A Escrava Isaura 9.101 · 9.101

In her extremity Isaura calls not on God first but on 'minha sinhá velha' — the old mistress, Leôncio's dead mother, who raised her tenderly. It is a piercing choice: the one figure of the slaveholding family who loved her is now a soul in heaven she can beg for rescue, even as that woman's son sends for the shackles. The dead mistress has appeared three times in this chapter — as Leôncio's excuse, as Isaura's plea, and now as her intercessor — and each use measures the distance between the mother's love and the son's cruelty. The verb 'valei-me', stand by me, is the same she will use to the Virgin in a moment; the two protectresses, earthly and divine, blur into one.

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