Piedade is Jerônimo's wife, a hardworking and honest Portuguese laundress who loses her husband to Rita Baiana and, over the course of the book, falls from a respected resident to a drunk evicted from the tenement. The book uses her to show what Jerônimo's change costs the one left behind.
She arrives with him at room 35, and the narrator measures her by her work: "Piedade deserved her man well, very diligent, healthy, honest, strong, well suited to everything and everyone, working from sunup to sundown and always giving such good accounts of her duties". When she sees Rita nursing her sick husband, the narrator says it is not reason that warns her of the danger, but instinct.
She changes her habits but not her soul. Her husband leaves her bed for a hammock and orders her to wash every day, and she seeks out the Witch, who prescribes baths and powders for his coffee and food. She spends the night of the ambush awake, imagining disasters, and the next morning she blames "that procuring nature, which had stolen her man from her", and then Rita. She quarrels with Rita and loses.
After the fire, she wastes away, grumbles and starts drinking parati. Her daughter begins visiting her on Sundays, the school fees fall behind, and Jerônimo, who had promised to pay, sends her away. In the end she is evicted, "in rags, without any care and always drunk", and takes refuge with her daughter in Cabeça-de-Gato, where Pombinha begins to protect the girl.