An extract from Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior, translated by Johnny Lorenz

When I opened the suitcase and took out the knife, wrapped in a grimy old rag tied with a knot and covered in dark stains, I was just over seven years old. My sister Belonísia, at my side, was about a year younger than me. We’d been playing outside of our old house with dolls we’d fashioned from corn harvested the previous week. We’d transform the yellowing husks around the cobs into dresses, pretending the dolls were our daughters, the daughters of Bibiana and Belonísia. When we noticed Grandma Donana in the backyard, walking away from the house, we turned toward each other to give the nod: all clear. It was time to find out what she’d been hiding in her leather suitcase, among threadbare clothes that smelled like rancid lard. It wasn’t lost on Grandma how quickly we were growing up; curious girls, we’d push into her bedroom and interrogate her about conversations we’d overheard and things that piqued our interest, such as the objects buried in her suitcase. Our parents would reprimand us constantly, but Grandma only needed to give that fi rm look of hers, and we’d shiver and blush as if we’d drawn too close to the fire. 

So when I saw her walking through the backyard, I immediately looked over at Belonísia. Determined to rifle through Grandma’s things, I decided I’d tiptoe over to her room and open the suitcase, its worn leather tarnished and covered in a layer of dirt. That suitcase had been hidden beneath her bed for as long as we could remember. From the doorway I spied Grandma making her way toward the woods past the orchard and vegetable garden, beyond the old roosts of the chicken coop. In those days we were already accustomed to the way Grandma would talk to herself, muttering the strangest things, like when she’d ask someone—someone we couldn’t see—to stay away from Carmelita, the aunt we’d never met. Grandma would tell that ghost dwelling in her memory to leave her girls alone. She’d utter a jumble of random, disconnected phrases. She’d talk about beings we couldn’t see—spirits—or people we didn’t know, distant relatives and comadres. We were used to hearing Grandma ramble on like that in the house, at the front door, on her way out to the fields, and in the backyard, as though in deep conversation with the chickens or withered trees. Belonísia and I would glance over at each other, laugh under our breath, and draw closer without her noticing. We’d pretend to play with whatever was at hand just to eavesdrop on her, and later, in the company of our dolls and the plants and animals, we’d repeat what Grandma had said with great seriousness. We’d repeat, too, what our mother whispered to our father in the kitchen: “She was talking up a storm today, she’s been talking to herself more and more.” Our father was reluctant to admit that Grandma had been showing signs of dementia, claiming she’d always talked to herself, she’d always recited her prayers and incantations aloud with that same distracted air. 

Belonísia pulled the blade from her mouth, too, then brought her other hand up, as if trying to hold something in. Her lips reddened, and I wasn’t sure if it was from the excitement of tasting the silver blade or from wounding herself, for she was also bleeding. I swallowed as much blood as I could. My sister was wiping her mouth frantically with her hand, her eyes squinting with tears as she tried to stand the pain. I heard my grandmother’s slow steps approach, then she called out to me, to Zezé, Domingas, and Belonísia. “Bibiana, can’t you see the potatoes are burning?” I became aware of a smell of burnt potatoes mingling with the smell of metal and the blood wetting our dresses. 

There was a curtain separating Grandma Donana’s room from the kitchen, and when she opened it, I’d already picked up the knife from the floor and wrapped it haphazardly with the soggy cloth, but I’d not yet pushed the leather suitcase back under the bed. I saw my grandmother’s startled eyes, before her heavy hand struck the side of my head and Belonísia’s in turn. I heard her ask what we were doing there, why her suitcase was out from under the bed, where did all that blood come from? “Say something!” she demanded, threatening to tear out our tongues. Little did she know that one of us was holding her tongue in her hand.