The Air You Breathe
Illustration: Jacob Myrick. Her costumes occupy an entire room in my house. I’m still surprised by how heavy the dresses are; I no longer have the strength to remove them from their bags. All of those rhinestones and beading make some weigh as much as six kilos, some twelve. It’s a wonder how Graça ever danced in them, let alone stood for hours on set, propped up by an ironing board at her back so she would not be tempted to sit and possibly ruin her costume.
What’s astonishing wasn’t the costumes, but the fact that Graça was not swallowed up by them. Any other woman would have seemed invisible beneath the sequins and stones, but Sofia Salvador made them seem natural, almost necessary—the glittering carapace that protected everything vulnerable underneath.
Being a woman is always a performance; only the very old and very young are allowed to bow out of it. The rest must play our parts with vigor but seemingly without effort. Our bodies must be forms molded to fit the requirements of our times: pinched, plucked, painted, not painted, covered, uncovered, perfumed, dyed, squeezed, injected, powdered, snipped, sloughed, moisturized, fed or unfed, and on and on, until such costumes seem innate. Everywhere, you are observed and assessed: walking down the street, riding a bus, driving a car, eating in a café. You must smile, but not too widely. You must be pleasant, but not forward. You must accommodate and ingratiate but not never offer too much of yourself, and never for your own pleasure. If you do this, it must be in secret.
Any deviance from this role has the potential for disaster: shun the part and you are trying to be a man; you are a bitch; you are angry; you are pitiful; you are a dyke, or, as they used to call us in my day, a “Big Foot.” Embrace the role with too much gusto and you are a puta, like my mother. Either extreme can get you beaten, or defiled, or simply killed and dumped in a ditch. If you think I am exaggerating, or that I am trapped in a harsh past and times have changed, then listen carefully to what I am telling you now: when you have no power in this world you must create your own, you must adapt to your environment and try to foil the many dangers around you, so a woman’s pleasantness—her smile, her grace, her cheer, her sweetness, her perfumed body, her carefully made‑up face—isn’t some silly by-product of fashions or tastes; it is a means of survival. The performance may cripple us, but it keeps us alive.
When I think of our first months in Rio’s Lapa neighborhood, it’s a wonder Graça and I didn’t end up dead and floating in Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon. You could say we had luck on our side, but I prefer to think of it as the economies of scale. When cicadas leave the safety of the earth every seventeen years and crawl into the light, they have no stingers or barbs or poisons to protect them from their predators. Their only defense is their sheer number. So it was in Lapa in 1935—there were girls everywhere. Shopgirls, good‑time girls, cleaning girls, cigarette girls, errand girls, candy girls, showgirls, butterfly girls, and girls like Graça and me, who refused to be anything but ourselves. This is, of course, the most dangerous thing any girl can be.
It was easy to disappear. In those days, a regular phone line was a great luxury. Even automobiles were rare. For the police to be notified of a disappearance, someone had to physically run to a station and tell them. It must have taken the Sion Sisters the better part of the afternoon to realize Graça and I were gone, and then to fetch the authorities. Senhor
