Elizabeth Bishop - Prose

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… If there were diviners of dreams today, the way there were in the time of Joseph of Egypt, what a fine thing it would be! I can never get that story of the seven fat cows and seven lean cows, that meant seven years of plenty and seven years of famine, out of my head.

I suffer a great deal from dreams and one of the worst I had when I was little was the disillusionment I suffered when I died and went to heaven. How horrible heaven was that night! I remember until today the dismal life I led in heaven until I woke up. It was an enormous yard, clean and bare, filled with old women in cloaks, with shawls on their heads, holding their hands up in prayer, not paying any attention to each other. No São Pedro, no angels, nothing. When they were tired of kneeling they walked around in that enormous yard with their heads bent, still praying. When I woke up and saw I wasn’t in heaven, what a relief!

Dreaming that I’m at Mass at the Cathedral in the middle of the crowd in my underwear is something horrible that’s always happening to me. Lots of times I’ve dreamed I was at school in my bare feet, without knowing where to hide them. It’s a constant martyrdom. But I’ve had marvelous dreams, too. I can’t count the times I’ve flown, without wings, to Boa Vista or over the houses of the city. It’s delightful! Or I was in a marvelous palace, like the little girl and the dwarfs. And I’ve dreamed of being in a field of peanuts, and I kept pulling up the plants and finding silver coins at the roots.

But last night’s dream was horrible. I dreamed I’d turned into a monkey, and in spite of my grief I could have resigned myself to being a monkey if I hadn’t had a tail, but my tail was enormous!

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… Grandma’s been sick a week today and everyone in the house is in a state of the greatest anxiety, because they say that if she shows improvement today by tomorrow she’ll be saved.

I don’t know why God let me know grandma! I might have been so happy, because my parents are both strong and healthy, if I’d never known her. If only she’d died when I was little the way the other one did!

I’m in agony today! Esmeralda came to help us and taught us some prayers that God can’t possibly not listen to. We’re all praying with such faith! We’ve done almost nothing else all day today. There wasn’t even anyone to receive the callers.

I spent the day in anguish, seeing grandma in that condition, with nobody able to help her. The doctor comes and prescribes things, and goes away, and then she gets worried about herself!

What mama says is always right. Sometimes I thought it was absurd when she said that life is made up of suffering. Now I see she was right. Life really is made up of suffering. These days since grandma’s been sick I’ve forgotten all the joy I ever had and suffering is all I can think about. And since they said that tomorrow would be the crisis, I’ve been in such agony that all I can do is stay on my knees with the others, praying. When they get tired I take a walk around the garden, come back through the kitchen, the parlor, and go to every corner of the house, trying to find some peace, but I can’t. And if I go in grandma’s room, it’s worse torture.

Why does God punish us all this way? We never hurt anyone. I wait for the day He’ll remember and release grandma and us from this suffering.

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… Grandma died!

Oh dear grandma, why has God taken you away and left me all alone in the world, missing you so much! Yes, my dear little grandmother, I’m all alone, because weren’t you the only person who’s ever understood me up until now? Shall I ever find anyone else in this life who’ll tell me I’m intelligent and pretty and good? Who’ll ever remember to give me material for a pretty new dress, so I won’t feel I’m beneath my cousins? Who’ll argue with mama and always try to defend me and find good qualities in me, when everyone else only finds faults?

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?