Chapter 4: Sunday Table

On Sunday, forty Sequeiras came to eat, and the table seated thirty-two.

I looked over the chairs from the kitchen door.

The long oak table in the dining room had been set with the good plates, and every place had a card in Avó's slanted handwriting.

Mine said nothing.

There was no card for me, and no chair.

I stood there holding a casserole of bacalhau à Gomes de Sá in two oven mitts, and heard the family sit down around me.

They were all looking at the empty place where I stood.

A girl of about twenty giggled and was shushed.

Henrique, at the far end, had the grace to look at his wine.

Avó said nothing.

She watched me over her glasses with her cane across her knees.

It was a test, and I could not tell what the right answer was.

I put the casserole down in the middle of the table.

Then I walked into the front hall, took a straight chair from under the stairs.

Carried it back and set it at the foot of the table, next to the serving dishes.

"I'll sit here," I said, "so I can serve."

"The bride does not serve," said a woman in green.

"The bride cooked it."

"She is not the bride. The bride is somewhere in Providence."

That drew the first silence.

It also drew the first Portuguese out of me.

My grandmother on my mother's side had raised me in the evenings, in the back of the chandlery.

She had not spoken a word of English to me until I was seven.

"Eu sei o meu lugar," I said. "É aqui. Hoje, também."

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