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We were still lying on the floor that first time Faith invited me to see her in disguise, and I was tending to a small cut she had on her shoulder. She started talking, out of the blue. The sound of her own voice transported her, and the weight of her confession made her appear beautiful. In those moments, Faith became, for me, the most beautiful woman on the face of this earth.
“The nun told me, ‘Menina, go to the Sodality da Mercê. That is where they keep all of my great-grandmother’s papers.’”
Faith paused in her confession, and along with it, the nun’s. She caught her breath and the nun prepared to continue her story. It seemed as if it were she lying naked beside me, burning through me with her eyes; Faith’s eyes, transfixed, were trying to interpret signs that vanished in midair. I was certain that such was the way that the nun had looked at Faith in Minas Gerais while she was relating her secret. And Faith, naked and trembling in my arms, was more than Faith: she was reunited, doubled. Astounded, I regarded the doubled pair that was confessing.
“My mother was a nun, and her mother a nun before her. And nevertheless I was born and so was my mother. So was my grandmother. All nuns and whores. Only I dared to break the cycle, more from shame than conviction. This I honestly tell you, Menina, because I am preparing to leave this earth. I am tired of seeing people wearing the habits of what they are not.”
Faith turned sideways on the cold floor where we lay. She told me how she spent entire weeks going through the sodality’s files, which were in a stiflingly hot attic. There she found letters signed by la Xica que Manda herself. She found account books and lists of purchases. And in that attic, behind a false wall, she found the dress. Excited, she asked for permission to display it, which much to her surprise, was granted. But what surprised her even more was the single condition imposed in order for her to take the dress. She must never return it to the sodality. She must find a way to keep it, to secure a better place for its storage and care. The dress must never return to da Mercê.
The day before her departure, Faith returned to that attic, asking to be left alone with the dress. She caressed its soft cloth for hours, admiring its ample skirts of golden raw silk that had mysteriously survived the passage of time. Its hard bodice was designed to refine the waistline with a braided net of strings, which when tightened, would hamper breathing. Faith’s eyes played over its long sleeves, down to the wrist. Wings of embroidery flowed at their end, forming the flight of a butterfly. The dress was undoubtedly authentic, made with the intention of reminding anybody who saw it or wore it of what true luxury and beauty were like.
Supporting the dress from beneath, however, was an odd and intricate net of metal strings and leather straps. The metal was exposed, with alarming ridges of rust visible within the harness. Faith caressed these, too. The metal cut her skin. Blood flowed. The harness’s cold dry leather sucked in each drop until it became humid and tense, as if recovering from a long drought or satiating hunger. “Thank you,” Faith found herself saying, not entirely aware of whom she was thanking for the experience, for her first cut. She sucked on the blemish until the blood stopped flowing and then proceeded to place the dress in the box, in which it would be transported safely to the Center’s keep.
The famous exhibit of emancipated slaves opened its doors during the first week of November 1995. But, on October 31st, while people were donning their disguises and partying in blind celebration of that feast the pagans left us, Faith walked alone through the hallways of the Center, attending to the final details. Everybody was gone, she told me, still lying on the floor beside me. With her hands she proceeded to dress the dummy that would display the freed slave’s dress. But she was unable to contain herself. She got naked there, alone, in the cold room of the Center.
She put on the embroidered hosiery, with the ribbons and undergarments. They fit her perfectly. Then she pulled the bodice over her. It was difficult to tie its braid of golden strings, but luckily they attached at the front of the dress. Down fell the leather and metal harness, which rested coldly on Faith’s hips. She could not resist the temptation of wearing it bare, without any underwear on. She then left the Center to roam the streets and did not return until her flesh was raw and burning. This was the first day of her ritual. This was the first night of this story that finds its end on the cold surface of this computer screen and the inscriptions of this pale skin.
***
About
Mayra Santos-Febres
Mayra Santos-Febres is a Puerto Rican author, poet, novelist, professor of literature, and literary critic who has garnered fame at home and abroad. In 1991, Santos-Febres garnered attention and critical acclaim for her first two collections of poetry, Anamu y manigua and El orden escapado. In 1996, she won the Juan Rulfo Award for her short story, Oso blanco, which was published in her collection of short stories called Pez de Vidrio. Pez de Vidrio (published in English as Urban Oracles) contains 15 short stories about the complicated relationships between sexual desire, race, identity, social status, and political status in modern Caribbean society.
Her first novel Sirena Selena vestida de pena (published in English as Sirena Selena) describes the life of a teenaged homosexual male drag queen who works in the streets and has a talent for singing boleros. Santos-Febres completed her undergraduate work at the University of Puerto Rico and holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from Cornell University. Her work has been translated into French, English, German, and Italian, and is taught in many universities in the United States. Her more recent publications include a collection of essays called Sobre piel y papel and also a novel about Isabel la Negra titled Nuestra Señora de la Noche (Our Lady of the Night). She is the Executive Director of Festival de la Palabra and lives in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
