She discovered a secret.
When Teresa stepped down from the cart and felt the parched earth crunch beneath her sandals, she knew there was no turning back. The sun of the sertão spared no one: it beat down like a judgment on the broken tile roofs, on the twisted trunks of withered trees, on the streams turned into muddy scars. In those days—the beginning of the 20th century, when the Brazilian interior seemed to groan with thirst—water was worth more than money. Those who had a deep well or their own spring were considered blessed; those who didn’t learned to live counting drops, carrying cans from afar, praying for rain that was so slow in coming that hope crumbled to dust.
Teresa was thirty-two years old, but grief had aged her. Just a few months earlier, a fever had taken her husband in three days, without asking permission, without saying goodbye. Suddenly, she was widowed, with two young daughters and a handful of savings hoarded like a lit candle in the wind. Returning to her parents’ house meant accepting the same old fate: pity, cramped quarters, the feeling of being a burden. Staying alone meant betting her entire life on an idea that many considered madness: “I can do it.”
That’s why she bought the place no one else wanted. A plot of land abandoned for years, far from the river, with a house half in ruins and soil so hard that not even grass dared to grow. “It’s cheap,” the notary told her in that voice that sounds like a warning. “But there’s no future here.” Teresa listened in silence. She didn’t buy a future; she bought an opportunity.
The house she found upon arriving seemed more like a memory than a home: creaking floorboards, a door hanging by a hinge, holes in the roof through which the wind whistled as if it, too, were hungry. Four-year-old Ana squeezed her mother’s hand and looked around with wide eyes. “Here, Mommy?” Teresa swallowed and forced a certainty into her voice that she hadn’t yet felt. “Here, my child. We’ll fix this. You’ll see.”
That first night they slept on old blankets on the floor, listening to the breath of the land and the creaking of the roof. Rosa, the youngest, stirred in her sleep, as if her body knew what her mind couldn’t yet grasp. Teresa lay awake watching her daughters, pondering the weight of her decision, wondering if a woman’s strength could sustain an entire life. At dawn, when the light filtered through the cracks like a promise, Teresa tied the baby to her back with a cloth—as her mother had taught her—took the humblest and most faithful tool there is: the hoe, and went out into the yard.
She worked as if work were prayer. She patched holes, nailed boards, removed years of grime, lifted what she could with her bare hands. In a few days, the neighbors began to appear, but not with help: with judgment. They arrived at the fence, arms crossed, staring as one observes someone else’s mistake.
The first was Doña Sebastiana, a robust woman, weathered by the sun, one of those who survive because they’ve learned to hoarse their voices. “Are you the new owner?” Teresa nodded, still hammering. “Alone, with two children… on this land.” Sebastiana clicked her tongue. “Nothing grows here. The previous owner was a man, strong, and even he left. You won’t last two months.”
The words weren’t just words; they were stones. Teresa felt the provocation, but she didn’t allow herself to respond angrily. “I don’t give up easily,” she said. Sebastiana let out a dry, bitter laugh and left, leaving in her mouth that taste of humiliation that you swallow to keep going.
And she kept going. For weeks, Teresa carried water from the community well, almost a half-hour walk away. Ana followed her with her short steps, carrying a small can as best she could, happy to feel useful. Rosa slept in the shade when the heat became too much. Teresa planted beans, corn, squash; she spent her last savings on seeds like someone buying hope. She watered with heavy buckets. And still, nothing. The sprouts emerged weak, trembled for two days, and died as if the earth rejected them.
In the village, the whispers followed her. “Poor girls, suffering because of their mother’s stubbornness.” “She’s going to come crawling back.” Teresa heard them, and each phrase tightened her chest. But when she returned to the spot and saw Ana humming under a withered tree, and Rosa with a peaceful little face, she remembered why she was there: because those girls couldn’t grow up learning that the world decides for a woman. That night, with aching hands and a knotted back, Teresa knelt beside the makeshift bed and prayed softly: “Lord, I don’t know if I did the right thing, but now I’m here. My daughters need me. Give me strength… and if there’s a blessing buried in this earth, show me where.”
The next morning, she made a decision that seemed like desperation, yet was a desperate act of faith.
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