didn’t think there would be any harm in just trying it on.”

“Luckily for you, it wasn’t Mother who found you.”

She laughs, thinking I’m joking. “I’m sure your mother is a kind woman.”

Mother would be pulling her out of the house by the earlobe and batting her with a shoe.

“Maria das Dores said your mother is sick and was sent away for treatment,” she says, echoing the half-lie I told Maria das Dores. They don’t know Mother is still in the house, slumbering down in the senzala.

She returns her attention to the vanity and starts putting the jewels back into their cases. Her slender fingers move in a frantic manner and the small items keep slipping from her grip.

She takes off the rings, then the bracelets and necklace come off. Then the white velvet gloves and the chest pendant come off. She glances over at me, flushed. I have a vague sense I should leave now, but I can’t look away. The scent of rose and lavender wafts over me and I spot the round glass bottle with a balloon spray on the vanity. Mother’s perfume.

Suddenly it is Mother I see taking off her earrings and gathering her jewels into the case. I had felt happy for a brief moment but now I know she still lies in the dark below, unaware. I feel her absence like the pit of a plum taking up space in my middle, pushing into my organs.

The light from the setting sun settles upon Joaquina and highlights the gentle curve of her neck. There is something poetic, something pleasing about her—she emanates softness if not brightness necessarily, and her skin is a perfect golden hue. How have I never noticed how lovely she is? The very first time I saw her, in the kitchen, she seemed plain and dim like a dull painting. Her eyes were downcast. In the days following, I suppose I must have never really looked at her. She would glide silently through the hallways carrying a bucket and a mop or a duster. It is startling to think that underneath that was such a gem. Perhaps the glamorous clothing brought out her brightness. The longer I regard her now the more mesmerized I am. Her collarbone, her long neck, her cheekbones, her chestnut hair and bright eyes…

“Senhor Neves?”

“Uh…the hairpin.” I point to the crown of her head.

“Oh.” She startles, then pulls out the hairpin. Her chestnut hair falls down in cascading waves over her shoulders, long and full. Mother does not approve of unmarried women wearing their hair down, saying it is the way of harlots. I see her meaning now, judging from the way it makes me feel. Joaquina sets the hairpin down on the vanity carefully, with the other objects.

I’d like to freeze her in this moment in time, with sunlight falling over her bare neck and shoulders and soft-knuckled hands. With her face turned away, just slightly so. I imagine her delicate hands on her knees and her chin pointed away. She can become ephemeral as a moment.

“I will change now,” she says. “I will leave the room as I found it.”

“Don’t.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I don’t want the room as you found it.”

“I don’t understand—”

“I like it with you in it.”

I am as surprised by the words as she is. But Joaquina has changed something about this room, filled it with life and light.

“I’m sorry,” I add quickly. “I didn’t mean…”