Day of the

Dragonfly

––––––––

David Vogel

Table of Contents

Title Page

Author’s Disclaimer

About the Glossary

Clarification

Book 2 ~ Maria ~ Brazil - 1933

My  Father

My Mother

Their Decisions, My Memories to Age Eight

And Then I Was Eight

After I Turned Thirteen

Fifteen

Book 3 ~ Layla

Layla's Father

Layla's Mother

Layla's Brother Felipe

Enzo, Lara, and Bernardo

Layla As a Child

Layla at Eleven

Flight from Fear

America

Toward the End

Approaching 1975

A Proclamation

The Day of the Dragonfly

Book 1 ~ João ~ (The Prequel) ~ Brazil - 1932

Day Minus Five - Milagre de Maria...

Day Zero – Quitaiús...

Day Zero - Back in Milagre de Maria...

Day 1 - Sitio Cacimba...

Day 1 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 2 - On the Road...

Day 2 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 3 – Cedro...

Day 3 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 4 – Rendinha...

Day 4 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 5 - José de Alencar...

Day 5 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 6 - On the Road...

Day 6 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 7 – Umarizeira...

Day 7 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 8 - Undecided in Umarizeira...

Day 8 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 10 – Jucás...

Day 10 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 11 – Quincoe...

Day 11 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 12 – Acopiara...

Day 12 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 13 - The Thief of Acopiara...

Day 13 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 14 – Catarina...

Day 14 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 15 – Barriguda...

Day 16 – Taua...

Day 16 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 17 – Carrapateiras...

Day 17 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 18 – Araca...

Day 18 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 19 – Cruz...

Day 19 - Milagre de Maria

Day 20 - On the Road...

Day 22 - On the Road...

Day 22 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 23 – Bomsucesso...

Day 23 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 24 – Roberto...

Day 24 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 28 - Barra Velha...

Day 28 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 30 - Assunção do Piaui...

Day 30 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 31 – Assunção...

Day 31 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 34 - São Miguel do Tapuio...

Day 34 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 38 - Alto Longá...

Day 38 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 41 – Altos...

Day 41 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 43 – Teresina...

Day 43 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 44 – Teresina...

Day 44 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 45 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 46 - On the Road...

Day 46 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 48 – Caxias...

Day 48 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 54 – Parceira...

Day 54 - Milagre de Maria...

Day 55 – Codó...

Day 56 – Wednesday...

Day 57 – Thursday...

Day 58 – Friday

Day 59 – Saturday...

Day 60 – Sunday...

Day 61 – Monday

Clarification

Acknowledgments

GLOSSARY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Author’s Disclaimer

Three of the characters in this volume are highly fictionalized versions of real people whose lives I’ve found inspiring. However, only their goals and the fact that their lives were difficult have been retained in these stories. All of the events described in achieving these goals are fictional. The first of these characters is drawn from my late father-in-law, Pedro Cardoso. In his early teens he traveled, alone, far across Brazil in search of a place where his family could escape a drought. The second is a version of my late mother, Kathryn Burke, whose childhood was cut short by the death of her father. And the third was inspired by a former student of mine whose real story is mostly hidden from me. Knowing only the beginning and end is enough to make it the most extraordinary tale I have ever believed. (I hope she is still alive and serving her community.) Any other resemblance of any of the events or characters in this story to any actual event or person, dead or alive, is purely coincidental. In particular, while the Assembléia de Deus is a real church, nothing in this book other than Sister Luiza’s religious instructions, all taken from church publications, is in any way representative or characteristic of the church.

DAY OF THE DRAGONFLY

First edition, October 31,2024

Copyright © 2024 David Vogel

NEURON PRESS

58 Bradley Dr

Hull,  GA 30646

For

Auzileia,

who showed me something of poverty in rural Brasil

and

Colleen,

who showed me how easy it can be to be a parent.

This Volume Contains
~
Book 2 - Maria
~
Book 3 - Layla
~
Book 1 - João
(The Prequel)

––––––––

About the Glossary

The occasional PORTUGUESE words in this book can be easily understood from their context and similarity to English cognates. For no more than they matter, they can be skipped over. However, out of an abundance of caution and just in case, there is a GLOSSARY at the end with definitions. (There are even a few definitions of English words.)

Clarification

My effort to capture Caribbean English is in no way meant to belittle its speakers. I always found Caribbean English to be a gorgeous language and note that, during the twelve years I lived on the island of Dominica, each of the three weekly newspapers ran columns that attempted to replicate that beautiful speech in the same way I have.

Book 2
~
Maria
~
Brazil - 1933

I am Maria. At my daughter's insistence I am going to write about part of my life. I don't know why we're doing this. All I do is clean houses, and I can't even support my children. I don't think I'm a whole person.

I can write a grocery list in English, but Portuguese is still my only language. So Layla will have to translate. Frankly, I doubt she'll ever get around to it, but if you're reading this in English, I guess she did.

If you are one of my grandchildren, I'm sorry we never met. I hope your life is productive, and... Well, lots of other things.

And so we begin.

Don't expect me to be even a whole person.

***

When I was a child, I was not as rebellious as my father was when he was a child. However, I certainly had a mind of my own, especially when it came to what was permitted to boys that was not permitted to girls. Of course, all that rebellion was just inside my head and made no practical difference. When I was a child, I was just a child, and like all children I had no control over my fate. The story of my childhood is the story of the adults around me. And how much does a child know about the adults in charge? Only a few lies told in that insulting voice they reserve for children.

For reasons I will explain, I think I remember my early childhood better than most people. I even remember being happy, but the memory is a fabrication. My circumstances should have made me happy, so I remember being happy, but I doubt that I noticed any happiness at the time. I will tell what I remember of events, and you can make up how I felt as well as I can.

My Grandparents

As for my maternal grandparents, it is best if nothing is said. That they were poor immigrants from Portugal is already too much. I’ve never visited their graves as I should. If I did, I’d bring a shovel and use it to wish the worms great happiness.

My paternal grandfather, Bernardo Almeida, is altogether different. I imagine someone has already written about him – at least in some brief commentary about his role in the affairs of our city, Belém. We did think of it as our city, not just because we lived there, but because Avô Bernardo was so well-known. If I had lived longer in Belém, I'm sure I would have grown tired of hearing, “Oh! You're Senhor Almeida's granddaughter!” but I only lived in Belém as a child, and I liked being noticed.

People used to tell me my Avô Bernardo could be mayor or governor as easily as eating his breakfast, but every election year he turned down every offer. The closest he came to politics was as a deacon of our church, which sometimes brought him minor troubles that vexed him as though they were battles in the Great War. Had there ever been real conflict, I'm sure he would have resigned at the first raised voice. Still. He was a power in our city, and he showed me how power can be polite and generous.

He supported almost as many charities as existed in Belém, and he frequently spoke as an advocate for the poor - studiously avoiding offense to the class prejudices of the truly rich. Our church's charities were kept well-funded by his knowledge of theology and, possibly, the diplomatic way in which he reminded people of his connections in a more practical world.

It was from Avô Bernardo that I learned the poor are not entirely responsible for their poverty. I heard him quote Anatole France so many times: “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”  This was at a time when a great majority of the members of our class believed the poor were poor because of sloth, stupidity, recalcitrance and, of all things, greed. How easy it is to recognize one's own vices in others.

Avô Bernardo was educated by the standards of our time. He'd been apprenticed to a lawyer, though I don't think he ever practiced at law. He exercised a measure of power, but his real desire seemed to be to know things just for the sake of knowing them. He sometimes went for a walk with me while I was still small and would try to teach me the names of all the interesting plants we passed. I forgot most of them, but by the age of seven I remembered enough to be able to bore the Great Sphinx of Giza.

Most of his knowledge came from reading whatever fell into his hands - not the disreputable magazines, but journals of all kinds. While he would read indiscriminately, his knowledge was not obtained indiscriminately. He was a skeptic. It was a rare day when it would not have been possible to hear him mumble, “Very interesting, if it's true.”

We discussed what I read, and so I enjoyed reading and often kept what knowledge children’s books offer. He gave me to understand that, even though I was a girl, I was to be educated. I would become a teacher of small children in a public school. I was also to find a husband who would endure the ridicule that would come from having a wife who continued to work after she married. I kept this perfect ideal in my heart my whole life and did not keep it a secret from my mother who expected me to earn my living by bossing servants around.

Our family had been in Belém since the Pleistocene. They came from Portugal even before sugarcane's ascendance in the nation's economy - when brasilwood was still exported for the red dye extracted from it. Avô Bernardo was among the richest men of the city. He was raised in a formal household by ever-changing governesses, and in turn, he was as formal with his own family as with his business associates. I never thought he loved me. At least, I never thought so while he lived. I did understand I was important, perhaps like a teacher's best student or a prize-winning turnip.

Every year, Avô Bernardo took a trip to the United States. The trip was often quite long, up to two months, and had something mysterious to do with his business. I was summarily removed from Belém at the age of eight, so I  am mostly left with questions about this business. I know he owned the largest print shop in the northeast of Brazil, and he published a newsletter that circulated to no more than a couple dozen people but still provided a large share of his income. When it was time for a new issue, my grandfather might awaken my father in the middle of the night, and until the newsletter was in the hands of the subscribers, phone calls from the print shop and a lot of rushing back and forth transported palpable amounts of chaos into our home. The children shared the sense of urgency of the adults by feeling an urgent imperative to stay out of the way.

All I ever knew about the newsletter is this: It contained financial information, and Senior Almeida only got paid if the information it contained reached his clients before anyone else. Until this very moment, I always suspected it had something to do with the coffee markets, but as I write this I'm less sure. When I think about who his closest associates were, especially the American diplomat, it still seems possible, but... Well, he knew scads of people, and his quiet generosity left many of them feeling indebted to him.

***

I think my grandmother, Vovó Leticia, was a good match for my grandfather. She was good-natured about going with him on that long, arduous voyage to America, enduring dinner at the captain's table and Caribbean sunsets reflected in her cocktail glass.

She was also (so far as I know) the last committed Victorian, and she was just as formal as my grandfather. She knew exactly how things should be done and taught me most of the rules, herself. I know that a proper soup spoon is round rather than oval, so the soup may be poured into one's mouth rather than slurped into it. I know how to fold a napkin so the waiter can pick it up by one corner, and with a deft flourish, drop it into the client's lap. I admit to a bit of nostalgic heartache as those rules disappear. (However, I am thankful we no longer change our clothes three times each day.)

My  Father

My father was Senhor Bernardo da Silva Almeida, Jr. I was never permitted to call him anything other than Senhor or Father, but secretly, whenever I thought of him I used the diminutive my grandparents used - Bernardinho.

It came as a surprise to everyone, including myself, that my father turned out to be a model parent. There was nothing about his life before I was born that suggested he would be even an ordinarily decent father - that he would provide, that he would smile at his wife, that he would have a moment's patience for a child, that he would be happier coming in the door than going out of it. I knew he’d been a bad boy, but I so admired that boy.

The details of his life, if I was foolish enough to get into them, might be about running away at age ten because he wanted to hang out with the street children in Manaus. Just getting to Manaus was comparable to Tom Sawyer rafting up the Mississippi to Minneapolis. He used his last cruzeiro to send a telegram informing his parents how much the bus ticket back home would cost.

At age seventeen, he returned from the military academy that was supposed to correct his behavior with a much older wife. Neither of them was well received.

To be fair, among the world's gold diggers there are occasional women who are honest miners, content to trade their youth for some stability in their chaotic lives. Such women can be quite loyal, but no one suspected That Woman of being an honest miner, and by the next afternoon the marriage was annulled even without all of the Church's considerable bureaucracy having been notified. This miracle is attributable to the large number of unrepaid favors Avô Bernardo found in what he called his “securities account.” The whole affair could have been kept a better secret had the amount withdrawn from his bank account been larger - say, ten times as much. That Woman was escorted out of town by the police, and a whopping good story sprang up about why you ought not mess with sweet old Senhor Almeida. The story was still popular when I was dragged out of Belém kicking and screaming.

There was a lot of discussion about what should be done with the rapscallion, and that discussion was not confined to Avô Bernardo's house. My grandparents had less to say between themselves than any pair of gossips around town.

Avô Bernardo knew from the beginning what had to be done. My father had to be brought into the business. It was a Victorian solution to the problem, and it's hard from today's perspective to understand why it was the right thing to do, but Avô Bernardo knew what he was doing. We now think of an emotional, loving environment as a requisite for healthy psychological development. We think of the only alternative as parenting by threat and abuse. Perhaps, when you have a child who is difficult to love, the distant formality of a Victorian upbringing can avoid the deepest hurts. My father prospered in the trust Avô Bernardo showed him.

My Mother

Nothing about my father ever suggested he would look among the wealthy belles of Belém for a proper wife. My mother came from a poor and bitter family. Still, she quickly became well-liked even by the skeptics in our circle of well-off friends. When she danced, she somehow attracted stares without attracting a vote of condemnation from the Wobbly Old Puritans Caucus. She flirted across the room and with an unintended touch under the table. She flirted with a look she gave the whole room when she stepped into it, or with a look she gave you over her shoulder as she began a conversation with someone else.

And it never mattered that you knew she was flirting with everyone in the room just as she was flirting with you. At least it never mattered enough to keep you from half-believing you were so special you could hope to make her love you. But for me, even before Gabriela did any real harm, all this glamour was over-shadowed by the daily drudgery of her family dramas. She was used to having things her way and thought she put enough effort into charming people so that she deserved to have what she wanted.

The dramas did not often involve my father's side of the family. It wasn't that Gabriela didn't try to incite conflict. She often wrote incendiary letters. However, these letters caused no difficulty for the simple reason that, once my family had seen a few of them, they all agreed not to open letters from Gabriela. I always thought of my father's family as my family, and of Gabriela's family as that family.

Gabriela was of that generation of women who, though they could not see anything like women's liberation in the future, thought of Victorian virtues with contempt. Accordingly, my grandparents saw no reason to like her, and as it was perfectly obvious from the first minute what sort of charmer she was, she failed to charm them. However, she did have the one virtue she needed to get their blessing. She was not already pregnant when Bernardinho brought her home.

My mother's feelings toward my father were as random as a child's attitude toward dinner. Still, I'll admit there was some sort of intermittent convergence on what I think was honest love. My father was tightly wrapped in Victorian virtues, but the very tightness of the wrappings squeezed out aneurysms that broke and bled rebellion. He obviously offered a combination of adventure and stability that would have attracted Gabriela, but there was more than that, and it wasn't Father's financial prospects. Gabriela assumed whoever she married would have financial prospects, and as for adventure, it was the roaring twenties. She found something else in my father that most people hadn't seen. He'd been the child who liked living on the street and became the adult who never seemed to mind giving up his own interests for someone else. It worked well for Gabriela and, for a while, even better for his children.

Their Decisions, My Memories to Age Eight

My first brother was Daniel. He was born when I was not quite four, and shortly thereafter I announced that I had wanted a sister. I repeated myself, regularly for two years, until my mother became pregnant again. Then I repeated myself with the malignant insistency of a six-year-old on a mission until I was promised a sister. The fact that my mother could make such a promise made me believe she could control the sex of her children and, when Roberto arrived, my first thought was, “How could they name a girl Roberto,” but the coin dropped, and the rage broke out, and I went rampaging through the neighborhood shouting how stupid my mother was.

A sister did arrive after another two years, and I was certain she was the most beautiful child ever born, but by that time I was many years older than baby Lara, and I feared being caught alone with her and a dirty diaper. I then had two brothers and a sister, and that was as large as my family ever got.

***

Because I was their first child, my parents thought they had enough money to send me to a private school. In our culture, private schools were mostly for the sons of the upper class. I was not only the smallest pupil in my class, I was also the youngest – and a girl! Accordingly, when we played tag, I was always the one with cooties. An unbiased observer, clocking the amount of time I had to spend as “IT,” would have concluded there was something especially horrifying about the Maria Almeida clade of cooties.

My first day in school may be the strongest of my early memories. I had a new, yellow, gingham dress. My father paid attention to important days. So he took the day off from work, and Vovó Leticia came to look after Daniel while my parents walked me to school, one on each side holding a hand. When the day was over, my father was there to walk me home again.

Waiting for my first day in school, I had been seriously worried about getting in trouble. I was afraid of being unable to follow all the rules - especially the one about remaining quiet and attentive to the teacher with my hands folded on my desk. I imagined this torture went on on for hours at a time, but I was willing to try to endure it because my grandfather had absolutely convinced me that I wanted to know all there was to know. So with a lot of trepidation, I went to school. Of course, I didn't get in trouble, but I was disappointed, and then angry. After all the fears I had overcome, I came home screaming, “They didn't teach me anything!”

***

My sixth year saw my first ride on a train. My mother wanted to spend Christmas with her family, but my father insisted we spend Christmas in Belém. So the day after Christmas my mother and I got on a train, without my father, and set out for Codó where my mother's family lived. I thoroughly enjoyed sitting on the blue cushioned seats and watching the countryside fly by. I especially liked the relaxed atmosphere in which it was possible to start up a conversation with people you would never speak to otherwise. As a child I had rules about being a seen but not heard. However, my mother started lots of conversations with people, and when she was done with someone and moved on, I moved in.

As soon as we arrived in Codó, the trip stopped being fun. The children in the family compound were an unruly lot who wouldn’t play with me, and the adults told me to go play with the children. At that time, I was starting to acquire a vocabulary of naughty words, and I spent a lot of time trying to think of someone I could safely tell what I thought of my relatives in Codó. In my grandparents home, words like "ugly" or "stupid" were thought to be naughty enough, but in my own home I was learning worse words from my mother. Had I known what my next trip to Codó was going to be like, I might have used some of them in front of my grandparents.

And Then I Was Eight

There was a day that precipitated a change in my personality and defined a new relationship with my mother. The change took away most of my mother's interest in charming me, which was sad, but it also put an end to her parenting me in ways I knew were wrong because they didn't happen when my father was around. It was the day my internal name for her switched from being Mother to her given name, Gabriela. Of course, it was only in my thoughts that I used this silent sign of disrespect. It wasn't that she was so bad on that singular day, what happened was just the straw that gave the camel insight.

Humans are secretive and deceitful. We lie. When the social situation is a little difficult, we make up little white lies so automatically that we fail to notice that a white lie is often more offensive than the truth.

We lie. We cannot tell a personal anecdote without exaggeration. Having a disagreement, we make up whatever facts we think might be true to sustain our position. We know lying is bad because it is deceitful, but we deceive by omitting relevant facts and think that's not bad because it isn't lying.

We lie so routinely that a whole suite of social graces is needed to keep the lies from causing as much trouble as perhaps they should. Unless we're looking for trouble, we avoid challenging one another's white lies.

This unique summer day was just like any other boring day spent at home instead of at Vovó Leticia's house - until a moment in the middle of the afternoon when my mother told me to answer the telephone and tell the caller she was out. I said, “No, I won't do that. It's a lie.” The telephone rang until the caller gave up, and in the silence that followed I understood the power of holding the moral high ground. It was defiance, and Gabriela couldn't think of anything to do about it.

And it took less than a day to catch Gabriela in a lie.

“You're lying.”

“Don't you ever call me a liar!” There she stopped because we both knew she had lied, and what was she going to do to me for calling her on it?

I made up my own set of social responses to lying. I didn't think, “Oh, it's just a white lie” and let it go. If I was told a lie, I looked straight at the liar, silently, with a perfectly neutral expression on my face, just looking, and if it was my turn to speak, silence.

Given this new insight, little white lies weren’t common enough to suit me. So I found other times and places where the moral high ground could be seized. In those days women were expected to make a lot of the clothes for their children, even if they could afford a housekeeper. One boring afternoon, Gabriela was measuring me for a dress. I suppose I kept squirming and making it difficult, so she told me to stand still and slapped me hard. I didn't let myself cry, but I could feel the tears well up in my eyes, and I said as distinctly as I could, “You should not have done that. It was wrong. We will continue this discussion when you are in better control of yourself.” The line about continuing the discussion was not original, I'd heard something like it from a teacher speaking to a child, but I knew when I heard it that it was a line I should save for an occasion, and I'd found the occasion.

I worked at strengthening the moral ground I occupied. I accepted the Victorian rules of my father's family as though they were truths. I also started paying attention in church, but I was disappointed with the result. Even Catholic rules were never as useful as Victorian dicta.

I have long since learned that holding the moral high ground sometimes works for a child facing an adult. However, moral arguments are useless for either an adult facing another adult or a child facing another child. Still, I have remained wholeheartedly for the truth and eschew even little white lies. No one believes your excuses, anyway.

***

One day, when I was still eight, my family was sitting at the dinner table, or most of us were. Sister Lara, being only one year old, had been fed before dinner and given over to the housekeeper. I think everyone wanted to leave the table, and so the conversation came to a halt. I was waiting for my father to tell us we were excused when he looked up at the ceiling and said, as though musing to himself, “I think it's time we got a car.”

We were electrified. Cars were common enough in Belém at that time, but they were not easy to come by. The countries that built cars were all going to war with one another, again, and weren't making cars anymore. It was probably easier to buy a tank than a new car, and people who had cars were holding onto them.

My father probably should not have spoken out loud before he had found a car to buy and asked the price. Every time the poor man came home from work, his children would crowd around him demanding to know what progress had been made that day. Then at the dinner table Gabriela would begin the conversation with, “Have you done anything about the car.”

About three weeks into this harassment I was dining with my grandparents and Avô Bernardo said something like, “Ah, your poor father, Maria. He can't find a car he can afford. I think I will have to make a withdrawal from my securities account.”

A week later my father drove up in the middle of the afternoon with an old, but serviceable, Model A Ford. The car had belonged to the Municipality of Belém but was somehow unneeded and had been declared surplus. When it was auctioned, my father, my grandfather, and one of the pressmen in Avô Bernardo's shop were the only bidders.

The car was handed over to my father on a Thursday, and on Thursday night we took it out for ice cream. On Friday morning, I called Vovó Leticia on the telephone as soon as I woke up and talked her into inviting me to breakfast. Breakfast at my grandparents' house was never typically Brazilian. In Washington, D.C., they had developed a taste for American breakfasts, and I shared their preferences in all things, no matter what.

Vovó Leticia may have owned the only waffle iron in Brazil, and we were playing Rummy over the remains of bacon waffles when the telephone rang. Vovó Leticia answered it in the usual way, and then was silent for a long time.

Then I heard her say, “Will he live?” After another silence, she realized I was standing behind her, and turning to me, she shooed me out of the room with a gesture.

I stood in the hallway on the opposite side of the door. I'll suppose it was ten minutes, but I have no real idea of how long. The telephone call was over for a long while and I was not sure about standing in the hallway when Auntie Livia finally came for me. Auntie Livia was the only member of the staff who was accorded a courtesy title. I believe it was because she was a favorite of Bernardinho, but she was also a favorite of mine. I do notice, for the first time as I write this, that she had the diminutive courtesy title - Auntie, and not Aunt.

Auntie Livia came and asked me to read aloud to her. Reading aloud was something I liked to do. I thought I read better than any of my relatives, because I did so dramatically and with different voices for all the characters. Auntie brought along a book I had been reading to Vovó Leticia the preceding week. I followed her into the study and began to read, bewildered.

I did not read well. My attention was on my memory of the telephone call which I kept searching for clues to what was happening. I tried to make myself remember a different tone of voice than the one I was reacting to. I wanted to remember a “Will he live?” that was less somber and intimate – a “Will he live?” that might apply to a pet cat. I tried to imagine a message that would just fill the silence before she spoke. I tried to remember where in the silence there had been a quick inhalation that might have marked word of an accident, or a long silent sigh to accompany bad news long expected. I couldn't remember any such thing.

Frustrated, I put the book down and announced I was tired of reading. At a loss for what to do with me, Auntie Livia tried to interest me in another book.

It was difficult. She knew I knew something bad was happening, and I needed to know what it was, but she was not permitted to tell me. I knew there was no point to asking questions. So to spare Auntie Livia an impossible task, I said I would read to myself. I chose a book I had not begun, found the first page, and sat staring at it until I thought she might notice I hadn't turned a page. Then, I went on to the next page and sat staring at that one.

This went on for an hour before my parent's housekeeper finally arrived with my siblings. I traded looks, but no information, with Daniel. I assumed I knew more than he did, and “Will he live?” being all I knew, I thought it best to keep what I knew to myself.

Gabriela went through so many housekeepers I remember only one of their names. Mariah was our housekeeper that day. She came in carrying Lara and, after dropping Daniel and Roberto with us in the study, she started to leave with Lara still in her arms. I suddenly felt it important to know where all my siblings were and shouted, “Wait! Where are you taking Lara?!”

She stopped without otherwise reacting - as though she were trying to figure out why I was shouting or wasn't sure, herself, where she was headed. At last, she replied in that awful but well-meaning voice adults reserve for children, “I think we'll go to the kitchen to see if there are any of Lara's crackers.”

Auntie Livia was left to keep the the rest of us entertained. She did her best.

Eventually, dinner arrived for us. It consisted of rice and beans, and day-old lettuce salad. It didn't even rise to the level of leftovers in my grandparent's house. There was no sign of a sit-down dinner for the adults. There was hardly any sign of the adults, themselves.

I wanted to tell Daniel that I was afraid our father was dying, but I dared not do such a thing. I could hear comings and goings through the backdoor, but I knew I wasn't going to learn anything until the adults decided what I should be told. I knew things sometimes happened that children were not supposed to know about, and I began to hope this thing was one of those, and that it would forever be a mystery. Everything I could think of that the adults might have to tell us was worse than something never to be told. Will he live? Who was it Vovó Leticia wanted to know about? Where was my mother?

The time after we ate was unlike any time I've ever experienced. I asked to go to bed early. It must have been a relief for Auntie Livia. I was put to bed with Daniel and Roberto at Roberto's bedtime. Roberto kept wanting to talk. It just annoyed Daniel and me. Sometimes Daniel hit Roberto, not hard enough to make him cry, but not hard enough to make him be quiet, either.

I did sleep that night. I think I forced myself to sleep just because being awake was intolerable. The guestroom we were in had heavy curtains that completely shut out the light except for a tiny slice that the morning sun sent in sideways along each edge of the window. When I awoke to go to the bathroom, those tiny slices were bright with the glare of a cloudless day. The hallway between the guestroom and the bathroom was empty, and the house was silent, but I knew my escape from the future was over. There was no point to looking for someone. They would come and tell us when we could take a breath and resume our new lives, whatever they would be. I lay back down in bed, still as a mannequin, next to Roberto and Daniel.

Eventually, there were two quick raps on the door, as though we were ever accorded any privacy, and Auntie Livia stepped in. We were told to hurry down to breakfast. The hurrying part helped a little.

My mother was already waiting at table and told us to sit down. We were promptly served the kind of breakfast we expected in Avô Bernardo's house – scrambled eggs, bacon, freshly baked coconut buns, and freshly made pineapple juice. When we had finished and were starting to get restless, my mother spoke, saying she needed our strict attention.

“I would give anything if I did not have to tell you this, but I must. Your father died last night. He had a stroke.” Then she was silent.

I watched little Roberto's face. Tears started to well up in his eyes, and then he said, “It will be all right. Some good fairy will come and make him well again.” We all just sat in silence. Then my mother said a soft “No” and got up and walked over to Roberto. She picked him up and kissed him and walked out of the room with him in her arms.

Daniel and I were alone.

***

I still haven't fully forgiven anyone. My mother said, “No, you cannot go to your father's funeral. Funerals are not for children.” I appealed to Avô Bernardo who gave me the same answer. I don't know whether he truly believed I should not go, or just believed it was my mother's decision to make. I knew it was hopeless to appeal any further, but I did, and got an unexpected hug from Vovó Leticia. The hug just made me uncomfortable. We didn't hug.

While our father was being buried, his children were at the park - expected to play. I sat on a bench with my knees drawn up underneath my chin. I don't remember which poor servant was assigned to entertain us.

I spent the time going over every memory I could dredge up of my father. I rehearsed memories like the lines of a play to make sure I didn't forget. For many months thereafter, I continued to rehearse my memories, especially while going to sleep at night. But memory is fragile, and most of what I rehearsed is gone.

Over the next few months, I spent a lot of time in the park, and I spent a lot of it sitting on that bench with my knees drawn up underneath my chin. I suppose it prepared me for a time I'm not going to write about when I did not dare to allow myself an emotion. Daniel and I both had birthdays while I was sitting on that bench, and then we were six and nine.

***

That time was also when I first began to think in a more adult way about religion. I was not taken in by all the excuses people were making for God taking my father away from me. I did not think God needed my father in Heaven, and when I was told we could not hope to understand the mind of God, but that he always has the best interests of the faithful in his plans... I think that was the first time it occurred to me that we have as much obligation to judge God as the other way around. What if God is evil? Then we would be obliged to work against Him even if He is God.

Avô Bernardo had begun taking walks with me more frequently, and I put that question to him on one of them. “What if God is evil?” He must have thought well of the question, because he suggested I put it to the priest when I got the chance. I think I remember the tone of voice in which he said, "Why don't you ask the priest...?" His voice seemed to admit to a sardonic pleasure in the events he might be unleashing.

The chance came a month later when the priest made one of his rare visits to our Sunday school. I have to admit he tried to be kind – but he failed. He repeated all the clap-trap about knowing the mind of God and then went on to say something like, “I know you are troubled by the death of your father, and it must be hard for you to see much good in the world right now. But we are all just tiny specs in God's plan, and what happens to us individually may not be so important. Here is what I promise you. That when you are older, and these days are deep in the past, you will be able to look around and see so much good in the world that you will know as a certainty that God is good.”

The priest does not have much time left to make good on his promise.

***

I wondered what a “stroke” was. It sounded as though someone hit my father, but I didn't think that was what happened. Again, I asked Avô Bernardo, and he explained what an aneurysm is, and that my father had one in his brain that broke. He told me my father arrived at work, hung up his hat, and put his hands to his head as though he felt a terrible pain, and it was over in seconds. He collapsed on the floor, and while he continued breathing for a few hours, he was never conscious, again.

***

Other than the absence of my father, the changes in my life seemed small - at first. I knew Avô Bernardo was still paying some of my father's salary to my mother - not the whole thing, he didn't think we needed a housekeeper, anymore.

I had the usual invitations to dinner with my grandparents - often twice in a week, and Avô Bernardo began taking Saturdays off from work to “take a little walk” with Daniel and me. I would have given him the liar look, but I understood that the word “little” is relative, and it probably was a little walk compared to joining a Roman legion on their way to Gaul. We usually took some random streetcar to the end of the line and then spent all day walking back.

The city became an impromptu classroom that revealed the scope of my grandfather's knowledge, and the skill with which he could casually share it with children. Probably the first thing Daniel and I learned was not to try eating anything just because it was red or purple and Avô Bernardo said it was edible.

A long series of these walks focused on a fountain in the center of the city. Like most of the fountains in Belém, the one we studied was dry except for a small, disgusting puddle of water we thought must be witch's brew because the sun was unable to dry it up. The fountain, which was supposed to be spouting water, looked like a cast iron wedding cake. We argued, but I am still certain it was topped by an actual unicorn horn.

We observed mosquito larvae in the witches brew, but that was only the beginning. We used the fountain to learn about concrete, beginning with the history of how the technology was lost during the Dark Ages and rediscovered. Eventually, we got around to the fact that ordinary concrete is porous and doesn't hold water, and how that seemed a piece of information that could have improved the construction of every one of the fountains in the city.

Our walks were not all just roving lectures. Once, Avô Bernardo accidentally dropped a small coin in the grass. He wasn't sure whether it was an older coin called a “real” or a new “cruzeiro,” but he claimed it was one of the four thousand réis gold pieces from the nineteenth century, so the three of us spent no less than an hour on our hands and knees combing through the grass, grunting like pigs, and laughing like hyenas.

I remember more of those walks than I do of my father, but perhaps, he would be happy to know I learned the one lesson all the walks were about. Once in a while, just as I was expecting to hear Avô Bernardo say, "Very interesting, if it's true," he would substitute, “It is only knowledge gained for its own sake that makes a mind worth having.”

***

For some weeks after my father's death, I noted each Sunday that Avô Bernardo was not in church. I thought he might be going to early mass, but when a couple months had gone by I asked him about it on one of our private, after-dinner walks. He said he was trying to figure out what he thought about God.

“Whether He's good or evil?”

“Or somewhere in between, or just doesn't care.”

“Do you believe in God?”

He paused a long while. I began to think the answer must be no, but he was afraid to say so. Then he said, “I don't think so.”

When I asked it, I hadn't thought I was asking a real question, and that answer! I had never doubted the existence of God for a second. I'd heard of doubters, but I just thought they were crazy.

“But everyone believes in God.”

“Of the two of us, one has his doubts, and the other has already got as far as considering the possibility that God is evil."

“But if there is no God, then Jesus Christ could not be the son of God. But people who knew Jesus and saw the miracles wrote about him.” I thought myself as clever as a Jesuit.

“None of the men who wrote the gospels ever met Jesus.”

“But it was Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John.”

“In those days, it was thought arrogant to sign your own name to anything you wrote. The people who wrote the gospels signed the names of anyone they wanted to. The gospels were all written many, many years after Jesus was dead.”

After a while, he added, “John was written by several different people.” Looking back on that conversation, I think he must have used the long pause to consider whether he should discourage my religiosity even further. He settled for telling me that someday we would talk about the origins of the various Christian canons. I understood that he was going to explain Christian cannons.

And after another long silence, I commented idly, “Vovó Leticia still goes to church.” And Avô Bernardo said something with a bitter edge I would never have thought possible. “Vovó Leticia is welcome to go to church even if I am not welcome to forego church.”

***

In the absence of a housekeeper, I found myself acquiring some of our housekeeping chores. I can't say they were more burdensome than was appropriate for a nine-year-old. However, some of them came to me, not because they were assigned to me, but because they were going undone. My mother got behind on the laundry and, when I tried to help out, the laundry became my chore.

Then there came a month when my mother did not quite make the money from Avô Bernardo last. Gabriela raved on about how my grandfather's stinginess was making us go hungry. I suppose it was true that he could have afforded us more, but there had been enough - she squandered it on clothes.

I thought I was supposed to join the drama by going to Avô Bernardo and begging for what Gabriela thought was an adequate allowance. Of course, no matter what Avô Bernardo might have given her, there was that remote possibility she would still find it inadequate. Sharing my grandparents' distaste for drama, I fed us rice and beans for a couple days and said nothing to Avô Bernardo about these things.

Instead, I developed a plan for her new clothes when they showed up in the laundry. I would wash them carefully and iron them. Then I would give them away. When Gabriela confronted me, I would say, "You have already worn them once. Naturally, I thought you were done with them." The plan was too clever by half, and I never screwed up the nerve.

Gabriela's new clothes turned out to be necessary because she was going dancing. She put my siblings to bed, told me I was in charge, and then made sure I had Vovó Leticia's telephone number. She assured me there would not be an emergency, she was just giving me the number because that's what responsible parents did. I thought I was capable of judging for myself what responsible parents did, and I judged Avô Bernardo would have a fit if I told on her.

There was nothing to do after she left but put myself to bed. Lying there, looking out a window at the darkness on the other side, I made myself afraid. I stopped looking out the window, but the plaster on the walls held shapes I knew were there even in the dark.

After Gabriela went dancing, again, the next Saturday, I told her I didn't want to be in charge anymore. It didn't do any good. She explained that adults need to have fun sometimes, too, and that I was perfectly all right with my siblings, and that I would probably be in charge the following Saturday as well. It was too much. I told my Avô Bernardo what was happening, and he had the fit I expected. It was enough for him to know she was already going out in public only six months after my father's death. When abandonment came up in the next sentence there was no place further for his outrage to go. My grandparents jointly summoned Gabriela to their house. I was glad, for once, to be excluded from adult affairs.

The recurring look I got from Gabriela over the next few days made me fear that vengeance was to be hers. She began to talk about moving us to Codó to be near her own family. I reported this talk to Avô Bernardo who promptly warned Gabriela that if she moved his grandchildren away from him, he would cut her off financially.

Gabriela grew progressively grouchy and indolent, arguing one day that she needed a housekeeper, and the next that she could get along in Codó without Avô Bernardo's “damn money.” I got more chores coupled to an order to explain to Avô Bernardo that we had to have a housekeeper. I wanted to ask her why she needed a housekeeper in Belém when she wouldn't have one in Codó without Avô Bernardo's “damn money,” but I didn't have the nerve to use the word “damn,” and it wouldn't sound right without it.

What amazes me, today, is that I managed to swim in the edge of her drama while Avô Bernardo got sucked into the vortex.

When I missed an invitation to dinner because I had to feed my siblings, my grandparents’ only immediate response was to stop giving dinner invitations to us one at a time and start inviting us all together. However, Avô Bernardo soon went further. There were men associated with his “securities account” with whom he dared to speak confidentially, and Gabriela began to receive letters. I know that some of those letters came from law offices.

I was sniffing around in her business as much as possible, but she had fits in which her rage was almost enough to destroy those letters without the match. I never got to see them. The bright, charismatic light that won people to her flickered on and off during those dark days. When she received a letter, it shone a cold, black vacuum that sucked sour sweat out of the walls.

She started hiring a child-minder when she went out at night, and I was told I didn't have to do my chores anymore. It would have been more accurate to say I could choose which chores I would do. I could stop making Gabriela's bed, but I couldn't very well stop doing the laundry or the dishes after meals. When the dishes were all dirty, Gabriela would have turned them over to eat off the other side.

Avô Bernardo paid for both Daniel and me to continue in the private school. Being out of the house five days each week made life better for the two of us, but poor Roberto and Lara. They heard nothing but Gabriela's constant grumbling and almost sub-vocal promises to move us to Codó. When Gabriela got tired of children, they spent the rest of the day in their rooms. I did what I could for them. As soon as I got home from school, I played some game with them. Then, unless Gabriela was having an all-consuming rant that made it up to me to fix dinner, I read to them - dramatically and doing all the characters.

***

Then there came another month in which Gabriela came home from a dance without a cruzeiro left and a week to go to the first of the next month. She confronted Avô Bernardo in his office at the print shop. As I understood it from Vovó Leticia, she had to review every disagreement they'd ever had, starting with imagined slights from before her marriage to my father. Avô Bernardo met her scorn with the silence of a will as old as his Silurian ancestors who crawled out of the sea. When Gabriela finally found herself with no more to say, Avô Bernardo just swiveled around in his chair and went back to work.

Two hours after their confrontation, one of the pressmen arrived at our house with a box of groceries and some cash that he slid into my pocket while whispering instructions not to tell Gabriela that I had any money (as though I would have been so stupid). On the first day of the next month, the pressman delivered Gabriela's usual check along with a letter that explained she no longer needed to worry about paying for our groceries. He had made arrangements with the greengrocer, the butcher, and the baker to give her whatever she wanted on credit. At the end of each month, he would pay the bills and deduct their sum from her next month's check.

Gabriela reacted the way a Tasmanian devil might react to a stick being poked down its burrow. Unfortunately, the check was large enough to pay for train fare to Codó and she ordered us to start packing.

I ran to my grandparents' house where Vovó Leticia explained to me that there was nothing they could legally do to prevent Gabriela from taking us to Codó. However, she reminded me that Avô Bernardo would cut off her allowance, and that would soon bring her home, again. Four days later we were on the train to Codó.

***

On the train, Gabriela bought us all treats and told us how great it was going to be with her family in Codó. She said the public schools in Codó were so good they were better than the miserable private school in Belém, adding how concerned she had been about the poor education we were getting. Of course, I'd seen Gabriela's family, and even though I’d been very small, I knew that at least some of them were illiterate. I mostly just thought about how the treats we were getting probably only meant greater poverty before the end of the month. There was the hope that the more precipitously we fell into poverty the sooner Gabriela would give up and take us back to Belém.

I could tell that something was not going right for Gabriela - something more than the fact that in trying to get more out of my grandparents she had argued her way out of everything. Now her pride was taking her down a rat hole and she knew it. All I knew was that I was about to learn what a rat hole smells like.

When we finally arrived in Codó, we were met by a cousin with a donkey cart who was to take us and all our gear to the Compound – the collection of houses about three miles from Codó where most of Gabriela's family lived. The cart was not adequate for all the boxes of clothing and other paraphernalia we'd brought, but Cousin Diego piled boxes on top of trunks until I began to fear we would tip over and some of us would be crushed. As it turned out, I think the only creature that suffered much was the donkey who had to be struck with a quirt at regular intervals.

I kept quiet about my own dread, and for a fugitive moment a lighthearted mood survived in the cart. There was laughter from my siblings. They were on an adventure. And then, we arrived - home. Roberto started looking around for whatever Gabriela was calling home, but I could see from the way Daniel's mouth gaped open that he knew we were looking at it.

The “home” in front of us had been a two-room clay house with a hard-packed floor and a thatch roof. The roof was still recognizable if not of much actual use. The remains of doors and shutters hung uselessly akimbo, and that was the best part of it. We were soon to find out that the house had been emptied of furniture along with anything of potential use such as a pot to cook rice in. It was empty of everything except insects, cobwebs, musty air, and chicken droppings. The droppings grimly suggested that the house had held chickens quite recently.

Gabriela explained that we were only sheltering there for a few days while her family built us a new home. Had we come with more warning, she said, her family would have had our new home waiting for us. She was cheerful about how we would have it all cleaned up by nightfall. That cheerfulness made me think of the sound the wet globs of clay must have made as they were piled up to make the walls. All of the neighboring houses were clay, so my brothers understood as well as I did what our “new” house was to be.

I can't say that Gabriela's family came rushing to our aid. The houses were no more than fifty paces apart, and I sometimes saw someone looking out of a window at us, but no one came. There were some toddlers and slightly older children playing in the dirt, but they ran home when I looked at them. I have no doubt the expression on my face made me look as though I were about to grow snakes for hair and turn everyone to stone.

Cousin Diego had a look on his face that seemed to say, “Nobody warned you?” I understood that his efforts in getting us to this particular level of Hell had been meant to be helpful. He seemed, with his unassuming manner, to be a decent lad about twenty years old, and I thought him rather handsome in a torn-clothes, straw-hat, sweaty-from-honest-labor sort of way. He asked whether we had brought any food, and when Gabriela said, “No,” he offered to go back to town to get some staples for us - if we had any money. I looked at the sky in a sort of prayer that we still had a cruzeiro, and when Gabriela started to get into her purse, I gave Diego the combination mouth-and-shoulder-drop, whole-body-sag, negative-head-shake look that means, “Thank heavens, and thank you so much for saving us from starving because we're led by a lunatic.”

***

When Cousin Diego left, we were by ourselves with a house to clean. Gabriela took us to a nearby house where she said her grandmother lived. There we all got an excited welcome with warm hugs, but surely her grandmother had seen us arrive. We borrowed a broom, and my new great grandmother followed us to our new home. Gabriela began sweeping. There was really nothing much to be done to the place other than sweeping, but a lot of that was needed. As she worked, Gabriela kept extolling the virtues of the broom her grandmother had made out of a stick and a bundle of some kind of leaves. It looked like a chicken being swallowed by a snake. Gabriela pointed out that it was a wonderful broom which, like many of the useful things we were going to discover in the next few days, came free from the bush. I supposed the useful things included the kind of berries we learned not to eat from my grandfather.

I had some urge to help, for the sake of my siblings, but there was only one broom. I pulled one of the shutters off a window and propped it up against the doorway to keep the chickens out. After my mother swept the floor, my great grandmother left for a few minutes and returned with a great aunt who had a broom on a longer stick that could be used to brush around up in the rafters and among the coconut leaves that made up the roof. A cloud of insect and spider laden debris came scuttling down on us, and everyone who was not sweeping abandoned the house. The floor needed to be swept all over, again, and because it needed to be swept with a little vigor, it showed itself to be less hard-packed than I'd thought.

As evening approached, Cousin Diego returned with rice and beans, salt, a pot, and a large spoon. Other relatives began to make their appearances. Most gave Gabriela an excited hug and then, backing up, looked at us and our situation with a Humph. A few were more helpful, Cousin Diego especially. As darkness descended on us, he went home to his mother's house and returned with what turned out to be our dinner. It was meant to be celebratory. There was rice and a feijoada. I think I could have pushed the pigs' feet around in the black beans and eaten the rice if it were not for the snout. As it was, I ate standing up and walking around, and when I was out of sight, I dumped it all on the ground.

Eventually, I have no idea how late it was, someone arrived with a hammock that got strung for Gabriela. The children just got coconut fronds to sleep on. There was no bath, no change of clothes, just collapse on the ground. I didn't care.

***

As I knew the stories of my father's travels when he was scarcely older than I was, I thought I had some independence baked into my genes. I hardly slept, and spent the night reviewing a decision. I would wait until there was some food, other than the feijoada, and as soon as I had eaten I was going back to Avô Bernardo. I intended to spend two days going cross-country in order to make it harder for Gabriela to find me if she bothered looking.

In the morning, a prescient Gabriela woke me in order to tell me that, if I tried to run off to my grandfather's house, the authorities would return me so fast I wouldn't know I'd been in Belém. She said they'd even put Avô Bernardo in jail if he didn't send me back as soon as I arrived. I thought to myself, “Very interesting, if it's true,” but I did know my mother was my legal guardian, and I was intimidated by her anticipation of my thoughts.

***

When breakfast arrived, it was cuscuis, a spongy mound of cornmeal cooked with tapioca. That was okay, except we ate it with our fingers. There was nothing unusual about people eating cuscuis with their fingers, it was a traditional food for working people. I just wasn't used to eating much of anything with my fingers. Gabriela promised we would have spoons the next day. I wanted a knife and fork, and I didn't know how Gabriela was going to make good on all the promises she was making.

It's impossible for me to describe all the things that were wrong during the next few days, or to explain the smaller infinity of things that would remain wrong for years. We slept in the dirt for three nights, but things like hammocks began, slowly, to arrive. For a while, we slept two to a hammock, but that improved as well. We did get spoons, which is all anyone in the Compound used  (other than their fingers) to eat. There were other problems, worse problems, that just would not go away.

In my family, sanitation was important. The staff was trained in some detail about how infectious diseases are spread and knew that their employment depended on their following the rules. I went to a school where the lavatories were kept clean. Eating food prepared by people who didn’t wash their hands after they defecated nauseated me. I could have coped with an outhouse, but the one we were told to use was filthy. I didn't want to touch anyone.

I found myself charged with taking care of Lara. I'm sure I got the job because Gabriela didn't like changing diapers. I hated the diapers, mainly having to wash them, and of course, we didn't have enough of them.

There was no sign of Gabriela's family starting work on the promised house. Eventually, Cousin Diego repaired the roof of the place we were in. It was interesting to watch him do it. There was a kind of technology involved – knowing how to cut and process the coconut leaves. Once our roof was repaired, he started cutting tree limbs into shapes needed for the someday house, but as soon as it became clear that he wasn't going to get any help, he quit. I thought it was noble of him to do what he did.

Without Cousin Diego I don't know what we would have done, but what he did wasn’t enough. I was determined to run away. I thought about running away every night, but I knew I had to be patient because I had to make a go of it on the first try. If I failed, I didn't know what Gabriela would do, but locking me in a cage didn’t seem beyond possibility.

Were there really authorities who would return me to Gabriela? I doubt it, but when I was a child I believed in authorities who enforced the rules. Unlike my father, I only tested rules in my imagination, and I had no way of knowing any better.

Looking back after all these years, I think Vovó Leticia should not have told me there was nothing a lawyer could do. It contributed to my belief in the existence of malign authorities, a belief that made me timid. Could my grandmother have been as naive as I was about these things? Surely she knew money was as important in court as anyplace else, and my grandparents had a lot of it while Gabriela had none. It's possible I had no insight into what was really going on, and I am left, today, with only that child's understanding. Adults, especially the adults in my family, often thought it best for children to know nothing of the winds and weather that controlled their lives.

Aside from escape, the only thing that much occupied my thoughts was my concern, as big sister, for my siblings. Free of school or any other supervision, Daniel and Roberto went wild. As soon as they'd eaten whatever stood in for breakfast, they headed into the bush. They usually appeared for lunch and then disappeared until sunset. I thought I saw my father in them, but that seemed less likely to save them than destroy them.

As for myself, the heat in Codó was unbearable, even in the morning. By afternoon, it sent me searching for the deepest shade and best breeze. There I sat with Lara in my lap for hours at a time.

Lara got her basic needs met while Gabriela went from house to house gossiping with her family. She had plans she shared with everyone – plans that seemed to involve going dancing and meeting someone with money. I'm not sure where she was going to find someone with money who wanted four children - even if it was just a mistress with four children.

One day my brothers talked me into going with them into the bush. I had to do so with Lara on my hip, so my brothers promised me they knew interesting places near by - and they did. We spent most of the morning by a frog pond. They caught tadpoles, and I lay on my back and watched a vulture ride the currents in the air. The day's heat drove updrafts so strong they made me think of Avô Bernardo's lesson about furnaces that would smelt iron ore. There were plenty of vultures to watch, but there was one that caught my eye sailing back and forth through the up-welling heat, slowly rising into the cold upper air. He was not looking for food as I'd been taught in school. No matter how good his eyes might have been, he was too high for that. He was doing what Avô Bernardo would have said he was doing. He was a bird that could ride the currents, and he found pleasure in doing it. He rose until he was just a dark spot against a white cloud, a thin line that contracted into a dot, and then expanded into a faint line, again, as his wings turned toward me. When he disappeared, I couldn't tell whether he was just so high and far away I couldn't see him, or had flown into one of the fluffy white clouds that patterned the silky blue of the sky. Cumulus clouds. I thought about what I'd seen vultures eat and thought I could easily eat pig snout in exchange for that freedom.

***

As a child, I think I was less judgmental than I am now. I kept no book against any of my mother's relatives, but I avoided them. They were subsistence farmers who had found a way to include some laughter, but not much kindness, in their lives. There were children-a-plenty among them, but there was only one girl anywhere near my age. Sophia told me the only thing boys needed to be able to read and write was their names, and girls didn't even need to be able to do that. I wrote her off.

Among Gabriela's close relatives, her grandmother was all right. She expressed some sympathy for my descent into poverty, but of course, that was all she’d ever known, so she didn’t think it was the worst thing that could happen to a person. For that matter, I suppose she was right.

Gabriela's mother was hopeless. She was just a crazy lady who spent hours each day wandering through the Compound picking leaves off the ground and stuffing them into the torn pocket of a dirty house dress. The dress was worn so thin - when the sun was behind her, you could see the outline of her scrunched-up body through it.

I did like Cousin Diego. He was illiterate, but he was clever in his way, and he never made fun of anyone. He was a little shy and didn't judge me or my siblings. There were a few others who were not so bad. In particular, there was a cousin of some degree who lived in Codó but often visited on Sunday afternoons. Gustavo earned a decent living in town repairing electrical equipment. This often required some ingenuity because replacement parts were almost never available. He liked to show off how much he knew about science, which was mostly about electricity and how to make paint. He seemed to think anything else was unimportant, but he at least admitted I was smart.

There was a bad moment with Gustavo that pretty well fixed our reputation in the Compound. Gustavo was trying to persuade Daniel to take up his trade. He said anyone who was my brother was probably smart enough. Daniel pointed at Gustavo's hands, black with grime that could never be thoroughly scrubbed off, and said, “I'm going to have a profession that doesn't get my hands dirty.” Gustavo just replied quietly, “It's honest dirt,” but there were relatives present who recognized a bit of gossip that would echo for a month.

***

My life in Codó came, first, in two threads, and then in three. At first, there was just Monday through Saturday except for Wednesday night. That thread was almost entirely about being poor and friendless in a world of histrionic drama, a world where hypocrisy was the normal way of making sure you had all the bases covered, a world I should have been able to get out of by clicking my heels twice and making a wish. The rest of the time there was religion. Later, there was a third thread - school.

On the first Sunday after our arrival in Codó, we went to church. It was a Sunday that began Saturday night when Gabriela ordered us to get out the best of the good clothes we brought with us. That seemed like an ordinary demand until Gabriela tried to dress her mother and grandmother in some of her own clothes. They would have none of it, and Gabriela's grandmother told us to put what we'd dug out of the trunks away. The adults began arguing over what clothing was appropriate for church. Neither her mother or grandmother seemed to much appreciate Gabriela's insistence that she knew what was appropriate, but Gabriela, being both our mother and Gabriela, got her way. We went to church dressed for Saint Paul's Cathedral.

I had no good evidence that Gabriela was trying to show off, only a meanly colored hypothesis that suited me. There were those among her relatives who expressed doubt that she had married into money. If she had married into money, they giggled to one another, what was she doing living in what even other residents of the Compound saw as poverty? I speculated that the need to show these gossips the contents of our trunks had everything to do with getting us dressed to the nines. To tell the truth, at the same time I was grousing to Daniel and Robert about our mother's motives, I secretly approved of the result. I was glad to be doing something classy.

I was of two minds about going to a protestant church. I was of two minds but neither of them cared. I was comfortable with Catholic ceremony and didn't see why I should have to change. On the other hand, I had not been enamored with the Church since my father's death, and I was open minded about protestants. As I had never been in a protestant church and had never even heard of the Assembléia de Deus, I was slightly curious about what I would find when we got there - though not curious enough to justify walking a mile past the Catholic Church to the far side of Codó.

An usher greeted us at the door without the enthusiasm I thought was commensurate with our being five, well-dressed new members of the congregation. Perhaps, he was put off by my entrance. As we walked in, I was not done objecting to being compelled to go to church, and he heard me throw in a complaint about the extra mile. I thought he could have ignored that, but instead he intervened. “Do what your mother tells you, Madalena.” I couldn't imagine where he got the idea I was called Madalena, but even after my mother corrected him, he continued to call me Madalena, and that became a problem for me.

His name was João, and in church it was always Brother João this and Brother João that. I never saw him be anything other than an unfriendly usher on Sundays. That, and the fact that he couldn’t remember my name, made me think he was at least mildly retarded, but that isn’t what the  congregation thought. The Assembléia de Deus didn’t have saints, which was fine with me, but that means I still don’t know what to call this man. Maybe, “HERO OF THE BENIGHTED WORSHIPERS.”

I didn’t pay much attention to the whole story, but I thought the summary was this: During the founding of their hopelessly small church, Hero João was to Pastor Vinicius as Paul was to Jesus. His mindbogglingly dull personality somehow brought in a couple cartloads of adherents to the faith.

In any event, what became important from my point of view was that he had so much influence that most of the congregation called me Madalena. A few seemed to think I just didn’t like my real name and had decided, in some childish way, that I wanted to be Maria. So sometimes I was Madalena, and that was wrong, and other times I was Maria, and that was just condescension as though I were a child.

I hated being called Madalena, but when I complained to Gabriela about it, she only said it didn’t matter. I was so frustrated. How is it possible to explain that what you are called does matter? Even in the Compound, where everyone should have known I was Maria, it was about a fifty-fifty split.

I also never liked the way Hero João looked at me. He was skinny in a land of fat men, so he looked like a bird of prey.

***

Once we were seated, Hero João informed us that the congregation had just been forced out of the building where they had met for several years, and glory be to God, the Lord had led them directly to this apparently abandoned, half-finished building that would seat as many as two hundred people. Unfortunately, they did not have two hundred chairs, and as we had not brought our own chairs, the children were required to sit on the floor.

I looked around at what passed for Sunday best in the congregation. The women, except for Gabriela, were all dressed in various kinds of gingham with long sleeves and hems that skimmed the floor. There was more variety among the men, but nothing that a pressman would not wear to work. Under the circumstances, I thought some consideration should be given to us for the finery Gabriela had dressed us in. Specifically, I thought I should be given a chair rather than having to ruin my dress by sitting on the dirty floor. The gingham congregation seemed to think I was more in need of a lesson about the perils of vanity. It wasn't my vanity!

I gave the Catholics five points for having a decent place to gather, and the protestants five points for being willing to meet in an abandoned building. I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about the absence of the Latin mass, so I had already decided on a split decision before Pastor Vinicius began what they called “preaching.” Five points each.

But the man was a lunatic! Okay, half the saints were lunatics, maybe more, but the Catholic saints were just bits and pieces kept out of the way in reliquaries. Here was a living, raving madman, and unless God was neither good or evil, but also just a raving madman (a possibility I had never considered and would have to think over) I was in the wrong place to be getting any religious instruction. I deducted the five points I'd previously given the protestants.

I was less certain about the sanity of the choir and what I thought about their music. I'd never thought much about the organ in the cathedral in Belém, except to occasionally think that organs did not deserve to be tortured any more than people. The protestant choir, unlike the Catholic organ, had an effect. It accomplished something. There were about a dozen people in the choir, their music obviously got them moving about, and I felt it might do the same for me. However, I was not comfortable with the idea that moving about was what should be encouraged in church. I could not score a contest between our organ and this choir, so my mental score remained ten to five, an edge for the Catholics that could have been just two to one if I hadn't been awarding five points at a time.

The preaching and the choir did get people on their feet with their arms in the air, and waving their hands about as though they were fending off spider webs. With a little effort, I was still able to remain neutral. It was when people started falling on the floor and shouting gibberish that I stood up and backed up against the wall.

***

When we were home, again, I asked Gabriela whether we could talk about the church service. She said, “Yes,” and then we stood there looking at one another. Then she said, “Well?” And I said, “Well?” And finally, not knowing what to say, I said, “Can you explain it to me?”

And she said, “What do you want me to explain?”

“Everything.”

We went on in this way for a while with Gabriela trying her best to be the adult who understood the world, which meant keeping away from any question that had an answer. She didn't have any answers. I could see her problem and almost sympathized. I thought she would make something up and I would have to give her the liars' look, but we were too far out in the water for her to even try to explain how we got there.

I tried asking what those people who were thrashing around on the floor were saying. She didn't know. Having heard that the missionaries who started the church were from America, I asked whether they were speaking English. Gabriela thought I might be right.

Once that conversation sputtered down to its entropic death, I didn’t expect any resumption of our theological intercourse, but shortly before we went to bed, she gathered us together and told us there was a Bible study group on Wednesday nights. There Pastor Vinicius would explain the religion of the Assembléia de Deus to us. She assured us that they were the real Christians, and that we would understand. I pointed out that the Catholic Church was closer and asked whether we could go to the Catholic Church, instead. She said “No,” and when I pointed out that we could wear our good clothes, she still said “No.”

***

I had to watch Gabriela's transformation into a holy roller, the genuine article. I was not surprised that it took only a few weeks. I knew what kind of charmer she was, and I could see it coming out, transformed, in church. Services at the Assembléia de Deus were a kind of audience-participation theater, irresistible to Gabriela. She wiggled her toes and bumped her knees together waiting for the rise in pitch of Pastor Vinicius's voice that signaled he was ready for the coming ecstasy. As his words became meaningless except for the emotion they contained, Gabriela rose with her arms in the air and her hands shaking with her fingers splayed. She paraded, dancing through as much physical space as the unruly arrangement of chairs permitted. She led her section of the congregation like a cheerleader, each uplifting wave of her arms getting more of them to their feet. I don't think she'd ever heard of ululation, I think she discovered it on her own.

I was not surprised the first time she collapsed to the floor and began talking in tongues, I had been dreading it from one week to the next. It was amazing how her ululation acquired consonants, first, and then more conventional vowels until it did sound like a language. I was mortified and impressed all at the same time.

Watching Gabriela speak in tongues was not all I dreaded, and worse was soon upon me. Gabriela persuaded one of the women in the church to make two dresses for me. I'd feared one of those gingham dresses that I would have to wear on Sunday, but two meant I could wear them every day. At the time, I thought that was absolutely the worst thing the Assembléia de Deus could do to me. I could not have been more mistaken.

***

We had been in Codó two months when someone showed up from the public school wanting to know why we were not in attendance. No one had ever worried about the attendance records of the children of the Compound, before, so course I saw the hand of Avô Bernardo in this. And so did Gabriela who screamed that we were none of his business. And what’s more, the school required uniforms, and no girl in the Assembléia de Deus was going to wear those heathen uniforms. I suspected that having Lara back in her lap while I was in school had more to do with her harangue than the godliness of the uniforms.

She deserved the liars look. Hadn’t she, herself, told us we would attend a public school in Codó better than the private school in Belém?

The school official returned two days later and informed Gabriela that, because it was a religious matter, I would not be required to wear a uniform. Gabriela still raged. Nevertheless, she had read the documents from the lawyers in my grandfather's securities account and had to accept that I was going to school. My punishment was meted out at school without any effort on my mother's part. It consisted of the daily ridicule that came with having to wear an eighteenth century peasant's costume.

There was no alarm clock, and it was up to me to admit, even before sunrise, that there was light in the sky. Then it was my task to turn my brothers out of bed. Breakfast our first morning was what it was to be every morning - whatever was leftover from dinner that wouldn't spoil over-night – in other words, beans and rice. Fortunately, lunch was better right from first day. Cousin Diego's mother gave me a covered pot with a convenient handle from which the pot swung. That pot was for carrying our lunch to school, and knowing the diet Gabriela fed us was nutritionally doubtful, I made an effort on that first day to have a lunch in the pot that included something attractive purloined from the Compound's garden.

On our first morning, Cousin Diego showed us the way to school. The three mile walk got us to a school that was its own level of hell. Every sensation had the word “yuck” emblazoned on it - everything from the smell of urine in my classroom to bullies being the only people who paid any attention to us. I had to share a broken desk with a girl who was put in the back of the room because her parents didn't give her the money to buy her own pencil and paper. When she “borrowed” mine, she just scribbled on the paper. None of the greasy, childish books were of any use to me. It was all hideous - but it wasn't the Compound.

The school had morning and afternoon sessions. Because I was older, and there were fewer older children, I managed to get into the morning session, but Daniel and Roberto were stuck in the afternoon. They could have walked to school long after I did, and I could have returned to the Compound while they were still in school, but I insisted right from the start that Daniel and Roberto were too young and unreliable to be trusted to get themselves to and from school alone. For some reason, Gabriela's grandmother backed me in this, and all three of us got a full day away from the Compound. There wasn't much to do during most of our day, but I wasn't going to give up my precious few hours of boredom for more time in the Compound for the Insane.

School started at half-past seven in the morning and effectively ended about ten o'clock when I broke a sweat. The climate of Belém, one hundred miles from the equator, was hot and humid. and Codó was another two hundred miles farther south. But Belém was on the coast, and Codó was far from any moderating ocean breeze. Only two hundred feet above sea level, it was too hot for school even in the early hours before sunrise.

We were dismissed at eleven forty-five. There was an hour-long break before the afternoon shift began their four hours and fifteen minutes. I don't know how Daniel and Roberto managed to learn anything.

In school, there was a strict divide in child society between town kids and country kids. We were assigned country kid status by the town-kid bullies. When we objected, one of the town kids just pointed out that we ate with our fingers out of a common pot. Then second-tier bullies pounced on me for wearing Assembléia de Deus dresses, and that was that.

My name continued to be a problem for me. Assembléia de Deus kids didn’t come to school often, but a couple times their presence led to shouting matches that attracted other kids hoping for a fight. They would tell me my real name was Madalena and back it up with the claim that their parents had told them it was my real name. So, of course, the bullies picked up on my sensitivity and regularly tormented me with the name Madalena.

The teachers also distinguished between town and country kids, believing the town kids had a pretty good chance of learning to read, possibly even to memorize a date in history. They hardly knew what to do with us because we could not only read and write as well as some of the teachers, on our second day in school we wanted books from the school's library - which did not exist.

***

We were in school less than a week when a letter from Avô Bernardo arrived for me. It came addressed to me in care of the school's principal who delivered it to me, personally. It caused a minor stir among my classmates. A week later a man I didn't know, but whom I learned was a vice-mayor of Codó, came to my school. He waited patiently in the hallway until we were dismissed, and when my classroom was empty, he took me back inside where no one could see us and gave me an envelope with a small amount of money in it. He told me it was from my grandfather and gave me his own telephone number at the Municipality in case of an emergency. The visit may have lasted less than three minutes, but it was a three-minute ride in a balloon to me. I felt joy walking home. I felt like I had a hawser and bollard holding me to Belém. I knew better, but at least I was held by a thread and a thumbtack.

There was no way I could use much money. Had I bought anything and brought it home, I would have needed some plausible explanation for how I came by it. Still, the money eased our lives in little ways. On our way home from school, there was woman who had a freezer in her house, and she paid for the electricity to run it by selling Popsicles. She made them, herself, and we did not get to pick our own Popsicles, she picked them for us. Sometimes a Popsicle had an undesirable smear on it from something else in the freezer. I almost always thought it was blood, and when that happened we just threw it away, and I paid for another.

I wanted us to have plates and cutlery for our lunch, but we could not take anything like that home, and I feared that hiding them somewhere along the way would get them stolen. I did not know my teacher, Senhora Sousa, as anything but a strict teacher who had no patience with the chaos that was the default state of my school, but I had always been a teacher's pet, and I hoped I knew how to approach her. I asked to speak to her after school and told her of my father's death and our fall into poverty. I emphasized that we were the only children from the Compound who attended school. I explained that we were not used to eating with our fingers, and I asked whether she had someplace where I could store three plates and a little cutlery. Of course, Senhora Sousa fussed about the problem of giving us special treatment but, of course, she emptied out a drawer for me.

I made an effort to make our lunches attractive, as I had seen my grandparents' cook do. The Compound's garden always provided a colorful salad and decorations for the plates. Sometimes we had nothing but a salad arranged in layers of color. It was lunch at Vovó Leticia's, and eating at a wobbly table in the shade of a cashew tree was close enough to eating at the Pão d'Arco table in Vovó Leticia's dinning room. My attempt at elegant little lunches attracted the attention of some of our peers. It was not positive attention at all. It got us bullied by some of the town children, and it did not get us out from under the country-kids label. It didn't matter to me. I was keeping us from forgetting the world the way it ought to be, or so I hoped.

Eating decent meals at school renewed our disgust at the meals we had been getting accustomed to at home. So I got some help from Cousin Diego and built a table out of the old door to our house (which had been replaced because it was rotting around the hinges). I then bought some old cracked plates, used cutlery, and some jelly glasses, and got Senhora Sousa's permission to tell my mother they were a gift from her. I think it was the first lie I'd told since early childhood. When I tried to persuade Gabriela to let me prepare dinner, we argued. She wanted to pass Lara to me the moment I arrived home, and what was wrong with the dinners ordinary people ate? I asked whether she could remember how we ate in Belém and wound up carrying Lara on my hip while giving directions for dinner to Daniel, but we ate better.

My letters to Avô Bernardo were often about the steps I was taking to inculcate some sense of aesthetics in my siblings. In one of my letters I used both “inculcate” and “aesthetics” and thought myself quite articulate. My grandfather often wrote about how proud he was of what his nine-going-on-ten-year-old granddaughter was doing to cope with our situation. I wonder, now, whether my letters might have dissuaded him from taking action to get us away from Gabriela. He might have thought we were going to be all right. Being unable to see the future, I might have thought so, myself.

***

There is so much to tell, and it is hard to do because of the way the threads stretch past one another but intertwine and then snarl together so events from different time periods are adjacent.

The day after I received my first letter from Avô Bernardo, Gabriela already knew about it, and the moment I got home from school she demanded to see it. I told her I threw it away, which was the truth. What else was I to do with it? I wasn't going to bring it home for her to see.

She wasn't quite prepared to call me a liar, but she made it clear (clear in the sense of hot glass meant to brand your skin) that I was to show her any letter I got from my grandparents, or any others of that family, or anyone connected with them, or on second thought, I was to show her any letter I received from anyone, period. I was also to show her any letter I wrote to anyone, whom-so-ever I think she said, before I mailed it.

So my grandfather began writing two letters each time, one for me and one to turn over to Gabriela. I also wrote two letters, one at school and one at home. For the letter I wrote at school, I bought the postage. For the letter I wrote at home, I hounded Gabriela for a stamp sometimes even threatening her with whatever the lawyers in Avô Bernardo's securities account had threatened her with. I had no idea what that was, but I had figured out I could get a reaction by referring to Avô Bernardo's lawyers. I sometimes fantasized about those lawyers getting custody of us for our grandparents, but what judge in Codó, not owing Avô Bernardo a favor, was going to take a mother's children from her? I still don’t really understand how to use money.

My letters to my grandfather were as objective as I knew how to make them. I wanted him to know how things were, but I did not want to alarm him by getting hysterical. I thought it would make him unhappy about a situation he was trying to make tolerable. I should have gotten hysterical. I had no idea how seriously I needed rescuing.

***

There were a dozen children in the Compound of school age, and a couple times during a week a few of them would decide to go to school with us. We didn't like this because we couldn't show we had money and that meant we couldn't get a Popsicle on the way home. I was particularly afraid little Roberto would say something that would set our secret afloat in the river of gossip that flowed around us.

There came a Tuesday when Sophia, the only girl of my age in the Compound, decided to join us on our way to school. She walked briskly up from behind us and called me Madalena. I was immediately irritated and asked her why she was coming with us when girls didn't need to know how to read or write. She didn't answer my question, she just said, “You're the smartest person in the Compound, and you're a girl, and girls are stupid." That was all.

As we spent hardly any time together, I challenged her - rudely, “How would you know how smart I am?”

“Sometimes, I listen to you when you sit outside at night talking to your brothers.”

I don't know why I didn't warm to what Sophia was saying. I only replied, “At school they only teach you how to read and write. They don't teach you much else.”

“So you went to another school before you came here, and they taught you?”

“No. Well, I guess a few things, but once you know how to read, you have to teach yourself,” and then I added, “Or else you have to have a grandfather who teaches you. That helps, too.”

Sophia continued along with us, seeming not to notice that I was still being rude to her. I have often felt guilty about the way I treated her. I was pleased to have someone almost my age notice that I knew things, but I bet myself that one day of school would be enough for her.

On the way home, she said she liked the books. I didn't know whether she meant picture books or that someone had read a story to her. However, it was a good enough day for her, and I lost my bet with myself. It took two days to be enough for her, or so I thought.

Sophia stayed in the Compound on Thursday and Friday. Then on Monday she was with us, again. She said she'd talked to her mother about going to school, and her mother told her that if she were a boy, she'd be old enough to start growing food to sell in the market, and pointed out that the boys her age were all helping their fathers. However, as she was a girl her mother could let her go to school for a while. Her mother offered to help her with the laundry after school on Wednesday, but she would have to do the whole laundry on Saturday. The way Sophia put it, “Wednesday” and “Saturday” rather than “Wednesdays” and “Saturdays,” I thought  she was being allowed to go to school for one week.

When she lasted through the whole week, my brothers and I decided to wait to see whether she would show up on Monday, and if she did, then we would decide what to do.

She showed up.

And something had to be done. I hate to admit that my first impulse was to tell her she wasn't one of us, and she couldn't walk with us, anymore. Daniel and Roberto took up her cause, and I tried to make a case for telling her she could walk to school with us but not back home. I knew I was beaten, because I thought it was a stupid idea, myself, but the question remained, What to do about the Popsicles?!

That night I put Lara to bed, and my brothers and I had a secret meeting at the frog pond. In the end, we decided on a plan that was so full of risk that it tripled the amount of time I spent worrying about getting caught. We decided to tell Sophia the Popsicles were an absolutely secret reward our grandfather provided for being the top students in our classes. I said I had written to Avô Bernardo to explain that Sophia could not be expected to start out at the top of her class. I told her he agreed to provide her with a Popsicle as long as she made progress every month toward the top of her class. Then we pounded her with the need for secrecy every way we could. We started by telling her that if she told any of the other children, they would start coming to school, and they could not all be at the top of their classes, so they couldn't get a Popsicle, and the whole scheme would leak out, and when it did, Gabriela would take the money, and we would stone Sophia to death, and no one would care because she was just a bastard, anyway. She was, in fact, illegitimate at a time when there were fewer such children and their status was often hidden. She was sensitive to it.

Part of the plan concerned damage control if she talked. We agreed we would steadfastly maintain that there was only enough money for the Popsicles, and that it came from the vice-mayor, and he did it for all the top students. Not only that, we would claim that Gabriela should have known about the arrangement. So I began creating the evidence that she should have known. The next time I wrote to Avô Bernardo, I included a vague reference to rewards for our success in school, something that would not alert Gabriela, but which would allow us to deny having kept anything from her. There was more, but what did it matter? Popsicles?! I was twelve and my time was coming. I was already whistling in the dark.

***

It turned out that we were completely wrong in assuming the Popsicles were the light that instinctively drew Sophia to our flame. We discovered our mistake on a day when I said she couldn't have lunch with us because she was sick. She cried. The lunches we shared with her were what drew her to us. She liked the formality of the table setting. She had made dolls out of corn cobs, but she had never thought of having tea with them, and then, suddenly, she skipped past playing at having tea to being grown up and having high tea with us.

***

I found myself in a peculiar social position at school. Individually, both the town and country children liked me, but socially I was uncategorized and unacceptable in either group. One time I was sitting behind a maintenance shed, talking to a girl I judged to rank fourth or fifth in the social hierarchy of the town girls - just below the bullies. Our class had been let out earlier than usual for some reason. (Teachers who were not paid regularly often did not attend class dutifully.) Let out early, the girl didn't seem to have anyplace to go. So we talked animatedly for a long time while I waited for Sophia and my brothers to show up for lunch. Suddenly, four of her friends came around the corner of the building. In the instant they appeared, she stood up and slapped me as hard as she could, seemingly out of the blue. I was surprised, but as soon as I thought about it I understood. She liked me, but her social standing was at stake.

In spite of the way the bullies laughed at us and our elegant lunches, we acquired a couple friends. They were all smart, low-status kids who were attracted to the bonhomie around our table.

***

There were times when I begged Gabriela to take us back to Belém, to let us live with Avô Bernardo even if she wanted to stay in Codó. She just said Avô Bernardo wouldn't have us, which was nonsense, but it ended the discussion even if I gave her the liars' look.  Sometimes, when there was nothing left to say, I threw rocks at our house thinking that, if I knocked it down, we might have to move back to Belém.

Our descent into poverty started me on the road to feminism long before “feminism” was a word. At first, I just kept asking what right Gabriela had to keep us in poverty and a terrible school because her ego would not let her give in to Avô Bernardo. I had always sought the moral high ground, and the idea of “rights” had plenty of appeal to me. As I grew to think of myself as a woman, I began to think of women's rights along with children's rights. Then I mostly skipped over parents' rights, which I thought were adequately enforced, and went on to grandparents' rights. I thought about how poverty stripped people of their rights. I thought about these rights with an intensity that, in some other time and place, could have taken me to the barricades. To this day the anger is trapped inside my head.

After I Turned Thirteen

When I was thirteen, we had a new house. It was no larger than the old one, it still just had the two rooms. It did have a concrete floor and walls made from bricks holed-out like concrete blocks - “tijolo.” The roof was still made of coconut leaves, and it still sagged. It was still a dark and dirty place. Many of the tijolo bricks had been broken before they were put in place, and the concrete that held them together began to crumble before the house was finished. Even I could see what the men who built our house were doing wrong. They mixed great piles of concrete in the morning, and as it hardened during the day, they just kept adding water to keep it workable. By the end of the day, it still looked like wet cement, but I knew it would set without any strength. Indeed, the upper walls shed powdered concrete that settled on us at night. Ironically, when the day came that I needed the walls to fail, they stood as though they'd been built by Roman soldiers.

When I was thirteen, Gabriela still did not have a rich lover, but she did have a job she liked. She was a clerk in a pharmacy. In this job she was free to give advice to people who were ill. At first, her guesses were completely random. She sold sulfa powders for asthma, antacids for the grippe, and cocaine syrup for anything that did not respond to her first recommendation. As her “patients” often improved in spite of her treatments, she was certain intuition was perfect. She had a good reputation, probably because of the amount of cocaine she dispensed.

She earned enough money to actually buy small beds for Daniel and myself, and we hung the hammocks for Roberto and Lara above them. She paid for a few other improvements to our home, but most of her money went for clothes and cosmetics for herself. Those clothes and cosmetics did improve all our lives because they improved her temperament.

Daniel was eleven and had begun talking about when he could quit school and start earning money. I asked him whose son he thought he was, and he just stared at me. So I asked him whose grandson he thought he was, and he still just stared at me. I did succeed in getting him started corresponding with Avô Bernardo, and I wondered why all of us had not been corresponding with him all along, and well, I prayed for Daniel. I suppose it was a real prayer, it had the form of a real prayer. What else was there to do?

Lara had just started school and was still an unknown quantity, but Daniel was at the top of his class in spite of his lackadaisical attitude, and Roberto was in Senhora Sousa's class, and Senhora Sousa swore he was the best student ever to pass through our school.

***

Not long after I turned thirteen there came a month when Avô Bernardo's letter was late. That was not a cause for concern because the postal service was unreliable. If a letter written on the first of the month did not arrive until the next month, that was just life. Still, I always hoped for his letter well before the third week of the month. Sometimes, a few days after that, the vice-mayor, who was now the ex-vice-mayor, would appear with a little money and sometimes an additional message. I knew he was the ex-vice-mayor because of the new instructions he gave me for contacting him in an emergency.

On the fourteenth of March, the ex-vice-mayor was waiting for me in the hall. We walked back into the classroom as always, but instead of handing me the envelope in his hand, he sat at a desk and motioned for me to sit down.

“Senhor Almeida had a stroke. He can't speak and the right side of his body is paralyzed. He refuses to eat, and cannot last long if he does not. He wants to see you.” The ex-vice-mayor was just that blunt. It was okay, I have always preferred bad news in short sentences. There's never  more to say, and it gives me permission to respond in short sentences.

The envelope contained train tickets and what seemed like a lot of money. He told me my grandmother had made arrangements for me to be met at the station. Her arrangements assumed I would depart on the sixteenth. Then he said, “If your mother gives you any trouble about traveling to see Senhor Almeida, tell her you have a lawyer who will be interested in her refusal, then come immediately to me.”

***

I had never traveled on a train by myself, so my worries about changing trains and keeping my tickets and baggage claim checks in the right place spared me from thinking constantly about Avô Bernardo. I understood that a stroke killed parts of his brain, and that brains can’t regrow like a bone, so I knew better than to listen to any of the people who were telling me my grandfather would get better. No one needed to explain that the damage was so great that Avô Bernardo no longer wanted to live. Why else would he refuse to eat? When I thought about him on the train, his impending death was all tangled up with my father's death, and I wondered whether strokes were hereditary, and would I die of a stroke?

I tried to distract myself by doing the things I’d enjoyed the first time I'd been on a train. I walked from one end of the train to the other trying to enjoy the scary places where the cars join. I looked out the window, but I was bored, and some small dramatic voice in my mind kept telling me it should be raining. What I had most enjoyed on my first trip was talking to strangers, and I would have liked to tell someone what a wonderful grandfather I had, but I wasn't interested in talking about anything else a stranger might talk about, and I wasn't going to walk up to someone I didn't know and ask if they wanted to hear about my grandfather.

It was one of those trips in which you feel the agony of ever-slowing time, a trip in which there is no neat mathematical escape from Zeno's paradox. It was one of those trips in which you so prepare yourself for the never-ending, asymptotic approach to the last train station that you expect your boredom to outlive you.

Auntie Livia met me at the station with a driver I didn't know. As soon as I saw her I started to cry. People in my family did not show their emotions much. No matter how closely or how frequently I came to crying when my father died, I didn't. This time, I began to think I would cry for a long time, but my own crying reminded me of the constant keening of the women in the Compound when one of the babies died of diarrhea. That stopped me. It was too much drama.

I think that was when the fantasies I had of someday returning to Belem lost their appeal. I knew that if I returned to Codó, I would be alone and adrift in the creation of a God who knows nothing of mercy. There would still be people in the world who shared my sense of aesthetics, a Senhora Sousa or a Vovó Leticia, but someone who swam in knowledge of the world as though it were his seawater self? No. Senhor Bernardo Almeida would be gone.

***

I was told Avô Bernardo could understand what was said to him, and Vovó Leticia told me what to say. She told me to tell him how well we were all doing. That was what I already intended to tell him, but then I saw him. It was the first time I ever saw a stroke victim. In fact, it was the first time I ever saw anyone who was seriously ill. It was his right side that was paralyzed, but his quavering effort to raise his left hand when he saw me started me crying, and there was nothing to stop it. I had been told his face was spared, but the lopsided grimace that had replaced his smile made me want to believe in God, again, so I could hate Him. Avô Bernardo tried to speak, but the sounds were unintelligible. I thought that, if I could stop crying and try hard, it would be easier to understand him, but I was wrong.

I took hold of his hand and lowered it to the sheet. It was weak and clammy. Never mind that it was warm and could still move, it seemed already dead to me. Tears were forming in his eyes, and I didn't want him to cry.

Vovó Leticia pushed a chair under me, and I sat down still holding the repulsive hand. I think it was five minutes before I could speak.

“We're doing fine Avô Bernardo.” And I told him all of his grandchildren were number one in their respective classes – except for Lara who was just starting school but would be number one in her turn. I told him I was still going to be a teacher, and I was still going to teach after I was married. I told him I thought Roberto would be the real scholar in the family, perhaps even a professor at the university. Senhora Sousa had taught him to play chess and said he was already almost better than she was, and she was the one who said he would be a university professor.

I said Daniel was getting to be too handsome for his own good and asked whether my father was like that. Avô Bernardo grunted and nodded his head, yes. I told him I thought Daniel was a lot like my father, but I didn't think he would run away because my mother couldn't pay his way back home.

I told him we were the healthiest crew anyone ever saw. I gave him cheerful news and had no way of knowing my happy predictions for the future were so horribly wrong.

As bad as my first impression was, it took a day for me to understand just how bad things were for Avô Bernardo. I was told he stopped eating when it became clear he could not feed himself and would be on pureed food for the foreseeable future. However, I knew that was just the last straw. There were worse problems. It was so difficult to get him out of bed that he had to use a bedpan, and then it was so difficult to get him on the bedpan that he frequently soiled his bed. He couldn't clean himself and had to submit to the ministrations of Auntie Livia. He had to wear a diaper at night, and this was a man you could have told was fastidious from across the street.

The evening after the day I arrived, Avô Bernardo started to refuse water as well as food.

It would have helped me if I could have participated in his care, but I could not make myself help with any of these awful things, and in any case, I was the last person Avô Bernardo would have wanted to help him. So I made it my task to think of questions he could answer with a nod of his head. It wasn't like engaging him in a conversation, but it was better than hours of silence. Good yes or no questions are hard to come by, and sometimes it seemed to take an hour to think of another question. We had no choice but to believe silence in one another's company was good and meaningful.

It was not long before the silence lasted so long that I asked him whether he wanted to die, and he nodded yes. I said I understood, and we both cried, again. Then there was a time when it was especially hard for me to think of a question because the question in my head was, Would you commit suicide if you could, and I was not going to ask that question. Committing suicide was what he was doing in the only way he could, and the question that disrupted my thinking became, If I could find a faster way for you to commit suicide, would you want to do it.

For a while, I got a pretty good run out of questions about God and religion. None of his answers suggested his impending death had turned him the slightest way back toward believing.

“Suppose there is a moral God you stopped believing in. If you later started saying you believe in him, because you face death and fear there might be a Hell, would that be offensive to God?” I waited a long time before he shook his head no. He'd obviously thought seriously about it, and I got in a good dozen questions working out how he reached that conclusion.

I took my meals with Vovó Leticia. I told her I didn't want to go back to Codó.  One could say I begged her to let me stay. Of course, I knew before the first word was out of my mouth, she had to tell me Gabriela would never allow it. I argued, saying that when Avô Bernardo was gone she might relent. I argued for letting me stay until Gabriela came after me, but Vovó Leticia still answered, “No.” She allowed for a remote possibility that, with Avô Bernardo gone, Gabriela might relent. She told me to wait a month or two, and then beg. It seemed like good advice, even wise advice. She asked whether I might be able to enlist someone like our pastor to help persuade Gabriela. Pastor Vinicius?! I knew that Pastor was not going to let one of the handful of souls he was saving go back to the Catholic Church.

***

On the third day, I asked Avô Bernardo whether there was anything more we needed to say, and he shook his head weakly and for emphasis waved his hand weakly, no. Later in the day, Vovó Leticia came into the room and asked Avô Bernardo whether it was time for me to go back to school.

Yes.

I went out of the room with Vovó Leticia and told her I wanted to stay until he passed, and to attend his funeral. I made it clear that I still harbored some anger over missing my father’s funeral. She said Avô Bernardo didn't want me there when he died. She said she'd asked him.

I've never quite convinced myself she really asked him, but I did ask him myself, "I want to be here until the end. Is that okay with you?" He shook his head, no, and then looked away from me. It had taken me a long time to decide how to word that question. I didn’t get it right.

I began packing to leave the next day, but as it turned out, he was gone before the next day came. I didn't actually see him take his last breath, but I was there when he went to sleep for the last time.

Vovó Leticia said he wanted me in school, not at his funeral, and I believed her. It was what he would want even if he didn't really say it. Still, the survivors have some rights, too, and in the end, she relented. Attending the funeral would only delay me by three days, and there were things we needed to do.

We needed to ransack Avô Bernardo's library for books for me. We began after dinner the day he died, and decided we were finished when the handle broke on the suitcase we were packing the books in.

The only other thing we needed to do was talk to one another in a way we had never done before. Vovó Leticia said she was sorry he died with no faith even though her own attendance at church was mainly habit – not even that so much as reluctance to part with anything that had been part of her life for so long. Then she said, “I assume he told you why he never used the word ʻlove.'”

“You mean he never told you he loved you?”

“No. He never said it, but I knew he did.”

“We never talked about it.”

“He never used the word. He said words had two properties, meaning and power. Some words have more of one than the other. ʻLove,ʼ he said, was all power and no meaning. So he saw the word as being all about manipulation. I'm surprised he never told you about that, because the example he always gave was the way priests, and especially missionaries, use the word. He always emphasized that word ʻmissionariesʼ  because he was thinking about the Assembléia de Deus.”

Vovó Leticia told me one other story I have been unable to forget. While my father was working for him in the print shop, Bernardinho often said to Avô Bernardo that they should encourage their employees to unionize. Avô Bernardo said it was silly nonsense because he already paid his employees more than any other shop. Avô Bernardo was a generous man who looked after his employees' families, but after my father died, he changed his mind. Vovó Leticia thought the change involved an appreciation of his own mortality and how, without my father, his death could change the shop.

Of course, the house became crowded with relatives, some of whom I supposed were more important to Vovó Leticia than I was. She had children other than my father. But I continued to have her full attention whenever she could give it. I think she did it for my grandfather, because maybe I was his favorite.

***

When I arrived back in Codó, I felt totally abandoned and alone in a world where I didn't belong. However, if I looked into the darkness, not directly but with my peripheral vision the way a sailor looks for danger at night, there were two discernible points of light. There was Vovó Leticia, and there was the former vice-mayor.

One day, the principal of my school brought me a letter from Vovó Leticia, still addressed in his care, and I thought about how easily a cloud might drift over that point of light. Vovó Leticia was no correspondent. At first, I might have wondered whether she could really read and write, but I did get a letter from her once or twice a year. Considering how seldom she wrote, her letters were surprisingly warm. As for their content, she could have sent the same letter every time. It was always, “Nothing here has changed,” and then something touching about how thinking of Avô Bernardo always made her think of me. She always asked how my siblings were doing, and I always wondered why my grandparents' interest in my siblings had to run through me. Perhaps, Vovó Leticia just inherited Avô Bernardo's way of doing things.

The former vice-mayor still visited me from time to time. The sum of money in my envelope grew a little larger. Knowing how poor a correspondent Vovó Leticia was, I thought the money probably did not come from her, and I asked him where the money came from in a tone of voice that suggested I thought it was obvious. It took a while to get an answer.

“It comes from the most important friendship I ever had, and from the respect I had for your grandfather. There was never another man who could make an evening spent just talking as worthwhile.” As it was far too small a sum to make any difference to him, I had no qualm about taking it. I don't know why it took me until Avô Bernardo died to learn that the two of them had interned in the same law firm in São Luis. Perhaps, it was because the former vice-mayor always made his visits so perfunctory, it was as though he wanted me to think of him as just the errand boy. His visits remained few and far between, but we developed a habit, when he did come, of having coffee together in a bakery a few blocks from the school. I always left those visits thinking about what would happen if he died. I thought I should ask him to make arrangements for someone to tell me if that happened, but I never had the courage. I told myself that if he did not come for three months, I would know he was not coming again. I also thought that if I lost contact with the former vice-mayor, no one would think to tell me if Vovó Leticia died. If Auntie Livia were still alive, she would not know how to contact me. Perhaps, she could read enough to recognize a letter from me and get someone to respond to the return address on the envelope. Perhaps.

I suppose there was a third point of light, but it did not shine from the place I still thought of as home. Cousin Diego didn't have the power to do much for me, but he was there in the compound where the little he could do counted. I started trailing him around, or no, it was more as though a part of my brain that was unknown to me started trailing him around. I was about half-aware of what I was doing.

It was the habit of most of the people in the Compound to sit outside for a couple hours after dark. The men usually drank beer. Instead of staying inside where there was some lamp light to do my homework, I found myself deciding I needed to sit in the cooler air outside. A few minutes later I'd discover myself sitting twenty feet away from Diego. After four or five nights of this, Diego walked up and asked whether there was something I needed.

There was a moment of embarrassment when I realized why he was asking. Hurriedly, I said, “No, it's just too hot in the house,” but when I thought about it, one of my teachers had just been talking about confidants, and I thought I needed a confidant. Cousin Diego was kind, I’d sometimes seen him wince when people called me Madalena.

It was an awkward relationship. When I was nine I stopped walking around the Compound without a shirt on. At thirteen I noticed that some men were paying attention to me in spite of the dresses I had to wear. Finally, aware that I was deliberately going outside at night to sit with Cousin Diego, I was not above wearing a kind of raggedy old dress that I'd outgrown – one that fit too tightly here and there, and even opened small gaps close and yonder.

Diego was now twenty-five years old and obviously embarrassed around me. I always waited until he was settled outside in the evening. Then I joined him, not the other way around. I was willing to give the impression that I was the coquette who might have a romantic interest. Understand that we did not think of thirteen-year-olds as children. It was only the slightest irregularity for a twenty-five-year-old man to take an interest in me.

We didn't do anything that suggested romance. For the most part, I only sat and told him my troubles. He listened politely, and Gabriela watched us skeptically. Once or twice each night, I poked him on the arm to emphasize something I was telling him. When he poked me back, I was sure he would kiss me if we were alone on a desert island.

***

At this same time, I was acquiring a boyfriend at school. In those days, having a boyfriend did not mean you were having sexual intercourse. If you were thirteen, it didn't even have to mean you had kissed him. My relationship with Henrique was better than the one with Diego in that I could admit to its existence to a few people. On the other hand, my relationship with Diego was better in that he was really a more sympathetic friend.

Before I left to be with Avô Bernardo, the elegant little lunches that preserved some of his culture had attracted a few other participants, most of whom even contributed to their preparation. When I returned, those lunches had stopped, and my presence did not cause them to resume. If it had been my father who had died, some of my few friends would at least have said they didn't know what to say. As it was my grandfather, they didn't even know how to say that. Many of them had only remote relationships with their grandparents, others were being raised by their grandparents and had contentious relationships with them. I don't think any of them had a relationship that would allow them any insight into my grief. So they shied away. Henrique was the exception.

Henrique didn't know what to say, either, but he knew I was grieving, and while he didn't have any idea what to do, he thought that this was his opportunity get somewhere with a girl he thought was pretty. He wasn't going to let that pass, or so he told me later when we were good enough friends to allow him to admit he was an opportunist.

He sat with me. He told himself that silence was okay, but it didn't work. Not saying anything made him feel awkward, so he worried that I felt awkward, too. So he finally asked whether I felt awkward, and when I said, “Yes,” he said, “Me too,” and he asked whether he should go away. It was unusually solicitous for someone our age, and I liked it. When I might have restarted our elegant little lunches, I was more interested in spending the time with Henrique.

He was a decent kid about to face manhood. He might have been handsome, but he was no better than average because of a peculiarly shaped chest with a breast bone that was pointed like a bird's – enough so you could see he was misshapen even when he had a shirt on. When we became close enough to discuss such things, he told me it was called a “pigeon breast deformity,” and it came from having bad asthma when he was little. He said he almost died more than once in asthma attacks, but that was before I met him. When I knew him, he had a treatment that consisted of a glass gadget with a rubber bulb on it that would spray medicine into his mouth while he inhaled. He let me try it, once, and I can't describe how the medication made me feel - maybe as though I were breathing cold air into my skull the same way I was breathing it into my lungs.

Unhappily for Henrique, when he first started school he did not know any better than to say out loud that he had a pigeon breast deformity, and from then on he was one of the bullies' favorite objects of ridicule. We got on well because, years before we became friends, each of us had formed a child's silent sympathy for the other's social position.

As was bound to happen, Daniel and Roberto heard about our friendship, and this being Brazil, they knew the duty of brothers to look after their sister's honor. By this time, both Daniel and Roberto had managed to transfer into the morning class. So they were both free in the afternoons and took turns hanging out with their sister and Henrique. It was irritating, but I understood how things were done. Daniel was not a bad brother, he let us hold hands.

So I was hanging out with Henrique in the afternoon and Cousin Diego in the evening, and feeling at sixes and sevens about men and boys. I felt like I owed each of them some sort of loyalty, but I also liked the unspoken sexual tension intruding on both friendships, and I didn't want to give either of them up.

Then I discovered gossiping with Sophia about men, and brothers, and raging at the world, and we began plotting how I could get some time alone with Henrique. Sophia had a strong preference for my relationship with Henrique. She said that when it was time for me to give up my virginity, I could do it with Cousin Diego, because he was older and would know better what to do, but that I would have to have two lovers if I did that. I didn't think Cousin Diego was likely to know much more than Henrique, but I thought I would prefer Cousin Diego, anyway.

At times, I felt some crisis concerning my virginity coming, but in some ways I still looked on myself as a child, and the crisis seemed far in the future.

My schoolwork suffered.

Of course, Roberto got tired of spending his afternoons watching two extremely timid lovers. He began arriving at unpredictable times. That was supposed to keep our behavior chaste while giving him a little freedom. My brothers needn't have worried. I was paralyzed by the fear of getting pregnant. That, I knew, would destroy my plans for my future, and I had no idea how to separate sex from pregnancy.

My knowledge of sex consisted of whatever I heard from my thirteen and fourteen-year-old friends – mostly myth, wishful thinking, half-truths, misconceptions, and combinations thereof. The only difference between my knowledge of sex and that of any other girl from Codó in her early teens was that I greeted each new revelation with skepticism while my friends were ready believers. The more unbelievable a new announcement seemed, the more excitement surrounded it.

Fifteen

As was customary, at fifteen I moved on from elementary school to high school. I knew I should be glad to be getting on with my life, but I had to hold back tears every time I thought of leaving my brothers behind along with the elegant little lunches I always meant to resume. I thought of some of the teachers as my good friends and hated the idea that I would have to start over with new teachers.

My new year at school began in a sort of dull, disciplined way that left only a little room as I went to sleep at night for fantasy, and no room during the waking day for excitement. Senhora Sousa insisted that the University of São Paulo was the only real University in Brazil, and that was where I must go. To win the kind of financial support I would need to attend the University of São Paulo, I understood I would have to be the best student in Maranhão. Of course, I knew that second or third would do, but if I only aimed for second or third... Working my way through college was not going to be an option because that plan started with being able to find work. Moreover, Senhora Sousa also insisted that work would interfere with my studies, and I believed her.

There was the possibility that Vovó Leticia would pay for my education, but hinting in my letters that I wanted to go to the University of São Paulo did not get replies with promises of money. I wasn't even certain she could pay the tuition if she wanted to. Avô Bernardo appeared to leave gobs of money, but one never knows with certainty about these things. Even assuming she could pay for a grandchild's education, she had other grandchildren closer to her than I was in far off Codó.

Besides all that, I wanted to be independent. I wanted to earn my own way. I wanted no one to have any leverage on me. I was galled by the fact that Gabriela would be my legal guardian until I turned eighteen. That made no sense in Brazil where the culture regarded people as adults almost as soon as they reached their teens. Why should Gabriela be able to tell me where to live and what to do? I could tell myself that Gabriela could not afford to enforce her legal rights, but she didn't have to. Pastor Vinicius made it clear to me that the children of his church would not be allowed to deny God. College was not the right destination for a child of his church – certainly not for a girl. He frightened me even in my ignorance of how evil he really was.

All these complicated concerns about money faded appreciably as soon as I decided to be the best student in Maranhão. The decision was costly because I believed I could succeed and knew what it would take. Even a fantasy as I was going to sleep at night was more likely to be about getting scholarships than about Cousin Diego. I studied, not just my lessons at school, but whatever else I could get from my teachers in the way of appropriate textbooks. Important examinations were coming in only three years.

Weekdays and Saturday were all work and no play, but Sundays were a little different. My senses had accommodated somewhat to the chaos in church - enough so that I could tell when it was time to stand up and back out of the way and then look as though I were engaged with the chaos as I moved toward the exit. Once church was endured, Sunday's were peaceful. In the afternoon, I usually had a long talk with Cousin Diego. He had problems of his own, a sort of premature mid-life crisis in which time seemed to be slipping by with nothing done. Sometimes, he talked about how much I could accomplish with my life and almost grieved about the difficulty he faced if he tried to make up for lost time.

Then there came the Sunday before the Sunday that changed everything. Sister Heloisa was a regular (but undistinguished) participant in the holy rolling and speaking in tongues. She had never seemed to quite reach the heights of ecstasy that someone like Sister Clara achieved regularly. Now I'm being catty. They were all just holy rollers, but Sister Heloisa was about to distinguish herself.

She came out of her transcendent state saying loudly and clearly, but not shouting, “I've seen Jesus and I have a message from God.” The usual practice in the church was for a few members of the congregation to escape as soon as some of the raving lunatics began to quiet down. They were mostly escaping from Pastor Vinicius's final appeal for money. On this occasion I attached myself to Brother Samuel who sometimes ushered so he could look like he was on some important errand for the church as he exited. However, Brother Samuel stopped to chat with someone, so we were a little late getting out the door, and just before I was out of range, I heard my name.

Sister Heloisa was standing, but she was still transfixed by her message from God and, as the congregation began to find something a little like normal consciousness, she repeated God's message.

“Brother João has been God's faithful servant and our tireless worker for fifteen years. He has led his people to Christ, and he has brought them justice as the leader of the Syndicate. It is time for Brother João to marry.” Several shouts of Amen rang out, briefly confusing Sister Heloisa. She began, again, in a louder voice and separating her words from one another. I had turned and was headed back out the door, again, when she got to, “...and his bride is to be the girl, Madalena.”

Some may have thought I was a peculiar choice for his bride, but no one paid much attention to that part of the message. It was the idea that it was time for Brother João to marry that claimed the congregation's enthusiasm. As for me, I was mortified, and by the time Pastor Vinicius began his usual pitch for cash, I was many steps into my flight for home.

***

I was embarrassed as only a teenage girl can be embarrassed. Cousin Diego and Sophia tried to calm me. Gabriela only shrugged her shoulders. As the week went on, my anxiety hardly waned at all because of my fear of the next Sunday. I begged Gabriela not to make me go even though I knew she would scold me. She made it clear that my not going would affect her standing in the church.

Inevitably, Sunday came. When I parted from Cousin Diego, I didn’t know that I had just heard myself called Maria for the last time for many years. It almost seemed like a normal Sunday except Gabriela insisted that I sit next to her so I could not cut the service short by five minutes.

The service began, as always, with an offering by the choir. At the end of the usual hymns, the choir sang itself into silence. For a moment, it seemed a little too silent to me. After a longer than usual pause Pastor Vinicius began his sermon with his voice straining toward pianissimo

God is in this room.

God is everywhere, all the time, so of course, he is in this room

[Louder.] God is here and active in this room!

[Quieter.] God is always everywhere and active everywhere. What is the difference? How is it that I can feel his presence in this room like it is a new sensation – something I never felt before? Can you feel it? [People calling out Amen, but not as loudly as usual.]

[Shouting] WE – ARE – BLESSED! For God is acting directly in this room, right in front of us, in a way even those without faith can see.

[Quieter] Millions of Christians of faith have come before us, and because they have faith, they have been able to feel the presence of God, but only a few have ever felt His presence as we feel it today.

Saints have prayed their whole lives to hear from God as clearly as we are hearing him in this room at this moment. We chosen few.

[Shouting.] God has given us direct orders in clear speech that we must follow! Hallelujah!

[More hallelujah's from a generally mystified room.]

He has spoken to us in a way that any faithless person can hear. If there were faithless among us, if there were Satanists among us, if there were atheists or agnostics or other beasts among us, they – are – no - more! Hallelujah!

[More hallelujahs.]

[Loudly, but not shouting.] We have learned from Acts 2:4, Corinthians 12:4 to 10, and Corinthians 12:28 that speaking in tongues is the physical evidence of Baptism in the Holy Spirit. You all were here last week! Sister Heloisa rose from speaking in other tongues with a message from God. A directive from God delivered in clear speech in this church. Hallelujah!

She told us that Brother João has toiled long enough for Christ - without a wife. She told us that Brother João has toiled long enough to create the Syndicate for you who are farmers - without a wife. She told us God wants a wife for Brother João.

[Shouting.] And did I shout Hosannas? Did I shout Hallelujah!

[Quietly.] No. I did not. [Crescendo.] I did not because even I was skeptical when I heard the word of the Lord! Welcome as this message was to all of us, I was skeptical! I, in my arrogance, I thought I should investigate!

[Normal voice.] Well, how do you investigate? I prayed. I prayed and God forgave me my arrogance! Hallelujah! I prayed for a sign, and I got more than a sign! I got a message. [Loudly.] A message from God!

Sister Clara came to me on Thursday. She came to me because God spoke to her in a dream! In her dream she saw Jesus, but it was the voice of God. It was the voice of God speaking directly to her. The Lord told Sister Clara it is time for his servant, João, to marry!

And God does not want us to have the least doubt about this. Not-the-least-doubt! So at the exact moment he was talking directly to Sister Clara... At the exact moment, though I was sleeping, an angel came to me in a dream and said, “Open your ears. Listen to your flock. They are the messengers of God!” You! My flock! You are the messengers of God! Hallelujah! God has spoken to us in so many ways in the past, but now he speaks so that there is no room even for the heathen to doubt! He has spoken to us with a clarity. He has spoken with a clarity reserved only for a few of the saints. He has told us, Brother João must marry. His Plan is beyond hope for any of us to know or understand, but we have been told one small piece of His Plan. Brother João must marry. How many people, how many faithful Christians have ever been told even the smallest piece of His Plan by God Himself?! But He is here in this church telling us a piece of His Plan, a step that we must take, and to have it be a step we take so happily!!! Brother João must marry! For how long have we already known Brother João must marry! Praise the Lord! [Praise the Lord!]

[Quietly, again.] I have thought of the word “honor.” I have thought of the word “privilege,” but how can there be a word in any language to describe what it means to be an ordinary woman in this room chosen directly by God, Himself, and told who you are to marry. We have such a person in this room.

Pastor Vinicius looked me straight in the eyes. His eyes locked on mine, and I bolted. There was no point to imagining this was anything but serious. I bolted with Gabriela screaming right behind me. I expected someone to grab me as I crashed through the folding chairs, but I think everyone within reach of me was just stunned.

I tried to convince myself it was a nightmare, but when you try to run in a nightmare you are almost paralyzed, and while my legs would not move as fast as I wanted, they worked far too well for me to be dreaming.

When I arrived in the Compound, I was alone – everyone else was in church, or at least far behind me. I shrieked; I rent my garments like a Biblical mourner; I literally tore the seams out of my dress getting out of it. I felt like some nasty creature was smothering me. I dug through my now ancient trunk, but it contained only clothes for a child, so I wrapped myself in a towel. I was going to wear what I wanted, I was not going to wear that stupid dress, and I was not going to endure any more of this Assembléia de Deus nonsense.

What I did not understand was that, even after almost six years of attending the Assembléia de Deus, I still underestimated this church and Pastor Vinicius. What I did not understand was what a mistake I made by running home. It was my last chance to run away.

***

The first people to arrive in the Compound were women from the church. Aside from Gabriela, there were three other women whose names I’d never bothered to learn, and Pastor Vinicius's wife, Sister Luiza. They were organized, and they had a plan.

When I saw them coming I retreated into the room I shared with  my siblings. My mother found me there, and the five of them entered. Sister Luiza sat on the bed opposite me while the others stood. As Sister Luiza spoke to me the others sometimes entered their amens as though they were in church.

“My dear Madalena. You...”

“My name’s not Madalena. It has never been Madalena. It is not any part of my name. I am not Maria Madalena. I am just Maria.”

“My dear. Clearly, God has named you Madalena. He called you Madalena when He spoke to Sister Heloisa, and we all knew who he meant because he had already told Brother João your name when Brother João first saw you. Brother João told us your name was Madalena, but when you said you were Maria, some of us called you Sister Maria. But now that we know God has called you Madalena, of course, you must be Madalena.

“My dear Madalena. You are so fortunate to be offered a man like Brother João to marry. A man so godly. He is not just a deacon. He is a pillar of the church like no other. As a boy of fourteen, he brought more than fifty faithful members to the church. He brought them on foot and in donkey carts all the way across Ceará, Piaui, and Maranhão. He is the man whom God told to organize the Syndicate to stop powerful men from stealing the land of our brothers and sisters. He is on a par with the great men of the Bible. And to so serve God by marrying him... You cannot help but see Brother João is a man you can count on to take care of you and your children. What problem can you have?”

I had no difficulty identifying or explaining what problem I had with all this. The problem was that I did not want to be taken care of. I wanted to be a school teacher, and if I ever wanted a husband at all, he would have to be someone who would not mind my being a school teacher.

Sister Luiza went on to remind me that I was chosen by God, Himself, to marry João, and that as a good and faithful wife to João, I would sit at the hand of God in Heaven for all eternity. God, Himself, had raised me above all other women, at least of my generation.

At this, the women in the room, except for my mother, seemed to think they should kneel in my presence. One of them actually began kissing my hand. I pulled it away from her and shrank back on my bed.

“There is nothing more a woman could possibly ask for.” No, it seemed to me there were any number of other things a woman could ask for. A woman could ask to be left alone. A woman could ask to be a teacher. A woman could ask to have someone on her side.

“I want to talk to my mother alone.” All the heads swiveled, and all their eyes focused on Gabriela. She looked a little trapped to me – enough to give me hope I would have some leverage once we were alone. There was a pause, and then Sister Luisa stood up, silently, and led the others out of the room.

They went out of the room, but their shadows blocked the light that normally shone through the gaps around the door, and I knew they were listening. I opened the door and asked them to move around to the kitchen - which was outside on the opposite side of the house. After I heard the appropriate swishings about, I spoke.

“Why are you letting this go on? You know I'm not going to marry João.”

“I think Sister Luiza is right. He would be a good match for you.” My own voice had been meant to be intense but not overheard. Gabriela obviously did not mind being overheard.

“I don't even know him, and even if I did know him, and even if I was in love with him, I wouldn't marry anyone now.”

“You can't go against God's will.”

“God's will! This is the will of a crazy old woman who rolls on the floor and spouts unintelligible garbage!” I knew as I spoke it was the wrong thing to say.

“Pastor Vinicius, himself, had the dream that confirms the truth of what she said - even for atheists and heathens.”

“Pastor Vinicius just wants to control people, and he's smart enough to know that if he was the one who told you to jump three times and shout three hosannas, you'd just tell him to go jump them and shout them himself. But if God tells you to jump and shout, you're going to do it. So when Pastor Vinicius wants you to jump and shout, he just tells you it's a message from God, and you do it.”

“Are you saying Pastor Vinicius didn't have that dream?”

“Pastor Vinicius has to be the one to bring you God's messages, and if someone else starts getting messages directly from God, he has to be getting them, too. Trust me, from now on God is going to be speaking directly to Pastor Vinicius.”

“So you're saying Pastor Vinicius is a liar.”

“What do you think?”

“I think you're a vicious heathen, and I can't imagine why God would pick you to marry such a man as Brother João.”

“Well, there you have it. God didn't pick me.”

“Why are you so willful?! João will take good care of you, and he has the money to build us a house.”

“I don't want to be taken care of. I want to be a teacher. And if I ever marry, it will be to someone who wants me to continue being a teacher. And as for your house, I'm not going to marry someone I don't know to get you a house.”

“Well, it's all decided.”

“What do you mean it's decided? You can decide. And Pastor Vinicius can decide. And you all can think God decided. But I am not going to say ‘I do’ So you can forget it!”

“It won't matter whether you say ‘I do’ or not. It's God's will, and it's been decided, and it isn't doing any good for us to argue. So I'm going to get Sister Luiza, and she's going tell you what's going to happen.”

“NO! It's not going to happen!” As angry and afraid as I was, I still didn't understand how much trouble I was in. I'd never even heard the word “cult.”

With that, Gabriela opened the door and shouted at Sister Luiza to come back. The four almost identically clad women came crowding back into the room with Sister Luiza in the front. I backed up against the far wall. Sister Luiza seemed to take a moment to line the women up as you would a choir. When she had organized them to shout hosannas (if necessary) she said, “There were two plans. If you had been cooperative, as we thought you would be, we would have celebrated this truly holy wedding with every resource the Church could find. You would have had a wonderful wedding. However, as you are determined to resist, Pastor Vinicius has decided, and we all concur, that you should be married as quickly as possible. You will be married here, at home, on Wednesday morning in accordance with God's will.”

By the second time I shouted “I will not!” Sister Luiza was outside with the other three women crowding out behind her.

***

I wasn't left alone. Two of the women sat outside and chatted about the weather, and I soon learned, during a three-on-one scuffle that included Gabriela, they would not let me leave the house even to go to the outhouse. I had to use a pot.

I sat on my little bed, under Lara's hammock, and looked into the darkness toward Daniel's little bed and Roberto's hammock. Light filtering through the roof dappled the room with a few scattered bright spots, but I would have needed to leave the door open, and expose myself to Gabriela's inspection, to get enough light to see anything. I thought about all the awful things we endured other than my predicament. I thought about how ugly and crumbling our walls were, and the spider webs that were impossible to sweep out of the roof. I thought about how I could stand being poor if we just treated one another decently.

Gabriela stayed in the front room, where her bed was, and I stayed in the kids' bedroom. I started digging in the wall with the remains of a pencil. If I'd had a better tool, I would have scratched “Maria was here” in the tijolo bricks.

I thought about escape and decided the best I could do was to wait until they were bored and inattentive and then just crash through the front door and run. I could easily have outrun them. I thought it was stupid of them to think two, well three, any number of middle-aged women could keep me imprisoned.

Once it was thoroughly dark, I decided to bolt out the door with all the force I could manage, but Gabriela had pulled her bed across the door to my room. It was three against one before I got the door open enough to rush out.

An hour later I tried to climb through the roof, but there is no way to squeeze through dried coconut leaves quietly. I got pulled down by my ankles. I then decided I should try to sleep so I could keep my wits, but I was still awake when two new women replaced my guards just after sunrise.

***

So it was Monday. I began to hope that one of my siblings would tell one of my teachers what was happening, but I knew they would not be in school that day. I don't know where my brothers and sister were sent. They didn’t come home. I haven't seen them since.

I could hope that, by Wednesday, one of my teachers would wonder why I was not in class and come looking for me. I tried to stay alert and prepared to scream at any sign of someone who might be on my side, but I hadn't slept for twenty-four hours and was in a fog. I couldn't sleep or stay awake.

As the day passed my thoughts were more and more about murdering Gabriela. I thought that, if I succeeded, the two women at the door would panic and run away, giving me a chance to escape. There was a lose leg on Daniel's bed. It was thick enough to be a club but not very long, and I wondered whether I could hit her hard enough. I decided the answer was yes, if I could catch her sleeping, but how was I to do that? I thought about the ropes that held the hammocks and the possibility of strangling Gabriela, but how could I strangle her if I couldn’t catch her sleeping?

As Monday's light faded, I called through the door, saying I was ready to come out, and when Gabriela opened it, I attacked her with the leg from Daniel's bed. I was able to strike her a couple times, but I couldn't knock her out, and then it was three on one, again. The two women pinned me to my bed while Gabriela went for a rope. I struggled, but shortly, I was tied down. At first, I thought I could squirm out of the ropes, but they were only a temporary measure. They retied me so tightly they cut off the flow of blood to my hands. Then they left.

As my hands swelled, I wanted to ask them to loosen the ropes, but I rejected the idea. I hoped my hands would die. I wanted them to have damaged goods for João. I wanted them, always, to have to look at what they had done. I wanted never to lose the smallest part of my hate for them.

Fortunately, I didn’t sustain the damage I'd hoped for while I was enduring the pain. It did take six months for normal sensation to return to my hands, but that did not become a cause for regret in the minds of my captors.

***

Was it in the darkness of Monday night that my depression started? If not, I took a long step in that direction. I had always thought of myself as a strong person who defended her rights as well as a child could, but I began to have other thoughts. I reminded myself that the vast majority of Brazilian children were in as much poverty as I was, and even more helpless, even more subject to the whim of adults. What had I been other than a spoiled child who felt herself entitled to the silver fork a rich person once stuck in her hand – a child who had done nothing other than scream when someone jerked it back out? What had I done that was strong? Had I run away and found a better life for myself and my siblings? Was I going to find a way to kill Gabriela? I already knew the answer was no, I wasn't even going to try.

Still, that was not the night I gave up. The walls of our house were not as sound as they might have been, and I began to think that, if I could untie myself, I could try to push the top of a wall down and escape in the confusion. I could wiggle my feet a little, so I started trying to rub the rope against the bed frame. I didn't see how I was going to free myself even if I did get a foot loose, but I kept at it for hours even as the rope cut into my foot faster than the bed rail cut into the rope. I think I kept it up, not to escape from imprisonment but to escape from how I felt about myself – the unfit, self-imagined protegee. When I felt blood trickling down my ankle, I felt a little heroic, and the horrible feeling subsided a little. I fed myself the bromides we hear from inspirational speakers - the people who escape, the people who survive, are the ones who never give up - and I did not give up until I thought I could see the earliest signs of the next morning's light.

Thinking the sun was about to appear, I gave up – too tired to have any new ideas. I think I stayed that way for thirty years.

An hour or so later, the hole I'd made in the roof when I tried to climb out was still dark. So I'd been mistaken about the coming sunrise. I had no idea how much time I might still have to try to escape. I was exhausted, and I only tried to sleep.

I didn’t. I was still tied to the bed and the urge to urinate kept me awake.

***

The clouds I could see through the hole in the roof still had a reddish tint. It was morning and it was only Tuesday. I still had another day to live through before anything happened. I didn't see how whatever was going to happen could be as bad as waiting for it to happen. How could they actually make me marry Brother João?

It was only a short while before I urinated in the bed. I thought about dying and whether that could happen without my having to do anything. I'd had no water since Sunday, and I wondered whether I could die of thirst.

About mid-morning, two women came into my room and untied me. They berated me for having urinated on myself as though there was something I could have done about it. Then they informed me that I must sit up straight because Pastor Vinicius, himself, was about to visit me. When he arrived, I could not deal with his presence and curled up into fetal position for the first time. My mother was angry and told me to straighten up and listen to Pastor Vinicius. I curled up tighter and squinched my eyelids tight.

“Madalena...”

As I lay there wishing I could not listen, Pastor Vinicius repeated all his evil nonsense about the wonder of God choosing me almost like He chose Mary to be the mother of Jesus. And he repeated the nonsense about how God told Brother João what I was to be called even before he told Sister Heloisa who he was to marry. He even suggested God might be preparing the second coming. I only wondered what was holding up the chorus of angels, and why God had told everyone except me what He wanted me to do. He hadn't been shy about telling Mary why she was pregnant.

Pastor Vinicius seemed to think that his mere presence should convince me that all this nonsense was coming straight from God. He seemed to think that raising his magnificent bass voice to a shout should bring me quivering to my knees asking him what I should do to prepare myself. To be honored by God, I thought, is the worst thing that can happen in a person's life.

I managed to say, loudly enough to interrupt him, “I'm going to be a teacher.” I expected the women in the room, of which there were several, to grab me and force me to sit up and look into the face of evil, but all that happened was that Pastor Vinicius ended by saying, “We will do God's will. Good bye, Madalena.” Then he left.

I don't know how to describe what I was thinking. I saw the long line of still worse days coming and, paradoxically, the insight made that day the worst day of my life. I finally began looking for a way to kill myself, but finding a way to do that appeared even more difficult than escaping.

I spent most of the remainder of the day curled up in Enzo's hammock, staring out the hole in the roof. On most days there would have been nothing to see through the hole, but on that day the emptiness seemed unique, even preordained.

Sometimes, I found myself hovering on the cusp between wakefulness and sleep, and I cannot tell you with any certainty whether the horrible visions I suffered were dreams or hallucinations, or some of each. I was aware enough during those moments to hope I had gone mad - that I had been hallucinating for two days. I didn't believe I was insane, but if it could only be true, there was a possibility I would someday recover and find myself someplace safe.

Eventually, the sky began to turn red, again, and then it seemed to stay that way so long I asked myself what could turn the sky red other than a sunset. I must have slept for a while, because I suddenly found it dark outside. I hadn’t been tied up, again, after Pastor Vinicius’s visit, so I was able to sit up on the edge of the hammock and begin wondering what I should do. I decided I might as well try pounding the wall down. I lay down on my back in my own bed and began pounding on the wall with my heels – sometimes both at the same time, sometimes alternating as fast as I could go. It seemed to me I pounded for a long time before I heard the scraping of Gabriela's bed being pulled away from the door. I continued pounding the wall as the door opened. Then their hands grabbed me from every direction. Gabriela was shouting that they had warned me what would happen. I didn't remember any warning. When I asked for a glass of water, my own mother slapped me.

I found myself lying in bed trussed like a pig being taken to market.

***

In the morning, they had a gingham dress for me and finally gave me a glass of water. I couldn’t hold onto it. They picked me up and dragged me outside. Pastor Vinicius was there along with something like half-a-dozen women from the church. I thought most of them had served as my guards. They stood me in front of Pastor Vinicius, who spoke for a while in a calm, ceremonial way. There were no vows. I was never asked to say “I do,” and then I was told I was married.

There was a kind of wedding procession – a procession of donkey carts that took us toward Codó, almost into town before turning off the road into the bush. We followed a track that I'd never thought of as either a path or a road, but something in between. Having passed it every Sunday, I was familiar with the path but only as one of many that passed into the bush and usually petered out as though they had never served any purpose. I had no idea that this path was a road that passed over a pair of hills and down to a prosperous farm.

Arriving at Brother João's farm, I was led, without resisting, on a short tour of his house. The tour seemed to focus on such things as the laundry facilities that would be essential to my duties as a housewife. When we reached Brother João's bedroom, the tour ended, and I was left alone with Brother João. Our so called “marriage” was consummated as fast as a flock of vultures would find a dead pig.

***

The next day, I was taken to another house where I stayed for about two months (I think). To this day I have no real idea why I was taken there, but after I returned to Brother João's farm, I had a fantasy about the former vice-mayor looking for me. Even if I was being hidden from him, I thought he still might find me.

I wasn’t even allowed to go to church for about a year - until I got pregnant. After that, Pastor Vinicius could threaten my child.

FIM

Book 3
~
Layla

Layla's earliest memory, she was certain of this, came from when she had just turned four. It was of an argument in which her father beat her mother. She thought she remembered it because her mother participated in the row instead of just silently waiting for the blows to fall.

From then until she began keeping track at age seven, the only specific memory she had was of  the first beating she received, herself. She did have a sort of meta-memory – knowledge that beatings were frequent, knowledge that the world was a place without a refuge, knowledge that her mother would intervene and take a beating meant for a child, knowledge that there was nothing about her life she wanted to remember.

Layla's Father

The Compound was not the only proto-village João started. There were three others. João, himself, had first squatted on some land only a mile from the Compound, but after he formed the Syndicate and came to terms with the latifundiários - men who still held vast tracts of land given as royal grants four hundred years earlier - he was able to purchase land only half a mile from the outskirts of Codó. There he maintained a garden that was large enough to sometimes require a hired hand and produced as much cash income in the market as a freeholder could expect. But that was not all. He had just as much income from his efficient system of managing egg production from chickens he fed on coconuts gathered by the children of Syndicate members.

Once João stopped traveling between Ceará and Maranhão, bringing refugees from the drought to the Assembléia de Deus, he could no longer walk away from his emotions. His anxiety became something he awoke to every day. If nothing piqued his anger, the anxiety could last all day and trouble his sleep at night. Still, he was a man with whom you could do business with a handshake. He sold at a fair price and, on the rare occasions when someone was dissatisfied with some arrangement, he never insisted it was a done deal. He was helpful when he could be, and not just to people in his church. He was a one-man program dedicated to teaching people about malnutrition. He was liked.

João was not a drinking man, his church forbade it, but he was a lonely man, and where was a lonely man to find a few men to talk to other than in a bar? He chose an inconspicuous bar annexed to an establishment called the Mercearia Deus e Filho. If there were any doubts about the welcome of a teetotaler there, they were erased when it was learned he would sometimes stand his cronies to a round while he drank another Coca Cola. This annex to the mercearia existed because the owner of the Mercearia Deus e Filho was not an adherent of the Assembléia. He was a Catholic and permitted to be an alcoholic.

The bar was in what had once been the one-car garage of the owner's home. It was, therefore, not large. It did not have a counter. It did not have a large stock of hard liquors - a bottle of cachaҫa sitting on a small, unpainted, wooden shelf was enough. What it had that a customer was likely to care about was a refrigerator from which beer was served in what was becoming the Brazilian style – so cold there was almost always a ring of ice around the neck of the bottle. Once in a while, when a beer was opened and poured into a glass, the expanding gas in the bubbles froze the foam. Unfortunately, this excellent refrigeration did little for João's Coca Cola which the patrão only began to chill when he saw João coming.

Inside the bar, the walls were covered with a layer of concrete that was badly cracked and in places had fallen away - not only to reveal the bare, red tijolo bricks beneath, but to create small piles of concrete detritus that remained at the base of the walls through an occasional sweeping. The concrete could still be seen to have been painted white a decade or so before João's time.

Like many Brazilian homes, the owner's small house was surrounded by a tijolo wall. The wall was painted with a fading advertisement for a candidate for mayor in an election many years earlier. The candidate's face was no longer recognizable, but his number, the number that identified him on the ballot for those who could not read, was easily made out. It was possible that a few voters still searched in vain for 3344 on their ballots.

Customers of the bar, of which there could be seven or eight at a time thanks to the popularity of the host, usually sat outside at one of four small tables. The taste of the beer, or a Coca Cola, varied from moment to moment with the vagaries of the breeze and how much odor the air picked up from the stagnant water that oozed slowly through the grass growing in the gutter. Mosquitoes bred furiously there but were tolerated even though they were a species known to the clients to transmit malaria. They were tolerated for a simple reason - there was no malaria in Codó.

The only downside to this bar was that it was where João obtained marital advice. It was advice that came from men who bragged about the violence they used to enforce their rights on reluctant wives, and who kept their children in fear of them. It was advice that fit the anger João could not remember being without -  the anger he assumed was the normal state of men. He did know in his heart that his anger was greater than that of some men, but it was at least partly God's own doing. He had never wanted God to favor him by making him the one to bring fifty new converts to the Assembléia de Deus. In particular, after all he had suffered, he did not know why God would decide he must marry a Madalena. Madalenas were the women he hated - women so unlike his mother.

Layla's Mother

Layla's mother was fifteen years old when she married, but she was still just a child - a child whose precocity undoubtedly contributed to her failure to understand what was happening around her. She thought her intelligence and self-discipline were getting her someplace while the adults around her were constructing a dark reality that was taking her somewhere else entirely.

When Maria refused to be married, Pastor Vinicius felt he was trapped. He'd already gone too far in his sermon to turn around. It was a brilliant sermon, and he could not let her make a fool of him. That the daughter of an outstanding member of the congregation like Gabriela would refuse to marry when he had made it clear he was speaking for God... It was incomprehensible.

And so, Maria remained isolated in João's house for a year. In a voice that foreshadowed insanity, Pastor Vinicius read Bible verses from Leviticus that made Maria fear for her life. She didn't think he actually meant to stone her, but he was a Biblical literalist who could have justified any crime that suited him.

In time, the idea of rescue died. She came to understand that those in the congregation who were not in Pastor Vinicius's thrall had long since decamped leaving behind a cult of personality. Perhaps, the former vice-mayor had looked for her, but there would have been few who knew what had happened, and none who would have been willing to tell.

***

João's hand shook while he was getting his key in the lock of the empty church, and having this trouble while Maria watched made him angry. Once they were inside, he sat Maria next to his reserved seat in the front row and then left to find some way to busy himself. Maria waited, agitated, suppressing the hope that she would see her siblings for the first time in a year – if not to talk to them, at least to see they were all right. Waiting, she began to think that, if she became an ardent adherent of the Assembléia, she might be allowed to get up and walk around.

João returned and sat next to her. Looking straight ahead she heard the doors open and close behind her. Two members of the choir entered her field of vision and took their places against the wall behind Pastor Vinicius's lectern. Soon she heard the doors opening more often, and she felt the congregation gathering behind her to stare questions and opinions at her like Argos Panoptes, the hundred-eyed giant of mythology. There was no telling what they'd learned about her from their pastor.

She began trying to will one of her siblings to appear in her peripheral vision. When she had waited for as long as she could stand it, she started to turn around to look for her brothers or sister, but João's elbow in her side warned her not to. The jab stiffened her neck, and she sat with her head motionless. Only her eyes followed Pastor Vinicius's arrival.

The service began in a familiar way, but Maria soon lost track of it when she entered a dreamy place she had frequented during her year of isolation. Her thoughts had been filled with fantasies involving Daniel, or Roberto, sometimes Lara, but now the fantasies were more like hopes. Over and over again, Maria considered standing up, turning around, and looking through the congregation for her siblings. This would bring her a beating, but she had still not stopped trying to find the courage when the service ended.

João sat, perfectly still, as though the preaching had left him in a trance. By the time he stood to leave, most of the congregation was already gone. She could still see her mother moving toward the door - head bobbing above a crowd of shoulders. She could not help watching Gabriela, but when her mother started to turn toward her, she looked away. For the rest of her life, the idea of making eye-contact with Gabriela horrified Maria.

She did not see her siblings. She tried to believe they had just left ahead of her, but it was hopeless. There was nothing to do but uselessly her hope for the next Sunday.

***

The days between Sundays stretched on longer than ever, and as the third and then the fourth long-awaited Sunday passed, her hope crumbled leaving behind only the wish and the fantasies. She saw or heard nothing of her siblings and, finally, she asked João what he knew about them. He replied that he knew nothing, it wasn’t his family. She prayed the prayer of a nonbeliever with no other option than prayer. She prayed that the former vice-mayor had come and taken them to Vovó Leticia. It was possible.

A Sunday came when João seemed to be in an approachable mood, and she again asked him what had happened to her brothers. When he claimed to know nothing, Maria went on with what she had prepared to say. She told João she wanted to ask Pastor Vinicius.

“Pastor Vinicius does not want to talk to you about your brothers.” He didn't say the Pastor didn't know. Obviously, she thought, it was something they didn't want her to know. And what would they have not wanted her to know? Escape? Murder? Rescue?

She had little enough too think about. She had no friends. She was forbidden to read even though there was nothing in the house with printed words on them other than packages of food. The books she inherited from Avô Bernardo had been left in the Compound until Gabriela had them burned. And so the question of what had happened to her brothers and sister came to occupy her thoughts so constantly she wondered about her sanity. Then, two months later, when the sermon ended and it was time for them to leave the church, João said, “Wait. When Pastor Vinicius has time, he will speak to you about your brothers.”

She hadn't expected to get this permission to speak to Pastor Vinicius, and as anxiety gripped her, she wasn't sure she could still produce the sounds of speech. During the hour or more she waited, she reminded herself that, if she had permission to ask and didn't say too much, she was not in for a beating. She assumed the Pastor would know what her question was and hoped, if she just sat silently, he would begin speaking.

When Pastor Vinicius arrived, he had already changed out of his preaching clothes and looked like any other well-off merchant in Codó. It was meant to be a disarming look, but it precipitated the fear dissolved in the air. Maria changed her mind about asking him anything.

Pastor Vinicius began with a smile and... “So, my dear Maria. Dear, I might say, to God. I understand you wish to talk to me. What can I do for you?” As if he didn't know what she wanted. What he wanted was to appear agreeable. He did not, however, care as much about appearing agreeable as he did about appearing to be first among equals. He ignored the empty chairs and stood looking down on her.

Maria sat speechless, wondering whether she had really decided not to ask her question. The threat contained in the words “I'm waiting” startled her, and the question she'd been waiting months to ask rushed out.

“Tell me where my brothers and sister are.

“Please.”

“The devil has been able to take them from God's true church because you would not bend to the will of God. There is nothing more of any importance to say.” With that he turned around and left.

That was all he would say! It was no answer at all! Maria's thoughts first collapsed into a turmoil of emotion free of any meaning. The next thought she had was that she needed to capture what he had said and examine it. She began repeating what she had just heard until she could repeat each word and inflection, but had she got it right, or had it changed while she memorized it?

The Devil has been able to take them from God's true church because you would not bend to the will of God.

She knew he had meant to be obscure, to say something that would be useless to her, but he would also say something he thought was true. The words, themselves, meant that her siblings were no longer under the guardianship of Gabriela or the Pastor. They could be dead. They could be scattered to the four winds. Vovó Leticia could have rescued them. The former vice-mayor could have rescued them. Whatever happened, they were not in the Church, but she already knew that.

It was the prosody, everything except the literal meaning of the words the Pastor had spoken, that was hard to remember. But she knew he spoke with irritation, and would he have done that if they were dead? No. The irritation meant they were alive and out of his control. Maria had a moment almost of happiness. And if they were dead, surely he would have said something about Heaven or Hell.

They were “taken” from the church. They didn't leave, they were taken. They didn't run away, they were rescued. She knew she was reading too much into what Pastor Vinicius said, but there was a real possibility she was right, and it could have been so much worse.

As they rode home, Maria kept seeking more meaning in those words. Then, when she walked through the door of her house, the impossibility of ever knowing brought on her fatigue, and she risked João's wrath by reheating leftovers for his Sunday dinner. She ate nothing, herself, and went to bed.

***

For the first five years that João lived near Codó, his chickens lived in a better house than he did, but when he replaced his house he had the money for materials, and he built a house that seemed to anticipate a future family. (Although it is likely that he just built the house he could afford, and the house was alone in its anticipation of a family.)

This was the house Maria was shown the day she was married and which she was thereafter required to care for. It was situated on low ground, so the well would not have to be deep. Consequently, the road to the house was often muddy enough to cause trouble for the donkey, but in other regards the house was better than satisfactory. It was set next to a garden that was nearly large enough to be called a truck-farm and was kept attractively well-groomed. Moreover, João's mother, two years gone when he married, had asked him to plant flowers around the house. He directed one of his occasional workers to plant the flowers, and the same man took it upon himself to weed them whenever he was hired for whatever reason. During her better spells, Maria thought the flowers nice, and she sometimes wondered what João's mother had been  like.

The tijolo house, itself, was no less than seven rooms if you counted the outside kitchen. The outside kitchen was not at all outside in the sense that applied to João's childhood home. It differed from the inside kitchen in having a larger gap between its bare, tijolo walls and the tile roof, and it was appended to the otherwise rectangular house so that three of its walls were outside walls.

The outside kitchen was equipped for the slaughter of animals as large as a small pig, and contained the brick oven. It was where the heavy work was done - pounding cassava or corn for farina, canning vegetables, everything other than actual meal preparation.

It was not as grand as Senhor Sequeira's house, but it was closer than anything João had ever imagined himself living in, and he expected Maria to keep it pristine. The walls in every room were brilliant white, and any mark on one of them could strike his anger. A chair recklessly moved that scraped a wall, even João's own fingerprints, if they could not be carefully washed away, put Maria in a state of fear that lasted until João's anger crested and flooded the household.

It's difficult to describe how words can be even worse than blows, but for Maria, João's words were far worse. No one had ever called her “stupid” before. In all innocence, she wondered why anyone would do that if they didn't think it was true. None of her friends or family had ever called her stupid, but what if they'd thought it? They would never have said it. But no, what about her teachers who put her at the top of her class. Still, João only called her stupid when he perceived she had made a mistake, and that was so often she began to wonder why she made so many mistakes, and in time she believed it – not that she was severely retarded, but that she was stupid in ways that justified the epithet. When he called her children stupid, she even wondered about them, but she was determined to wait to see how they did in school and, after that, how they fared in the real world.

Her first child, Daniel, was born when Maria was sixteen. Two years later, her second child, Roberto, died when he was a week old. Vomiting and diarrhea took him over the course of a single panicky night. She didn't even have time to try to think of something to do.

Her first child died a year and a half after the second, again from a diarrhea that resembled cholera. And, again, João was irritated by Maria's endless grief.

The third child was a girl, and Maria thought of calling her Lara, but she had lost Roberto, and then Daniel, and she was afraid of continuing to name her children after her missing siblings. What if... No, it couldn’t be, but what if... She knew Pastor Vinicius hadn’t poisoned them out of anger over the names she gave them. Hadn’t Roberto even died before the Pastor even knew his name? Hadn’t he?

She considered naming the girl after Vovó Leticia, but in the end she decided it was best to pick a name out of the blue. Maria knew all this crazy thinking about names was nonsense, but she thought picking a random name might spare her from constantly thinking about crazy nonsense. So she chose Layla.

By the time Layla was eleven, Maria had borne five more children of which three were still living. With the death of each child Maria mourned, wordlessly, by extending her depression until the next death.

Layla's Brother Felipe

Felipe was only fifteen months younger than Layla. Like his parents, he was fair-skinned and fine-boned for a child in the State of Maranhão. The fact that he was well-fed showed in the paunch he carried with him - nothing you would comment on if he were an adult, but noticeable when he was almost ten.

One year after another, Felipe's teachers either thought he was stupid, or thought he was not working up to his potential. He rarely completed the assignments he was given and was often thought to be just another lost child too far behind to be able to do the work. Still, except for his spelling, he somehow knew everything children were supposed to know and a bit more. When his teachers tried to help him, they usually started at a level he had long since passed, so he stared at the walls and let his pencil fall to the floor.

From the time Felipe had a personality distinct from the generic infant, he was sullen at home, but as he approached his tenth year, this sullenness became more entrenched as he thought more distinctly of defying his father. He began by defying his teacher, perhaps to see how that went. At first, his teacher was too busy to do much about it, but when defiance became his default action, she told Felipe to ask his mother to come for a meeting after school. Felipe replied that his mother was dead.

“Did she die recently?”

“No, it was a long time ago,” and he had to stop himself from adding, Before I was born. His teacher thought his mother's death might still account for his bad behavior, and she hoped it would pass.

Felipe was closest to happy when he was working in the garden. He worked under his father's direction, but as soon as his orders were given he was in his own world. It was not just a world of watching sprouts with two leaves turn into cabbages, it was a world of cabbage moths and their caterpillars and chrysalises. He didn't mind picking them off the leaves, as he was told to do, so long as there were weeds to nurture just to see how they would turn out. When it rained, he came home covered with a layer of mud so thick he could feel its weight.

Enzo, Lara, and Bernardo

When Layla was going on twelve, her next brother, Enzo, was seven. He was the darkest of the Cardeiras, and almost as tall as ten-year-old Felipe. Sometimes, Layla whispered, “When our parents had Enzo, both of them must have been cheating.”

Enzo had friends. Other children marveled at his cavalier attitude and were drawn to him almost like fans at cockfight waiting to see the blood. He led them on rampages through the bush, and he was the one who had the nerve to walk on the railing of the bridge over the Itapecuru river. He was the last one to get off the train tracks. He intimidated his friends by asking who was willing to play Double Dare with him. No one ever answered, it was known that he had swallowed a poly-wog on a dare and claimed he could feel it swimming in his stomach even the next day.

When Layla was going on twelve, Lara was only three. She was a constant source of worry for Maria, because she had gone back to naming her children after her missing siblings.

There had been a child between Enzo and Lara. That was Vinicinho who lived only four days. Finally, there was one last child who lived only a few hours – Bernardo.

Layla As a Child

In many ways Layla looked like her mother, or perhaps her father as the same description fit them both. Except for Enzo, they were all relatively light skinned and fine boned. The one unusual thing you would have noticed about her, even as a small child, was that she was tall. No one had any idea where her height came from. Perhaps it lay somewhere in João's patrimony but hidden by generations of malnutrition.

Her height was a curse, a subtle curse that hid itself while tormenting her even before she could cry out with meaningful words. Her parents had no sense of what a child of a certain age should be capable of doing, they only had a sense of what a child of a certain size should be capable of doing. Maria, of course, was tolerant of her child's failings, but when Layla was four, João expected the behavior of a six-year-old. He expected her to know the difference between a hammer and a screwdriver and to be able to fetch what he wanted.

Accordingly, Layla learned the language of abuse before she learned to speak politely. Still, the rules of civility came easily to her, it was in her nature to become a model child. The language of abuse was to be something that haunted her, not because she heard it from João more or less constantly, but because it was her native tongue. It commented behind every kind or conciliatory word she uttered, and the day was soon to come when she would let it speak to her beloved mother.

It was not only uneducated adults who created problems for Layla because of her height. Her teachers habitually thought of the tall, gangly girl in their classes as the oldest, held back because of some slowness of mind. It could take a dozen surprises before they discovered that Layla was bright, and in the overwhelming chaos of those classrooms, it could take a long time to accumulate a dozen surprises.

Layla started school shortly before her sixth birthday. By that time she already understood there was something wrong with her mother. She could not have put words to it. Maria's depression made her fragile, death seemed so attractive to her and she kept it near. She was impatient for the day the last of her children would be through school so she could lie down and let her body consume itself in search of nourishment.

Layla protected her mother as much as the other way around. She established a quiet intimacy. Even in the time before she started school, she would sometimes surprise her mother by taking her hand and leading Maria to her bed. Then they would lie together, Layla wrapped in her mother's arms, the two of them murmuring words beneath the sounds of breathing. Maria sometimes told stories about her life, either beautiful stories about Avô Bernardo, or less happy stories that told of loss. The loss was almost always of education or of knowledge. Rarely, the stories told of the loss of civility.

Layla often heard the stories as fables, and replied with a child's philosophy. Or, perhaps, they seemed like religious mysteries, but she learned there were a few questions she could ask that would elicit answers that related the mysteries to one another. From “When was that?” she learned that her mother's life was divided into four parts: Before Codó; Before they made me marry; Before you were born; and After you were born. Once in a while there was a fifth part that Layla didn't understand - Before Daniel was born.

Layla's own stories were the brief stories of a child. “There was a new boy in school today. He got teased a lot, I mean a lot, because his last name rhymes with merda.” “We had a spelling test, today, I only missed one word.” “Senhorita Silva can't teach next year because she's getting married.”

As she began to understand her mother's stories and fragments of stories, Layla assembled them into a sort of history of her peculiar mother. In the years that followed, she retold them to her siblings so they could understand their mother as she did.

***

There were occasions, not so far apart, when João made an effort to engage Layla as his child. At bedtime he might say, "Let's talk over old times" and proceed to tell a story about the journeys of his youth, or he could share one of the jokes his mother told when he was a child. The memory of his mother was still a temporizing influence on his behavior as a parent. So there were these times when he spoke pleasantly with his family, but there were never times completely without fear.

***

When Layla was to attend school for the first time, it was the same school Maria had shepherded her brothers through. At that time, Enzo was not quite two, Felipe was four, and Maria was pregnant with the child João would name Vinicius. Maria's plan for the day would be exhausting, but she remembered her own first day of school with such longing that she made herself rise early and fix Layla a proper breakfast. When the time came to go, she hoisted Enzo into a sling on her back and walked the two miles to school with Layla holding one of her hands and Felipe on other. When school ended for the day, Maria was there to see Layla home. Layla was relieved to have her mother with her that day, but more than that, the unexpected energy her listless mother showed made her feel as though school was magic, and she couldn't wait to go the next day.

Layla's walk to school was shorter but otherwise not much different from what her mother's had been. She passed clay houses with thatch roofs, often sagging and with walls slowly washing away under tropical rains. Half-naked children grew around many of the houses, loosely supervised by older children who did not attend school. She passed a wetland, often at shadowy times of the day when she had to move briskly as she passed through clouds of mosquitoes so dark they obscured her view of the road ahead. It was a habitat of rare frogs and the birds that stalked them, a swampy land that might have been thought to be futilely awaiting the arrival of some fever with which to drive humans back to wherever they came from.

***

The students at the school were still divided into town kids and country kids, but by the time Layla was classified, she'd already made friends with a town girl. Mariana's family was one of the few families in the Assembléia de Deus who were not rural people. They were converts - converts who had not come from Milagre de Maria with João.

Layla and Mariana each suspected the other of harboring complaints about the church, but it was not easy to get started talking about them. Layla tested her suspicion at the end of the second week by offering a complaint about the severe dresses they were required to wear. When that complaint went well, she brought up a woman she knew to be her own grandmother. This was a woman in the church she had never met and felt she probably did not want to meet. She identified her grandmother to Mariana as the cheerleader of the right-center section of the congregation and asked Mariana what she thought of her behavior. Mariana thought her a little silly.

“A little silly?” [And she switched to a  whisper.] “She's my grandmother, and I think she's bat-shit crazy.” Within minutes the mental firewall that constrained criticism of Pastor Vinicius's church disintegrated like the walls of a dried-out sand castle. It was six- and seven-year-old criticism that did not encompass theology, but it opened a view of an ever-flowing river.

***

After school, Layla and her mother often lay in bed together, and Maria softly asked Layla about her day. The conversation was almost always the same. Layla said she had found a few minutes before school to chat with Mariana, had done her work satisfactorily, and had received a quick word of praise. Maria hoped Layla would meet one of the teachers she had liked. She even thought her teachers would remember her, and if they discovered that Layla was her child, Layla might punch a hole into the real world for her. However, teachers left the school when they married, and Layla was several generations of teachers too late.

They strayed from their default conversation one day when Layla asked Maria what she thought of her grandmother's behavior in church. Maria didn't speak or move a muscle until Layla spoke, again.

“I think she's bat-shit crazy.”

Maria silently squeezed Layla's hand.

The next day, Maria began the first of what could have been horror stories. She told the stories with a calmness that barely stirred the silence and, for the few years before Layla properly understood them, she found the stories soothing.

***

A few weeks after Layla started going to school, one of João's three donkeys had a foal. It was so fuzzy and baby faced that it seemed to be an animated plush-toy two-and-a-half-hands high. It capered about. It cavorted. The foal's personality was so un-donkey-like it seemed more like a kid goat. The name Maria wanted didn’t fit, but they agreed on Eeyore, anyway, and the two of them began to speculate about what happens to a donkey's personality when it discovers donkeys are beasts of burden. Neither of them could leave the foal alone.

When João realized how much attention the animal was getting, he called Layla and Maria together and said simply, “The donkey can't be both a working animal and a pet.” That was all for the time being.

***

Layla's friend, Mariana, lived in the center of Codó in an apartment above her family's prosperous mercearia – a mercearia that would be called a “supermarket” after the word was popularized and applied to any mercearia that added a few perishable items to its stock.

Mariana's parents owned a car, and it became almost habitual that on Saturdays they would drive Mariana to João's farm and drop her to spend the day. With a friend to entertain, and João away selling produce in the market, Layla could not refuse. The two girls spent much of several Saturdays taking turns cuddling Eeyore. Layla knew this was dangerous play, even with João out of sight there was no telling what clever guess he might make, but it was irresistible.

It was an idyllic scene, and Maria often carted Enzo outside to a place where she could watch from afar. She knew what could be coming, but she could not bring herself to stop their play.

In due time, there came a Saturday when João returned early from the market because the syndicate children had not provided enough coconuts for the chickens. Wanting help, he asked Maria where Layla was. Maria tried to run to tell the children to hide in the bush until João's rage was over, but she was already seven months pregnant and barely arrived in time to take half the beating. Layla's share was the first real beating she received in her childhood, and she remembered it. Her face showed bruises that could not be seen in church.

As sometimes happened, João appeared subdued after giving his wife a beating, and Maria could allow her depression to keep her in bed. Layla was not allowed to light the stove by herself. So, when Sunday morning arrived, she put some cold beans and rice on the table for João and waited to see what his reaction would be. He ate in a kind of breathy silence that spoke what his lips would not. When it was clear they were all safe for the moment, Layla asked whether they would be going to church. When the answer was “No,” she sighed in relief and went to lie down in her mother's arms and listen to her haunting murmur.

***

When none of João's family showed up for church, Pastor Vinicius had a couple of ideas about what might have happened - both of them unpleasant. So in the evening, he paid the family a visit, and the still-swollen faces we're not a surprise. He wanted to help, so he took Maria out onto the veranda, for privacy, and asked her to tell him what was happening to her good Christian family. He thankfully left out the blessed by God.

It was a question Maria couldn't have answered even if it had come from someone with some sympathy for her. She just described the specific events that led up to the beatings. Pastor Vinicius counseled her as he had anticipated would be necessary. He reminded her of the duty of a Christian wife to obey her husband and cautioned that, if she could not discipline her children, herself, it was João's duty. He expressed his suspicion that Maria was sparing the rod too much for her children's good and that, perhaps, João had felt it necessary to make up for her many omissions more or less all at once.

When Pastor Vinicius left, Maria went back to bed secretly whispering, “They told me he would take good care of me and of my children. If this is what it is to be chosen by God... I don't believe in God, or if he's there, I don't believe he cares about us, but I constantly pray to God not to take an interest in any of my children. What did I do wrong? Or am I only wrong in thinking there is something wrong?”

It was only four days after the beatings that Vinicinho was born. It would have been much, much better if the tiny child had died soon after it was born, so that João's beating could be blamed for the premature birth and the early death. But that isn't what happened. Vinicinho was eleven days old when Maria fell asleep nursing him, and she always believed she smothered him in her sleep because she secretly wanted him dead. If only João had let her name the child as she had the others, anything other than Vinicius..., but she hadn't even tried to dissuade him.

***

When Layla was eight, Felipe was in school, Enzo was out of diapers and already a danger to himself, and baby Lara was demanding to be fed twice during the night. So there were fewer opportunities after school for Maria and Layla to lie in bed murmuring their poetry to one another, but on a day when Layla was insistent, Maria set Felipe and Enzo to playing in the newly turned dirt of her herb garden, fed Lara before she demanded it, and lay down to listen to her daughter. There was an intensity in Layla's voice that made it hard to keep low. Layla reported that Larissa Dias had run away from home.

It wasn't as though Layla had never thought of running away before. She thought of it often, but in the same way she often thought about murdering João. She didn't have a gun, and she didn't think she had the means to run away, but what did you need to run away?

“Larissa will be back in school in a day or two. If she doesn't get hungry and come home by herself, someone will bring her home – the police if no one else.”

“But when I'm older. I know you wouldn't want me to, but you'd understand.”

“My love, you must not run away. Not ever. I know it seems like a long time until you're grown up, but then you can go away and go to the university. After that, you can have any kind of life you want. Think about it. Suppose you have seventy more years to live, and you will be grown up in nine or ten of them. Think how good those other sixty years will be if you've been to the university.”

“I think the university costs money, is that right.”

“A little, I think, but if you do well in school you can get a scholarship.”

“If I don't do well, who will pay for it?”

In the silence that followed, Maria asked herself how she was going to convince Layla to endure her home for ten more years. She knew the message she had just given Layla was the only message she had. She kept remembering that she wanted to give Layla enough money to buy a Popsicle on her way home from school every day, but she had even less money than she'd had when she was a child. Then she could not keep her knowledge of being better off than many women out of her thoughts. Or am I only wrong in thinking there is something wrong?

In that same silence, Layla continued to ask herself what she would need to run away, and when she could hope to get it. It was a complex problem. How to kill João would be easier to figure out, but Layla didn't know what the consequences would be, and she didn’t see how she could talk to her mother about that.

***

Not everything that turned the children against their father could be called abuse. When Layla was eight, João bought a second-hand car, not in running condition. A project such as rebuilding an engine went much better if João had a stooge. A “stooge” was someone who ran to fetch things João needed, or passed tools to him while he was under the car. These tasks were simple enough for a child to be made a stooge. The task was supposed to be interesting to them, because they would learn how things worked and how to fix them. The children, however, found it boring. Layla said she was so bored she thought her blood would clot. You couldn't call it abuse, and yet, you couldn't blame a child for adding it to her list of grievances against João.

As making the car run was a major project, Layla and Felipe were supposed to alternate days as stooge while the car was put in order. But Felipe was useful in the garden and dilatory as a stooge, so Layla got the task three times to Felipe's one. Sometimes, Layla had difficulty finding a tool João wanted. This was because João, himself, didn't always put them back in their assigned places, usually thinking he would need them, again, in a short while. Then João was not good at telling Layla where a tool was. He said things like “Over there” with a vague nod of the head that would have been uninterpretable even if she had been able to see him under the car. Being required to give clear directions agitated João, and on a particular occasion it was enough agitation so that, transferred to his biceps, it stripped the threads off the oil pan plug. He didn't hit Layla, but he berated her.

She didn't know what she had done wrong, but whatever it was, she was sure she did not deserve vilification. More than that, she thought she never did anything bad enough to deserve any kind of criticism. The worst things she ever did were inadvertent. Someone only needed to point them out to her, and she would try not to do them ever again.

João's demands on his children's time grew as his children did. He expected them to replace the men he had to hire to work his excessively large garden. He opened a greengrocer's shop in town where he sold his own vegetables and eggs, and he needed his older children to mind the store. These demands began to interfere with Layla's schoolwork but, when Maria brought this to João's attention, he only replied that Layla was old enough to help bring in some money. Of course, she would never earn her keep let alone repay all she owed him.

***

Turning ten, Layla found most of her days spent minding the greengrocer's shop. Like most of the shops in Codó, it was a long wait between customers, and Layla had time for books. It was customary for shops to close for two hours at one o'clock, and she could use the time to go to school to borrow the books she needed to keep up her studies. Being unsupervised and intelligent enough to be able to learn from books, she made better progress in history and literature than she would have made going to school. However, mathematics (which she thought was important) was a problem.

During the afternoon, she also had time to tutor Felipe and Enzo. Felipe sometimes needed supervision because of his negligence in school, but with Layla's help, Enzo managed the equivalent of skipping a grade.

***

By the time Layla was ten, Felipe was eight and talking about running away from home. Layla told him she intended to run away, too, but they weren't old enough. She retold their mother's story about her marriage and imprisonment to emphasize how difficult it might be to leave the Assembléia de Deus. In fact, she did more than retell it. The way she recreated the gripping details anticipated the modern horror movie. She ended by pointing out there was no place for them to go.

“I'll go to Belém and find Bisavô Leticia.”

“Mother talks about Bisavô Leticia, but... Even if you could find her, I don't know how old she would be. I think she's dead.”

“Then I will go there and when they ask me where I'm from I won't tell, and they will put me in an orphanage, and that will be better.”

“There is no orphanage in Belém, and they would leave you on the street to starve to death.” Layla had no idea whether there was an orphanage in Belém, but this was a dispute she had to win. As arguments seldom yield outright victory, she never won definitively. It became an argument they repeated endlessly, but each time they argued, Layla delayed Felipe's departure. And each time she succeeded, she wanted to feel anything other than her future history gaining on her.

Layla had already gone from fantasizing to planning, but her arguments with Felipe changed the way she thought. She moved on from great escapes to thinking about what she would have to do in the real world to get her family away from her father and from Codó. She stopped overlooking the difficulties and tried to picture the details. As she thought about what resources her mother and siblings had, she didn't see much, and when she thought about resources of her own, her thoughts turned black with the futility of her fantasies.

Layla at Eleven

The world turned decisively toward the discontinuity in Layla's life on a day when Felipe was ten and Layla was still just eleven. A trained observer might have heard the first clashing of the Fateful gears.

It was a day in late summer. School was still out. Codó had grown to a point at which João's farm was close to being within reach of electricity. Gustavo, the fixer of generators, starters, and now the electric company's transformers, had connections with everyone in the town who worked with electricity. Through those connections it was decided that the farm was just within reach of the electrical grid - if João would pay for installing the last three poles.

So on this day in late summer, anticipating an electric pump in the well, João was working on plumbing the chicken houses and the small barn where a few animals were sometimes kept. In another year or two, the house could be plumbed as well. There was to be an inside toilet and running water in the kitchen.

And on this day in late summer, while Layla was managing the greengrocer's shop, João told Felipe to stooge for him. Felipe refused. João slapped him across the face and told him to come along. Felipe stood his ground. João hit him in the stomach. Felipe still refused. João knocked the breath out of him and, before Felipe collapsed, João gave him a shove that sent him down hard. There was a sound in the confusion, not overly loud but recognizable as the sound of his head hitting the tile floor.

Felipe didn't move and it seemed a long time before he took his next breath. Enzo watched without taking a breath, himself. In what seemed like silence, a flock of small parrots flew overhead squawking as though they had witnessed the assault. Then João turned on Enzo, “I guess you'll be stooging for me.”

“No, I won't. I hate you!”

João knocked the wind out of him, and when Enzo recovered, he helped João carry Felipe to his bed and followed João out to start work on the plumbing. Felipe was still unconscious.

***

When Layla arrived home, Felipe was in bed unattended. He responded to Layla's voice, but she could not get anything sensible out of him before he was asleep again. His breathing was all wrong. From a rapid start, it slowed and slowed and became shallower until it stopped. Then, after a pause, he gasped and began breathing deeply and rapidly, but his breathing slowed again to another stop, one cycle after another.

Layla could think of nothing that could be done for him and supposed, generously, that her mother had thought the same thing before taking to her own bed. Layla had no trouble knowing, in general, what must have happened, but to learn the specifics she went looking for Enzo. She found him sitting on a stool in the doorway of the barn waiting for orders.

It had been raining, and water trickled across the dirt floor in long lines and small puddles. When the rain stopped, bits of leaves and sticks were left behind, piled into tiny dams and levies. Layla called Enzo away from the door. She got an intimidating look from her father, but she was not trying to hide their conversation, or rather, that was not foremost in her thoughts.

Enzo's story fit her expectations. Enzo was worried because Felipe was still unconscious when they left him in his bed. Layla told him Felipe had spoken a few words, but was cautious about encouragement. Enzo was also worried because there had been no lunch, and João just kept on working on the plumbing without a word.

When she spoke to her mother, Layla feigned more optimism. She lay down with Maria and spoke in their old, quiet way. “Felipe has been awake. He's sleeping, again, and ought to be left alone until morning. He's going to be all right. You can just go to sleep without worrying. I'll take care of dinner for everyone. Should I bring you some dinner?”

Layla didn't need to hear the answer.

***

The kitchen had not been touched since breakfast. The insulated carafe of coffee was long gone cold. Three plates on the table were finger-painted with bacon grease and decorated with fragments of cuscuis. A frying pan full of grease looked as though it had been left for a while on top of the fire. The specially shaped boiler for steaming the cuscuis was open with the lid lying across the gap between the stove and the counter. The inside was coated with the fine particles of rice flour that were hard to get out if you let them dry. There was a smudge of blood on the floor with a sandal print in it.

Layla hadn't noticed that Felipe was bleeding, and when she went to check, the back of his head did not look as bad as the blood smear in the kitchen suggested. He was still minimally responsive, and Layla turned her attention back to preparing dinner.

She thought the greengrocer's would be unexpectedly closed the next day, because she would be responsible for the household.

***

João stepped out of the room Felipe shared with his siblings just as Layla set his dinner on the table. She dished up a plate for Enzo and sent him out onto the veranda to eat it, then one for herself, and she sat down with her father.

“I don't think I'll be able to take care of the store for awhile.”

“Enzo and I can manage without you. The plumbing can wait a few days.”

After a pause she said, “I don't think he'll live.”

“I shouldn't have pushed him. He was already falling.”

Even with all the unimaginably difficult things Layla would have to say on the other side of the discontinuity that was rushing forward, what she said next was the hardest thing she ever said in her life.

“He was defying you. Enzo told me.”

***

Layla woke Felipe at sunrise. He could speak coherently, but he slipped quickly back into sleep and the alarming respiratory pattern. She had her doubts about João's assertion that he and Enzo could manage without her, but there was nothing to do other than start out for the greengrocer's. When the store closed at one o'clock, she ran home, arriving with her lungs rasping inside her chest. The chicken house chores were done, and João thought they could take care of the garden in time to get some work done on the plumbing before dinner. Enzo was being uncharacteristically helpful.

***

The summer's rainy season ended, and unabated heat returned. As Felipe tended more toward recovery than relapse, Maria also had more days that were better than those that were worse. She began doing most of the housework, though she continued under Layla's direction. “Good morning, Mother. Today, we need to...,” and then Layla would be off to attend to the store.

Felipe's recovery was slow. His worrisome breathing pattern would seem to improve, becoming little more than an occasional nighttime pause in his breathing, and then one night a gasp would announce the return of the frightening cycles.

When he was first able to get out of bed and move around, he fell frequently, always toppling over backward, and twice injuring an elbow as he tried to break his fall. Layla was afraid he would hit his head again with the consequences of dropping a melon on the floor a second time. Still, she began working at persuading him to volunteer to stooge for his father. It was not easy.

“Don't make me tell you why. Please just trust me. You don't hate him any more than I do. I wouldn't ask you to do this just to make him happy. I have my own reasons I can't tell you about, but please, trust me.”

She counseled him about keeping his temper while he stooged. “Put your mind elsewhere, in a dream. Imagine we are in a different land, a different universe. Make it into whatever you want. Fantasize. I will share my fantasies with you and, for a few weeks, our minds will live somewhere else. Then I will tell you why I want you to do this.”

Felipe concluded that she had figured out how she was going to murder João, and while he stooged, his fantasies did not stray far from that theme. Sometimes, when they were absolutely certain they were alone, they spoke of this fantasy and let their minds wander along that dangerous path. Felipe shared his fantasies for putting an end to João. He shared them all, the fabulous as well as the practical, because he never knew how one of them might help his sister.

The plumbing project went well, but the work on extending the power line was not begun. Promises of “soon” did not improve João's mood. The car threw a rod, and when João began rebuilding the engine, fear was constantly in the family's dreams.

During the day, Felipe medicated his boredom with thoughts of mayhem. João could not be said to have been either contrite or gentle with Felipe, but he was restrained. Not every day went well. There came the day when the engine that had started on the test bench would not start when installed in the car. Still, most days went better than memory predicted. When the car was running once again, Layla saw to it that they all praised João's work on the car.

At night, after João was asleep, Layla took a greater interest in sewing than she ever had, sometimes cannibalizing some of their best clothes to make what she wanted. She knew exactly what that was and started over from scratch many times.

There was a string of days that were better than any day in the lives of many families in Codó, and Felipe was never worse than sullen, but he was absolutely unforgiving.

Then there was more work to do on the car. The drive train was functional, but the front springs sagged so badly there was danger of the drag link disengaging from the steering gear and sending the car in whatever direction the poor alignment of the wheels and the ruts in the road plotted out.

Felipe and Enzo both got slapped, and once again, Felipe wanted Layla to explain why he was supposed to put up with João.

***

The day came when Felipe had been sufficiently recovered for weeks, and Layla knew she was delaying out of fear rather than necessity. Her plan was dangerous. If it failed on the first day, she told herself there was no alternate plan, but she knew there was. She just couldn't think about it. One of them would have to kill João before he unleashed his rage on them. If the plan failed on the second day, they would probably be at the mercy of whatever Pastor Vinicius decided should be done. If it failed after that, there would be only poverty and degradation. There was nothing to be salvaged out of failure, but wasn't courage doing what you had to do to make reality tolerable? But she also thought of the lives of other children she knew, and she vacillated, Am I wrong in thinking there is something wrong?

She thought about all her careful, realistic planning, and what she was willing to do to make it work. But how realistic could her planning be with no experience of the world? Then again, did she really have no experience? And wasn't it life or death? Wasn't it already life or death? Felipe could die at the hand of João, or he could kill João and die in prison, or run away and have a life no better than death, or was she exaggerating everything? She vacillated. In the end, it was her promise to Felipe that made up her mind. She had promised there was a reason for stooging for João.

She'd been as ready as she could be for many days. She only had to pick a day and do it. So she picked the day she was in and began. They would be ready to leave in two days, with three days more to go before her twelfth birthday. She wondered what her birthday would be like. She and her mother always acknowledged her birthday, but they never celebrated - the Assembléia didn't approve. If everything went perfectly, in five days they would be too exhausted and dirty to remember anyone's birthday.

***

On the day they were to leave, there was nothing to do until bedtime, and the day passed, not like in a dream, but in some stranger place, as though time had lurched ahead leaving her still in the past, going through the motions of a time already gone.

When it was bedtime for Enzo, she sat him on his bed and spoke quietly. “Tonight, you must trust me, absolutely, and do exactly what I tell you to do. If you fail me in any way, it will mean disaster for all of us. Do you understand what I'm telling you?”

“I think so.”

“I am going to do something João won't like. If you do not do exactly what I tell you, João may start by killing me. Now, do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“These are the clothes you are to sleep in. Nothing else. Nothing more or less. Nothing in the pockets. Exactly these clothes. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“When I wake you, tonight, I will not speak. I'll just touch your shoulder. You must not make a sound, not even a deep breath. You must follow me in the clothes I just gave you. You must have absolute faith in me. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Will you do as I say?”

“Yes.”

“Not a sound when I wake you. You must remember as soon as you feel me touch your shoulder that you must not speak. Do not speak of this to anyone. Do not ask Felipe about it. He knows nothing, anyway. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“If you hear me get Felipe up before I touch your shoulder, do not get up. Do not get up until I touch your shoulder. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Give me your sandals, now. When we leave the house, I will give them back to you. When I give them back to you, do not speak. Do not slip into them standing up. Sit on the bottom step of the porch to put them on. Then walk away with me without letting your sandals slap the ground. We must be silent. Understand?”

“Yes,” and she repeated everything and made him respond, yes, seven more times.

Her mother was certain to be more difficult.  When Maria finished cleaning the kitchen, Layla took her by the hand. Maria said she wasn't really ready for bed, and Layla told her they must talk.

“Mother, we must leave this place. If we stay here, João will kill one of us, or else Felipe will kill João. Even if neither of those things happen, Felipe will run away, and what is a ten-year-old boy to do alone in the world? We must leave tonight. Do you understand?”

“No. Are you saying you are going to run away tonight?”

“First, listen to me again, and tell me if anything I tell you is not true,” and she repeated herself adding, “Felipe and I are close. He has been talking about running away for a year. After João beat him, the only thing that made him pretend to respect João was my promise to him that he could trust me to get us out of here. Tonight we must make good on my promise.”

“But we can't. Where will we go? What can we do? The church.”

“You must trust me as Felipe and Enzo do. I promise I will get us free from here.”

“But without even a plan. Where will we go? You're just a child.”

“I just promised you. There is a plan, but there is too much to explain. For now, you must trust me. If you can't trust me, we will forgive you for not coming, but we will go.” Layla's fear flickered. She had just made a mistake. All she had done wrong was use the word “promise,” but she hadn't meant to make any promises, so it was already a mistake.

She went on in a voice not meant to brook an interruption. “First, these are the clothes you must wear. Put them on when you go to sleep so you do not need to put them on after Felipe touches your shoulder tonight. They are not what you usually wear to bed. If João pesters you, tonight, tell him they are just night clothes you made for yourself. He will believe you.”

“Do you understand.”

“Yes.”

“When Felipe touches your shoulder, wake up, but do not speak. Do you understand.”

“Yes.”

“Here is your task. When Felipe touches your shoulder, stand up but do not move. Wait for Felipe to take hold of the belt on the dress I have given you. He will lead you through the dark to Lara's crib. You must lift Lara from her crib. Then Felipe will lead you out of the house. You will need to carry Lara for half a mile and keep her from making any sound. She will cling to you without crying if you are careful. Felipe will be there to open doors for you, so you do not need to jostle her. It is the most difficult task anyone of us has, but it is all you have to do. Do you understand?”

“Yes, but...”

Layla put her hand gently over her mother's mouth.

“Shush. The crib is noisy. You must try to lift her free of it without bumping the rails. You must be quiet. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Now, give me your sandals. I will put them on your feet when you are out of the front door and have reached the bottom step. I will put them on your feet so you do not have to jostle Lara. Then do not hesitate. Walk quietly away from the house. Do not let your sandals slap on the ground. I will not rouse Enzo until you are on your way. Felipe will be with you. He has instructions. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“That is all you have to know, now. Do not think about the rest of the plan. One thing at a time. You must trust me. Do you trust me?”

Maria knew she had to assert herself. “I trust you, but you may not do this. I am telling you as your mother, no, you can't.”

“We are not going to discuss this. Felipe and Enzo and I are leaving tonight. If you choose to stay, we will leave Lara with you. The plan is as carefully worked out as a plan can be. You can trust me and come. If not, we will understand, but we have decided.

“Should we wake you, or let you sleep?”

“No, you can't go. I can't face João if you have run away. There is no telling what he would do.”

“Then you had better come with us.

“One more thing. Is there any money in the house that you can lay your hands on without the slightest possibility João will notice?”

“I'm your mother, and I am telling you, no, you cannot go. I understand how you feel, but we must discuss this tomorrow and decide what we have to do.”

“We are not going to risk discussing this, tomorrow, and I am not going to risk discussing this any longer, tonight. If you have some money you can get safely, do not put it in the pocket of the dress I have given you. If João were to pester you, tonight, he might discover it. Do not put it in a drawer that can make noise. Lay it on the dresser with some clothing over it, and when you get up, put it in the pocket of your dress before you go to get Lara. Felipe will stop by the dresser. Do you understand?”

“You can't.”

Layla repeated everything, starting with the rationale for leaving.

“If you aren't going, tell me now, but don't tell me we can't go. We will defy you. The only thing you can tell me, now, is that there is something I've told you to do that you don't understand.” She chose the word “defy” deliberately. It was unbearably strong.

***

She spoke to Felipe. She added his sandals to the carefully ordered pile she would carry onto the porch. She dressed Lara in the clothes she had made for her, added her sandals to the pile, and cried for the first and last time. She cried because she used the voice that had haunted her from before memory against her fragile mother. She cried because she saw the coming hardship she had chosen to impose on her family. She cried because tiny Lara drew the tears from her, and because she was afraid she was all wrong about everything. Then she dressed in the clothes she'd made for herself, put out the last lamp, and began the long wait in the long darkness that ran through rural Brazil.

She lay in bed listening to the night pass, every sound increasing the danger. Even the inevitable whistling and croaking of the frogs could be keeping João awake. Knowing she could not judge the passage of time, she feared getting everyone up too soon or, being afraid of starting too soon, letting the night pass away. So she counted slowly to sixty, over and over, sixty times for each hour. She told herself the counting was dangerous, too much like counting sheep, but she knew only João and Lara would sleep that night.

As Layla's estimate of the time approached midnight, she counted every last estimated second. It made no real sense to choose this second rather than that one, but she needed to be disciplined. She counted to sixty for the sixtieth time. She could still change her mind, collect the clothes she had made before João saw them in the morning, and lie back down to sleep.

She opened her eyes, but it was so dark she only knew they had opened because she could feel her eyelids move. It was time to get up. She began counting her breaths, telling herself she would get up on the fifth breath. She reached five and thought, with the next breath, and again with the next breath. It was easy to delay only one breath at a time. Sudden awareness of how many one-breaths she had taken sat her up, frightened of herself.

She swung her legs over the edge of her bed.

She could just sit there.

She did not have to stand up, but even without that promise she made to Felipe... She only needed to stand up once, with the next breath, and the decision would be irrevocable.

Hesitation was one of her fears, but it had not been her own hesitation she had feared. It was time to go, with the next breath, but it was also her last chance to hesitate.

With the next breath, or the next.

***

When she looked around the room, she found herself looking into darkness so perfect it was like being in an alternative universe – one with no spacial dimensions, perhaps just two dimensions, fear and the knowledge of existence. There was not even an imagined shape in her peripheral vision. She knew she'd made another mistake by not removing the window curtain before she went to bed. She might have been able to make out the window against the night sky.

She took four measured steps forward and reached out. Touching the side of the top bunk released the breath she was holding. She stepped forward, again, and reached farther. She thought Felipe must be awake, but he lay perfectly still. It was as if she was the monster in the dark, and he was the child frozen with fear. She touched his leg and moved her hand step-wise to his chest. Finally, he sat up on the edge of the bed. She put her two hands on his waist to steady him as he put one foot on the ladder and slipped silently onto the floor. She turned him ninety degrees with her hands still on his waist, and when she was satisfied that he was facing in the right direction, she let him out of her grasp.

Flight from Fear

One corner of the bottom sheet had come lose from the bed. It irritated Maria, but she lay motionless, horror-stricken by her knowledge of the darkness that flows like an ether through the earth.

Her thoughts were a chaos of a single thought. Who is this child who defies her mother? No child of hers, not her Layla, obedient, at the top of her class in school, even cheerful given the circumstances of her life, and the cause of this... This what? It was not a transformation, not something you could see happen, something that preserved some substance of what had been. It seemed to have done to Layla's integral self something like the shattering of annealed glass. And the cause of this? This what? More than defiance. This substitution. Pastor Vinicius would call it “possession.” But Maria correctly guessed that this possession had arisen from Layla's own fear of what she had decided to do.

Maria knew, too, the deeper cause – the years in which the only protection Layla had was the willingness of her own mother to soak up the beatings meant for her children. This time it was not enough for her to accept another beating. The only means she had ever known to save her children had failed like an old rope, wet and worn from too many passages through the same grommet.

And she knew the still deeper cause – the escape she found in the beatings, the bed where she could lie for a day without being disturbed, rummaging in the memories and fantasies she shared with Layla.

Maria did not want to think about what was happening, but the reverie that had always let her escape from her troubles was useless. She could not stop herself from asking, What should I be doing? How can I save my children? And before she could answer, it would begin, again... Who is this child who defies her mother?

After a long time trapped in these thoughts and not knowing what else to do, she got out of bed, turned the sheets back, and reached into a slit in the box springs that supported her mattress. She withdrew an empty hand and started over. She took off her dress, folded it, and laid it on her dresser before she returned to the box springs. This time she withdrew a small bag of coins and a few bills which she placed under the dress. Drenched in fear, she put on the dress Layla gave her and crawled back into bed.

She felt odd in the dress, a little liberated inside her fear. It was just the most ordinary dress, sleeveless with the hem at mid-calf, a night gown if João should ask. Had Layla planned that? No, Layla was just a child. Maria knew she had to find a plan for her children. She only put her hands on the money in case...

When Maria blew out the lamp, the darkness hid countless dimensions, all snarled together, time choked into stasis. Sleep was impossible. She could not keep herself from listening for sounds, knowing that even familiar, innocent sounds would seem threatening. She thought she felt a small, chitinous thing crawling on her leg. Perhaps, it was a spider, but there was nothing to be done, fear forbid the smallest movement.

The frogs sounded somehow different, their chirping more like the sound of birds startled into wakefulness. The sound had to be set aside, the sound of frogs had to be rationalized as just the sound of frogs.  She had to reassure herself that the sound of her own breathing was synchronous with the movements of her chest.

She was afraid because the house was quieter than usual. Her three oldest children were frozen in their own beds. There was no tracking time during the sleepless night, but it wore on, and Maria began to hope that Layla had changed her mind. Layla was a marvelous daughter, and she told herself she was sure that, when Layla thought about it, she would do as her mother told her. At long last, she heard a parrot squawk and knew, for a while, they were safe - that morning had come and Layla was still in her bed. But there was no second squawk, and the morning did not come. Maria did not imagine that Layla lay in her own bed tracking time, counting it in her head, from one to sixty, sixty times to mark an hour.

When Felipe touched her face, Maria was startled, as though from sleep, but it was only into the realization that her children were active and morning must still be far away. She wondered whether she could change Felipe's mind just by lying still, but in a moment he pushed her arm twice. She rose to the side of her bed, and Felipe grasped her belt, almost pulling her to her feet.

Being tugged through the house was awkward. Maria kept stepping on Felipe's heels, but they were quiet until Maria heard a loose, clicking sound when Felipe's hand touched the rail of the crib. She was afraid of what came next. She knew it would be noisy to put down the side of the crib, but it would be less noisy than bashing a fidgeting Lara into the side of it. Putting down the side wouldn't wake João, but if he were already awake...

She felt a tug on her belt that meant get-on-with-it. It was an urgent tug that seemed to leave no time for putting the side of the crib down. So she bent over the side and lifted Lara to a standing position with their cheeks pressed together, and then in a moment of unexpected cooperation she felt Felipe lean in and lift Lara's legs over the side of the crib. There was a small noise as the two of them leaned against the railing, but it seemed only to come into consciousness after the danger of a louder sound had passed. As hoped, Lara merely put her arms around her mother's neck, but Maria had a poor grip on her. She was stooped over, afraid to risk bouncing Lara in her arms to get a better hold. Felipe only made things worse getting his hand back on her belt. She stumbled, Lara slid to a sort of limp standing position on the floor, leaving Maria no choice but to grasp Lara under the arms and lift her child onto her hip with the palm of her hand ready to try, hopelessly, to smother any sound from Lara's lips.

Once in the living room, Maria could see the outline of the front door against the different blackness of a cloud-covered sky. She headed for the door, irritated that Felipe was still hanging onto her belt.

She reached the porch unable to see, and afraid to move. Felipe pulled her forward, and after a few steps gave her a lurching tug as he stepped into the space above the first step. She sensed a slowly moving commotion around her as Layla made Felipe turn lose of Maria's belt and put his arms around her waist. Then one groping hand lifted her right foot and slipped a sandal onto it. Then the left foot, and then Layla's hand guided her foot onto the last step. Layla knew she had made another mistake. She'd told her mother she would not put her sandals on until she reached the bottom step.

When she felt her foot on the ground, Maria set off through the darkness like someone being pursued, leaving Felipe behind as he put on his sandals. She stumbled as Felipe caught up with her and fumbled his arms around her to restrain her flight. She stumbled just enough to start Lara squirming in her arms, but Lara almost seemed to understand the urgency of the hand hovering over her mouth.

Felipe turned his mother away from the new road, the one that reached João's farm along the route the electricity was to take, and onto the old path that led toward the Compound – a place Felipe knew only from his sister's stories as a place of such evil as to make him forever afraid of the road that led there.

A few stars showed around the margins of the clouds, but had it not been for their own weight on their feet, vision alone would have told them they were floating in the empty space of an almost starless universe. Stumbling over a clump of grass steered Felipe away from losing the path entirely.

They passed beyond João's cultivated fields into the bush. In that even greater darkness, the invisible path became a little easier to follow. The track was mirrored above their heads by a faint paleness of the sky where the path created a break in the canopy. They walked on by tilting their heads toward the sky and trusting their feet to navigate debris on the ground.

They were less than a mile from the house when Maria heard the rustle of feet behind them. She knew it was Layla and Enzo, but what if it wasn’t? She froze and listened for a heavier, angrier footstep. When the sounds were just two steps away, she whispered, “Layla?” and crouched as though expecting a blow.

Layla reached out for her, but her hand went over her mother's head, and when she stepped on Lara's dress, the three of them sprawled onto the ground. Maria and Layla both began trying to calm Lara almost before she started crying, and when Felipe joined in, Maria knew that three of them trying to calm Lara was too many. She stood up and stepped back pulling Felipe with her. “Leave it to Layla.” Had she whispered it, or had it been Felipe who spoke, or was it only in her imagination?

That small thing. Layla had usurped even that small duty of a mother. Maria could not stop herself. She cried, not loudly, but loudly enough for others to hear.

When Lara was quiet, Layla began giving orders. “Mother, Felipe, and I will take turns carrying Lara piggy back. When each of us has taken a turn, Lara will take a turn on her own feet. We have plenty of time before daylight, but we are going a long way, tonight, so we must move at as quick a pace as the person carrying Lara can easily keep up. We don't want to be seen on the road by some early-bird who wants to be first at the market. We especially don't want to be seen by our father who could still discover we are gone and easily catch up with us in the car. I should have found a way to sabotage it.

“If you see headlights coming from any direction, hide immediately. Don't think about it. Don't hesitate. Don't look to see what anyone else is doing. Run! Get as far off the road as you can but make sure you are down on the ground before any light passes near you. Do you each understand? Lara, when you are walking, you must hold my hand so we can get off the road together.

“If the car is coming around a corner, run toward the inside of the corner so the lights don't sweep over you as the car turns. Do you each understand?”

Walking in the dark, Maria knew her tears were hers alone, and her loneliness surrounded her even closer than her depression. She wanted to lie down, anywhere, and stop thinking.

***

The river of pale sky that mirrored their narrow road was a tributary to a larger river that mirrored the road to Codó. Maria felt her feet on what she knew must be the main road. She automatically turned toward the right just as Layla and Enzo turned the other way. Startled, she spoke, “Wait,” and in a few steps she was able to put her hand on Enzo's shoulder. They were headed toward Timbiras. Timbiras wasn't safe, but it was far safer than Codó.

The unexpected turn cleared Maria's head like a sniff of camphor and left her more afraid than ever. Layla's warning about getting out of the road wasn't just about someone seeing them and talking to a member of the church, her mind was filled with an image of João deliberately running them down. In successive instants, she became a more active, and then a more willing participant in their escape. Layla had something on her mind beyond what could be expected of a runaway child. There seemed to be a possibility that Layla intended to get them all the way to Belém. If Layla didn't, Maria did.

Her sudden vigor slowly died, and as time passed, her thoughts about getting to Belém were more and more frequently interrupted by the need to tell herself to keep up. She found her thoughts starting over and over again, first a reassuring thought that it must be possible to think of a way to get them all to Belém, but then the difficulties – the things she needed, mainly money. Shortly, an unwelcome thought would intrude about becoming destitute in a place where destitute strangers were as welcome as Gypsies. She, herself, had always thought of beggars as being lice infested. Then she would again have to tell herself to keep up.

The family walked for more than an hour before a light rain began. Tiny drops just large enough to feel the tug of gravity seemed to give darkness weight and drag it down out of the sky. Sometimes there was just a mist that gave blind space a kind of cold viscosity. When the rain paused for a while, the dress Layla made for Maria began to dry. The rain came and went and came but was never a rain to thoroughly soak her. Still, the sound of their feet on the road softened, and the rain-filled darkness separated Maria from her children even more definitely. A long pause came, and Maria decided she could hope the rain was over, but then she felt a freshet of cool air dropping out of the sky. There was a pause before she heard a few large drops thud against the ground. With her next breath, she felt them strike her clothes. There was one against her face, and then it seemed as though she had to search between the raindrops to find enough air to breathe.

In the north of Brazil, rain during the day is more refreshing than uncomfortable, but as the night cooled, the discomfort of their soggy clothes outweighed relief from the heat. Fatigue began to constrain Maria's thoughts. She could not let herself stumble, and her mind became focused on little more than the sensations that told her when her feet were secure on slippery ground.

Hidden far beyond the rain clouds, one of the stars of the Southern Cross set behind them. The other three continued their imperceptible fall toward that night's death.

Two hours into their escape, Maria saw the headlights behind them. She immediately knew it was João, knew it with certainty. She believed he would catch one of them on the road and run down his own wife or child. She believed he would hunt them down in the dark and beat each one murderously. She wanted to run about, making sure they all ran into hiding, but she followed Layla's orders and ran into the bush, alone, making more noise with her feet than was necessary just to make sure they were all alert to the danger. When she was well beyond the reach of the headlights, she lay down on the wet ground. Her breath stuttered with fear. She could hear that the others had a few steps to go before hiding themselves, and then there was the sound of Lara sliding off her brother's back.

There was a long wait for the distant lights to arrive. Maria feared the wait was so long that Lara would stand up to see what was happening just in time to be revealed by the passing headlamps. The silence of the light sliding over her seemed to muffle the sound of the car passing over the road.

Maria lay in the mud, waiting for Layla to stir before she risked standing up. She lay there, afraid of her children becoming filthy as much as afraid of being caught and returned to João. Before she stood up, she remembered a fragment of a poem her father used to recite. She remembered the poem began, “De tudos os cavaleiros de Appledore...” [Of all the knights of Appledore], but the line that recurred in her thoughts was, “...and hid and when the foe was past blew a triumphant trumpet blast.”

***

An hour before sunrise the rain had passed, but Maria could still hear the wet swish of denim from Felipe's pants. The idea of Lara doing some of her own walking was long abandoned. Layla was in her third or fourth mile since she'd taken Lara from Felipe. Maria felt guilty, but she did not have the strength to carry her youngest child any further. Perhaps Felipe...

An hour before sunrise, Layla stopped them all. She gave Lara to Maria saying softly, “It's not far, now.”

“How far?”

“You don't have to carry Lara. She has to walk, just a few dozen steps.”

“When I say I must stop...” Maria did not finish. No finish she could think of would have conveyed her exhaustion.

Layla lined them up with Maria at the end, just behind Lara. They joined hands, and Layla led them into the bush along what had once, briefly, been a path for a donkey cart. It was overgrown, and Maria was only three steps into it when the first thorn caught in her dress.

“Stop! I'm caught. Just a second.” Being last in line, Maria had a free hand to defend Lara and herself from the threatening plants. As she freed the thorn, she felt the vine swing forward past her hip toward Lara. She waited for the cry that did not come.

“We're free,” and she heard only the crack of dead twigs and the swish of wet leaves as Layla took another step.

There was a wave of motion as Layla found where the bramble held less tenaciously and pulled on Enzo's arm. Enzo took a step and pulled on Felipe's arm. When Maria took her step, the thorns multiplied, and trying to remove them in the dark she gave up blood.

They backed out once when the bramble that held less tenaciously turned out not to be the path trod by the ghost of the donkey. Backing out put Maria in front where she felt sure she could only lead them into some evil place remembered from childhood's witch-tales. Lara screamed when a branch raked the back of her head.

It was only eight steps backward before Layla tugged them forward, again, and it was really not far, not forty steps in all, to a clearing. Maria continued to wave her hand in front of her, feeling for the next branch where none existed. With each step she whispered to herself that she had to take another until she heard the sound of a foot on the first step of a short stairway. It turned out to be three steps up. Then four steps across a porch brought her inside a house where Layla released Felipe's hand, Felipe released Enzo's hand, and with Lara freed of Enzo, Maria folded up onto the floor and pulled Lara next to her.

***

The match strike could have been a lightning bolt the way it surprised Maria. Layla's face showed briefly as the match flared. Maria caught a glimpse of the inside of a small mud house. She was in one moment amazed by her daughter, and in the next fearful that the fire Layla was trying to light would not catch.

There was a brief surge of firelight in the room as several leaves caught fire and died out. The leaves left a tiny glow near Layla's hand, like a spark eating its way up a piece of dry grass. Other points of light were nearly motionless until Layla called them to life with a cautious breath.

Firelight began to flicker through what had once, briefly, been the home of a squatter. Only a table missing a leg remained of the squatter's possessions. Maria could see her two boys start moving toward the fire, and the next thing she saw was a pot hanging over the grate. Had Layla carried... No, Layla had to have been here before. She had planned this and was already pouring the second cup of rice into the pot, and why hadn't Maria noticed that the pot was missing from her kitchen?

It wasn't so strange. It was exactly what Maria would have done if she had planned their escape. But now there were questions. Was this their hideout until the Congregation stopped looking for them, or were they moving on right away? Did Layla have anything planned beyond this? She must have. She couldn't have arranged all this without thinking beyond this night. Maria thought she must have a conference with Layla, not that minute, but as soon as they had both had some sleep. She was still thinking not-this-minute when Layla sat down next to her mother and asked, “How much money did you bring?”

“Not much. A thousand cruzeiros – nothing.”

“Not much.”

“Three days worth of food.”

“Not for that. Give it to me.”

“We need it to get to Belém.”

“We're not discussing this. Just give it to me.”

Maria could not understand how the orders of this child forced themselves on her. She could understand how Felipe and Enzo could be enthralled by some charismatic older sister who promised them escape from their home, but was Layla such a sister? Lying together in her bed she never felt anything in her daughter but a reflection of herself, beaten into soft compliance, free of fibers, sharing her meditation on memory.

She knew it was now her task to save her children, but it was already too late. They could never go back to Codó. They had to run away, and there seemed to be nothing, now, but to beg food until they somehow found a way to Belém. Even if they got there, she no longer remembered the way to Vovó Leticia's home. Vovó Leticia was probably dead. She could only see them begging on the street, her children deprived of the schooling that should have given them a way forward. João would have made their education difficult, but wasn't she going to find a way to see to it, herself?

Had she never made her plan clear to them? Hadn't she explained that they only needed to endure and, in the end, everything would be all right? They were good students, at least Layla and Enzo. They could get scholarships from the state. It would only be seven more years for Layla, and there she understood her failure. Eleven for eight-year-old Enzo.

She tried to focus on what she could do to rescue her children. How long had it been since she'd last written to Vovó Leticia? Fifteen or sixteen years? How long since Avô Bernardo died?

She didn't know why Layla was being so secretive. Layla had shared such intimate thoughts in their bed. Still, Layla was smart. They had spent the night walking toward Belém. No other place she could imagine made any sense, but why would she keep that a secret? Or was it just that her child had no idea how far it was to Belém?

These thoughts passed in the time it took her to draw the money out of her pocket and hand it to Layla. Then she lay down with her children on the packed-dirt floor. Not quite. There was a banana leaf for each of them to lie on.

The sleep that was to rejuvenate them did not come. An ever-growing crop of mosquito bites tormented Maria. She lay on the hard floor with a dozen fleeting thoughts, over and over again. She was too tired to stop them and was content to let them roll on because the last one was always “Layla and I will be able to figure out how to get to Belém.”

Maria could hear the sounds of three of her children sleeping on the hard floor, but the one that mattered most did not sleep. Layla was up pacing the floor as much as she was lying down trying to sleep. Maria spoke to her quietly once, “Get some sleep. We will figure out what to do after we have rested and can think better.”

Layla replied with a scowl that Maria might have felt in the dark.

Scenes from the night flickered in Maria's imagination. They did not tell a story or express any feeling about what had happened, they only filled the space between that recurring reassurance, “Layla and I will be able to figure out how to get to Belém,” and later “With Layla's help, I'll be able to figure out how to get to Belém.”

Time must have advanced according to the ticking of the clock back in the house in Codó, but the day, itself, had a will and was reluctant to begin. Maria waited for it, imagining the day would bring information that would show her the way forward, but when the first light began to form, it did nothing but add to the difficulty of finding sleep. She squeezed her eyelids together, but the phosphenes she saw were red and bright and stimulating. She rolled from her right side to her left. She thought of her children, and of the mosquitoes taking advantage of their sleep. Mosquitoes were inevitable, but this cloud of mosquitoes was insufferable even if you did grow up in the northeast of Brazil.

Maria let random imaginings of the coming day take over her thoughts, and slowly that reassuring thought inserted itself more and more often, and as the day brightened enough to wake the last and laziest birds, somehow in the middle of “With Layla's help, I...” Maria slept.

An hour later she was awake, itching, she could feel a confluence of welts the size of coins on her legs. Her first thought was, We have to get out of here. It was a thought conceived as much in sleep as wakefulness, and she only knew that “here” was not where they belonged. Several seconds passed before she fully remembered that there were more important issues than the mosquitoes.

Her three youngest children seemed unchanged in their sleep, but Layla was not in the room. And outside, Layla was not in sight. What Maria saw was an abandoned farmstead, one that had not lasted long after its inception. The storm that muddied her family during the night had washed the air, and the area around the house seemed to have more detail than could be real. There was an acre of tall green grass growing up among stumps and limbs of felled trees. The individual blades of grass were so distinct they seemed countable, so green they must have fluoresced. A stagnant pond explained the exuberant welcome a chorus of frogs had given them a few hours earlier. The water was foul, thick with protein, but it glistened in the low angle of the light, transforming a repulsive sinkhole into a scene you would want to capture in memory.

What do you suppose happened to the people? It was a question either Maria or her daughter could have asked, and either of them could have answered. The mosquitoes.

Maria looked around and would have liked a horizon that was farther away. The scraggly forest spilled into the far side of the pond and huddled up against the edge of the cleared acre allowing the dangers that lay ahead to crouch too close too soon. She thought her daughter could be close-by in the bush, but close-by surrounded her and fear claimed too much of it. She shouted. She didn't want to wake her other children, but she couldn't help herself. She walked around the house shouting for her daughter. She was greeted only by the sudden silence of the birds and the knowledge that all she could do was wait.

Almost all. She roused her children and moved them onto the porch where the mosquitoes seemed fewer, but that scarcely interrupted her worry, or her irritation with Layla. Why did she sneak off? When would she be back? And then the real what if. What if she doesn't come back?

She wanted her children to wake up, to share her worry. No, she didn't want that.

When Lara finally woke up, Maria hoped her crying would wake the others. No, that wasn't what she hoped, and when Felipe sat up and groaned loudly enough to wake Enzo, she felt guilty for having wished them awake.

Maria looked at Felipe with a slightly wild look, “Layla isn't here.”

“No, she's not.”

“She's gone.”

“Yes, she's gone.”

“I'm afraid of what could have happened to her.”

“She said she'd be gone.”

“She told you?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Last night. She told me to tell you to cook the rest of the rice because she isn't sure we'll have a fire tonight.”

“When will she be back? Where did she go?”

“She went to Timbiras. I don't know when she'll be back. Maybe it will be quiet a while.”

Maria almost said, “What if something happens to her?” but she stopped in time to avoid scaring her children. Besides, she knew the answer. If Layla didn't come back, she would have to find a way to get her children to Belém. But what if Layla didn't come back? How could she leave Layla behind? If she had to leave her, how would she know when the time to leave her had come? Who could she turn to? Everyone she knew was in the Church, the Assembléia. Was there a Catholic Church in Timbiras? Of course there was, but she didn't know, and just as importantly, she had no idea what a Catholic priest would do. Yes, in a way she did. She remembered a priest she spoke to, once, in Codó, and before that, the priest in Belém, but that was so long ago. Still, if Layla didn't come back, she could go on until they found a priest. There, at least, she would find honest advice.

***

At mid-morning Maria walked back to the road. Barely stepping out of the bush, she looked toward Timbiras. Unsatisfied with a view of three-quarters of a mile, she stood on her toes as though that would help her look over the next hill. There was no sign of Layla coming. She'd known there wouldn't be, and having looked down the road, she had to stop hoping Layla would arrive in the next few minutes. She should never have gone to the road to look, but it was not long before she went, again.

And soon, again.

And after the fourth time, she told herself she had to boil the rice. Felipe knew where the matches were, and he chattered on with helpful suggestions in a way that made the day seem too ordinary. It made Maria wonder if he shared some reassuring secret with Layla. She considered the possibility they had some simple surprise waiting for her – Vovó Leticia waiting for them in Timbiras. The thought died as the memory of Layla's dark temper welled up. “We're not discussing this. Just give it to me.”

When she spoke to Felipe, she knew she was saying something she shouldn't say, but it turned out to be harmless.

“What are we going to do?”

He replied with morning light in his voice, “We're going far away.”

“To Belém?”

“I don't know.”

“What did Layla say?”

“She said, ʻFar away.ʼ”

“When did she first talk about it?”

“Last night.”

“Last night?”

“While were we walking. When it was really pouring down.”

“So now you're happy.”

“Not exactly.”

“Why not?”

“Because I'm tired and the rice stinks.”

“And dirty.”

“And dirty.”

“Do you know where Layla got the water for the rice last night?”

“No.”

“I think I know. I was hoping for someplace else.”

There was a shallow well between the house and the pond, and she drew the water from it, but she might as well have taken water from the pond itself. The water in the well was at pond level - so close to the top the absence of a bucket and rope didn't matter. The water wasn't odorless, or even free of dead gnats floating on the surface, but boiling it with the rice would make it safe.

Maria's day ratcheted on in a slow, jerky motion. There was the endless anxiety of waiting for Layla – countless minutes, each flattened into hours. There was also time that passed in accord with Maria's love for her children. Lara was cranky. Felipe and Enzo wandered aimlessly, poking at frogs they couldn't catch, wrinkling their noses at the well-water when they were thirsty. When Felipe reminded Enzo of the tadpole he swallowed, Enzo replied, “That was just a tadpole. This is nasty. The tadpole was alive. This has dead, rotten frog juice in it.”

Maria intervened without a note of sarcasm, “But that is the water that will take us far away. It's almost like magic water.”

“If that's the water they have far away, pick someplace closer.”

Felipe stepped in, “But it's magic water. Magic potions always taste like dead, rotten frog juice because that's what they're made out of.”

When the rice was cooked, there was enough for three days, maybe more - they wouldn't be eating it any faster than starvation dictated. It tasted worse than it had the night before – possibly, Maria feared, because the well water was a mistake.

By the middle of the afternoon Maria was panicking, she couldn't think of any business Layla could have that would keep her in Timbiras so long. It didn't occur to her that she couldn't think of any business Layla could have in Timbiras at all.

***

An hour before sunset, Maria went back to the road hoping she would see Layla returning before dark. At the bottom of the hill, half-a-mile away, she first saw a shadow moving across an open field. Layla was at the end of the shadow. Maria remained quiet, even when Layla was just on the other side of the road, but as soon as she reached the edge of the bush, Maria began, “Where on earth have you been? We need to talk.”

“Not now, Mother.”

And all in a rush, “I've been worried. Felipe said you went to Timbiras, but he didn't know when you'd be back. What could you have gone there for? Felipe didn't know. We need a plan to get to Belém. Why didn't you tell me you were going?”

In silence, Layla pushed a thorny vine out of the way. Her mother went on.

“Are you okay?”

“We have to get moving. We have three miles to go before dark.”

“We can't stay here. The mosquitoes are terrible.”

“As I said, we have to get moving.”

“Where are we going?”

Silence.

“If you know it's three miles, you must know where we're going.”

“Be quiet, Mother!”

***

The rice weighed too much cooked, and she thought she had to take the first turn. She tired of the loop of yarn through the neck of the bag slipping off her shoulders. So she carried it in her hands, but then the loop cut across her wrist, and the edema in her fingers made her think of stuffed sausages. She kept shifting the bag from one hand to the other and back to her shoulders. Cooking the rice was another mistake. She had to stop making mistakes, and if she made so many this close to home, what would happen when they went beyond Timbiras into unfamiliar places?

Stumbling across a pasture in near darkness, they arrived at a “barn” much like João's barn. As the freeholder who owned the land had warned Layla, they had to share it with a donkey, but as Enzo cheerfully observed, “It's too far for the mosquitoes to follow us.”

Before anyone slept, Layla drew a bucket of water from the freeholder's well. In the paler darkness outside the barn, they one-by-one washed their hands in the bucket. Maria didn't approve of washing in someone's well-bucket, and she didn't approve of washing in second-hand water, but they had to eat with their hands, and she didn't approve of eating with dirty hands either. They each scooped a handful of sticky rice out of Layla's bag, and pressed it into the shape of a snowball. When Lara's crumbled as she held it, Maria made another and held it for her while she nibbled, complaining and resisting her mother's admonitions to eat. Lara scattered grains of rice on the ground, and then noticed for the first time that they looked like insect eggs.

When Maria finally finished with Lara, she still had her own rice to eat, but she began again with Layla, “We need to talk.”

Layla gave Maria an angry stare no one could see and walked inside the barn. Maria followed her, determined. The stare and the anger dissipated slowly in a silence that abutted Felipe's voice coming from outside.

“It's a real pig sticker.”

“It's not as big as the ones in the slaughter house.”

“It's big enough to take care of anyone who gives us any trouble.”

“Where did you get it.”

“Layla gave it to me.”

“Where did she get it.”

“I don't know. I guess somewhere in Timbiras.”

“What's it for?”

“It's to take care of anyone who troubles us. She says I'm going to help her get us where we're going. She's going to explain it to me.”

“Where are we going?”

“I don't know. She won't say. She says it will be better if we don't know until we've gone farther.”

“Are we going to Bisavô Leticia?”

“I don't know.”

Inside the barn, Layla knelt in the dirt, and scratching around with her fingers, she scraped together some moldy straw for a bed. When Layla stopped moving, Maria spoke, “When can we talk?”

Silence.

Finally, “Please don't talk to me, Mother. I'm too tired to sleep, and you'll make it worse.”

Going into Timbiras, alone, had been difficult for Layla. She had slept poorly each night leading up to the night without sleep, and she had a hard time keeping her mind on the threats that were everywhere, not just in time and space, but in her thoughts, her mother's thoughts, her siblings' thoughts, and in their thoughtlessness.

***

The morning sun shown straight through the door of the barn into Maria's eyes. Even when she turned onto her side with her back to the door, the light was too bright for sleeping. It was time. She knew they had slept long enough, if not well enough. She could see filth in the straw she was sleeping in. She didn't know whether to examine the straw to see just how bad it really was, or to sit up and look outside to avoid knowing.

She couldn't tell whether Layla was still sleeping or just determined to keep trying. Her other children were squirming around trying to resist whatever was inevitable.

As the sun pushed its way into the sky, Layla refused to move. Maria again heard Felipe bragging to Enzo about his knife. When she insisted on seeing it, the knife was so large it made her think of murder.

“Where did you get that?”

“From Layla. She says it's bigger than the one in Father’s story about the knife he bought with the money he was supposed to save for robbers.”

“Where did Layla get it?”

“I don't know.”

“When did she get it?”

“I don't know.”

“When did she give it to you?”

“When she got back from Timbiras.”

“Did she get it in Timbiras?”

“Maybe, I guess. I don't know.”

“What is it for?”

“She said it's for protection.”

“Protection from what?”

“She said she would explain it later.”

“Why would she choose you to protect us?”

“She has one almost as big. She has a pocket for it inside her pant's leg. So do I. I didn't know what the pocket was for. Now I do.”

Maria couldn't say what was wrong with Layla and Felipe having knives for protection, but she couldn't think of what was right with it, either. Still, the knives, and  especially the pockets for them, forced the idea back into Maria's mind that Layla was more than the child she thought she knew. But even if Layla could plan and implement her vision, it would still be a child's vision.

She couldn't divert herself from thinking about the knives. She was compelled to search for what was wrong with them. They presaged horror. She watched her children, and they seemed surrounded by horror, surrounded but untouched while she felt it already seeping inside her.

When Layla finally emerged from the barn, it was mid-morning and everyone was bored and irritated. Felipe and Lara didn't share much of their mother's anxiety, but Enzo was infected. His reckless courage had always blossomed suddenly out of safety. During the night, Felipe's steady bragging about the knife cut away Enzo's courage and left his fear of the dark. As Layla stood blinking in the sunlight, Enzo ran to her and threw his arms around her. Maria knew her family was not given to hugging, and remembering how it felt to be a child seeking safety, she felt jealousy and knew it by name.

Layla pried Enzo off and and told him that as soon as she had eaten she would have something to tell them all, but when the time came, Enzo did not find the information reassuring.

“I am going to tell you some things about our plans. It is only a few miles to Timbiras. We will go there, now. I have looked the town over, and there is a small park where Mother and Enzo and Lara can wait while Felipe and I beg some transportation. The park is near a posto where we can find a Good Samaritan filling his truck with gasoline. There is not much foot traffic in the park or around the posto, so no one has to worry about who they might meet.

“Today, we will carry the rice we have with us, but after that we will carry nothing except the clothes we are wearing. It will make it easier for us to find transportation if we aren't carrying anything. You each have only one set of clothes, and you will get dirty, but you have probably already noticed that your clothes are made to last for awhile.”

Felipe began asking the questions. “Where are you taking us? Where are we going after Timbiras?”

“It doesn't matter. What we have to do to get to one place is the same as what we have to do to get to another. I've decided on a good place, but we're not going to waste anyone's energy discussing it.”

“I think we have a right to know.”

“You might be right, but when we are there, you will agree that it was best not to discuss it.”

A note of anger entered Felipe's voice. “I understand why you didn't say anything to anyone before we were ready to leave. It was because someone might accidentally say something that would get back to Father, but that doesn't apply, now.”

“I promise you, when you get there, you will agree that it was best not to discuss it. Have I ever promised you anything and let you down?” and by the time she added “Come with me” she had already picked up the rice and was on her way back to the road to Timbiras. She was done with questions she feared answering. She was not done with a family that was losing its enthusiasm for necessity. Her siblings, after all, we're just children.

***

Layla spoke with a controlled, almost civil voice. “Mother, if we start discussing my plan, we will all have different ideas, and we'll argue. When you start thinking about how to do this, there are so many details. I've been thinking about this for as long as I can remember, and there are still details every minute that I haven't thought of. We must not start anything unplanned. It will be a disaster. For a few days, you must stop being my mother.”

Was she talking down to her mother? Close enough to make Layla uncomfortable, but she knew what was coming, and she had to keep her mother out of it. There were more difficult questions waiting for her – far worse than “Where are we going?”

***

In the middle of the morning they were in the small park, the praça, where Maria and Enzo and Lara were to stay. It was a small triangle created by the intersection of three streets that missed finding a common meeting point by about a hundred and fifty feet. The only thing that could be said for the place was that the sky over it was blue. The trees were sickly and provided only splotchy shade. The ground was too hard to interest a child in playing in the dirt, and in such ground the grass was splotchy as though it had the same disease as the shade. There was no bench, only a tree trunk for Maria to lean against, and a thorny hedge to absorb complaints of boredom before they rang out into the town.

Layla had thought a long time about the exact phrase she was about to use.

“Mother and Enzo and Lara will wait here while Felipe and I scout ahead. We may be gone a long time. Don't worry. I don't expect to be back before dark. Eat all the rice you want, we won't be taking it with us. Stick close to this place. When I return, we may be in a big hurry. I won't have time to go looking for you. So stay close.”

‘Scout ahead?' It was a lie.

***

Maria sat in the heat. Her dress was cooler than one with sleeves and the hem at her ankle, but it still became steadily stained with sweat. An hour went by as quickly as any normal month, and she found herself already worrying about why Layla had not returned. She wanted to go looking for this posto and Layla, but she couldn't leave her younger children, and if she took them with her, what if Layla returned and found them all gone?

By mid-afternoon, she could no longer control her anxiety. She told Enzo and Lara she was not going out of sight and walked a block to the corner where she'd last seen Layla and Felipe. Looking up the cross-street, she could see a road with a little traffic - a busy avenue for a town in rural Brazil. Obviously, it was the road with a posto.

Maria returned to the praça, gathered up her children, walked them back to the intersection a block away, and began her instructions using Layla's expression.

“I am going to scout ahead. I won't get out of sight, just up to the next corner. You must not go anywhere. Stay here where I can see you and I'll be right back. Keep an eye on the praça and shout at me if Layla comes back.” Enzo and Lara were glad to be anywhere other than the praça, but they had scarcely a moment to look around before Felipe rounded the next corner and broke into a run.

“What are you doing here? Layla told you to wait in the praça? She just sent me to tell you it's going to be longer than she thought, maybe a long time. You have to wait until she comes. She says it could be midnight.”

Layla told you... For a while, Layla’s telling them had begun to rekindle some unnameable inner resource in Maria, but it was exhausted. To Maria, Layla felt too much like João. Maria knew what she wanted. She wanted to return to her bed. She knew that soon, it would be any bed. What was there for Maria to say? To ask about? To complain about? Felipe was only the messenger. Without a sound she turned, put both hands on Enzo's shoulders and turned him back toward the praça. She dropped one hand from his shoulder and lifted Lara up from the ground by an arm. The walk back was slow. Her children came almost like reluctant dogs investigating every bush and stone along the way. Maria saw no reason to rush them.

A thin paring of the moon, set in a blue sky where it usually goes unnoticed, attracted Maria's attention. It seemed to lead them, not in the friendly way the moon follows along beside you, but from in front following the sun toward the horizon, staring back across the praça and coldly criticizing their halting return. As they again stepped onto the worn grass. Enzo spoke, “At least, we're safe.”

The words struck Maria as almost insane in their disregard for the future, but her anxiety was porous enough to let in an unexpected insight. How many times had Enzo been told to be afraid of being discovered on the road? How had they hidden fearing João, lying in the dirt, on that dark, dark, moonless night? How afraid had he been? Terrified. Terrified. Terrified. And he was silent with the inescapable bravery imposed upon him. Maria's tears came, and when she squinted to wipe them out of her eyes, the image of the moon blurred, and she remembered a day when João had threatened to leave her permanently blind.

***

A street light came on. It illuminated the praça making it a bright island in the darkness – exposing them. Lara came and asked her mother to turn it off.

“Why?”

“Because Enzo is scared.” A child scared of the light, a daguerreotype reality, a positive or negative image depending on the angle at which it is viewed.

It was the middle of the night when Layla and Felipe returned. They came cautiously as though they expected to find someone sleeping. They were greeted by quiet, fretful questions, and Layla gave but one answer.

“Try to get some sleep. We will have to move on in the morning.”

Wasn't it already morning? No, there were still hours of sleeplessness to endure.

***

Maria could see the outlines of buildings and trees beyond the circle of yellow light that fell on the praça. Enzo was sitting with his back against a tree. Her other children were sprawled on the grass in places where it was thick enough to hide the dirt.

Maria watched Enzo rise and walk out just beyond the circle of light. From there he seemed to peer into a monochrome morning that was almost invisible to anyone sitting inside the light. A donkey clopped by pulling a cart loaded with construction materials. Open bags of cement suggested the driver had just looted a building site before any workers arrived. Enzo walked the perimeter of the praça and then deliberately collapsed into a limp pile on the ground, a dramatic gesture of utter defeat by relentless boredom.

Maria quietly spoke to Layla, “You said we have to move in the morning. I don't think anyone is sleeping.”

Layla rolled onto her side, drew her knees to her chest, clasped her hands behind her head, and held her arms over her ears. Half a minute passed before Enzo gave a long, loud, dramatic sigh. Lara slept. Silence blurred four sources of purposeless anger out to the edges of the circle of light. It was the first time Maria felt real anger toward Layla.

Five minutes later, Layla spoke without moving.

“Is there any rice left?”

“A lot.”

“Who's going to carry it?” Pause. “I carried it first, yesterday, and if we all eat a handful before we go, it won't be much.”

A long while later, Layla suddenly got up, obviously agitated. “Where's the rice?” She stuffed a handful into her mouth, molded a handful for Lara, and ordered her family to eat.

“Anyone who doesn't eat has to carry the rice first. And eat quickly, we need to be through town before we attract a lot of attention.”

Grabbing one arm, she pulled Lara up out of sleep. Lara began crying. Layla ignored her. Then, “You're going to have to start out on your own feet. Eat.” The crying stopped. Lara looked stunned, perhaps with a new understanding of what it meant to be on the run from João.

Felipe asked first, “Where are we going?”

“Forward.” And Layla started off, dragging Lara by the arm, leaving the rice on the ground for someone else to pick up.

Maria's anger urged her to let the rice lie. Let Layla come back and carry it if she wants it. But there was a duty that gave her no choice. She picked it up. The rice that remained was not so heavy, and Maria was glad of that for the time it took her to shoulder it. Then she feared what was to come at the end of the day when they would finish it. They would have to start using the little money she had given to Layla. It would never get them to Belém. She walked, but she walked seeking her bed in Codó.

The rising sun showed them a day such as is seldom seen in developed countries. The air was so clear – as the breeze folded the air and swirled it around, you could expect to see the light glint off the wrinkles. In another time and place, they could have been out walking for pleasure.

Sunshine can change the character of a night's exhaustion, lifting some of the anger and giving muscles a dreamy willingness to move. Layla relented, a little, deciding to tell them how far they were going to walk.

“According to the map, Coroatá, is ten miles from here.”

Lara whined, “Ten miles!”

“Stop fussing. I'll find us a place to sleep before we get there. According to the map, we can do better in Coroatá about finding transportation.”

“The map? Do you have a map?” It was Maria.

“The map at school. They had a map of Maranhão.”

“And now you have it in your head?”

“What we need of it.”

“How much is that?”

An angry look was all her mother got for an answer.

Enzo took over, “Why is Coroatá better for finding transportation than Timbiras.”

Her silence made it clear, Layla was not going to answer any more questions. However, Felipe knew the answer, and not knowing why Layla wouldn't answer, he grumbled, “It has a bigger posto that sells cheaper diesel, so more trucks stop there.”

He wasn't finished before Layla turned on him. She spoke in a tone of voice that did not need to be loud to have its effect, “You just broke our deal.”

“It didn't hurt anything.”

“I know that, but don't do it again.”

Walking, Layla did not expect rapid progress. Enzo had to be told to stop scuffing his feet in the dirt because he would wear out his sandals. When no one wanted to carry Lara, they had to stop until someone decided they were rested enough to volunteer, and no one seemed to have enough faith in what they were doing to put themselves out.

Layla was silent while every other voice went up half an octave because that was the pitch needed to whine at one another. They did not make even the slow progress Layla expected.

Enzo walked with a reluctant, shuffling gait, but he actually griped less than Felipe, and after a rest stop that came within ten minutes of the previous rest stop, he asked Layla a question.

“How fast do you think we're walking?”

“I don't know.”

“I think about two miles per hour.”

“Probably about that.”

“It was not long after dawn when we left Timbiras and it is afternoon, now. So we have been walking for more than five hours. So if Coroatá is ten miles from Timbiras, we should be there.”

“So we haven't been making two miles per hour.”

“Are you sure about the distance.”

“Absolutely.”

“Then we must, at least, be close.”

“Yes.”

“You said we would stop before we got to Coroatá. So it must be time to be looking for a place to stop.”

“You're right, but you're wrong. It's my fault. I wasn't thinking when I said we would stop before we get to Coroatá. It's better to stop on the other side. If we stop on the other side, Felipe and I can leave you wherever we stop. We can walk back to Coroatá. Then, when we get a ride for everyone, we can stop along the way and pick you up. We won't have to go hunting for you in some dismal little praça. Besides, on the other side we'll be a whole town farther from João. It will be safer.”

***

Coroatá was only half the size of Codó, but that made it twice the size of Timbiras. In addition to the highway leading northwest to São Luis, the town lay on the highway leading northeast to Vargem Grande. The crossing was what gave Layla hope she would find a posto in Coroatá even though both roads carried a lot more donkey carts than truck traffic.

Passing through the town, the ordinary activities of people in the street distracted the family from their complaints and they walked in silence. They passed a ʻrodoviária,ʼ a stopping place for intercity buses. Layla wished she could buy five tickets to almost anywhere. She watched Enzo's head turn slowly, keeping the rodoviária in view as they passed.

Beyond Coroatá, the road led on toward Belém, but it could also be taken to São Luis. São Luis was the state capital and no place for Maria’s family. There was no reason for them to go to São Luis, but the question would not go away. Why so secretive?

The road briefly followed the Itapecuru River. Meandering across the broad, riverine plain, the road and river supported a flourishing agricultural community. As soon as the family came to a house with outbuildings, Layla sat everyone under a tree.

“I'm going to ask for permission to stay here. It's just possible there will be a roof to sleep under, but don't count on it. If it's okay, we're going to stay here even if we have to sleep outside. At least there is a decent pasture with grass, and I don't see any sign of rain. I have a plan, and I promise I'll do better, tomorrow. I promise.” She hadn’t meant to make promises, but she was encouraged by having seen the hoped for posto as they passed through town.

Enzo wanted to know, “Are we going to eat, now?”

Layla looked at the sky, “Yes,” and she shared out most of the remaining rice.

The freeholder's home was a small, prosperous-looking, tijolo house. Layla did not have to call at the door to get a response. A middle aged woman in a brown dress that nearly matched her skin met her fifty feet from the house. The woman had a skeptical look. It didn't appear to be a look that would go away anytime soon. It was a look that reminded Layla of a worry she sometimes had about the way she was dressed. Her short pants were identical to those she had made for her brothers, but on her, they were very short, shorter even than what the Catholic girls in Codó wore. She made them to the same pattern as the boy's shorts because she thought her long legs might do her more good on this journey than her small breasts, but this woman in this place was not the person she was thinking of while she was sewing her pants. She should have brought Felipe or Maria along. It was another mistake, and she had to stop making mistakes.

The woman came to a decisive stop. “What do you want?”

“My family is waiting by the road. There are five of us, altogether. We would like permission to camp here tonight and use your well, just for drinking water.”

“Are you Gypsies?”

“No.”

“You look like a girl who was with a band of Gypsies who came through here some months ago and stole and stole and stole.”

“We're not Gypsies. We're just traveling.”

“I'm sorry, you can't stay here.”

“We're not Gypsies!”

“Even if I said, ʻYes,ʼ  my husband would say, ʻNo,ʼ  and he has a gun.” The woman turned and strode back toward the house.

Layla called after her, “May we at least use the well before we go on?” Silence echoed the word ‘no.’

Layla decided the word “camp” had been a poor word to use. She chose it to hide the fact that they were so poor they would be sleeping on the ground, but it did suggest Roma travelers. As she turned back toward the road, she wondered what the woman would do if she just laid down in front of the house and went to sleep.

When she told her family to get up and start walking, complaints rose high enough for the gods to hear, but for that night they got a small portion of luck. Less than half a mile farther down the road, Layla arranged for the family to sleep in an empty shed, one originally intended for goats. Felipe muttered about traveling from goat hotel to goat hotel. Enzo was silent until he saw Layla cutting banana leaves for them to sleep on. There was not a facetious note in his voice when he sang out, “Oh, this is going to be so much better than last night!”

***

In the morning, there was not enough rice to go around. Layla and Maria did without.

Before Layla and Felipe set out for Coroatá, Maria grabbed Layla by the arm and spoke.

“You will have to spend some of the money to get us food.”

“What money?”

“The money I gave you.”

“It's spent.”

“Spent?! On what?!”

“The knives Felipe and I used to cut the banana leaves.”

“You spent the money on knives so you could cut banana leaves?!”

“No, I spent the money on knives for protection for Felipe and me. And that's more than I'm going to tell about it. I don't know when we'll be back, but don't you dare go anywhere. If I don't get back until the day after tomorrow, I'll expect to find you still sitting here.”

Ten steps away she hesitated long enough to turn and say, “I won't be gone until the day after tomorrow, and I'll bring something to eat.” Ten steps further she turned and shouted, “Where's Felipe?!”

***

None of them had gone inside the shed to sleep, but the morning revealed a cloudy sky, and Maria feared they were going to need a roof before the day was over. She envisioned an afternoon cooped up in a goat shed with two children. Then she set that worry aside and focused on the new worry – knives to protect Layla and Felipe, her children who were constantly going off, disappearing on their own.

She saw a man leave the house where Layla got permission to use the goat shed. He headed into the sun and Maria couldn’t see where he went. Then from time to time, a woman emerged to take care of some small chore near the house. What if one of them came and asked her why they were still there? Or when they would leave? Or what they were doing or where they were going? She couldn't say she didn't know. Or what if she told one of them they would leave before nightfall and then they didn't? What if one of them told the family to get off their property?

Just thinking of the possibility of being required to talk to a person who owned that land... She would rather be interviewed by the Federal Police.

By afternoon Enzo and Lara had eaten what little rice remained and were complaining about being hungry. There was nothing to do but tell them to wait until Layla returned. She had promised to bring food. It was a promise that required frequent repeating, and Maria wasn't sure Layla had made the food a promise. There was a question she wanted to ask one of her older children, but she thought it would be received badly. Thinking she probably shouldn't, she tried it out on Enzo and Lara.

“If we could go back home, now, would you want to?”

Enzo answered, “Layla says we can't.”

The words “But if you could...” died on Maria's lips.

***

The day was better, in some ways, than the day in the praça, worse in others. Her children had more room to move around. They complained more of hunger. Enzo and Lara argued over whether drinking all the water they could hold helped with their hunger. Enzo said it did. Lara said she tried it, and it didn't. Enzo said she didn't drink all the water she could.

Sunset revealed a bank of cumulus clouds on the horizon. The clouds didn't necessarily mean rain, but they meant it was important to go unnoticed, to retain their permission to use the goat shed. When darkness was firmly upon them, Maria kept searching the sky to see where the stars were blotted out. Enzo and Lara kept asking when Layla would return, and Maria told them to look for stars that disappeared because the clouds moved over them. That way they could get some warning before the rain started. The third time Maria told Enzo to watch for clouds, he said he had told God not to let it rain.

“And God said?”

“God doesn't talk back to me.”

Maria wondered whether he meant God doesn't reply, or God just does what he's told without any backtalk. After a short while she said, “So you talk to God like those ancient men in the Old Testament.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sometimes in the Old Testament men argued with God. Sometimes they even make God back down when God got out of line. Is that how you tell God not to let it rain.”

“I guess, maybe. I don't pray.”

“Some people call that prayer.”

“Shouldn't Layla be back by now?”

When Layla and Felipe returned, the stars were not all the same stars as had begun the night. Three voices confronted them, and while they could not understand the individual words, they had no trouble understanding the question, “Did you bring any food?”

“I promise there will be food tomorrow. That's a promise. I'm sorry, but tomorrow is the best I can do. I promise, promise, promise.”

Maria wanted to ask how she could make such a promise, but she did not want to hear the answer and was silent. Sleep called, not only because of fatigue. It was the all the escape they had.

Enzo wanted to know whether there would be any breakfast.

“I'm sorry, but there will be food later. You won't get any hungrier than you are now. I read, once, that when people fast they don't get any hungrier after the first day. I didn't have any breakfast, today, so I can tell you that's true. Hold on, and I promise, you will have dinner tomorrow. Worse things have happened to people.”

“Worse things haven't happened to me.” It was Enzo.

***

It was still dark when Layla woke Felipe by putting her hand over his mouth. When he was awake enough to know he should be silent, he pushed her hand away, and got up. He followed Layla out to the road before he spoke.

“Why are we up? The posto won't even be open, will it?”

“I don't know. I just want be out of here before they wake up. I'm not answering any questions, including yours.”

“You're going to have to if you don't come up with something, today.”

When Maria discovered Layla was already gone, she knew why. She also knew they'd gone as far as a child could take them. Her daughter had been brilliant getting them as far as she did, but the place she had taken them was inevitable. They were starving and filthy, and it was only the beginning.

Families like hers were left to starve to death. It happened. She had only one idea - when Layla returned, she would take her children to the Catholic Church in Coroatá. The church would probably be empty, in which case they would sit on the steps until someone came who could help them, or they died. Actually, she knew they needed more than someone who could help them. They needed someone who would help them. Food was scarce in Ceará.

Enzo and Lara spent the day either complaining or lethargic. Maria didn't know which way she preferred them. Listening to complaints she couldn't do anything about was awful, but her children seemed healthier complaining than lethargic. Then, early in the afternoon, it happened.

The man she had seen around the house emerged from the front door, and started walking toward her. He had attractively regular features that Maria noticed even through her anxiety. His dress was oddly fastidious. He looked more like a politician trying to look like a farmer than any real farmer. He walked away from the front of the house and across a patch of bare dirt.

“My wife thought you would be staying here only one night. You're now making her a little uncomfortable. So I'd like to know what your plans actually are.”

Maria knew she had to answer. She almost started with if Layla keeps to her promise... But she knew it wouldn’t do and made herself find a satisfactory answer. “My two older children have gone to town for some things. As soon as they return, we will be on our way.” It was true because she was going to take them to the Catholic Church.

“When do you expect them back?”

“I'm not at all sure. It's kind of a complicated errand, but I can promise you that we won't be here tomorrow at all.”

“You must not be. Understand?”

“Yes, of course, and we are sorry to have taken too much advantage of your kindness. Please tell your wife...,” but he was already three steps with his back to her.

***

An hour before sunset, Enzo complained about hunger for the hundredth time. “She promised, promised, promised.”

“Is your hunger worse than it was this morning?”

Enzo paused, “I can't tell.”

“Then I suppose it's not. Layla told you it wouldn't get any worse. That was true. And she promised to bring food with her when she comes back. I don't know when she'll be back because I don't know what she's doing, but the time between now and when she gets back can't be as long as between this morning and now.”

“Can't you do something?”

“If she doesn't come back with food, I'm going to do something.”

“What?”

“Something.” That sounded too much like Layla, so she added, “I know what it is.” It still sounded like Layla.

“Are we going back home?”

“No, we can't possibly do that, now.”

And Lara spoke with a clarity of thought and precise articulation that was unusual for her, “You're our mother. Can't you do something now?”

“We can't leave Layla and Felipe behind.”

***

Hours after dark, Felipe arrived. He was walking quickly and then broke into an outright run. He had run most of the two miles from the posto, and when he reached Maria, he tried to speak but, instead, he knelt down and vomited. He used a gasp of air to wheeze out, “Get up to the road.” With his first full breath he spoke again, “Stop standing there. Get up to the road. Run. Get up to the road,” and he resumed gasping.

Maria stood motionlessly, thinking that if Layla was right behind Enzo, she could get them all started to the church. There would be no help in the middle of the night, but they would be in a more hopeful place.

“Go! Run!”

Enzo grabbed Lara and started for the road. Maria shouted, “Wait” but somehow found herself running after them.

A pair of headlights flew down the road. A car was a rare object on a rural Brazilian highway, and believing it was the truck he was expecting, Felipe cried out, “Oh, no!” A moment later he could see it was not a truck and shouted, “Never mind, get up to the road!”

Enzo turned and looked at him.

“Don't stop. Get up to the road. I'll explain.” When he caught up with them, he squatted at the edge of the road breathing like an animal that had just won a race with a predator. He began speaking while he was still kneeling on the ground.

“I thought it was the truck. I saw the headlights coming, and I thought it was the truck. We have to wait here on the side of the road. There will be a mail truck coming, but he won't wait for us. He'll stop and if we pile right in the back right away we'll get a ride, but otherwise he'll go right on without us,” and then Felipe backed up and started over.

“It's a mail truck. The driver isn't supposed to pick up any hitch-hikers, but Layla talked him into it. When I left he was having his dinner, but I was afraid he would get here before I got you up to the road. He's behind schedule, and you have to be ready to get right in. Layla will be with him. He didn't want to do it because he can get in big trouble, but she talked him into it.” He stopped his rush of words abruptly. He had nothing more to say, but it seemed to Maria that he'd almost gone on, that he'd almost explained how Layla talked him into it.

Maria began asking questions that were meant to help her insist on going to the Catholic church.

“Does Layla have any food?”

“I don't know.”

“Then as soon as we're all together we need to find a Catholic church. They may give us food.”

“Layla says to stay by the side of the road so we don't miss the truck.”

Another truck roared past them, but it was not a mail truck. To Enzo, its headlights seemed to flatten the dark until the truck flew past letting it spring up again.

When the mail truck arrived, it was smaller than Maria had imagined – just a box behind a cab, one size larger than a pickup truck. Layla and the driver jumped out of opposite sides of the cab, and by the time the driver had the door on the back of the box open, Felipe was pushing Enzo and Lara inside.

“Did you bring any food?” The voice was Lara's but only because she got the question out first.

“Just get in. Hurry.” Lara was dragging her feet, waiting for a better answer.

“Get in. We'll eat later.” Felipe scooped Lara up and put her through the door into Enzo's arms.

Layla was right behind them pushing her mother, who wanted to discuss what was happening and was angry at being hurried.

“Junior Oliveira knows a lot that might help us. So I’m riding up front. So’s Felipe.” And with that she let this Junior Oliveira, obviously the driver, close the door of the box. At least he left the light inside turned on.

Lara began to cry. Maria tried to console her, but sensing that her mother was also crying, Lara only cried harder. Enzo had a better take on the situation, “At least we're going somewhere.”

They went someplace for more than an hour. Maria spent the time holding Lara in her lap, uncomfortably squatting as though she were perched on a wobbly fence. She was afraid to settle into a more comfortable position out of fear she would start Lara crying, again.

***

Layla had questions to ask of Junior Oliveira, but he turned out to be the one to start the questioning.

“Do you mind if I ask why your family is going to São Luis, and why you're so desperate?” He was sorry as soon as he asked. He didn't want to know too much, and he had just asked to know everything that mattered. He was afraid the answer would change his mind about the deal he’d made with this girl. If he were going to ask such a question, he should have waited for the feeling of detachment from reality that comes with driving in silence at night. He should have waited for the onrushing truck to compress the darkness ahead, for the feeling that comes of both refuge and lost companionship, for all the things that reveal the emptiness that lies hidden in the daylight.

Layla ducked the central issue of the question. “We're not going to São Luis. It's just where we're going right now.” Junior Oliveira could not hold back his curiosity.

“Then where are you going after São Luis?”

“I can't tell.”

“Can you tell why you can't tell?”

“No.” Pause. “If I tell, my family will argue about it. Now, no more questions.”

“Is there something wrong with your mother?”

“Yes, now no more questions.”

“Is she the reason you're going somewhere?”

“No, now really, no more questions.”

“Your father isn't with you. Is he the reason?”

Layla didn't answer, and after a moment's silence Felipe started to speak. Layla cut him off, “Felipe, please be quiet.”

The silence continued.

Then Layla asked, “How much does a hotel room cost?”

“Ah, your voice returns with questions of your own. It depends on the hotel, but you must be asking about the kind a truck driver would stay in. In Peritoró, seven or eight hundred cruzeiros, more in São Luis.”

“Will they let all five of us stay for that?”

“They'll want more, not a lot more, and they'll probably negotiate.”

“Do we have to tell how many we are?”

“No, if you make sure there's a backdoor you can open from the inside, you can bring your family in through that, but your mother has to rent the room. Otherwise, there will be a lot of questions, and you seem to have some reason for avoiding questions. Are you sure you don't want to tell me what's going on?”

“Yes, I'm sure, but thanks for asking one more time.” The sarcasm was not lost on the man who had made a deal that extended the life of Layla's plan until sunrise.

There were other questions about time and distance, some of which Junior Oliveira could answer. He tried to trade the answers he knew for information from Layla, but she clammed up. Her questions about the shipping industry in São Luis - those especially aroused Junior Oliveira's interest, but Layla was still not about to satisfy his curiosity about anything, and he gave up.

***

An hour on the road, Maria felt the truck slow for a town, and then stop. The door to the box opened and Layla spoke.

“We have to get out here. The driver isn't supposed to take passengers, and he has to make a delivery. So we have to get out. He'll come back for us in fifteen minutes.” At least, she fervently hoped he would.

Lara didn't wait to hear the end of what Layla said, “Did you bring any food.”

“No, but we'll eat in Peritoró. It's only another hour.”

Maria was alarmed, “Why are we going to Peritoró? That's closer to Codó than Coroatá. Where are you taking us?” She wanted to say, You're taking us away from Belém, but she was afraid of what Layla would say.

“Peritoró is on the main road north from Teresina. I can get us a ride from there. There wasn't anyone going anywhere from Coroatá. We could have been stuck there for days or weeks.”

We could have died in  Coroatá.

Questions began again about food and about Layla's promises. Doubts crept in, but Felipe stuck with Layla, and Enzo stuck with Felipe. Layla made more promises. It no longer mattered what they were - promises she couldn't keep. She had to keep her family on the truck. She was too exhausted to be nice to anyone, and she was afraid she'd been so rude to Junior Oliveira that he wouldn't come back.

***

When they reached Peritoró, they stopped at a small park, and Layla told her mother to get out with Enzo and Lara. Then Layla explained that there was a possibility of finding a better place to sleep than on the ground in the park, but she wasn't sure and she didn't want them to have to follow her all over town. They were to wait for her in the park. Then, with no better explanation, she put Felipe back in the truck and climbed up behind him.

It was the greater part of an hour before Maria's older children returned on foot. While they were still at some distance from their family, Layla began loudly, “Just hold your peace, and I'll tell you what we're doing.” Then, when she was close enough for them all to understand, “Don't say anything, I'll tell you what's happening.

“Tonight, we are staying in a hotel a block-and-a-half from here. Because we are arriving so late, I have negotiated with the manager to let us stay in our room until two o'clock tomorrow afternoon. You will be glad to know the room includes breakfast. They start serving breakfast at six o'clock, so we will be getting up at five-thirty to make sure we get there before the truck drivers have eaten all the best food.”

Lara had heard enough, “No food until breakfast?!”

“It's late, Lara. I don't know exactly what time it is, but it's only two or three hours from now.”

Enzo added, “Lara, we get to sleep in beds.” Layla did not feel compelled to tell them there were only two beds in the room.

***

It was a truck drivers'  hotel. The guests were expected to provide their own sheets and towels, and if anyone cared enough, their own toilet seat. There was no toilet paper. Layla could have asked for some, but she assumed they were expected to provide that as well. Still, as Enzo pointed out, they were filthy, and there was a shower. That was enough even without soap.

There wasn't much Maria could do. She was afraid to start asking Layla where the money for the hotel came from in front of Enzo. She assumed Felipe already knew. All she could do was act like a mother. She insisted that Layla get the single bed to herself, and the remaining four members of the family shared the double bed, lying crosswise with Lara curled in her mother's arms. Maria wanted to talk to Layla, but by the time her children were in bed, Layla had the upper hand in the conversation by being asleep.

***

In Coroatá, Felipe had counted at a deliberate pace to thirty and then rapped on the door of the truck as Layla told him to do. In Peritoró he had no reason to count at all, but he counted long past thirty, waiting for the door of the truck to open, counting for no reason other than its having been useful back in Coroatá. In the dark room with his family, he counted, again, for no reason. Losing track as he dosed, he began again when he awoke.

Enzo thought it had been an awful day, and he did not look forward to more days like it. But he thought more days like it were coming, so he slept in spite of his hunger.

Layla lay in a fugue state compounded of elation and dread. The thought that it was important to sleep kept her awake. She fretted that the hotel was not what she expected. She'd never stayed in a hotel, but couldn't there at least be a toilet seat? Was the world so impoverished, so awful in every way, that her home with João was better? No, it couldn't be. She knew enough to know better than that.

Before dawn set the truckers in motion, the desk clerk rapped on the door, giving the lie to Layla's expectation that he would forget. Even her hunger did not make Layla rise promptly from her bed. She finally understood something about the cost of what she had set in motion. In all her imaginings, in all her planning, she had neglected the fatigue she would have to overcome. Every moment of that day, she would have to ask herself what she would be doing if she were not exhausted. And then she would have to do that instead of lying down wherever she was to sleep.

Layla dragged her family from their beds, reassuring them they could go back to sleep after breakfast. By the time they were ready to leave the room, a little light could be seen through the window, and Layla saw a pair of vultures perched on the roof of a neighboring building. For them, the challenge of the day was to beat the dogs to the morning's garbage.

That the cheap hotel provided any kind of breakfast was Layla's first discovery that made anything better than expected instead of worse. At that time, “breakfast” in anything less than an high class hotel, if it was offered at all, was seldom more than coffee and bread – perhaps more than one kind of bread. If there were complaints from Layla’s siblings, they weren’t loud enough to be heard.

Had the owner of the hotel been in the tiny, dirty room referred to as the “dinning room,” he might have objected to the pack of wolves stuffing bread into their pockets before they left. But the patrão was not present, and the poorly paid woman in charge felt she was doing a good deed by turning her back on an obviously troubled family.

When they had lunch in their pockets, Layla said, “Okay, back to bed,” but she put her hand on Felipe's shoulder.

“Not us. We have work to do.”

“No, I can't,” but they both knew he could.

Maria was motionless, staring at Layla.

“I don't know when we'll be back. I promise I'll bring something for dinner. When you aren't allowed to stay in the hotel any longer, wait for us on the bench in front. We might be late.”

***

Once the family was moved out of the hotel by the patient but firm day-clerk, the bench in front of the hotel was worse for the children than the praça in Timbiras. Enzo and Lara were allowed to walk to either end of the block, but all the interesting shops were beyond their limits. There was a bakery almost directly across the highway from where they sat, but the occasional truck worried Maria and her children were not allowed to cross to get a better look at the few cakes they could see through a window.

Much of the time the children sat on the bench fretfully swinging their legs. The food they saved from breakfast was soon eaten out of boredom rather than hunger. Once-in-a-while, they got a passing truck driver to sound his horn.

When the day finally began to wane, the setting sun shone directly into their eyes. They each tried sitting at various uncomfortable angles, but for the most part they stood, looking up or down the street, or back through the window at the night-clerk who had come on duty for his twelve hours. Relief came when the sun sank behind the bakery.

The clouds turned from gold to puce. A few streetlights came on two blocks from their bench. It was possible the nearby lights were on a different circuit and would turn on in a short while, but even Lara knew it was more likely they no longer worked.

When the sun set, daylight was replaced by fear for what had happened to Layla and Felipe, but Felipe did return before fear morphed into panic. He carried two large plates of beans and rice purchased from a street vendor. It was enough for four people if they'd been less hungry. Felipe ate like a starving dog but stopped himself before he overran the boundary that marked Enzo's side of the plate. Then he carried his secret with him, back to the posto where Layla still waited for the right truck driver.

***

There are always plenty of abandoned construction materials available in Brazil. The struggle to do anything in a developing country leaves unfinished building projects strewn everywhere. Felipe picked up a piece of rebar to stick in the doorway of the truck while Layla was inside. Then, while Layla went for the rest of the family, he stayed sitting on the running board with the rebar still in the doorway. He knew perfectly well that he was not keeping the driver from leaving. Felipe was embarrassed, but he stuck to his fiction.

The driver sat there with the engine running for what seemed to Felipe to be many times the wait that should have been necessary to get his family from the hotel. They were traveling with nothing but the clothes on their backs for the specific purpose of not keeping exactly this driver waiting. Felipe kept expecting the driver to get tired and leave, but as impatient as a truck driver on the road could seem, passing without being able to see safely ahead, truck drivers were accustomed to waiting. They waited to load, they waited to unload, and in a poorly organized country, sometimes they waited for days.

Layla arrived dragging Lara with her right hand. Enzo was holding her left hand but walking a step behind her. Felipe watched Layla stop three times in half a block and glare at her mother, waiting for her to catch up.

Maria knew Miranda do Norte was not on the road to Belém.

Layla was frustrated with herself for having told her family where this trucker was going. If she hadn't told, they would still figure out they weren't going to Belém when they passed the turnoff at Cachucha, but they would already be on the truck and on their way to Miranda do Norte. Now, the sound of their feet scraping the pavement held up their side of an argument. Layla replied with her insistent urging of her mother to keep up.

The ride to Miranda do Norte was more uncomfortable than fearful, but it was some of each. The flatbed truck had no railing, and the family huddled against the cab as the driver swerved to miss potholes that showed up suddenly in what he had for headlights. Sometimes he hit a pothole hard enough to turn them all weightless with nothing to grip and then smash them against the truck bed. The scream of the transmission even more than the roar of the engine vied with the yowling, whistling wind in a competition of unimaginable purpose. Fortunately, no one in the family could drive, and they were naively unaware of the rash way in which their driver forced the truck past slower vehicles.

It was sometime after three o'clock in the morning when the driver dropped Layla's family at the Miranda do Norte rodoviária – a large, vacant lot with a roofed concrete platform. A row of small stalls crowded under the roof. A single bus sat, dark and quiet, seeming to wait for morning.  There were two stalls on the platform that offered bus tickets for sale. Then there were signs for three “restaurants,” but they were just windows through which a plate of rice and beans could have been passed if they'd been open. Metal latticework closed the windows to thieves but revealed greasy stoves, and inside two of the shops, small stacks of wooden stools and tables. In front of the remaining shop there were four stools that had not been stolen. The four stools were just four sections of the trunk of a coconut tree and not likely to be tempting. A table that seemed to go with the stools gave its clients a choice of which three legs to rest it on. At the end of the platform, there was a pair of restrooms so foul the family preferred to urinate in the shadow further on. They were not the first.

Maria struggled to stay awake so Lara could sleep on her lap. The others all struggled to sleep sitting on the stools with their heads on the table. No one would have succeeded even if they hadn't bumped the table back and forth every time they moved. Traditional Brazilian music played from one of the ticket windows – songs of success or failure in love usually accompanied by a single guitar. American rock and roll was still five years in Brazil's future. A variable breeze kept the odor of the restrooms pushed off to the other side of the platform. A row of forty-watt bulbs along the edge of the roof seemed bright against the darkness beyond, but they left the platform itself a dimly yellow slab still littered with paper cups and pastry wrappers from the previous day, or the day before that.

When daylight hid the forty-watt bulbs and customers were eyeing the stools and table, Layla told her family she would be back within minutes. She walked across the street and up the road to a hotel. There, the morning clerk had arrived, and she negotiated a half-price room that she promised to leave empty in the late afternoon.

By this time, Layla understood that darkness was the motive force of progress. The twenty-four hours just past would be the pattern of the family's life – work and travel beginning with the night, hours of boredom before sunrise, and fitful sleep in crowded, half-price beds during the day.

***

They were no longer on the road to Belém, but what was Maria to do about it? She had no power to do what Layla was somehow doing for them. She was afraid of where the money for the hotels was coming from, and she was afraid there was no longer even anything she could do about that, but she had to speak.

“Layla, how did you get the money? What are you doing?”

“Stop worrying. I know what you're thinking. Just stop it. I'm not a thief, and I'm still a virgin. If you don't believe me, ask Felipe. Now, stop asking questions and let me sleep.”

Maria didn't know what to believe. She'd never known Layla to lie, and she thought Layla would just tell her to stop asking questions rather than starting, but this was different. These were circumstances and this was a child she had never known. There was no point to asking Felipe anything, she already knew he'd just tell her to ask Layla.

Could they really have a way of begging the money? That would not be a secret, and there were knives.

***

When the day-clerk finally insisted they vacate the room, the difficulties for a child ruling her mother grew worse. Cheap hotels did not have lobbies where a family could wait after they had checked out – they had benches on the sidewalk. Maria had to be told to wait on the bench and ask no questions. The afternoon was already passing, and it would be the middle of the night, again, before Layla and Felipe could return.

It was harder for her mother than Layla ever knew. Fear and boredom are immiscible. Each one took its turn until it became unbearable and Maria let the other resume dominion over her thoughts. If she had only been at home, she could have just curled into depression and thought about death.

***

Layla still had seven hundred and fifty cruzeiros, but what they needed was transportation. Layla stopped haggling over money. It was transportation to São Luis or nothing.

An unlicensed bus stopped in the middle of the night. These “clandestine" buses were common, and this one was taking shopkeepers to São Luis where they could buy cheap goods to sell back in the villages. Layla watched the driver negotiate the price of stolen diesel fuel sold from a barrel with a hand-pump behind the posto. She knew there were empty seats on the bus, the space was needed for merchandise on the return trip. It was a common arrangement, and knowledge of it was not restricted to the Illuminati. So while the attendant cranked the pump, she approached the driver, not with much hope but thinking of what a success it would be to provide her family with a ride in a bus. A hired driver might have seen any amount of money as better than nothing, but most of the clandestine buses were driven by their owners. This owner entered into negotiations with her - but chiefly with the intention of making fun of her. His usual shtick for teasing prostitutes didn't work, and Layla got off without much embarrassment or disappointment over what she never expected.

An hour later, Layla got her family into the back of a truck that had delivered furniture to a store in Caixas. It was the first time the family had ridden in a completely dark, closed box. She entered the truck already mildly nauseated.

The swaying of the truck amplified the nausea. Then darkness amplified the swaying of the truck. In twenty minutes she knew she was going to vomit, and there was nothing to do to mitigate the result.

Her retching was like punctuation at the end of “I'm going to throw up.”

Maria had to do something and began pounding on the cab to stop the truck. Shouting at Felipe to stop her mother, Layla aspirated some of her vomit into her lungs. Once Felipe wrestled his mother away from the cab, the chaos in the truck shrank to where Layla was left gasping on the floor with acid flames in her chest, begging her mother to get away from her.

The family rode on, carrying the roar of the truck and the smell of vomit with them. Maria kept insisting it was the exhaust fumes regularly boiling into the box that had made Layla sick. Layla knew the real cause, but she did want to be free of the fumes. Speaking set off paroxysms of coughing, but she managed to tell Felipe that she did not want the driver to discover the vomit until he was far on down the road. So when the truck stopped and the driver opened the door for them, they all spilled out together, and Felipe saw to getting the door quickly and securely shut while the driver was still wondering whether they were all out already.

***

Layla had tried to tell the driver that, once they were in São Luis, her family wanted to be let out at whatever point along his route was closest to the docks. The driver was perplexed, but she went on to say it was also important that they be near a truck drivers’ hotel. That request was easy to understand, so he settled for it.

As the truck drove off, Layla didn't know where they were or how much time they had until daybreak, but there was a hotel and a night-clerk. The acid in her bronchi raised an inflammatory response, and with each breath a burning pain evoked the core of that word, “inflammatory.” She started trying to tell Felipe he must negotiate with the hotel clerk. He stopped her. He understood.

The clerk thought it more than strange that a ten-year-old boy should negotiate the price of a daytime room while a woman who appeared to be his mother stood silently behind him. However, there seemed to be a parent present, and the clerk was more interested in his last two hours of sleep than in negotiating with Felipe, so the price was settled at five hundred cruzeiros. They had two hours to wait for the hotel's breakfast.

Layla disturbed the sleep of everyone save Lara with a deep, frequent cough. Layla, herself, didn't try to sleep, she was fully occupied with breathing. A small breath that didn't burn her lungs and agitate her cough left her gasping for a deep breath which set off another paroxysm of coughing. She feared what would happen to her family if she died. Her anguish over the horrors her arrogance was bringing on her family leaked out as unintelligible sounds beneath rasping exhalations.

When it was time for breakfast, Layla could not think of eating, and Maria could not think of leaving Layla. The first time Maria said Layla needed to go to the hospital, Layla whispered “No.” For a while after that, she just shook her head. Then she threatened to slap her own mother. Maria gave up.

It was the beginning of a long, grim day for the family. When the time came to vacate the hotel, Layla sat up on the edge of her bed. When had she ever imagined her life could be so impossible as to require her to stand up in that moment?

***

She stepped into the street with an indeterminate sentence to both illness and overwhelming fatigue. She wished she could somehow be free of her obligation to her family - free to be dead. To make things worse, as she looked around she knew she was lost.

It was possibly the best place in São Luis for Layla to be lost. They were not buried among tall buildings. They were still on a highway where Layla knew a little about making her way, and she had a view of part of the city that lay on lower ground. She could see enough to make her understand that reaching São Luis did not solve her transportation problem. She could see several miles into the city, but it obviously stretched far beyond that. There were millions of places to go, and how could she possibly beg a ride to any particular one of them, even if she knew which particular one of them she needed to get to? She suddenly sank down in another convulsive fit of coughing that hid her urge to cry. She was relieved she did not spit up blood.

Lying in bed in the hotel, she had felt she was doing what she needed to do to help her family. She was recovering – a little. But put out of the hotel, she needed to find something she was able to do that would count as progress. She still had it in mind that “the docks” were an identifiable place in a maritime city. So she began by going back into the hotel to ask the clerk where the docks were found. Her chest seized as she tried to get the question out, but she was able to whisper to Felipe who asked the question.

The day-shift clerk was young, and finding the question difficult to answer, he just said he didn't know. Layla was puzzled by this. She hoped the clerk said he didn't know because he was stupid, but she was afraid she was somehow the ignoramus. She could not think of an alternative question, so she turned and left without attempting another word.

Outside again, she thought there had to be an answer to her question. It was a perfectly simple, straightforward question. What could be wrong with it? But she was the rural know-nothing, the one capable of some simple-minded stupidity. She gestured to Felipe to walk a little way away from their mother, and he told their mother to wait on the bench.

They walked slowly along the highway where it began its long entrance into the city. Fast moving trucks passed them one after another. Sometimes there was a bus or two. Off the pavement on the side of the road, they walked a short way among donkey carts and a few other pedestrians.

Felipe didn't see why his sister should get such a strange response to asking where the docks were, but he wanted to know... “Why do you need to find the docks?”

She whispered, “Never mind.”

“No. This doesn't make sense. Why do you need to find the docks? Where are we going?”

Layla sat down on a couple fifty pound sacks of rice in front of a mercearia, put her head between her knees, and whispered, “You'll tell Mother or Enzo.”

“No I won't. I promise.”

Silence.

“Just name a place – one word.”

“You'll argue... with me.”

“No I won't. I promise.”

“If you tell, we'll never get there.”

“I promise I won't keep us from getting there. I won't tell. It's a promise. Simple as that.”

“America.”

“America. We can't go to America.”

Layla was silent.

“But America.”

Layla turned an imaginary key in front of her lips and then drew one finger across her neck. She whispered, “They will argue.” Felipe understood. She added, “Don't make me talk anymore.” But in a moment she went on with her arm waving in a broad gesture.  “There's São Luis. It's got everything that Belém has got. Go there.” She waved at the city in which they were already lost. “Don't make me argue.”

***

The posto they found was not large with a lot of space for trucks, and it had looked dirty even from a distance. No one was stopped at the pumps. Layla stood, staring into a window. An empty chair claimed her attention as much as the two men sitting inside the posto's office. There was no point to waiting.

The older of the two men asked Layla what she needed. She just sat down, and Felipe asked where the docks were. The man's reaction was almost the same as that of the hotel clerk, but this time it was clear he was not the stupid one. Layla wanted to crawl out of sight and go to sleep forever, but this time she could not go away as ignorant as she had arrived. She had to have a follow-up question. She rasped out, “This is a maritime city, isn't it?”

The word “maritime” tickled the older man. “A maritime city? Yes, it is. So the young woman from the countryside came to see the docks. Well, they are here and there. They are all over. Walk in any direction, you will come to the sea, and there you may find big docks with big ships, or little docks with rowboats, or nothing at all depending on where you are.”

Layla understood what he was saying, and it was something she actually needed to know, but she was sick and tired - tired of being sick, and sick of being tired, and tired of rude people, and she still just wanted to lie down and sleep forever.

Felipe touched her shoulder, intending to move them on, but the younger of the two men, a man no older than the clerk in the hotel, felt some sympathy for Layla and her brother.

“Do you know what shipping company you want?”

Felipe and Layla answered more or less together, “No.”

“What is it you need to do?”

Layla wheezed out, “We need to find the captain of a ship.”

“A particular captain?”

The first response that came to mind was, No, just any captain. Any captain who's going to America, but she couldn't say that - it would reveal the Quixotic quest she was dragging her family on. She once read a book that had a “harbor master” in it, so she had the idea that there was someone or some office that would know all about shipping in the port. After a while she finally whispered and Felipe repeated, “A particular captain. We thought that if we found the harbor master we could find a particular captain.”

“Do you mind telling me why you're looking for a particular captain? It might help.”

She shook her head, and Felipe translated, “No.” Both men wondered whether these were children looking for a father who had run off to sea and whom they would never find.

“I don't know anything about a harbor master. I know a little about where some of the shipping company offices are, and maybe you can ask about a harbor master in one of them.”

Layla looked at Felipe and nodded meaning, You talk to him.

“We'd be very appreciative of anything you can tell us, especially about where the shipping company offices are.”

The younger man went to a rack of maps and pulled one out just as a horn sounded from outside. “Excuse me. I'll be right back.”

The older man stared at Layla the whole time the younger one was out pumping gas. Felipe had never seen a man stare at his sister like that. It wasn't a look of sympathy. He wanted to shout at the man to stop, but that was more likely to make things worse than better.

When the young man returned, he unfolded the map and asked whether Felipe could read maps. Of course he could. The young man pointed to where they were and marked the place with a pencil. Then he pointed out where the ferry to Alcantara docked. It was so far from where they were. If that was where they needed to go, it would require another day's travel even in the unlikely event they could identify a willing driver going that way. The young man explained there was a lot of equipment for handling cargo just south of the ferry, but he didn't know what company it belonged to. He pointed out other locations of interest, and finally came to an older part of the port near the center of the city. He said several shipping companies had offices in the area even though their equipment was nowhere near their offices.

When he finished, Felipe asked whether they could have the map, and before Layla offered to pay for it, he said, “Yes, of course, I meant for you to take it. They're free, anyway.” Layla somehow knew that anyone else would have known maps were free. She looked thoughtfully at the younger man for a while. When he looked back at her, she nudged Felipe who thanked him, and they left.

Back on the street, Layla spoke to Felipe. “I only have two hundred fifty cruzeiros left.”

Felipe asked, “How much do you think a room costs?”

Layla just shook her head for an answer.

She went back into the office and asked the younger man where the cheapest hotel in the area was. He could only guess from appearances and had no idea what the price was, but he thought there was a cheap pousada less than a mile farther along the road across the street from another posto.

Felipe considered telling Layla to forget about getting the money for the hotel, they could sleep on the street that night. He considered it, but he thought that sleeping on the street could be worse for Layla. So he considered what he could do to get the money. He had the knife, but he was afraid.

***

Felipe returned briefly that night with two plates of rice and beans, and was gone, again. This time the food was just for his mother and siblings. He left quickly without taking a share. Eventually, the time came when the night-clerk pushed the bell on the counter out to a conspicuous place and disappeared through a door. Maria and her children were stuck somewhere in the broad middle of the night on a bench in front of the hotel. Secrets and worries held time back – she remembered the words ‘verge and foliot’ from her grandfather’s explanation of how a clock works.

When neither of her older children reappeared, Maria knew something awful had already happened, and she knew what she must do when the morning clerk came back on duty. She would get directions to a Catholic Church and tell the clerk what he must say to Layla or Felipe if they showed up. Beyond that, she could make no plans because she did not know whether she would find a priest or a gardener at the church. She hoped for a priest and feared...

Her mind was firm enough about what she was going to do so that she didn't need to keep thinking about it, but of course, she couldn't stop. Her first guess about what could have happened involved Layla dying of pneumonia, but she could not stop thinking about the knives. Her dread of that night hardly waned even when Felipe arrived with news.

“We're going to stay in a different hotel. It's a couple of miles from here. Layla is making the arrangements. It's a better hotel, they have stuff. Layla didn't come because she's sick, and I told her to stay and wait for us. She actually isn't coughing as much as she was, but she needs to rest.” Maria remembered a woman in Pastor Vinicius's church who coughed less because she didn't have the strength to cough while she was dying.

***

The family arrived before dawn and found Layla asleep on a couch inside the hotel. Layla had already put an end to the family's brief nocturnal schedule. She'd arranged for a room for the following night, and the clerk allowed her to rest in the small lobby once she had paid in advance for the next night's room. The clerk also promised to get her family into a room as soon as one became available during the day, which would be before three o'clock in the afternoon, but no, they could not move in as soon as the first person left. This was not a truck drivers’ hotel. The hotel provided linens and towels, and the rooms had to be cleaned between clients.

In fact, there were unoccupied rooms already available, but the clerk didn't want to let the family into a room any earlier than he'd seen his boss let clients into a room. He also told them there were too many of them to be allowed to stay in the small lobby all that time, but if they would return about twelve-thirty, he would try to get them into a room by one o'clock.

In spite of the fact that by one o'clock they would have gone almost another day without sleep, Enzo raised his arms and shouted “Sheets tonight!”

They sat on the sidewalk half-a-block from the hotel in front of a store that sold “movables” – furniture and appliances. They leaned against the building and one another. Layla sat with her head on her knees, able at times to let her thoughts wander away from controlling her breathing. The others involuntarily watched the rising sun create shadows of the buildings, shadows that shrank as the sky turned from grey to blue. Layla briefly thought about how tired her mother must be of having Lara in her lap. Then she raised her head and with a carefully controlled breath began to speak. She was addressing Maria and Enzo.

“I think you should know we are going to be here for several days. There are some things I must take care of before we can move on. I should get up now and get started, but I just can't. I'm going to sleep as soon as we get a room. As soon as the mercearia across the street opens, Felipe can get you some food.”

When she finished, there was only silence – silence as though no one cared, the silence of depression. Layla forced herself to speak, again.

“This is hard, but we're getting somewhere. We're not going to wind up the poor servants of some stupid oligarch of the city,” and feeling they didn't have enough confidence in her to be encouraged, she added, “Isn't that right, Felipe?”

Felipe was discouraged and less than half-sure he believed her, but there was no point to undermining his sister. So he said, “Yes,” with as much enthusiasm as he could push through the gaps in his skepticism.

Afterward, Layla sat awkwardly next to her mother waiting for some question she would refuse to answer, but Maria sat in a long silence while Layla stroked Lara's head. Feeling her mother's desperation, Layla broke the silence, whispering.

“How long did it take you to save the thousand cruzeiros?”

“How long?”

“Yes.”

“Oh years. You know João controlled the money, every last centavo of it. You know that when I got to spend money, I picked what we needed, and he paid and kept the change. That's why he did the marketing with me. I think most of what I had was just coins I found lying in the street.”

“So how long?”

“Daniel was alive. Before you were born.”

“What were you saving for?”

“I don't know. Just to have it.” Then with some irritation, “I guess I was saving it for this, but I don't know because I don't know what this is. You won't tell, and I promised myself not to ask anymore.”

“We'll be here a few days. Then you'll know.”

“But you aren't sure your plan will work or you would tell us.”

“No, it will work.”

“You've told Felipe.”

“Mostly.”

“Does he agree with you.”

“He didn't at first. He had to see it. To get... Never mind.”

When twelve-thirty came, and the family started for their room, Layla shook her head no at Felipe. “We'll be back early. We'll have to be, because I can't go any farther, but we have something to do.”

At the hotel desk they asked where they could find a library in São Luis. The clerk said he didn't know anything about a library, but this time Layla was pretty sure it was the clerk who was stupid. São Luis would have a library.

They asked again at the posto across the street. The attendant at least knew the question made sense, but he didn't know the answer. They turned and walked back past the hotel, and then aimlessly up the road, telling one another they just had to keep asking people until they came to someone who knew, but they passed a mercearia without stopping. Then, focusing on what was necessary, they asked a hair dresser who claimed to know, but she didn't read maps, and she couldn't tell them how to get there. She seemed even more frustrated than Layla or Felipe.

Finally, across the street, there was a lawyer's office. Surely, in a lawyer's office someone could help them find a library.

They left the lawyer's office with an “X” on their map. It was not an exact location, but it was promised to be close enough so that someone near the “X” would be able to direct them. The legend on the map made the library appear to be a seven mile walk, each way. Layla confirmed that she was done for the day. Felipe breathed a dramatic sigh that meant ʻfinally, at last,ʼ but there was a question he had to ask.

“Okay. In the morning. Seven miles to get to the library. I've been waiting for a hint, the smallest hint. What in the library is going to help us find a ship's captain going to America?”

“Nothing. That's not why we need a library. We need a library because we need a book.”

“Okay, I'll bite. Is this any book?”

“You need to learn English.”

It was a simple remark that had an effect on Felipe. He admired his sister before the remark. After it, he believed in her.

***

It was not straight-forward to find the building that was recently named “The Public Library Benedito Leite” in honor, of course, of a politician. All the streets were named on the map, but there were no street signs and clerks in stores commonly didn’t know the names of the streets where they worked. Layla could count blocks and corners, but maps are not realities, and it was necessary to confirm that they were not making mistakes. She learned the hard way that “Is this the Rua São Francisco?” was the wrong question to ask a clerk whose desire to be helpful kindled neurons that didn't actually store memories. “Can you tell me the name of this street?” got fewer answers, but the answers did not lead her astray.

Just asking a question could precipitate a bout of coughing – one that did not garner any sympathy. It got a look that meant ʻAre you contagious?ʼ and sometimes a response that was shorter than the name of the street. They switched to letting Felipe ask the questions.

When they finally found the building that was recently named ʻThe Public Library Benedito Leite,ʼ they found a building that may have been the last to be built in the neoclassical period of Brazilian government architecture. The construction of a new capital in Brasilia would put an end to such expressions of oligarchical supremacy.

It was intimidating. The way it wasted space was intimidating. Even the outside of the building wasted space. It wasted spaces devoted to broad stairways no one used but which rose impressively between monstrous columns that held up a few square feet of overhanging roof. It wasted spaces devoted to walkways that were gated and inaccessible. It wasted spaces hidden behind plywood fences covered in placards bearing the names of construction companies or politicians. They walked around the outside of the building reading the signs that reassured them that, yes, this was a library, and if this was the building that was needed for a library, Felipe understood why there was no library in Codó.

As they walked around the building, they tried to decide which of the great spaces was actually being used to enter the library, and when Layla pointed up a stairway, Felipe nodded in agreement. The size of the door seemed to give a warning of the size of the space they were about to enter, but it failed in its task.

They were on a marble floor, not yet worn by decades of feet entering and leaving – some feet purposefully, but others, like those of Layla and Felipe, not at all sure they belonged. Felipe reassured himself that the ceiling was not higher than the sky. Across a space that could have been meant to teach perspective drawing, there was a counter staffed by two clerks each with an ambiguous countenance.

Layla whispered to Felipe, “I think you had better do the talking.”

“What do I say?”

Layla had mentally practiced a short speech, just two sentences, but it seemed too long to explain while they stood there. So she just said, “Never mind, I'll get us started, and then you look really interested and take over.”

As they walked to the counter, Layla felt the knowledge that she shouldn't cough building in her chest. She began taking rapid, shallow breaths, almost like panting. When one of the women smiled at her, only a little condescendingly, she had to begin speaking. A little deeper breath was required.

“We have just moved to São Luis and are unfamiliar with the library. Do you have instructions on how to find books?” She had to blurt out the last sentence to get through it just as the coughing fit began. Felipe had spent the previous half-minute wondering what he would say in just this event, and as the event arrived, he knew.

“My sister isn't sick. She has asthma.”

“Oh, I'm sorry.”

“She's been coughing a little all morning, but I think it's worse in here.”

“That could be. All the construction has stirred up a lot of dust.”

As Layla recovered, Felipe explained that they needed a book.

The librarian looked at Layla, “If you're okay, now, I can help you. Do you need a particular kind of book?”

Felipe looked at Layla and spoke, “We need a textbook that will teach us English. That's right isn't it?”

She wheezed, “Yes.”

Layla was embarrassed by how solicitous the woman was, and the amount of time she spent teaching them how to use the library – how to use the card catalog, which books could be checked out with a library card and how to get one, which books they had access to and which they would have to ask the library staff to get for them. They would have to get their mother to come to the library to sign Layla's request for a library card, and she would need identification that showed she was a resident of São Luis.

As the librarian continued in her unexpectedly solicitous way, Layla's embarrassment grew. After all, they had only come to steal one book. However, her anxiety fell a notch and stopped exacerbating her cough. With some preparation, she was able to speak.

“But we can use the books inside the library without a library card?” She needed her understanding confirmed.

“Yes. Almost any book.”

“We want to learn to speak English really well because our mother is going to marry an American.”

Their mother was going to marry an American?! The audacity of his sister came crashing through Felipe's fear of the library. He had to suppress a giggle and found himself ten-years-old for the first time since they’d run away.

As they approached the shelves that held the books, the librarian began to ask them to repeat what they had been taught while they were at the card catalog – just to make sure they understood how the codes they had found in the catalog would lead them to the right shelf. The librarian's attention was on the oldest child. For her part, Layla did not expect to ever return to this library, she was sick and exhausted, and she had paid no attention. She thought they were just going to follow the librarian to the book they needed. Felipe heard his sister's silent groping for an answer and almost shouted, “I've got it. I can find it!” He got shushed, but he also engaged the librarian's attention.

As Felipe did know the alphabet, could count, and had paid attention, he was able to lead the librarian and Layla down the correct aisle toward the textbooks that would teach them English. The library had not been in use for long, but the books had been on shelves elsewhere and brought their decades of dust with them. As soon as the librarian pulled the first book off its shelf, Layla felt the seizure begin in her chest.

The librarian was alarmed. Felipe kept reassuring her that Layla would soon be all right, that coughing fits as bad happened to her from time to time, but what he felt was panic. The librarian insisted they needed to get Layla out of the library, away from all the dust, and they soon found themselves outside. Even after Layla recovered, the hardest part was getting the librarian to stop helping them. When they were finally alone, Layla told Felipe he had to go back and get the book.

“How?”

“Steal it.”

“How?”

“Pick it up. Walk down that narrow aisle where no one can see you, act like you're putting the book back, but put it down your pants under your shirt.”

“But you're not supposed to put books back, yourself. You're supposed to put them in the basket for the librarians to put back.”

“Just do it.”

Felipe didn't look at the librarian as he walked past her. Then he thought that might be suspicious. So he turned around and said, “I dropped my...,” but the only thing he could think of that he might have dropped was his knife, so he mumbled and finished with “somewhere.”

He found the book in the basket for books to be returned, and a minute later he was outside where Layla had to restrain him from breaking into a run. Two blocks of fear and coughing and laughter brought them a feeling, almost, of safety. It was the first time either of them had stolen anything in their lives, and the urge to look over their shoulders for a police officer still pestered them at times the next day.

Two blocks from the library they were still not done for the day. They were in the city's center, and it would take them only half a mile's walk to reach the area the young man in the posto had marked as having the offices of shipping companies. It was an area where Layla hoped to find, in addition to shipping companies, a cheap hotel her family could occupy – one that was not a six-mile walk from where she needed to be.

The area was shabby enough, and there were a few hotels that looked cheap. However, they did not find a posto, and Layla felt she was in a place where crimes and criminals she did not want to encounter could be found. She pictured the area in the dark and did not like the look of it. They passed a bar that catered to sailors, and Layla did not like the look of the men inside. Truck drivers were not men who paid a lot of attention to their appearance, but these men made “barbaric” sound like a complement. They were speaking Portuguese, but with the accent of the south of Brazil, and she felt them as strange as if they'd been speaking Russian. She thought it better to walk six miles each way than to move her family too soon.

The area was dotted with the small offices of companies offering shipping services, but they were not the shipping companies proper – they were brokers, and freight forwarders, and whatever other service a middleman could think of. Layla didn't think these were the people she needed, but she thought they could tell her how to find the people who could help her. She thought she was where she needed to be to ask questions. She didn't know exactly what to ask, but she was accustomed to that. She wanted to try out a question at each office they passed, but she'd done as much that day as she'd hoped for. She would have time during the night to figure out what the right question was. Then she could walk another twelve miles the next day.

It was on their way out of the shipping district that they saw the ocean for the first time. At first it was only a small wedge of olive-green seen down a side street, but the wedge radiated until it ran into the sky, and they turned toward it without any discussion or complaint about fatigue. There was no beach. There were no rolling breakers. The water was opaque with the effluent of the Amazon River, which reached the ocean four hundred and fifty miles north. Trash floating in the water lapped at the quay. But the water went on in every direction, out to where you would think it poured over the edge. It confirmed their geography lessons. Their ancient seawater selves seemed to want to return to the ocean, not knowing that during the four hundred million years since they emerged from the water, the ocean had grown poisonously salty. But to be sea creatures, again, hugged by their environment, knowing cruelty only as an appetite of survival...

The sun was already setting when Layla and Felipe set out on the six miles back to the hotel, and when they reached it, two hours later, the sky was dark and they knew without asking that their family was frightened. Only Felipe crossed the highway to talk to them, to reassure Maria and Enzo that everything was okay, and they would return. He didn't say when, and Enzo wanted to know why they couldn't get back in the hotel in the early afternoon as they had the day before. Felipe could only say they would get in as soon as he and Layla returned.

They returned at midnight, fifty cruzeiros short, but able to negotiate with the clerk. The hotel was almost empty.

***

The next day Layla began her search for a captain by telling a story of having a school assignment that required her to interview the captain of a ship. It was a good story that led middlemen to give her addresses they would never have shared with anyone they thought was, or would ever be, in need of shipping services.

The offices of the shipping companies generally occupied a whole floor of a large building. It was before the days of cubicles, and in the outer office several desks were usually scattered around a large, open room. Conversations were easily overheard, and Layla sometimes found more than one person trying to help her. She discovered the ships sailed more or less in accord with printed schedules, and there were even lists that gave the names of the captains of specific ships. There were two problems to be solved. The first was how to find one of the captains.

“You can never tell. They may stay on their ships. They may come ashore. They usually come through here after they clear customs, but you never know when that will be and you might have to wait all day to catch one of them. Are you sure you want to go to all the trouble of getting your hands on a captain. Wouldn't a crewman do for your class?”

The second problem was her language. Layla had read that Portuguese was, until recent times, the ʻlanguage of the seaʼ the way English was the language of airplane pilots. She hoped ship's captains spoke Portuguese.

“No, none of them speak much Portuguese. One of us might be able to be your interpreter.”

“What about this Captain Diniz? That sounds like a Brazilian name.”

“Does anyone know Captain Diniz?”

“There's an Italian. I don't have any trouble understanding his Italian, does anyone remember his name.”

“Some of them speak pretty good Spanish. If you can get someone to speak Spanish one word at a time, you can usually get it, or it's pretty easy to read.”

“The problem is that you can understand their Spanish, but they can never understand Portuguese.”

“I think you should try something else. There are actually quite a few deckhands from Portugal. One of them would be easier to interview.”

“Could you pretend a seaman was a captain? Would your teacher know the difference? She  gave you an unfair assignment, so I  think it would be fair.”

“Spanish is easy to read, and I'll bet if you wrote your questions, you could read the answers."

And later, “This is the schedule our ships are supposed to follow, but they don't do it very well. You can find out what ships are actually in port in O Estado do Maranhão, the newspaper. They print a list every day.”

They found three companies that dominated shipping between North and South America with scheduled runs from New York or even farther north, through the Caribbean, and along the coast of South America at least as far as Buenos Aires. They had schedules, and for two of the companies, they had the names of the captains of the ships.

So the plan was this: When a ship arrived, and that was daily, they would sit in front of the company's office. Each time someone entered who looked as though they could be a ship's captain they would ask, “Are you captain Smith?” and if the answer was “Yes,” they would ask, “Do you speak Spanish, or Portuguese, or Italian?” and if the answer was again “Yes,” Layla would ask to speak to the captain in private. This was a plan that would require patience, and Maria was again warned that they could be in São Luis for a while.

It was a plan with a weakness Layla didn't want to think about. She expected to get turned down more than once before she found the captain she needed. The danger would come if a captain turned her down and complained in the office about what her project really was. She could be told to go away and stay away, and she did not have the answer to “What will we do then?” She decided it was a bright spot when she discovered restaurants where there were abandoned newspapers, so she could find out which ships were in port.

Their first day, Layla came prepared with pencil and paper, donated by a hotel clerk, in case communication did become easier in writing, but they did not encounter a captain. They spent the day with their English book trying to put together some phrases they could write down if they had trouble making themselves understood. It was not easy. Unhappily, they had not picked up a textbook with even the smallest English-Portuguese dictionary, only a short glossary that translated the words actually used in the book.

Still, Layla insisted they study the book properly, memorizing all the new English words they met as they went along, and testing one another frequently. Layla would not hear Felipe's complaints about being too tired of memorizing English to be able to learn any more.

It only took two days for it to become clear that Layla was not going to learn enough English to be able to talk her family's way onto a freighter. They were stuck waiting for a captain who spoke Spanish or Italian and who came with enough patience to communicate by writing messages back and forth. But still, Layla insisted on the English lessons. There was a potential use for every word they learned.

On the third day, they split up to cover two shipping companies at the same time. At midday, they switched companies with one another. In this way, if anyone asked why they weren't in school, they could say, in the morning, that they would have school in the afternoon, and in the afternoon that they had school in the morning. Felipe was enthusiastic about the plan because it doubled their chances of meeting a captain, and incidentally, forced a stop to his English lessons.

When the first clerk left the shipping office toward the end of the day, Layla asked whether there was still any possibility of a captain showing up. The answer she got was just “Probably not,” but it came with a skeptical look, the first look that said to her, “This isn't about school, is it.”

It was a tiring day that turned toward the bright spot they needed at the end. Each day, they took different routes to and from the city in the hope of finding something useful along the way, and they found a hotel and posto a mile closer to the center of the city. The discovery would prove useful for one night.

***

Maria decided to take Enzo and Lara out walking during the day. She intended to take them on walks like those she had once taken with her grandfather, but she had forgotten the names of most of the urban plants she once knew. She still recognized many of them, and had a few interesting stories to tell, but her children grew tired of “Avô Bernardo had a book that would tell you the names. I promise I'll get us one when I can.”

What Maria wanted was to find a fountain. She still knew a lot about fountains, and there were no names to be remembered. However, a suburb of a city of a million people is not the place to find a fountain, and she began to think about taking her younger children into the old city with Layla and Felipe.

Enzo and Lara liked these walks in spite of their mother's pedantic efforts to teach them about things that were not interesting and which she only vaguely understood. Worse, Maria's focus on not getting lost kept an unnecessary fear smoldering along their path. Maria had the address of their new hotel written down, but what if?

Even with all the difficulty and insecurity around them, Enzo and Lara discovered on these walks a sort of suitability to their mother's parenting that was new to them. They understood their mother's urge to find things she knew about, and they thought this was not something that could happen in Codó where there was nothing worth knowing.

***

On the evening of their second night in the new hotel, Layla and Felipe returned early, but only Felipe crossed the street. He brought two plates of rice and beans, and immediately returned to where Layla waited. Then they were gone for three hours. Maria finally spotted them, a block-and-a-half away, running as much as they were walking. When they arrived, Layla fell to her knees coughing up sputum, but the coughing was nothing. Maria had to run up and touch Felipe to be sure.

He was covered in blood – his face and his clothes sticky with blood.

“Felipe, Felipe! Felipe!”

Felipe stood stunned, and Layla had to struggle the words out against the spasms in her chest.

“It's okay. It's not his blood.” And again, “Mother, it's okay. It's not his blood.” Then there was silence with Maria stroking the blood on Felipe's face and chest. The silence lasted until Layla spoke, again.

“Come here so I can whisper.

“We're going back...

“to the other...

“hotel.

“We're going now.

“Come.”

She raised her hand to Felipe for help getting up, and they started off before anyone asked a question.

At the first corner, Layla turned them off the main road and, at the next corner, she led them up a street that paralleled the highway. When Maria tried to question Layla, all she got was, “Can't you see I can't talk, now,” and when she tried Felipe, he just told her to ask Layla.

A few blocks later, she was walking behind Layla and Felipe when she heard Felipe speak.

“I'm sorry, I didn't hold the knife the way you taught me.”

“Felipe, it doesn't matter.”

“But if he had a knife...”

***

“I'm your mother, you have to tell me.”

“Layla said not to talk about it.”

“You have to talk about it to your mother.”

“We have to do what Layla says. She knows exactly what to do all the time.”

“She almost got you killed.”

“No, she didn't. We weren't in any danger at all.”

“What if the other guy had a knife?”

Silence.

“I'm not letting Layla do this anymore.”

“I'm going to breakfast.”

The rest of the day was hard for Maria. She wanted to take Enzo and Lara for a walk, but her agitation kept her from starting out. She asked the desk clerk where she could find a Catholic Church with a resident priest. He said he couldn't tell her, exactly, but he thought she'd have to go downtown. She started to tell Enzo and Lara they were going downtown, but the directions she had from the clerk were not clear, and she was afraid of not getting back before Layla and Felipe returned. She decided to make her whole family go in search of a church the next day, but she wasn't sure how to make Layla and Felipe do anything. Suppose she threatened to take Enzo and Lara with her, would they give in? Maria thought she should have acted sooner. Layla and Felipe seemed more determined than ever – even with the incessant reminder of the blood they couldn't get out of Felipe's clothes.

In most ways, the remainder of that day and the next five days were all the same for Maria. Each day, Layla and Felipe disappeared after breakfast. Felipe briefly reappeared with two plates of rice and beans. Then both Layla and Felipe returned sometime between nine o'clock and midnight with enough money for a room in the hotel. Maria worried almost constantly, but she couldn't think of anything she could do - unless something horrible did happen to Layla or Felipe. She was torn. She wanted something to happen that was bad enough to put her back in control of her children, but she didn't want anything that bad to happen to Layla or Felipe.

The days differed from one another in one way. On the days that were wet, the day-clerk took pity on them and allowed them to stay in the ʻdinning room.ʼ Those days were hour after hour of punishment. Even Lara understood the solution to tic-tac-toe, so the cat always won.

The two days that were sunny allowed some relief. When they went for a walk, Maria forced her mind off her worries and onto her belief in naming things. On one of their walks, they came to a flower garden with a border of snapdragons. Maria had not seen a snapdragon since her own childhood, but no one can outlive their childhood memory of snapdragons, and no one can forget the name. She picked three of the blossoms. Then they had snapdragon fights until their flowers were smashed into yellow pulp.

The days in São Luis went on with burned-out worry and resignation. After Layla came back with money for two nights in the hotel, they had the same room twenty-four hours each day. While life was objectively better, for every day that Maria took her children for a walk she spent another day curled up in bed while Enzo looked for distractions on the street.

***

Felipe's time was spent in mindless waiting – mornings in front of the United Maritime offices, afternoons in front of Morgan Shipping Lines. Layla's mornings and afternoons were reversed. Her time on duty alternated between mindless waiting and memorizing English vocabulary. She was surreptitious about picking up a newspaper abandoned in a restaurant. She thought no one would care, but she wasn't sure. Usually, she read the front page after reading the shipping news in the back.

They stuck to their story of needing to speak to a captain for a school project. They stuck to it while the initial skepticism was replaced by outright disbelief. However, they did not seem to be street urchins intending to steal anything they could get their hands on, so no one did anything about their being there. They even seemed to leave to go to school at appropriate times.

Once or twice each day, someone would strike up a conversation with one or the other child, trying to find out their real motive for being there. Sticking to an absurd story probably produced a better result than refusing to answer or trying to make up a new story.

On the fifth day of boredom for Felipe and memorization for Layla, Felipe met a captain who said he spoke a little Spanish. Felipe told him, as well as he could in maddeningly slow Portuguese, that it was his sister who wanted to talk to him, and they would be waiting for him when he returned from his business inside. Felipe had no idea whether the captain understood him, but when the captain turned to go inside Felipe ran for his sister. They ran back, together, and waited for more than an hour, sharing their fear the captain's business had been short and he had left before they returned.

When nearly two hours had passed, Felipe nudged Layla and pointed to a man coming out of the building - a big man only a little over-weight. There would have been a lot to notice about his appearance, but it was all overwhelmed by the tattoos. It was a time before tattoos were popular, and to show off bare arms covered with them was clearly a statement – a statement more disturbing than articulate. He looked like just the captain Layla needed.

Whether he had understood Felipe or not, as the two siblings approached him it was evident the girl wanted to talk to him. He stopped and looked at Layla with eyes she thought already showed interest. He waited. When she reached him, she swallowed, could not control her coughing, and had to wait to begin speaking Portuguese one carefully enunciated word at a time. She began by explaining that she spoke Portuguese rather than Spanish.

With a lot of repetition Layla made her proposal. Once it became clear that the captain understood, Layla no longer needed to comprehend the words he spoke. He somehow commanded himself to speak one word at a time, but his voice filled with anger. The tattoos on his arms were old and faded, and you could not tell a coat of arms from a snake's head, but the way they rippled as his fists opened and closed revealed an intense desire to strike.

Felipe was terrified. It could not possibly be his job to protect Layla from this man, and she just stood there, waiting, so stunned that the only complete thought she had was that the polite thing to do was to let him finish.

***

They didn't wait for someone from the shipping company to come out to tell them to go away and never come back. The next day, Felipe sat in front of the offices of the third shipping company, LAC Inc., asking anyone who looked like he could be a captain whether he was the captain of the Sam Huston or the Tortola.

Days passed with the family stuck in São Luis. Each day required a six mile walk into and out of the old city. Each night required Layla to earn another night's lodging. The family survived on a “breakfast” of bread and coffee, the food they crammed into their pockets each morning, and three plates of beans and rice – two for Maria and her youngest children, one for Layla and Felipe.

On their ninth day, Layla encountered a Captain Mendez who answered that Spanish was his first language. He agreed to stop to talk with Layla when he had completed his business inside. She was hopeful. She'd done her homework, and she knew Captain Mendez ruled a small ship. He was both Master and First Officer. There was a chief engineer. Then there were just deckhands with extra responsibilities.

Layla waited. Felipe arrived expecting to trade places with her. They both waited. Layla wished Felipe didn't have to be there. Felipe wished the same.

When Captain Mendez emerged from the shipping company's offices, Layla took him by the hand and led him across the street. Without asking, she moved a couple chairs out from in front of a bar and into the shade of a neighboring building. She was ready to begin, but Captain Mendez started the conversation with what he had learned about Layla inside.

“I understand you have a school assignment and have been waiting a long, long time to speak to the captain of a ship.” His natural voice was intimidating even without the rank of captain behind it. It made his squat, waddling body irrelevant. It was clear he always spoke in the same stentorian baritone as though he were on the bridge of a ship-of-the-line. It didn’t help much that Layla already knew from his company's shipping schedule that he was the captain of a two thousand six hundred forty tonne rust bucket.

Layla had to ask him to speak more slowly. He repeated himself, and stripped of some repetition, their conversation went like this:

“I understand you have a school assignment and have been waiting a long, long time to speak to the captain of a ship.”

“That's partly true.”

“Only partly. I wonder if I could guess which part.”

“There isn't a school assignment.”

“Nobody seems to think there is. So what is there?”

“My family must get to America.”

She started to continue, but Captain Mendez interrupted. “So your whole family must get to America, and you have some story that is so heart warming that I will risk my ship's captain credentials to smuggle you to America, or do you think you have enough money to pay me?”

“We have no money. We are running for our lives, and I beg you to help us.”

“And you are running for your lives all the way to America. That seems a long way to go. How about across the bay to Alcantara?”

“I'm serious. I'll explain, and you have to believe me.

“My mother is vice president of the Partido Socialista. My father has been active, too. My uncle is a communist. They took my parents' passports. Now my father and my uncle have disappeared. They will kill us.”

“You mean the dictatorship.”

“Yes.”

“Are they doing that?”

“It has begun. Have you read the papers or have you been away at sea?”

“I've read the papers, and there is only speculation. They took your parents' passports to keep them from leaving the country. Likely as not, your father is just under arrest.”

“For us there is no speculation. My father and uncle are not just taken, they are disappeared. We can't contact them. We can't wait for the speculation to be found to be true. We will be dead by then.

“You are the captain of the Kathryn Burke. It's only two thousand six hundred forty long tons, the smallest ship your company owns - a small ship with a small crew. You stop in Belém and Caracas. Once you hit the Caribbean, you stop everywhere until you get to San Juan, then you go to Miami. We want to go to Miami. Your company does not pay so much attention to you that it will be much trouble for you. It's not as though we want you to go out of your way.”

“If your mother was an important person, you must have money to pay.”

“My father was a socialist - a man of the people. He was a small farmer. We were never rich. What we had we spent trying to get my father back, released if he is still alive, which we doubt - at least his body. What was left we spent getting here.”

Captain Mendez stared at Layla for a long time. He was impressed that Layla had come prepared with as much knowledge of his ship as she had - even though some of it was a little demeaning and most of it came from the schedule she'd picked up from his employer. He even thought that maybe she behaved like someone who could be the daughter of the vice-president of the Partido Socialista.

“You're a tough kid. The one I wonder about is your mother. Did she put you up to this?”

“My mother is in hiding.”

“Did she dress you for the occasion?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you show off your legs very well. How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

“I don't believe you.”

“I'll be fifteen next month.”

“How many of you?”

“My mother and myself, two brothers, and a sister. I am the oldest.”

“So what do you have to offer besides this story about Magalhães Pinto being after you?”

They stared at one another, each waiting. Layla listened to the quiet sounds coming through the traffic from far away. For a moment, she thought she might be listening to a clock faintly ticking, but when she concentrated, she couldn't hear it. Captain Mendez listened to his own memories telling him Layla's father and uncle were dead. Felipe had to suppress an urge to speak just to fill the silence.

Layla was about to make her offer when Captain Mendez gave in and spoke.

“There's no point to discussing this any further...” Layla's heart stopped. “Either I believe you're an incredibly clever liar, in which case I hope you rot in hell, or I believe your improbable story, in which case I should take you to the States. I don't believe either one, but there's a reason why I have to decide to take you. I want you to understand why I'll do it, but I do not have time for that, now. If you are in the trouble you say you are in, you will be discreet. But if not, and you are tempted to share any information about this with anyone, remember that sailors are often strong men with few scruples, and captains are the law when they are at sea.”

“Even my family, except for Felipe, won't know where we are going until after we are on your ship. My family has been very frightened for many days. They know not to speak. Even my little sister, Lara, understands that she is not to speak to anyone outside the family about anything. We will not cause any trouble. I am more concerned about your sailors.”

“My sailors? They are my men. I will take care of them, including keeping them from paying too much attention to your legs. However, there are rules you will have to agree to. I cannot have my employers finding out about this. That means my crew cannot know about it. You will have to remain in a cabin for the whole trip. The cabin is within one of the holds – below the main deck. The crew will not be down there while we are at sea, but in port there will be whole days when I will insist you do not speak. You will have to find a way to keep the youngest among you quiet. Your little sister?”

“Yes.”

“For a whole day. At least, hours at a time.”

“Yes.”

“And you still want to go with me?”

“Yes.”

“Either you are stupid or you are really desperate. Have your family at the gate to Pier Sixteen at five o'clock on the day after tomorrow. Now, I'm very busy.”

“Five in the morning.”

“Yes, of course, in the morning.”

“Pier Sixteen.”

“Yes.”

“Where's Pier Sixteen?”

Pointing, “That way. When you come to the sign that says Pier Sixteen, you have arrived.”

***

“You said you were going to buy us onto a ship to America with your virginity.”

With her arms raised as though she had just won a gold medal, “I didn't have to! He bought it!”

“What did you tell him? I didn't understand any of it.”

“You don't read the newspapers.”

“Neither do you.”

“I have been, a little - when I look up what ships are in port.”

“Well, explain it,”

She explained that the military had recently taken over the government and didn't like socialists. She ended with, “That has to be our story. If he asks you about it, that's what you have to tell him, and make sure he understands that we're more scared of someone finding out that we're on his ship than he is. And when you talk to him, don't volunteer anything, don't make anything up. If he asks you a question, and you have to make up an answer, you make sure you tell me absolutely everything you tell him. Don't you forget a word.”

“Of course, I understand all that.”

“And I don't have to earn any money, tonight! The hotel is paid for, and there will be no point to renting a room for tomorrow night because we'll have to leave at one o'clock in the morning to get back here.” And then she realized she'd made more mistakes. She didn't ask about any details of the trip. In particular, she didn't know how long they could be trapped in their cabin. How long could the trip take? Captain Mendez was only in port in São Luis for four days, even a little less. Suppose it took four days in each port on his schedule. She had no good idea how long it took between ports. Suppose it took four more days.

“It could take two months, probably a lot less, but we have to be prepared.”

“Prepared for what?”

“I don't know. How do we keep Lara and Enzo from going crazy and driving us crazy? How do we get food? If we have to stay hidden from the crew, do we have to provide our own food?...”

***

The following morning, hopefully the beginning of their last full day in São Luis, Layla lay in bed exhausted and terrified. What if Captain Mendez wasn't serious? What if he doesn't show up? What if we spend another sleepless night, and then he doesn't show? How can I say, ‘Oops, we'll have to go on waiting in São Luis?’ If he was serious, wouldn't he have had more to say about preparing for the trip?

Layla lay in bed until people could be heard walking down the hallway headed for the bread and coffee. Each day in São Luis, she had been first up, first at breakfast, and within ten minutes of six o'clock, she was off to whatever secret thing she did each day. Layla sleeping-in seemed to Maria to be a sign something awful had happened, again.

Layla did not look well. Her cough was almost gone, but her skin seemed to have been stained by the grey light of the hotel room. Her eyes were not actually bloodshot, but it seemed to Maria that they failed to shine the way healthy eyes should. When Layla finally rose, she failed to really unfold. She rose like someone ill – or defeated. There must have been another disaster like whatever left Felipe covered in blood. She knew Layla was ready to give up.

Maria knew she had to be ready to take over. A priest would know what to do to save her family. There were too many families to save, but hers was different. They were not another family to be rescued from poverty. They were a family of means, a family that had always wanted to be Catholic, a reputable family to be saved from the Assembléia de Deus. She had it worked out in her mind. She was tired, but she was ready.

Layla ate breakfast with her face in her plate. The two boys started to leave.

“Stop.” Pause. “If you're going back to the room, okay, but don't go anywhere else. If Lara ever finishes, I need to talk to everyone.”

Maria prepared herself.

When Layla finally had everyone corralled in their room, she began, “I have great hopes that we will be resuming our journey tomorrow. I think Felipe will agree that it looks promising. Is that right Felipe?”

“Yes. I agree.”

“Today we can rest until the hotel throws us out, but tonight we must walk into town. It's a little over six miles, and we must be there by four o'clock in the morning. So we will start out in the middle of the night. We won't be getting a room tonight. One more time we will do without sleep, but I hope that, once tonight is over, we will be able to sleep as much as we want. I hope the coming days will be fairly easy. Do you have any questions, Felipe?”

“No.”

“With any luck, everyone will have all their questions answered tomorrow night.”

Maria thought Layla's appearance belied what she had just said. She thought Layla looked desperate. Nonetheless, there would be one more day, another day of misery, before Layla gave up. Perhaps, Layla actually had something worked out. If not, at least Layla had promised their questions would be answered. No, she hadn't promised, but she'd used the last of her credibility. Not quite that, either. Maria had heard the hedge in every sentence. Layla had stirred up hope but hadn't promised anything more than hope.

The more Maria thought about it, the more likely it seemed that the next day would include a revelation of some sort but something that would strike a child as an accomplishment and leave an adult lost. Maria knew it would not include an answer to the question that mattered most to her. “Where did the money come from?” She thought a moment. Yes, that mattered more than “Where are you taking us?” Wherever Layla took her family, there was the possibility of a future rescue. Where the money was coming from was the bitter, unalterable present.

***

Long before it was time to set out for Pier Sixteen, demands for explanations had exhausted themselves against Layla's stubborn refusal to explain or answer. Turning to Felipe for explanations and answers got referrals back to Layla, but it also got the reassurance, in a voice that laughed all around its edges with the excitement, of secret knowledge that everything was all right. He provided the prosody that fit with Layla's words.

The family set off into a night covered with splotches of yellow, incandescent light. They waded through shadows along the edge of the nearly deserted highway. A stiff, swirling breeze could have been trying to mix the light and dark together. They could hear the few trucks on the road while they were still miles away. On the side of the road, phantom crowds of donkey carts and pedestrians rose up from memory of the day and evaporated as they walked through them. The emptiness lifted sleep and buoyed up spirits, but when they had walked three miles, the questions began again.

“How much farther?!”

“We're almost there,” and a mile later, “I told you we were almost there because we were over half-way, that's almost.” The dispute went on and reminded Maria that her children were still just children, and she prepared herself to veto whatever was coming next. No matter that she didn't know what a priest would have to offer, she could at least tell them how different a priest would be from a pastor.

As they walked into the city, and the buildings grew tall, oddities appeared most of which Layla never noticed in the daylight – an elaborately carved door with a knocker from the nineteenth century, a tiny garden between tall apartment buildings, a pair of cats sleeping atop a garbage can, homeless people in doorways, human excrement to be avoided.

***

Layla had told them they must be at Pier Sixteen by four o'clock out of fear they would not arrive by five. Layla had no good idea what the time was when they stopped walking but, as much as her family had tormented her with sluggishness, she guessed it was long before five o'clock. Once again, there would be an interminable night to live through. It didn't matter. Arriving hours early at least removed one source of anxiety.

Pier Sixteen was in an industrial area not designed to accommodate families that had been set adrift. Enzo evaluated the situation cheerfully. “We can stand on the concrete or we can sit on the concrete and lean against the fence or we can sit on the curb and lean against the air or we can lie down on the concrete,” which is what he did. A minute later he howled, “Is tonight over, yet?”

Each time one of them asked whether the night was over, Layla looked at the sky hoping there would be no sign of sunlight. She had no idea of the time, but Captain Mendez said he would meet them at five o'clock. Any sign of sunlight would mean he wasn't coming. Layla wished the night to last forever and spare her the debacle she feared was coming. She paced. She tried to distract herself by entertaining Lara, carrying her pick-a-back, but she'd had enough of that walking into the city.

Maria had nothing to do but wait for Layla to play her cards. She began thinking about how a priest might get them to Belém and what they might find there, but with time her thoughts subsided into the fantasy memories of Belém that had filled thousands of sleepless nights in Codó.

The night was filled with shadows – faint shadows from the moon crept among longer, darker shadows from distant street lights. Out to sea, subtle waves in the bay pressed the moonlight into glimmering outlines of shadows rising from far below the surface.

Mingled smells of growth and rot lie permanently in the memory of anyone who has ever looked at an ocean, and that night they carved their engram into the brains of each of the five fugitives. The family squirmed on hard surfaces until their joints hurt and then added restless pacing to their failed remedies for fatigue. All but one wished the night to be over.

Layla spoke quietly to Felipe, “You remember what I told you to do when Captain Mendez comes.”

“Yes.”

Then she spoke to her family. “In a little while I hope to introduce you to a man whose presence will answer all your questions. He speaks only Spanish. You must not try to speak to him until I have told you exactly what to say. If he says something to you that you understand, say ʻGraciasʼ  and pretend you don't understand.”

Layla must have had an internal clock that was hidden even to her. Within ten minutes a shadow appeared walking toward them from a block away. Layla told herself not to believe it was the captain, but even at the risk of disappointment she began walking toward him. She tried not to let herself think This is it.

She was nervous, not only because of her fear it wasn't the captain. She had a poor recollection of what Captain Mendez looked like. Any any short, squat man would pass as the Captain. As they approached one another, Layla didn't know how to act. When they were within feet of one another, she finally spoke, “Captain Mendez?”

“Yes, it's me.”

“What a relief.”

“A relief? Why?”

“No. Never mind. I told you my family wouldn't know where we’re going until after we're on your ship. This is close enough. I’m going to take just a couple of seconds with them before we get on.” She spoke with enough agitation to keep Captain Mendez from understanding any of the words that poured forth. What he did understand was that her family seemed to be present, and he didn't know what else could matter. So he said, “Everything is okay. I'll take you aboard, now.” He spoke slowly and deliberately, but Layla hadn't finished speaking and wasn't prepared to listen. So she went on, “I should have asked if we need to bring food. I located a mercearia nearby where we can rouse the owner at this hour. It will just take a few minutes.”

Capt. Mendez still didn't understand, so he said, “You're talking too fast for me, but I think I've arranged everything on the ship for you. If there's some problem, you need to slow down and tell me again. Are you ready to board now?”

Layla thought she understood at least half of what he said, and hoping against hope that she wasn't making a fatal mistake, she just said, “Yes.”

Moments later, Layla stood her family in front of her. Before addressing them all, she moved close to Maria speaking softly and rapidly. “I think you will like what I am about to say a lot, but just in case I'm wrong, please don't say anything negative out loud. We are about to board a ship where there will be no more secrets and there will still be time to discuss anything you want to discuss."

Then she put her arm around her mother in a sideways hug that could have been either an act of love or of constraint and spoke loudly and deliberately, “You have to listen closely. I don't want to repeat myself, and you will have to hold your questions for a few minutes.

“This is Captain Mendez. He is going to take us to America.”

As Felipe and Enzo started to chatter, Maria said in a voice Layla feared the captain would hear, "No, we can't go to America."

Layla hissed, “If you spoil this, we'll never forgive you. The crew hasn't even arrived yet. There will be time to discuss this on board. That's where we're going now,” and she strode off taking the captain by the arm and hurrying him away.

Maria had somehow known, as soon as she heard “I think you will like what I am about to say...," that she wasn't going to like what came next. She was right. She knew she did not want to go to America. She had no idea what awaited them in America and that was reason enough not to go. And, she had leverage now. This captain wasn't likely to want to take her children anywhere against their mother's will.

She had learned to fear what hat-trick Layla might have. So she started out after Layla and the captain, intending to just shout out that the captain could not take her children to America. All Layla could do was threaten to hate her, and if that was to be the cost of saving her children, she would have to bear it.

As she caught up with them, Enzo skipped up to Layla and asked, “Are we really going on a ship?”

“Yes.”

“Wow!”

Maria hesitated.

***

As Layla hustled Captain Mendez along the pier, the captain thought he should have had a word with this child's parent - if nothing else, a courtesy acknowledgment of the head of the family. So he was already turning back when Maria caught up with them. He spoke before she did.

“Layla has told me that your husband and brother have been detained by Magalhães Pinto. I don't think it serves Pinto's self-interest to do anything more than keep them out of his way for a while, I think they have only been detained, but I understand your concern and would be horrified to discover I have misjudged your situation. So let's get you out of the way for a little while.” The captain had his own reasons for thinking the men were dead, but under the circumstances “detained” seemed a better word to use than “murdered.”

Maria understood only enough of the words Captain Mendez spoke to wonder what he was trying to say. For a moment she thought he might be saying something important, but it probably had nothing to do with getting her children turned around. She had to focus on what she must do, but... How did Layla communicate with him? And then the corollary, Can I make him understand me?

***

When Layla and Felipe had first looked at the ships in the harbor, there was daylight, and all they had seen were the great freighters - freighters that displaced eight or ten thousand long tons. They hadn't even seen the ships like the two thousand six hundred tonne Kathryn Burke. Layla knew there was a place in her brain that found the ship disappointing, but she walked up the gangway feeling elation ahead of all else.

Captain Mendez led them toward the bow of the ship and, stopping, said to Layla, “Wait here a bit. There's no light below, yet. I'll be back with a flashlight.”

The moment he turned away, Maria began. “We have to get off this ship. We can't go to America.”

“Hush, he'll hear you, and America is exactly where we're going.”

“You had no right to bring us here and get us on this ship without discussing it.”

“We'll discuss it as soon as we have a chance, but it doesn't matter. I haven't done everything I've had to do to get us on a ship to America just to get back off it. Anyone in Codó would kill to go to America, and I'm getting us there. I can amount to something there, not some peasant's wife.” She said it as though she were criticizing her mother's life.

“I'm going to tell your Captain-what's-his-name you can't go.”

“Your children will hate you if you keep us from getting to America.”

“How will we live in America?”

“How will we live here? It's the same problem wherever we are. but in America someday I can be somebody. So can Felipe and Enzo and Lara. It's a done deal, Mother. Captain Mendez is taking us.”

“But what will happen to us? How can we trust this Captain Mendez?” And her own question reminded her of slave traders and shanghaied sailors.

“Mother, we're ready to go. You're coming with us, aren't you?”

And her mother didn't say, ‘I can make you stay.’ Not yet.

***

When Captain Mendez returned, the lights of other ships shinning out of the dark water still seemed more connected to the starry sphere than to the earth, but there were signs of sunlight - enough to make shapes and shadows compete with one another. He handed Layla an old pair of dungarees and his ditty bag and said, “These are huge and worn out, but you need to figure out a way to make something that will cover your legs, at least down to mid-calf. Do it as soon as you get into your cabin. I don't want the crew to see you like that. Come with me.” Maria followed the commanding voice, afraid of all her options. Blind fear of America, but also fear of being cut adrift in Brazil.

Layla remembered being told they would have to hide in a cabin and not be seen by the crew. Now, she wondered whether it was her family that was to be hidden from the crew or just her legs.

He took them down a companionway onto a lower deck and then forward through a cavernous cargo hold into greater darkness. Past a looming pile of large wooden crates, his flashlight revealed a cabin jammed into the bow and then showed them the way to the bunk beds they could sit on in the dark. He propped the door open and promised them that a trickle of sunlight would soon find its way down the companionway. There would be no electricity until the engines were started. He left with his flashlight in his hand.

There were no portholes, and Layla thought they were below the water line. The room was narrow, claustrophobic. She had seen three bunk beds on each side of a narrow aisle that was forced by the sides of the ship almost to a point where it ended at the door to the head. The twelve beds were left from a time when the Kathryn Burke carried a larger crew. Five of the them were tightly made up with sheets and a pillow. They were a disappointment to Layla. She thought of sailors as sleeping in hammocks.

As soon as there was enough light to outline the door, Maria took Felipe by the arm and backed him out onto the lower deck as far as the companionway. Not wanting to be overheard, she spoke with quiet intensity. She resumed  arguing with Felipe from where she left off with Layla.

“We can't go to America. What will we do in America? They speak English in America. We don't speak English.”

Felipe replied in the same tone of voice. “Layla has an English textbook. We're going to learn English on the ship. She already knows a lot of English.”

Maria was taken by surprise. Her daughter already knew a lot of English? Where did this book come from? It gave her doubts about her objections to going to America, but she did not have time to consider those doubts. She had to get her family off the ship, but she wondered whether it was possible that Layla communicated with the captain in English.

She abandoned Felipe and tried reasoning with Enzo, but Enzo was too young. The argument was beyond his ken. All he could say was, “This ship is okay!”

***

Coming from beyond the cabin door, the voices Layla heard were unintelligible echoes of what was already muffled, but it didn't matter to Layla whether she could understand them or not. She knew what Maria was doing, and she trusted Felipe. Even if his loyalty failed, she knew how to get it back. So she sat on the bunk that would soon be hers and waited. She didn't think her family would wander off into São Luis without her. Listening to the stream of confused sound, Layla could catch the prosody in their voices. Maria sounded like a desperate parent, and Felipe like a patient teacher trying his third explanation of something too difficult for his student.

Layla sat without moving, trying to ignore the conversation. It just interfered with the sounds she meant to listen to – the sounds of crewmen arriving on deck and beginning the routine that would take them out to sea. A metal door slamming shut echoed through the ship and then in her memory. She never forgot the sound.

Layla was still sitting alone on the bed without having made a cut in the dungarees when the ship shuddered and the two engines stuttered their way to an asynchronous shaking. The noise startled her out of a reverie. Then a light came on, and the twelve beds resumed their existence. Layla and her siblings began examining their surroundings.

Peeling paint inside the cabin was consistent with the rusted hull and with the impression that the owners of the ship intended to run it at minimal expense until some repair cost more than the ship was worth.

At seven o'clock, a crewman started down the companionway toward their cabin. Seeing Maria at the bottom he stopped and spoke. “Layla?”

Maria stepped back and pointed into the cabin. Layla was still sitting on one of the beds. She was motionless with the dungarees in her hands and the ditty bag beside her. When the crewman spoke to her, she jumped and tried to cover her legs with the dungarees.

What had happened to Captain Mendez's insistence that the family would have to travel hidden from the crew? Of course, he had only told her they would have to be isolated to emphasize the risk he was taking. When the crewman finished speaking, she had to ask him to start over. He'd spoken slowly enough, but her legs kept her from hearing him.

***

“We get to have breakfast with the crew.” And to herself, Thank God!, which she had to take back because she didn't believe in God. “I can't go because I haven't remade these pants, yet. And you can't go until I have explained something to you. I know everyone is hungry, but you have to understand the story I told Captain Mendez to get us on his ship.”

Layla not only needed to tell Maria and Enzo what she had told the Captain, she had to explain it. She ended with, “I don't want you to talk to him about anything. Pretend you don't understand his Spanish. If he asks you a question so simple and direct that you absolutely have to make up an answer, make sure the rest of us know what you told him, immediately.

“And one last thing. Mother, everyone, America is where we belong. Think of this ship as taking us home.”

***

The trip from São Luis up the coast to Belém was memorable for its nausea and vomiting. They got sick in order of age from Lara to Maria, skipping Enzo who Captain Mendez said had a sailor's stomach. Their cabin moved constantly with no horizon to provide any sense of a stable world. They listened to one another wretch, and smelled one another's vomit, and got the dry heaves. Maria fussed over Lara, pinching her skin, knowing it would seem flaccid if she were dehydrated but not remembering exactly how her skin felt normally.

Each member of the family imagined a storm outside that set the vessel into violent motion, but there was no storm, and they knew it and told themselves they ought to be thankful it wasn't worse, but no, they were not thankful. If they’d been asked to thank Layla for all she had done to get them there, they would have refused. Those who were feeling a little better, because they had just vomited, were bored and just wanted to escape their next round of illness.

Most days they had only one visitor. The cook stopped to gauge whether he needed to prepare any food for them. He left biscuits and 7-UP.

With no porthole, it’s hard to exactly say how they learned to feel the sunset coming on. It wasn’t just the passage of time, there was a change in the sounds of the ship. They grew crisper as though they were closer, but softer and more frequent. Layla imagined the cook walking back and forth in the galley, or Captain Mendez pacing in his cabin worrying some question of great importance to the ship.

Surprisingly, Maria found a way to help Layla manage everyone's misery a little. She remembered stories about the Irish coming to America and, as she recovered, she told the others about how much better off they were than the Irish. Layla knew these stories well enough to know she was leaving out the worst – the death, the misery visited on the Irish when the United States closed its ports to them and sent them off suffering from cholera and every other disgusting plague. She knew the story her mother did not tell of the ship that was brought to port by the passengers because none of the crew survived the passage.

There had been two days of sailing by the time Layla joined Enzo at the ship's mess and sat down for dinner. She ate slowly, testing the ability of her stomach to tolerate food and stopped before she had eaten much. She pocketed a few biscuits for later. They weren't the famous ship's biscuits of yore that crews tapped on the table to drive out the weevils, but it pleased her to be on the sort of adventure that had her eating biscuits on a ship. Maria and Felipe stayed behind in their cabin, systematically eating two crackers and two swallows of 7-Up every hour.

Layla's dungarees were not a good fit, but they stopped short of being clown clothes. Still, even with pants that shapelessly fell almost to her ankles, she was uncomfortable among the sailors at the table. She could have wished for a great ship and a captain with his own table.

As she was leaving the crew’s mess, Captain Mendez stopped her. “I'm glad you're improved. I want to talk to you. Come to my cabin.” Permission was granted for her to first tell her family she would be delayed.

***

Layla knocked on his door. He commanded her to come in and ordered her to sit down in a voice that sounded as though he had been giving orders all day. Captain Mendez began the chat, but Layla could hardly listen. His cabin was full of books – three book cases full of them. She had been in the library in São Luis, and her mother had told her about her grandfather's fine library, but even her teachers owned no more than a few dozen books. She couldn't stop herself from counting the number on one shelf and estimating the total – not a thousand books, but hundreds. She interrupted the captain.

“Those are your books? And you've read them?”

“Yes, there isn't much for a captain to do at sea other than read,” and he was silent while she stood up and began looking at the titles. “This is what I want. I want to be a ship's captain.” She wasn't sure she should have said that because she spoke before she had read any titles. What if the Captain only read trashy novels? No, she knew she would find books she wanted to read on those shelves.

He watched her peruse his books for a full minute and then said, “You'd be surprised at how little time it actually takes to read all those. Really, those are just the ones I want to keep with me. Now, sit down. There is something we must talk about. If I start to speak too quickly, stop me. You must understand me.

“I told the crew you're twelve. I don't believe you're fifteen. You have my apology if I'm mistaken. Thirteen seems closer to the mark, but twelve is better for discouraging them. They haven't said anything, but I know they don't like the idea of having women on the ship. Of course, individually, they would make an exception for a woman of their own which is what they probably think I'm doing. One way or the other, don't let anyone in your family contradict my statement that you are twelve years old.

“I haven't told them the reason you gave me for needing to get to America. They would sympathize with it, but assuming you've told the truth, they could also put you in danger.”

Perhaps it was unnecessary to keep implying that he had suspicions concerning Layla's story, but he abhorred being gulled, and Captain Mendez knew he had a weakness that had made him too quick to accept her story. He wasn't going to be made a fool without at least having made his suspicions known.

“I want to have a chat with you because I want to get to know you, but I want to start by telling you something about myself. I want you to know why you were able to get me to take you to America. So you are going to learn something about me before I learn much about you.

“For starters, I am Cuban. I am also a kind of refugee. Do you know anything about our government?”

“You mean about the captain being like a dictator on the ship?”

“No. I mean about the government of Cuba. About Fulgencio Batista.”

“All I know about Cuba is that it is an island, and I assume it was a Spanish colony, because you speak Spanish.”

“That’s correct, but what matters to me is that Brazil has become a dictatorship. Cuba has been for a long time. Batista is the dictator. Beyond saying he is a devil, I won't describe him to you because I haven't heard you use any vulgar language. Getting my captain's papers was almost as good as getting citizenship in another country. My papers got me far away from the government of Fulgencio Batista.

“You knew the itinerary of my ship. You probably didn't notice that it includes islands all up and down the Caribbean, but not Cuba. We sail within shouting distance of Cuba without a port of call.

“I was lucky to get even this ship to captain because I told the shipping companies I wouldn't put into a port in Cuba - not while that bastard Batista is in charge. My company mostly runs freedom ships left from the war – ten thousand long tons. I could captain one of those if I would go to Cuba.

“I hate Batista enough to hate all dictators. So I am afraid you are right about your father and uncle being murdered. Batista murdered my brother, and I will help you get away from your government. That's enough about me. Now, I want to know about you - maybe more than you will tell, but for starters, how old are you, really.”

“I'm twelve, just like you said.”

“And if I'd said fourteen, you'd have said ʻfourteen.' As captain of this ship, technically, I have more power than I have ever used or will ever be likely to use. However, by lying you could convince me to use the power I have to put you off this ship. So here is the deal we will have. I give you permission to say you don't want to answer, or don't want to talk about something. However, if there is too much you don't want to talk about, or I catch you in a lie, I will put you ashore.”

Layla tried to think of something to say that would move the conversation forward and away from the direction it was taking. It was like trying to suck an idea out of a vacuum cleaner. Captain Mendez began again.

“By the way, tell me again, what's your mother's name?”

Layla froze. The casual “By the way” was not casual at all. She tried to speak firmly and failed.

“Maria?”

“Maria what?”

“Maria Cardeira.”

“Maria Cardeira is not vice president of the Partido Socialista. The vice president of the Partido Socialista is a man named da Silva.”

“Da Silva is already in the United States. My mother stepped in to replace him.” It was a clever response, but the delay before she spoke was too long.

“Whatever your real reason may be, it's probably one that should make me feel kind of sorry for you, but I doubt that your wanting to go to America justifies my risking my captain's papers. And I don't like being lied to. I shouldn't have let you on my ship in the first place, but I wanted to believe you and I was too busy to have this conversation. I'll be putting you off in Belém.” He ended thinking the need to speak slowly had prevented him from sounding convincingly angry.

Panic claimed her voice, “No, no. That isn't it at all. I'm a truthful person. I've always been a truthful person.” She continued rambling until she found something to say - not something she thought was any use, but something that would keep the conversation from ending then and there.

“I have told you two lies. I'm going to tell you some things that I swear are the truth. I am twelve years old. I didn't just say that because you said it. I lied when I said I was fifteen because I thought you would assume I was lying no matter what age I gave. If I gave fourteen you might guess twelve, so I said fifteen so you'd guess fourteen. I thought I could get away with saying I was older because I'm tall. I didn't need to tell you that lie, because you turned out to be a more decent man than I expected. I'm sorry, and I apologize.”

She paused, then, “How do I explain this?

“Okay. When I told you we spent the last of our money to get to São Luis, that was the second lie. We didn't have any money to get to São Luis. There was no way for my mother to deal with our situation. I got us here and kept us alive by working the postos. That was the second lie. The rest is the truth.”

“It wasn’t real prostitution, just blow jobs. I thought I would need to save my virginity and use it to get us to America. That's why I wanted you to think I was fourteen, so you'd think it was okay to trade transportation for my virginity. But you said you'd take us before I had to tell you what I was willing to pay.

“The rest of what I told you is true. I won't blame you if you don't believe it. It doesn't matter. Now you know what I'm willing to pay, and maybe you’ll take us anyway.”

She didn’t understand the overwhelming urge to cry at all. She only understood that it had to be stifled before the tear that was already forming became visible. She’d made the offer to a captain once before, but it wasn’t like this. It wasn’t made out of fear of failure. It wasn’t a coupon that could be redeemed in pain and confusion in the next few minutes.

Captain Mendez just sat in silence,. Layla wanted to flee, and at moment when almost anything would have been better, she blurted out, “I'm going, now. We can talk again, tomorrow.”

“Stop. I'll tell you when you can go.” Then he left her standing by the door while he thought, back and forth, between two problems. The first, and the one he wanted to be important, was that there was still some possibility she was telling the truth about why she wanted to get to America. It seemed far more likely she had lied to him, and he didn't like being played for a fool, but the intensity of what she had just said gave him pause.

The second problem was his awareness that he was attracted to her – not that he was interested in her virginity, or that her gangly look was starting to appeal to him. Something else attracted him more. Even before the competent, unapologetic way in which she had just told him about supporting her family with fellatio, there had been her attitude - the union-organizer mindset she might have gotten from political parents, the attitude that had just wiped away any moral confusion about a twelve-year-old working the postos, that attitude was sexually attractive.

Still, as Captain Mendez continued to think about the girl, he convinced himself his sexual interest in any twelve-year-old was too small to account for his fascination with her. It wasn't easily explained, she certainly wasn't charming, but he was interested in her, and he was slightly tempted to keep her on board just to pry information out of her. It was hard to believe she was only twelve, but that had to be true. What fourteen-year-old girl would claim to be twelve? So she hadn't lied about everything.

“This has been... awkward. You can go ahead and go. And yes, we can talk again tomorrow, or rather we will talk again tomorrow. But don't expect me to reconsider. Plan on being put off before we leave Belém.”

“Don't put us off. I just told you what I'll pay.”

***

When tomorrow came, the ship was already at rest in Belém. Layla told her family they were in Cayenne in French Guiana. She wasn't sure what she would tell them if they ever reached Cayenne, but at that moment, she didn't care. She was agitated, frustrated by the need to plan for events she could only hope would materialize.

Layla didn't think her mother would recognize Belém after all the years since her childhood, but she did not want to take a chance on some random sight bringing back an inconvenient memory. So she told Felipe to keep his mother occupied by pretending to be sick – sick enough to keep his mother focused on him, but not so sick that Maria would start insisting they get off the ship. If she did start talking about getting off the ship, he was to get better as rapidly as would not arouse suspicion.

Captain Mendez had spent the night convincing himself that the minor sexual interest intruding into his thoughts had no chance of derailing his principled thinking. He was not a man to compromise on the truth, and her hesitation seemed to mean she was lying about the reason she wanted to go to America. However, something about the fact that Layla was in charge rather than her mother made him doubt his own suspicions or, perhaps, it meant there was another reason that was equally compelling but harder to admit to. He thought there was at least one more lie beyond why she wanted her family in America, but he needed to remember that the strong-willed child was just a child, and there was no telling what that lie might be. He decided to indulge his curiosity for the three days they would be in port. He also thought a conversation with Maria might be revealing.

When evening came, he demanded another interview with Layla. He began by asking how the rest of her family was feeling. When she finished answering, the ensuing silence was long enough to allow her to say, “I guess that's it for tonight” and start to leave. But the captain had only been considering whether his next question was the right one.

“No, sit down. It's all right to have a some silence in a conversation. You are an interesting puzzle. I'd like to be able to talk to your mother about you, or even Enzo, but you seem to be the only one with the patience to understand Spanish. I wonder about that.

“Anyway, there is something obvious I haven't asked you. What will you do in America - if you get there?”

“What my mother wants me to do – go to school so I can become somebody.”

“You want to go to an American high school.”

“I could go to high school in Codó. We're going to college. All of us.”

“Mmm. What do you want to study?”

Layla didn't know, but she knew what the right answer was. “I want to be a doctor.”

“I'm not surprised. You're ambitious, but do you know how long it takes to become a doctor in the U.S. It's long enough in Brazil, but it's twice as long in America.”

“So much the better.”

“If you don't have money, how will you support yourselves.”

“There's work in America.”

“Not much if you don't speak English.”

“We have an English textbook, and we are going to learn English on your ship.”

“It will take you many months to learn enough English to fit in a workplace.”

“Then we will beg.”

“Did you beg your way to São Luis.”

“You already know the answer to that.”

“Begging doesn't work any better in America. There are even laws against it. You can't even sit around looking poor in places you're not wanted. It's called ʻvagrancy.ʼ  Your family will look poor, and that will attract the police.”

“Then we will do whatever we have to. I'll be a prostitute if that will get my brothers and sister through college, but I'm not going to be a prostitute and wind up like the women in the postos.”

“Prostitution is against the law in America just like it is in Brazil. The difference is that the law is enforced often enough in the United States so you can't just go to a gas station and show off your legs. Prostitution is an unspoken part of the business model of the postos, but it won't work in a gas station in the States. Most prostitutes get arrested every once in a while. For them, it's just part of  the cost of doing business. But the first time they arrest you, they will discover you're in the country illegally. They'll deport you. That's beside the fact that there are serious laws against men having sex with twelve-year-olds, and men will be afraid to have sex with you.”

“Then we will live like animals in the forest and eat bugs.”

“In other words, you don't have any idea what you are going to do there.”

“It can't be harder than what we've done to get this far. Well, we're alive right now, so I guess it can get harder, but I don't think it will.”

“You are going to need some help.”

“Maybe at a Catholic church.”

Captain Mendez knew he had information Layla would find useful, but he didn't know whether he felt like giving it to her. He feared that helping her would be complicated. He had no trouble rejecting the crude offer she had made out of desperation, but he thought it likely she could be more subtle, and he did not want his motives for any act of charity to be complicated. And what if she seemed to like him? He would want to know whether he was just being manipulated, and what if he was, what difference would it make? And all that was irrelevant, the moral choice was clear.

“I remain decided on putting you off the ship, but that might not make any difference in the end. You are determined and resourceful, and I think it possible that you will still find your way to America without my help. So, perhaps, I should tell you what I know that could help you when you get there. You don't seem to know the basics of being a refugee.”

Layla didn't respond, so the captain asked, “Do you want to hear what advice I have if you get there?” He wondered whether he was just prolonging his interest in Layla with no purpose.

She answered with a quiet “Yes.”

“You might be able to get status as as political refugees. If you can do that, there's a lot of help from the government - money, housing, everything. However, that could be a problem for you. If you apply for asylum, they will want proof that you are likely to be killed if they send you back to Brazil. It should be possible to prove your mother is what? Maybe the acting vice president of the Partido Socialista. Anyway, any request for asylum by an important member of the Partido Socialista will probably go all the way to the President of the United States. They won't even let you out of Immigration before they learn from the State Department what they are to do with you, and there's the problem. The United States undoubtedly supports the dictatorship. If Magalhães Pinto wants you back, they'll send you back.

“If you offer a different reason for seeking asylum, so you don't seem important, then they will probably give you a date for a hearing and turn you loose. It's a big country, so you could try to just disappear. It isn't easy to live in the country illegally, but people do it. I know a little about how it's done. Enough to know I wouldn't do it.”

There was a long pause. Layla knew that what she said next was important. An imaginary clock seemed ready to tick forward and end her hopes. Still, waiting for that tick, Captain Mendez seemed less determined to put her off his ship, and she still had some faith in the value of her virginity in a negotiation. She only had one thing to say, and she had to say something before time ran out.

Layla took a deep breath setting off a paroxysm of the coughing that had been quiescent since their arrival in Belém. When she recovered, she went on with frequent interruptions for short breaths.

“My mother is not the vice president of the Partido Socialista. We're running from my father. He tried to kill my brother. He could kill all of us, if he catches us. I don't know how to explain how dangerous he is. There is no safety for us anywhere in Brazil. You would have to understand our church before I could even start to explain. It isn't believable. Not as believable as saying my mother is vice president of the Partido Socialista.”

“Are you telling me your new story for the Immigration officials, or is this a new story for me?”

“It's actually the truth. I lied about who my mother is because I thought it might get us to America without my paying for it with my virginity. But it doesn't matter. I always expected to use my virginity to get there – ever since I was eight or nine. Actually, the problem was to keep it until I got to São Luis. I didn't want to have to lie about my virginity to a ship's captain. Well, I admit I didn't know whether I could get away with the lie. I don't know if anyone can tell whether I'm a virgin by looking at me. It's a small price from my point of view. I can still pay that way.”

Without really being confused, the captain began, “That was confusing. I was talking about the problems you might have getting political asylum as functionaries of the Partido Socialista. What does that have to do with your virginity?”

Layla finally broke, almost shouting, “Nothing. Nothing at all. I'm begging you. Don't put us off your ship. Please, please, please. I'll do anything.”

There was another long pause before Captain Mendez spoke.

“So now the self-confident young woman who talked her family onto my ship is too overwrought to be able to explain the real reason she wants to go to America. Do you want to calm down, or do you want me to assume you're just like every other Brazilian wanting to get to the land of milk and honey?”

“It's just so complicated.”

“Did you say the problem started with your church?”

“Sort of.”

“Perhaps, you could try explaining your church. It might turn out to be more believable than your story about your father and uncle, or will it be just another lie?”

“No, it will be the truth. But it's not very believable. That's why I chose a lie. It's easier if I just pay our way, if I can.”

“It sounds as though you don't have a good story to tell me. If you do, I'd be interested. I have the time, just now, to hear a complicated story.”

After a long silence: “Are you going to tell me now?”

“This is difficult...

“My mother should tell you most of this, but she won't do it. Probably, I can't. She has been so hurt by what has happened to her, there's no way you can understand. It's made her somebody she isn't. I'm not making any sense.

“If I ask you to wait until tomorrow, you'll think I just need the time to make up a lie. But it goes back a long way – before I was born. The church kept her prisoner for a year.”

Layla stopped speaking.

“So you’re Scheherazade, and I am to keep you on board to listen to the Tales of a Thousand and One Nights. Well, all right, I'll listen to you tonight, not tomorrow, but don't get your hopes up. Anything you tell me, now, I'll think it's a lie, and I do mean to put you off my ship.”

And a sarcastic voice inside Layla's head said, At least we'll be in Belém.

***

“My mother can’t tell you what happened to her in the church. It was bad, and even if she could speak Spanish she would just sound incompetent. Whether I can tell it better, I don't know. I don’t think the little Spanish I’ve learned will help much. This is going to take a while. If I make this short, my mother will seem retarded. I won't do that. She's intelligent, I think unusually intelligent, and I'll stay in Brazil before I'll let you think otherwise.

“It will also be hard to tell you about my father. I don't think I can make anyone understand him. Sometimes, I think I understand him, and then I'm sure I don't. So how can I make anyone else understand him? He has a long history. I've never even tried to tell it, before. So, as much as you say you want to know more about me, you are going to have to sit through more than can possibly interest you just to get to our church, and it's a long way from there to me. I'm really not the interesting one. It's my parents who are interesting. I'm just stuck with what has to be done.”

As she spoke about her parents and the church, she kept repeating almost everything until she had to give up and go on never thinking she had conveyed what she meant to the captain. At times, she wished he would interrupt, but he let her struggle for the hour or more it took her to find her own stopping place. She still wanted to say something about how she hadn't said anything right, but she couldn't even say that in a way that was helpful.

When she finished, Captain Mendez said, “There is something in my own life that makes it easy for me to understand what you have been through with your father. It's similar, in an awkward way, to there having been something in my life that made me set aside my suspicions about your dictatorship story. So I'm going to take my time thinking about whether or not I believe you. You're story about the dictatorship was easy to believe because it was simple. Now, your story is complicated.

“We both know you're willing to tell a lie, but we'll talk, again, tomorrow.

“Wait. I have one more question. Why did your mother let you work the postos?”

“I knew I wasn't making you understand. She didn't let me. I made all the decisions and told everyone what to do. Surely you can see I'm doing that now, on your ship. No one in my family talks to you because I told them to pretend they couldn't understand you because I didn't want them contradicting some lie I told you. Now it doesn't matter, because you know everything.

“When my mother asked me where the money was coming from, I just told her I wasn't a thief and I still had my virginity. I think that put a big question mark in her head that will be there forever. It's something we will never talk about again. And while we're on this subject, can you think of any other way I could've got us here? All of us?”

***

The next day did not bring a resumption of their conversation. The captain was occupied with his company's business, or at least with keeping his job, and he stayed occupied until the Kathryn Burke resumed her journey. As his ship left the Port of Belém, Captain Mendez cursed the company's owner. Because he was the most reliable captain and had the smallest ship, his ultimate boss at the end of a line of bosses was always using him for personal errands the captain ought to refuse but couldn't. He was behind schedule, again, and told himself he didn't have time to think about whether he should put the family off his ship. By the time they were at sea, there didn't seem much point to it. That was the same day Felipe's illness suddenly improved. Somehow, his stomach ache never quite led to the diarrhea he expected at every moment.

The dialogue between Layla and the Captain resumed, but not where it left off. Captain Mendez had too much to complain about.

“One of the owners wants to ship a monkey to the States. You can't imagine how difficult that is. Well, not for him. He just says, ʻTake care of it,ʼ  and then it's my problem. We're another day late because it took two days just to find a veterinarian who will certify that the damn monkey is healthy, but he won't do that without keeping the monkey in quarantine for two weeks. So I can't actually take the monkey to the States until my next trip, and the owner didn't want to pay to have the monkey boarded with the veterinarian that long, and he doesn't understand... No, I mean he won't understand that the way his monkey bites he's probably a serial killer. So I found someone to keep it for him, but I don't know the fellow. He could sell the monkey and disappear for all I know. And according to the owner, it's all my fault.”

Layla asked, “How much does it matter that we're late?” She didn't care about the answer which was, “Not at all until we're behind more than five days.” What Layla cared about was keeping the Captain worked up about his problems, not hers.

His problem with the owner and his damn monkey led the Captain back to complaining about his failure to get a liberty vessel under his command. That was the first time he used the surname of Fulgencio Batista as a curse word. His desire to command a ten thousand tonne vessel led him to fuming about the work he invested in getting his captain's papers, and then the time he spent as a second mate on a ship that stopped in Cuba compromising his integrity.

The next day, Layla opened their conversation by asking the Captain to explain his intense hate of Batista - how Batista came to murder his brother.

“Cuba is a poor place to live, an impossible place to live if you aren't connected to Batista. My brother had connections. He ran a casino for men who paid Batista for the license. My brother made good money and took good care of his family, but the situation was complicated. Both the American government and gangs of American criminals called the ‘Mafia' support Batista. Everyone knows the Mafia pays Batista to let them run the casinos – millions every year. So stories began appearing in American newspapers about how the Mafia had moved into Cuba and was using Cuba to launder money, and so forth. It didn't take a genius to figure it out.

“Anyhow, the American's chief cop is a man named J. Edgar Hoover. He doesn't care about what goes on in Cuba, but his reputation was built on what he's done to put the Mafia out of business. So when these stories about Batista and the Mafia started showing up in the newspapers, Hoover had to do something. So he told Batista that Batista had to do something. Batista wasn't going to do anything about the real bosses, the Mafia guys, but there had to be arrests. So they arrested my brother and a couple other guys to turn over to this big cop. They were supposed to be extradited, but they could never be allowed to actually say anything because that would cause problems for Batista with the Mafia. So they killed my brother before he could be extradited. I don't know who, but they killed him, shot him inside the prison, him and a few others. Batista was cooperating, making arrests, that was enough for the American cop. No one was talking, that was enough for the Mafia. Never mind who pulled the trigger. Batista killed him. Batista ordered an investigation of my brother's murder. The investigation went on until the Diario de la Marina, the newspaper, got tired of it.

“My mother kept making a fuss. Everyone knew the investigation wasn't ever going anywhere, but my mother wanted to keep Batista's corruption in front of people. Because of my mother we were afraid of what Batista would do to the rest of us. That's when I discovered the safety of the sea. No one cares about anyone at sea.”

The next night Captain Mendez came back to the topic on his own.

“I have heard of a man in Cuba who is trying to make a revolution against Batista. I would go to help him, but he's crazy. He hides in the mountains and makes raids on Batista's soldiers, but he's stupid. The Americans support Batista. He's fighting the whole American army. Cuba is small. They will pass through the mountains and comb him out like lice.”

Layla waited through a long silence, thinking there would be more. She was right.

“I loved my brother. He was the only one in my family I care about. My father was a stinker. People can't imagine what an abusive father can be like unless they've had one. That's why I didn't put you off my ship in Belem. I kept thinking, ʻWhat if she's telling the truth?ʼ

“My mother danced in a nightclub, she was pretty. That's why he married her, but that's all she was – just a pretty thing. She didn't care about anything, not even her children. I don't think she even cared about herself. She'd do anything that wasn't any trouble for her, and nothing that was. She was careless - even about her looks, and her looks were all she had.

“But my brother, he was something. He was a lot older, ten years, and he took care of me. When he was still a dealer at the casino, he brought me food from the kitchen. I ate like a king. That's how I got fat. And he taught me just like he was a teacher. I loved learning from him, especially mathematics because he made the math all about the casino. I could walk into a casino this minute and run it, because I know the math, the games, the accounting, everything. When I was really little, when I was just learning to read, he was just a teenager, and he wrote little books, easy to read, that were about me. I read about my own adventures in the books he wrote. When I went to school, it was easy because I already knew everything from my brother.

“You know what else he taught me? He taught me to pretend. Everything was a game to him. We laughed at everything. The first job I had, when I was ten, was washing dishes. He came around and we pretended I was panning for gold.”

Layla only had to ask Captain Mendez about Batista once to open a wound so deep that she could see into his childhood and discover that his passion for the sea was only a corollary of the unitary theorem: He loved his brother, and he could tell you why.

***

The passage between Belém and Caracas began with a soporific stretch of time put together out of boredom and the effects of a larger dose of Dramamine than required. Lara and Enzo were disappointed in the ocean, each individually but for the same reason. Layla had promised them they would be amazed. They were expecting to be amazed by tide pools with fish and crabs, places to play, a beach, and sand for all the castles they could ever imagine, not by miles of boredom and a depth they found frightening when they thought about it.

The family was given access to all of the deck that did not carry cargo or have work going on. As was the case on many of the freighters, Captain Mendez's crew spoke only Spanish, and no one on either side of the language barrier made any effort to cross it. They watched one another warily and generally at a distance. With so little to do, Enzo and Felipe both would have taken an interest in the ship's workings, but the engine room was never more than a throb in the walls that went unnoticed beneath the lassitude that seemed to come from the sun's reflections off the sea.

The time was right for English lessons for everyone. Layla's plan for their education was simple. She would read a page of the book to them. Then they would discuss whatever the page was about and memorize all the new English words and practice them. Her plan was to get in three, hour-long classes per day, but the plan did not include the motivation for three, hour-long classes per day. When they were not holding class, they were all bored with nothing to say to one another, but as soon as class started, the family began chatting and was seldom on task for even half of each hour.

Maria worried about Layla's evenings with Captain Mendez. When they began to last more than an hour, she gave up any hope for a harmless explanation of how Layla arranged their passage. In fact, she assumed the future was already the past. She worried about practical issues, pregnancy was possible even in a twelve-year-old. She'd seen it happen. She had vague, ill defined worries about the moral issue. Sometimes she imagined what people like Pastor Vinicius would say. No, of course it was not just Pastor Vinicius. No one would approve. But her daughter had saved them from the impending disaster in João's house and was getting them all the way to America. Anyone could see her twelve-year-old daughter had done something beyond criticism. Then she would think of herself on this ship, almost as though she was on a vacation, benefiting from whatever her daughter was doing. She was making excuses for how it was almost all right– excuses that brought on her own moral crisis asking how she had let this happen. But what was it she called ʻthis?ʼ What did she actually know? When she listened, surreptitiously, outside the Captain's door, she could hear nothing that confirmed her fears.

***

The day the family spent two hours watching porpoises was the day Enzo and Lara took their first steps toward a lifelong love of the ocean and the things that live in it. It was also the day they approached Caracas, and it was the day Captain Mendez turned his conversation with Layla back to survival in America.

“There are a couple of religious missions in Miami that will help people without a place to live. They're mostly for alcoholics, but sometimes sailors stay in them to save money. They're really awful, and I don't know whether they'll put up a family. However, if one of them will take your family, I don't think they'll be concerned about whether you're in the States legally. The shelters have limits for how long you can stay, but they might let a family in trouble stay longer, and it might give you some time to learn English. They are generally fundamentalist protestant affairs, and you will have to put up with a daily sermon full of religious nonsense.”

“I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean they're Christians?”

“Well, yes, but now I'm confused. That seems like a strange question.”

“I mean are they Christian or Catholic?”

“Now, I'm more confused. Catholics are Christians.”

“In Codó you're either Catholic or Christian.”

“Is that the way the Assembléia de Deus puts it? Most Brazilians are Catholic. I don't think they'd go along with that.”

“It's the way everyone talks.”

“This doesn't have anything to do with getting into a homeless shelter, but there is something I think I should explain to you. Catholics are Christians. So are people in the Assembléia de Deus and all the other Protestant sects.”

“I don't know about Protestant sects.”

“I'm surprised you don't know more about this. You seem like someone who pays attention in school.”

The pitch of her voice rose. “I do pay attention in school. They never talk about this in school.”

“You never heard of the Protestant Revolution or the Reformation?”

“Obviously not, and I don't like looking stupid.”

“I'm sorry. If there is anything you obviously are not, it's stupid. I'll explain.

“If you believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God and died for our sins...”

When he finished, the pitch of her voice rose still further. “If the Assembléia de Deus is a protestant church, I don't want anything to do with protestant churches, and I'm not going to have anything to do with their place for people who don't have anyplace to live. I don't want anything to do with talking in tongues.”

“Wait, wait. Protestant churches come in all kinds. Most of them aren't much like the Assembléia de Deus. For that matter, I don't imagine most of the Assembléia churches are like the one you were in. Yours sounds like a cult. Most protestant churches aren't threatening, except for their sermons being so boring.”

Then he added, “Tell me what you believe in.”

Layla had trouble answering. “I think my mother might be a Catholic, really, but we had to go to the Assembléia de Deus.”

“I meant you, personally.”

“I can't tell you what I believe. I'm nothing.”

“An atheist?”

“No, I'm nothing. I don't think about it, and I don't want to start. I went to church because they made me. I don't think anyone would go to church if they weren't made to.”

“Cuba is like Brazil. Almost everyone is Catholic. That includes me, and I think you ought to get your mother to take you to a Catholic church. It would seem strange at first, but I think you'd learn to like it. Fortunately, they stopped saying the mass in Latin - that might sound like speaking in tongues to you. Not really, but the priest does speak in the local language now.

“I thought about suggesting you find a Catholic priest when you get to America. I'd like to be able to tell you that a priest would be sure to help you. There are priests who would help, but what I was about to say isn't going to work anyway. To find one who would be helpful and can speak Spanish or Portuguese, that's pretty unlikely. So the short version of my advice is: If you get really desperate, try a priest.

“Better, have you heard of the Quaker Church?”

“We have Catholics and Christians. That's it.”

“Miami is big enough to have a Quaker Church. They have another name, but I can't remember it, but I think most people in America will know about Quakers. They’re people who stand behind their morals. That's not much of an explanation, but you have the kind of problem they would help with, and they'd find someone who can speak Spanish. If you remember the word ʻQuaker,ʼ I'm pretty sure you can find someone who can help you find a Quaker church.”

“Quaker. Can you write it down for me. We don't have anything to write with.”

“But you can write.”

“Yes, of course.”

“That's something you need to be sure you tell the truth about. The advice you get will be all wrong if you say you can read and write but you can't.”

“Well, as I said, I can write, but I didn't say I can read.”

There was a brief pause.

“I assume that's a joke.”

“My first since I've known you.”

“You can read and write.”

“Yes, of course. I can read and write Portuguese. You already know that.”

“A librarian could certainly tell you where to find a Quaker church. Librarians are usually compassionate people. If you find a librarian who speaks Spanish, you might find yourself with a lot of help. Might even turn out to be a Quaker.

“The Quakers in Cuba were a lot of help to me when Batista murdered my brother. I don't mean spiritual help like you would get from a priest. I mean they hid me for a while and used their connections to get me a passport without the authorities noticing. I have to have a passport to be a captain.”

“Okay, we'll look for Quakers, but I have a question that has nothing to do with Quakers. It's a stupid question, but I've wondered about it for years. What does ʻevangelicalʼ  mean. I know we were... I mean the Assembléia de Deus, not me. They were evangelical, but I never knew what it means.”

“To tell the truth, I'm not sure, either, but I think the main thing about evangelicals is that they proselytize a lot.”

“Then we weren't really evangelical. Maybe my father. He brought all those people into the church, but I never knew anyone else who ever brought a new member. I don't know why anyone would join those crazies.”

***

During their conversation about religion, Captain Mendez had seen Layla let her guard down. So twice he tried to return to the topic, but her guard was up, again. She had told him her story about the Assembléia de Deus and her father, and she was not going to retell it, embellish it, or add anything other than a few mundane details of her life at school. He would have liked to absolutely convince himself of the truth of any one thing she said, but all he convinced himself of was that he was talking to a young woman who was willing to go to any extreme to get from a difficult place to a place where she could, as she said, make something of herself. Lying to him was nothing to her. All the same, trying to make something of herself seemed to be all she was doing. So perhaps his skepticism was misplaced. Even if she was lying, did it matter so much?

By the time they reached Caracas, they were all sunburned, Enzo less so, but still everyone. So in addition to spending more time huddled in shaded areas of the deck, they began spending more time in their room. Once there, more time was spent on Layla's English lessons, but it was not clear what they were accomplishing. Portuguese is peculiar among European languages in the way it is spoken, and its peculiarity was there to trouble Layla farther into the future than she could imagine. Speakers of other European languages complain that Portuguese speakers mumble, and that is exactly what they do. Words are articulated in the back of the mouth. While English speakers are generally incompetent imitators of Portuguese nasalization, Portuguese speakers find it difficult to make their tongues do enough work to speak English. A Portuguese speaker who has only an English textbook and not a teacher will pronounce the word ʻrealʼ something like ʻHEY-ow.ʼ

There were a few pages near the beginning of their textbook that discussed English pronunciation, but it mainly warned the reader that English orthography is so hopeless that it is necessary to learn the pronunciation of each word from a teacher. What English the family learned was unintelligible.

***

On the morning of the fourth day out from Belém they passed between the islands of Trinidad and Tobago, and Captain Mendez called Layla, and Layla called her family, to look at something interesting. They were crossing from the Atlantic Ocean into the Caribbean Sea, and the difference was as plain as a line on a map. “When you cross that line in a small sailboat, you go from sailing in real seas to holding the rudder with one toe and dreaming of riches. It's the Caribbean that ought to be called the ʻPacific.ʼ”

Once in the Caribbean, it was another day to Caracas where they sat for two days doing nothing. They would have wasted four days, but they were already behind schedule. After Caracas, they went back to Trinidad and started up the Windward Islands. It was the job of Captain Mendez's ship to haul cargo from industrial centers in the Western Hemisphere to the small islands of the Caribbean, the Lesser Antilles. It was a slow process, a few hour's between ports, and days of waiting to offload anything from powdered milk to an occasional automobile.

They stopped at both Trinidad and Tobago. Beyond the Grenadines they went on to Saint Vincent where Captain Mendez always lost five pounds from his wobbly middle (and always regained it before he reached San Juan).

“I may not seem entirely sane while we're in Saint Vincent, but I'll get better, again, when we're back at sea. I have a problem here that keeps me busy. The chief export of this place is marijuana. Our next port-of-call is Saint Lucia, but then it's Martinique. If you can smuggle the ganja from Saint Vincent into Martinique, you've got it in a department of France. There's no customs inspection between Martinique and Europe.

“So the government of Saint Vincent treats marijuana as a source of revenue. If you get caught smuggling, you have a choice between a fine and jail time. Then, if you don't have the money to pay the fine, they'll give you a few days to raise the money – enough time to make another ganja run. Everyone regards the fines as a tax on their exports. That is, everyone except the French. If you get caught in Martinique or Guadeloupe, they'll put you in jail and forget about you, and they'll impound your ship.

“I don't sleep in Saint Vincent. I don't want anything coming on board that's not on my manifest. Do you know how difficult it is to keep that stuff off your ship? I can't even threaten my crew. I could fire one of them, but I can't throw them in the brig and carry them around as though they were in a French prison.”

***

In those days, Martinique was the northern most of the Windward Islands and Dominica, for the small number of people who did not confuse it for the Dominican Republic, was the southern most of the Leeward Islands. Today, Dominica is included with the Windward Islands, not because of any vagary in the Trade Winds, but because of the inability of people to stop fussing over things that don't matter.

Altogether, it was nearly a month of sitting in ports and dealing with customs officials. Much less time was spent at sea. There was boredom, but in their boredom there was safety. They sailed among porpoises, and who can do that without sharing their joy? Several times Captain Mendez pointed out plumes of water made by whales spouting in the distance. There were flying fish stirred up by the ship, and there was the pleasure of air so clear it almost seemed to Maria that she could see beyond the horizon and over the curvature of the earth.

Maria did not like the invidious moments of happiness that crept up on her. She would find herself surprised at being inside one, and her sense of guilt would rebound worse than ever. Still, she could see inside of them something of her daughter's vision. It was not exactly believable, she knew it wouldn’t last, but it was admirable. It made her feel better because the vision persisted and exonerated, and it made her feel worse because she had failed Layla.

Captain Mendez never appeared in the family's cabin, but if Layla appeared on deck, he would sometimes drop what he was doing and engage her in conversation. More days than not, he appeared while she was having dinner and asked her to stop in his cabin when she finished. As the days went on, the small hesitation needed to end their conversation grew longer, and somewhere in the Caribbean she began to sit through silences until the conversation began, again. With little else to talk about, Layla told more about her history than she had ever meant to tell, and Captain Mendez told as much of his history as he desired.

Between Guadeloupe and Montserrat, Layla asked Captain Mendez a question about how he chose his profession. She understood he felt safe at sea, but how did he learn about it and choose it? The Captain thought he needed to begin by explaining his brother, again, and long before that was done, he forgot the question.

The captain's father was abusive. He never came close to actually killing a family member, but he was worse than the typical macho male with his biblical duty to absolutely rule his family in accordance with his whims. His father never disciplined his children for no reason, but he disciplined them for every reason, which is more than a child can bear. His father enjoyed it. He smiled as he berated four-year-old Joaquin Mendez. He thought it funny that he could send a child of his out to cut the switch he would use on the child's legs. He was a sadist.

Layla learned, again, that Diego Mendez was the best brother in the world. He saved Joaquin from their father. When their father was home, they were out. They were out together, and Joaquin was not a street child with no parent around, he had Diego. Diego took Joaquin everywhere he went. At eighteen, he even made his friends let his eight-year-old brother pal around with them.

As an adult, Diego could not go near their father, the mixture of hatred and anxiety was too strong. But thanks to Diego, Joaquin was able to say, “No man is so evil as to deserve being abandoned by his children. There is enough evil and misery in the world. We do not need to add to it even if we  crave revenge.” And so, he visited his father, briefly, before he left for the merchant marine.

Layla began calling Captain Mendez “Joaquin.”

***

When they left Anguilla, they were on their way to Puerto Rico. Captain Mendez notified his employers that there were stowaways on board seeking asylum in the United States. He wrote that their case seemed legitimate, and that he intended to put them ashore in Miami rather than San Juan. The secretary who took the message shortened it and typed two copies, one of which she filed. The other went to the company's operations officer for the Caribbean and South America. He looked at it and tossed it in his waste basket. He could give a shit about Captain Mendez's little boat.

They still had Miami after San Juan, but it was time for Captain Mendez to explain in greater detail what they must do when they reached Immigration. There was good reason to hope. These were the days when Dwight Eisenhower was President and America was a refuge, the days before America became a shining city on a hill that the world's huddled masses were free to admire from afar. However, they faced a problem. Even under Eisenhower, America as a refuge was as much myth as reality.

“You do not need to jump off my ship and swim ashore. You can go through Immigration. They will hear whichever of your stories you want to tell, but only one, thank you. And don't go with the vice president of the Partido Socialista story. As I told you, that story will go all the way to the President and cause you hellish trouble. Use the story about the Assembléia de Deus. Make sure you shorten the story and use the word ʻcultʼ as often as possible.  That word will make your fantastic story believable.

“I think that story is good enough to get them to schedule a hearing to decide whether to grant you asylum. Then they will investigate your story. They won't lock you up while they investigate, but I would be very surprised if they let you stay in America. They will think you can go back to Brazil and live someplace far from where your father lives. But while you're waiting for your hearing, you can just disappear. Then you will be in the country illegally. Personally, I would not stay in America illegally. It's too difficult. If you can find work, it's like slavery because your boss can threaten to get you deported. Every day you will worry about being caught and sent back to Brazil. Still, there are people who do it.”

“Can't we buy identification?”

“You mean like in Brazil where you just bribe someone? No. You might be able to get some fake identification, even a fake passport, but there are always risks.”

“Can you still get an education?”

“I suppose you can, but it won't change anything.”

“What if I'm a doctor?”

A look of incredulity was all she got for an answer. Then the Captain went on. “If you marry an American, then you can get citizenship,.”

“Marry an American? Lara is just four. Maybe sixteen years of hiding. That's a long time.”

“It's not that bad. As soon as one of you gets married... Let's say your mother managed to find someone. As soon as she gets citizenship, she can get it for her children. Or you could get it pretty soon... Anyway, the first one to get citizenship can get it for the rest of your family.”

“Okay, let's say I got married. Sex for citizenship. Is that more moral than sex for money? Actually, I think it's worse. When it's sex for money both the client and the prostitute benefit. If it's sex for citizenship, the client is probably a victim. For that matter, when it comes to the morality of the thing, I'm guessing most marriages are worse than prostitution. I think most people disguise what they're really after with the word ʻlove.ʼ”

“You wouldn't have to be getting married for citizenship. That could just be a useful side effect.”

“How could I ever know I wasn't doing it for citizenship?” And after a silence, she added, “If I were a doctor from America, going back to Brazil might not be so bad.”

This time she did not get the incredulous look. Instead, she got the tone of voice the captain might have used to explain the death of a child. “Becoming a doctor might not be realistic.”

“Getting my family from Codó onto this ship might not have been realistic.”

The captain thought to himself, My God, and Layla went on.

“I kind of liked the story about the vice president of the Partido Socialista.”

“They can check that out in a hurry. A call to the U.S. embassy in Brazil would do it. It's a story that would make the person interviewing you nervous. It would quickly get pushed up to high level officials – the Secretary of State, the President, himself. They might make you very comfortable while they were waiting, and you'd never get out of Immigration.”

“I only meant I'd miss it, not that I'd use it.”

Captain Mendez couldn't stop. “Even if they somehow believed that story, the American government prefers dictatorships they can control to democracies, and they might send you back to Brazil just to get in good with the dictatorship.

“The story about the Assembléia de Deus, can you prove it's true? I don't mean to me, I'm not sure I care anymore. I mean to Immigration.”

“It's the truth.”

“But can you prove it to Immigration.”

Layla thought for a while. She thought about her friend, Mariana, and about getting beaten over the play with Eeyore. Everyone who actually knew anything about their family... It was too long ago, and not good enough, anyway. No one knew what João had done to Felipe, and even if she could somehow tell someone what to say, there was no one who would say it for her. She wondered who the former vice-mayor was and whether he was still alive.

“No, but it is the truth.”

“Even if you could prove it, I don't think they'd give you asylum. They'd send you back to some part of Brazil where they'd say you'd be safe.”

“Safe from poverty?”

“No, of course not. It's a fantastic story, but if you give them some names of people to contact, they'll give you a hearing. They'll turn you lose until the hearing date. You can't hope for asylum. You'll have to disappear. But you must be prepared with some names to give them. Just to get through immigration and out the door - they don't even have to be real people.”

“It's no worse than I expected.”

“It's not going to be easy. I can take you back to any part of Brazil you want to go to, as long as it's along the coast.”

“No, we're not going back.”

“Is that your decision to make.”

“Yes. As I said, it's no worse than I expected,” but as she said it, she lost trust in herself. What if they really should go back? What if she couldn't consider going back because it would make her so horribly wrong? What if she was crushing her mother's personality just as João had done? And yes, what if it wasn't her decision to make.

Captain Mendez went on without her attention. “I can never leave the ship for very long, these devils will steal the paint off the hull, but when we get to Miami I'll meet you ashore - after you get through Immigration. I'll see what I can do about finding you a homeless shelter. After that, you're on your own.

“There is something more we must talk about, and that is exactly what you must say in Immigration about how you got there...”

The Captain was not greatly worried about what his bosses would do if they heard a complaint from a crew member. What did concern him was what they would do if they heard a complaint from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. He feared what the family might say to a diligent Immigration officer, and he wanted to be certain they would say only what he told them to say.

America

The family walked out of the immigration and customs building into what, for most people on the street, was Miami sunshine. For them, it was American sunshine. They crossed a busy street in the middle of the block and stood waiting on the sidewalk for Captain Mendez. It was a sidewalk unlike any they'd seen in Brazil – a flat slab of unobstructed concrete, free of the bedlam of small-pocket entrepreneurs. People used it to walk from one place to another without competing for space in the street.

For a while, they stood around as though they were expecting Captain Mendez at any moment.

Which they were not. The captain had said he had no idea how long they would have to spend in Immigration, so he would look for them several times a day as he went about his business. What Layla feared was that the Captain may have given up on them while they spent nearly twenty-four hours getting out of the building.

When they were tired of standing, they sat on the concrete. They sat in one position until some under perfused or overworked group of muscles complained. Then they changed position until the next group of muscles complained. The frequency of these changes increased steadily, and when they could no longer get settled for two or three minutes, they got up and walked around. They leaned against a building of unknown function, or they squatted, or they squatted against the building of unknown function, and at some point they all gave up and lay on their sides on the concrete with their hands as pillows until, within another minute or two, their necks and hands reached agreement that their task was impossible.

Passers-by either avoided eye-contact or stared at them. Sometimes Layla tried to look purposeful, as though they were there waiting for someone who was late, but the family just looked like a family on the street. They thought Captain Mendez must have come and gone while they sat in Immigration being interviewed by a woman who was suspicious because they said they were from Brazil but could hardly speak Spanish. She was quite insistent on the point that Brazilians spoke Spanish.

As their second day in America began to pass, they each wondered whether they would ever see the Captain, again. Layla began to fear he didn't show up because of the way she had lied to him. Worse, she wondered whether one of her family could have said something as they were interviewed in Immigration that got him in trouble. Just as often, she wondered whether they had found the right place to wait, but she didn’t see how they could be wrong.

Layla was already worrying about being arrested for vagrancy – the vague condition that could only be against the law in a country like America where everyone was rich. Layla told the family to wait while she went for a walk just to see what sort of a place they were in, but she was afraid to get out of sight of them.

There was no donkey excrement in the street, and all the movement seemed orderly and purposeful. The people and traffic took turns at intersections. No one was dodging through the traffic as they had done to cross the street. What held her attention the longest was the architecture. In Brazil, all the shops had fronts that rolled up like garage doors, opening the whole interior of the building to the street, and allowing the contents of the shops to spill onto the sidewalk. Here, the line between inside and outside was defined by windows the size of the doors in Brazil. Going inside required opening a door and walking intentionally through a doorway. Layla was not sure what she thought about this architecture. It seemed to be a mark of wealth and possession, but there was something off-putting about it, something unfriendly. If it were meant to prevent shoplifting, it was even a little insulting.

***

When night fell, neither Layla or Maria liked the area they were in. It was better lit than a city in Brazil, but cities in Brazil are busy at night, and the Miami waterfront was deserted. This peculiar American law the captain called “vagrancy” stuck in Layla's head like the tamping rod in Phineas Gage's brain. She could see her family as vagrants almost as though she were across the street looking at them. As the night began to reveal how long and hungry it would be, Layla thought her family would look more purposeful if they were walking somewhere. So she started walking with her family. Layla knew Captain Mendez wasn't coming in the middle of the night, but she so wished he would that she left Felipe behind just in case and told him to walk back and forth, up and down the block, within sight of the building that housed the Immigration and Naturalization Service – the INS.

To avoid getting separated from Felipe, Layla only intended to walk her family around the block, but she didn't get that far. On the back side of the block, they came to an industrial area that was fenced off. Both the fencing and the lighting were in poor repair, and fear of the people who might occupy that abandoned place brought the family to a halt. They each took one step backward. The backward step disclosed a consensus that turned the family around.

The feeling of desertion occupied Layla's mind, and she finally gave up any hope of Captain Mendez showing up, of ever seeing him, again, or even of ever learning what had become of him. Still, once the family had Felipe with them again, they did not go far out of sight of the immigration building.

They walked a lonely figure eight around two blocks that let them keep the only door Layla thought Captain Mendez might come through in sight half the time. Their circuit brought them within sight of a brightly lit restaurant a quarter of a block up a side street. Maria had to explain to her younger children that the booths and shiny counter were to be expected in an American restaurant. Its attractive brilliance aggravated their hunger and loneliness and then made them feel still worse when it closed and the lights went out.

As the night grew old, it emptied out most of its sounds, leaving only the mournful cries and clanking that come across the water of an industrial port. Maria succeeded more and more frequently in getting Layla to stop to let them rest. Lara had to be carried. They were all exhausted, and the family's shuffling pace did nothing to keep them from looking like vagrants. They were hungry for the first time in more than a month.

When the restaurant reopened, just before sunrise, the lights illuminated their hunger, starting it squirming like a primitive, dark-loving creature. A few daylight sounds began in the remaining darkness. Sunrise found the family back across the street from Immigration, leaning against the building, or lying exhausted on the sidewalk. Layla wanted to lie down and let the city awaken for someone else, but something had to be done. So as people began to appear on the street, she began asking this person or that whether they spoke Spanish.

These events were before the Cuban diaspora. The population of Miami was only one percent Hispanic, and the only language the family heard being spoken was as foreign as parrot squawk. Of course, as long as the question was just "Hablas español?" most people understood. Sometimes they smiled as they shook their heads, but just as often she got a disdainful look that she knew should anger her but only made her desperate.

After about an hour of asking, someone tried his high school Spanish on her. They learned one another's names, and nothing else. Still, even someone with the merest smattering of Spanish kept hope alive for another hour before despair set in. It was only the impossibility of thinking of anything else to do that kept her asking.

She started her family walking, again. She had no idea what they could possibly find that could do them any good, but Layla thought they might as well be looking around for a miracle while she was searching for a Spanish speaker.

Maria, was not looking for a miracle. For Maria, walking was a way to find a church. Any church. In this city of the rich, every church must have someone who could see their desperation and suffering. Any church could help - if the churches of rich people still had any regard for the poor.

Most of the passers-by were men, but late in the morning Layla found herself asking a smartly dressed woman whether she spoke Spanish. The woman replied, “No hablo Espanol” - just as many of the people who had only shaken their heads could have done. Then the woman stood still. She looked at Layla, vaguely at her family, at Layla, again, and then at each member of her family, separately. Felipe, especially, looked desperate almost to the point of tears. She seemed to be seeing a woman with four children, but it was not clear who was in charge - whether the big girl who approached her wanted someone who speaks Spanish for herself or for the adult who seemed likely to be her mother. The woman did not need to speak Spanish to understand Layla's “Por favor, necesitamos ayuda.” The air was filled with desperation, and the woman made up her mind.

She gestured separately to both Maria and Layla to follow her, and the whole family shuffled off. They turned at the first corner and walked two blocks up one of the streets the family had traveled during the night. At the corner, the woman crossed the street and led Layla and her mother into a tiny storefront, a tailor's shop. Felipe took Lara from his mother and held Enzo back from crowding into an interior space the size of a walk-in closet.

The front end of the shop was empty and shabby enough to make Layla feel she was back in Brazil. There was a counter with a linoleum top that extended across the room from one wall almost to the other, leaving just enough space for a person to squeeze through. There were two wooden chairs with missing slats, one of which was out of its place by the wall.

The room was shabby the way a tailor's shop ought to be, money being spent on the client's ego, not the tailor's. The tailor knew both men's and women's clothing and had a reputation that allowed him to employ two women and another man in the back room. He insisted on taking all the measurements himself and supervised his employees as though they were stitching skin grafts onto movie stars. He made shirts with an extra pocket just wide enough to hold a hundred dollar fountain pen, and collars that hid the buttons that held them down. He made suit coats with inside pockets that were the width of a passport and shallow enough so the passport stuck up just enough to be easily grasped. He knew what important people wanted before they did.

When no one came from the back room, the woman shouted, “Pablo.” A minute later she took a breath meant to power another shout, but the door to the back room opened. Pablo was dark enough to make his heritage uncertain. He was small but well-built and well-maintained. It wasn't that he exercised, it was that he didn't over-eat, and with his flat, muscular abdomen, at sixty he could have passed for almost any age he chose. His dress might have made Layla think tailor without being told. Wide suspenders over a rumpled, white shirt held up tan pants with an actual herring-bone pattern.

“Pablo, you speak Spanish don't you?”

“Si, Señora.” A wave of relief washed across the family.

“I found these people on the street looking lost. They seem to be desperate to find someone who speaks Spanish.”

“Okay, let's see what gives.”

Pablo looked at Maria and said, in Spanish, “What do you need?”

Layla replied, beginning by apologizing for the Spanish she had only been learning for a few weeks, explaining that they were Brazilian and spoke Portuguese.

“It seems you have been learning Cuban Spanish. You should learn Guatemalan Spanish, it is the best, the purest.”

Layla replied that she was glad to be hearing the true Spanish, and that she understood how he felt because her family was from the northeast of Brazil and spoke the purest Portuguese – almost as it was spoken in Portugal. She did not mention that, in Brazil, the most common way of insulting someone was to call them Portuguese.

That was enough of the obligatory qualifying conversation generally required by speakers of Latin languages. Layla went on to explain that they were seeking asylum, but had failed to meet the person who was going to help them in America, and had been up all night on the street. She went on to explain that they had heard of homeless shelters that might take in families.

At first, Paciano (called “Pablo” by his customers) translated almost word for word what Layla said. The discussion did not go on for long before he asked the woman who had brought the family to him, “Do you know anything about homeless shelters?”

“Not much.”

“Do you know where one is?”

“No.”

“I don't know what to tell them. Maybe I can find a homeless shelter in the phone book. Do we look under homeless shelters?”

“Maybe, or under charitable organizations, but the police would know. They should go to the police. I assume the police have a translator, and if not, maybe you could volunteer. No, wait, of course not the police, the Department of Social Services. All my clients get to Social Services through the police, but these people don't have to.”

Even before Paciano relayed this suggestion to Layla, she reacted almost as though she were being attacked. She had understood the word “police,” and when she thought of police, she thought of Brazilian police. It didn't matter whether you were the victim or the perpetrator, the Brazilian police were to be avoided.

“No, no, she's not going to take you to the police, she's going to take you to the Department of Social Services. Even if she did take you to the police, the city police wouldn't care whether you're here legally, and even if they did care, you have an appointment with the INS, so for now you're okay to be here.” There ensued a discussion between the woman and Paciano little of which got translated into Spanish but which ended in a plan. The woman, whose name Layla came to understand was Mrs Broughton, would take them to the Department of Social Services and stay with them until arrangements were made for them. If necessary, Paciano would come to translate.

Layla was skeptical and afraid, but she didn't have much choice. She did manage to blurt out, “We are starving.” The conversation stopped. Everyone looked at everyone else. After Paciano translated, it became necessary for someone to speak. Paciano caved in. Addressing Mrs Broughton, “If I provide a little cash, can you take them to a restaurant on your way to Social Services?”

Mrs Broughton was already half-sorry she'd gotten herself into this, but when Paciano offered to pay it seemed impossible for her to refuse to stop at a restaurant. She was a struggling lawyer in a man's profession and would probably miss the one appointment she had with a client that day. Her secretary would call the client at the last minute and tell her Mrs Broughton was unexpectedly held up in court – a good dodge for a rich lawyer with a reputation but not for a woman struggling to get a grip on the brass ring.

Everything seemed to be decided, but instead of pushing them out the door, Paciano started a conversation with Layla that never got translated, and while they were conversing Mrs Broughton had second thoughts about taking them to Social Services. If, instead, she took them to the police, the police might refer them to Social Services, but if it was easier, the police might just call a homeless shelter and get them in. Furthermore, Social Services would take a lot of interest in the family, which wasn't necessary and therefore wasn't good. There might be something in all the legalese they were tangled up in that would make them care whether these people were citizens. Mrs Broughton didn't like working with Social Services, they often made her feel incompetent, and she decided on the police, first, thinking it might be better for the Brazilians, but mainly in the hope it would get her back to her own life more quickly.

The conversation that never got translated was about the family's history, and in particular about what forced them to flee to America, and specifically about what grounds they were using for their asylum claim.

“Do you think you will be granted asylum?”

“No.”

“Good, you're realistic. So do you have a plan?”

“Captain Mendez thought the people at the homeless shelter might help us find work.”

“Not if you don't speak English.”

“Then I guess the plan is to learn English. We started trying to learn on the ship. I don't know how far we got. I can't understand anything anyone says here.”

“Maybe you could get to Texas. There are places there where more people speak Spanish than English.”

Mrs Broughton interrupted saying she had to get this taken care of so she could attend to her own business.

***

Mrs Broughton led them briskly out of the shop and down the street. Layla caught up with her first, and as Maria caught up, with the intention of asking Layla what was happening, Mrs Broughton was already entering a restaurant.

Maria always remembered the restaurant as looking bright and shiny in a way she had never seen before. The counter and the tables had matching Formica tops. There was stainless steel that the waitresses hated cleaning, and enough fluorescent lighting so that reflections from the edges of the stainless steel made the appliances look set off by tiny neon lights. Against one wall, there were booths covered in glossy, brown faux-leather. The floor was just linoleum, but even that had been waxed during the night. Maria thought, if they were about to eat in that place, just maybe, beatification of Layla could begin.

Enzo headed for one of the plush booths, insisting they could fit six people in one. Layla was about to insist otherwise, but Maria beat her to it. They sat at a table.

Mrs Broughton watched as, one at a time, the family members accepted menus. They each took one look at their menu, some shrugged, then they looked at Mrs Broughton – except Layla. Layla began scanning the menu intently. She quickly ran down some scattered words she recognized. She could tell that the menu was organized into sections. Beverages was no problem because she knew the word “beverages” as well as “coffee” and “milk.” She could tell from the pictures that “eggs” were ovos. She had no idea what pancakes or waffles were and couldn't recognize the pictures. It wasn't conspicuous, but she found the word “cereal” in one corner of the menu. “Cereal” is the same in English and Portuguese. She did not know the word “oatmeal,” but she knew “hot” and assumed it was cooked cereal. While she had no idea what a dollar was worth, she could easily see that hot cereal was cheaper than eggs.

She was still examining the menu when the waitress returned for their order. Mrs Broughton thought she should just go ahead and order a big breakfast for each of them, but she was curious about what Layla would do. She was beginning to consider the possibility that there was a reason for the oldest child being in charge. She told the waitress they would need another couple minutes.

When Layla raised her head with a satisfied look, Mrs Broughton called the waitress. When the waitress arrived, she looked at Mrs Broughton, but Mrs Broughton looked at Layla.

Pointing at the word “oatmeal,” and a picture of a glass milk, Layla said, “Oh-nee hoat oh-aht-mee-ow ahnd oh-nee meelk.” She then held up one finger and repeated, “Oh-nee.”

Mrs Broughton said, “Oatmeal and milk,” and pointing at the rest of the family, “For everyone? For all?”

Shaking her head and pointing at everyone Layla said, “Não, agora,” which was clearly just a nasalized ʻnoʼ and a word that might have been understood.

So Mrs Broughton passed Layla's order on to the waitress. “Just one order of oatmeal and a glass of milk for now. I'll order for the rest when when the oatmeal comes. I'll appreciate your patience. They only speak Portuguese, and I only speak English.”

At that time in America, oatmeal would have been waiting on the steam table of almost any restaurant, and the waitress was back in much less than a minute. Layla was pleased. There was not only a large glass of milk, there was a additional pitcher of milk for the cereal. She didn't try to speak, she just pointed at the rest of her family and gave a thumbs up wondering whether the gesture would be understood in America.

As Mrs Broughton gave the obvious order, Layla pointed toward her and asked, “Kho-fee?”

Mrs Broughton looked at the waitress and said, “Yes, I'll have a cup of coffee.” Then she pointed at Layla and said, “Coffee?” Layla nodded, yes, and pointed at everyone except Lara. The coffee came with still more milk and sugar, but there was no amount of milk and sugar that would make it taste like coffee. There was something wrong with it, but Mrs Broughton didn't seem to mind.

When the check came, Layla saw Mrs Broughton put down a five dollar bill. A few minutes later, the waitress returned with two dollars and sixty-five cents in change. Mrs Broughton unexpectedly pushed the change, along with another two dollars, over to Layla. Layla didn't understand what she said, but she guessed that Paciano had given her more than enough to pay for a cheap breakfast, and Mrs Broughton was giving her what was left. She was glad enough to get it to risk an “Obrigada.” She had no idea how to pronounce ʻthank you.ʼ

Layla examined each of the coins to determine its value and added them up in her head. She thought she had calculated that the bill would be two dollars and twenty-five cents and expected another ten cents in change. She knew about tips, though no one in Codó ever tipped, and thought the dime might somehow have become a tip.

When they stood up to leave, Layla saw Mrs Broughton take a quarter from her purse and leave it on the table. She knew a tip when she saw one and began to wonder, again, about the ten cents. The only explanation that came to mind was that Mrs Broughton, and ultimately her family, had been cheated. She kept her own counsel, fearing there could be other explanations. It was later that she embarrassed herself in the process of learning that American businessmen so dislike taxes that they don't include sales tax in the advertised price. They want to make sure everyone knows who’s getting that ten cents.

***

When they left the restaurant, Mrs Broughton could feel she was dragging around a family that had been up all night. She didn't know they had also walked a dozen miles. Layla soon understood the woman was anxious about their slow pace and took over the task of encouraging everyone to walk faster.

“This woman is helping us, she fed us. Now she needs us to move faster. So it doesn't matter how tired we are, we must move faster,” and she picked Lara up on her back and ran about fifteen steps to demonstrate the point, but the truth was that the fifteen steps were all she could manage.

Layla had no trouble reading the sign that said they were being taken inside a police station, but there seemed to be nothing she could do but try to control her panic. She tried to reject the possibility that Mrs. Broughton, who had led them to Pablo, and Pablo, who had paid for their breakfast, were conspiring to get them deported. But it was America. What did she know? In any event, it was too late to run.

She decided. If they got sent back to Brazil, she would sell her virginity to get back, again, and the next time they would know to stay out of police stations.

As they entered the building, Layla took a paper she'd been given by the INS out of her pocket and held it in her hand. She wasn't sure what it was, it had been given to her mother, but it was the only document she had that could possibly be of any use to her. In fact, what she had was a copy of her mother's application for asylum. She held the document, nervously, until they left the building only forty minutes later.

Mrs Broughton was known to the police as a lawyer, and Layla became confused about her name when they called her “Counselor.” Mrs Broughton explained the circumstances of the family, and was referred to the Department's part-time liaison officer for Social Services. Exactly as she hoped, it was easier for the officer to call the only homeless shelter in Miami that took in families than to call Social Services. It was the Eisenhower years when homeless shelters were closing because homelessness was disappearing. So there was no three-month wait to get in. They got beds the same afternoon.

There were rules in the homeless shelter that had, somehow, to be communicated to the family. Mrs Broughton left a phone number, and the director of the homeless shelter explained the rules to Paciano over the telephone, and Paciano repeated the rules to Layla over the telephone, and Layla instructed the family. The result was partly what is expected in a game of Telephone in which people whisper a phrase to one another around a circle and laugh at what comes out at the end. Felipe did not understand why hot dogs were prohibited, but he was ready to accept whatever he was told if it got him closer to a bed.

Included in the rules, and understood, was a requirement that children be enrolled in school. There seemed little point to their going to a school where they would not understand the language, but when Layla pointed out the problem, she learned it was not just a rule of the homeless shelter, it was the law. So everything depended on learning English.

The homeless shelter was back in the harbor district, and their room was a large, concrete block version of the gloomy room they'd occupied on the ship - windowless except for a tiny skylight. Of course, there were differences, but it wasn't the motionless solidity of the concrete blocks that was the difference that mattered. This room had to be shared with another family rather than the ghosts of seamen past.

Maria was content to put up with what they couldn't change - the dim, yellow light that seemed not to have the energy needed to reach the end of the room, the concrete floor, the restroom that had to be shared with twenty people. Not much about that was worse than the way they'd been living as they escaped from Brazil. However, Maria wanted to make the best of their situation, and there were things the other family was doing that didn't help.

For example, trash. Wasn't there something in the rules about keeping the space assigned to you clean? Their new roommates had left early in the morning, but their presence remained in four piles of rumpled clothing - one next to each bed. Maria thought she could smell the dirty clothes, and she knew there were going to be other issues, she could feel them coming. They were written in trash.

***

They slept, barely disturbed by three returning, stair-step children – like Lara through Felipe except it was the middle child who was a girl. The three of them made only a brief commotion before they went outside. However, their mother returned half an hour later and made an ongoing racket that had to be endured. At five o'clock, the director alerted them to the shelter's evening meal and put them at the front of a line that extended half a block around a corner. They ate willingly enough out of a hunger that overcame fatigue. Then they slept until morning.

Layla awoke knowing she was in the homeless shelter but with almost no recollection of her surroundings or of the numerous disturbances that had failed to quite rouse her during the night. She lay with her eyes closed and thought about simple things she knew. They were in America. Her family members all had beds to themselves. They would be awake soon, and they would be hungry. She had no idea what to do when her four dollars and sixty-five cents was gone. She'd been told there were people in America who were not doing well, that was why there was a homeless shelter, but she was not sure what not doing well meant in America where everyone was wealthy. She had not seen anyone begging.

She also knew that lying in bed was not going to help her find a way forward. At the homeless shelter, the one meal each day was dinner, not breakfast, so she got her family out of their beds and found a restaurant, but this time oatmeal was fifty cents – two dollars and fifty-eight cents with tax for five bowls. As she ate, she saw people around her drinking large cups of coffee. She wished for one of those cups for herself, but there was no money for lunch. There would be shared bowls of oatmeal for the next day's breakfast, and then the abyss. Still not understanding what American coffee was like, she could have saved that much of her wishing for something else.

Returning to the shelter, they met the three children who shared their room waiting for a small bus the school district sent for them. Two children they had not seen were also waiting. As the family approached the door to their room, it opened and the children's mother hustled out, passing without a word or a nod.

Even twelve hours of restless sleep and a breakfast of sorts were not enough. Another night's sleep would be required to lift their fatigue. Each member of Maria's family remained in a mental mist of drifting, repetitive thoughts made dim by the shadows their thoughts cast on one another. Layla knew there was little point to an English lesson, but there was a point to emphasizing their importance. So they resumed English lessons after breakfast, before the afternoon's hunger compounded the problem of learning anything that day.

***

Layla needed money. She supposed people could survive on one big meal each day, but that was not what she intended for her family. English lessons could not compete with hunger. She hoped they could beg, but she didn’t need to have it explained to her that the line between begging and vagrancy was thin. The difference obviously lay in where they begged and whether anyone might be annoyed by their begging.

She understood that some of the rules they were given were laws. She wasn't sure whether she counted as a child, but she was afraid to try begging when someone might think she should be in school. As the children who shared their room had left for school in the morning, she thought she should not try begging until they returned in the afternoon.

By mid-afternoon they were all hungry and doing nothing but sitting on their beds looking at one another. Layla did not understand why the woman and her children were still gone. The children obviously had school in the morning, and it seemed as though the bus that took them away should bring them back, but the afternoon offered nothing other than more waiting. Layla began to wonder whether school in America could last all day.

It was almost four o'clock when the three children returned, and Layla said, “School's out. We're going begging, now.” The whole family went - hoping a catastrophe would not separate them.

There was nothing they could say to passers-by about their situation. They could only look pitiful. So Layla thought about how to look pitiful. She put Lara in front holding her mother's hand. Lara and Maria both held their hands out silently. The other three stood beside them. Passers-by treated them much as they had when the family was on the sidewalk waiting for Captain Mendez. It reminded Layla of the Captain, and she wondered how he could be almost forgotten so quickly.

Maria put down her right hand, and held out her left. She asked Lara whether her arm was tired. Lara said, no, but as soon as she started thinking about it, she changed hands, too.  A few coins came in, but they had little time before five o'clock when the shelter began serving its evening meal. They left with  thirty-five cents and found themselves at the back of the half-block-long line. Whether the director would again move them to the front was not a question because he wasn't there.

While they waited, Layla began calculating. They would run out of money the next morning, but the day after that was Saturday. If they could beg thirty-five cents an hour for the whole day,... but what was Saturday like? She didn't imagine there was a market nearby. And Sunday? Even if the weekend yielded another four dollars and sixty-five cents, that would not get them though a week living in the shelter.

During the fourth repetition of her calculations, a tough looking man walking along the line interrupted Layla's thoughts. He looked tough because he was big, and his tank-top T-shirt revealed tattoos second only to those of the captain who had terrified her in front of the shipping company offices. He spoke to Layla, and when she didn't respond to a louder voice, he motioned to her to step out of line and talk to him. He tried gestures as well as speech and a few sounds that were not speech, but it was almost all lost on Layla. She understood the gesture that meant money, but there was no context.

The man was trying to ask her if she wanted to make some money, and if she'd said yes, he would have made the job sound like getting paid for going to a party. Over the course of a few minutes, his English just got more emphatic, as though he could force her to understand. Layla shrugged and went back to her place in line. The would-be pimp said something undoubtedly vulgar about girls in homeless shelters and what could be expected of them.

Layla warned the family that breakfast would be slim and told them to clean their plates at dinner. Afterward, they could think of nothing to do and sat on their beds watching one another. Their three young roommates sat at the other end of the room, sometimes watching them, and sometimes pushing around one of a handful of toys that did not fit together in any inspiring way. For a while, the girl pushed the only doll across the floor as though it were a toy car. Nothing about Lara or Enzo seemed inviting to them, and Felipe's expression was so dour it made his own family shrink away from him.

On the Kathryn Burke, they had gone on deck after dinner to watch the darkness come. In Miami, going outside only meant going where they felt unsafe. One at a time, each member of the family lay down, not to sleep, just out of boredom. Maria and her two boys wished Layla would say something. They knew she must have a plan, this sister who got them to America.

The family's second night of sleep had overtaken them when a man walked into the room, slamming the door behind him. A row detonated in the room so quickly it seemed to precede him though the door. The man and the woman were screaming. The family retreated to Felipe's bed against the wall at their end of the room. The woman's children fled to the wall at their end of the room except for the youngest who fled through the conflict to the safety of Maria's arms.

A moment later, the director arrived. Seemingly afraid to enter, he stood in the doorway, obviously ready to back up and make room for anyone who wanted to exit. From there, he joined in the shouting. The woman's oldest boy was the first to begin crying. The shouting continued in a way that made the threat seem to grow until two police officers finally arrived. They'd been rousted from their substation inside the same restaurant where the family had eaten breakfast. Their presence in the doorway and then inside the room brought silence, except for the man who was trying to explain something in bursts of agitated speech that stopped a decibel shy of being loud enough to get him handcuffed and arrested. Whatever he was saying may have been as unintelligible to the English speakers as it was to the Brazilians. After several minutes of having the content of what he was saying ignored by the police officers, his speech decayed into shorter bursts between longer pauses, and he allowed himself to be led out onto the street.

***

Layla rose in the morning to the same thoughts as had kept her awake after the dispute during the night. How to get money? Now that they were in America, how to live? Learn English, but they needed the money immediately, for the next day.

She could not get to America and then fail. Could she? The night had filled her with questions she couldn't hope to get answered. In the postos she had grown accustomed to closing her mind to everything except the money she was earning. She could still do that, but was there a way to earn the money without getting arrested? Was there a better way to beg? What did the woman they shared the room with do during the day? How did she get money? How could she contact Paciano? She didn't know how to find his shop. She didn't know how to ask the director of the shelter whether he had Paciano's telephone number, and even if he did, what kind of advice would Paciano have to offer? Even if she found a way that worked while they were in the homeless shelter, she didn’t understand the rule about how long they could stay. If she could have answered even one question, she might have seen a way out.

At breakfast, Felipe and Enzo each got a bowl of oatmeal, Layla and Maria shared theirs with Lara, and then they were broke. The waitress saw them count out the last of their change, and hoped they wouldn’t be back. Aside from the fact that she knew they wouldn't leave a tip, they looked like a homeless family eating in a restaurant for respectable people.

***

Even Lara seemed to expect Layla to say something – something more than, “We have to learn English quickly.” They all understood and accepted the necessity, and they did their best with the day's lesson, but they wanted to know more. They might have settled for knowing what progress they were making with English and no doubt Layla would have told them - if she'd had any idea, herself.

By late morning, they were already too hungry to learn anything, and Layla was ready to send her mother out to beg, but she balked. What if something happened that separated them? What if her mother got arrested for vagrancy? So they waited. At one time or another, each of them thought they would be better off with João, but deep inside, they all knew there was a future – all except Maria and Layla.

Layla had no plan for getting money. So, as the morning became afternoon, she began working on more tractable problems even though solving them would not feed her family. She thought her pronunciation, as much as her poor vocabulary, could be contributing to her absolute inability to ever communicate anything in English. So she got to work on the problem of writing a note to the director - a note that would ask for help with pronunciation.

She found the director in the kitchen tying an apron awkwardly under his overhanging abdomen. It was an odd sight to her, a man in an apron. It started a shower of senseless thoughts. Questions formed of their own accord, and the answer to all of them was, What a stupid question.

Did he like to dress up as a woman? Was he homosexual? What would he trade for a blow-job? Had he once cooked in a restaurant?

She cleared her throat. It was awkward. She still didn't know his name. He finished tying up his apron and turned toward her looking embarrassed, as though he'd been caught pulling up his pants.

He spoke meaninglessly, “How can I help you?”

She gestured as though writing on her hand. He understood and found a pen that would write buried in a jar of pens that wouldn't. Then he pulled a scrap of paper being used as a bookmark out of a cookbook, and handed pen and paper to Layla.

She wrote the note as quickly as care in a strange language would allow, and silently handed it to the director.

I write 200 words english. Not can pronunciar talk. You can me-help pronunciar english.

She didn't have an English-Portuguese dictionary and could only hope ʻpronunciarʼ had a recognizable English cognate.

The director read the note and after a long moment said, “Okay, after dinner.” Then he took back the pen and wrote, “Yes, I will try after dinner” on the bookmark. Layla found herself able to get the gist of the note. It made her smile as she said “Obrigada” and began gesturing in a way that asked for possession of the pen.

The afternoon crept on until their roommates returned and, once again, the family went off to beg. They returned an hour later with exactly thirty-five cents. This time it was all from one man who had given fifteen cents the day before. It was discouraging. Their place at the back of the line for dinner was also discouraging, though it was the pleasantest part of their day because they were outside and the younger children could run around while Maria and Layla held their place.

Inside, they passed along a line of servers, heavy women just approaching old age who placed the food on their plates – a large helping of canned beans and wieners, a smaller one of canned string beans, a scoop of rice pudding, and at the end, a slice of bread that had no place on the plate and sat soaking up liquid from the beans. Reaching the bread server, Layla paused and handed her the bookmark while she began pointing, first at the bread and then at her family. The bookmark read, “More please, breakfasts.”

The woman shook her head, no. When Layla reached the table, she told her family to save their soggy bread for breakfast.

After dinner, there was a long, quiet wait for the director. It was stressful as well as boring because they all half-expected a repeat of the previous night's row.

When the director came, he had two-thirds of a loaf of the soft, white, commercial bread that was driving local bakeries to extinction. No one spoke as he set it on Maria's bed, but Enzo got out the slice of bread he had saved from dinner and ate it.

A horrible thought crossed Layla's mind. She pulled the thirty-five cents out of her pocket and pointed, first at the thirty-five cents, then at the bread, and said, “Isso pra isso?”

The director understood Layla to be asking whether she should pay for the bread. So he shook his head, no. She had meant to be asking whether she could buy a loaf of bread with thirty-five cents. The answer was yes, but it was all for the best that the director misunderstood. If Layla had confirmed that she had wasted so much of their four dollars and sixty-five cents on restaurant oatmeal, she would have become still more depressed.

The director helped them learn to pronounce some of the reading vocabulary they had learned. In the process, they annoyed the woman who shared their room. She expressed her annoyance, and the director told her, first, that she also had problems that were annoying, and then, that she should take her children someplace else where they would be less disturbing to the lesson.

The time the director spent with the family reinforced his recognition of how badly they needed help, but he vacillated in his own willingness to get involved. The family had their appointment with the INS, and there seemed little point to doing more than keeping them housed until the results of that appointment were known. If they got asylum, there would be government assistance to get them settled. He knew they were begging for money, and he assumed that meant hunger was a problem for them, but those were the problems their INS interview would solve one way or the other. He also thought beyond their interview to the need to get them started on their lives in America, to find work for Maria, to get the children in school, especially the oldest one who seemed dangerously mature for her age. Their mother seemed nearly helpless, but he thought, There must be some kind of work she could do.

He concluded there were at least three things he should to do for them. He would give them a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter every other day. The bread he could purloin from the shelter. The peanut butter would seem like a small thing to anyone who has never tried to live on the salary of the director of a homeless shelter. He would, of course, also continue to help them with English pronunciation. Finally, he would find out whether he could get them a Portuguese-English dictionary through the library.

***

And again in the morning, Layla rose not knowing what to do. They devoured their two-thirds of a loaf of bread, three slices each. It had the consistency of air and was about as satisfying. They were still hungry, so Layla waited twenty minutes to give their hunger some time to subside before she began their English lesson. The lesson did not go well, less because of their hunger than because Layla was distracted by her worries and by the woman who shared their room. The woman had not gone out. She avoided doing anything they could complain about, but she rummaged through a bag of makeup, finally spilling it on the floor. She spent a full four minutes opening a bag of crackers. She sighed with a weariness meant to show the family what a truly difficult life was like.

Layla began their lesson by reviewing what they had learned about pronunciation. She'd just gone on to the last page they'd studied in their textbook when there was a knock on the door. The knock was strange because no one who was likely to come to the door, and no one who actually did come to the door, ever knocked. The woman, who was closest, went to the door. She began shaking her head no, but Maria and Layla both recognized a voice that sounded like Paciano's. It sounded so much like Paciano's voice that, even though they had no reason to expect him, and even though the woman continued to shake her head no, Maria and Layla collided in their race for the door.

It was Paciano - out of the blue as far as Layla was concerned, out of the far ultraviolet from a galaxy a million light-years away.

Paciano told the family that his wife was concerned the homeless shelter was not a safe place for them. He and his wife had a guest room they could use for one month while they got their feet on the ground. It would be small for a family of five, but no worse than where they were, and then he added, “You won't want to miss your INS appointment because, if you are with us, they will have a hard time finding you to reschedule.” People who are new to a language have a hard time recognizing subtlety. It took a minute to sort out what he meant, and Layla didn't try to translate for her family.

Any of Paciano's employees could have said it probably wasn't Paciano's wife who was concerned about the family, though his wife was always supportive of Paciano's sudden generosities.

***

On the day of their INS appointment, the family still had two weeks to go on Paciano's one month offer. Lara was still in her mother's arms, but the rest of the children were in school. Getting them in school had been a task that fell to Paciano or, from his point of view, fell on Paciano. His first problem had been to overcome Layla's reluctance. She was afraid their legal status would cause them trouble. In Brazil she needed an identity card to do anything that involved the government. She did not have an identity card in America, and she was afraid of getting deported. Paciano assured her the school would not care whether the family had American identity cards. There was no such thing as an American identity card. Layla wanted to know how you registered for school without an identity card. She was unwilling to believe it was as simple as Paciano said it was. He did not have children, so she was afraid he didn't understand something.

“They just fill out the papers they have at the school and it's done.”

“How do they know what name to put on the papers if you don't have an identity card?”

“You tell them your name.”

“So I just walk into the school and say, ʻHello, I'm Layla Cardeira. Register me for school.'”

“No, your mother just walks into the school and says, ʻHello, I'm Maria Cardeira. I've come to register my four children for school.ʼ  But her English isn't good enough. So I'm going to lose half a day's work to translate for your mother, and probably another half-day to argue with you.”

Paciano volunteered to go with them and assured Layla he would see to it that nothing went wrong. He promised to bring along the telephone number of Mrs Broughton, adding that Mrs Broughton was on the family's side and was a lawyer. Layla knew that, in Brazil, your lawyer was on whichever side was most profitable for your lawyer.

Of course, when the time came it was not Maria asking a school secretary to register her four children. It was two children at one school, one at another, and one who was too young for school. At Layla's school, the secretary was nonplussed, she seemed to have to deal with the prospective student instead of the parent. She called in the principal, who watched as the secretary did what she always did – almost. Paciano treated Layla as her own parent, even when Maria seemed ready to answer, but the principal didn't say anything, so the secretary took whatever answers she got.

The questions began simply enough. Layla gave her mother's name and, without worrying too much about the government finding them, Paciano's address, and then her own name, and then there was the question of her age. She wasn't sure what age she wanted to be. She did not want to be thrown into classes that were too advanced for her and started to say, “Twelve,” but she stopped. The whole idea of coming to America was to become someone, and here was an opportunity to skip a step. It was not a question that could wait for an answer. She only took time to think, I'll do what I have to do and said, “Thirteen?” She spoke with hardly a pause but there was an inflection at the end as though she wasn't sure. The secretary caught the inflection and looked around, but there was no inflection in Paciano's translation, and still getting no direction, she wrote thirteen. As Layla's birthday had been in mid-September, she had just put herself in an eighth-grade class with almost as many fourteen as thirteen-year-olds.

Then the questions got vexing.

“Have you been vaccinated?” How should she answer? If she answered no, she thought they would expect her to get vaccinated, and she did not want to deal with another task of unknown complexity. So she answered, “Yes.”

“Do you have proof of vaccination?”

“No?”

“You will have to get it from your old school. Did you bring your records from your old school?”

“No.”

“What is the name and address of your old school?”

“Escola Unidade Colares Moureira. I don't know the address. It's in Codó, Maranhão. Maybe that's enough.”

“It's where?”

Paciano tried to improve his pronunciation of Maranhão.

“Maranyow? I never heard of Maranyow. I thought they were from Brazil.”

“It's a state in Brazil.”

When they finished spelling everything, the principal finally began instructing the secretary. “You'll have to write to their old school to get their records.”

“That will be easier than this. Wait. I doubt that we can write to them in English.”

There was still a page of questions and blank spaces that remained blank. Layla was told she must write to her old school for a copy of her records. Layla added that to the bottom of her list of things to do. If they kept hounding her, and if she ever got enough sleep to care, maybe she would get it done.

***

Layla felt as though she were just watching herself go to school. It wasn't because she was just beginning to be able to understand what was going on in her classes. It was because the more she understood, the more she had to be a child, again, a child among children. Not even that, she had to be a girl among girls - girls who talked about Marlon Brando in The Wild One, girls who were learning more about makeup than geography, girls who completely ignored the gangly new girl with the black hair and dark eyes who couldn't possibly be made up to look like a porcelain doll.

Layla dressed each day in one of two dresses Paciano's wife found for her in the Salvation Army Store. The dresses had short sleeves and reminded Layla that she was free of the Assembléia de Deus. They also told her she had come to a place where there was something called “style” that created an in-group and an out-group almost the way the Assembléia de Deus did. Style seemed so pitifully unimportant to her, she thought that, if she had the option of being stylish, she would keep her Salvation Army dresses.

The school impressed Layla - the building, itself, the organization, the orderliness of the classrooms, the regular attendance if not the irregular attention. She expected that, when her language skills got good enough to let her form a judgment, she would find herself behind her peers in her classes, but what she saw going up on the blackboard in mathematics told her there was at least one subject in which she would not be a dunce – this despite the trouble she'd had getting much mathematics instruction while tending the greengrocer's in Brazil.

There was no formal program for students who did not speak English, but she was immersed in English all day, the family continued reading their textbook in the evening, and there was a Spanish teacher who would spend a little time answering questions after school. Paciano obtained a Portuguese-English dictionary through inter-library loan, and before the last renewal period was up, the Spanish teacher gave Layla her own, pocket-size, Portuguese-English dictionary.

Layla's proficiency in English improved rapidly enough. In a month, she was able to understand most of the conversation of the girls she sat with at lunchtime, girls who were also in the free lunch program. While she learned to understand English rapidly, learning to think quickly enough in English to participate in the conversation took months longer, and she could not say she had any friends at school. She could barely say she had acquaintances.

The English of all her siblings, except Lara who wasn't in school, improved rapidly - Enzo faster than anyone. Some people would say he learned so quickly because he was the youngest, and young children are naturally adept at learning languages. That may be true. Then again, adults learning to read will learn to read new words as fast as young children learn to speak them. Perhaps, Enzo's advantage lay in the fact that his peers were younger, and at the same time they had simpler concepts to express, some of them were also more willing to spend time making themselves understood.

Layla continued to teach the evening lessons, but Enzo was more likely to correct her grammar or pronunciation than the other way around. Becoming the acknowledged best speaker of English in the family gave Enzo a new, and never-hoped-for, sense of self-worth. He was no longer just a dependent – only different from a pet dog because of his potential. Now, he was consulted. He took an interest in the nuances of language. He wondered how cognates came to have different meanings, or how languages came to be pronounced differently. He discovered on his own that languages evolve. Of course, everyone knows that languages evolve, but for Enzo it was conscious, a concept, a recurrent thought that might come to him when he was bored. Enzo became the first member of the family to be glad they had come to America.

For Maria, progress in English was slow. Paciano's wife, Oyama, preferred Spanish. That was the language Maria heard all day, and that became her second language even as she tried to keep up with the lessons the children shared in the evenings. Listening to her children speak English at a rate she could not follow was more frustrating than helpful. It was depressing. Her desire to remain in bed was not so strong as it had been at checkout time in the cheap hotels, but the only thing that got her out of bed, now, was the embarrassment she felt when she was in bed while Oyama was preparing breakfast for her children.

She knew how important it was to learn English. Her children had to be in school, and she had to find a way to earn money, and she understood Paciano perfectly well when he told her, once again, that she had to learn English. She just couldn't.

She had to try harder. She tried to study their English textbook on her own during her long days with Oyama, and she made some progress, but she was so distracted. The kitchen table had a Formica top with chrome edges. The top was dark blue with gold-colored swirls of enough different sizes to make her feel as though she were looking through a window into a three-dimensional space, a night sky in another universe. Oftentimes, if her concentration on the book started to falter, the page went blurry as her eyes tried to focus on the distant places in the table top.

Oyama frequently interrupted Maria with chatter about whatever crossed her mind, often with questions about housekeeping in Brazil. These questions were harmless, possibly even helpful, because they interrupted Maria's habit of memorizing lists of words in an order that often left her unable to recognize a word when it was not in the right list and in the right order. Oyama's singing, on the other hand, was a more extended distraction, and Maria could not bring herself to complain. Oyama only sang when there was no one to talk to, but that was all the time Maria was studying.

Maria did come close to enjoying the time she and Oyama spent cooking together. She learned such difficult cooking tasks as the making of croissants, or the even the more difficult challenge of replicating Oyama's soups that were not just pots of water she threw things in. They were several pots of water that allowed different ingredients to be cooked for different lengths of time before being poured together. Maria imported the Portuguese word ʻaperfeiçoadasʼ to describe these culinary paragons. They shared a fantasy, in Spanish, about opening a restaurant together.

***

Layla was afraid to talk to anyone about where she was from, and how she had come to America, but she wound up sharing more with the Spanish teacher in her school than she meant to. It wasn't because the Spanish teacher was especially approachable. She was not Hispanic. She was, in some ways, just another southern belle from the Florida panhandle who had spent a year in Spain. However, Layla had an immense need for information, and while neither of them spoke Spanish well, they could manage a conversation. Moreover, she knew she was going to have to confide something to someone as the price of getting information, and why not the teacher who spoke a romance language?

Layla said they were waiting for the INS appointment – the one that had already passed. She fairly willingly said they were fleeing her father and then wished she hadn't said it. She immediately resolved to be less informative, but she was too late. Layla knew her teacher had picked up her scent.

“Why did you have to run away from your father?”

“He almost killed one of my brothers.”

“So you were afraid of him?”

“Yes.”

“What else did he do?”

“What else did he do? Well, he had chickens.”

“Was he often violent?”

“I'm not sure. We were still afraid when he was nice. That's all.”

And later, “Where did the money to get you to America come from?”

“I don't know.”

“Your mother just had it.”

“Yes. That's all.” Of course, the Spanish teacher knew Layla was receiving free lunches, and it was not lost on her that Layla had only two, second-hand dresses. She asked about money hoping to get Layla to talk about something that troubled her. Indeed, money was a topic that troubled Layla, and when her teacher approached it, Layla withdrew.

“Why did you come here instead of someplace in Brazil?”

“It will be hard for our father to find us here. That's all.” The Spanish teacher's curiosity obviously went beyond answers that ended in “That's all,” but if she pressed for an answer, Layla abruptly changed the subject – engaging the new topic as though it were what they had been talking about all along.

Public school teachers are often decent people, and the Spanish teacher silently agreed to make her own guesses as to how Layla got to the United States. Layla's reticence and the particular places at which Layla derailed the conversation made her teacher wonder, darkly, how her family got to the United States, but she did not guess it was Layla who led them. The Spanish teacher was a better confident than Layla had any reason to expect, she refrained from gossiping in the teacher's lounge.

The Spanish teacher guessed that the INS appointment was a fiction, and the way Layla kept casually returning to her mother's need to earn money made it clear that Layla was not anticipating the kind of help a successful refugee application would provide. After the fifth or sixth time Layla returned to the problem of money, the Spanish teacher had a suggestion.

She told Layla to stop a public bus and ask the driver for a route map. When Layla returned with the map, she found a route that would take Maria directly from an area where there were cheap apartments to one that included a lot of homes of faculty from the University of Miami.

“University teachers are busy. They often hire people like your mother to clean their houses. If she had a housekeeping job, there wouldn't be much need to talk to the people she'd be working for. It would still help if she could speak English, but maybe you could help as your English gets better. If you think that's a good idea, we'll mimeograph a flyer that announces that your mother is available to clean houses. You can pass it out door-to-door. I know of a woman who managed to get enough work that way to earn a living. I wouldn't promise anything, but I think it's worth a try.”

The Spanish teacher was proof that southern belles can be nonjudgmental, insightful, generous, and clever.

***

An offshore breeze brought air over Miami from across the Atlantic, air that hadn't seen an industrialized country in a year, air so clear it was a joy just to look through it, air warmed to perfection by the Gulf Stream. Maria and Oyama had taken the bus across town to pass out flyers. Walking the streets of a neighborhood that fell just short of possessing real wealth, looking at the meticulous yards, almost feeling the pressure of sunlight against her skin, the pleasure of it nearly erased the sense of failure that kept ballooning up in Maria's thoughts, failure to protect her children, failure to learn English, and fear of failure to provide an income. Wrapped inside the sensory pleasures, there was also a feeling that she was finally doing something useful. Each time she stuck a flyer between a door and a door jamb, or into a mailbox, a brief prayer popped into her thoughts, “Let this be the one.” The prayer was an ear-worm, and each time it spoke, she renounced the thought, reminding herself that she was not a believer. And then she silently added, If there is a god, please, let me apologize for taking back the same message over and over.

Maria knew that Layla had wanted to come with them, but it was a Wednesday and Layla was afraid of being discovered out of school. Maria wanted to tell Layla how the day felt, and why it felt that way, and she was sorry Layla wasn't there because there was no way she was going to succeed in describing it all later.

Her thoughts and feelings on the bus ride home were like the Mandelbrot set, never ending, never the same, but never traveling far from one another. The afternoon was not far advanced, and they had already distributed all the flyers. There was some satisfaction in that, and also in the knowledge that she would be home with Oyama when her children arrived from school.

It was late Wednesday afternoon when the first call came for Maria. It was a good time for a potential client to be calling because Layla was home, and no one would have to tell the caller to return the call when someone who spoke better English was available.

When the first call came, Oyama handed the phone to Layla. It wasn't a potential client, it was a deep, formal voice that seemed to turn even a telephone receiver into a cathedral, or possibly a courtroom. The reverberating voice was calling from the post office. Layla started to panic. She didn't know why the post office would want to talk to her mother, but it was a government agency that had their phone number – a government agency that, she realized for the first time, knew too much about the whereabouts of people.

When it was settled that Layla could take a message for Maria, the voice informed Layla that it was against the law for anyone except postal employees to put anything into mailboxes. Layla panicked. When the voice finished and let her hang up, she wanted to know whether she had to move her family immediately, that minute, and of course, no one knew the answer until half-an-hour after Paciano finally arrived home and got everyone calm enough to listen to him explain.

“The postal service only wants you to stop putting Maria's flyers in mailboxes. Yes, it's against the law, and they told you that to make sure you'd stop, but they aren't coming to arrest anyone for putting flyers in mailboxes. They aren't. I promise.”

The phone rang, again, in the middle of dinner. Layla stopped chewing and held her breath while Paciano answered. She was aware of the bolus of chewed food sitting in her mouth, but she waited for a definite break in Paciano's voice before she swallowed. She tried to hush everyone at the table so she could listen to Paciano's half of the conversation, but Lara, finding a rare silence that would give her a chance to speak, started telling about what she had seen on Howdy Doody.

When Paciano handed her the phone, Layla had to make a conscious effort to inhale so she could speak.

She wheezed, “Hello?”

“Is this Maria?”

“I am she daughter. I can you help, I can help you.”

“I found your ad in my mailbox. I've been thinking about having someone clean my house once-a-week. How much do you charge?”

It was an obvious question, and Layla was unprepared for it. A satisfactory answer came to her almost as soon as her panic, but having an answer didn’t calm her. She could not sort through English grammar rules fast enough to sound competent.

“We first could visit your house. Then we you tell our cost. When we can visit?” She knew better grammar, and the corrections she started making, silently in her own head, almost kept her from understanding the woman's response.

Layla would have to go with Maria to translate. So it took a lie about having a house to clean the next day to set up an appointment late enough in the afternoon. The lie also gave her a day to try to find out how much to charge, but the Spanish teacher turned out to have only a little better notion than Layla. Layla had to settle for a wild guess at four to seven dollars for a house, depending, or maybe two dollars an hour if that's how cleaning people got paid.

The next day they found themselves in front of an old, clapboard house on half-an-acre of closely mown grass. Layla couldn't tell whether the house was three stories tall or just two stories with an attic full of secrets. Mrs Clarke was waiting for them on a wide front porch that gave a little when Layla stepped on it. The woman was a widow who had lost six children - four to educations which had taken them far away to university jobs, and two more, her youngest boys, to World War II.

As soon as Layla and Maria walked in the door, Mrs Clarke began telling the story of her life and explaining why she lived alone in such a big house. The house was almost typical of other homes in the neighborhood, all built in the nineteen twenties. It differed by being large by any standard - four large bedrooms, two bathrooms, a study, and a formal dinning room. Standing in the entryway, looking through the living room at an ordinary brick fireplace, Layla and Maria knew they were about to see the grandest house they'd ever seen from the inside. There were glimpses of dark, nineteen twenties furniture. In the entryway, a darkly patterned runner and a large ceramic pot, empty because the space was too dark for plants, sucked what little courage Maria had out of her. She did not have any idea how to clean a house like the one she was about to be shown, and she gave a brief tug on Layla's shoulder that signaled she wanted them to turn around and get out. Tangled up in her own anxiety, Layla did not understand.

For three or four minutes of her conversation with Mrs Clarke, Layla wasn't sure her English was intelligible. Then she gave up and blurted out, one word at a time, “I speak better English at school. I'm too nervous.” That was the point at which Mrs Clarke decided she was going to hire Maria if she could afford it.

The outburst helped. Layla’s English improved even if it was still full of mistakes. The word “little” appeared in their conversation several times as they toured the house, and Layla could not stop herself from pronouncing the final e as she had when she first learned the word while she was on the Kathryn Burke. Portuguese is full of final e sounds, and Layla's English was full of extra final e sounds, even at the ends of words that were not spelled with a silent E. Layla was aware of this defect in her English, so she also frequently deleted final Es when they should have been sounded.

When the tour ended, Layla was more afraid of giving a price too high, and losing the work, than of bidding too low. She swallowed hard, as if to drown her anxiety in stomach acid, and managed to speak with professional firmness, “Four dollars.” It was easily a seven dollar house. Mrs Clarke did not take the time to breathe a sigh of relief before she said, a little loudly, “Okay, then it's a deal.” She, too, had no idea what the proper price for house-cleaning was.

On the bus home, Maria felt a tiny bloom of confidence and used it to ask Layla a question she had been putting off since they got on the ship to America. “When we were coming here on the boat, you talked about going someplace where you could be someone. Who is it you think of being? Do you have any specific ideas about what you might do here?”

“If I don't change my mind, I'll be a doctor.”

“That would be a good thing. I hope it's possible,” and the possibility became the principal focus of Maria’s life.

***

There was not much left of the month of shelter Paciano and Oyama offered. Layla could almost smell the time running out, but if her mother could get another four-dollar-a-week job every time they spent a day passing out flyers, there was hope – hope they would not have to impose on their benefactors for much longer than the month they were offered. Layla hated the idea of over-staying their welcome, but it would not be so bad if they knew how they were going to get out on their own.

On the following Saturday, the weather was not such as would drag happy memories up from Maria's childhood. It rained a steady, all-day, Miami rain - a rain a little too far north of the tropics to be comfortably warm. Oyama bought a canvass raincoat for Maria in the Salvation Army Store. Maria wanted Layla to use it, but Layla was going to look for an apartment they could hope to afford while Maria and Oyama were leafleting, and Maria needed the raincoat to protect the leaflets. They all stood in the rain until the bus came for Maria and Oyama. Then Layla stood in the rain, waiting for the bus going in the opposite direction, into the city, almost back to the docks.

She was tired. She was especially tired of not knowing enough. She had no idea how to rent an apartment or what they cost. She only had a map of bus routes and the Spanish teacher's belief that the bus she was waiting for would take her to the cheapest apartment buildings in Miami. Layla had no idea what a cheap apartment building looked like. So she rode the bus to the end of the line looking out the window, trying to pass judgment on the apartment buildings she passed. By the time the bus settled into a long wait at its last stop, she had an idea of where the apartments she would least like to live in were found. So she sat waiting, counting on the bus to go back the way it had come but a little afraid it wouldn’t. Oyama had not given her enough money for any extra bus fares.

The driver spoke, “You aren't plannin' to ride the bus all day are ya?”

“No.”

“You can ride it back a ways, if that's what you're plannin', but you can't use it to stay out of the rain all day. It's not allowed.”

The vague accusation was a relief to Layla. “...back a ways...” The driver seemed to be confirming they would return the way they had come.

***

She got off the bus across the street from a collection of ugly, three-story, concrete boxes she had spotted. The one nearest the street had a metal door that was open - stuck at the end of a long arc scraped in a concrete walkway. The building also had a large sign she had read looking out the window of the bus, “Apartments Available Now.” Layla walked in and stood dripping in a hallway. A stairway that looked as though it would be sticky to step on led to the upper floors. On the far side of the stairs, the hallway was littered with urban detritus - mops and buckets and a rusted shovel that might still be in use. A paper bag slouched against the wall - gooey on the bottom, torn, and spilling out two empty potato chip bags covered in slime from deeper sources of garbage. A fifty-five gallon drum had been moved at times, leaving a series of circular rust marks on the concrete floor. A line of empty Yoo-Hoo chocolate drink bottles was neatly placed along one wall.

Layla clapped her hands and spoke loudly, “Hello.” She knew about knocking on doors, but it still seemed rude to her to pound on someone's door. She clapped, again, and shouted, “Hello!” On the third try, the door closest to her opened enough to allow one eye a view of the hallway. Then there was the clatter of a chain on the door, and a negro woman stepped halfway into the hallway. She left her hand on the doorknob. Layla started to speak but stopped when the woman asked, “What’re you doin' here?”

“I want a cheap apartment for rent. This look cheap. I don't know how rent one. Can you me help? Can you help me?”

“Girl, you be in Overtown. You pretty dark for a white girl, but you ain't dark enough to live here. This be Colored Town.”

“I'm sorry. My friend say... My friend send me here for rent a cheap apartment.”

“This place is just crappy. It ain't cheap. The landlord knows Negroes can't go no place else, and he can charge whatever he damn well want. Where you from?”

“You can tell me where to go?”

“The other side the river! Where you from?”

“What river?”

“The Miami River! Right over there!” and she pointed over Layla's shoulder.

Layla thanked her for the information without saying where she was from. She had no idea how far “right over there” was, but it didn't sound far, and she was used to walking.

She walked past collections of ugly apartment buildings scattered among small, run down, clapboard houses shedding white wash. They made her think about the poor she hadn't known existed in America. The houses were better than anything a poor Brazilian would live in, but they were worse than the house João built - the house she had made herself stop thinking of as home.

As she hoped, in only a few blocks she came to a river accompanied by a broad and busy street. She turned up the street, memorizing the name of a pharmacy that would mark where she needed to turn on her way back to the bus stop in Overtown. She was careful enough about marking the route back so that her fear of getting lost was irrational, but it was a fear that wouldn't go away.

In a few more blocks, she came to the Eighth Avenue Bridge, crossed it, and found herself on a street lined with businesses, but no apartment buildings. It was just more of the Miami she was newly accustomed to – tidy stores with painted-lady fronts, neon signs instead of ruby lips. Looking up the side streets she saw more small, clapboard houses. Had she turned down those streets, she might have found the houses in better condition than the homes in Overtown. She wanted to turn around and go home to Oyama's house, but she felt the obligation to exhaust the possibilities where she was.

When she left Codó, she didn't feel the obligation. When she left, she saw difficulties, possibly failure, but she imagined an end to it, possibly even a celebration. Now, there was an obligation to deliver the promise of America - an endless obligation, somehow as difficult to endure as anything she had done to get her family out of Brazil. There had never been a celebration.

She walked for fifteen blocks up Eighth Avenue, told herself she'd done her duty, turned around, and only had to remember two turns to get back to her bus stop. As her dime tinkled into the coin box, the bus driver asked her what she was doing in Overtown.

“I looked for an apartment. It was a mistake.”

“Colored Town would be a good place for a Mexican as far as I'm concerned.”

***

Layla had another plan for finding a place to live. The problem with it was that it might require her mother to change buses to get to her clients' homes. She didn't think Maria would object, and as it turned out, Maria was strongly in favor of it. It would mean Layla, and maybe the other children, wouldn't have to change schools. Still, Layla thought it would add twenty cents a day to their expenses.

They didn't pass out flyers the next day because it would have irritated people to see them working on a Sunday.

On Monday, Layla sat at lunch with her friends. They were all in the free lunch program, but Oyama and Maria sent a sandwich with Layla, anyway, and it looked a lot more appetizing than the beanie-weenie and canned string beans everyone else was staring at (and which were exactly what she'd had to eat in the shelter). She passed over her thoughts about food to one more purposeful. Her friends got free lunch, that meant they were poor, and Layla wanted to know where they lived.

The cheapest was an eight dollar per week, eight by twenty-two foot camping trailer. Layla wanted to go home with her friend, Clara, to see it. Clara not only had the cheapest home, she was Layla's best friend because she always spoke slowly and with good diction when Layla was around.

“You have two brothers, a sister, and your mother. You couldn't all fit into our trailer, no way, no how.”

“You can't think how we fit. We fit in one bed.”

“Not our beds. Maybe you could sleep three people stacked up on top of one another in one bed and two in the other, but you couldn't put them side-by-side.”

Still, it was agreed, Clara would ask her mother whether she would drive Layla home after Layla saw the trailer.

***

Letter carriers typically return from their routes in the middle of the afternoon, and so it was, once again, late afternoon when the post office called and informed Layla that it was not only against the law to put flyers inside mailboxes, it was against the law to put flyers on mailboxes or in any way touching mailboxes. It was still the voice that could have narrated news reels, and this was her second offense. Layla whispered, “Okay, I understand” and hung up the telephone. She put her head down on the table, and when she opened her eyes without lifting her head, she couldn't tell whether the golden swirls in the table top were blurry because she was too close to focus on them, or because of her tears. Maria noticed, and dried Layla's eyes, but it took Paciano's return to get her to focus on what her mother had actually told her. Maria had earned four dollars that day.

Layla could hardly get to the telephone fast enough. She called Mrs Clarke and wanted to know everything about the job Maria had done, and what she should do differently, and did they need to come to Mrs Clarke's house so Mrs Clarke could show them what wasn't just right, and Mrs Clarke said they should come when it was convenient for Layla, who she knew was in school. But what if Mrs Clarke was like one of those teachers who is especially kind when they explain why they are failing you?

And then Layla thought to herself that the stress she'd been suffering, and the constant need to try to figure out what to do next, had taught her to worry about everything. What if she'd been this way when they started out? There wouldn't have been any starting out. Before they left, she needed to think through every possibility, but she didn't worry about every possibility, at least, not so much. It was a long time ago, and she could remember being afraid, but the difference was that being afraid focused her attention on solving problems, but now when she worried she was just mildly hysterical. She was afraid back when she had not yet got anywhere. Now, she had gained so much at such a cost that she worried about losing it.

As she mulled over the change in herself, Layla recalled the fear she once had that Captain Mendez would betray her to Immigration. She had told herself that if they got deported, she would have to start over. Could she do that now? Could she make herself do it again? Actually give up her virginity this time? Tell every lie all over again just to get back to the lies she was telling now? Do it all fearing failure with the new knowledge that failure was the most likely outcome?

She wanted the Layla of Codó back again – the Layla who was only afraid and was willing to do what had to be done. So she promised herself she would do it all over, again, if she had to, and she reminded herself that she had never broken a promise to anyone.

So she ate well at dinner and went to bed early to get herself rested for whatever Mrs Clark and the rest of the world had to offer, but she couldn't sleep.

***

Seen from the low hill that overlooked the trailer park, Clara's trailer was one particular aluminum glare among an array of metal objects in the intemperate sun. A scattered few points of light were painted, usually yellow or blue, and they were easier for Layla to identify as trailers. They were the new trailers, colorful giants, eight feet by forty or forty-five feet. Layla had seen trailer parks filled entirely with these new ‘mobile homes,’ but her friend's home was not one of them. It was a camping trailer in a lot where a few mobile homes swam in a blinding sea of aluminum. The lots the trailers were supposed to occupy had been surveyed and formed a well-ordered array, but the placement of the trailers, themselves, was as disorderly as could be managed within the constraint created by the parallel arrangement of sewer and water lines.

Layla and Clara had cut through a thin, scraggly woods to reach the top of the hill. The reflected light from the camp below did not create an aesthetic that commanded Layla to stop in slack-jawed awe. Nonetheless, it was the top, so they stopped. Near their feet, a discarded tire provided warmth for mosquito larvae. Not far away, a pile of garbage was a composite of rotting remains of frozen dinners and one-quart beer bottles. Layla briefly saw the garbage pile as a memorial to a nearby dog carcass. She observed that the carcass was downwind of her. On the far side of the trailer park, a matching hill was covered by a matching scraggly woods that also had not fared well in its intimacy with humans.

As they left the trees, there were clumps of grass growing in hard-packed sand. Some of the clumps were just there to stumble over, but some lined paths used by the residents of the trailer park. Still others transformed the dry ground into a maze that invited Clara to create a new path home each day. The trailers sat on logs or concrete blocks that replaced the leveling devices which were either broken or never worked right. They passed a trailer with the remains of a flower garden overtaken by weeds and a child's broken toys, and in the next row they came to Clara's trailer. It rested cockeyed on flattened tires behind a flower garden that looked like a remnant preserved by magic after the departure of the elves.

“Your mother, she likes flowers.”

“My mother?! That's my garden!” and as they stepped onto a short, rock path that wound up to the trailer, Clara stopped. “It's the only nice thing in my life. When we moved here, the woman over there had a garden like this, and I wanted one like it, and some of the plants she gave me, and some I stole after she died, but most of them I just found. If you walk along the roads, looking in the ditches, you see all kinds of plants struggling to survive, and if you put them in a garden and take care of them, in a year they look nice.”

“How long?”

“How long have I been working on it?”

“Yes.”

“I started on it when I was six. My mother used to help, but now she just works and takes care of the house.”

“Here, everyone should have a garden.”

“No one stays here long enough. For a long time my mother said we were going to move out, too, but I think she's given up on that.”

Layla thought the inside of Clara's trailer was the cleverest thing she'd ever seen. The kitchen fit into the tiny trailer as easily as if the trailer were the magic wallet the Nymphs gave Perseus. Every nook or cranny that wasn't required by an appliance was a cupboard or a closet. Admittedly, the table was not going to seat five people, but the benches around it doubled as trunks. There was a door that opened onto two bunk beds. The upper bunk of one of them was piled with clothing, some of it neatly folded. On the other bed, it was the lower bunk that was buried in paraphernalia. Clara explained that she preferred sleeping in the upper berth, the other bed was her mother's.

“This is... ʻmarvelosoʼ  is an English word?”

“Marvelous. No, I don't think this is marvelous.”

“Everything in a small space.”

“It's too small. I am just here with my mother, and it's too small. It would be too small if I was here alone. You need room to move around.”

“Move around outside.”

“I know you need a cheap place, but five people in here would be in each other's way all the time. I mean all the time.”

“To us, that is nothing.”

“There's no room for your stuff, and when you find a place for something, you have to move half the trailer to get it out or put it away.”

“What stuff? I have two dresses, one shoes, two socks, two panties, and one bra. I wash panties and socks every night. I wash bra on Saturday.”

“The toilet is so small your butt won't fit on it.”

“We are not able to buy enough food to get fat. The toilet is okay.”

“There won't be any privacy!”

“We are a family. Not need privacy.”

“You go naked in front of your brothers?”

“We are a family.”

“Yuck.”

“So what?”

“Thank heavens I don't have to do that.”

“I did worse.” And she knew she shouldn’t have said that.

***

By the end of the week, Maria had a four-dollar-a-week job, a six-dollar-a-week job, and an eight-dollar one-time job, and she actually had sixteen dollars in her pocket. The family discussed these sums constantly in conversations that sounded like Enzo's teacher standing at the blackboard making up arithmetic problems. They compared their income to the eight-dollar-per-week trailer Layla found for them, and tried to calculate what they would need to move in.

Layla participated in these conversations with less enthusiasm than the rest. She knew they were beginning to over-stay their invitation from Paciano, and she had her own notion of what they would need to move out. She took her estimates to Paciano and Oyama, privately, with a request to be able to stay an extra week. She thought one more week would get her mother one more job, and that would give them an income somewhere between fourteen and sixteen dollars per week, roughly seven dollars more than their rent, a dollar per day for beans and rice. It was more than enough to get started, and they could expect Maria to find more clients later. Also in her considerations was the expectation that they would have roughly twenty dollars already in Maria's pocket to buy the things they would need to get started. She had a plan.

No one supported Layla's plan. Some complained she was counting chickens before they hatched. Some thought the plan would crumble around its financial edges. Paciano pointed out that they would have an electricity bill every month. “We can go to bed when it gets dark.” There would be transportation every day for Maria. “Eighty cents is still enough for beans and rice.” In truth, some of the family just liked living with Paciano and Oyama and wanted that to last a little longer. Layla wanted her family out and closed her ears to their objections. Reason was not at the core of anyone's argument. When the second four-dollar job came in according to plan, there was no sign of democratic action. No one wanted to move. Paciano and Oyama told everyone they could stay awhile longer. Paciano took Layla aside and told her, privately, they could stay awhile longer. Layla took eight dollars from her mother and paid their first week's rent.

They moved in. Layla didn't know how to get the electricity turned on and didn't care. She and her family were safe so long as they didn't do anything stupid and get themselves deported, and most importantly, there was nothing important facing her that she didn't know how to do. She just had to go to school like a child, help her mother with her work, and make sure her siblings did their homework. She put her mother, the bread winner, back in charge of the money, but she made her mother spend twenty-five cents to buy everyone a Coca Cola, and clinking the bottles together, they celebrated achieving independence in America. Enzo pointed out how much better off they already were than their relatives living in the Compound. No one mentioned that he had never been inside the Compound.

There were only four beds, so Layla insisted on sleeping on the short couch that only allowed for sleeping in fetal position, but her mother insisted longer and harder and won the couch. Her mother's victory was a moment of radical change, the seed crystal that precipitated normalcy.

The first night they slept in their clothes on bare mattresses. In the morning, they ate leftover rice and beans and rode to school with Clara on a regular school bus. After school, Layla went with Maria to buy five blankets from the Salvation Army Store, and they slept on bare mattresses, each with a blanket.

The first expense she hadn't counted on was the telephone. They needed one for Maria's work, and they were three days behind on their second week's rent. Then the propane tank went dry which choked off the refrigerator as well as the stove.

***

Like most of her peers, Layla's friends in school talked about movie stars and boys, and Layla got rare invitations to sleep-overs where there was more time for the talk about boys to segue into speculation about sex, and more time to exchange misinformation. Layla could have stunned her friends with her factual knowledge. She wondered what they would think if they knew. She heard them use the word “whore” to disparage girls they hardly knew. As the days passed, her discomfort with these conversations out-paced her fluency in English, and the quiet girl in the room grew even quieter.

There was another quiet girl in the room, and Layla found herself spending the free moments she had in school with Elizabeth. If Elizabeth didn't quite share the full scope of Layla's dislike for the conversation of their friends, at least she was disinterested in gossip.

Layla and Elizabeth talked about poverty as much as their friends giggled about sex. Layla had expected to be poor in the United States, but she hadn't expected to find so many other poor people.

Elizabeth was poor because her parents were communists. Her father had admitted to being a member of the Communist Party of America, and J. Edgar Hoover said the Communist Party advocated the violent overthrow of the government of the United States, and J. Edgar Hoover said the Communist Party had something called “Party discipline,” which meant that members of the Party had to advocate what the Party advocated. And so, Elizabeth's father was convicted of advocating the violent overthrow of the government of the United States and went to prison. That was the long version. In the 1950s, it was enough to say, “He admitted he was a communist.”

At first, their talk about poverty swirled around Elizabeth's understanding of her mother's political views, but it was not long before Elizabeth began sharing wishes that could not be. She explained to Layla that, as the Communist Party spiraled down the drain under the pressure of Tail Gunner Joe McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee, the Party used the last of its resources to send some of the children of the communists who went to prison to private boarding schools. Elizabeth was not among them.

“It would be so much easier to be in a school with less prejudice and more communist kids. I guess my father couldn't have been a very important communist.

“Sometimes Paul Robeson goes to those schools and gives free concerts. Then he has dinner or something with the communist kids. That's what I want - to hear Paul Robeson sing, and then have him tell me my father was a hero.”

Later, Layla asked, “When will he get out?”

“I don't know. I don't see how they can keep someone in prison for very long just for what he thinks.” And after a long pause, during which she shushed Layla, she added, “I only know him as the man across the table during our prison visits. I have no memory of him from before.”

When Elizabeth's father got out of prison, after nineteen years, he got an apology from the Governor of Maryland. He was still disbarred and did not think the fight to resume his law practice was worth it. He did rescue his wife and by-then-adult daughter from poverty.

In this way, their politically elevated talk about poverty became talk about their personal poverty, and their personal lives. Layla wanted to talk about her journey to the United States, but that would lead to questions she did not want to answer.

Like their friends, Layla and Elizabeth talked about their teachers, but they avoided most of the gossip. Sometimes they talked about the political issues their Social Studies teacher discussed in class.

They talked about their families, discussing personalities and trying to provide insight into one another's lives. Maria was hard to explain, but Elizabeth said she understood. She had a brother, a step-brother, actually, who was barely a year older than she was, and who she thought was depressed.

Elizabeth's house was almost a five mile walk from Layla's trailer, but each Saturday, Felipe volunteered to help his mother distribute flyers so Layla could visit Elizabeth. Her house was small and run down, with broken siding and even a broken window that had never been repaired. On the other hand, Elizabeth had a room of her own and the door could be locked.

Layla revisited the decision to meet at Elizabeth's house every time she went there. The conditions inside the house made her wonder about her friend's personal hygiene. She turned down offers even of bottled sodas and, when she could no longer wait to use the bathroom, she said it was time to go home and hurried to a gas station where the restroom was less greasy than was typical in the days when gas stations sold repairs instead of snack food.

Sometimes, Elizabeth's step-brother knocked on the door, and if they were not talking about a personal matter, they let him join their conversation for a while. As he entered the room, Layla and Elizabeth gave one another skeptical looks, but he seemed to understand that he could overstay his welcome. He was just enough older than Elizabeth to be on the high school debate team, and Layla found the issues they debated interesting enough, even if she didn't find them quite as interesting as Curtis did.

The main problem Layla faced during this time of poverty was Maria's employment. They'd been lucky at first. In subsequent weeks, the number of calls they got fell off so badly Layla thought about not paying the phone bill. When prospective clients did call, Layla assumed they would not be at home while Maria cleaned their houses, so she thought it best not to mention that Maria would be looking after Lara while she worked. Three weeks after they moved into the trailer they found another four dollar client. Then within a week they lost the six-dollar-a-week client when she arrived home to find Lara's feces in her toilet.

Sometimes their landlord gave them three dollars off their week's rent for cleaning a trailer someone moved out of. It was just a trailer, so it wasn't worth as much as a house, but the condition people left their trailers in could be so bad one trailer could take Maria all day.

Maria continued to spend Tuesdays and Saturdays going door-to-door with the flyers. On Tuesdays, she had to drag Lara with her, but at least Lara still fit under the turnstile on the bus, so she didn't have to pay. For another three weeks Maria's leafleting did nothing but waste ten cents every time she got on a bus. Altogether, there was not much change in the family's income over the course of three months, and Paciano was right, it was not enough.

Maria couldn't make herself forget the twenty-five cents they spent on the Cokes. Back in Codó, when they had talked among themselves about João, they were sometimes kind enough to attribute his bad temper to his history of malnutrition, and a fear of malnutrition haunted Maria. Twenty-five cents would have bought two cabbages to be boiled with a pepper or fried when they had some lard.

Paciano was not the only one who was right. Clara was right. The trailer was too small, and the family argued. Felipe and Enzo were still children and deliberately tormented one another - a pinch escalated into a punch that was returned as a kick, and there could be a strangle hold that left marks. Maria and Layla feared one of the boys would cause an injury that would require a trip to a hospital, and they knew the hospital would be legally required to report family abuse – whether to the police or Family Services wasn't clear, but both harbored the threat of deportation.

As the leafleting continued to fail to produce a new client, Layla felt an urge to go herself to help. She didn't quite see what she could do differently, and she resisted going because of the twenty cents in bus fare, but the time came when she decided she had to go. What she found was that Maria had exhausted the neighborhood pointed out by the Spanish teacher and was focused on a nearby blue collar neighborhood. The neighborhood was better off than most of the neighborhoods they passed through. The houses were neat, white, well-maintained clapboard homes with well-kept lawns and shrubs around them. They were about as nice as the house João built, and João could have afforded them a housekeeper, but it was still blue-collar, and Layla's first guess was that they were in the wrong place.

She told Maria she could get advice at school, information about other places University faculty lived, but she could not face two days of stress, from Saturday to Monday, over this problem. She had to take direct action then and there. So they walked four miles to the place on the map of bus routes that was marked as the location of the University of Miami. It was a place with a lot of pedestrians, and Layla started handing leaflets to anyone who looked more like a teacher than a student. When they came to an area with less pedestrian traffic, she went inside a building to look for people, but what she found was a bulletin board. There was a sign on the board insisting that notices be approved by the Office of the Dean of Students, and all of the notices had a box rubber-stamped in the lower right-hand corner with a signature scribbled in it. Layla had no idea how to go about getting that approval, and she thought she probably couldn't get it, anyway. So she just  posted a flyer. Then she took it down, tore the lower right-hand corner off it, and re-posted it. Maybe no one would know it never had the approving signature on it. They spent the rest of the day walking down every hallway of every building posting flyers on every bulletin board they could find, including the one's with signs that said For Departmental Use Only instead of signs requiring the imprimatur of the Office of the Dean of Students.

Their efforts resulted in two calls, one call resulted in a monthly cleaning at seven dollars, the other was from a man who didn't like the idea of Mexicans taking over the jobs of colored women. He didn't have a job for them, but they now had two addresses that were outside the area they had first leafleted, and Layla thought those addresses might identify a neighborhood they should prospect for clients.

***

They never went hungry, and they were never seriously malnourished, but they suffered every other effect of poverty. Layla was able to take the teasing she got for her clothes by thinking of them as symbols of what she knew she had accomplished. She still took pride in what she had done, because she still believed in her family's future. The boys were harassed most days and, to make matters a lot worse, they would use a slur made against one them as a slur against the other.

Layla got the electricity turned on, only to see it turned off when they couldn't pay the bill. They were three weeks behind on their rent. Another week and they would be put out of the trailer. Anticipating eviction, she had calculated how long they would have to stay in the homeless shelter to save enough money to be sure of three months rent in another trailer park.

The wistful sound of Enzo's voice as he tried to argue in favor of asking Paciano and Oyama to put them up made it hard for Layla to veto the idea. However, Maria supported Layla, and Felipe reluctantly changed his mind. Maria, more than anyone, wished to spend time with Oyama, and her decision brought a shared sadness.

What worried Layla more than anything else was that waiting to be evicted would mean involving the police. So she marked the Monday of the next week on her mental calendar as the day for moving back to the homeless shelter. Everyone in the family knew what Monday would bring, but its arrival was so certain that no one spoke of it, or even felt much emotion.

The accursed day arrived with a perfect ocean breeze pushing out a week's accumulation of stagnant air. The sky was blue enough for two skies. Maria and Layla began the difficult task of deciding what they could carry to the homeless shelter and what would have to be left behind. They were about to lose a lot of what they had been able to scrape together over six months. The pennies they would get from a garage sale would be no compensation at all.

Layla was in front of the trailer sorting their possessions into the things they could carry on the bus, and the things to be left behind. Their landlord was making his usual Monday circuit of the trailer park. He stopped and asked the landlord's obvious question, “What's going on here?”

“We have to move.”

“Without telling me?”

“I would have. We haven't left. We can't pay the rent, again. It's easier for everyone just to go. No eviction.”

“How far behind are you?”

“Starting today, four weeks.”

“You've been here for how long? Five or six months?”

“Six.”

“How much can you pay?”

“I don't know. I'd have to check. Not half.”

“Could you get caught up if I let you stay awhile?”

“We would try. We try finding more work all the time.”

“Pay me what you can. It's better for me than having to find someone else to rent your trailer who will wreck it and move out in a month. Maybe I can find more work for your mother to do around here. Can she do any fixing stuff – leaky faucets kinds of things?”

“No, but me and my brother can. We grew up on a farm. We helped our father fix stuff.”

“You have to understand none of this means you can keep getting farther behind. You have to get caught up, and I won't have enough work for you to make much difference – just a little, and that won't pay very well. I'm not much better off than my renters.” The last claim had been true two decades earlier.

***

The Sunday visits were erratic, they depended on how much guilt Layla felt about the bus fare. They went from being visits with Elizabeth to being visits with Elizabeth and Curtis. The visits always started out with the three of them chatting in Elizabeth's bedroom, but sometimes they went somewhere. Curtis often had a little money, not much, but enough to get them on a bus. Layla had stories from her mother about riding to the end of the trolley line with her grandfather and walking back. So Curtis paid three bus fares, and they walked back. They didn't have an educated guide for their walk, but they complained happily about the distance, and made amusing observations along the way. Layla looked for a crab apple tree, but all she could find were Pyracantha berries. Curtis and Elizabeth both knew the berries gave the birds who ate them diarrhea, and the berries provided a quarter of an hour of hilarity over the time a flock of Cedar Waxwings discovered the berries and all got diarrhea together.

***

Summer arrived, and Layla redoubled her efforts to find work for herself, but if potential employers didn't care what age she was, or believed her claim to be sixteen, then they didn't like her Mexican look and the accent that made her an obvious “wet back.” She and Felipe sometimes got a job mowing someone's lawn, but all they could get their hands on was a “push mower” in a time when “push mower” meant a lawn mower with no motor at all. They took turns pushing the mower at a run and could mow a lawn faster than someone with a power mower. The occasional customer who watched them work thought they were utterly mad. The little money they earned just vaporized in the needs of the family. Layla frequently arranged for her outings in search of work to take her near Elizabeth's house, and when she felt she had done her duty for the day, she would go sit on Elizabeth's bed and rage against a culture that treated her as a child even though she could pass for fourteen.

Layla's siblings spent the summer barefoot, postponing the cost of new shoes to the fall. The heat built up until the days felt like days remembered in Brazil. The asphalt on the streets softened, and when children crossed a street, they were comic figures who began the crossing calmly, standing upright while they imagined themselves fakirs walking on hot coals, and then finished the crossing on the run with their knees almost hitting their chins.

Summer arrived, and clients canceled while they went on vacation. Leafleting continued, but the results didn't pay for the cost of printing the leaflets, which could no longer be done on the mimeograph machine at school.

On one rare day when he could afford twenty cents each instead of ten, Curtis decided to take Layla and his step-sister to a public swimming pool. Layla didn't have a bathing suit, but Elizabeth had an old one that was only a little too tight. Then Curtis said he wasn't going to leave the room while the girls changed clothes. So Elizabeth whispered to Layla, and the two of them grabbed their suits, ran into Curtis's room, and held the door closed. Layla got a chair wedged under the door knob and held it while Elizabeth changed, and then Elizabeth held the chair, but while Layla was changing she threatened to let Curtis in. Layla suddenly felt herself back in childhood, but it was too late for a childhood of idyllic ignorance. She felt her anger engulf Elizabeth and Curtis. What right did they have to be childish? She raised her voice to an angry shout. “Go ahead, what difference does it make?” Elizabeth didn't go ahead. She didn't know what difference it would make, but she knew there was one. The day was disappointing, and it was the only time they went swimming.

Felipe let the summer pass hanging out with friends from school and waiting for Layla to find work for him. Enzo tried to escape boredom by hanging onto Layla, and as she spent less time with Elizabeth and Curtis she became more likely to let him keep her company on day-long meanderings that included a desultory search for work. Enzo had strict orders to stay out of the way when Layla was trying to make some money, but there were a few occasions when he engaged someone they met in conversation on his own. It was these conversations that made Layla realize how far behind Enzo's command of English she had fallen. She was used to comparing herself to Maria, listening to her mother's attempts to communicate when they went shopping. She was embarrassed by her mother's English, and Enzo's was enough better than hers to bring on the fear that her English was prejudicing people against hiring her.

Layla did not wait for school to resume to start trying to improve. In the evenings she watched the news on the family's tiny, second-hand television set and then read aloud from newspapers she scavenged during the day. She tried to emulate the accent required of announcers. In those days, announcers had to have the Midwestern accent of the NBC Pronunciation Guide. It wasn't the accent of the Northeast's upper classes, but it seemed like the accent of upwardly mobile Americans.

When school resumed she was a freshman in high school and full of ideas to improve her vocabulary. On the first day of school, she expressed sympathy for how hard each of her teachers had to work at the beginning of the year, and then went ahead and asked them to make lists of their favorite words without regard to their difficulty or how commonly the words were used. On the second day, she received a total of fifty words of which twenty were new to her, and on the third day she found ways to use all twenty words, and while she was at it, she informed her biology teacher that she had already learned all of the words in the glossary in the back of her biology book.

Her English teacher, Mrs Turnbull, spent ten minutes telling Layla how Joseph Conrad never spoke a word of English before he was twenty and still became one of the finest stylists of the language, so far, in the twentieth century. Layla was inspired with a renewed sense of purpose in her struggles to live in America, and just that easily, Mrs Turnbull became her favorite teacher. She began finding excuses to make a quick stop in Mrs Turnbull's room on her way to the bus after school. For a long time, she had a wistful hope, a fantasy, that Mrs Turnbull would offer her a longer conversation and a ride home. It never happened.

Layla's excuses for stopping in on Mrs Turnbull usually involved the meaning of a word. A thirty-second etymology lesson a few times each week soon led Layla to the unabridged Webster's in the school's library and a fierce desire to own the Oxford English Dictionary, a desire she satisfied twenty years later when the OED became available as an almost affordable edition printed in tiny type on velum with an accompanying magnifying glass. She shared these lessons and her desire with Enzo, and for the first time, being in America brought her closer to one of her family members instead of making their lives contentious.

When Layla thought about her family's poverty, she had to turn, afterward, to remembering her reasons for taking her family to America instead of Belém. First among them was the education they could all get in America. She fussed with herself over whether she should use the word “education” or “knowledge.” There was a difference. Education was what she needed to make something of herself, but knowledge was what she valued.

***

The start of school relieved Layla of a lot of anxiety. She no longer felt the obligation to spend her days looking for work. She still spent Saturdays distributing leaflets, and Maria picked up two clients. Sunday's could again be spent with Elizabeth and Curtis.

The third such Sunday was the first time Curtis decided to walk partway home with Layla. It was uncomfortable for Layla because she needed to urinate but didn't want to stop at her usual gas station. Still, the conversation was an interesting continuation of the one Layla had abandoned when she announced she was going home. She had said she would never cheer for a team, let alone be a cheerleader, because it never mattered to the world who won. Curtis tried to make a case for cheer leading – a case he found a little easier to pursue when there was only one young woman to argue against but which was still doomed to an outcome that could be no better than letting Layla have the last word. Her last word was that the real reason Curtis liked cheer leading was that cheerleaders were all pretty and wore short skirts that showed off their legs. She added that, if he admitted to the truth and asked nicely, she would put on Elizabeth's shorts and let him stare at her legs all he wanted.

The second time Curtis walked partway home with Layla was awkward. Several attempts at conversation quickly petered out. When they reached the intersection that marked the point at which they would separate, Curtis escorted Layla across the street. It was a manly gesture that annoyed Layla who could manage to tell red lights from green entirely on her own.

The third time Curtis decided to walk partway home with Layla, he took her hand, she took it back, and he blurted out, “I'll pay you ten dollars to have sexual intercourse with me.”

“Where would you get ten dollars, and what makes you think I'd do it if you had it.”

“I already have ten dollars, and you aren't a virgin are you?”

“Okay, two questions at a time. Where'd you get the ten dollars, steal it from your mother? And what makes you think I'm not a virgin?”

“Where I got it doesn't matter, and I didn't steal it from my mother.”

“Where you got it might matter. For example, what if it was drug money? And you're still short an answer.”

“You know it's not drug money.”

Layla did not respond.

“Can I start over?”

“It's too late. I'm already offended, but okay, start over.”

“I like you a lot, and I want to have sexual intercourse with you. I also would like you to have the ten dollars even if you don't do it with me, but if you don't, I have to keep it because I might need it to actually pay someone.”

“So you think starting over was better?”

“No.”

“It sounds pretty much like you're saying I'm your first choice whore. I guess that's better than being your second choice whore. Am I your first choice?”

“Layla, please, I shouldn't have said anything about the ten dollars.”

“Except you know I need the ten dollars. I talk about our money problems all the time.”

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make it sound like I thought you were a prostitute.”

“You're only fifteen. You can't be ten dollars worth of horny, anyway.”

“You can't imagine.”

“You could try being a little bit romantic - something like ʻI've loved you since the first time I saw you.ʼ”

“I do love you.”

“Bullshit. Besides, it wouldn't matter if you did, because I don't love you. You're okay for being my best friend's brother, but that's all.”

“Girls get horny, too, don't pretend they don't.”

“Girl's get pregnant, too, and don't pretend boys do, too.”

“We could use a rubber.”

“Not only that, boys think it's cool to get girls to do it. Then they'll only marry virgins. It's stupid to have sex with a boy. Besides, you're stupid. You can't just blurt out that you want to have sexual intercourse, and girls aren't going to do it with stupid boys. You have no sophistication. Even a girl who would do it wouldn't do it with you. And besides, I don’t even like boys. If I was going to do it, I’d do it with an older man.”

Curtis had nothing to say, so after a while, Layla had to go on.

“If I said, ʻyes,ʼ in two days everyone in school would call me a whore.”

“You don't think I'd tell, do you?”

“Yes.”

“I promise I wouldn't.”

“It doesn't matter. We don't have a place to do it. Both our houses are like bus stations.”

“I have a friend who will let us use his house. No one's home after school.”

“That's how you keep a secret?! Why am I still talking to you about this. There isn't going to be any secret to keep.”

“Outside. Warm, sunny day. I'll find a secret place in the woods and get at least three blankets to lie on.”

“Curtis! I didn't say I'd do it! I was giving you reasons for not doing it!”

***

There came a day when Maria said in Portuguese, “I had a conversation with the landlord, today. He said we were only a week behind on the rent. I thought we were three weeks behind. How did we get caught up?”

“Oh Mother, we haven't been behind for a long time. You lost track. I hope you haven't been worrying.” Maria didn't pursue the matter with Layla, but she didn't think she was mistaken.

***

It took two years for Maria's housekeeping business to earn enough money for the family to move out of the trailer. Layla scarcely saw the advantage to moving. A one bedroom apartment gave them marginally more space to be inefficient in. They would no longer have to move the rice bin onto the table to get to the dishes, and then put the rice bin back to put the dishes on the table. They would get to take a few more steps on their way to the bathroom, but they were in a building that was even more obviously a slum than the trailer park, and now their doubtful neighbors were just on the other side of the wall. They were still packed together with no privacy. The deciding argument was that Maria could finally sleep stretched out on a single bed.

As Layla's life grew more settled, she somehow found herself with more responsibility. On top of her own school work, and helping her siblings with theirs, on top of helping Maria with all the business matters her poor English made hard to manage, there was a new job she found for herself.

Sundays were still blocked out for Elizabeth, but the walls of the blockade were regularly breached by her family's demands. Even the time she had with Elizabeth at school shrank as administrators shortened the school's lunch break to cope with the disciplinary problems that came with students having any free time. Their most significant communication seemed to be the knowing looks they exchanged as they passed in the hallway. They didn't speak. The formulaic expressions of passing acquaintances were too mundane for them.

High school was not easy for Layla. She found she needed to do the homework, and she needed to help her brothers with their homework. The owner of a market thought child labor laws needn't apply to Mexicans, and hired her to stock shelves at night. Lack of sleep interfered with school, and there were scholarships in the future that she had to have. So each day she pawed at excellence through a wall of fatigue. After all she'd been through, she owed it to herself to succeed, and she knew fatigue was just a feeling her brain had, but it was a feeling like a dense substance that forced her to lie down at night and had to be thrown off like lead covers when morning came.

Her geometry teacher noticed her head nodding and asked her whether she was sleepy. She said, “No.” He asked, again, the next day, and she still said, “No.” The day after that he stopped her at the end of class and asked her to talk to him after school. She said she had to take the bus. He offered her a ride home. She was too tired to think of another excuse for avoiding him, so she said, “Okay.”

Mr. Andersen was long separated from his Danish ancestry, he was darker than Layla and was the one member of the faculty who could have passed for Latino. Layla vaguely understood that he would have been better liked by his students if he taught some other subject. She was conscious enough of this fact to resist absorbing her friends' attitude toward him, which was frequently expressed with the word “ishy.” She kept the suspicion to herself that, when he walked the aisles between the desks while students were bent over an assignment, he was less interested in looking at the work in progress than in looking over girls' shoulders and down their shirts.

***

When she sat down next to his desk, Mr. Andersen didn't ask whether she was sleepy, he asked why.

She was too tired to resist his inquiry with more than the mildest defense. “I work some nights stocking shelves in a grocery store. It isn't too bad, and it isn't every night, but sometimes by the end of the week I'm pretty tired, but I'll be okay on Monday.”

“First of all, you're too young to be working like that, it's against the law, but that's secondary. Some of the juniors and seniors who work at night do it because they care more about their jobs than they do about school, but that's not you. You need to quit doing this. You know it interferes with your school work.”

“I can't quit.”

“Explain to me why not.”

“We can't afford it. My mother doesn't make enough for five of us.”

“Your father isn't at home?”

“My father is in Brazil. I hope he's dead.”

Her tone of voice convinced Mr. Andersen that “My mother doesn't earn enough” wasn't just any excuse. He was tempted to follow his curiosity and see what he could find out about Layla's life at home. However, he was raised in a Southern culture that, while it encouraged gossip, discouraged prying. He turned to practical questions.

“You can't find a job that's on weekends?”

“I've tried.”

“After school instead of at night?”

“It wouldn't help. I have a lot of things to do. If I work after school, I'll wind up doing my homework late at night. It's better doing my homework after school, then work at night.”

“I guess I get it. I don't know what to tell you, but I'll think about it, and see what I can do.”

“I don't think there's much you can do, but I appreciate your thinking about it. Please don't talk to anyone about what I told you.”

“What you told me? I mean okay, but you haven't told me anything except that you work at night. Kids your age aren't supposed to do that, but we all know it happens and I don't think it would interest anyone. Is there something I missed?”

“No, I don't like talking about myself, that's all. Sometimes people ask questions – like about my mother and father.”

“Okay, I understand,” but rather than actually understanding, he wondered again about “I hope he's dead.”

He stood up and offered her a hand to get out of her seat. On the way home, he asked whether it would help if he made a habit of giving her a ride home from school.

“Not really. I can't start the stocking until nine o'clock, anyway.”

“Why don't I give you a ride home on Friday's, anyway, just to give us a chance to talk.”

“Okay.”

On Monday, Mr. Andersen began something new. As he walked up the aisle behind Layla, he put his hand on her shoulder, and paused for the count of three. On Friday, as they walked toward the door of his classroom, Mr. Andersen put his arm around Layla's shoulders in a sort of sideways hug.

Mr. Andersen was generally acknowledged as the smartest person in the school, proving that smart people are icky, but Layla began looking forward to Fridays. She liked the idea of having the attention of the smartest person in the school.

Of course, Mr. Andersen had to use Fridays to talk about the importance of science and math classes to Layla's future. That was boring, except for the times when Mr. Andersen decorated it with unexpected digressions that came from his own abandoned ambitions in the ethereal regions of mathematics. He talked about Kurt Gödel's proofs of the impossibility of proving certain propositions that other mathematicians were working diligently to prove. He talked about non-Euclidean geometries with absurd axioms that turned out to be useful. He talked about these things, and Layla was the only person he knew who would listen.

Mr. Andersen soon met Maria, and with Layla's help, they talked about possible futures for Layla. He thought she might make a decent mathematician, and hearing Maria's reply, Layla pointed out that mathematicians are well-prepared to work as accountants. Maria still preferred the idea of a daughter who was a physician, but of course, that was up to Layla. He found a weekend job for Layla, but the hours were too short, she wouldn't make enough money. He referred a client to Maria, which briefly improved their income, but not enough to allow Layla to quit her job.

Maria's depression did not lift so much as it burned out. She continued to suffer from the fact that her children's lives were difficult, but she also understood Layla's enduring expectations for the family's future, and it helped that she could find ways to help Layla, though not all of her attempts at help went well. She tried taking on Layla's job at the market, but even though her English slowly improved, she missed details when she read labels. So the iodized salt got mixed with the non-iodized salt, and when they changed the picture of the little girl on the Oreo cookies, she didn't know where to put them. Her failure at this was especially depressing, both because the job was such a burden for Layla and because her failure at it was the result of her previous failure to learn English the way her children had.

Mr. Andersen had other occasions to talk to Maria about Layla, and Maria settled on the idea that Layla should study math even if she wanted to go to medical school. Layla understood all the reasons for studying mathematics. She also had the aesthetic sense that allowed her to appreciate the logic of geometry. It was the first math class she had taken that revealed this kind of logic, and she understood Mr. Andersen when he talked about the problems real mathematicians worked on. He wasn't talking about about memorizing the steps in long division. She shared, partly, his enthusiasm when he gave her a short lesson in propositional logic and tried to describe what a sufficiently complex computer, if one could ever be built, could do.

Back when she told Captain Mendez that she wanted to be a doctor, she only said it because she knew it was the right answer to a question. When becoming a doctor actually became her ambition she kept it a secret from everyone except her mother. She was a little embarrassed whenever her mother shared it. So many people said they were going to be doctors, and so few succeeded, that she didn't like to advertise her intention. Besides, she now found herself waffling. Mr. Andersen's geometry class was more work than her other classes. She had to do the homework, and she had to do it well to get good grades. Still, she got the point to mathematics in a way that other students did not, and it attracted her. She tried to cover all the bases by thinking that, if she got into medical school knowing some mathematics, she could do things other doctors could not – medical research for example.

Throughout their discussions, Layla and Mr. Andersen had one thing in common. They both said they didn't like talking about themselves, but what they both meant was that they didn't think they should talk about themselves. However, the day came when Layla asked Mr. Andersen how he wound up teaching math in Miami. He started to answer. Then he realized where that would take him and stopped, but it was too late. He’d put Layla into position to goad him into continuing

“I can't talk about myself because it would make people think there's something wrong with me. I've had so much privilege, I'm supposed to be someone important, not a high school math teacher. My family has money. Gobs of money. Old money, new money, money by marriage, money by divorce, money earned, money inherited, money purloined. Not just my parents. My uncles. My aunts. Cousins. Third cousins twice removed. I'll probably have money, myself, when my parents die. I assume I'll inherit, provided I don't do anything crazier than being a math teacher – something like becoming a Democrat.

“They all have so much money, but they all still have this puritan work ethic, so they think they have to work and make still more money. Most of them are hundred dollar per hour lawyers. Of course, they start right off as partners in high-priced law firms. I don't think most of them are even better than average lawyers. Why would they be? But they have connections that are worth a lot to big corporations.

“When my father got tired of making more money to pile on top of his pile, he decided he wanted to be an ambassador. So he said the magic words, “I want to be an ambassador,” and in a week or two he was an ambassador.

“When I graduated from the high school for kids with gobs of money, my father had a heart-to-heart talk with me. He laid out all the options for my future he could think of. He used the word ‘smorgasbord’ to emphasize all the possibilities he was offering me.

“When I said I wanted to study mathematics, the look I got from him... I don't know how to describe it. We were rich. People in our family didn't actually study anything difficult. However, when he thought about it, he couldn't see anything wrong. He certainly didn't see me as merely the CFO of some big corporation...”

“The CFO?” Layla interrupted.

“The chief financial officer. Sorry. Anyway, he made a comment about understanding mergers, which I suppose he thought I would be good at. When I started graduate school in mathematics, that just confirmed to everyone that I was too weird for anyone to possibly understand, but I was still seen as having what they call ‘prospects.’

“But then when it came time to select my PhD thesis, I got stuck. I couldn't think of a problem I really wanted to work on. I didn't want to do something for no other reason than that it would get me past my thesis committee. I wanted to do something people would care about. I had prospects, so there was no special need for me to work on something mundane just to finish my degree.

“Some of the mathematicians at Duke had suggestions, but none of them seemed very interesting to me. Maybe my life would have been different if I'd gone to Princeton, but we were Southerners, and Duke is where my family went. I think I decided on Duke just to keep from looking still weirder to my family.

“So anyway... Uh... I’m sorry, I need a digression here... My first year in graduate school, I was flying back to D.C. from Duke, and I struck up a conversation with the fellow sitting next to me. He turned out to be the only interesting school principal I ever met. I wouldn't have thought such a creature existed.

“No, I take that back. Now I sound like my relatives talking.

“Anyway, we had dinner together after the flight, and today, I don't know whether I have a best friend, but he'd be a candidate. So I told him I had an interest in education. I even had a fantasy. Mathematicians generally get burned out by the time they're forty, and I thought I knew something about what is wrong with the way math is taught, so I used to think about becoming a public school teacher when I reached forty.

“I'm going on too long, here, but it's almost over.

“So my friend knew I had this fantasy, and when I told him I was stuck on a problem for my thesis, he just said, ʻCome teach for me.ʼ  Math teachers are hard to come by, so I could start without a teaching credential. I was actually depressed by my inability to think of an interesting mathematics problem I had a chance of solving. So I went home and told my wife that's what I wanted to do.

“It wasn't fair to my wife. She was the only woman among my family's acquaintances I ever would have considered marrying. She was the only one who could talk about anything that interested me, but it wasn't fair. I was throwing away the prospects I had when she agreed to marry me, and that is not a small matter to wealthy people. My wife pointed out that, if I became a teacher, we'd be poor, but she agreed to it. Of course, we aren't poor, but we're not anywhere near as rich as we could be.

“Anyway, the answer to your question is: My wife wanted to be closer to her family. I owed her, and a math teacher can get a job anywhere. So here we are in Miami. The end.”

“That wasn't as boring as you said it would be. Maybe almost, but not quite.”

“Well, boring or not. You are ambitious. You will be a rich and famous physician, and now you think I am at least a ninny, if not a nincompoop, for being a high school teacher.”

“Mr. Andersen, I don't think you are a ninny or a nincompoop. I don't even know what those words mean, but I can guess. I am ambitious because I want to be what my mother wants, but that is not about money. It's about knowing things. She thinks doctors know more than anyone else. I thought so, too, but you give me other ideas.”

“Stop. A ninny is exactly what I am. My own family has convinced me. Next month one of my cousins is getting married. I have no idea who, but every month some cousin gets married, so there will be a wedding. Our weddings are memorable affairs, at least they would be memorable if there weren't so many of them. Probably five hundred guests. My cousin will never notice whether I'm there or not, but my parents will notice, and I could get disinherited for failing to attend a family wedding. Maybe not disinherited, but I've embarrassed my parents enough.

“Know what the people I meet there will say to me? I heard the exact phrase three times at the last wedding. They must have shared it among themselves before I arrived, probably with a lot of head shaking and comments about what you could expect from a mathematician. They will start by asking, just to be polite and not say something they shouldn't, they will ask, ʻAre you still teaching?ʼ  And of course, I will say, ʻYes.ʼ  Then they start with their advice. ʻDon't you suppose you could do the world more good in a real profession? The law? Think how much good you could do as a lawyer. There are things a successful lawyer can do besides serve on the board of General Motors. Think what a lawyer who understands mathematics could charge, and what you could do for the world with the money.ʼ  And later they will talk among themselves about how I might still ʻcome around,ʼ  and how having been a teacher would even help if I went into politics. I'm not joking, every single person at the wedding said I'd ʻcome aroundʼ  to someone at some time. I know because it's an easy extrapolation from the number of times I actually overheard someone saying it.”

Layla finally got a turn. “It's obvious you are not the ninny. Your family sounds like a bunch of ninnies. You have made a miraculous escape from ninnydom.”

“Maybe. I don't think I'm any more unhappy than the rest of my family is – thanks to a tolerant wife.”

He went on for a while before he decided it was time to take a chance. “Now, I think it's your turn to tell what brought you here, but please keep it short.”

“I'm sorry, that isn't something I talk about.”

“What I just told you isn't something I talk about, either. Are you sure you don't talk about it? Be fair.”

“I'll think about it, but not now.” There was a silence that lasted long past the time someone should have said, “I guess it's time to go.” Then Layla began, again.

“Are we friends, or are we teacher and student?”

“There's a complicated question for you. What if I said, Both?”

“I don't think that's possible. You have to grade me harder than the other students, because sometimes we act like friends and you have to prove we're not.”

“I grade you just like everyone else.”

“No, you don't.”

“What do I do differently?”

“I don't know. Maybe you just grade me more carefully, so you find more mistakes.”

***

“I'll tell you about my parents, then maybe I'll tell you about myself. It can't be short, and it can't be all at once, and you have to promise me two things.”

“Okay, and what do I promise?”

“First, promise you won't ask me to tell any more than I decide to tell. You can't even ask me a question that makes me say. ʻNo, I won't talk about that.ʼ  Second, you must promise not to tell anyone anything I tell you. You must promise not to tell even if you think you have to tell, and you must promise that your promise is more important than anything else. What you hear won't be as bad as that sounds, but you still have to make that promise.”

“Yeah, that sounds bad all right. As a teacher I have a legal obligation to report certain crimes or threatened crimes against you or other people – crimes such as kidnapping or murder, maybe even grand theft, I'm not sure.”

“What about a long time ago in another country?”

“I don't suppose so.”

“Then you can promise.”

“Okay, I promise I won't repeat anything unless it's a horrific crime committed in this country.”

“You're safe.”

She talked about her father, first, trying to be objective, telling everything she knew about his own childhood that may have been exculpatory. She told Mr. Andersen how respected João was in the whole community, not just the Assembléia de Deus. When she went on to João as a husband and father, she told anecdotes as objectively as possible. Then she went on to her mother.

“What you have seen of my mother, so far... I'm afraid it’s all you will ever see of her... What you have seen makes her look like an illiterate immigrant – a person Americans look down on. If I fail to make her seem like one of the most intelligent people you've ever met, then I will have failed.”

Layla had made efficient work of her father, but she told everything about her mother. She began by talking crisply enough about Maria's childhood, but as Bernardo's death approached, her speech grew quiet and dreamy as though she were searching through her mother's memories for those that were really her own. She told how Maria had tried to save some of her family's culture for her siblings. When she described Pastor Vinicius's services, she grew angry, but the only expression of her anger was not in her tone of voice. She only said, quietly, “I am so angry right now I can't stand being me.”

Several times, she seemed to come to a stop with tears waiting in her eyes, but she hadn't stopped. She was speaking, silently to herself, about how she had treated Maria as they fled from João. The attitude she adopted with her mother was necessary, her mother would not have gone otherwise, but as she told about her mother's life, she was reminded of something she had only recently begun to think about - what their escape must have been like for Maria. And she was reminded of something that had been troubling her thoughts for a long time – they could have gone to Belem instead of into poverty in America.

When she finished talking about Maria, she was done for the day. If she decided to talk about herself, it would be another time.

***

Layla, of course, always had an unmet need to talk about herself. She had told her story in fantasy conversations many times. She had no assurance that Mr. Andersen would not be judgmental, but at least, he was partly her friend, and she had his promise.

So she told her story almost as she had rehearsed it. She hesitated to talk about João's attack on Felipe. It was not her story alone, and Felipe would be in Mr. Andersen's class in two years.  But there was no way to justify herself without telling it. She skipped over the time Felipe stabbed a man who tried to rape her.

Just once, she came to a full stop long enough to make Mr. Andersen wonder what she was thinking. She was wondering what happened to Captain Mendez, both the night they arrived in Miami and afterward. Someday, she thought, she would find him, again.

***

Felipe said Layla was obsessed with grades. Layla said she was obsessed with getting scholarships. Felipe said it was the same thing. Layla said it wasn't. It was Enzo who pointed out how childish they both sounded.

It wasn't only scholarships. Layla wanted to be a doctor and Layla knew she had to be prepared to do well in college. She came from a culture in which teenagers were treated as adults. Never mind that she came to a culture in which universal education had extended childhood. If they were ever to see their descent into poverty as having been worthwhile, she could not treat school with the negligence of childhood.

In fact, her focus on grades was not so unusual. Every teacher, at least beyond the sixth grade, has students who are so grade-conscious their parents should offer to pay them for every grade they get that is not an A.  Ten years later, it can be hard to imagine why grades seemed so important in high school, so we forget they once were.

Her final, end-of-the-year grade in geometry was a B. She didn't know whether she was angry, but she knew she was more than frustrated, and she didn't know how fairly she'd been graded. She begged Mr. Andersen for a chance to do some extra credit to get an A.

“No, I can't treat you differently from other students. Well, I already treat you differently, but I've never given a student a chance to do extra credit after the grades are in, and I can't start now. I understand it was difficult for you to get all the homework done. When you apply for college, if you ask me for a letter of recommendation, I will say you're the best student I've had.”

“But what about scholarships? And it's a math class!”

“Scholarships are where letters of recommendation make the most difference, and as for getting into college, a good math score on the SAT will mean more than your grade in geometry. It may even get an admissions committee to read your letters of recommendation.”

Felipe was right, she was compulsive about grades, and there wasn't the slightest pause in the conversation. “If you just let me do the extra credit, I'll have sex with you.”

Mr. Andersen heard her perfectly well, but he still had to resist asking her to repeat herself to make sure. A long silence between them began with the sound of the janitor's cart rumbling down the hallway. It was a deep, echoing sound made for a tense moment in a horror movie. She watched her teacher stare blankly out a window. She thought he might be thinking of the danger to himself if he said, “Yes.” She also thought she might have misjudged him, making a mistake with utterly unpredictable consequences. Neither possibility was calming. She reached her hand out to him in a gesture meant to apologize for the stress he seemed to feel, but she didn't know where to touch him, and when he shook his head, no, her hand retreated on its own. She heard the minute hand on the classroom clock click forward. It was a sound in the foreground that seemed to suppress the louder sounds coming from outside. She heard the distinctive sound of her bus pulling away. It wasn't the engine that was different, it was the way her driver fought the clutch. Regardless of what came next, the departure of her bus meant she would have to ride home with Mr. Andersen. It wasn't Friday, and if he didn't think to offer her a ride, she would have to ask for one.

Unlike today, when teachers are told never to touch their students, it was a time when teachers were told the opposite, but it wasn't the touching that caused Layla's error. When had anyone ever paid so much attention to her?

The tremor, Layla couldn't control it. She knew Mr. Andersen was feeling something quite unlike the anxiety she was feeling. There seemed to be a sympathetic weakness in his posture, his breathing, his indecision, but when he spoke he was firm, “I don't think I can help you. I think understanding you or your life is beyond me, but I'm sure you need help. I don't know what the Department of Child and Family Services has to offer, but that might be...”

“NO! No, no, no. Don't! Please! I was joking.”

“Layla, we both know you weren't joking. You need help I can't give you. You need professional help, your whole family.”

“No, please Mr. Andersen. We don't even have passport. No visa. No document. No country. They send us back to Codó. My father must kill us! We have nothing – just my promises.” She knew with every word how fractured her speech was. She stopped and went on with the one-word-at-a-time English she hadn't used for a long time. “It is all my fault, Mr. Andersen, I brought us here and I promised America. They have gone through so much, I must at least give them a future I promised. Don't do this to my whole family.”

Mr. Andersen interrupted, wanting to explain that Child and Family Services wasn't that dangerous, but he was caught by the “I brought us here,” and stopped. He knew her story. He knew she was chiefly responsible for getting her family to America, but he had never really thought about how great an obligation came with the promises Layla had made. She must have to regrow her liver every night after having it eaten every day.

“You need help. I'll have to think about what I should do. But you have to have help.”

“You can't tell anyone. You promised.”

“I didn't promise I wouldn't tell anyone you just offered to trade sex for grades. I need to get home. I'm going to think about this, and we'll continue this, tomorrow. This is enough for today,” and he looked directly at her, waiting for her to leave.

“Mr. Andersen, I missed my bus.”

***

Layla was haunted by one question. As she tried to do her homework, as she sat through dinner, as her hands automatically stocked grocery shelves, she thought, When will I know I must move my family to avoid being deported? She couldn't wait too long, but she didn't want to jump out of the way of a shadow into the path of a semi-truck. She wondered whether it was conceivable that she could still seduce him, but even if it were, she didn't think she was any good at seduction, at persuading anyone who needed to be persuaded. She wished she was really beautiful. Maybe that would make a difference, but she didn't even know how to put on makeup.

She was afraid Mr. Andersen would tell her story to Child and Family Services, and the police would arrive in the middle of the night. Or Mr. Andersen could just decide to let her lead her own life. In between, Mr. Andersen had more choices than she could imagine. Who could he talk to? The principal? The vice-principal? A psychologist at Child and Family? His wife? He wouldn't talk to other teachers, would he? What if he did talk to the principal? She was afraid of what the procedures were and principals followed procedures.

She had no idea what she would encounter when she went to school in the morning, and even if she did, how would she know when they needed to run? Would they need to run the moment someone from Child and Family showed up? Was that already too late? Even if there were a police officer waiting for her, there could be an opportunity to run if they weren't immediately incarcerated.

She blamed herself for not being prepared when she knew all along they could need to run someday. She knew they would need money. She should have saved some for this emergency. She could have gone down to the docks and been careful to solicit only foreigners. In Brazil, when she had the right time and place, she could earn a week's wages in an hour. She just hadn't done it because she didn't want to, and that was an unforgivable excuse.

She came home from the grocery store exhausted, but things that had never bothered her before conspired against sleep - her brothers' movements and the noises they made in their crowded bedroom, the moonlight that was in her face when she turned on her left side, the rough stitching that kept a hole in the sheet closed. When her eyes were open, she could not stop herself from searching for details that would tell her how well she could see in the dark, and when she closed them, she was aware of the phosphenes and could not resist squinting to make them turn from red to blue. She jerked her mind away from these things that were keeping her awake only to find herself caught up in the real worries she could not stop.

***

Mrs Andersen was a southern belle of good family and enough education to think a mathematician with prospects was decent husband material. That was even before she discovered he was kind, slow to anger, willing to compromise, loyal, and sometimes amusing. She also saw him as a little inflexible when an ethical principle was at stake.

The problem, of course, was that they were married while they were both still undergraduates, and he had never mentioned his school teacher fantasy. When he decided that was what he wanted to do, he had no idea how to ask a woman of good family to accommodate herself to the idea of brutally slaughtering his so called “prospects.”

He had been tongue-tied when he asked her to marry him, but that speech sounded as though it passed through the lips of Demosthenes by comparison to his confession that he wanted to teach kids. It was quickly apparent to his wife that she was going to have to be patient. He abandoned more sentences than he completed. When he finally gave up, hoping she would be kind, she only said, “You know we'll be poor.”

“You have a little money from Uncle Bruce.”

“I only meant poor compared to what we're used to.”

Two years later she moved him to Florida. There they lead a quiet but sophisticated life together, somewhat isolated, not exactly fitting with either the teachers they'd fallen in with, or the society they'd fallen out of. His wife took some cooking lessons from her parents’ cook and soon discovered all she needed was one, good, encyclopedic cookbook. By visiting her father's wine collection, she learned the names of a few good vineyards, and most evenings after dinner they shared the mild inebriation that comes from splitting one bottle of wine. The night after Layla propositioned him, he found it easier than he expected to start talking about Layla.

“I've talked to you before about a student I have named Layla.”

His wife only said, “Yes?” but he had her full attention.

“She's worried about scholarships and getting into college, and she asked me, today, to let her do some extra credit to get her grade up to an ʻA.ʼ  I said, ʻNo.ʼ  So she offered to go to bed with me just to be allowed to do the extra credit.”

“And you said, ʻNo,ʼ or you wouldn't be telling me about it. Or would you?”

“I said, ‘No.’ I know quite a lot about her, maybe more than I should. She needs help, but I don't want to just go to Mr. Denison and tell him she propositioned me. She doesn't need to be punished. She needs help. People who don't know about her could do a lot of harm. She has a history that even Mr. Denison might understand, but I promised her I wouldn't tell anyone.”

“You mean you promised you wouldn't tell anyone she propositioned you?”

“No, I promised I wouldn't tell what I know about her personal history. That was before the bit about propositioning me happened. What I know about her past isn't as bad as I'm making it sound, I mean the morality of it, but it is something people would gossip about, and I understand why she doesn't want me to talk about it.”

“Can you tell me?”

“I wouldn't be very comfortable. She was really adamant about making me promise, and I understand why.”

“Can you tell me something general, get me in the ballpark?”

He thought, then, “I'll tell you this. When she was twelve years old she got her mother and three or four siblings out of Brazil and to the United States. It wasn't her mother who did it. It was Layla. They were penniless when she did it.”

“But you can't tell me how.”

“If you were to guess, you might guess something somewhat worse than what happened, but I've never met anyone with a story that's anywhere near as amazing as hers.”

“If you tell Mr. Denison, and talk him out of expelling her, is he just going to turn the problem over to Child and Family Services.”

“He might.”

“And is her circumstance one in which they might take her away from her mother?”

“I have no idea, but it could be even worse.”

“You can't help her, yourself.”

“Not the kind of help she needs. I'm not qualified, and not after she propositioned me.”

“Oh yes, that, I'd almost forgotten. Well, I don't know any better than you. You can at least tell her she can't be offering to trade sex for grades. Tell her you understand why she did whatever she did to get here, but tell her there's no excuse for being a prostitute, at least not now. She wants to succeed in school? Tell her that won't happen if she gets caught trading sex for grades. In college, that will go on your transcript as ʻDismissed for academic misconduct.ʼ  Then you never get into a decent school.”

“She has bigger problems than that.”

“Obviously, but they aren’t your problems. Your libido is much to cathected to this female.”

“Freud isn’t going to help.”

“He won’t help her,  but he might help you.”

After a silence, she went on, “Who's teaching across the hall from you?”

“Kay Carr.”

“Keep your door open and ask Kay to keep an eye on your door so she can testify that you keep it open when talking to female students. And don't have sex with her. No telling what you'd bring home from that.”

Mr. Andersen didn't quite know how to respond, and the conversation went on to other things until they were both in bed and had reached the silence that told them it was time to go to sleep. A moment later his wife said, “I'd like to talk to her, myself.”

“You mean Layla?”

“Yes.”

“I doubt that she'll agree to talk to you, but the easiest way to find out is to ask her. There isn't any advantage in being subtle with her. Do you mean it?”

“Yes.”

“I'll ask. Now, go to sleep.”

***

The dreaded moment arrived when Layla entered her history class and was handed the note that told her she was to see Mr. Andersen. It was unusual for teachers to request a student from another teacher's class, that was a prerogative of administrators, but Mr. Andersen did not want to see Layla after school - and be left driving her home, again.

It was his preparation period. He should have been working on the endless pile of homework that only led to frustration with trying to teach what his students were not ready to learn. Instead, he just sat trying to think of what he should say to Layla. His mind was as empty as the void between galaxies. Emptiness can swirl, quantum fluctuations of nothingness flickering in and out of existence, creating a sense of presence as they annihilate one another in accordance with some conservation principle. His empty mind swirled.

His wife was right when she said there was nothing he could do for Layla, and yet, his wife wanted to talk to Layla, herself? That would have to do.

“Your wife?! No!”

“Why not?”

“Because I offered to have sex with her husband!”

So Mr. Andersen admitted out loud that he couldn't see any way to help her, and then went on to tell her what his wife had said he should tell her, knowing that it was of no help. Then he added, “I know nothing I have to say is of any use to you, but I think I should talk to your mother to see how my wife and I can help.”

“My mother? Without the Child and Family Services people?”

“That's correct.”

“No. You still can't talk to my mother” and she stopped, realizing that her rush of language was skidding toward self-contradiction.  She went on more slowly. “You can't understand her. I mean... I don't mean because she doesn't speak English. I mean you can't understand her as a person. I've tried to explain her, but I just can't. Even if she could speak English, she'd... Well, she isn't stupid at all. She tells the most beautiful stories you've ever heard, mostly sad but sometimes happy. She tells her life, but you have to listen for a long time to understand. It would be cruel to talk to her about me. You could ask me to translate, but you couldn't tell whether I was really telling her what you said because you don't speak Portuguese, and I wouldn't tell her. It would be cruel.”

“Why would it be any more cruel than... She doesn't know?”

“Of course she knows. We didn't have any money to get here. How could she not know when I disappeared every night and came back with money for a hotel room. But we never talked about it, and we're never going to.”

“If you keep trying to use sex to get what you want, eventually you're going to have to talk to her about it.”

“Why would I ever have to talk to her about it?”

“I don't think you understand me any better than I have understood you. However, I must tell you that if I hear even a rumor of bad conduct, I'll find someone to speak to your mother about it, and then you will have to talk to her about it. If you keep up what you've been doing, even if I do not hear of it, there will be someone else who will. Do you know how hard it is to keep fornication a secret?”

“You could just butt out of my life.”

No, that was a mistake – I mustn't anger him now.

“I’m sorry. I couldn't sleep last night, and one of the things I thought over and over was that I would be lucky if I could get out of this just by telling you I wouldn't do it anymore and mean it. I won't do it anymore. I haven't done anything for a long time, anyway. I'm afraid to because we could get deported. I don't mean that I'm telling you right now that I won't do it because I'm afraid of getting deported. I won't do it because I’m telling you I won't, and that means I won't,” and as she said it, she knew she meant prostitution will remain only a tool of last resort.

Even with this conversation added to all the others, Mr. Andersen didn't understand just how afraid of authority Layla was. She did not understand that, in those times, the State of Florida's Child and Family Services might talk to the Sheriff's Office, but the Sheriff's Office had no liaison with the INS and no interest in what the few Latino people they encountered were doing in America. Illegal immigration, if it was a problem at all, was a problem in California and Texas. What Layla did understand was that there were laws against her being in the United States.

The lesson from her scrape with Mr. Andersen was simple. Layla had figured out on the day they first entered the homeless shelter that just enough cash to live on was not enough. They needed a cash reserve against trouble, against the possibility of needing to run from the authorities. There were so many authorities: every teacher, the school administrators, the police, the sheriff and his deputies, the Department of Child and Family Services, and all connected in her mind to the INS. And there were people who would tell the authorities - your landlord if you got behind in your rent, anyone who had a grievance against you, people who didn't like Latinos, people who were just mean.

Guilt was something Layla felt often enough, but it was an unfamiliar kind of guilt she felt after she left Mr. Andersen. It wasn't about the escape fund. That would have been impossible. The moment she set aside a dollar, there would have been some irresistible demand for it. It was guilt for creating a life for her family in which an escape fund was necessary and impossible.

She sat in the remains of her history class so depressed she felt the weight on her chest and had to make a conscious effort to breathe. Her teacher’s eyes passed over Layla, still seeking the right student to call on while half her attention lagged behind, watching Layla in her peripheral vision and wondering what was wrong.

Her family needed a hundred dollar reserve. Her mind did not stray from that thought until she was lying in bed, falling fast through the family chaos toward sleep. Around the docks there were foreigners, sailors who would not have the interest or the ability to cause her any trouble. She only needed to be careful.

Toward the End

The week Layla turned sixteen they were still living in the one bedroom apartment, and they still had no money for an emergency, but the idea of needing it had long been smothered under the stack of urgent needs that always beset the family. The previous week the family learned Lara couldn't see the blackboard at school and had to have glasses. At the beginning of the week, Maria had to have a new vacuum cleaner, and that had to be bought immediately because she had a client waiting. Enzo was fussing, chronically, that he didn't want free lunch, anymore. On rare occasions, the memory of the emergency fund startled Layla just as she was crossing over into sleep. When that happened, the “worries” started, and she did not sleep for hours. The worries, of course, did not need that particular memory to catalyze them, almost any memory from before she was fourteen would do.

The week Layla turned sixteen, the family spent hours talking about how to manage college. Mr. Andersen had made it clear that she was not to go to a second-rate school, let alone some affordable junior college the girls' counselor suggested. Of course, it wasn't Mr. Andersen who had to figure out how they were to afford the tuition. It was Mr. Andersen who Layla wanted to tell to get the hell out of her life but was also the one person who could show her the way to an “almost first-rate”  education.

Advising Layla, Mr. Andersen had no choice but to broaden his idea of “not second-rate” even if he did not broaden his idea of “first-rate.” He recommended Barry University, but as soon as Layla found out it was Catholic they could have paid her to attend and she would have said, “No!” The only remaining choices were Miami University, which was near the familiar docks but was a private school with no endowment and high tuition, or the University of Florida, which had lower tuition but was three hundred miles farther away than she could possibly commute. Somehow, they had to manage it. Layla had not sacrificed her childhood to gain a career in housekeeping.

There were still questions that were not answered. She did not know what documents might be required to get in-state tuition at the University of Florida. Mr. Andersen told her private schools pretending to be Harvard jack up their tuition to impress people and then find excuses to give almost everyone a big scholarship. So she didn't know what the University of Miami would really cost. She was applying for scholarships, but most were too small to make much difference, and even the ones for poor students didn't decide on winners until after the college application deadlines.

***

Toward the end of the week Layla turned sixteen, Layla got the call. It came from one of Maria's clients. She was calling from the hospital.

“Maria fell. She was changing light bulbs in the chandelier in the stairwell. The ladder slid out from under her. Her right leg slipped between the rungs, and her own weight fell on the ladder. She has a badly broken leg. It's a compound fracture, very bad, I could see the bone sticking out of her leg. A lot of blood, we're going to need a new carpet. They're taking her into surgery, now.” The woman who called didn't mean to mention the carpet, it just slipped out. She also didn't mean to mention the three hours Maria sat in horrific pain, waiting for someone to come home. There, her intentions succeeded.

Layla's siblings wanted to go with her to the hospital, but she was already figuring how many pennies they had, and how many house cleanings they could miss before they were hungry. She told them they couldn't afford it in a tone of voice that invited silence. She went out the door knowing she would have a half-hour wait at the bus stop, but she preferred her restless silence at the bus stop to dealing with the hubbub in the house.

Without a watch it was a long half-hour, one that made Layla wonder whether there was some mistake. She reviewed the bus schedule in her mind half-a-dozen times. Then there was the long ride into downtown and the long wait for the next bus. She stood fingering the transfer in her pocket. Every time she took her hand out of her pocket, she began to worry that she had lost the transfer, accidentally pulling it out with her hand. She knew it was still there, but she could only resist checking, again, for a few minutes.

It took Layla an hour-and-a-half to get to the hospital, then another half-hour to find someone who directed her to the blue line on the floor that led to Maria's ward. By that time Maria was out of surgery with a plaster cast from ankle to mid-thigh. She was on an open ward of a kind that was beginning to disappear even though physicians knew patients got better nursing care on open wards than in private rooms.

Maria translated what the nurse had told her as well as she could. She would have to find her own doctor for follow-up and, because she didn’t have any way to pay, they would probably discharge her in the morning. They would keep her for another day if she could pay. She was not to put weight on the leg for two months.

Maria told everything she'd understood in three sentences, and Layla answered in one.

“It's a good thing we're rich.”

A nurse brought Layla a straight-backed chair and then pulled the curtains around Layla and her mother. Layla felt more as though they were being hidden from view than given any privacy.

The nurse informed them that the patients had already been served their dinner and named some things available from the ward's refrigerator. Maria didn't want anything, maybe a glass of orange juice. The nurse told her she could ring later if she wanted something. Then she looked at Layla and asked whether she wanted anything. Layla wanted to say, No, but she knew it would be a long, even more miserable night if she did. So she asked for some cold soup not knowing what she would be getting.

After Layla had eaten her cup of soup, and Maria had stared at her glass of orange juice, neither of them had anything to say - there was only the necessity of being present. They both silently gnawed on the same thought: Can Layla take over the housekeeping work for two months? What will that do to her schooling? She's to graduate. What if it is even more than two months? Then there was a final question in their circle of thoughts: Is there any way to manage other than making Layla take over the housekeeping business? And more poisonous than the Brazilian wandering spider, not wanting to be heard even inside their own thoughts, came the yes, there was something else that would let her stay in school and go to college, and even as she tried not to, Layla began imagining how it might go.

As the night dragged on, Layla thought, over and over again, about getting in bed with her mother so she could sleep, but she just sat in her chair and used her hands as a cushion against the iron railing of the hospital bed. The nurse returned on her rounds.

“You don't have to stay here all night. We'll take good care of her. She's going to be just fine.”

“The buses have stopped running.”

The circadian morning of hospitals begins hours earlier than could possibly benefit either patients or staff. It is kept that way by the surgeons who bask in the moral superiority of being early risers. A new nurse brought Maria's breakfast long before she had any appetite. There was no offer of anything from the ward's refrigerator for Layla, so the two of them picked at Maria's breakfast.

The nurse returned to ask whether they had anyone coming to pick them up, and when the answer was “No,” she said she could call a cab for them. In the same breath she said she would explain to Maria how to use crutches while they were waiting downstairs. She was efficient about it, that was what she was paid to be. It was all so routine for the nurse, it was the main reason she was looking for employment somewhere else.

Layla thought the nurse must have been an especially beautiful young woman only a few years before, and wondered what it would feel like to have just lost that kind of beauty. The thought didn't have anything to do with why she thoroughly disliked the nurse. She thought a nurse should be friendly even if she couldn't show any compassion.

“We don't have money for a cab.”

“Well, she can't go home on the bus. You'll have to think of something. She has to leave,” and without another word she went off to complete her rounds.

Layla mentally checked off the few people she knew who had vehicles. All of them would be working. Several times she thought through whether it was really impossible to take the bus. In the end, she decided they would just have to wait in the hospital's lobby until the few people she could call began returning from work. Maria was too ill for that, it seemed cruel.

She would have to beg at the information desk for the use of a telephone. Maybe it wasn't quite begging, but just the thought of asking still felt bad.

An hour later, the nurse stepped back inside their curtain.

“Have you worked out how you're going to get your mother home?”

“No.”

“My shift is over at three o'clock. I have to discharge you now, but you can wait here until three o'clock, and I'll drive you home. If they assign anyone to your bed, you'll have to stay on a gurney,” and with that, she was gone, again.

***

Layla called her mother's clients, explained what had happened, and got permission to take over the house cleaning for two months. Of course, she didn’t explain that the plan was for all of Maria's children to take one day off from school each week and work as a mob, cleaning five houses in one day.

The plan was not what could have been expected of Layla. It was conceived out of a mixture of desperation and wishful thinking. When she was twelve, she would have thought through the details and rejected it. Even if transportation between jobs hadn't taken three hours of their day, the younger children did not work fast enough, and their work was never well-done. When given a task such as cleaning a toilet, they just said, “Eeew,” and if they did anything at all, they held the toilet brush by the tips of their fingers and dripped water on the floor. Layla and Felipe worked frantically, but doing anything well meant leaving something undone. There were complaints, apologies, and promises to do it over if Saturday would be all right.

Layla and Felipe did the make-right work as well as one Saturday would allow, but one Saturday wasn't long enough. When they returned home at the end of a frantic day, Enzo and Lara had made no preparations for dinner. They could have, they'd prepared simple meals without help before. Anger flickered on and off, and for an ugly moment Layla recognized her father inside herself. Enzo and Lara were still just children, and no one had told them to fix dinner, and knowing those things, Layla controlled herself, but her voice sounded accusative when she announced that dinner would be canned soup.

As Layla brought a share of the soup to her mother, her anger dissipated to reveal her underlying feelings of guilt. She noticed that her mother smelled badly, but knowing how poorly Maria felt and how difficult it was for her to bathe, she let it go.

Sunday was worse. It was obviously Maria's leg that smelled so. Layla had an urge to cut the cast off to look at the leg, but she could imagine what the most likely outcome of that would be – a doctor wanting money just to tell her what an idiot she was to cut the cast off.

On Monday, Layla came home from school to find her mother shaking violently and complaining of the cold. Layla started frantically knocking on neighbors' doors and continued until she found someone who would drive them to the emergency room. She had to promise the woman fifty cents for gas even though they wouldn't use half that amount.

Layla waited with her mother and the neighbor in a room dominated by the bright yellow paint on the walls. The color was not a good choice, it looked dingy rather than cheerful. The room was filled with linear rows of identical chairs made of chrome-plated, iron tubes with thinly cushioned seats covered in dark-green plastic. Half-a-dozen groups of three or four people sat in little linear arrays scattered around the room. In one of the groups, the two people at the ends leaned forward, talking across the person waiting to be seen.

The wait was not quite as unbearably long as Layla feared. Maria was taken through an ominous pair of doors, and Layla and her neighbor were told to wait where they were. Sitting with just her neighbor, it would have been easy to talk, but Layla was not in a mood for small talk. She had too many worries - the most immediate of which was her fear the neighbor would decide she had done her duty and return home. However, the neighbor knew the family's problems were an ocean, and she was caught in a gyre.

The emergency room nurse explained that the wound had been very dirty when Maria was brought in the first time, and without proper care, it had become gangrenous. Maria was already being taken to surgery. The nurse was sorry, but Maria was going to loose her leg below the knee. It was necessary to save her life.

Layla wanted to know whether her mother would be discharged the next day, and if so, would she just get gangrene, again. The nurse told Layla the doctor couldn't talk to her but would talk to her father when the surgery was finished. Layla said her father was in Brazil and that she was the head of the family. The nurse frowned, then her face just sagged while she tried to think through what she was supposed to do. Finally, hearing the neighbor support Layla's claim to being head of the family, she agreed to tell the doctor that Layla was the only one who could speak English well enough to understand his instructions.

Layla also wanted to know whether they would give Maria a wooden leg. The nurse said Layla would have to ask the doctor, but during Maria's two-day stay in the hospital, Layla never saw the doctor. When she tried to insist with the people who came to care for Maria, she got stares that meant something like, “My only connection with this hospital is the water pitcher in my hand.”

Somehow, Maria was discharged with a supply of penicillin, but if the doctor had ever used the word “prosthesis,” it was just one of the smudges in a blur of language.

***

While they still had three houses to clean, Felipe helped, but when they lost one more, Layla took over the business alone. At least the quality of the work improved, and while Layla was struggling to decide what to do, she got a call from a woman who had been referred to Layla by one of her two remaining customers. Unbeknownst to the caller, Layla had been recommended on the basis of obvious need, not competence.

Layla thought that looking after her mother had pushed the number of absences she'd had at school over the limit for getting credit for the final semester of her senior year. So she quit school leaving one semester for someday. House cleaning actually seemed like good money if she could get a full schedule. She calculated that, if she could build up the business to ten houses per week, by the following New Year she would be able to afford a prosthesis for her mother's leg, then finish her remaining semester of high school, and have money for her tuition at the University. She would still be only seventeen.

Except the new customers didn't come in time to pay the two months of back rent. Facing a return to the homeless shelter, Layla could have paid a week's rent, but that would only mean having a week's less cash when they were put out. Of course, the homeless shelter was not the family’s only option. There was Paciano and Oyama, but the idea of imposing on them once again seemed as repulsive as the shelter.

She swallowed hard and called Oyama. But the obligatory pleasantries ended before Layla could ask her favor. Oyama and Paciano both had terrible colds, possibly influenza, and that tipped the balance toward the shelter. Feeling desperate, Layla spent the week's rent on a fifty-pound sack of pinto beans. At least, she could put the fear of her family starving out of her mind.

The family returned to the homeless shelter on a gorgeous Spring day that failed as an antidote to depression. They recognized that having their old room all to themselves was fortunate, but it was like the good fortune of having an amputation below the knee instead of above. Maria lay down on her bed and began a self-destructive rant about how it was past time to return her crutch to the hospital.

Layla had already exhausted the last of her self-control and told her mother to shut up. Enzo intervened, telling Layla to shut up, herself, which accomplished nothing. However, he spoke to his mother as well as he could.

“Mother, no one at the hospital cares about the crutch. Everyone in the world thinks you deserve to keep it a while longer. You aren't depriving someone else of a crutch. Be patient a bit. We'll get you your own crutch. Just be patient for a few days. Do you want me to call the hospital to make sure it's okay.”

Maria turned on her side so she faced the wall and was silent for a short while, but she resumed fussing about the crutch. By the end of the day, it was apparent to her children that Maria had regressed beyond the the limits of sanity. It became Enzo's task to speak calmly to her, to try to distract her from her obsession with the crutch. By relieving Layla of that one new obligation, his efforts calmed his sister more than his mother.

At Layla's suggestion, Lara lay in bed with Maria for as long as an eight-year-old could tolerate it. The idea was to start Maria telling the stories that had filled Layla's childhood, but Maria proved refractory to therapy.

The following days were long. Every time Layla left the shelter, she feared what Maria might do, but all that happened was that Maria grew almost silent without becoming completely disanimated. She got in line for dinner when the time came, she kept herself clean and took care of her stump herself, but she had no more social engagement than these things required. Each of her children wished one of their siblings would try to do something for her – each with their own problems to deal with. Enzo tried harder than the others. He tried reading to her in the evenings, but the only books he had to read were in English, and besides, he didn’t know how to read in Portuguese.

***

On the second day of June, Layla borrowed a dress from Elizabeth and went to her high school's graduation ceremony. She had to go but couldn't help wishing she hadn't. Sitting in the audience, the best part of the ceremony came when Elizabeth walked across the stage, but even that was a moment of ambivalence. The rest of the ceremony was filled with speeches about how much the graduates had accomplished, or about never giving up their dreams. What the hell did they know about either of those things?

A new director of the shelter had not liked the idea of housing a Latino family and would not have let them in if it had not been for the awkward precedent. He did not let them use the kitchen to cook their beans for their breakfast, and Layla regretted having let her anxiety drive an impulsive purchase.

Over the course of the summer, the difficulties in keeping her family fed and housed kept Layla depressed. Half her clients had no teaching to do during the summer and canceled while they went on extended vacations. Felipe brought in a little money by taking over her job stocking shelves, and even Enzo occasionally mowed a lawn, but then there was the day Enzo came home so angry it took several tries to find out what was wrong. He had decided to try getting a newspaper route and was told they didn't hire niggers.

Layla wasn't as dark as Enzo, but she had a pretty good idea that skin color had a lot to do with her own problems finding work. Housekeeping was probably the only work a Latino woman would be permitted. She knew before the summer began that being quick at arithmetic was not going to get her a job as a clerk. She'd tried restaurant kitchens and spending her time looking for lawns for Enzo to mow. She'd tried walking down the street stopping at every business and offering to do anything, regardless. She even made herself stop at the radio station when she came to it.

The looks she got; the long pauses while people tried to figure out how to express what they usually said in some new, inoffensive way; the managers who were never in; and of course, the versions of “don't call us, we'll call you.” She had kept these things out of her mind until Enzo's complaint brought them in, knotted together, strangling the goodwill she knew she had to have to live through each day.

And every day was spent in the shadow of the sixty-day time limit for the family's stay in the homeless shelter. With time, the director softened toward the family, and in particular toward Layla, and when he put them out in accordance with policy, he told them they could return in two weeks. Layla still had to spend most of what little she had saved to get her family two weeks in a cheap motel.

Late August arrived and the University began to revive itself. The housekeeping business survived with three clients, and Layla spent five dollars to get professional looking business cards printed. She felt confident she could find new clients from time to time, and she came to regard the sack of beans as part of a savings account for the day she got her family back out of the shelter.

When school resumed, Felipe was in Mr. Andersen's geometry class. Of course, Mr. Andersen had learned in the teacher's lounge that Layla dropped out of school. Even though he already knew why she had withdrawn, he extracted an explanation from Felipe on the second day of the new school year, then visited Layla at the shelter the same evening. He didn't go there to offer any help. He was not about to ask his rich relatives to take an interest in a family of Brazilians who were in their country illegally, or to ask his wife to make any further financial sacrifice. He explained that he was there to reassure Layla that graduating a year late was not important. More than anything else, he wanted to know she had a plan for getting into the University of Miami.

For her part, Layla was no longer pleased to see Mr. Andersen. She did not want him to see the condition Maria was in. She took him outside and they spoke standing on the sidewalk. In order to get rid of him, she assured him that she had only quit school to get Maria's business into good enough shape to support the family. She said nothing about her fears that Maria would never be in good enough shape to go back to housecleaning. She said nothing about how her thoughts at night turned to what the consequences would be if she just abandoned her family and took care of herself. She said nothing about how relieved she was to be free of school, and how she had enjoyed a Sunday with Elizabeth who was tired of the struggle to get into college alongside Curtis.

As uncomfortable as Layla was with Mr. Andersen, she still hoped he would take an interest in Felipe. Felipe was bright even if he was a lousy student, and with Mr. Andersen's help, Felipe might achieve what she hoped for him even as her hopes for herself foundered. Felipe, however, soon began to avoid Mr. Andersen. Mr. Andersen seemed too interested in his sister, and perhaps, not interested enough in Felipe.

***

One Tuesday when Maria was even less responsive than usual, Layla finally called Oyama. Before Layla could ask her to pay Maria a visit, Oyama interrupted in a voice stained with accusation. She told Layla how much she'd worried when she heard one day that her best friend had lost a leg, and almost the next day her friend disappeared. Layla made excuses, explaining that the new director would not let them use the telephone. Her excuses sounded weak even to herself, but of course, it didn't matter. Oyama said she would be there the next day, and Layla had to insist that she wait until Saturday. Oyama could not understand why Layla had to be present.

When Saturday arrived, Oyama was not surprised at what she found. However, being unsurprised did not make her prepared. Maria could not stand for long, and even if she could, there was no kitchen to cook in.

Oyama sat on a straight-backed chair, more or less facing Maria. Her hands were folded in her lap, and she kept her eyes from settling on Maria's stump, though she could not keep them from flickering over it. At times she followed dust motes meandering through a pillar of light that held up the tiny skylight.

Layla tried to start a conversation, but all she could think of was to ask Oyama questions about life in her home, and the responses she got were so brief she could have been interviewing an uncooperative criminal suspect. She tried the fantasy Oyama and Maria once shared about opening a restaurant together. She tried questions about the menu and the recipes behind it, but neither of the older women were much interested in fantasy - the missing leg was too present.

Layla knew there was a cooking program on television at three o'clock. The two-hour wait was an excruciating effort to control the constant urge to pick up a Baby Ben clock that sat on a box next to her mother's bed. When three o'clock finally came, Layla intimidated the other residents of the shelter who were killing time in the day-room and changed the channel.

The cooking lesson turned out to be all about how to put your own finishing touches on commercial, ready-to-eat products. When it was over, Layla walked Oyama to the bus stop half-an-hour earlier than necessary. They stood on the edge of the curb as though the bus were already within sight, and each looked at rundown buildings - Oyama silently accusing their owners of failing, out of avarice, to resist the blight, and Layla silently angry at the buildings, themselves, for seeming to define her worth to the world.

Of course, the friendship between Oyama and Maria was not something that could be extinguished by an awkward afternoon, and as soon as Layla returned, her mother wanted to know whether she could visit Oyama in her house just to get away from the shelter. Her question struck Layla as the best thing that had happened for a long time.

***

Managing the housecleaning business left Layla with Sundays free, and she began visiting Elizabeth and Curtis regularly. Curtis was starting his second semester at the University of Miami, and could be said to have gone off to college even though he still lived in the same house. When he talked, he talked about college and then went on to talk about college. He was boring. He bragged. He should have been starting his second year not his second semester.

For her part, Elizabeth only complained. Some of the time she complained about the stupid, little job she had bending over to poke soft-serve ice cream cones out through a little window in a little, square building for a little, fat manager who strutted about making only a few pennies more than she did, but mainly she complained about Curtis being in college when she was not. They only had enough money for one tuition – one tuition that demanded even her lousy little savings – and why did he get to go just because he was male? He was supposed to find a part time job, but he hadn't, and from there her complaints got still louder to compensate for becoming less coherent.

When the Family again had to move out of the shelter at the beginning of October, the house cleaning business was already prospering, but to put together a budget that included saving for Maria's prosthesis was not simple. Layla wanted to move back into a trailer, and managed to find one that had a couch that was long enough to accommodate Maria in something more stretched out than fetal position. For the first time, she thought to put her siblings to work on a vegetable garden and had no trouble persuading a few of her neighbors to let her extend the garden onto their lots in exchange for a share of the produce. Layla learned that tomatoes and carrots could be planted in Florida in the winter, so that's what they planted. They planted more tomatoes than their neighbors had any interest in, canned them all, and did not share anything they canned. The canning jars cost almost as much as a can of tomatoes, but they fit well with the fifty-pound sack of beans. By mid-winter their meals were a boring repetition of beans and tomatoes sometimes cooked with a trace of chicken. Carrots were not such a success. Layla read that carrots could be left in the ground after they were ready to harvest, and for a couple weeks that seemed to be true, but then row upon row of them turned woody and lost their sweetness.

In November Mr. Andersen made sure Layla understood that it was already time to apply to the University of Miami. She could have felt anger, but she went ahead and applied with a feeling of nostalgia for the dream she had carried and was about to leave behind. Even if she were accepted, she didn't see how she could go. She seemed destined to stay out of school to keep the business running.

In December she had the money for the prosthesis. The problem was the physical therapy her mother needed to use it well enough to clean eight houses each week. Even if they could pay for the therapy, Maria would not be ready in time for Layla to go back to school in January. Even if they could pay for the therapy, Layla wasn't sure her mother had a positive emotion left they could attach a prosthesis to. A weekly visit with Oyama seemed to help, but it was six bad days to one good.

Summer school made a brief appearance as an option, but it turned out that summer school was designed for students who couldn't, or just didn't, do the work. Students who were kept out of school by Fate were too rare to be accommodated. Layla could see no way forward other than another year of cleaning houses, but by then it would be time to save for Felipe's college expenses. Everyone thought high SAT scores would get him in despite his grades, but the probability of his getting a scholarship was indistinguishable from zero. By the time Felipe graduated from college, even if he did so in four years, Enzo would be starting. Layla had no difficulty seeing her responsibility in all this. She had dragged them to America with a promise of opportunity. She owed them the opportunity and if she continued cleaning houses, she could at least see her siblings succeed. She knew she could even see her siblings' future successes as her own, but she compared that, not with what she had come from, but with what she had set out to do.

One hundred times a day, she put the plan she believed would serve her own interests out of her mind.

They paid for the prosthesis and one physical therapy session. Everyone from Enzo through Layla went with Maria in the hope of learning how to help their mother use her prosthesis. Enzo turned out to be the most determined to make Maria get up and do her exercises, probably because he was the least depressed of the children old enough help. He was still the one with scads of friends at school and an enthusiasm for his classes that almost made his teachers forget about his dark skin. However, even while Enzo managed to get his mother into her prosthesis and on her feet everyday after school, he could do nothing about Layla's frustration and the deepening gloom she involuntarily shared with her family.

A day came when Layla spent the time she should have used to clean a house in bed with her mother, listening to Maria tell the familiar stories of Belém. She wanted the stories to still be inspiring, to tell of a reality that could exist, but what they did was bring out the feeling of nostalgia that had begun to occupy her mind. It was a safe feeling, but not strong enough to cover up the horror of her obligation toward her family, the obligation that was her own doing and, thereby, inescapable. The next morning she called the client she'd stood up, apologized without making an excuse, and made arrangements for getting her work done.

Maria had no trouble understanding her daughter's state of mind. They were both depressed, and she thought some sort of end to her family was probably close at hand. She pictured her family being deported to die of starvation on the streets of São Paulo. It was not unheard of. There was nothing she could do for her children, and she almost wished for any end to struggling. She admired Layla and wished there was a god. She would have prayed to him to let Layla die and take her chances with the afterlife.

Relief from what seemed to be Layla's certain fate came both obviously and unexpectedly from two sources. Felipe spoke first.

“It's perfectly simple, I know how to clean a house, so you can go to school.”

“But then you'll fall behind in school.”

“It's just my turn to be a year late graduating. You deserve it; you're a good student; I'm a lousy student. You need to get on with your education. Besides, maybe a year of cleaning houses is what I need. I'll still only be nineteen when I graduate, and maybe the delay is just what I need to make me a better student.”

“Being bored in school is what makes you a lousy student, and being still another year older is not going to help with your boredom.”

“Look, it has always annoyed me that I'm only a year-and-a-half younger than you, but I'm two years behind you in school. I already hate being one of the oldest kids in my class, but you know what? You're so smart, I have always loved being around you, and my friends all bore me, but when I go to college there will be more smart people like you. I started to say I can't wait to go to college, but what I mean is that I intend to be a good student in college because that's what I think I need to do to be around people like you.”

Layla knew she had to argue against Felipe's intention to take over the cleaning business, and the argument went on for days. She also knew she had to lose. She was afraid of what would happen to her, what she might do, if she didn't lose, and half the time she was arguing she was thinking about what would be necessary to get her clients to accept Felipe as their housekeeper. As the days went by, one by one her siblings sided with Felipe, making their arguments chaotic and irrational, but making it more possible for her to give in. Then Maria called Layla to her bed and told Layla of her fears that depression could triumph over them all. Each word seemed to confirm a fear of her own that Layla had failed to notice, and she capitulated. Somehow, it was not a relief to be made to do what she wanted to do.

She knew it wasn't a solution. If Maria took over the business from Felipe, and everyone found summer jobs and part-time work in the winter, then Felipe could go back to school, and they still might save a semester's tuition by the following September. If everything continued without a problem (And when did that happen?), there could be tuition for a second year – one tuition with Layla and Felipe in college at the same time.

Still, it was at least a one-year reprieve. Possibly there would be two years in which to find a solution other than the one she had always expected to turn to. The feeling of relief seemed oddly foreign to her. It wasn't a reprieve from prostitution; prostitution had come to seem like a simple expedient; it was a reprieve from the strategies a prostitute would have to employ to deal with her family, her friends, and the authorities.

***

It didn't work. The family business prospered under Felipe, and Layla finished high school, but there were expenses that couldn't be avoided. As Maria improved, additional physical therapy was needed so Enzo could learn what to do next. Lara broke her new glasses. Curtis reported that the textbooks for the classes Layla intended to take had already been stolen from the library. He had already sold the books from his first semester. There were the usual summer house cleaning cancellations.

Felipe, who understood Layla's Plan B, walled off a place in his feelings and began speaking to his mother of the “scholarship money” Layla was expecting.

As the summer wore on, Maria made as much progress as anyone hoped for. She began supervising Felipe before she could do much more than sweep a floor, herself. There was at least an improvement in the quality of their work, and there was an obvious positive feedback loop between her physical and mental status. She began visiting Oyama on Sundays while Layla visited Elizabeth. When the cost of college came up in her conversations with Oyama, Maria spoke more about the success of the business than the scholarship money. She thought about this scholarship money, Very interesting if it's true.

It was a summer of some progress and not so much regress, but by the end of July, Layla could do the numbers. She was going to wind up short on her tuition. She was confident her relatively wholesome plan for prostitution would pay off quickly after the start of school, but the University was already telling her to pay before the start of classes. She began borrowing eleven dollars per week from the landlord by not paying the rent. She put the family in debt to a neighborhood grocer who had not yet been put out of business by Safeway. And it still wasn’t enough.

“A hundred dollars! With a hundred dollars I can make everything work. I’m sure of it! And I’ll pay you back in a month.”

“How are you going to pay me back in a month?”

Layla turned her back on him, looked at the ceiling, and raised her arms in frustration. When she turned around, Mr. Andersen said, “No. I was naive about you. Not now.”

“When I say ‘one hundred dollars’ it sounds like a fortune to me. I don’t really know what it sounds like to you, but I know it doesn’t sound like a fortune.”

“It’s enough so that I’d think I should mention it to my wife, and I’m not going to do that.”

“So your wife’s the problem!”

“That’s not what I said. I said ‘No!’ My decision! Because I would be facilitating a plan that involves your turning yourself into a whore! – if you haven’t already.”

“You could at least say ‘prostitute’ instead of ‘whore!’” Layla wasn’t sure whether she wanted to control her anger.

“I could at least say a lot of things. I could say I once wanted to help you, but you talked me out of it just by breaking a promise! It was a promise you made to me, and you made it sound important to you!, but like I said, I was naive.”

“You should try living by that promise. You should try living in a place where people take one look at you, and know you’re poor, know you’re desperate, know they can take advantage of you, so you stay poor. Try being called a nigger and being made to live like one.

“I have a family. I brought them here because there is opportunity here. I owe them that opportunity, and I am part of them. I get to be somebody too. I offered to have sex with you for a chance to get my grade up. Now, it’s a hundred dollars.”

“I can’t believe what you’ve become. Yes, I can. I saw it in you, but I didn’t want to believe it. I still don’t.”

Layla wanted to get even angrier, but she was too desperate. Grabbing at straws, she shouted, “Don’t think of it as for me. Unless Felipe works his way through, which you disapprove of, I’m going to have to at least pay his tuition. You can think of yourself as doing it for Felipe.”

“In the first place, the hundred dollars doesn’t have anything to do with Felipe’s tuition next year. But in the second place, if it did, I’d have to tell you that Felipe doesn’t have the brains. Let him learn a trade.”

“You arrogant... Felipe is really, really smart You know...”

Mr. Andersen cut her off. “You were never his teacher.”

“You arrogant, stuffy, prude! You know why I stopped wearing a bra in your class?! It wasn’t because I didn’t have one. I wore a bra in all my other classes. It was to see how much extra time you would spend standing behind me staring down my shirt. And it was a lot! You lecher who thinks everyone else should be perfect.”

“Layla, you need to stop trying to save your family. If you don’t, you’ll never save yourself. You’ll get into trouble and drag them down with you. Besides, you’re not helping them, you’re just making them dependent on you. You need a real solution. If you let...”

Shouting him down, “Making them dependent on me! The rich, conservative speaks the truth about himself at last! They’ll be better off lifting themselves up by their own bootstraps! Why don’t you go be a lawyer like you’re supposed to. I have a real solution, I can make you a promise I can keep. These are the last words you will ever hear from me!”

***

But she didn’t have a real solution because she was not willing to go down to the docks. She was afraid of venereal disease.  Her plan was still to stick with prostitution for a circle of students who weren’t getting laid and hopefully wouldn’t have VD which, if she brought it back from the docks, would ruin her.

So Layla went to her first class without having paid her tuition. She discovered that her teachers didn’t take roll and immediately wondered what she could get away with. Then she screamed, almost out loud, when she learned the truth. The real deadline for paying her tuition was a month after the start of classes, at which point the University would threaten to disenroll her, but it would take another month to get her teachers to actually do anything, during which the bursar’s office would still be happy to take her money.

The sexual revolution was burning steadily through the big cities of the north, but in the South, still recoiling from the Civil Rights Movement, the sexual revolution was as distant as the protests against the War in Vietnam going on up North. For the most part, young women were still afraid, and young southern men kept them that way by clinging to the notion that they would only marry a virgin.

None of Curtis's cohort of sophomores had both the interest and the nerve needed to approach the aging streetwalkers found around the docks. So in these times in which innocence was only beginning to feel more like ignorance, Layla found prostitution among Curtis's friends to be an even easier trade than she had imagined. Some of his friends treated her gently, as though she were a reluctant virgin they had seduced. Others could be told, “No,” and their cries and insults ignored. When one of her new clients insisted she was a “courtesan,” she thought she knew what the word meant, but she looked it up to make sure and decided she was still just a prostitute.

Layla wasn't sure how Curtis would react when he learned that she had found it easier to work among his friends than to make her own. There was no reason to expect him to like what she was doing, and she thought she had better tell him herself. So on the second Sunday of her first semester in college, she paid a visit to Elizabeth, and asked Curtis to walk her home.

They climbed up the hill into the woods behind the trailer park, the woods that had grown ugly in proximity to humans - an apt metaphor, Layla thought, of her own life in proximity to humans. They sat on the arms of an abandoned, over-stuffed chair too dirty to offer any comfort, facing one another with their knees bumping. Curtis asked Layla to tell him her troubles. The remark sounded casual, but he knew she had not invited him to talk about the weather. It was Curtis her high school friend, not Curtis the college sophomore.

Layla was surprised that Curtis initiated the conversation in a kinder tone of voice than she expected. She didn't relax, or change the speech she'd practiced, but it helped her find the voice she wanted.

“Curtis, we've known each other for a long time, but there is a lot you don't know about me...”

As she spoke, they each found themselves with an undisclosed urge to pound a cloud of dust out of the old chair. Curtis, especially, had to restrain himself when he spotted a small spider that made a perfect excuse to thump the chair.

“Do you remember the time, when we first knew each other, when you took us to the swimming pool. I got mad about you and Elizabeth playing games - Elizabeth saying she was going to let you in your room while I got into her swim suit? I got mad because sex was serious to me, and you were both being childish. I knew it was normal for you, but I wanted you to be more mature. I knew I was the one who knew too much, but I still got mad.

“You know some about what my father did. As far back as I can remember, I thought about running away. I knew it was just fantasy, so I imagined I was going to take my whole family. It was just some fantasy, but it was a detailed fantasy. I worked on it every day – every problem I could think of. Even when I was eight or nine years old, I worked on how to run away. I thought it would be great to come to America, and that was all in my fantasy. I don't know how old I was when I learned men think it's a big deal to have sex with a virgin. Maybe nine. The moment I learned it, I knew it solved the problem of how to get to America. It was just luck that I got us on a crappy little freighter without giving my virginity to the crappy little captain. I don't mean the captain we actually found. He wasn't crappy in any way. He was a decent man, and I will never even see him again. I will never repay him what we owe him.

“Now, I know that coming to America was a bad idea. My mother had an idea that was better, but I kept thinking, ʻAmerica!ʼ  Everybody in Brazil was like that about America. I promised my brothers it would be a great opportunity. I dragged them here. Now, I owe them the opportunity. Not only that. I have gone through so much, I owe myself the opportunity. So I have to earn enough money to get everyone through college while I’m getting myself through college. You know there is only one way I can do that. If you can think of another, tell me what it is.”

Curtis was not sure he was following her, but he did not stop her.

“I am not going to make everyone work their way through school. Mr. Andersen says that the best students do not have time to work while they're in college. I take his word for American students, but two weeks has been enough time to make me know it's true for me. I thought my English was okay, but I have to read my college books with a dictionary in my hand. I am so far behind, already.

“So I've been doing some business you won't approve of. The problem is, it was too easy to get started with your friends. I didn't want my business to have any connection with you. But I needed the money right away, and they were the guys I sort of knew. Anyway, I thought I'd better tell you before someone surprises you with the information.”

It took Curtis a moment to think of the words to substitute for “prostitution.”

“You mean sex for money.”

“If you know any other way to keep everyone in school, you'd better tell me about it.

“Curtis, you and Elizabeth have been my best friends, ever. If there is any way to keep that, I want to. When I charged you fifteen dollars for my virginity, I knew a fourteen-year-old girl could get a lot more. I gave it to you for nothing. I wanted to really do it for nothing, but I had to have the fifteen dollars. Can we still be friends?”

Layla wondered whether Curtis would ever speak, and then slowly... “I don't have anything to complain about. It may have only been fifteen dollars, but I paid you. If I paid you, I guess my friends can pay you.” They both knew it was a non sequitur, and there was a break while they both judged how much anger was in his voice. Then he added, “I don't like it, but I suppose we can still be friends.”

“All through high school, after that time with you, I never did it with anyone else.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel like you were being loyal to me?”

“No, I guess not. Will you not tell Elizabeth? Please.”

“Jesus no. I wouldn't tell her if you wanted me to, but she's going to find out. You have to tell her.”

“No.”

There was silence while they both thought about how Elizabeth would react when she heard about it. Layla began to slap the chair they were sitting on, pounding small clouds of dust out of it. When Curtis joined her, she told him to stop, it made her choke. She got off the chair and started drawing lines in the dirt with her finger. The random lines had nothing to do with anything.

***

Prostitution was profitable, but it was not an occupation Layla had adequately planned for. There was only supposed to be a handful of clients who would not take up much of her time. The small handful part worked, but there always seemed to be pointless negotiations that took up time she had set aside for studying.

Most of her prospective clients lived in fraternities or dormitories or some other place where women were not allowed upstairs, and Layla would not countenance the back seat of a car. She hated the feeling that went with getting a hotel room. She decided she could support the cost of a small trailer, but Curtis found something better.

The small room for rent was a wooden structure with a faded-yellow, tumble-down feel to it. The room was built like a balcony off the back of a building that housed a laundry downstairs and detritus from several failed businesses upstairs. It was built out from the upper story over a small area that included four garbage cans and space for two cars. The owner of the building had hammered it together when he separated from his wife.

The wooden stairs that led up from the alley seemed treacherous until anyone climbing them reached the top and compared them to the small platform in front of the door that sloped with a pathological subsidence back down toward the alley. Plumbing for a toilet, a shower, and a sink hung from the underside of the room. The plumbing called on anyone climbing the stairs to guess whether it was about to twist free at the end that was attached to the room or the end that turned horizontally and disappeared into the building.

On the inside, raw lumber gave the room the feel of a tree house built for a child by an indulgent father. The grey, painted floor gave underfoot and emitted sounds that suggested a large acoustic instrument. The shower was a large, enameled, metal box, white on the outside, black, speckled with white, on the inside. It was a shower that foretold an end to the time when showers were still tiled by craftsmen. The toilet was not partitioned off from the rest of the room, a flattened ooze from a wax doughnut was visible at the base. In short, the most recent occupant (a student at the University who shared Layla's need for isolation) was moving out and the price was perfect.

When Curtis told her about it, he seemed angry and complained that he felt as though he were making himself an accomplice in Layla's business. However, when he showed it to her, it was almost as though they were back sitting on Elizabeth's bed thinking themselves the cleverest students in their high school. He wanted to call the room either “Cambridge House” or “Oxford House.” Layla decided on “Cambridge House” claiming the alley behind it was Cambridge Alley.

For a short while, Cambridge House served two purposes. Layla found it impossible to study in the trailer she called home, and the University's library was useless - nothing was more distracting than the constant whispering. So she studied in the lopsided room rented for her trysts. Unfortunately, it was not long before a group of men pounded on her door. That not only ended Cambridge House as a place to study, it was the end of Cambridge House as a place where Layla might ever be found.

She had emphasized to each new client what the consequences would be if word of her occupation reached the University's administration, and she promised to see to it that they shared in the consequences. The threat hadn't been enough. At the first knock on her door, she knew someone was gossiping. She put up a fifty dollar reward for information about who was talking, and promised that the culprit would get a beating from which he would never fully recover. She further promised a hundred dollar reward for information concerning any future gossip. She couldn't actually afford the rewards and didn't care much about the information. What she wanted was to stop the gossip.

A disreputable hotel across the Miami River replaced Cambridge House. She made her clients pay the hotel bill, and made a bad investment in a Vespa motor scooter so she could get to and from the hotel without wasting a lot of time.

Some days she spent half the time she had for studying looking for a place that was quiet enough to suit her, but by the beginning of October she'd found a landing in a stairwell in the Student Union. It was square, beige, and concrete with steel railings - the sort of place that made her feel like scribbling “Layla was here” on the wall.  As stairwells go, it wasn't bad, but you could only say it didn't need cleaning and painting if you were in charge of the University's maintenance budget. She was surprised, once, when she found it had been swept. The wad of chewed gum wrapped in a bit of foil was gone, and its absence brought it more to mind than its presence ever did.

Sitting on a stair was uncomfortable, but she only dragged a chair up from a conference room half-a-story below when she expected to spend an hour or more there. Then she was always tempted to leave the chair for the next time, but she never did. As winter came on, there were nights when there was a mild chill in the stairwell, but the chill mainly kept her from falling into a sleepy stupor over her books. When she read about poor students living in the steam tunnels of the University of Colorado, she thought for the first time about how fortunate a poor person was to have caught a ship going to Miami rather than New York.

The course that troubled Layla every day of the semester was called College Algebra. She first met the class at seven o'clock on the Monday morning of her first week at the University. The professor spoke with a Middle Eastern accent and made it clear that his students were going to find his exceedingly low standards exceedingly difficult to satisfy. He started by writing a list of skills on the blackboard that students would be assumed to have acquired in high school. Layla could remember how to do almost nothing on the list. As she looked around at the ashen faces of the other students, the only thing that distinguished her from them was that they weren't looking around. The tone of his voice, his body language, and the objective content of what he said, all reinforced the impression that he did not think highly of the students he encountered at the University of Miami. Layla thought he acted as though he were, himself, descended from the same Mahommed ben Musa al-Khwarizmi whose text, she learned, introduced Europeans to algebra in the ninth century.

Layla had not yet earned the money to buy any textbooks, so she wound up in the public library looking over high school algebra books. Then, at seven o'clock the following Wednesday morning, her professor began covering the topics on his panic-list, himself. This was presented as an act of charity, but it was more nearly an admission that the topics on his list had amounted to half the content of the course. Still, he did not make anything easy. His explanations were terse.

As fast as she earned the money to buy textbooks, she took stock of what she had to do in each of her courses, and by the start of the third week, she was shocked at how far behind she had already fallen. The University was nothing like high school. At the end of her first round of hourly exams she didn't know what to do. Some courses she could try to recover, she just had to do well on what came next, but algebra was different. She had to somehow learn what she'd already missed to understand what came next.

By the end of the first month, she was already cutting back on the number of clients she had, selecting those who took up the least amount of time ahead of those who paid the best. She insisted that Felipe and Enzo build up the house cleaning business even as they were returning to school and their mother was taking over. The net flow of money had to be from home to college funds, not from “scholarships”  to home.

***

Algebra remained her opponent like no other class. Layla had trouble remembering her professor's name. She believed she was suppressing it because she hated the class. The fact that his name was complicated and foreign sounding did not explain her inability to call it to mind. After all, she had mastered Mahommed ben Musa al-Khwarizmi. By mid-semester she had given up and allowed herself to think of him as Professor Mahommed ben Musa al-Khwarizmi. Anyone in the class understood who she meant when she called him that.

During those days of relaxation and anxiety that came between the end of final exams and the posting of final grades, the teaching assistant for her algebra discussion section spotted her walking toward the student union and ran after her. He was excited and wanted her to know, not just that she had received a ʻBʼ  in the course, but that Professor Mahommed ben Musa al-Khwarizmi had actually considered giving her an ʻA.ʼ  As far as anyone knew, the Professor had never before considered giving anyone in introductory algebra an ʻA.ʼ  Her grade point average for the semester was 2.7, and it was not lost on her that less effort trying to save what she thought would be a ʻDʼ  in algebra would have given her a higher GPA. Still, it was a math course, and in later years it remained the grade she was proudest of.

Approaching 1975

By her third year at the University, Layla's life was at least orderly. She was down to three issues in her life. The first was medical school. That was her mother's dream for her, and Layla felt, not so much a duty to her mother, as an obligation to someone whose choices in life she had taken away. She needed to give something back. The problem was that her GPA was not the 3.5 needed to get into medical school, though there was a source of hope.

Layla was enrolled as a biology major with a premed adviser, but she knew that most of the premed students were taking simplified courses to make their grades competitive. Physics 201 was described as introductory physics, but it was the algebra based physics course with no calculus requirement. Some of them took organic chemistry at a nearby junior college instead of the University. Layla wanted none of that. The hope her premed adviser held out to her was a score on the Medical College Admissions Test, the feared MCAT, that would open admissions committee eyes to the details of her application.

The second issue was whether she wanted to go to medical school at all. At the same time that medical school was her mother's dream, by teaching Layla to care about knowledge for its own sake, Maria had set Layla up to want something else. Layla had come to understand that medical school was largely a technical school. The curriculum sweeps rapidly over a vast collection of topics, all in the form “Science has shown...” and none in the form “We know this because...”  And the most important thing she had learned in college was the value of frequently thinking, Very interesting, if it's true. There would be no time for that in medical school. So there were nights when she thought about a PhD in physics instead of medical school. Sometimes she even fantasized about getting the PhD after medical school.

The third issue during that third year popped out of her integral calculus course. One particular day, the instructor was giving examples of various methods of integration when one student put up his hand.

“Why don't we just do these by inspection?”

“Okay, why not? What are the answers?”

To the everyone's surprise the student gave the answers, slowly but in a tenth of the time needed using the methods they were being taught. When, to everyone's relief, he finished with the problems, the instructor just stood there. So the student went on. “You just imagine the problem is a simple one that's familiar to you. Then you try to solve the real problem with the same steps you would use to solve the simple problem. Then re-differentiate the incorrect solution. You will immediately see how to change your answer so it's correct.” The instructor looked at the board, again, then he said, “Okay,” and went on with his lesson. Layla felt rather strongly that the braggart should have kept his mouth shut and let the teacher teach.

The student's name was Jamie Rathburn. When Jamie Rathburn stood up, he was short. That was another feature that would not make him popular, but she could not help thinking of Clark Gable who she had heard stood on boxes to kiss his leading ladies. His name was far too American for him to be a math-head, but Layla came to understand that he was the smartest kid in the class and didn't know it. His show of arrogance was more accurately a show of innocence. He hadn't anticipated the effect it had, but he caught on, and thereafter, he sat quietly unless called upon.

Layla found herself sitting closer to him as the days went by, and when he spoke to her as they passed in the hallway, she smiled a smile she was surprised to discover she had. A day came when she was sitting next to him in class. They had never exchanged more than a casual greeting, but he leaned over just as class was beginning and asked whether she would have dinner with him that same night.

Layla panicked. She knew what she had to say, but class might start in the middle of her answer, and besides, she couldn't answer in a room full of people. The only response she could think of was, “I'll tell you something after class,” and after a class she could not have told you much about, she fumbled around until they were alone in the room.

“I'm very sorry to tell you this, but you do not want to go out with me. You will want to know why, so I will tell you. I'm a prostitute. I use the money to pay for my brother's education as well as my own. I will soon be paying for my younger brother and sister as well. It's a long story.

“I could enjoy going out with you, but at the end, when you wanted to make out, I would have to say, ʻNo, now you have to pay.ʼ  I'm sorry.”

The next time the class met, Layla sat well away from him, but after class he caught up with her in the hall.

“Please step aside with me for just a second,” and leaning against the wall while students crowded past them, he said, “I was struck by one thing you told me Wednesday. You want to guess what it was?”

“Absolutely not.”

“You said, ‘Its a long story.’ I've never met a prostitute, and I doubt you're very representative, but I think I'd be very interested in your long story, just over coffee, just as someone who is curious about you with no further motive.”

“It's not a story I tell. It just isn't.”

“Do you drink coffee? And will you just tell me where you're from?” His own Alabama accent marked him as a Southerner.

“I'm from Brazil, and now we don't need to have coffee. I'm sorry.”

“Would you be curious about a prostitute studying mathematics if you weren't one, yourself?”

“No.”

“Now, you have lied to me. I think that means you owe me part of your story.”

“I don't know whether I lied to you or not, but if I did, it was just to get you to leave me alone without being rude.”

“Your English is really good. How old were you when you came here?”

“I was twelve, and now you have heard part of my story. So I've paid you for having arguably lied to you.”

“I don't suppose a Brazilian would like American coffee, anyway. I don't really like it, myself, but one time I had a cup of coffee that just filled my nose with the smell of brewing coffee - like camphor. I went looking for another cup like that. I never found one, but it got me in the habit of drinking coffee. Does real Brazilian coffee have that wonderful aroma?”

“I don't remember.”

“Ah, so you are suppressing your memories of Brazil. Your story is long but not happy.”

“Oh for Christ's sake. We need to get out of the way of these people. I'll drink a cup of your American coffee, but that's enough sacrifice. I'm not telling you my story, and I'm sure as hell not going out with you.”

Coffee after class became a regular event. And a day came when Layla became conscious of Jamie's resemblance to Mr. Andersen. It wasn't so much his appearance. They looked a little alike, but it was his his choice of words, or less often a gesture.

Another day came when she stopped refusing to talk about herself. After all, she'd already told him she was a prostitute. There were plenty of details Jamie never heard, but he said her story was the most remarkable story he'd ever heard. It was inspiring, and he admired her. His own story was more mundane. He was the smallest boy in his class in elementary school. That was enough to make him the target of bullies, but he knew he was smarter than they were, and that he would be someone, someday, while they would be getting divorced from the wives they bullied.

The University's Christmas vacation approached. It would be a couple decades, yet, before it would come to be called ‘Winter Break.’ Jamie was headed home to Alabama. Layla admitted that she would miss their meetings, “I won't miss the coffee, but I'll miss talking to you.”

“I've enjoyed these conversations, myself. If I hadn't, I don't suppose we'd have had so many of them.”

“I shouldn't, but I could give you a free roll in the hay before you go, if you would like me to.”

They met twice before he left, and resumed again when he returned. Layla made him make the unnecessary promise not to tell, requiring almost the same verbal contract she had with her clients. She was his on Tuesday afternoons, when he wanted, with the understanding that he also had to let her study during that time.

When he left for Alabama that summer, she didn't cry, but she could have if she'd let herself. When he returned the same day classes started in August, he had a romantic relationship back home that he intended to keep up. He didn't think he should renew his relationship with Layla. Layla heard the words he spoke in silence. Then, for the first time, she cursed the Universe that made her a prostitute. She was irritated by the amount of time she had wasted thinking about him over the summer. Weeks later, she found herself resenting her clients, which she had never done before, and tears caught her by surprise.

***

Layla began her fourth year at the University of Miami depressed, or setting her advisor's diagnosis aside, exhausted. She was tired of being a slave to the ambitions of her eleven-year-old self. She was tired of classes. She was tired of men. She was tired of getting up in the morning. She had a decision to make that was not intrinsically depressing, but it still frustrated any weak effort she might make to overcome the inert, black tar that filled all the interstices of her thinking.

She still believed she owed it to her mother to go to medical school, if she could, but left on her own, she would have chosen the PhD in physics. In physics she found the ideas about the Universe that came closest to unimpeachable knowledge. Moreover, it was an historical moment for her personal ambition. Sputnik had been launched fourteen years earlier and reentered the atmosphere two months after launch, but it left behind an ember in the National Science Foundation, a radiant puddle of money large enough to fund a stipend for almost anyone working on a PhD in physics, a stipend that was large enough to keep her in school anywhere in the United States, and if she were careful enough, it could help pay the tuition for Felipe and now Enzo. She could stop selling her time and inclination.

During the day, she kept busy enough to avoid thinking about the decision, but if she awoke at night, it troubled her return to sleep. She didn't expect to be able to get into medical school, anyway, so she could satisfy her conscience by trying just one medical school. When she failed to get in, she could go to graduate school. But no, nobody applied to just one, and no, that would not satisfy her conscience.

One of the issues in this decision was just the time and money it would take to apply to medical school. She would have to start by taking the MCAT and landing at the absolute top of the heap of conniving, high-achieving cutthroats clamoring to get into medical school ahead of her. The problem was that, in those days, the results of standardized exams like the MCAT were never revealed to the applicants, only to the schools they applied to. So she couldn't just get a mediocre score and give up, she had to get the letters of recommendation, go to the interviews, write the essays, and fill out the applications for the dozen medical schools to which she would have to apply to be able to tell herself she had actually tried, and of course, she would have to apply to graduate school at the same time.

She who had led her family out of Brazil felt like she'd never had a choice about anything in her life. So, as ever, she set out to get into medical school.

She failed. It was all rejections, it was just what she expected, but that didn't matter. She didn't like being told she wasn't good enough – not at all. She reacted by wanting to go to medical school, and one day, as the rejection letters were pouring in, some of them from Physics Departments, she saw an announcement posted on the bulletin board outside her adviser's office. It advertised a new medical school that had been open for just one year on the island of Grenada in the Lesser Antilles.

Medical School in the United States consists of two years of ‘basic sciences’ followed by two years of ‘clinical clerkships.’ St. George's Medical School promised two years of basic sciences in Grenada, and then clinical training in hospitals back in the United States. It promised eligibility for internships in America, and it offered a friendly admissions policy that boiled down to answering one question with a yes.

Can you write a check for the tuition?

Layla's premed adviser demurred, “You'll be wasting your money. They have a lousy reputation. No one knows whether any of their students will be able to pass the state exams needed to get an internship. Even if they do pass, the hospitals that run internships will most likely reject them.” But Layla saw an opening. If she did well enough on that state examination, really well enough, why would they all reject her? Really? All of them?

Layla was careful. She contacted St. George's admissions office and asked what she thought were the right questions. She found out that there were only a few full-time faculty, but they were mostly retired from teaching in medical schools in the United States. Most of the rest of the faculty, according to the admissions officer, taught in American medical schools and traveled to Grenada just to give a few lectures in their area of expertise. Layla insisted on a list of names and contacted a few them by telephone. They were real.

Then there was the big issue – clinical clerkships in the United States. She got the names of some of the hospitals and found one of them that intended to add a few St. George's students to its existing program for students in American medical schools.

Her premed adviser shrugged.

***

It would mean four more years of sex for money, and then, never again. The greater problem, from Layla's point of view, was that she was still a person without a country. She needed a passport from somewhere, and if she were to get back into the United States after going to Grenada, it needed to be an American passport.

Since Layla’s arrival in Miami, Castro had come to power and launched the Cuban diaspora. Even before the Cuban Revolution, a statistician would have noticed a steadily growing Latino surge from all over the western hemisphere, and Miami had grown like a kudzu plant. By the time she needed a passport, Latinos were nearly half the population of Miami. For the most part, they were new arrivals with ambitions other than attending college, or they were the children of new arrivals who were not yet old enough to go to college. So Latinos were still unusual at the University, but Layla knew of a few Cubans and Mexicans. She didn't know them personally. She'd always been afraid of other Latinos because it didn't matter whether they were legal or not, it seemed to her that associating with them was risky. If they were legal they were a risk because they would tell, and if they were not, they might be careless and attract immigration officers. But she needed a passport.

***

Layla's Vespa was broken, as was often the case. No one wanted to work on it because fixing a Vespa didn't pay enough. It was a two-and-a-half mile walk from campus to Shorty's Bar-B-Q, but Layla was still accustomed enough to walking. What she didn't like was giving up the time.

Once inside, Shorty's was disorienting. Shafts of bright light from the setting sun streamed horizontally through the windows. The sunlight was dazzling, but could not light up the dark, mahogany interior. Everything was mahogany – floors, tables, walls, and ceiling. The room was penetrated by dark wood columns that sometimes rose straight through the wooden tables. They rose into a jungle of decorative objects hanging from the ceiling - purposeless window frames hanging akimbo, not just a fan but the top of a windmill, flags, a few lamps burning just brightly enough to reveal they were lamps.

She didn't know what to do. She walked through the restaurant looking around corners, checking the appearance of the few shadowed faces, and then returned to the door where she stood wishing someone with a Latino complexion would walk through it.

After a while, a bartender with little to do walked over to her and asked whether she was waiting for someone. She answered that she had been told she would find some Mexican friends there at five o'clock.

“You mean Luis and his friends? They meet here sometimes. You're early. I don't think they get here by five. They meet in the back room,” and he pointed toward the dark, far-end of the restaurant. A few glints of light from the highly lacquered wood helped to define a doorway.

The back room was brigtly lit and might have been a small meeting room also used for storage. Or it might have just been a storeroom with a couple unneeded tables. There was a pile of crates containing beer bottles, both full and empty. The plain white walls were plasterboard and looked cheap at a time when lath and plaster was still common, especially cheap in comparison to the dark wood of the outer room. She sat in a folding chair that was too low for the table in front of her.

It was a relief to be alone with no one to see she didn't know what she was doing, but it was not a relief to have no idea how long she had to wait. What if the bartender were to return in two hours and ask her why she was still waiting when no one was coming?  She decided to wait half-an-hour, and if no one came, leave. She'd been told five o'clock, but she had never owned a watch and had neglected to check the clock behind the bar. She decided on a long half-hour.

Some mnemonic urge started her counting away the seconds, and then the minutes, but it was not long before the door opened and four young men entered. They were carrying on two conversations. She interrupted them both, loudly, to ask, “Is one of you Luis.”

Luis was dark-skinned, short, and well-built, but he somehow looked as though he would have an apple shaped belly by the time he was thirty. He was the leader of a group of Mexicans whose successors became the University's Latino/Hispanic Association. He looked at her with an expression that suggested he was wondering whether she was Latino, but perhaps he was just silently rating her looks.

Layla held out her hand, and as he took it, she drew him away from his friends. She spoke quietly.

“I want to speak with you.”

“How long will it take?”

“I don't know.”

“What's it about?”

“I'd rather not say right here. Some privacy would be good.”

“We're going to have a kind of meeting. Are you Hispanic?”

“Yes. I'm from Brazil. Technically, I think that makes me Lusitanic.” She wasn't sure she wanted to say that, it sounded sophomoric, but she also wanted to give the impression of being educated.

“Does that mean you're not Latino, either?”

“No, it means I am Latino, but it's not worth discussing. Can we talk?”

“How about after the meeting. People will hang around afterward, but we can go outside, and you can stop trying to make me curious. If you're Latino, you might even find the meeting interesting.”

“Okay, but how long will the meeting take?”

“I think less than an hour.”

“Okay.” But she was already regretting the time lost.

Another half-dozen people arrived and drew chairs up to the table where Layla was sitting. They didn't pay more than nodding attention to her, and when Luis started the meeting, Layla dragged her low chair to the other table. In the process she made enough noise to call attention to herself – leaving her stuck with trying to appear friendly and interested in the group.

She paid no attention to what was being said. At first, she just hoped something would happen to make the chatter end soon, but then she resumed her endless debate with herself. It wasn't just that going to Grenada meant using a fake passport and possibly great difficulty getting back into the United States. There was also the need to pay the tuition for Felipe and, now, Enzo. Tuition at this medical school in Grenada was a lot, and she had no idea how she could manage it for herself without putting Felipe and Enzo out on their own, working their way through school. She knew no one would criticize her for finally making the selfish decision, but she still owed her brothers the possibility of being among the best students. She wavered.

Luis saw her walk out of the room. He guessed she was bored but would be back. When the meeting ended, he went out into the restaurant to look for her, then he looked in the parking lot, and as he was giving up, he looked up and down Dixie Highway. She was gone.

***

The day had been of the kind that winter visitors from Minnesota brag about when they write home, and as she walked away from the bus stop, the night was a clement breeze that hid solid objects from the mind. If she could only take off her clothes and close her eyes, she felt she could float on this air. She knew better than to look at the sky, it would be nothing but a blur of light pollution, but she couldn't stop herself. She looked and wished for the ability to cause a power outage.

When she arrived home, Felipe met her in front of the trailer both suspicious and accusative.

“What have you been doing?”

“What business is it of yours?”

“Tell me!”

She answered softly to end the questioning, but with deliberate tones of irritation, “I met a client, and then I studied in the stairwell.”

“That's not what I mean. Why did you go to see Luis?”

Moving Felipe away from the trailer, “What do you know about that? It was four days ago.”

“Why did you go to see Luis?”

“How do you know I saw Luis?”

“He's in my Lit class. He knows I'm Brazilian, so he asked whether I know you. He didn't know your name, but the description was pretty obvious.”

“So I went to see him, and then I didn't see him. I changed my mind. What's it to you, anyway?”

“Luis said you acted like you were looking for drugs.”

“You know I don't use drugs.”

“I used to know you didn't use drugs, but it's been a long time since I've known anything. Were you looking for drugs?

“I told you I don't use.”

“It's an occupational hazard for people in your profession.”

“What the hell is this about?! When did you start critiquing my life?”

“I'm not critiquing your life. I'm just concerned about you and Luis.”

“Is Luis a drug dealer?”

“Luis is whatever you want him to be. Why did you want to see him?”

“I went there, I changed my mind, I didn't talk to him.”

“What did you want before you changed your mind.”

“None of your business. Not drugs.”

“We could argue about whose business it is, but let's not. Just tell me what you wanted. If it's bad, I'll try to be helpful. If it's not, it won't hurt anything but your superiority complex. Personally, I think I've supported you through enough shit to be someone you could confide in. So out with it. An abortion?”

“Nothing as bad as anything you'd think of. I wanted a passport. I don't want one, now.”

“A passport? An American passport?”

“Yes. That was all.”

“All? Whatever for? Oh, the medical school on that Caribbean island.”

“Yes.”

“You still want to be a doctor.”

“No.”

“Why not.”

“Lots of reasons. I've thought it out carefully, and I don't want to be a doctor.”

“Lots of reasons. For example, everyone in your family wants you to be a doctor, and you want to make sure they're not happy.”

“Don't say stupid things. You're better than that.”

“Okay. You can be better too. Let's go back to ʻlots of reasons.ʼ  Give me one of them.”

“One. It's a fake passport. It'll probably get me out of the country but not back in again. Then what would we do?”

“I can't believe you couldn't get back into the country. Half the Mexicans got here without a passport or a visa or anything. You're sure as hell smarter than they are – especially about that stuff. Don't try to tell me that. What else?”

“My premed adviser isn't sure they're even legit.”

“You mean the medical school.”

“Yes.”

“But you think the school is okay.”

“Not any more.”

“Why not? What's the worst thing that could happen? You'd maybe waste three months finding out.”

“In the meantime, you and Enzo wouldn't have your tuition money.”

“We'd cope. You think you're the only one who can figure out how to get along.”

“I don't want you to have to cope. You're doing really well, and you can't imagine how afraid I was it would be just like high school. You can maybe get into a real medical school.”

“It is a real medical school. You checked it out – thoroughly. Why, suddenly, do you not want to go? It's us, isn't it.”

“It's lots of reasons, just like I said. I don't even want to be a doctor. It's just what you and mother want.”

“Bullshit. I know you want to be a doctor. It's what you always said.”

“It's what I always said, but it wasn't what I thought.”

“Baloney. You applied, and you were accepted, and you were happy about it.”

The argument went on until Layla realized they were well into a digression about how tightly they bonded during their escape from Brazil, and how they didn't acknowledge that bond. She gave her brother a hug, kissed him on his ear, and whispered, “I'm exhausted. I have to get up early. I'm going to bed.”

***

The weather changed, and on a Sunday almost two weeks later it was hot and the sky was a smooth, featureless layer of black clouds thick enough to silence bird song. Layla woke up lying on damp sheets. An oscillating fan did little more than spread the sour smell of the airless trailer.

Her family had acquired a habit of eating a late breakfast on Sundays, and since the acquisition of a waffle iron, waffles had become inevitable. Lara and Enzo were out of bed ahead of Layla, only Felipe had to be called. They took their plates outside to a rickety, wooden table that the mosquitoes allowed them to occupy from about ten in the morning until three or four in the afternoon.

Her siblings were gayer than usual, and their gaiety infected Layla. They cheered the waffles, then sliced bananas on them and wore the peels as caps. Lara giggled and sneezed coffee back into her cup, and when that happened, Layla thought, My God, I was only a year older than Lara when we escaped from João. I couldn't have been much different.

As soon as Maria picked up an armload of syrupy dishes and went inside, Layla's siblings got both more excited and quieter.

“Give it to her,” came from both Lara and Enzo.

“What is it?”

A confusion of voices spoke, “It's an American passport,” and Felipe added, “Or close enough. Luis let me compare it to a real passport, and I couldn't tell the difference. There's more, just in case,” and Felipe handed her a Certificate of Naturalization.

“If you knew how to drive, I'd have gotten you a driver's license, too.” Felipe went on in a rush, “It's probably a good thing you didn't ask Luis, yourself. He said he was suspicious of you, but he knows me better. The hard part was getting a passport photo of you, but Luis told me the name of a Mexican girl working in the Registrar's Office, and she copied the photo from when you registered. It's a little old, so we made the date of issue on your passport old and stamped it as though you'd gone to Brazil three years ago. It looks really good, but you'll have to have a good story about your trip to Brazil. The Mexican girl only charged eight dollars for getting the picture copied, and it cost her two dollars to do it.”

Layla was stunned. It was the best gift she was ever likely to receive in her life, and she didn't know whether she wanted it. Her siblings didn't know she had put together a good case against going to medical school, or that she had also put together a good case in favor of going to graduate school and becoming a physicist. Stunned, confused, undecided, she still felt an imperative to speak and fell back on the easy question that followed from what Felipe just said.

“How did you pay for it?”

“I contributed my savings. We all did.”

“Your savings wouldn't buy you a double dip ice cream cone. All of you, together, couldn't pay for this. How did you get it?”

Felipe confessed, “We still owe Luis forty-eight dollars for it. He wanted to help, really, so he got it for us cheap and said he'd wait for some of the money.”

“So I get to earn the forty-eight dollars.”

“No!”

The conversation naturally went on to how they were going to manage the cost of everyone's education with Layla in medical school. Layla returned over and over again to how difficult it is to imagine what medical school is really like, retelling her premed adviser's tales - students memorizing anatomy during their morning showers and suddenly realizing they were memorizing anatomy from dreams they had during the night, students recording lectures without attending them and then playing them back at double speed because they couldn't afford the time to attend a lecture, students wanting the hospital cafeteria to be as quiet as the library so they could study while they ate.

She thought earning enough money could be difficult while she was in medical school. The demands for study time would be overwhelming, and even given the time, clients would be harder to come by – medical students were older, and while she didn't know the phrase to name it, the sexual revolution was making progress. No, she knew medical school was a bad idea.

“This passport is the best thing anyone has ever done for me, or ever will do, but it won't work. I've heard about medical school. I don't think I could earn enough money and survive in medical school.”

“Layla, we've grown up. We can work things out for ourselves. You've done everything for us. It's time for you to do for yourself.”

Enzo could not resist making a mistake. “It must be possible for someone who is really, truly determined to work his way through school.”

“What do you want to be, Enzo. Remind us.” Pause. “I think you said, ʻAn oceanographer and work at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.ʼ

“If you want to major in business, you can work and go to school. You could study pottery making and work. If you're a Theater Arts major, you can do whatever you damn well please, but if you succeed in becoming an oceanographer, spills in your textbooks will record every dinner you ate in college because you won't have ever stopped studying to eat.” Layla was repeating something she'd thought about her own textbooks.

“I could still be a linguist.”

Layla insisted on an agreement: When it became necessary for Felipe or Enzo to earn more than they could during the summer, one of them would drop out of school entirely for a semester rather than work part-time while they were in school. Everyone agreed, but it didn't settle the argument. The argument had to die of old age and, in the end, a proclamation.

A Proclamation

Whereas:

Layla da Costa Santo Cardeira, Maid of Codó,

is too simple minded to look after herself,

We, Whose Signatures Are Hereto Affixed,

Herewith Proclaim:

We Will Not Accept Any Damn

Scholarship Money from Our Sister,

Layla da Costa Santo Cardeira, Maid of Codó.

Not Today. Not Ever. So she can damn well go to medical school.

Signed this Twenty-Second Day of March in the Year 1972

Lara of Destiny,

Spiritual Captain of the Kathryn Burke

Enzo I,

Lion of the Red Neck Trailer Park

Felipe Cardeira,

Lord High Potatory

***

Even the proclamation did not immediately end the discussion. It sputtered back to life at least briefly everyday for another week, but  right from the start, the passport gave the decision to go to medical school a momentum that overran any ideas Layla had of a career in physics.

There was a particular advantage to the school in Grenada which Layla had often considered. She did not have to take any summer vacations. She could complete the program in thirty-six months. In three years she could have an internship. From the hospital's point of view, interns were free labor, but there was enough pay so that, if she lived as close to the ground as she'd always lived, she could begin helping again. Lara wouldn't even be in college, yet.

***

Layla left for Grenada in late August. The day she left, the streets of Miami were quiet in the heat. The elderly tourists were still in Minnesota where it was far too hot to think of traveling south for the winter. Her whole family got on the bus to the airport, spending twenty cents per person each way.

It would have been easy to think Layla was rich that day. She had a ticket to fly to Grenada and gave each of her brothers the price of a semester's tuition. Her canvas duffel bag held the results of a trip to the Salvation Army: four cotton blouses, one skirt, one pair of women's slacks, two brassieres, three handkerchiefs, one pair of nylons, two pairs of bobby socks, a pair of flip-flops, two sheets for a single bed, three bath towels, a large tin cup, and a spoon. Not from the Salvation Army was a new toothbrush, a comb, and two containers of roll-on deodorant. Then there was Maria's contribution of twenty one-pound bags of rice or beans - she wasn't sure of the airline's weight limit, so that was all. Layla also had the clothes she was wearing, which included a small purse she'd been carrying since the eighth grade. There was no makeup, which she had never afforded, and as usual, a roll of toilet paper instead of more costly feminine hygiene products. There was no toothpaste because the eleven cents she had left in her purse would not buy a tube of toothpaste, and she had read about a study which claimed that brushing without toothpaste was as effective as brushing with toothpaste. That was before toothpaste contained sodium fluoride.

Layla had hoped to leave with more than eleven cents in her pocket. She could have worked another week and still arrived in time for the first day of school – if the required airline tickets had been available. Other students heading to St. George's knew how far in advance of a new academic quarter all the seats on the few flights into Grenada's tiny airport would be booked.

Rejecting the idea of arriving late, Layla arrived at Pearls Airport a week early on a LIAT DC3. The DC3 had two significant disadvantages. First, it was extremely reliable,. And second, it could use an extremely short runway. These two facts meant Layla was flying on an incredibly loud airplane that was already approaching forty years old and was landing on a runway that was officially described as “geographically challenging.” She knew she was probably mistaken when she thought they were crashing, but she went ahead and thought it even though two other students she met on the airplane had warned her it would be a rough landing. One of them also warned her that the airline's name, LIAT, stood for “Luggage-In-Another-Terminal,” but Layla thought it was probably just a horrible misspelling of “LATE.”

The amount of chaos that just fifteen arriving passengers could create, along with the worn-out, dirty look of the international airport, and the filth in the bathroom, and the smell everywhere convinced her of the truth that had been growing inside her since she left her family in Miami. She was making a mistake. St. George's Medical School was a scam. The airport in Barbados, where she'd changed planes, had been a little reassuring, but this... The broken, grimy welcome-sign over the kicked-in door that led into the chaos and dirt was probably put up by her fairy godmother - intending her to see it as a final warning to turn around. One of the students had told her the last flight he was on aborted its landing because there were goats on the runway. Layla thought the goats were probably just trying to be helpful.

As she waited with the other students for their baggage to appear, she learned the school was twenty-five miles from the airport. Her eleven cent contingency fund didn’t seem to be enough to cover the emerging problem. Ah well, when had she ever been able to throw money at a problem?

If she'd been able to find a frigging map of Grenada in the University's library, there was a good chance she would have noticed the problem before she faced it, but why would anyone expect the airport and the capital city of a small Caribbean island to be twenty-five miles apart? Even the corruption expected in a tiny country recently jettisoned as economically unsupportable by the collapsing British Empire, even that was an inadequate explanation. The problem was that every Caribbean island wasn't flat. Grenada was a volcanic rock yet to be worn down into the sandy beaches of the magazine ads for Caribbean islands. The town of St. George's was located where there was a harbor, and the airport was located where there was a small flat place.

She was unlucky - her baggage did not go to another terminal. Once she got her seventy pound duffel bag past customs officials, who were understandably suspicious of all the rice and beans, she didn't know what to do with herself or the seventy pound bag.

Outside, she was immediately surrounded by a cacophony of taxi drivers, most of whom drove small jitneys in the hope of finding a group of tourists wanting a tour of the island. On the other side of the clamor, her two fellow students were being driven off. She might have had just enough time to hail them and ask to be taken along, but that would have involved being unable to pay her share when they arrived. In the few seconds it took her to decide to go ahead and hustle the ride, they were already gone.

As the remaining travelers found jitney drivers and left, the chaos coalesced around her. She told the drivers, “No.” And then, “Damn it! No!” And then worse. When they demanded to know where she was headed, she told them, “Nowhere.” They didn't believe the airport was her final destination. When she told them she didn't have any money, they said they accepted American dollars. They didn't believe anyone was crazy enough to arrive in their airport without any money, but one by one they gave up until there was only one driver left hoping she was carrying a seventy pound bag of money.

“You a student?” meaning a student at St. George's Medical School.

“Yes.”

“You not have money for real?”

“Yes, I really don't have any money.”

“What you do?”

“Walk.”

“Carrying that? No, too far.”

“Please, just go away.”

“I afraid for you. What you to do?”

She was afraid for herself. She had eleven cents. She was in a foreign country and knew almost nothing about it. The island seemed unsafe, and even St. George's Medical School seemed like another trap.

“Can I hitchhike?”

“Poor people here hitchhike all de time, but white girl like you? Maybe trouble.” It was startling to her to be referred to as “white,” but she knew she could not let her mind stick there for long.

“I can promise to pay you in a month, plus some extra, if you can take me now.”

“I sorry miss. I only make my living driving for money.

“Okay, what road do I take to get to St. George's?”

“You go sout at de main road. Sout be lef. You go sout a mile-a-half to de fork, bote roads go to St. George's. To get to de medical school, you go trew St. George's. Ony one road go out de oter side. It go pas de medical school – anoder five miles at Grand Anse.”

Layla thanked him for his considerate attitude, hoisted her duffel bag onto her back, and struggled for one hundred fifty feet beyond the end of the building before she stopped to set the bag down.

She found herself in the greenest place that could exist. The airport was surrounded on three sides by hills and more distant mountains all covered in tropical rain forest. The green around her was not quite solid, there were scattered spots on the sides of the mountains where the canopy let a red or blue roof show through. She felt the trade wind and without thinking knew what relief it would bring to someone sitting in the shade after working in the sun. She knew she was in a beautiful place, but she was afraid, not deathly afraid, but afraid enough. She was a white woman who was about to start hitch-hiking in a country the Brits had abandoned as a financial sinkhole. Grenada was in the process of turning itself into a black republic. She began dragging the bag on the ground, wondering whether she would wear a hole in it.

When she reached the main road, there was a negro woman waiting under a tree with a small child, perhaps four-years-old. The woman was older than Layla, but no more than thirty. She had skin so dark Layla had only seen the like of it in pictures. The rest of her appearance embarrassed Layla because it reminded her of all the racist remarks she'd heard in Florida. The woman wore a white blouse, a dark skirt, and clumsy-looking, black shoes that could have been left from the nineteenth century.

The child had a lighter complexion. Layla thought the child prettier than the woman and regretted the thought.

The woman spoke, “Hello, good day.”

Layla stopped and sank to the ground next to her bag as she spoke, “Hello.”

“That looks too heavy.”

“It is too heavy. I'm not carrying it anymore.”

“You right. Taxi drivers charge too much. Better to take a transport.”

Layla wasn't sure what she meant. Perhaps there was something like a bus service on the island, but it didn't matter. She didn't believe any kind of transport was going to take her twenty-five miles for eleven cents. She didn't know how to respond to something she didn't understand, so silence followed until the woman resumed.

“You Haitian?”

“No, I'm Brazilian.”

“Brazilian? Good, I not likin' Haitian juju.”

The conversation ended there, but neither the woman or the child hesitated to stare at Layla. Layla stared back, as curious about them as they were about her. From time to time, one side or the other smiled, eliciting an awkward smile in return. The driver from the airport passed without acknowledging them. She watched him turn right onto the main road.

A car passed. Layla put out her thumb. The woman looked at her harder than ever, a look of curiosity bordering on criticism. A loaded dump truck passed at a speed that seemed like sublime madness for that vehicle on that road. A blast of the air horn as it passed made Layla glad she hadn't been alert enough to get her thumb out.

Time passed marked by the dull buzz of insects, the driver from the airport returned – this time headed toward St. George's. The woman stepped into the road and put up her hand. The jitney, which had been a taxi and was now a transport, stopped. The door slid open, and the woman hoisted her daughter through the door and started to get in. She stopped with one foot inside and looked back at Layla.

“You not takin' de transport?”

“I don't have the money.”

“It not so much as at de airport.”

“I still don't have it.”

“What a white lady doing here wit no money?”

“I'm a student at the medical school. My tuition money and the airplane ticket was all I had.”

The driver sounded the horn.

“Hush that horn! Tis white student lady say she got no money,” and turning back to Layla, “You goin' St. George's?”

“Yes.” It didn’t matter whether the woman meant the town or the medical school.

“She say she going St. George's,” and back to Layla, again, “What you do if you can't pay?”

“I don't know.”

“She not know what she going to do. Tis one time you give somebody a free ride.”

The driver replied, “I know she can't pay. She come on de LIAT wit no money. She no student. She just a crazy lady. Let her hitch-hike like everybody else wit no money.”

“But she a white lady. She plenty lost.” Two other voices spoke up - in support of the woman but mainly wanting to get the jitney moving.

The driver caved in. “Oh, for Chris' sake. Get de woman inside. I can't make money by sittin' here.”

The inside of the jitney was crowded with negro faces. A thin, elderly man who looked as though he belonged in a wheelchair hoisted up Layla's duffel bag and held it as she got up into the jitney. Two obese women, occupying a bench seat, pulled a jump seat up into the aisle. As soon as she settled into place, her bag was shoved onto her lap. The woman next to her had no choice but to lean heavily against her. She felt crushed and smothered, but to be helped at all relieved some of her fear. She thought she would be taken to the town of St. George's, and St. George's Medical School was five miles beyond that, but even though she would be left with a problem that still seemed unmanageable, it had to be less unmanageable than the problem at the airport.

The speed of the jitney on the narrow road winding through the mountains, the constant swerving to avoid potholes, her exhaustion from travel, the heat and humidity, the bodies that compressed her, the awkward, folding seat she occupied, these things made her nauseous. She was relieved that there was none of the body odor she had expected while getting into the crowded jitney, but as the road wound on, at each curve she debated calling on the driver to stop. She did not want to annoy everyone, again, but she knew how much worse it would be if she vomited inside the jitney.

And then the problem was taken out of her hands. The woman next to her shouted, “Stop! De white lady going to trow up!”

The jitney stopped in the middle of a blind curve, the elderly man pulled Layla's bag off her lap, everyone in the jitney stood up and crowded to the side that let her reach the door, which the driver slid open from the outside while stepping briskly aside. Layla would have had a few minutes to go in the jitney before she vomited and did not vomit spontaneously the moment she got out, but she knew she'd better vomit before she got back in. So she put her finger to the back of her throat.

When the jitney was moving again, she thanked the woman next to her and asked how she knew. “When you sweat drop on me, I look at you, and I know. White people be white, but you more like a Venezuelan, and Venezuelans not be that white.”

***

The jitney stopped often to let someone on or off, to acquire a message to be delivered farther down the road, once to pick up a birthday cake to be delivered, sometimes for a conversation of unknown purpose between the driver and someone who had come down to the road. Sometimes the driver got out of the jitney and disappeared for a few minutes for no obvious reason. But they reached the town of St. George's, and by the third stop inside the town, everyone was off the jitney except Layla. She wasn't sure what to do, whether to get off with the last passengers or wait. When the driver started off again, she didn't know what to say or ask. She was slightly afraid he'd forgotten she was still on the transport, but she didn't speak. Half-a-mile further along the jitney stopped.

The driver pointed through the windshield and said, “De road to de medical school. Tis as far as I go.”

Layla thanked him, asked how much he was owed, and asked his name so she would know who she needed to find when she got the money to pay him.

“Never mind, Missy. You don't pay me back. My paying customers say it white girl privilege to ride, but tis as far as I go.”

***

She sat on a foot-high curb with her feet in the road and rested. She was not going to go on this way. When she had rested a little, she was going to put out her thumb and wait for the result. If nothing happened, she would try to find a place to hide her bag and walk on without it. Without the bag, five miles was nothing to her.

She watched a dog sniffing through piles of trash and cowering every time a human came near. She wondered whether she or the dog was hungriest. Then she thought the dog's focus on what was important probably evinced the greater intelligence.

***

St. George's medical school consisted of two buildings, both were built of concrete blocks, small rectangles piled up to make big rectangles inside a crumbling layer of faded yellow paint. One was long and low, and reminded Layla of a chicken coop. The other was tall enough to have once been a barn, or a gymnasium, or even some kind of factory. A lecture hall would fit in it easily enough, but without the sign on the outside, Layla would not have believed she was being let off in the right place. It did not look like a medical school that had just admitted its second class of more than one hundred students.

Beyond the buildings, there was water. The sun was setting on the other side of the island, so it seemed more likely to be the Atlantic Ocean than the Caribbean Sea. Layla needed to find a place where she could hunker down for the night, maybe live if she had to. An empty coastline seemed more likely to provide a place where she'd be left alone than the side of the road. So she lugged her bag around to the back of the barn and dropped it where she could sometimes get her eyes on it while she explored.

She found a pipe sticking up out of the ground behind the building. It had a faucet on the end of it, and when she tried it, water came out. Locally, it was called a “standpipe.” A standpipe could be useful if she had to live on the beach for a while. In the villages, one pipe could serve several households even for bathing which was done modestly in clothing that got soaked in the process.

She also discovered a path that led through a hundred feet of weeds and scrubby trees to a narrow, black-sand beach. As she walked along, she investigated any place where clusters of trees shaded the undergrowth enough to thin it out. She found one cluster that was not easily penetrable around the edges but open enough inside. It seemed almost secure. So she picked her way inside and pulled up spindly weeds until she had a patch of bare, black sand - a place to sleep.

She knew what she didn't have, matches, and the advancing night was an issue. She tried to remember what shops she may have passed just before her arrival at the school, but she had been paying too much attention to her hunger. She walked back to the main road, and found herself fifty yards from a group of men she presumed were students gathered around some wooden shacks that turned out to house food vendors.

Layla did not have to ask to understand why all but two of the shacks were shuttered. They were awaiting the return of students for the start of the term still a week away. She thought the students she was looking at were probably too poor to fly home between quarters. So they would be too poor to afford her modestly priced services. Each was just there for the food, and as soon as it was handed over in a paper bag or on a paper plate, they scuttled off to some private place. Had Layla seen more science fiction movies in her life, it would have looked to her like the opening scene in a movie about a dystopian future.

She tried begging a meal on credit, but it was no go. The first vendor wouldn't believe the white woman didn't have any money. The second had overheard the conversation and ignored her. A woman who had set up a brazier in front of one of the closed shacks and was grilling chicken thighs just said, “No.”

She began chatting up the students, but asking for the loan of a cigarette lighter only got her comments about the health risks of smoking. When it came to poverty, the woman grilling chicken seemed to be in a league with Layla. She didn't have any matches, and was afraid to loan the lighter she had to anyone, but she had heard Layla's request, and Layla came away with what she needed. The woman gave her a live coal. It took Layla a minute to scare up a rock that was flat enough to carry the gift, but she was set. She would boil some of the rice her mother had sent, the beans could wait for another day.

***

The stars twinkled like the stars in a Walt Disney animation, and as she lay waiting for sleep, an amused voice inside her head told her the little clearing around her was her room at the Alhambra Palace. It wasn't much of a magic trick to transport the palace from Granada to Grenada – they were only one vowel apart. Layla wasn't sure whether she was being really funny or was half-asleep and already dreaming.

She was exhausted and thought she could sleep through anything, but there was a problem with her room at the Alhambra. The mosquitoes were more numerous than the stars and as voracious as Iguazú Falls. They were not as bad as the mosquitoes on her twelfth birthday, but they made her feel as though a lot of difficult years had gone by and she was still in the same place, still escaping from João in the middle of the night, still fantasizing about being someone.

As is the way with some species of mosquito, they gave up the feast after eleven o'clock. By midnight, enough of the itching had subsided, and she slept. Fortunately, these were the days after malaria had been eliminated and before dengue fever had arrived. The hard packed sand disturbed her sleep, repeatedly, but each time an aching joint aroused her, she turned over and was quickly asleep again.

The mosquitoes woke her up in time for the first Caribbean sunrise she'd seen since she walked off the Kathryn Burke. She wondered what could make the sunrise seen from this island so much more worth watching than the sunsets in Miami. High-altitude puffs materialized, scattered like pink popcorn glued to a cerulean backdrop. There were mauve cumulus clouds on the horizon with golden edges that shone like neon ribbons, and far off to her right, a wall of tall, shadowy-purple cumulonimbus clouds revealed a front moving in with a threat that fascinated her. The slowly evolving colors kept her distracted from her troubles, in awe for half-an-hour until the sun itself appeared and began to wash the day with white light.

Shortly after her acceptance to St. George's, Layla had received a long list of instructions, almost none of which made any difference to her. However, the instruction to register as soon as she arrived seemed to be something she could do. Awake, and wanting to escape the mosquitoes, she set out for what she knew would be a long wait for someone to arrive to keep up the school's end of the instructions.

She waited an hour-and-a-half before she saw a woman drive up in an old Plymouth, raise a small cloud of dust parking, and start walking toward the chicken coop, which Layla hoped was the administration building. Two other students appeared and followed about a hundred feet behind the woman. Layla was about twenty feet still farther behind. When she reached the building the woman was still struggling with the keys.

“Be patient. I know this is the right key,” and a sarcastic voice from the previous night thought, It's just the wrong lock.

They clamored in together. Then the two students in front of her stopped abruptly and waited while the woman began settling herself behind a desk. This settling filled a minute of a peculiar silence before the woman spoke. “Are you here to register?” and they all answered, “Yes.”

The woman handed them forms to fill out. Then she asked them to hand over their passports. Layla panicked . The woman explained that they would get their passports back in a couple weeks. The school would get visas for them that would allow them to stay longer than the tourist stamps in their passports. Layla's panic partly dissipated leaving behind a supporting skeleton of worry – a worry that put her on guard for traps as she filled out the paper work.

There was a question about citizenship that made her pause. The sarcastic voice said, You're traveling on a fake U.S. passport, so you put down ʻfake U.S. Citizen.'

When she turned in her paperwork, the woman looked her up and down, and then asked, “Are you the new Brazilian student who is here without any money?”

Layla froze, she couldn't think fast enough to know what to say. There were so many roots and branches to the question, and all she could see was the trunk.

When Layla did not respond, the woman went on, “Professor Scott wants to see you. He's in the other building. Just go in and look around until you see his name on a door. He might not be in for another hour.” The woman looked Grenadian but spoke with an upper-class, British accent that mystified Layla.

As Layla turned to leave, the woman added, “Professor Scott is a little odd. You may have to knock on his door twice to get his attention, but the Grenadian staff send our problem children to him. He's more practical than the psychologists,” and as Layla stepped out the door, the woman added, “You can register tomorrow if you don’t want to now.”

And Layla thought, If I stomp out I’ll look totally scatterbrained, and if I turn around, I’ll look more than totally scatterbrained. She continued out, saving her embarrassment for another day and thinking, I couldn’t have been like this when I was eleven.

***

The building that kept calling itself a gymnasium was still locked up. She was hungry and thought frequently about getting a fire started and boiling some rice, but it would certainly take more than an hour to do anything about her hunger, and by then this Professor Scott should be in his office. She didn’t know whether he was a threat or an opportunity, but if he was an opportunity, she wanted to take advantage of it, and if he was a threat, she thought she should get it over with. So she decided on a forty-five minute walkabout to see what resources she could find - the new voice suggested something in the way of a cave, maybe one that was inhabited by runaway slaves in the Eighteenth Century.

As expected, she returned without having made any useful discoveries. Even if there had been a lonely male who, in spite of a fist full of cash, chose not to fly back to the States between quarters, she probably wouldn’t have noticed because she could not break her focus away from her hunger. She found the building open and without any difficulty found the door labeled Dr. Scott. Her first knock was more tentative than she intended, but Dr. Scott shouted back, “Step in!”

Professor Scott's desk engaged her attention even more quickly than Professor Scott, himself. He was hunched behind an electric typewriter, and looked a little gnome-like until he stood up and offered her his hand, proving that he was both tall and stronger than he looked. He was interesting enough looking, but half his desk was covered with wood carvings, some of which were small, laughing Buddhas, but more were tall, grotesquely stretched-out figures, often with extraordinarily large genitalia. None of the carvings seemed to illustrate anatomy in any way useful to an anatomist. The only evidence of his profession was a human skeleton hanging, as modestly as possible, in a corner by means of a hook screwed into its superior sagittal suture.

After they shook hands, Layla remained standing until he told her to sit down. “So first things first. Who are you? Then, why are you here?”

“I'm Layla Cardeira. I'm a new student. By ʻhereʼ  do you mean in your office or as a student at St. George's?”

“Well, first let’s try in my office.”

“I'm here because the woman at registration said you want to see me.”

“Oh, yes, there's only one woman in this class, so you're the Brazilian traveling on an American passport without any money.”

Layla froze. Dr. Scott look puzzled and then said, “I'm interested in your being Brazilian, but what I'm expected to ask you about is being here without any money. Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“How about the Brazilian part? Is that true, too?”

“Yes, but how do you know.”

“There are no secrets in Grenada. Any interesting piece of information spreads as fast as a tongue can wag it on. I really don't know how the phone company survives. If I want to talk to a Grenadian, I just tell a couple of them who I want to talk to, and by the end of the day, the person I want to see knocks on my door.

“When the local staff sends someone to me, it means there’s a problem, and you're out of money, so yes, there’s a problem. From where I sit, so far this could be a problem that will last a couple days until money arrives from your bank, or you could have somehow got yourself in deep shit. So I’m expected to find out what’s up. So tell me your problem.”

The new little voice, the one that had suggested the cave, provided the answer. “I need to find someplace that will sell me eleven cents worth of matches. I have the eleven cents. I can't afford a lighter.”

“And you need matches?”

“Yes, to start a fire so I can boil some rice.”

“To start a fire to boil rice. Are you camping out?”

“You could say I did last night.”

“Okay, let's say that. Do you intend to camp out the whole time you're here?”

“I will do that if I have to, but I don't expect to have to.”

“Well, as it's against the law to camp out in Grenada, we'll hope you don't have to. That leaves us with two questions, and I'm not sure which to tackle first. Yes, I am. Since you regard matches as your most immediate need, I will ask whether you are hungry. Then I'll ask about your plans. Are you hungry?”

“I had some rice last night, but otherwise I have had nothing to eat for more than two days.”

“So you are hungry.”

“Yes.”

“Are you expecting a money transfer to the Barclay’s bank?”

“No.”

“Then you could be hungry for a long time.”

“I don’t expect to be.”

“That’s an interesting answer. How is it that you are going to solve this problem?”

“I have a large quantity of beans and rice and only need matches.”

“Is it the case that you have a two-year supply of beans and rice.”

“No.”

“Okay, I want to help you. So why don't you elaborate a little bit on what your problem is - problems are?”

“Elaborating sounds too much like talking about myself, which I don't like to do. My problems are I don't have any matches or a place to live. However, I can probably solve both of those problems. I’ve had worse problems to deal with.”

“But just at the moment you’re hungry.”

“You could call that a corollary of the matches problem.”

“Okay. Hunger is an immediate problem I can do something about. Let's go see what they have to eat in the shacks. After that, you might be in more of a mood to share information about yourself. I will be disappointed if you don't have an interesting explanation for what a Brazilian woman is doing at St. George's, broke, with an American passport.”

She'd been starting to relax before the words 'American passport' came up, again. “I'm sorry, but that’s not something I'm going to be willing to discuss.”

“I can't imagine a mundane explanation, but just being unable to imagine it doesn't mean one doesn't exist. However, no explanation at all would reveal the existence of a fascinating explanation you are unwilling to share, and that would be something I'd really like to know about. Let's go. I'm hungry, myself. My breakfast comes so early in the morning I usually need a second.

“By the way, the only thing I recommend from the shacks is pizza. The oven pretty well kills the microbes, and they don't handle the pizza after it's out of the oven. The pizza shack is open in the morning because I'm not the only one afraid of diarrhea.”

***

The Grenadian staff was not wrong about Dr Scott. He was more helpful than the psychologists. In dealing with problem children, he was practical, and he paid attention to detail. So they started their friendship by sharing one large pizza rather than two small ones, and their conversation involved more digressions than steps forward.

“If someone could find a way to make money from mosquitoes, this island would be the wealthiest place in the world, but you're right, you don't want to camp out with them. So what do you imagine doing?”

“I read about students at the University of Colorado living in steam tunnels. I don't think there are steam tunnels, but I don't think I need them on a tropical island. I'll find something else. An unoccupied stairwell will do until I get something worked out.”

Dr. Scott missed the possibilities in “something worked out.” He focused on the concrete half of what Layla said. “I don't think there are any unoccupied stairwells around here, either. What else?”

“You said I'm the only woman in the class. It shouldn't be hard to find a guy who’ll put me up. I imagine I even get to choose.” A startle response just before she finished that remark made her feel as though the part of her brain that knew she was saying something she shouldn’t had fallen asleep from fatigue and shouted the second it woke up.

Dr. Scott thought of course several seconds before he found his voice. “I don't like that idea very well. There's an ethical problem with your being forced to choose someone even if you have some choice as to who. I'm afraid of sounding puritanical, here, but I don’t think I am. I can imagine offering to put you up, myself, without the sex, but sometimes female friends from the States take their vacations with me, and I don't think they would like the idea of a permanent female resident in my house. Anyway, I’m afraid you’re planning on something that sounds a lot like gold digging.”

“I was only pointing out it’s an option. And I think it sounds more like prostitution than gold digging. The guy doesn’t think I’m in love with him before he finds out I’ve fleeced him. We just trade financial support for sex. It’s a fair deal. I've been in tighter spots before and done worse things. But I repeat, it’s just one option. And I still need matches.”

“Oh yes, the matches. We'll take care of the matches.”

***

“A story?”

“Your story.”

“As I said, I don't like talking about myself.”

“Give me the short version.”

“I'd rather not.”

“Before we go on, I’m afraid I have to embarrass myself. You said ‘Layla' didn't you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. My memory hasn't failed, yet.

“Layla, I'm not any threat to you. I think you’ve already told me a significant chunk of what you want to hide. Knowing your story might help me understand what I'm doing if I try to help you. I've helped other students, and at least a couple of them had stories they didn't want to tell, but we became good enough friends. The short version?”

“Okay, the short version, but no one has been or will be a good enough friend for any more. Don’t even ask. Actual friendships with my teachers haven’t ended well.

“So here goes. My father was not a nice man. He nearly killed my brother. We had to decide. Kill him or run away. We ran away. I decided it would be as easy to get to America as someplace in Brazil where we would have no future.”

“How did you get to America?”

“On a very slow freighter.”

“But how...”

“Stop being stupid! I was only twelve. There's only one way for a twelve-year-old girl to get her mother, two brothers and a sister to America!”

“I'm sorry. I didn't hear you say you were only twelve. And did I understand you, correctly, it was you who got your family here?”

“What you probably understood correctly was that I don't like talking about myself.”

“If you were only twelve, wasn't your mother in charge?”

“She couldn't. That's it, that's my story, you got the whole thing. I'm exhausted, now stop asking questions. And you can't tell anyone! Nothing about me! I don't know why I told you too much.”

Layla's voice got even more agitated. “Can you tell me what’s going to happen when they look in my passport?”

“What are you talking about?”

“When I register. The woman take my passport. She said I get it back in two weeks. I am in trouble?”

“No, no, no. The school collects everyone's passport, faculty too. Tourists who come without a visa are only allowed thirty days on the island. You need a visa to stay longer. So the school just collects everyone's passport and takes the whole lot to Immigration. I doubt that anyone looks at them. The school says you're a student, and they just stamp student visas into all of them at one time. If there's a problem with your passport, you could have gotten it out of a box of Wheaties, I don’t care, no one here cares.”

Layla covered her face with her hands and rested her elbows on her knees. It was a gesture meant to insist she be left alone.

She spoke without raising her head. “I'm sorry, I don't need to shout. I already understood what is to happen. It's just that my whole life has been about avoiding disaster. Sometimes I bite the hand that feeds. I won't be able to tell you any more. It upsets me.” Layla thought to herself, Just that easily I made it obvious I have a fake passport. I must get control of myself.

“Things were still bad after you got to the States?”

It was another question. Help was too expensive. She got up and left.

***

She slept for most of the day in her room at the Alhambra. She could register another day.

When the mosquitoes resumed their most intense activity, Layla left her duffel bag behind and fled to higher ground But she didn't get much relief from the mosquitoes, and she was already too late to find the woman with the live coal.

Having slept all day, she spent most of the night wandering around the school grounds looking for a comfortable place to lie down.

Long before morning came, she admitted she should have put up with Dr. Scott’s questions and found out what he had to offer. Probably nothing of real use, but when had she lost the discipline to deal with mere fatigue.

Now. the question was: Did she spend the day finding some student who would put her up, or did she go back to Dr. Scott? She decided on the obvious, she would use the morning to find out whether Dr. Scott had anything to offer and the afternoon to do what was necessary.

Of course, in times of trouble nothing is ever simple. After waiting through most of the morning for Dr. Scott to arrive, she learned from the secretary in the chicken coop that during the break between quarters faculty members felt no obligation to show up at all. However, the secretary picked up her telephone and called Dr. Scott informing him that the student from Brazil wanted to meet with him.

Layla would never have asked the secretary to make that call. It was an imposition on Dr. Scott that made her feel guilty - which was far too close to feeling an obligation.

***

“I'm not a threat to you. Nothing you say to me is going anywhere. But if you are going to survive here, you're going to need a friend. I suppose you can find your own, but who knows, maybe you'd rather not. Your apology wasn't bad, and I find you interesting. So I might be interested enough to help. If I were you, I'd take a chance on that. Do you think I'm wrong?”

“Not exactly, but I don't see how you can help.”

“And are you a little upset because you already told me most of what you're afraid to tell me?”

“Yes, but I still don't see how you can help.”

“Well, for example, I can tell you that Gordon's store will probably sell you eleven cents worth of matches, but if I like your story, I might even buy you a whole box.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't be trying to be funny, but I already thought seriously about you last night. I keep wondering why you keep telling me it was you who got your family out of Brazil, not your mother.”

“Oh Jesus, now I'm expected to be a story prostitute. I'm supposed to tell my story for a box of matches.”

“No, I'm trying to be less difficult. I'll tell you what I can do for you, now, on credit. Your story can pay for it when you are used to telling me things. I can do this for you: I don't have anyone from off the island visiting me at this very moment. I can put you up for five nights. After that, I don't know where you'll find an abandoned stairwell, but I suspect you're better at such things than I am.”

“Is sex involved?”

“What? In finding a stairwell.”

“No, you know what I mean.”

“No, no sex is involved.”

“Okay. Thank you. I promise that within five days I'll at least find a place with fewer mosquitoes and get out of your hair.”

“No sex, but I can’t promise not to pry more of your story out of you.”

“It doesn't matter, now, what I tell. Maybe I shouldn't have been so difficult, but you can't imagine... Never mind. Here, I'll tell you. I'll answer this most important question of yours.”

She paused, and then, “Are you thinking my mother put me on the street to earn the money we had to have, so I say I got us to America, but my mother was in charge.”

“I can’t say that didn’t cross my mind, but I have been waiting for another explanation.”

“No, it wasn’t at all like that, I did all the planning – starting when I was nine-years-old. Even earlier.

“My mother is pretty hopeless. It isn't her fault. It's hard to understand, it's a hard story to tell sitting here. In short, my grandmother and my father... and a whole congregation crushed her psychologically. The last few years she's been able to keep food on the table and pay the rent by cleaning people's houses. That’s pretty much all she’s capable of, but it isn’t who she is. It isn’t explainable. It’s what a cult can do.

Layla’s train of thought followed a lose rail: “She keeps losing clients, and we never get the business built up. We live in a one-bedroom camping trailer, my mother on the sofa and four of us in a tiny bedroom. My two oldest brothers are in college. I just paid both their tuitions and bought my ticket here. So now I'm broke. It would be easier to stay in the States and just be poor people, but then what was the point to all the trouble of getting there? I'm sorry. Why am I telling you all this? It doesn't answer the question. I'll stop. I'll get some sleep and get something organized, whatever, so I can focus on classes. I'll be better, and I'll try not to mind talking to you. But I'm going to stop talking about myself now.”

“Sometime, I hope you will tell me the long version of your story. If I could find a publisher, I could be your biographer.”

“You'd have to start with my parents, maybe even farther back. It's probably not as interesting as you think. My rambling probably makes it sound more interesting. Being poor and scared shitless of your father are not great novelties.

“Look, I will really appreciate having a place to stay for five nights, but I'm too tired to continue this conversation. I do have one question I want to ask you before I let you get back to work.”

“Go ahead.”

“I know medical school is going to be hard. It can't be as hard as yesterday, but hard. The question is: Will I be a doctor when I'm done? My premed advisor doesn't think so. If you're a little too honest, I promise I won't tell anyone. It wasn't an out of nowhere question. I think about it all the time. I could have gone to graduate school and studied physics with an NSF stipend.”

“So your question is: Is this school any good – good enough to make you a doctor in the States? Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“I don't think I can answer that. Not because I don't want to, but because I don't think I can. I'll try, but first let me ask you one more question. Are you here because you want to go to medical school, or are you here, instead of studying physics, because that's what your mother wants?”

That question. Was it amazing? Or was it so common for medical students to be there because their parents...

“No, no more questions about me. I always wanted to go to medical school, since long before I was interested in physics. So here I am, but I'm not sure I'm in the right place.”

“When you say you're not sure you're in the right place, you still mean ʻIs the school any good?ʼ”

“Yes.”

“Well, I can't answer that question. I don't have the data. It could even turn out that the school is good but still won't make you a physician. The school has only been here one year. You are in our third class.”

Layla interrupted, “I thought it was the second.”

“No, third. We take in two classes each year. September last year and January this year, and now it's September.

“Anyway, there are still no data on what happens to students who come here, so I  make no  promises. I don't even have a strong opinion about what is going to happen.

“What the school is doing is all above board in terms of being a legal path to becoming a physician in the United States. What matters is whether students can pass the licensure exams when the time comes. The school does present the information needed to do that, but whether the students who come here will succeed, I don't know.

“I can tell you our standard for passing first quarter Anatomy is lower than it is at schools in the States, but not egregiously so. We hope we can put enough pressure on our students to get them to study like students in U.S. medical schools, but we don't do it all at once in the first quarter.

“The amount of stuff you're expected to learn in medical school is overwhelming, and I've heard students tell one another that we don't really expect them to learn it all. I've even heard some say they know students in the States who say they don't work as hard as students here do. They're wrong, and I doubt they will ever be physicians.

“The worst thing that could happen to you is that all our students turn out to be lousy when they get back to the States. They can poison everyone's opinion of a few successful ones so you can't get an internship. Even if you do everything right, I can't guarantee that won't happen.”

***

Professor Scott lived among Grenadians and at some distance from the school in a village called Lower Woburn. His absence from the semi-official American compound was the chief reason for his being regarded as a bit odd. As they drove to the village, they were waved down by people along the side of the road a dozen times. Usually, it was just someone who wanted a ride up the road, and soon the Professor's 1962 Morris Minor station wagon, a fake woody, was so crowded there was someone riding on the spare tire mounted on the back door.

There were other reasons for stopping him. Two people sought medical advice. Once, a child stopped them with a message for Professor Scott about when the “net” would be put up. It was a message about window screens.

Dr. Scott explained, “Most of these people only know that I'm a doctor who teaches medical students. They don't seem to know, probably just don't care, that I'm not a physician. I keep telling them I'm not a physician, and they keep asking for advice, anyway, and given the general quality of medical care on the island, if the matter is simple enough, I give them advice. Got back pain? Take aspirin for a couple days. If that doesn't fix it, go to a real doctor. The right person works just like the right placebo, and pretty often, I'm the right person.”

Professor Scott's house was a tiny, concrete block structure with rooms so small they could not have been reduced by a square inch and still have served their purposes. It was a lot like the trailer back home. There were two tiny bedrooms measured to the size of the beds they contained, an efficient kitchen, and a room that could be either the dining room or a sitting room, depending on the arrangement of the furniture, but not both at the same time. There was a wide veranda on two sides that shrunk the visual impression of the house even more. It was on this veranda that Professor Scott held his frequent entertainments, the only events on the island at which the Americans mixed, socially, with Grenadians.

As Layla and the Professor were starting up the steps to his house, a Grenadian woman with an infant in her arms intercepted them. The infant had the croup and the woman asked Dr. Scott to take them to the hospital in St. George's. He told Layla to go on in and give herself a tour of the house, which would require four blinks of the eye, one for each room. She was also instructed to look in the refrigerator and take whatever suited her. He said he would be gone for about an hour.

As she entered the house, Layla took note of two small piles of vegetables, some of which she could not identify, sitting near the door. Later in the evening, she got the explanation she was looking for.

“Oh, the Grenadians are generous. They know I don't garden, so the Grenadians who garden keep me supplied with vegetables.”

“Is it payment for the transportation and things you provide them?”

“I wouldn't call it that. I don't think they think of it as payment. They just share well. I suppose it's because I live here instead of next to the school. They've decided I'm part of the community, so they do for me what they do for every member of the community who is too handicapped or too stupid to garden. They probably think I don't know how to garden. I let it go at that. I think I do my share in return.”

“So, Professor Scott, tell me about these women who come to visit you on their vacations? A bunch of hippies?”

“Oh no, first of all it isn't a bunch, and second, I'm the closest thing to a hippie that ever comes around here. One of them is a former student who says she had a crush on me back when, and now she's living that childish fantasy. The other is a German woman, an industrial designer. I met her in St. George's. Her English isn't bad, but she was having a hard time with the Grenadian accent, and I helped her escape from a hustler.

“I don't keep any secrets from them. They know about one another.”

“So no money changes hands.”

“No, no. And on a different subject, you may stop calling me Professor Scott when we are off campus. I prefer Don, or even Donald. The Grenadians are a formal lot, and even my friends among them insist on calling me Professor, and the school's administration also insists on titles, but I hate it. So I'll be pleased to know one person who, in my home, can address me in a rational way.”

“I'm sorry, but I like the sound of Professor Scott, and I will have difficulty calling you anything else.”

“Try it right now. It won't be difficult.”

“No.”

“Think of it this way. At a place like the University of Chicago or MIT, a lot of the faculty go by their first names. What matters is what you know, not what your title is. At lesser universities, more of the faculty will want to be called ʻDoctor.ʼ  At a medical school, which is not a very intellectual place, everyone is ʻDoctor.ʼ  If you want to make someone really mad at you, forget to call a dentist ʻDoctor.ʼ  And the guy who paid a hundred bucks for a doctor of divinity degree, that man insists on electronic amplification when he is introduced as Doctor Whatever. I like to think of myself as belonging at MIT.”

***

Her bed for the night was a single bed in a room that would not have held a full bed without taking out a small writing table that was the only other piece of furniture in the room. The window screen in her room, “net” it was called locally, was torn as were all the other screens in the house. The mosquitoes could be called few in number only in comparison to what she'd suffered in her room in the Alhambra. In spite of her fatigue, they kept her awake.

She lay on her back, staring into the darkness trying to see. She wondered whether Dr. Scott would come prowling into her room, or knock gently on the door, or nothing at all, and she wondered what she would do if he did. She decided it depended entirely on the details. When the mosquitoes let up, she finally slept with no sign of him other than occasional snoring from the other side of the wall.

When she woke up to urinate, she stumbled around so sleepily that she was unaware that the mosquitoes had returned. For the mosquitoes, it was already morning.

When Dr. Scott cracked the door and called out “Breakfast,” her room was already hot and stuffy, but she didn't care that the room felt like a greenhouse in Hell, she only wanted to sleep. She pulled the sheet over her head hoping that would stop the morning announcements. While she hid, Dr. Scott went on to explain that he almost always got up along with the village gardeners who preferred doing their work during that brief time “between sunrise and sunstroke.” And thanks to being an early riser, he had good news for her. Layla expressed her feelings about the words “early riser” by curling into the smallest ball she could get her lankly body into, and thinking to herself, Oh please, do not be one of those people who think early rising is morally superior.

Ignoring her thoughts, Dr. Scott went on, “There is a family that lives nearby – Michael and Sarah Chastain. Michael is known as “Beetle.”  They have a three bedroom house. They also have three children. They would move their children into one bedroom and rent the free bedroom to you for ten U.S. Dollars per month. I told them you could begin paying the rent when you start your internship, which you could possibly do in as little as three years. Then you would pay ten dollars per month until what you owe is paid. If you are interested, I will be free of you already this evening. If you are not interested, I will just tell you to get out because you have been giving me a false impression of yourself.”

Layla sat up, already dressed for the day because she didn't own any night clothes. “Of course, how... how... How could I not be interested, and how did you arrange such a thing?”

“As I told you, these people share well.”

“But what about their children. They won't like it.”

“Did you tell me you and three siblings slept in the one bedroom of a camper?”

“Yes, but we didn't do it to accommodate some stranger.”

“It is not for you to question why. As I said, they share well. To be honest with you, they know you will be rich someday, and they might hope you'll feel a little indebted. You might even take an interest in their children's educations. They've spoken about the difficulties they face trying to educate their kids. They want opportunities for their children, and there's no telling what kind of opportunity you might be.

In time the conversation went on to: “There are some difficulties to be overcome living with them – food and transportation come to mind mainly because I am just about to say something about food and transportation. I would recommend that you not eat with them even if they offer to feed you. I don't know how you'll manage that politely, but they'll probably offer you food once in a while, so figure out what you are going to say. I don't know whether you learned the true meaning of the word “diarrhea” in Brazil, but if you didn't, you will have plenty of opportunities here.

“Now, for transportation. I doubt I can find a transport driver who will let you pay him in four years. You can ride to school with me at four-thirty in the morning and study then instead of doing it all in the evening. Then you can ride home with me, but I'm not going to make finding you a place to study my problem. Sorry.

“Oh, and before I forget, avoid the restrooms at school. They are mostly used by students who have diarrhea.”

***

Beetle's home was small, but not in the claustrophobic way Dr. Scott's was. When five people were around the dinner table, there was still space to walk around, and a separate “sitting room.” Layla's bedroom was twice the size she was used to - anywhere. The house was brightly painted, both inside and out, and Sarah filled their small yard with a tangle of flowering plants she transplanted from the bush. Layla was fortunate that the house had a toilet and septic tank rather than a pit latrine. There were houses that didn't even have pit latrines - as Dr. Scott pointed out the next morning by noting a number of people headed toward the bay with buckets of night soil.

As with almost every house in the Caribbean, the windows had no screens or glass, just wooden shutters that could be closed against a tropical storm. No one in the family seemed to be bothered by the mosquitoes, though the impression was deceptive. Mosquitoes were just something they had endured for so long they never thought about complaining. When she asked Beetle's oldest child, a girl of eleven, whether the mosquitoes bothered her, she enunciated the word “hate” convincingly.

Layla was not sure how much Dr. Scott had told Beetle about her, but her concern soon dropped out of her thoughts. She fit in this family. At least, she felt as though she fit. Their culture was like the culture of her childhood with a Catholic church instead of the Assembléia de Deus. They lived outside as much as inside, and their veranda was a meeting place for friends who came without a warning or a by-your-leave. They grew most of their own food and it came to the table in simple, familiar ways. The children went to school in uniforms and otherwise led unsupervised lives. They gossiped, usually with amusement more than judgment, and knew far too much about their neighbors' business. They talked about a man’s “inside children” and “outside children” without criticism.

The whole family was engaged in practicing for a traditional dance festival, and what the Grenadians thought of as their traditional dance was the quadrille. It may seem odd that an Eighteenth Century dance of the European aristocracy was the traditional dance of a recently liberated black republic, but it was also the traditional dance of Brazilian festivals in June. However, the dance had evolved to serve opposite purposes in the two cultures.

Watching the family practice, Layla finally understood why it was called the “quadrille.” In the Caribbean, it was still danced by four couples, it was still the sophisticated dance of the aristocracy, and the Grenadians only tried to perfect its elegance and dignity. In Brazil, it had evolved into a long line of dancers making carefully choreographed fun of a rural wedding, but the step was the same.

The one problem she had with Beetle's family involved Dr. Scott's warning not to trust the food or water. She didn't know how to live in someone's house and not accept their food, and she didn't know how to accept their food without contributing to its preparation. If she didn't accept their food, how could she use their stove and propane gas just for herself and interfere with Sarah's own preparations for her family's dinner? Even if they weren't insulted, she would still be an awkward inconvenience.

Beetle habitually sat outside his house in the evenings to watch the sunset and chat with passers-by. As Layla had nothing else to do before classes began, she joined Beetle and Sarah and listened to the dinner conversation continue its meander from children's school work to the protectionist policy the British Commonwealth had adopted for Caribbean bananas. The weather is a frequent topic of conversation even in Grenada where the weather never changes. It was under discussion with a family friend when the friend asked who Layla was. Beetle answered simply, “She a student Professor Scott. He ask we keep her a while.”

“I thought she staying wif him. That a different lady?”

“No, same student lady, she stay wif us, now,” and that seemed to be all the information that was needed. It was a simple fact that could easily spread through the community without suffering the fate of gossip repeatedly whispered in the Telephone Game.

***

“No, all I did for you was give you a bed for a night and talk to a friend for a few minutes early in the morning. It was nothing and it didn't solve your problems. What are you going to do about books? You can't get textbooks from the library even at medical schools that have a library. They get checked out and never returned before they even go on the shelves. You still have problems.”

“Professor Scott, you solved all my problems almost as soon as I saw you the first time. You told me I was the only woman in the class. The only female among a hundred medical students. You may not approve, but that is the best position I've been in since the day I turned twelve. I'll get to chose who buys my books.”

“If that's the solution, why did I bother to arrange for you to stay with Beetle's family? In fact, why did I insult Beetle by sending him... What? A woman of ill repute.”

“Why did you do it? Well, first you did it so I can become a physician. And second, you did it because I will be a physician, and that means my brothers and sister will all finish college and become people you would accept as colleagues. Oh, and maybe you did it because, as you just told me, it was easy to do. And if you have any other suggestion as to how to get my books, I'm all ears.”

Dr. Scott, having worked himself up to the edge of a fine dudgeonous fit, cringed and relented. “I do have other suggestions, but first you have to understand, clearly, that you can’t get away with prostitution. The administration will hear about it, and when they hear about it, they will write dismissed with prejudice on your transcript and you probably won’t even be able to get into a physics program. Do you understand?”

“Yes, and you don’t need to speak to me like I’m a child.”

“I have assumed you were expecting your family to send a little money once in a while. If I’m wrong, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t sound like they could send you the price of a book, but you still can’t risk prostitution. As for other suggestions, you can use my Gray's Anatomy so long as you check with me every day to see whether I need to look something up in it.”

After a pause, he began again, “By the time I decided I should help you, I had a pretty good idea how you got to medical school. It's bizarrely admirable. It makes me think you have the grit to make it in this school, but for some reason I can't quite articulate, I mind the idea of one of my students resorting to prostitution.

“I don't know how many books you might borrow from faculty. I expect that will be very hard to do, especially if you're unwilling to have your story known. You'll hear a lot about not being able to provide a book to you because they can't provide books to everyone. Besides, most of the lecturers just fly in from the States and don't bring any books with them. You don't always need all the books on the lists you're given. So ask what you absolutely have to have. Then ask if you can borrow any of them. If you do that, I may be able to loan you the money to buy a book once in a while. They're expensive, and I won't just give them to you. I don't even really know why I should trust you to pay me back, but I told Beetle I trust you, so I feel some obligation to be consistent.”

“Dr. Scott, I'm going to try to tell you something. I don't think it will make any difference to you, but it might, somehow. I can always hope.

“I was eight or nine years old when I learned that men will pay women for sexual intercourse. That was the day I went from fantasizing about running away from my father to planning it. That was the piece that made it possible. To this day, I think of  sexual intercourse for money the way that eight or nine-year-old did. Morality has nothing to do with it. Nothing. Morality is about treating one another decently. My clients have treated me decently, and I've been decent to them. It's a fair transaction. If a prostitute has a pimp who beats her, there's a moral issue. No one has exploited me. Sex for money is a tool I picked up as a child who didn't have the tools needed to live a decent life, and that is the beginning and end of morality.”

There was an edge to Dr. Scott's reply. “I don't know whether your no longer being a child makes a difference. It might... Well, more than might, but I won't argue with you. There is one more thing I have to say to you. Then this conversation can blessedly come to an end.

“If you suddenly show up with some money, I want to know who you got it from. If the dean wants to know if you got it from me, I'll  need to be able to tell him more than just no to convince him. And if gossip starts to circulate about me because of what you're doing with students, you won't have to worry about the dean, I'll see to it you won't be a doctor.

“Oh, and still one more thing. What do you have in the way of notebooks and stuff for taking lecture notes?”

“Nothing. Well, I have a pen.”

“Ask Mrs Babet, the secretary who registered you, ask her for paper, maybe she’ll even have a spare notebook, but wait until after I've talked to her.”

“Oh, and still one more thing more. I have a question about you that I haven’t asked, and it’s become a sort of ear-worm for me, and even though I don’t want to ask it while I think I need to be strict with you, I need to ask it while I’m thinking about it.

“You don’t sound like English is your second language. You don’t sound like it’s your first language, either. You sound like you’ve rehearsed everything you say. Are you aware of that and do you have an explanation? Sorry, that’s two questions.”

“Well, I’m not aware of it all the time, but I know about it. I had an English teacher in high school who told me I needed to write with worse grammar. And I know if my writing is too formal, what that must say about my speech. I speak the way I write. And now that you make me conscious of it, it’s going to get worse.

“I learned English grammar from a book before I could speak an intelligible word of English. So, as I learned to speak, I was always parsing sentences. For a long time, people complained about how slowly I spoke. So I worked really hard at parsing my grammar on the fly, not on using simpler grammar. If I get upset and stop parsing, I sound like... Actually, not like I just got off the boat. When I got off the boat I knew some  grammar, but I couldn’t pronounce ten words understandably.

“Honestly, I didn’t learn to speak English from the kids I ate lunch with at school. They were poor, and I had ambition, and I didn’t trust the way they spoke English. So I mainly learned to speak English by watching television news casts and reading news papers. Then I would read the news papers aloud trying to sound like the announcers on the evening news.

“That same English teacher told me about Joseph Conrad not speaking English until he was twenty. So, of course, I wanted to be like Joseph Conrad...”

***

Sometime during the night, Layla woke up and had trouble getting back to sleep because her stomach felt too full. At sunrise, Dr. Scott arrived to pick her up as planned. When she didn't come out, he went in and found her with her head over the toilet.

“You're sick.”

“Yes.”

“You broke the rules?”

“Yes.”

“I'll check on you later.”

Having just vomited, she felt momentarily better and mopped up around the toilet with the shirt she wore the day before, rinsed it out, and slumped into bed. She was cold and shivering.

By late morning, diarrhea accompanied her vomiting. Sarah was forcing bush tea down her, and she was vomiting it back up.

Shortly after noon, Professor Scott walked into Beetle's house and into Layla's bedroom without a “Hello, Good day.” He'd heard from a transport driver that Layla was seriously ill. He brought bottles of Pepto-Bismol and aspirin. Layla swallowed it all, threw up, took them all, again, and because she had just thrown up, kept them down.

Sarah felt Layla's forehead to confirm what she'd been finding all morning. She reported to Professor Scott that Layla had a fever. The Professor spoke to Layla intending Sarah to overhear.

“Here's your first medical school lesson even though you're sick. Because you're sick, you'll remember it. You can't tell whether someone has a fever by feeling their skin. What you feel depends as much on the temperature of your skin as it does on theirs. More importantly, a fever is produced by reducing blood flow to the skin. That cools your skin so you don't radiate as much heat from your body. It’s only your core temperature that goes up with a fever, your skin gets cold. If you actually had a fever and could somehow tell your skin was hot, that would mean you were losing heat, and your temperature was going down. Having hot skin with a temperature is a good thing.”

That said, Dr. Scott left as abruptly as he arrived, saying from the door, “I'll be back before evening. If you haven't improved, we'll have to take you to the hospital to rehydrate you. Take three aspirin every time you start shivering, again.” Layla had not spoken a word, and she hadn't lifted her head from the pillow more than she had to, but she nodded in response to his last instruction. She knew he was tired of being a good Samaritan.

After the front door had opened, but before it slapped shut, Sarah was speaking softly, secretly, “Bush tea is best,” and she went out to gather more herbs.

Layla drank, partly because the tea was boiled, and partly because she wanted to wash the sour taste out of her mouth. The afternoon passed with moments of sleep between long stretches of nausea, but as awful as she felt, she stopped vomiting. The watery diarrhea continued.

Dr. Scott pinched Layla's skin as though he were a real doctor and spoke to Sarah, “Please, not so much bush tea. In fact, not any before morning. It is too soon to try to rehydrate her. Anything we give her, even plain water, is going to keep her diarrhea going. She'll lose more than she drinks. If we have to rehydrate her, we'll have to take her to the hospital. You know I'm not a physician, but that much I do know as a certainty. Remember when Charlie was just a baby and had diarrhea and the doctor told you to give her nothing to drink for twenty-four hours. Adults are no different. I brought a thermometer, has she been shivering?”

Her temperature was just three tenths of a degree less than forty Celsius – a critical point in the minds of physicians. Professor Scott increased her dose of aspirin and told Sarah to take her temperature every hour until it went down. If it hit forty degrees Celsius, she was to send Beetle for him.

Layla didn't talk much during the night, but several times, when she was getting another dose of aspirin and her temperature taken, she said, “I wouldn't mind just dying.” Sarah always responded, “Oh, we get these things sometimes. They don't last long. You'll be fine in the morning.”

When the Professor arrived in the morning, Layla was lying on her side. She spoke without moving, “I wouldn't mind just dying.”

***

On the fourth day of her illness, Layla still felt awful, still had occasional diarrhea, and still needed aspirin to keep her temperature below thirty-nine degrees. It was the first day of classes, so when the Professor arrived, she rose slowly to a sitting position on the side of her bed. He told her to wait another day or two. She insisted she was going. She walked hunched over to a wardrobe, pulled out some clean clothes, and dropped them and herself back on the bed.

She began struggling out of the clothes she'd been wearing for four days, ignoring the Professor as well as Sarah. The Professor turned his back, stepped into the doorway, and said, “You really aren't well enough. You won't get anything out of going to class, today. So don't.”

“I'm going.”

“I'm afraid not. I don't think you should, so I'm going to leave without you.”

“Don't. Don't make me hitch-hike. I promise you I'll hitch-hike, and I've never broken a promise in my life.”

He believed she'd at least try.

She sat through his introduction to anatomy, and he loaned her the money to buy textbooks for biochemistry and embryology. He also took pity on her and left school early, putting off the start-of-the-quarter work until sunrise.

***

Each morning, Layla got up as every over-worked human does. She struggled to make sure she lifted her head before she fell asleep again. Then she struggled to prop herself up on her elbow. Getting into a sitting position on the edge of her bed required still another effort of will. Standing, walking, each piece of clothing, on or off, every movement required new discipline until she walked onto the porch and sat down with a book or a new set of note cards. There were a few seconds each day, between the time she stepped out the door and the time she opened her books, during which she was aware of her new world - aware that the morning was fresh in a way the evening never was, aware that she was in the midst of a tropical rain forest, aware that the trade winds touched her skin and sometimes brought the perfume of Sarah's flowers flowing over her. Often she extended those few seconds by a few more seconds, standing motionlessly, listening to the sounds of awakening nature.

Layla wrote to her mother: Medical school is unimaginably hard, and if anyone thinks knowing it is unimaginably hard will help them imagine it, they are wrong. Later she wrote: In Gross Anatomy, there are eight of us for one cadaver. Dr. Scott admits that the school has difficulty getting cadavers, and a U.S. school wouldn’t have more than four of us. It turns out that we don’t fight over who gets to do the dissection. I’ve had one side all to myself. I don’t know how these kids are going to be doctors if they can’t cut up a corpse. And still later she wrote: I didn't do well on my first anatomy exam. Professor Scott told me I might not have passed in a U.S. medical school. I did better than all but a handful of other students.

***

A year did not pass quickly. It was a year without the time for friendship – possibly without the opportunity. She was harassed for having the temerity to be a girl seeking to be a physician – sometimes by faculty as well as students. When grades were announced, she was thought disloyal to the community of students for setting the curve too high. She was an unwelcome “grind.” For the first time in her life, she was desperately horny and didn’t have time for a relationship. She was depressed, and the only solution was to quit medical school.

Which she did not.

Not with the brass ring within reach.

The Day of the Dragonfly

The letters Layla received from home were always dictated by Maria to Felipe with a postscript from Felipe confirming that everything was okay just as Maria said. Near the end of her third quarter at St. George's, she received a letter, not dictated to Felipe, but from Felipe. She tore it open with a feeling of dread that tried to stop her from opening it.

Dear sister of mine,

There is no point to beating around the bush about this. Not with you. Mother has breast cancer. By the time you receive this, she will have had a radical mastectomy. I suppose you understand what that means better than I do, but I understand well enough.

You are not to worry. We can take care of her. I have been extremely lucky. Dr. Craft has given me a job as a laboratory assistant. The pay isn't great, but it will help to keep the family together and Enzo in school full-time as you would like. I'll take some night school classes, but I'm not going to stress myself about it. I'll be able to return to school full-time when you start your internship in two years, and the experience in Dr. Craft's lab will be useful. I think useful enough so that I would be foolish to spend the time driving a fork lift even if it pays better.

I know you will find this news upsetting and will probably even want to come rushing home, but Mother asked me to tell you not to do anything to disrupt your studies. We all want you to be Dr. Cardeira, and the sooner you accomplish that the better off we all will be. You will be coming back to the States after your next quarter, anyway, and that is soon enough. By that time, Mother will be recovered and we will have the happy reunion we've all been waiting for.

Mother's clients all seem to be patient people, and when she returns to work, we should be better off, financially, than we have been.

Anything else I might write would just be small talk that doesn't belong here. I will keep you posted, regularly.

Love (even if you don't think much of the word),

Felipe

Layla did want to go rushing home, she started crying half-way through the first paragraph, not at the word “cancer,” but at the words “radical mastectomy.” The surgery isn't done anymore. It was scarcely ever worth it. Perhaps fortunately, even Layla did not fully appreciate how debilitating the surgery could be, or how it could impact the housecleaning business. She did understand what her family wanted her to do, and if it had been possible for her to honor her mother's wishes by studying harder, that's what she would have done. She went on, and no one around her noticed anything, but the loneliness she suffered in Grenada grew ever worse.

The news did focus her on a problem she had been avoiding – how to pay for her ticket back home. She couldn't bring herself to try to tap Dr. Scott's largess, again. It wasn't that he'd spent so much on her, she'd just turned to him too many times. The only other option seemed to be to tell a couple of carefully chosen students how much she needed money, but she wouldn't do that until the last minute.

***

The break between quarters came and went. Layla used the time, dutifully, to prepare for her last quarter on the island. At first she decided she would give herself the luxury of a walk through the forest each morning - a time to meditate on Maria's illness, to imagine what she must be going through, to curl up in memories of listening in her mother's bed to tales of another way of life.

She had to stop these walks. Her morning thoughts became ear-worms that interfered with studying. She might have found other ways to waste those few minutes each morning. She might have spent them visiting with one of the other poor students stuck on the island, but that was almost impossible. Dr. Scott was in Germany, and she was in a culture in which only men drove. The one time she hitchhiked, she didn't feel threatened with rape, but she had to endure a sexual commentary that only ended when she got out of the vehicle. And so the break was in no way restorative. It just intensified her loneliness.

She was already two weeks into her last quarter when the letter arrived from Felipe.

... I have to tell you the surgeon thought our mother already has metastases. I'm sorry I delayed telling you this for a few weeks. I debated for a long time whether I should tell you before you were ready to return home. I thought from the beginning that you probably have a right to know, but I also kept thinking that once I told you there could be no changing my mind.

Our mother is recuperating as well as can be hoped...

Layla thought the use of the word “recuperating” was a little weak considering what her mother was going through.

Layla knew she had to somehow put her mother out of her mind or she would fail a course and have to spend another quarter on the island. And so, she began by setting the distant moment when she would sit down on the airplane as the moment she would begin to grieve, to revisit her life with her mother, to scream epithets at the Universe. She knew how often she would start to think about Maria and would have to silently shout, “Not now,” but it would help to have an answer to the question “When?”

Letters describing Maria's chemotherapy arrived. Layla put each sheet of them in the trash as she read them. Always, her mother was doing as well as could be expected under the circumstances. Lara wrote to describe how well she and her brothers had organized Maria's care. She made it clear that her own burden was greater than that of her brothers, but she thought it was fair considering Felipe was supporting everyone, Enzo was a full-time student, and she was still only in high school. It was unclear to Layla whether her mother was confined to bed by her illness, or had retired to bed with the resumption of her depression.

Finally, one day as she was returning from school with Dr. Scott, Layla said, in a voice she might have used to thank him for the water melon she'd taken off his porch, “My mother is dying of cancer.”

“Did you just say your mother is dying of cancer?”

“Yes. I don't know why you need to know. It just popped out. I'm sorry. I haven't told anyone else. I try not to think about it, but I suddenly wanted to know what it would feel like to say it. I'm sorry, it was just an impulse.”

“Of course you have to tell someone. You can't just keep that bottled up inside yourself.”

“I have to keep it bottled up. If I think about it, I can't study.”

“But you need to talk about it. You need to grieve to get through it.”

“I'll think about it as soon as this quarter is over and I am on my way home. Then I suppose I'll cry, but there's no point to it, now. It will just screw everything up.”

“Do you need to go home, now? Finish up next quarter? You know the dean...”

Layla cut him off. “No, no. My mother would be against it. My whole family would be against it. They have all sacrificed to get me here, and I have to get through this so I can help my brothers through college. My oldest bother is already losing a year, maybe two, working to support everyone, and now my little sister is almost ready to start. I have to finish this and get off this damn island for good. The end of the quarter will have to be soon enough for grief.”

“Will your mother live that long?”

“Oh, yes, I'm pretty sure of it, unless my brother is lying to me, but if he was going to lie, I think he wouldn't have told me anything.”

“You're sure you don't need to go back? If it's money, I might be able to take up a collection for you.”

“No, no. I'm sure. It would be a terrible idea.”

“What have you done about getting home at the end of the quarter?”

“Nothing. Nothing, but I'll manage. If I do anything, now, the gossip will make trouble for me until I'm off the island, maybe even back in the States if anyone who hears anything winds up in a clerkship with me.”

Two days later, on their way home from school, Dr. Scott handed her the ticket home.

“That's it. You're not getting anything else out of me. That will get you back to the States, and you won't need me, anymore, and by the way, is there anything else you need?”

She answered, “No.” Then, in the next instant, she knew there was something else, but she was not about to ask him for it.

***

“Where do you start your clinical clerkships?”

“New Jersey.”

“Do you need me to change your ticket?”

“No, I have to see my mother before I go there?”

“How will you get there?”

“You mean to New Jersey?”

“Yes.”

“I can hitchhike.” Perhaps, there was enough sixties chaos lingering in the seventies so the answer was not outlandish. “My brother has a couple weeks' rent saved for me.”

Dr. Scott had a suggestion he would never have offered anyone else. “On most of the rotations there will be a place for students who are on-call to sleep in the hospital. You might be able to get away with pretending to be on-call on every night.”

“You would like to save me from myself, wouldn't you?”

“Of course. Save your two weeks rent for when someone figures out that you're living in the hospital.”

“Thank you. I think it's a good idea.”

“Be careful about eating the food off of patients' plates.”

“Do people do that?”

“I've seen it done. Patients who are sick sometimes don't touch their food, but don't eat anything that's been in front of a patient. Hospitals are full of dangerous microbes. The nurses usually have access to something they can offer patients who arrive at odd hours. If you're desperate, you can try begging something from a nurse. A can of Ensure or even Enfamil that has gone untouched is probably safe if you wash off the outside before you open it. Whatever you do, don't get caught stealing anything.”

“That was a little offensive, I've never stolen anything in my life, but I appreciate this advice. I've been thinking I might be able to live in a homeless shelter, and survive on the Starvation Army's one big meal per day. I'd prefer that to scrounging around in a hospital, but I don't doubt that I'll take advantage of your advice some time or another.

“For whatever it's worth, I'll tell you this: I prefer not to go back to doing what my mother and I could never talk about. I've only done that out of desperation, but desperation is sort of my normal state, and doing it has always felt normal. I appreciate your help more than I’ve told you. As insanely poor as I've been, it has been better to be saved from myself. I never know how to express appreciation. I think you know I don't have very good social skills. I think my bedside manner will be terrible?”

“I never thought about your social skills, but I can tell you this about bedside manners. Patients often want to hear what the physician is reluctant to tell them. I think they will appreciate your willingness to speak bluntly so long as you aren't cold. I'll tell you something about yourself. Your body language is often softer than your words. Maybe that will be enough. I think you will come to care about your patients the way you care about your family.”

“You know something I don’t like about prostitution? You’re going to think I’m crazy. I almost never talk about being a prostitute, but when someone like you makes me... I think I sound like my father. I mean the sound of his voice. It’s just for a few seconds. As soon as I start listening, it’s my voice.”

***

The day she finished her last exam, she rode home with Dr. Scott as usual. Shortly before they arrived at Beetle's house, she said what she had been trying to say the whole way. She succeeded in speaking, as she always did when something mattered, in an uninflected voice as though she were talking about the grass at school needing mowing.

“We should say ʻgood byeʼ in bed.”

Dr. Scott thought for a few seconds and said, “Would you care to repeat that?”

“We should say ʻgood byeʼ in bed.”

After a few more seconds he said, “Is this lust or payback?”

After still more seconds, she ignored her memories of Jamie Rathburn and said, “I suppose there is something wrong with me, but I can't honestly say I know the difference,” and while Dr. Scott was still trying to think of what to say next, she added, “I guess it's always payback, but sometimes I like it and want to do it, and sometimes I don't. I want to say ʻgood byeʼ to you in bed. I've thought about it going to sleep the last few nights, imagining what it would be like. I used to wonder about it once in a while but not a bunch of nights in a row. Maybe that's lust. Do you think?”

Dr. Scott thought in silence.

After a while, Layla went on. “I haven't had sex in almost two years. It will hurt to start, again, but I want to do it, anyway. What better way to say ʻgood byeʼ can you suggest?”

So he said, “Okay.”

They agreed to an afternoon assignation with Layla returning to sleep at Beetle's as usual. Then, as that afternoon drew to a close, they agreed to a second afternoon. And as that afternoon grew to a close, Layla said, “There is one more thing I need from you.”

“And that would be?”

“A dime.”

“A dime?”

“Yes, a dime. Actually nine cents would do, and if you give me a dime, I can give you a penny back.”

“So all this time you've spent in bed with me is so you can ask me for a dime?”

“Yes, no other reason.”

“And why do you need this dime?”

“I have eleven cents. Bus fare home from the airport is twenty cents.”

***

Preparing to leave Beetle's house was difficult for Layla. Even before her mother's illness, she had been a colorless obstacle in a small space. Now she felt like a thief who couldn't even think of a kind word to pay as interest on her debt. When she had an opportunity to talk to them, she never knew what to say and opened a book instead. She had neglected them, and being a medical student was just an excuse for her neglect. She remained a little closer to Sarah, but she thought even Sarah would be both glad to have helped and glad to have her on her way. If their children were to benefit from her presence, it would have to be in the sweet bye-and-bye.

The day before she left, she told Sarah she needed to talk to her. She said she was sorry to be such a poor house-guest when Sarah's family had done so much for her. Sarah interrupted to tell Layla she was like part of the family. Layla demurred and went on.

“I have never been able to show my appreciation to people who have helped me. You are not the first, but there is something I want you to tell your family after I have gone. When I first came here, I was amazed by how much your culture is like Brazil. You made me feel comfortable. But some while back I learned my mother has cancer. She is dying. I don't know how I will find her when I get home. When I talk to any of you, I start thinking about my mother. So I have been standoffish. I'm sorry. I think you are all dear people, and I appreciate what you have done for me more than I can say. I will pay you the money I owe as soon as I have an income, but I will never be able to repay what I owe you. Please don't say anything to the rest before I am gone. I don't want any sympathy about my mother.”

It was time she went home. The five cotton blouses, one skirt, two pairs of women's slacks, and especially the three brassieres were in tatters. Her socks were so far gone they were forgotten, and she wore her shoes without them. She often went barefoot to preserve the remains of her shoes and the one pair of flip-flops. She had never used the pair of nylons. She'd been out of deodorant for more than a year. Beetle's family had long since eaten the beans and rice. The rest of what she'd brought she left behind including the duffel bag. What she still owned fit more easily in a paper bag. She thought she could still have use for the duffel bag when she set out for New Jersey, but she had hated dragging it around, and Beetle's oldest daughter had once said she would like to have a duffel bag. It was a small price to pay for almost two years’ use of her room.

***

Layla took her seat on the airplane. She estimated the number of times she had stopped herself from thinking about her mother. A hundred times each day for ninety days was nine thousand times. Then she continued on.

It seemed to be too late for many tears. She started to think about the meaning of life, and promptly confirmed what she always thought. The question, What is the meaning of life? is absurd. She thought about the senseless reduction of her mother to someone almost incompetent to be a housekeeper. She didn't have to ask what that told her about a universe she already knew was cruel. In the end, she thought about what her mother had actually accomplished with her life, what the stories she heard curled up beside her mother meant to her. That is when she cried, silently, until she landed in Barbados.

She arrived in Barbados a little after eight in the evening. Her flight to San Juan didn't leave until six in the morning. A night spent stuck in the airport was nothing compared to a night on a mosquito-infested beach – except for her fear of Immigration the next day. What if they caught her? And what if they sent her back to Grenada instead of Brazil?

Between Barbados and San Juan, she repeatedly cursed the poverty that doubtlessly caused her mother to delay getting treatment. In between curses, one fear chased the next through her mind. Even if her fake passport could pass muster, what if she'd left it behind? She pulled it out of her pocket, opened it to the photo page, and stuffed it back in her pocket. A minute later, she stood up in the aisle, took it back out, and shoved it as deeply into her pocket as she could. Then she continued to worry, incessantly, that she would somehow squeeze it out of her pocket unnoticed. A tiny hope flickered once. Would a real student visa stamped in her passport make it look more authentic?

Her passage through Immigration began with only about five minutes of waiting in line thinking her nervousness would be noticed and that would be the end. Then there was thirty seconds in front of an immigration officer who looked at her passport photo, looked at her face, flipped through a few pages of fake stamps, looked for a moment at the Grenadian student visa that was pasted inside, and casually started to press his self-inking stamp against the next page. He stopped without the page being stamped, looked at her with a smile she thought meant I've got you, and said, “Welcome home,” as he finished pressing the stamp against the page.

Layla hurried through customs and was out of the airport before she could focus on finding her connecting flight to Miami. She turned around and went back inside but didn't stop expecting someone in some uniform to stop her and return her to Immigration.

Once she was flying, again, she knew she was safe. There would be no Immigration to go through in Miami. But what if?

When she walked out of Miami International Airport, it was just after eleven o'clock in the morning. The day was sunny enough to help her leave behind twenty sleepless hours of thoughts she hoped never to revisit again.

She was relieved to find the busfare was still twenty cents and transfers were still free. Of course, the bus was aggravatingly slow. Each new passenger seemed determined to keep the bus motionless as long as possible. More than anything, she just wanted to speak Portuguese with her mother. When she finally changed buses and felt she was really, at last, on her way home, the slow progress was tempered a little by nostalgia. The bus passed by the cheap apartments where the negro woman had said she was too light skinned to live in Overtown. It passed within a block of the homeless shelter and within two blocks of the restaurant where her family ate oatmeal and was still hungry. She wanted to walk through the dilapidated woods and find out whether the over-stuffed chair was still something she could sit on, and she wanted to walk around her old high school, first alone, and then another time with Elizabeth. She wasn't sure about Curtis.

When she walked in the door of the trailer she found her mother alone, which momentarily alarmed her, but Maria was in better shape than she feared. The side effects of the chemotherapy were largely past, her hair was growing back, and the cancer had been beaten back for that day. Her left arm was weak almost to the point of uselessness, but at least she was right-handed, and when Layla later suggested she needed physical therapy, her mother smiled and said cheerfully, “Oh meu amor, qual é o ponto.”

Little was changed about the trailer. Maria had moved into Layla's bed, but when Layla started to complain about how tired she was, her mother hustled into the bedroom, came out with her bed clothes, and informed Layla there was fresh linen on her bed. Layla took the sheets from her mother and returned them to the bedroom. When she came out, she laid down on the couch and slept until Lara came boiling through the door at three o'clock.

As Layla rose from the couch and Lara recognized her, Lara ran to her and bounced up and down while they hugged. In a gush of words that started while they were still hugging Lara explained, “We-all-looked-after-mother-and-some-of-my-teachers-didn't-mark-me-absent-so-long-as-I-got-my-assignments-done-which-was-easy-to-do-because-Mother-suffered-so-well-without-demanding-anything-while-we-studied-so-I-am-still-near-the-top-of-my-class-and-Enzo-has-really-done-a-lot-more-than-I-have-and-Felipe-is-always-there-as-soon-as-he-gets-off-work-and-on-weekends-and-I-have-to-admit-he-has-learned-to-cook-better-than-me-we-take-turns...”

Lara was right. It was not only what she wanted to tell, it was what Layla wanted to hear, and the moment she finished, Lara flew the six steps to the kitchen and began preparing feijoada with the various meats Felipe purchased in anticipation of Layla's uncertain arrival date. As poor as they were, they were American-poor and there was no tripe, let alone pig snout.

***

Layla spent the night in Lara's bed with Lara on the couch. When she finally awoke, around ten o'clock, she and Maria were alone in the trailer. She called to her mother, scooted against the wall, and invited her mother to lie down with her. When she found herself curled against her mother's back, she said, “No, this is wrong.” She climbed over her mother, changing places with her, and began in Portuguese.

“Tell me about grandpa.”

“Oh, I've told you about him so many times, and so many stories. It's enough.”

“One more time. You don't have to think of anything new, just a few of the same old stories.”

When Maria finally announced she was tired and didn't have any more stories, Layla said, “I was wrong.”

“Wrong about what?”

“Coming to America. We should have gone to Belém. We could have gone to your grandfather's print shop, and even if he was dead, I think they could have told us where your brothers were. I had no idea how hard it would be for everyone to come here.”

“I don't really know what happened to my brothers. Perhaps, whoever was in charge of the print shop would have helped us, if there was still a print shop. I do know for sure what our lives have been, here.”

“Happiness counts for something, and I haven't made anyone happy, here. You must have been as miserable as you were with João - maybe even worse.”

“I have, for the most part, been unhappy, but I gave up hope for happiness when I was forced to marry João, not when we came here. Coming here has forced me to stop always longing for sleep - that was good for me. Much more importantly, all I have ever really wanted, since the day I knew I was pregnant with you, is for my children to be educated. While I may not live to see it, I have lived to see the inevitability of it. I know what happened to us, here, and I don't know what would have happened if we'd gone to Belém. Here, I know my children are going to be the people I wanted them to be. I would do it over again.”

The trailer was quiet except for the sound of a passing car, and Layla said, “But back then, you wanted to go to Belém. Why did you let me bring us here?”

“Good God, child. It would have been easier to hold back a lunatic driving a Sherman tank. You had both my boys with you. Felipe would have followed you anywhere to get away from João, and Enzo would have followed Felipe. What was I going to do, report you to the police so they could return you to João to be beaten to death? I was so scared leaving João I can hardly breathe just thinking about it, and when you wouldn't tell us where you were taking us, I think I only pretended to sleep the whole time. There have been times in America when I've been almost as scared not knowing what we would do next, but maybe those scary times have been good for me. I'm not scared of my cancer.”

“You aren't scared of your cancer because you can think of it as being only your cancer. It's not our cancer, or at least it is not attacking us in a way that will derail our lives. In Brazil, you were afraid of what would happen to all of us.”

“Yes.”

“So was I. Even when I was nine and coming to America was just a fantasy, I was afraid of what would happen to us if we ran away. I'm not completely over it, now.”

The outside door banged against the side of the trailer. No one was coming. It was an old trailer, and unless someone locked the door, it didn't take much to cause it to swing open. Layla got up to close the door, and when she returned, she sat on the edge of the bed and spoke, again.

“There's something I want you to do for me.”

“Oh no.”

“Seriously, I want you to write an autobiography, mainly about your childhood, but at least as far as your marriage to João.”

“Why on earth would you want me to do that?”

“I want you to include at least some of the stories you've told me about your father and grandfather.”

“But why?”

“I want my grandchildren to know about you, and Lara's, and Enzo's, and Felipe's grandchildren.”

“First of all, I am the least interesting person in the family. You are the person your grandchildren will be interested in. You were the heroic child who saved her family and brought them to America, though there is plenty about that trip they should not be told. And secondly, your grandchildren will only speak English, and I can't write a decent grocery list in English.”

Layla had her response prepared, at least the beginning. “You can write it in Portuguese, which you write beautifully, and I'll translate it, being sure to tell my grandchildren that they need to learn to read the original because it is so beautifully written. And besides, it is not for you to judge how interesting you are. If I start to tell my grandchildren why we came here, I can tell them that my father was a brutal man who was likely to kill one of his own children. Then I can try to explain how my wonderful mother from a cultured family came to be married to such a cruel man, but that's your story, which you know better than I do.”

“When would you ever have time to translate it. It would be a waste of time. And firstly...”

“I will have time to translate it when I have grandchildren.”

“I'll think about it,” and shortly before Lara returned from school, Maria said, “Okay, I'll do it, and I'll tell you why. I'm bored.”

“I don't want a school essay that will take you three hours to write. I want the whole thing. I want it to take you three months to write.”

“Good. It will keep me occupied after you have gone to New Jersey and I am alone most of the day.” And later, she added, “There's something I want you to do for me.”

“Yes?”

“Someday, after you're a doctor... I would prefer it if you would do it before you translate whatever I write. Someday, I want you to go back to Brazil and see whether you can find out what happened to Daniel and Roberto, and my sister Lara. I know I'll be dead, but it doesn't matter. I want someone to know.”

***

Layla hadn't liked her first almost two years in medical school. It wasn't the endless list of lists to memorize, it was the endless memorizing of superficial conclusions with no discussion of how the conclusions were reached, nothing challenging or arguable, just superficial conclusions, one after the other, stated as facts. It was technical training, but at least the surface covered was vast. The next almost two years, the so-called “clinical” years, these she didn't dislike.

These she hated.

During these clinical years she rotated through a series of clerkships that were supposed to teach her the fundamentals of each subdiscipline of medicine. Then as an intern, the story went, she would learn technical skills – how to put down an endotracheal tube, freeze a wart, or close a surgical wound. The story was garbage. She didn't learn anything because there was no time to learn anything. Her days, and on most rotations every third night, were spent doing scut work.

The hospitals that were paid to run clinical clerkships for St. George's treated medical students as drudges who could be assigned any menial task. They were ordered around by interns and residents who expected students to go through the same exhausting servitude they had gone through.

She hated being required to introduce herself to patients as Doctor Cardeira. It was a fraud, she was just a student. She hated being required to wear a laboratory coat because she had to steal one.

She could not get all her clerkships in one city, and she hated having to rotate from city to city because she had to ask Felipe for bus fare on top of her tuition. Hitch-hiking really wasn't the option it had been in the sixties and early seventies. As the number of hitch-hikers became smaller, the likelihood that any one of them was actually dangerous increased, so fewer people picked them up, so still fewer hitch-hiked in a poisonous feed-back loop, and by the later seventies Layla could no longer think the people who still stopped to pick up hitch-hikers were safe.

Worse than just not learning what she thought she should, Layla knew medical school was changing her, and she didn’t like the change. On her pediatric rotation, there was a thirteen-year-old girl admitted with terminal leukemia. The hematologist determined that her disease had reached the point at which there was no point to the blood transfusion that had previously allowed her to go home feeling better. So she remained in the hospital while her parents went home to take care of their other nine children. They left instructions. The girl was not to be told she was dying.

It was impossible. Of course, the child knew she was dying. When Layla entered her room in the middle of the night, the girl said, “I'm dying. I want to talk to my parents, at least on the telephone.” Layla stood staring at her, speechless. She couldn't bring herself to say, “Oh no, you'll be fine.” But she couldn't ignore those instructions, either. She couldn't become the honest presence the girl needed. The girl's family lived fifty miles away, in a different area code, and Layla didn't have the money to give her a long distance call. So Layla turned around and walked out without speaking. She'd become a coward.

On her surgical rotation, she held retractors for the head of the general surgery department in a fourteen hour surgery. Even she could see he was incompetent, and when he broke down and started throwing equipment around the operating room, she was silent, and again said nothing when she accidentally met the patient's husband in the hospital's cafeteria.

She was aware of a ninety-seven-year-old woman who entered the hospital with congestive heart failure. The woman lived with her daughter's family quite happily, and had just published a volume of poetry. She was not given coumadin just because she was old enough to die, which she did of a stroke in the hospital.

There was an arrogant student who thought he was about to become the world's most famous surgeon. He thought he needed practice doing “cardiac sticks,” so one morning, as he went about drawing routine blood samples from twenty patients, he drew every one of them by shoving a needle through the patient's chest and taking the blood sample directly from the patient's heart. The chief resident knew about it and did nothing other than tell the student he shouldn't do that, again. He then told everyone else what a great surgeon the student was going to be.

To complain about any of these things, she would have had to go over the heads of the people who gave her orders. When, she asked herself, did she lose the nerve? Worse, it wasn't just nerve she had lost, it was compassion.

She read a study in which medical and law students were given the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory when they entered and again when they left their schools. At the beginning, the law students scored low on the altruism scale, the medical school students scored high. After four years, the only change was that the medical school students scored lower than the lawyers on the altruism scale. Layla thought, “That's me. What am I going to do about this?”

***

When Layla began her four-week psychiatry rotation, she had only twelve-weeks of clinical clerkships left before she was a real doctor. It was an easy rotation. There were no nights. There was actually time to learn something. She wasn't sure exactly what. She was in Utah and not at all sure the population of Mormons on the ward was representative of the world of crazy people. She joked that she would become an expert in Mormon psychology, but she took their problems seriously and renewed the hatred of religion that had languished in her through a decade of not confronting it.

She was staying in Salt Lake City's Rescue Mission. The Mission's focus was on drug addicts and alcoholics, not on destitute medical students. However, she wanted in because it offered the addicts lodging, three-meals-a-day, and employment assistance. It also offered all the indoctrination into the Church of Jesus Christ of the Later-Day Saints they would stand for. That part, along with the employment assistance, she would have willingly given up if they’d let her.

She didn't qualify as a member of their target demographic, but she told her story with an emphasis on her history of prostitution, the circumstances that could force her return to prostitution, and how she had been spiritually adrift for all the years since she escaped from the Assembléia de Deus. She made herself irresistible to anyone seeking new souls for the Church.

It was a short, cold walk from the Rescue Mission to the hospital the day the head nurse on the psych ward told her she had received a call from her brother. “He left his phone number at work and wants you to call him back. I hope this is going to be good news.”

“No, it's going to be bad. My mother has terminal breast cancer.”

“I'm sorry. Is there anything I can do?” Of course, she assumed the answer would be “No,” but Layla promptly took her up on the offer.

“Actually, there is a way you might be able to help. I don't think people know how poor I am. I live at the Rescue Mission. I don't have a whole dollar to my name, I almost never do, and I have no way of returning my brother's call. There isn't any reason my brother would be calling me other than to tell me I have to go home. I have no way to call him back, or to make the calls to get a leave of absence from the medical school. Is it possible that you have a way of helping me make those calls?”

The nurse hesitated. “Well, I'm authorized to make long-distance calls on my office phone, but the hospital watches us carefully. If you only need those two calls and can keep them short, I'll let you make them. I'm sorry I sound so mean spirited, but they...”

“No, no. Just thank you. I'll be sure to keep them short. It will be a great help.”

Of course, the first call proved to be a problem. The operator intercept she got when she called home implied their phone had been disconnected for nonpayment. So she called the number Felipe had left, the number of Dr. Craft's lab. The voice that answered seemed to be that of an undergraduate lab assistant. The assistant said she didn't know where Felipe was, that he would normally be in the lab at that time of day. However, she had heard his mother was extremely ill, and he might have been called away because of that. That was enough. She didn't need to talk to Felipe to know she needed to get permission from St. George's Medical School to abandon her last quarter and complete her clerkships during the next.

Her second call sliced through the school's bureaucracy so easily Layla felt palpable relief. A secretary said she understood the request and would forward it to the dean, but Layla didn't have to worry about his approving it. He routinely approved temporary leaves of absence for much less serious reasons. She didn't have to contact them again until she was ready to return to school. She might have to provide a death certificate when she returned.

Layla didn't know what to do next. She had no hope Felipe had returned to the lab during the time she was arranging her leave of absence, but she wasn't sure how she was going to arrange another long distance call, so she dialed the lab, again.

“Hi! This is Jim.”

She hadn't anticipated a new voice, wasn't sure what to say, and stumbled through an awkward version of, “I called a few minutes ago for Felipe. I don't suppose he's returned during those few minutes, but I'm kind of desperate to get hold of him. He called awhile ago, and our mother is very ill, and I'm calling long distance, and I don't know when I might get a chance to call, again. Is there any way you can help me get in touch with him. I'm very worried.”

“Are you his sister?”

“Yes.”

“Give me your phone number. I'll try to find him in the next half-hour. I'll have him call you. I know he's anxious to get hold of you. If I can't find him, I'll call you back myself.”

“I think that will be all right. I'll have to get the nurse to give you the phone number and extension. Thank you so much, and who are you?”

“I'm Felipe's boss.”

“Are you Dr Craft?”

“Yes.” So Jim was Dr. Craft - another Dr. Scott wishing the world was MIT.

The phone rang from time to time. When it rang within a minute of half-an-hour later, Layla feared it would be Dr. Craft, not Felipe. The head nurse handed her the phone saying, “It's for you.”

“This is Jim. I'm sorry I couldn't find Felipe. Is there any way I can help you?”

“Can you tell me anything about my mother. I know she has terminal cancer, and I'm afraid that's what Felipe called about.”

“I'm sorry. I can tell you your mother is very low.”

“In the Caribbean, ʻvery lowʼ  means someone is going to die in a very short time. Do you mean, if I don't come now, I won't see her, again?”

“I believe that is why Felipe is trying to get hold of you.”

“I need to get hold of Felipe. I need his help to get bus fare.”

The silence lasted long enough for Layla to begin thinking she’d lost the connection. It ended when they started speaking at the same time. They stopped, and Layla said, “Go ahead.”

“From what I gather a bus ticket may not be good enough. I'll see to it that you get airfare...”

***

As Layla stepped into the trailer, the first person she saw was Lara with her finger to her lips. The gesture stopped Layla just in time. The door had to be slammed shut and locked to keep it from drifting open again. So Lara's warning left Layla frozen with her hand on the open door. Maria opened her eyes and spoke softly. Lara repeated, “She says go ahead and slam the door.”

Layla got a stronger hug than the weakness of her mother's voice suggested was possible. Still, it was obvious that her mother was very low. The conversation that followed consisted mainly of variations on how relieved Maria and Lara were to have Layla at home. It was a conversation that quickly became difficult to maintain, and it started pushing Layla toward the thing she urgently wanted to say, but could only be said when she was alone with her mother.

Layla was relieved when Felipe and Enzo arrived fifteen minutes apart. The new conversation settled into talk among Layla and her siblings. It was mostly busy talk about their own lives, information they had already shared in letters, nothing about their mother.

Dinner was filled with silences during which they each wondered whether that dreary meal would be their last with Maria present. Afterward, Layla sat by her mother, and her siblings sat watching Layla.

Evening shadows flowed through the trailer park and slowly filled their home with darkness. Maria's breathing became stertorous but she remained restless in the sleep of someone exhausted by torture. Layla rose, jiggled Enzo awake, and gestured to her siblings, asking them to step quietly outside with her.

Enzo sat, uncomfortably, with one hand holding the trailer door ajar in case their mother should call. Felipe and Lara sat along one edge of a chaise longue made of strips of plastic woven on an aluminum frame. It seemed too weak to hold both of them. Layla faced them in a similarly flimsy chair. They sat in the dark, and listened for any stirring inside the trailer as much as they listened to what they were saying to one another.

“There is something I want to tell you. You may think it odd that I do not want to tell Mother, but I think you will understand. I don't want her to think going to medical school was a mistake, so I don’t want her to hear this.

“Mother speaks and writes Portuguese so well, and knows so many things. I think, if we lived in Brazil, people would think she was educated at a university. However, she is not formally educated, and she thinks of a doctor as the most educated person there is. But I can tell you a doctor's education is unbelievably huge and rotten at the core.

“Most of the medical students I have met, the U.S. medical students, most are in it for the money and prestige. A few actually want to help people. I don't think I've met one who cares about knowledge the way I do – we do I think. In physics, I can start with a set of definitions and follow three hundred years of data and argument and think what we know is pretty good. Medicine is technical education. When you see this do that.

“So what I'm telling you is this. I've been accepted into the physics program at Cal Tech. I'll start as soon as I graduate from St. George's. I have a National Science Foundation fellowship that will pay me four hundred and eighty dollars a month. That's as much as I'd get as an intern. I can survive on half that. So there's two hundred and forty dollars a month to help you. Of course, an internship would only last a year, and there'd be a more money after that, but I've decided. I've also decided that you all have to decide who gets what of the two hundred and forty.”

From there the conversation went on to how it might be possible to meld degrees in medicine and physics. It was an interesting question because this was long before the days of MD/PhD programs. Layla was going to make herself an interesting rarity.

***

When Enzo shook Layla's shoulder the light seemed to burst through the trailer window revealing a morning ready for more energy than Layla had to give. Enzo shook Layla's shoulder again. “I'm leaving, now. Felipe and Lara are gone. So you're in charge of Mother. I've moved her onto that reclining chair outside. It's going to get too hot for her in the trailer. It rained last night and the humidity is going to make it worse. I have a chemistry lab and won't be home until after five. Lara should be home a little after three.”

When Layla stepped out of the trailer, she didn't know what time it was, but the day was still pleasant. She sat next to her mother without speaking and looked across the trailer park, still on low ground between two hills and soggy from the night's rain. Puddles of water remained between the scattered clumps of grass. Looking between two trailers and across an empty lot, the remains of her friend Clara's flower garden could be seen in bloom. There were dragonflies everywhere. Layla finally spoke.

“I've been watching the dragonflies. It's interesting how they touch the water for hardly an instant. It looks like they bounce on the water. I wonder why.” As she said it, Layla glimpsed an analogy between that bounce on the water and the whole of a person's life, but Maria’s answer erased the glimpse.

“I think they're avoiding being caught by fish.”

“That's a good guess. They do it so often, do you think they somehow need to drink water so regularly?” Maria had no idea and did not answer.

Layla began, again, “They eat a lot of mosquitoes.”

She continued to watch the dragonflies darting down to the puddles and back up. She wondered, briefly, what a slow-motion video of a dragonfly capturing a mosquito would look like. But she mainly just watched the dragonflies while she thought about her mother. It seemed to Layla that, if her mother could be encouraged to eat a few bites of food each hour, she might live for a while.

When she'd thought about feeding her mother for the tenth time, Layla gave up watching the dragonflies and went to see what she could find in the kitchen. She came out with a small bowl of leftover rice that had been cooked with a few caraway seeds. She thought the caraway seeds were something people from India did and wondered where her family had picked the idea up.

When she held a forkful of rice up to her mother's mouth, Maria just shook her head no.

“Should I heat it up?”

“You should stop trying to get me to eat. I'm too sick to eat, and I don't want to prolong it. I'm glad you came home so we can say, ʻGood bye.ʼ  I'm glad you're going to be a doctor, but your education is wasted on me.” Layla could barely remember having heard the irritation in her mother’s voice. She had been saving what she had in mind to tell her mother for a long time, and now, she was afraid she was too late, that her mother was too ill to be able to have much interest in it, but there was nothing left to do but go ahead.

“Mother, I know you feel terrible, but there is something that may seem... Well, ʻoddʼ  doesn't do it justice, but there is something I want to tell you.”

A long, long time later, Maria said, " Well, go ahead."

“I want to tell you what I'm going to say about you at your funeral.”

“Oh good grief,” and then Maria spoke quietly and haltingly, “I don't see how anyone can twist my life into anything worth much comment at a funeral, but I know you wouldn't say anything bad about me, so I'm curious.”

“I'm going to do this just as though we were there. It will be my practice run,” and after a false start, she began.

My mother's life did not attract much attention. She was often depressed and reclusive in her depression, but none of that was in her nature. It may be that she was never anyone who would attract the attention of the world, but she did have eight years to reveal who she really was. During those years she was an energetic child at the top of her class in school, but after that, there were circumstances that no one should have to endure. Those circumstances make it difficult to comprehend who she was or what she accomplished, but it is worth the effort needed to understand.

She had one constant in her life, and that constant never attracted any attention. It was just an idea – an idea without much currency in the culture I dragged her into. It was an idea she picked up from her grandfather during walks they took together in the real world.

She could not take me out into the world to demonstrate this idea to me as her grandfather had done for her. While we were in Brazil, she was forced to be a sort of cloistered housekeeper, not often let out of the house and then closely watched, but she told me stories of Camelot – and not of an imaginary Camelot, but of the real Camelot of her own childhood, especially the time between her father's death and her forced move to Codó.

I have no idea how far back in her family the idea goes. I do know that it came to her at least as much through her grandfather as anyone. I think it would have come from her father if he had lived.

When she was with her grandfather, everything was a lesson. There was nothing that was not worth knowing about. The name of a bird might seem unimportant. After all, names are arbitrary and what intrinsic value do they have? Well, the names of birds allow us to talk to one another about birds that are not around to point out.

What difference could it make to know a bit of trivia, say that the Battle of Agincourt was fought in 1415. Well, it could make you interested in what changed in English culture with the result that there were no more Welsh bowmen in 1515.

The Universe is like a symphony that contains every melody ever written within it. To ignore one melody in a symphony diminishes our appreciation of every other melody, and to ignore one piece of knowledge is to diminish our appreciation of every other piece of knowledge.

What do we get out of life other than a little time to appreciate melodies – a little time to appreciate the relationships between the things we know? The answer is ‘nothing.’ There is nothing else.

I think my great grandfather's lessons were easy to take. There were no pages in exercise books to fill out. I think he made my mother a good student. No one, aside from her children, ever knew her well enough to appreciate how much she knew. Her eighth-grade education was not a measure of the scope of her knowledge.

My mother was determined to see her children educated, but her idea of education had nothing to do with getting a good job, or prestige, only with the melodies that make the Universe. She has passed that idea to us, that knowledge is for its own sake, and every particle of it is valuable. Every particle enhances the value of every other particle.

She knew there was no system to what she learned. Oh, there were categories, categories from bird names to industrial processes, but if there was a better way to acquire knowledge, that was what she wanted for her children. If knowledge could be made even better by being acquired in accordance with some system of education, that is what she wanted for us.

Every time I hear someone exhort someone else to go to school because they can get a better job, I cringe. I hate it. I want to scream at them that I would go to school even if it was sure to make me poor. Knowledge is for its own sake. Her grandfather sometimes said, “It is only knowledge gained for its own sake that makes a mind worth having.” That's how I feel, so I guess my mother's unobtrusive life was a success.

From the time my mother's father died, when she was eight, there was never a day when that idea was not at risk. His death could have distracted her from it. Her mother's disinterest in education was enough to destroy it, the move against her will to Codó, every day of their mean existence in Codó, the struggle and secrecy needed to keep a few degraded symbols of Camelot, the depredations of the Assembléia de Deus, her forced marriage, the man she was forced to marry, and her imprisonment. Every moment of her life was the time to give in and forget her idea. It is the greatest consolation to me that, after all her adversity, she has lived to see the live coal she carried across three generations, from her grandfather to her children, ignite a fire.

It took awhile for Maria to regain her composure. Then she said, “Thank you. I wish there would be someone there other than my children to hear it.”

“There will be a  few.”

“Not even ten.”

“Then I'll write a book.”

Fim

Book 1
~
João
~
(The Prequel)
~
Brazil - 1932

Day Minus Five - Milagre de Maria...

Everyone who met João thought he was small for his age. His height, alone, was enough to explain why he was not accorded the status of an adult (even though he was fourteen years old). But João was not only short because of his genetic patrimony, malnutrition left him stalled at the start of puberty. Out on the street, girls especially liked making his life miserable, teasing him mercilessly whenever the boys let up. At home, his own father would not hesitate to enhance a beating with a criticism of his physique. Of course, it never occurred to João that, for five months of his fourteenth year, it was a life-saving advantage to look more like a well-made child than a malnourished adult.

Everyone who met João thought he was small for his age, but that was only their second thought. His stature did not prevent him from being a handsome youth. He had a smile that revealed new, even, brilliantly white teeth. Fine bones (unusual among his people) lay beneath smooth skin perfectly bronzed by the sun. He was a well-made child who would have been beautiful even without the one attribute that surpassed all the others. His greatest power to enchant lay in his anemia which made his fine skin seem translucent – a fantastically attractive feature of ill health.

He was given to staring at people with his head tilted as though he were merely interested in them. That stare from those large, clear, brown eyes watching with faultless intimacy gave people an urge to touch him – to feel the texture of this gorgeous skin that almost seemed to radiate light.

Some of the interest in touching him was sexual. The girls who teased him knew more about his immaturity than they should, and they had their knowledge from play that was more revealing than the village priest would have considered acceptable. There was one young woman in particular who was his worst tormentor. Vicious knowledge stoked her cruelty, and with it Madalena won a place in his story.

While all of the interest in touching him was sensual, not all of it was exactly sexual. At age eleven, João had to stop his own mother from assisting him with bathing. Her frequent caresses were not the result of desire or of motherly love; they were the result of her privileged position among those who wanted to touch him.

There was something else, something aside from João's fine features and the finespun, waxen skin that incipient illness gave him. His voice attracted people, but their attention to his appearance kept the fragments of melody, hidden in each word, from rising quite to consciousness. A native speaker of English wandering the remote pathways of rural Brazil before World War II might easily have concluded that Portuguese was a fine language for bawling people out, or arguing on a street corner, and not much else. But hearing João speak... Without understanding a word of his language, the hypothetical wanderer would have thought he was listening to the river murmuring stories from before the arrival of humankind. His was still a child's voice, but it had always been unusually low-pitched for a child, and the constant need to appease his father had given it inflections that were innocently seductive. Even Madalena never heard his anger.

***

João lived with his parents, his brothers, his sisters, and their illnesses. Many decades after the end of this story, he had no idea how many siblings he had, or what all their names were, or who lived into adulthood, or even whether he and his twin sister were the oldest only because they were the first to survive to fourteen. He could only say, “There were a lot of us.”

The house his family lived in was typical of the time and place – there were two adobe rooms with an outside kitchen under a thatch roof. One of the rooms was for his parents' privacy. The other was a neatly organized sala de viva where the few possessions of the Cardeiras, other than children, were neatly organized. All but the babies slept in hammocks that were only strung inside when the weather was wet.

João's mother saw to it that her children lived most of their lives outside, day or night. If it rained hard, an extra bath-day was declared and everyone's clothes were hung neatly in the shelter of the kitchen. Wet children were not allowed to dampen the hard-packed floor that his mother swept after every meal.

The poverty of his parents was unrelated to the Great Depression that was creating misery in the rest of the world. Their fortunes did not wax or wane with the world's great economies. Whether they owned the land they farmed neither he nor his parents could say. They were just there. When there was enough rain to raise some rice, they were still poor, but for a year they were not hungry. When God chose to test them with drought, for a year they were beggars, or almost so. Some of their neighbors, who had larger parcels of land farther from the village and donkey carts to haul what was necessary, raised enough rice to put something aside for a bad year. However, they still had almost no cash and lived much as João's family did. In João's small world, the poor did not think themselves superior to the wretched. Sharing was an unstated expectation of the village, and those who produced a little surplus did not take their extra grain to the mill if their neighbors were hungry.

Sometimes there were needs that neighbors could not satisfy. For these, there was the church. His father was almost always angry, but João had no difficulty telling when his father had been to the church for help. When a neighbor helped, a piece of work was found for João's father - so he would not appear to be begging. But when he faced the three august members of the Charity Committee (all poor farmers with families almost as badly off as his own), he had to submit to three insufferable lectures. He was not only told to attend mass, he had to listen, once again, to the parable of the grasshopper and the ant.

João's father was quick to claim he was a better Catholic than the Bishop even though he did not attend mass. Attending mass would only give the priest more opportunity to harass him about his long absence from the confessional. He knew the purpose of confession, and he didn't like it. It was to make people tell things about themselves they didn't want known. It was to give the priest power over people. A priest was just a man with no more right to know these things than any other man.

***

The long drought left João with little to do. His only remaining task was one he had shared with his twin sister, but it became his alone while his sister learned to sew. He brought their water from a neighbor's well in a metal cracker box he carried on his head. A full box was heavy, and the task required a good many trips each day because his mother was a woman who demanded cleanliness. The absence of a winch, for cranking the bucket up from the well, made the task more difficult. Every time he lifted a bucket of water, hand-over-hand, resentment rose with each pull on the rope. A winch was an easy thing to build, but his father wouldn't do it because it was not his well.

There had been a time when João enjoyed defying the tropical heat by drawing the bucket up and pouring the water over his head and soaking his shirt. However, as time passed, listlessness grew on him and respite from the heat didn't seem worth the effort. He began to resent his only chore so that his father, knowing how lazy boys his age could be, sometimes had to beat him like a donkey to get him to do it.

***

His parents differed in their opinions of João. His father saw his inability to maintain a decent place in street society and his indolent attitude toward doing simple chores. He thought João was stupid and blamed his wife for bringing him into the world.

His mother knew João more intimately and often heard what passed for intelligence in their quiet conversations. She thought his life was hard because of the brutal stupidity of his father and the cruelty of his compeers in the street.

João, himself, wasn't sure who was right.

***

It was obvious that João inherited his slight build from his mother. She possessed a slim figure that drove the matronly women in her community to work diligently at finding suspicions worthy of a day's gossip.

She was always silent in her husband's presence, but when he was away, she had a stock of jokes she told over and over to any of her children who requested them. The children, of course, insisted the jokes be told exactly the same way every time. Even the way they cajoled her into telling one more was usually the same.

“Tell another one! Tell another one! Tell the one about the parrot and the frog!”

“I don't have time. I'm soaking the beans.”

“That's a joke. The beans soak themselves. Tell a real joke. Tell the parrot and the frog.”

“I don't remember it.”

“You do too. Don't lie to us. It's not nice.”

“Okay. Since you caught me in a lie, I guess I'll have to tell one more.” So she told the parrot and the frog. Her children, as always, started laughing before the punch line and drowned it out.

These jokes, often as long as short stories, were the dowel peg that held João and his mother together. They were jokes that were funny instead of cruel, and they helped João identify the two kinds of women in the world. There were women like his mother, and when he spoke her name, the sound of his voice could heal. Her name was Larissa. Then there were the pitiless women, the Madalenas.

***

During the first months of João's fourteenth year, the second year of drought began occupying most of his parents' thoughts. Both foresaw a day when their neighbors would refuse to help. His mother already felt sorry for her neighbors. Inarticulate, they would speak guiltily, almost unable to say the words that meant, “We do not have enough for our own families.”

João's parents understood that almost two years with no rain made action necessary. Actions, however, can be postponed - especially when the future is not yet fully felt and when denial has been an effective strategy in the past. But while they hesitated, the first dust storm hit. A month of hard prayer did not prevent still more dust storms from darkening the sky, and João's father knew that God was not going to relent. His parents retreated to the privacy of their room, and there they talked in quiet voices almost indistinguishable from silence in a household where language bore the passions of poverty. João was unprepared for the result of their conversations.

At fourteen, he was now an adult. So João was to be sent out from the village of Milagre de Maria to find his family a better place to live – a place with land for squatters and no drought.

João knew he was far too tired for such an undertaking, something would have to intervene. But all he could think of to say was, “If it's God's will that we be tested with drought in Milagre de Maria, won't it still be God's will that we be tested with drought wherever we go?”

“We will pray for it not to be so.”

“I'm too tired for a long journey. I won't be able to go far.”

His father knew the answer to that. “You may be too lazy for a long journey. So you may need a whipping to help you along.”

His mother said, “The walking will make you stronger and less tired.”

João sat in sullen silence for a while before he gave up saying, “But where should I go?”

“You must find us a place where it still rains.”

“But where's that?”

His father's voice grew louder. “Idiot! If we knew that, we wouldn't be sending you away!”

His mother explained, “Your father's friends think Maranhão will be better. It makes sense to cross the mountains to try to find rain.”

“Maranhão is a whole state. Where in Maranhão?”

“We don't know. When you get there you must ask God. You will have five months to search. If you don't find a better place at first, keep going. Trust God. Ask anyone who is kind for advice. God may inspire someone to help you find a place.”

“How am I to get to Maranhão?”

“As I said, walking will make you stronger. It will be pleasant just walking along and finding a place that is still green.” Of course, everything about life is always more difficult than we imagine.

When he asked them whether they had consulted the priest about their plan, they said Father Cardoso had told them to go to São Paulo, but they did not want to go there. His father said he knew even better than Father Cardoso that cities were evil places, and anytime anyone suggested going to a large city, João was to go in the opposite direction. As he said this, João heard what lay behind his father's fear of cities. It was not that he feared evil people. It was that he did not know how to survive in a city. He was a man who had the knowledge needed to live without cash, but no idea how to live with it.

When his parents finished explaining to João what he must do, his father took him aside and explained, again, that he was to stay away from cities. “People in cities,” he said, “have no honor because they cannot grow the food to feed themselves.”

Day Zero – Quitaiús...

On the morning João began his long walk, his mother swept the hard-packed floor of their home, and prepared a breakfast of cuscuis -rice flour steamed with starch soaked from a cassava root. Then she cried. She cried for as many reasons as could be guessed, but the one she spoke aloud was that there was no egg to cook for João.

When he finished eating, his parents gave him a small pile of change amounting to a few trillion réis. (Before the old real was abandoned, it would take a quintillion of them to buy a pound of meat.) His father also gave him strict instructions not to spend the money in any way on his own sustenance, and not to keep it all in the same pocket. The money had only one purpose. If João encountered a robber and said he had no money, the robber would call him a liar and threaten his life. Having said this, the robber's self-esteem would require him to make good on his threat. The money was to be kept to be given to robbers. João put all of it in the only pocket he had with no hole.

His mother gave him a sack with a cord laced through it so that, when he drew the neck shut, he would have a loop on each side to fit over his shoulders. The sack held two pounds of rice and a metal cup almost large enough to be called a “pot.” They regretted they could not provide him with matches. His father added that matches would only be a nuisance, anyway, because of the incessant need to keep them dry. João bit his tongue and only thought, Of course, if I had matches, I'd be constantly worried about all the rain.

As poor as they were, his mother had never had to beg more than clothes from the church, but she felt her son needed what instruction she could give in the art of “asking for help.” She began, “Remember your manners. Start by saying something nice...” And she ended, “Remember your manners. Take the water first, then ask for just half a cup of rice.”

Finally, his father reminded him, again, that he must stay away from cities, find some empty land where there was rain, and return within five months. The time limit was not set by the change in seasons and a time for planting. In a land so close to the equator, the change in seasons meant nothing - unless it meant going from one drought to the next. If something dreadful happened, and he were unable to return, they could not be left wondering whether he was coming back. But it would be pleasant just walking along as he grew stronger. He scoffed.

***

João began his long walk as the day began in earnest. The rising sun sat behind the dust-filled air like the sun in an old Japanese print, an orange disk sitting on an almost invisible horizon in a land of black silhouettes. By noon, the sky would turn vaguely blue at the zenith, but in the featureless brown distance, the earth and sky would still merge into an opaque sphere that underlay a feeling of horror. It had been that way for weeks. The dust in the air was so fine João could not see it or feel it blow against his skin, but it settled out on everything. Captured in his sweat during the day, the dust marked the crevasses in his skin while he slept at night, and when he arose in the morning, it made him want to bathe.

João listened to the sounds of small birds, mostly chirps and whistles that seemed to come from far across the burnt fields, but the sun had scarcely risen above the grasp of the dead trees before the sounds were exhausted for that day leaving only the occasional, invisible rustle of some scaly creature disturbed by his passing.

Milagre de Maria was five hundred miles south of the equator and far enough inland so that the ocean did not moderate the climate. Green Amazonas was far away to the west, across the States of Maranhão and Pará. The heat in Milagre de Maria was as intense in winter as in summer, seldom fully relieved even in the hour before dawn. Reluctantly, João wore the long sleeves and long pants his relatively fair skin made necessary in the intense sunlight that became the intense heat from which there would be no escape.

***

On the morning João began his long walk, he did not have much to occupy his mind. He had no concern other than that of putting a distance between himself and his village – truthfully, an easier task than hauling water. At noon, he was to stop at the home of an aunt who lived along the road, and when night came, he would stop in a village called Quitaiús. There, a boy from a neighboring village could surely beg his supper. He felt as though his journey would not really begin until the next day when he would be in a country and among people he didn't know.

As he walked, he found himself counting the number of steps he was taking, it was something he did often. The behavior had begun as an idle curiosity about the number of steps he took when he carried water. This curiosity evolved into a habit. Starting with his heel against the neighbor's well, and ending with his toe against the crock that received the water, he always tried to make the number of steps come out to six hundred forty-seven. That was just the beginning of the meaning counting steps would come to have for João.

He walked listlessly, watching the ground in front of his feet. There was nothing to see on the side of the road other than monotonous dead bramble. Where there had once been pasture, there was only dead grass with bald spots that revealed dead soil.

He was sweaty and bored, and as he traveled, he began to feel angry. He abandoned counting as his anger turned his thoughts to memories of teasing and bullying – memories that made him want to think of a plan for murdering Madalena. But it was hopeless. She could never be found alone, so plans died before they were born. He knew it was for the best. He didn’t want those thoughts. His mother had told him God could punish thoughts, so he had learned to start counting when his thoughts turned to murder. Still, his memories of embarrassment were like ear worms, and once in a while, he tired of counting and let fantasy have its way.

***

With time, some of these memories faded into a sort of meta-memory - a blurry knowledge that his anger was justified. But there were other memories, memories of humiliation, that never dimmed or left him alone.

The day after his thirteenth birthday had been hot and dry, perhaps heralding the memorable drought that was now sending him far from his mother. Business in the village marketplace had peaked at sunrise and, having a half-life of about an hour, was long dead. However, the praҫa wasn’t empty. It was a meeting place for a few people João’s age who had finished any work they had to do, and for elderly people who would never admit to being retired. (In their culture, if they were still strong enough to appear in public, they did not call themselves “aposentado.”)

João already knew he should be wary of Madalena and the other bullies. He knew, very well, her talent for embarrassing people. Still, if he wanted to find someone who would talk to him, or some soccer players who would let him into their game without too much groaning, the praҫa was where he had to go.

When Madalena and three of her friends came striding up to him, he knew the question he really wanted answered was, Of all the bad outcomes, how do I avoid the worst one?

“João, Stop! We  have to talk to you. We know we haven’t been nice to you, and you have to let us apologize to you.

“João, Stop! When we heard it was your birthday, we thought about how bad we’ve treated you, and we decided we should apologize. So stop. We figured out how to make it up to you. We have the best birthday present ever. I mean ever.” As Madalena grabbed him and brought him to a stop, her three friends all told how sorry they were, almost shedding real crocodile tears, and repeated what a fabulous present they had for him.

“Come with us.”

“No, I just want to go play soccer.”

“Oh don’t be a twit. You’ll make us go back to making fun of you. We want to give you the best present.”

She had hold of his arm and began to tug at him. When he pulled back, another of the women took his other arm, and one started pushing him from behind.

“We can’t give it to you out here on the street. All the other guys will come running for it and you wouldn’t get any.”

It was impossible. If he was going to get away, he would have to fight with them. Even if there were four girls, he knew how the banter on the street would go if he fought with girls. There was no break-even strategy. So he let himself be pushed and shoved, putting up enough resistance to make it clear he didn’t want to go. They took him down the street and into an abandoned, one-story building. It had been a bakery and before that, a wheelwright’s shop. The backroom still looked more like a garage than a kitchen. There were a couple filthy mattresses on the floor.

“Okay, for your present you can have your choice. You can have sexual intercourse with anyone in the room. All you have to do, first, is show us the great big cock you’re going to use.”

“No!” João fought, but the speed with which the four women had him down on a mattress would have been embarrassing even if they hadn’t taken his pants off.

“Oh, João. We meant to give you a present, but you can’t do anything with that!”

For a while, they continued taunting him while they played keep-away with his pants, but he knew enough to give up. He wrapped his shirt around his waist and started for home. The girls followed him outside waving his pants in the air, and for a block Madalena ran next to him holding her hand in the air with her thumb and index finger about an inch apart shouting, “This long! This long!”

It wasn’t his first humiliation, or even the last, but from that day João began to dream. At night, he dreamed of being chased through the streets naked and, in the daytime, of killing Madalena.

***

He was picking out arbitrary points along the road and reckoning the number of steps between them. Once, when he could see from the house he was passing all the way to the next house, he counted steps between the two. In his imagination, he often thought about his father berating him for one thing or another, and as expected, this imaginary father was complaining about his rate of progress. But he had reached his resting place by taking four hundred eighty-seven steps beyond the house where he had used a well, and he had counted out hundreds of steps several times that day. He found these numbers formed a useful defense against his imaginary father.

***

The State of Ceará had seen other droughts in João's childhood, but this one was worse. Even where there had been scummy ponds, now there were dead trees that stood skeleton-like among those that still kept a cup of sap from being sucked back into the dry ground. Here and there the bleached limbs held a few vultures. Even those ugly scavengers were fewer in number. João remembered his sister joking that the vultures ruled the Ceará because they knew a strong stomach was more important than a big brain.

He was walking past a house he had concluded was abandoned when he saw an ancient woman standing in the yard seeming to watch him pass. She was the kind of thin, once-tall-but-now-stooped woman sometimes found living alone long after the passing of her own generation - living alone past any obvious ability to manage the chores necessary to each day. As he approached, he could tell by the odd movements of her head as she followed his advance that near blindness compounded her difficulties. Closer, the cloudiness in her eyes was so obvious even a boy of fourteen noticed. She seemed far past all possibility of remaining in this place and, as João learned, she was standing in her yard waiting for her son-in-law to arrive with a donkey cart to move her into her daughter's home. It was her second day of waiting.

When he asked for water, she sarcastically offered him all the water in her well. He thought it hopeless to ask for any rice, but he did explain his journey because one never knew what helpful thing a woman that old might know. When he finished the story, her reply was only labored breathing. João wondered whether her rasping breath was something that had just begun or something he had somehow let go unnoticed. He didn't know what more to say. He expected her to say something, some further sarcasm.

Perhaps, it was the beautiful voice from the boy she could barely see that kept her silent. She just stood, vaguely waving her hands. Without being fully aware of what he was thinking, João wanted her hands to stop moving. He had never seen hands so distorted – every joint bent until her fingers bunched together and crossed over one another. He wanted those hands motionless so he could see all that was wrong with them.

She finally spoke with a sadness as oppressive as the heat. “You're too late. In five months, all the wells will be dry, and everyone will be gone.”

João knew what she'd said. He thought it could be true, and it silenced him. He remained standing, just staring at her hands until she said, “When you return, and your family is gone, look for a note on the door of your house. If you find one, take it to someone who can read and tell you where they’ve gone.”

He replied, as though he were talking to himself, “They won't know where they are going.”

“Then wait and they will send someone for you.”

He thought it could be a long wait.

***

On the morning João began his long walk, he hoped he would be able to catch a ride in a donkey cart, but the drought gave people little reason to tend their fields, and commerce between Milagre de Maria and the farms was nearly dead. In a wet year, there would have been a parade of carts moving in his direction - carts carrying men to small, subsistence plots of land that tradition had carved out of the great holdings, often wastefully unused by the latifundiários – the inheritors of royal grants and the failure of the Vargas government to achieve land reform. Now, there was only the heat filling the empty road, heat no different from the heat of any other day of any other year or any other road, heat that sapped his strength and strengthened his desire to escape his task.

From time to time, João adjusted the position of his wide brimmed hat, keeping as much of his face in shadow as he could. To avoid sunburn, he walked with his hands in his pockets or through the holes in his pockets. Never having thought about it before, he wondered where his mother found long-sleeved shirts for him. The only person he had ever seen wearing them was Senhor Sequeira, and his shirt was not one of that man's discards (which would have been large enough to cover João and three of his siblings).

Now, he was traveling far from Madalena. He hoped distance would make it possible to keep her out his mind while counting his steps less often. However, just deciding not to think about Madalena didn’t help him stop thinking about her. He knew it was just a fantasy, but he could imagine her secretly following him – intending to cause him trouble. He only had to catch her at it. He turned around quickly knowing there would be no one behind him. Then he picked up a stick, almost a satisfactory club, and carried it for a mile before he tired of it and tossed it into a ditch. He found himself wondering how he could get a knife.

***

Late in the morning, the appearance of a barbed-wire fence marked his approach to the Fazenda Sequeira - a farm that had employed twenty full-time workers. Now, men hoping for work would come at dawn and stand in front of the supervisor's house, each of them hoping to be chosen for that day.

The green plants that once grew along the fence-line were gone, dried up and blown into the field beyond. A child could have drawn the fence and field with perfect realism – four black pencil lines against a beige background merging with a beige sky. The omission of a few dead sticks that still clung to the wires would not matter.

João began counting the number of steps between fence posts, but he stopped at the third post, added up the number of steps he had taken so far, and went on intending to count off the entire length of the fence. The number would be a stronger buffer against the imagined complaints of his father. As it was Senhor Sequeira's fence, it went on long after he felt like quitting.

The Fazenda Sequeira fit João’s idea of a huge landholding, but it wasn’t like one of the great fazendas owned by the latifundiários. João had never imagined the size of a latifundiário's estate. The great fazendas were left from Portuguese colonial administration and the repeated failure of the Congresso Nacional to pass land reform legislation. The reason so many smallholders existed in Ceará was that the state was too prone to drought to have interested the colonial Portuguese.

Senhor Sequeira's house had a tile roof and walls made of tijolo (small red bricks holed-out like concrete blocks). In truth, even in wet years the place turned little or no profit. The Senhor's wealth came from a cement factory he owned in another state, but he lived near Milagre de Maria because that was where he grew up, and that was where the people he wanted to impress lived. He was as august a man as João had ever seen, but he was only a fazendeiro. He was no latifundiário.

João had instructions from his parents to stop at this house. There was always someone home, and João was told to try to get advice from Senhor Sequeira himself. But he knew why his father had not asked Senhor Sequeira the questions they needed to ask, and he did not know whether he would do so when his father would not. To ask, at that house, questions about geography only someone who had been to school could answer, and then to ask for rice... It would acknowledge the horrible difference between a Cardeira and a Sequeira. And that was not the worst of it. João had ambitions that an impoverished rural boy on the cusp of manhood could not admit to. He wanted to be seen as a person who knew things. He wanted respect and to make Madalena envious.

His sister had been to school, but it hardly counted. Being able to read and write wasn't what he thought of when he thought of Senhor Sequeira knowing things. Senhor Sequeira knew where to find wealth. João might have gone to school, himself, but no one ever told him he should, and even as a small child he was embarrassed by his clothes. The cloth from the seed sacks was used to make dresses for the girls, so most of his rags came from the church after they had been handed down through the children of some other family.

Where the barbed-wire fence met the wood-rail fence in front of Senhor Sequeira's house, there was a gap that opened onto a shortcut. Looking up the narrow path trod by the feet of the day-workers, he could see there were people milling around the front of the house. They were powerful people, and their presence made him feel his own insignificance as though it were a chronic disease. Still, he did not turn onto the path any farmer would take to save himself a hundred steps. He continued walking on toward the lane a proper visitor would use – the lane that could take a cart to the tijolo house with the tile roof.

João's ambition was coupled to a lack of opportunity so absolute that it precluded thinking of even the first step forward. And without a plan, his ambition was indistinguishable from fantasy.  The heat made his thoughts sluggish, crowded together and knotted to his fear of embarrassment. Still, his ambition began to follow him, confused like the shadows moonlight makes in the bush at night.

His pace slowed,. A recollection of frogs he had seen exposed and desiccated in the heat became mixed with thoughts about the people who would hear the foolish questions he would have to ask. Ten steps before he reached the lane that led to that house, he could not have told you whether he would turn off the road. He looked toward those important people just milling around, and with each of those ten steps his lassitude grew until he reached the gate and sat down. He was tired of walking, and sweat had overcome his brown eyebrows and was troubling his eyes, so he decided he should rest before approaching the fazenda.

João sat with his eyelids clamped shut, afraid of the men he wanted to emulate. He lost track of the number of steps he'd taken along the fence. Then, of course, it was necessary to imagine his father scolding him for sitting down.

The scolding was short, and he heard himself whispering, All right, I'll go on, but I know I’m just imagining you. He stood up, paused for a moment as a little dizziness passed, and began walking across the lane and down the road, beginning to feel better, free of ever having to ask to speak to Senhor Sequeira.

***

Early in the afternoon, he reached the home of his father's sister where he expected to be fed. His aunt greeted him with a hug that was several sizes too large for him and a kiss on the cheek that left a wet spot and an urge he knew he could not indulge to wipe it off. João was now in the house of his father's childhood, and his aunt sat him down at what was once his father's place at the table.

One of the many things that was never to be mentioned in João's home was that his grandfather had left a will. That was, by itself, reason enough for complaint, but the will specified that his aunt, who had never married and had no way of providing for herself, was to inherit everything that mattered. A man with a family to take care of got nothing just because he was a man who could work. And so, João's aunt hired a man to work her farm and fared better than João's father and his family.

His aunt had a lot of affection for her brother's children and had offered to adopt some of them - a common enough practice among the poorest families in the village. But while João's father might have been relieved to have a couple of his children adopted, the idea of his sister doing so was another of the taboo topics that kept his household  silent.

João's aunt had thought she would offer João some advice of her own when he came, but somehow her advice started with an exclamation that he was too small for such a task. He shouted a rush of words without seeming to draw a breath. “I'm glad to be going! I hate my father! He beats me for no reason other than I'm short. That doesn't matter, I'm an adult, and I'm going to kill him for beating my mother...”

In time, his invective almost petered out, but before his aunt could think of something to say, he was shouting again, “They won't be here when I get back!...”

When he was finally quiet, his aunt sat silently for a while and then changed the subject.

***

In the afternoon, a stroke of luck produced one man with a donkey cart heading toward Quitaiús where João expected to spend the night. Luck, unfortunately, comes in two kinds.

Senhor Pedro and João were instant friends – Senhor Pedro because João’s lustrous skin made the old man wonder whether he was in the company of an angel, and João because the Senhor had a parrot riding on his shoulder. João had always wanted a parrot. From the time he was four he'd been asking his mother why he couldn't have at least some kind of bird. His mother, being his mother, did not have to answer with a reason. She only had to say, “No.” João assumed the reason was that his father did not want him to have a bird.

When they found themselves among a few houses on the edge of the village, Senhor Pedro explained that he had come to Quitaiús to try to borrow tools he needed to rebuild the roof of his house. Then he added that he was embarrassed and stopped speaking. João couldn't understand his embarrassment – until the man began speaking again. “I’m going to spend the night at my sister's house, but I can't ask you to have supper with us.” Of course, João understood the problem and was only troubled by not knowing how to respond.

Like many villages, Quitaiús was a loose aggregation of adobe houses scattered through the bush, and it became difficult to find the simple tools Senhor Pedro needed. As the man picked his way through the maze of dirt paths, custom required him to stop and chat each time he asked for directions. Accordingly, the day moved forward faster than Senhor Pedro, and it was nearly dark by the time he put João down near an abandoned well in a field that had once been pasture. In Senhor Pedro's mind, he was acting in the boy’s best interest. It was a place with water and plenty of dry tinder, and those things seemed to him to be just what a traveling angel with a sack of rice on his back would want. What it lacked was enough daylight left for João to go off searching for some farmer's home where a lad from a neighboring village could beg a meal - or even just the match he would need to boil a cup of rice.

João was poor, but he wasn't used to sleeping on the ground, and he didn't have so much as a bed of leaves to lie on. Until a half-moon rose, sometime after midnight, the darkness pinned him against the dirt unable to see as far as he could reach. Even the Southern Cross was obscured by the dust that hung in the air. He was hungry and thirsty and thought about how much better off he would be if he had never met Senhor Pedro. He slept intermittently, but each time he awoke, the same grievances continued in his thoughts, and he was unaware of having slept at all.

Day Zero - Back in Milagre de Maria...

They lay in the small bed, in the small room, in the rural darkness. There could have been sound or touch, but for a long time there was nothing but blackness waiting to be written on. At last, Larissa spoke. “Tomorrow, I will have to begin controlling how much rice we eat.”

“The children always eat too much.”

“I meant for all of us.”

“Okay, but don't you forget the man is entitled to what he must have to keep his strength and provide for his family.”

“Are you going to Senhor Sequeira's every day?”

The night began to shake with anger, vibrating like a spiderweb with a trapped fly. “You know there's no work there, and it's a damn long way. There are other things I can do.”

“And when those things bring us some food, we will eat it. For now, I will cook a smaller pot of rice and dish it up so that everyone gets some.”

“Be careful how you speak to me. I will continue to make the decisions in this family.”

“Of course, just as you decided João had to have five months knowing how little rice we have.”

In her sleep she awaited the anger her husband let simmer for the following day.

Joaquim half-hoped João would fail, proving he'd been right all along about the boy being lazy and incompetent. He knew it was a hope he shouldn't have, but it was impossible to suppress.

Day 1 - Sitio Cacimba...

João awoke still dreaming. He had the faintest sensation of mist floating in the darkness. It was a feeling that had once been premonitory to the false dawn and the day's work, but it had no place in that night's reality. The hypnagogic perception passed leaving him aware that he was lost and afraid. He had no idea what lay ahead in that day or in that hour, and his fear was a child's fear of the dark. He dared not move.

He knew his fear was irrational, but self-knowledge is a narrow gateway to reason. He lay on the ground, unable to move, or to sleep, and unsure of when the sun would rise. It took an hour for the accumulating fear to become so disagreeable that it overcame itself. He got to his feet, picked up his bag, and set out in the faint moonlight searching for the road he had followed into Quitaiús. He intended to follow the same road on out of the village, to follow it until... He didn't know. Perhaps, until his mother's prayers brought him a sign.

His feet were swollen, and he wondered why - he had spent so much time the previous day riding in a donkey cart.

He thought he should have found someone in Quitaiús to talk to – someone to give him the name of the next village and to reassure him that he'd found the right road. The right road? He only knew that he didn't want to wind up on some footpath that petered out at the edge of a dried-up riverbed.

The darkness and the silence in a place where farm families should have been stirring kept his fear alive. He would have been comforted by any sign of activity - the light from a fire, the squeal of a distant ox cart, an angry shout at a lazy child. Instead, an hour of walking through the slowly expanding dawn revealed that Quitaiús, not Milagre de Maria, marked the edge of nothingness. He argued with himself over whether he ought to turn back and ask for advice, but who would he ask? Asking questions risked being ridiculed, so he walked on remembering for a while to count his steps.

It seemed like a long time later when one side of the road became fenced, and he thought that was a sign he was coming to something - until the fence ended in a tangle of barbed wire. An abandoned house fifty yards farther along claimed a timeworn association with the fence. A long disused well had no bucket or rope, and João began to think more of his thirst than his hunger.

By mid-morning the temperature of the air had already passed miserable. Whirlwinds began popping up in the dry fields – sometimes three or four dust devils danced so near to him they seemed almost within reach. Watching them, João began to think of people dying of thirst. He wasn’t fearful. After all, he could turn around and go back. That would mean facing an afternoon even hotter than the morning, but it wouldn't kill him. He argued with himself, I don't want to end the day where I started. And then, To die of thirst a person must make a decision to go on when they should have turned back.

His imaginary father told him he was working up silly fears, and he agreed. The heat and his thirst still grew, and he knew he should have brought along something he could use to carry water.

He found tracks made by a donkey cart that had come toward him and then turned around - retreating from the sun, he thought. It was a hopeful sign of human life and water. Not long after, he came to a pair of deep gouges made in what had once been a muddy place in the road. The ruts were far apart like the ruts made by Senhor Sequeira's wagons. Both sets of tracks were old, and he knew them to be evil - an artifice of Satan placed in his path to entice him to his own destruction. Telling himself to be sensible, he went on.

And in another hour, he saw a house set back in the burnt brush that once hid a burnt field. It was a house with a well, a winch, and a person.

***

When João asked for the rice, the woman looked at the man, and the man shook his head ʻNo.ʼ The woman narrowed her eyebrows and nodded toward the boy – a gesture that asked her husband to look again and reconsider. The man had already recognized the boy’s good looks but wondered why that should make João eligible for half a cup of rice. The man did not reply immediately, so the woman took the decision on herself.

With the rice in hand,  João had little choice but to ask for some matches. This time the man merely shrugged - while wondering what his wife was thinking. She was thinking about João’s beautiful skin. Wondering how skin just like it might have improved her life, she wondering how he came by it.

***

As he rested in the hot shade of their dust covered porch, João was troubled. He had stopped counting steps and had no defense against his father's charge of laziness. However, he had profited from the conversation that delayed him. He left knowing there was a village ahead and a town beyond that - Sitio Cacimba and then Cedro.

With shade as scarce as rain, he walked more slowly. He still had not eaten since he left his aunt's house, but with matches he could stop at the end of the day, someplace where there was a well, and boil some rice.

For a while, he tried singing fragments of songs his mother sang, songs he couldn't quite remember.

***

Sitio Cacimba was a collection of a few dozen thatch-roofed houses, much like Milagre de Maria. There was a mercearia that was closed as he walked by. Perhaps, it was always closed now.

His clothes were soaked with sweat. He stopped several times as he passed through the village, each time drinking a little before nausea set in. He knew what his father would have to say. He didn’t even imagine a reply, but he remembered threatening to kill his father for beating his mother. He wondered whether his self-esteem, like a robber’s, would make carry out the threat.

Beyond Sitio Cacimba, he grew less sure of how far he would travel that day. The terrain was not only exhausting, it was depressing. He seemed always to be between two hills. When he reached the top of one, he could never see farther than the top of the next. The slopes were as dry as the plain he'd left behind. They differed in being studded with small rocks, oddly smooth like the stones found in a river bed. In a few places, they almost cobbled the road.

***

He awoke to find himself sprawled on the ground inside a tangle of brush and spider webs that made a small patch of shade.  He wasn't sure whether he'd fallen asleep or fainted. He couldn't remember doing either. He was wearing his shirt around his waist, and his hat lay on the ground. That wasn't right, he needed protection from the sun. Still, he defended the decision he didn't quite remember making to take off his shirt. He had to get some relief from the heat even if he had to pay for it later.

He put on his shirt and went on without wearing his hat, waiting for the need to carry it to become a nuisance.  He thought, To keep the hat, I will have to decide to keep it every time I think of throwing it away, but I only need to decide to throw it away once to lose it forever. And the risk of losing it grew on him until he made a promise to God to keep it until he had a better one.

A donkey cart passed by, traveling in the wrong direction. The donkey's nose was bloody and oozed puss where the harness rubbed against it. Most donkeys carried scars or bloody lesions from their harnesses, but that bad? No. He felt some empathy for the poor beast, but more strongly, he felt a husbandman's contempt for the driver who was too lazy to care for his animals.

Beyond another hill and another, there was flat land where a large fire was burning through a field, sending up a cloud of smoke that made a brown blot in the brown sky, and João imagined the way its heat must make a hot blot in the hot sky.

***

He spent a long time in a broken chair on a smallholder's veranda. Afraid of spending another night like the one in Quitaiús, he asked, “How far to Cedro?” The answer was a relief. “Too far.” An answer of “Not far” would have compelled him to continue on. He'd walked for eleven hours on swollen feet without having eaten for a day and a half. He was done.

The smallholder had sold his donkey to a butcher and offered João a bed of leftover hay in an empty shed. He built a small fire that would not properly cook his rice, but when he could chew through the crunchy mass, he let it cool, drank the liquid off the top, and ate the remainder with filthy fingers he was too tired to wash.

Day 1 - Milagre de Maria...

Joaquim had been angry all day, and when Larissa served up his plate of rice, he tried to grab the spoon for himself. She held it back, and while he tried to push her out of the way, she managed to put a spoonful of rice on her own plate. Then he pulled the wooden spoon out of her hand, held it stupidly as though it were a weapon, and finally threw it back into the pot.

She'd been told that starvation would keep a woman from getting pregnant, and she kept that in mind as she turned her plate of rice upside down on his and walked away. She started to kick a short, three-legged stool out of the way, stopped before she injured her foot, and sat down on it. Then she put her hands to her face and tried to look at the images inside her head, but the pictures of growing things bending in the wind were gone. And all that was left of the images of her children were pictures of bloody childbirth and equally bloody death. Everything she wanted to see was crowded out by scenes of horror. She saw the scars left by a fire the drought had brought from far over the horizon. Having almost reached the village, the fire had died when a fickle wind turned it around to feed on what had already burned.

No one cared which fields burned. They hardly cared which houses burned.

Day 2 - On the Road...

Some while before dawn, he awoke from the restless night to a clearer consciousness. He couldn't see his feet in the darkness, but he knew there was something wrong. When he examined them with his fingers, they felt so swollen he didn't think he could walk. They felt as though the pressure would break them open. He lay on his back with thoughts of failure justifying his father's righteous hatred.

He knew he would have to try his feet, but not wanting to fail in the dark, he procrastinated until the morning's light began to find a way through the door of the shed. The sight that emerged reminded him of the feet on a rubber doll that had belonged to a neighbor's child. He was afraid. What would happen to him if he found himself unable to walk in this desolate place?

In the end, it wasn't an act of discipline that got him onto his swollen feet, it was the need to urinate. He first sat up to a squat and then attempted to stand slowly with an even pressure on each foot. It didn't work. He lost his balance and staggered. All his senses combined to form a horrible feeling of vulnerability, but nothing broke. He debated whether he should urinate on the floor of the shed, which was foul enough, but he took the dozen small steps to the door.

***

When he began his day's walk, he was committed to just the first step. After he took it, he paused while he decided whether he should take a second step or rest for the day. He felt his father decide for him, and he began to walk with his eyes always on the ground, consciously deciding how to take each step. At the end of the first hour, his feet were no worse and no better. He could still see the shed not far behind him and was afraid to count his steps.

By noon he had reached the next farmstead, and by adding a few spoonfuls of his own rice to the pot, he paid for a seat at the dinner table. When he saw the number of children who joined him, he knew he wouldn’t get as much rice back as he had put in.

When he set out again, Cedro seemed even farther away than it had when he stopped the night before. He knew what his father would say. Your feet are not getting worse. So you can walk at a man's pace. João didn't even try to match his own notion of what a man's pace would be, but he walked faster trying to keep track of each small abrasion as it appeared.

***

He slept no better than he had in Quitaiús, although this time he knew when he had slept because he remembered dreams – nightmares in which he fought Madalena who had the knife he wanted. He failed to wake up even at the horror of his own death.

Day 2 - Milagre de Maria...

Joaquim was the first to speak of João's sister, Lorena. And so, Larissa was the first to shout in anger. It was a bitter anger that flowered on sessile hate. Of course, Larissa had already begun to think about how she would explain to her daughter the necessity of finding a husband – and doing so quickly. But why? Why did he have to take charge and make difficulty so brutish?

***

“You know your sister would adopt two of them.”

“I don't have a sister.”

***

What else could she say? “I don't want to get married.” And later, “I'm not ready to get married!” By the end of another day, those two exclamations were exhausted, and the circular argument ended on “Would you rather starve?” It was an explicit threat, not just that they would run out of food, someday, but that her own sweet mother would stop feeding her and send her away.

Day 3 – Cedro...

Awakened before morning by stiff brown grass that was even more uncomfortable than bare earth, he waited for enough light to see where he was placing his feet and then began walking again – afraid of endlessly following a useless direction and equally afraid of asking for advice. His feet were unchanged from the previous day - except for several excoriations that looked somehow worse caked with dirt bound to a clotted, proteinaceous exudate.

By the time the sun was a finger's breadth above the horizon he was already calling at the door of a farmstead where he successfully begged his half-cup of rice, a few more matches, and permission to use the well. He no longer felt afraid, merely depressed, and as he set out on his resolute way, he began counting his steps. He was still under a thousand when he suddenly stopped counting and froze. He’d awakened in a murderous mood, but the counting prevented him from thinking about making a plan. A single, insistent thought was waiting for his attention. Madelena was impossible because there were always people around her. It would be easier to murder his father.

God punishes thoughts.

He knew he was walking north as he had been since he left his home. His mother had said to cross the mountains he needed to travel west more than north.

As the morning progressed, he found the few scattered adobe houses growing closer together. They were slowly replaced by small versions of the tijolo house at the Fazenda Sequeira. Then the long gaps between the houses disappeared leaving interstices filled with either the remains of small flower gardens or trash. By the time the streets formed a regular grid, the houses were built wall-to-wall. Cedro was a substantial town.

Having been concerned about how he would get along in a city, he was relieved to find he could easily identify the businesses he passed. The open door with two tables inside, two more out on the street, and two men at one of the tables drinking beer could have been a bar in Milagre de Maria. Most of the businesses he passed were just open doors revealing the front room of someone's home turned into a small shop - the adult equivalent of a child's attempt to sell rice cakes from behind a packing box.

He seemed to be moving against the thin flow of people.

The thought that pestered him most was that he was thirsty. In the countryside, he was accustomed to asking at houses that had wells, but here the houses were behind walls with iron gates, and there didn't seem to be any point to asking someone hurrying down the street for a cup of water.

He saw both a Model A and a Model T Ford parked on the street, but the only vehicles in motion were donkey carts. Perhaps, he thought, the owners of cars can sleep later than the owners of donkey carts.

Near the marketplace, some of the buildings were two-story, stucco boxes. These buildings all had businesses on the ground floor, but most of the metal doors that should have been rolled up to reveal the merchandise inside were rolled down revealing the economic failure that kept them closed on a market day.

In villages like Milagre de Maria, activity in the Saturday market peaks within half-an-hour of sunrise and then evaporates. But, here, it was the middle of a weekday morning, and the air was full of the sounds of  barter. He was intimidated, feeling as though speaking to anyone would require him to interrupt an important transaction.

There were half-a-dozen donkey carts working their way among the people. The animals appeared unhappy with the number of orders they were expected to follow. In the middle of the market, two of them became more interested in one another than in following more commands. As João approached, one of them began backing up, pushing its cart into a butcher's stall. The screaming of stall keepers, drivers, and donkeys brought João to a stop. He watched as people with stern purpose (and no responsibility for donkeys) pushed themselves perilously close to the misbehaving burros. They forced the drivers to give still more orders reinforced first by a whack across the nose and then across the rump, thereby confusing the animals even more. This wave of chaos rolled out into the general confusion of the market and disappeared like the ripples made by a stone dropped into choppy water.

The market square was surrounded by actual shops still open for business with their steel doors rolled up. There was no indication of maintenance of either the stalls or the shops. Some of the shops had no sign to identify them. Why would they bother when everyone in Cedro knew where they were? Others had faded signs that were broken and hung at odd angles. The buildings, themselves, were dirty and unpainted with cracked and falling stucco.

He sat down and wondered what to do about his thirst. Sitting on the curb, anxious about getting in someone's way, did not prove restful or thirst quenching and, in a few minutes, he struggled back onto his feet. Some peculiarly preserved momentum carried him a few steps into the middle of a cross street at the end of the market. Half-a-block down that street he saw tables that spilled into the street with a few people sitting at them – people who might not be too busy to help him. Being unable to read the sign proclaiming the place was a restaurant, he recognized a bar when he saw one.

At the table closest to the door, he found three men whose conversation seemed to have died.

“Where can I ask for a glass of water?”

“Ask the patrão. He's right there.”

“But I can't pay.”

“Carlos! The child is thirsty, but he can't pay. Bring him a glass of water! I'm buying!”

It wasn't funny enough to spark outright laughter, but it brought smiles and a guffaw, and left João confused. He walked to the wooden counter where the owner stood, and as he was handed the glass he said almost too quietly for the indignation to show, “I'm not a child. I'm fourteen.”

“Ah! He's not a child, Marcos. He says he's fourteen.”

“Fourteen, he says! If he was fourteen, he'd be old enough to figure out a better lie! The way he's been playing in the dirt, I'd make him out to be six.”

João had no way to respond. He stood still, waiting for the teasing to stop.

“Oh, he is fourteen and he's a blacksmith!”

“He smells like a blacksmith, all right!”

“If he had money, he'd be drinking cachaҫa as fast as that water!”

A woman at another table had been distracted from her conversation even before João spoke. Now, she looked at him for another few seconds and then motioned for him to approach.

João hesitated. She was a stocky woman who looked severe in her blue plaid dress with its hem that just touched the floor and sleeves that reached to her wrists. She looked old enough to be someone's grandmother, and finding her in what he thought was only a bar added to João's confusion.

As he hesitated, a radio played. João heard a professional musician playing the same music he sometimes listened to inside a bar in Milagre de Maria. His father said there was a man in Milagre de Maria who owned a radio, but there was no station in Milagre de Maria, so all anyone had ever heard on it was static. The owner was happy to turn it on for anyone interested in hearing the static.

The woman motioned, again, and spoke softly, “Come here.” Her two companions were younger, possibly her daughters.

She was on the opposite side of the room, and it seemed to João that she could be talking to someone else.

She stood up, motioned to him, again, and repeated, “Come here.”

Looking around for the person she might really be speaking to, João walked slowly in her direction.

“What are you doing here?”

It was the right question, but João only said, “I was thirsty.”

“Where do you live?”

One of her companions interrupted, “Look at his feet!”

***

Fifteen minutes later, the woman's oldest daughter dissented, “We shouldn't send him to Dona Isadora. A worn-out farm boy won't benefit from meeting those Americans.”

“I don't think it's our decision to make.”

The daughter looked hard at her mother. “You're making it too difficult. All he needs is just to have a meal and a bath and rest his feet.”

João hadn't understood half their conversation, but he understood enough to know when to intervene. “No, I can’t rest here. It’s getting late and I think I have only walked five miles today. I must go on. And a bath won't make any difference, I'll be dirty in the morning, anyway.”

The severe looking woman went back to what she was driving at before her daughter interrupted. “But look at your feet. They need to heal.”

“They aren't much worse than they were this morning. I must still walk fifteen miles today.”

“You can't possibly walk that far on those feet – not in a week, let alone an afternoon.”

“They're my feet. My mother and my brothers and sisters are depending on me.”

“But you have to be realistic.”

João had no more to say, but he didn't feel he could just walk off, so he stood silently. The severe-looking woman stared at her daughter while she shouted at the patrão, “Carlos, I need a piece of paper and your pencil.”

When she began writing, João was not sure whether this still involved him, but the woman had not dismissed him, so he waited, embarrassed, and having decided it was time to move on, he waited still.

Eventually, the woman stopped and handed a note to João. She did not assume he could read and explained, “In another seven miles, you will come to a tijolo house with a stucco front painted yellow. I want you to stop there and give this note to my friend, Dona Isadora. She will help you. Can you remember the name - Dona Isadora?”

“Yes. Dona Isadora. The tijolo house with the yellow stucco front. Seven miles along the road.”

“The note asks her to give you some supper and, if you will accept it, a place to sleep. I know you intend to walk more than seven more miles, but I think you may find yourself glad to have a place to recuperate.” She did not mention that the note also asked her friend to give João a bath and hitch up her husband's donkey, the next day, to take him on to the village of Rendinha. She did not need to explain to Dona Isadora what was to be done with him when they got there.

***

As the afternoon passed, he wondered how he could have failed to cover even seven miles. He wondered, but he knew. It took him two hours to get out of Cedro. He wasn't sure how much time he spent cooking rice, but it must have been a long time made longer by his reluctance to get back on his feet. And he walked as though he were crossing a stream on stepping stones.

And then he considered the possibility he had covered seven miles. There had been no opportunity to take the wrong road, and how could he have passed the house with the yellow stucco front without noticing it? He knew. He could have been staring at the ground.

As the afternoon passed, he admitted that he had no choice but to look for a place to spend the night. He turned onto a path that led to a house with a well, but it was as though he could hear his father belittling him, and he changed his mind. He would go on to the next house even though it might be difficult to get settled in the dark. He tried to stop himself from thinking about murdering his father. It wasn't even something he wanted to think about. But it would be so easy to do, how could he stop himself from thinking about it?

***

It was dark enough so that it took him a minute to be sure of the color.

As he approached the house, a barking dog brought a woman to the front porch and João to a halt. He stood motionlessly as the animal threatened him, snarling like one of the dogs Senhor Sequeira let loose around his house after dark. Dona Isadora grabbed the dog by the collar, but João could see well enough to know she didn't have a good grip. When her small lurching steps brought her close enough, João took four quick steps forward and back, wordlessly tucking the note between her fingers.

Except for wearing green instead of blue, Dona Isadora was dressed like the severe-looking woman. She had a kindly, plump face that turned out to match her husband's when the incessant barking brought him out of a small shed. They resembled a pair of rotund, porcelain figurines. Stood back-to-back, they could have been bookends.

Dona Isadora's husband took control of the dog, tied it to a porch railing, and then asked João who he was and what he was doing there. João pointed at the note in the woman's hand and, when her husband asked João whether he could speak, João said quietly, “Yes, sir. I'm sorry.” And for just an instant, he wondered whether a bad dog could be used to murder someone.

Dona Isadora read the note aloud – haltingly in the failing light. That was when João learned about the bath and the un-hoped-for ride in a cart. Her husband ended the ensuing silence by saying, “Well?” So she pointed João toward an aggregation of boards that looked like an outhouse but was too close to the well for that to be possible. Then she informed him that he could draw a bucket of water from the well and wash himself in the bathhouse where he would find soap.

When he finished bathing, Dona Isadora's husband was already eating. João became confused by a second, unoccupied place setting. He froze, unsure of what to do. Seeing him standing silently, Dona Isadora told him to sit down. When he sat at some distance from the empty plate, she pointed at the it saying, “Sit there,” finally adding, “I eat when the men are finished.”

João sat hesitantly. He knew there were rules, table manners, in some households. They were rules he didn’t know. His family, and many who were wealthier, often ate with their fingers, but thanks to his hesitance, João saw the spoon in the man's hand and found the one beside his plate.

When he took to the hammock on the veranda, he tried to prolong the pleasure of going from exhaustion to sleep and so fell into a dreamy state in which the imagined complaints of his father were interleaved with thoughts of murdering Madalena in front of her friends. He finally stopped these thoughts by memorizing the list of names he would need to find his way back home: Quitaiús, Sitio Cacimba, Cedro, and soon Rendinha. He knew the importance of doing this.

Day 3 - Milagre de Maria...

Joaquim was still not satisfied with his portion of rice. It had always been known to the families of the Ceará that men should eat first. The family would not survive if men did not have the strength to work. He truly believed that satisfying his hunger was a matter of necessity, not greed, but neither word mattered because it was also his right. Until the issue was settled, all his discussions with his wife would spiral around a core of distrust and end on a formality: Joaquim was husband and father. It was his duty to insist.

“None of the other families have started this... This rationing. Nicholas has less rice than...“

“None of the other families have sent their son on a five month search knowing they only have rice for two months!”

The argument did not end in that place or on that day.

Day 4 – Rendinha...

João awoke to violent shaking of his hammock. It took him several seconds to realize that Dona Isadora was telling him to come to breakfast. Then there was a brief moment while he was surprised - she had not touched him to awaken him.

For breakfast there was sweet coffee and a mound of cuscuis. This was not the pasta of North American diets. Rather, it was a more ancient substance, a mixture of rice flour and cassava starch that, when steamed, binds itself into mounds of pleasantly chewy little balls served (if one can afford it) with oleo margarine. It reminded him that there was a time when his family sometimes ate cuscuis. It also reminded him that it was not just the drought, his family was getting slowly poorer in good years. Slowly poorer, he thought, with the arrival of each of his siblings.

The decision to feed João cuscuis was not an idle one. There was not a lot of cassava in Dona Isadora’s household, and she was not spending it on João because he was an attractive child. (At least, she didn't think so.) She was using the starch because the handsome and polite boy God had sent seemed likely to listen to the message God would send through her.

After breakfast, Dona Isadora tried to get his feet into a pair of her husband's sandals, but they were too swollen. She said they would try again after he had ridden, rather than walked, for a day.

Dona Isadora insisted that João ride in the back of the cart with his feet elevated. This made conversation awkward, but as soon as they turned onto the road to Rendinha, she began talking about religion. Sometimes she said she belonged to something called the “Igreja de Deus” and at other times she said she belonged to the “Assembléia de Deus.” That was confusing, but of everything she said, that was all João could twist into anything that came close to making sense. He knew the Catholic Church was the church of God, and mass might be called an “Assembléia de Deus,” but when she said she was Christian, but not Catholic, he was stumped. He thought Christian and Catholic were the same thing.

When she said the Devil had got into the Catholic Church and that the true church was the Assembléia de Deus, he wanted to understand because she seemed to be as kind a person as he had ever met, but he couldn't think of a question that would clarify anything. So he nodded his head as though she could see him in the back of the cart and waited for her to change the subject.

Which she did not.

She talked about saving his soul, language he could not distinguish from what the priest said except that she spoke of the pastor instead of the priest. When she spoke to him about getting baptized, he did say he was pretty sure he had already been baptized, but she said he hadn't. How would she know? He began to wonder whether this kind person was, unfortunately, daft. He began to think of her as being like a fellow the children in Milagre de Maria called “Jericho” who harangued the market about Hell and Damnation on Saturdays. Still, he knew the priest approved of Jericho, so he thought there must be something all right about Dona Isadora as well.

Silence always made João uncomfortable but, on that day, he was relieved when it finally replaced incomprehensible speech. When Dona Isadora spoke again, she said only that there was an Assembléia de Deus in Rendinha, and she was taking him to some people there who would help him.

For a while, the only sounds were the rumbles and thumps that make a donkey cart sound like a collection of objects momentarily joined together like a crowd passing through a doorway but about to go their separate ways. João could only think of one thing to say to Dona Isadora, and when he could stand the silence no longer, he began, “Do you like parrots?”

“No, they’re dirty.”

***

The pastor lived in a house that was richer-looking than anything in Milagre de Maria, and he did not look like a priest, he looked like a shopkeeper. All the same, he asked questions like a priest, questions that were both awkward and difficult to answer, questions such as “Are your parents pious?”

João knew he was untraveled and might not know what a priest in Rendinha would look like. When the pastor asked him what he thought of the Catholic Church, João hesitated, unsure of himself. When silence required him to speak, he thought to ask instead of answer. “Are you a priest?”

“The Assembléia de Deus does not have priests.”

“Then are you monks? But orders don't have both men and women.”

The pastor finally understood just how confused João was and began again.

“We who are in the Assembléia de Deus believe Jesus Christ is our savior. So we are Christians, but we are not Catholic. The Catholic Church was the first organized Christian Church, but it has been taken over by Satanists who teach evil things. For example, they baptize children before they are old enough to understand what baptism is for. They teach you to pray to saints when it is God who needs to hear your prayers. Because of these things, your family is not in God's favor and you will stay poor.”

The questioning was awkward and turned into a tedious lecture, but João listened because the pastor said he was only there to help him. How he intended to help wasn't clear, but obviously the people he was meeting knew how to get money. They might not have been as rich as Senhor Sequeira, but they were better off than anyone else he knew.

He understood the pastor when he told him that no one should be baptized before they could understand what baptism was for, but he silently noticed that he was not sure what baptism was for even at his age and, if baptism were to be done only when people reached an age of understanding, what was his confirmation for? The pastor seemed to be telling the truth when he said these were things his family needed to understand if God were to make them prosper.

By the time the pastor found him a hammock and dinner with Brother Amos and Sister Elisebeta, it seemed settled in everyone's mind, except João's, that he would remain in Rendinha for a short time while he learned about God. Then he could return to Milagre de Maria to bring his family.

Brother Amos and Sister Elisebeta were the tallest people he had ever seen and so white he wondered whether they were like the albinos he sometimes saw in the market. Brother Amos dressed like the pastor, and Sister Elisebeta dressed like Dona Isadora. Brother Amos was not only tall, he stood at attention even while shaking João's hand with two short pumps. As he did not seem to bend at the neck, his eyes looked down on everything.

João was told Brother Amos and Sister Elisebeta were from the United States of America, and that fact would have made João uncomfortable even without their peculiar speech. He understood that English was their first language, but when they were said to be speaking Portuguese, he hardly understood more than when they were speaking English. No matter which language they spoke, they sounded like orators – Sister Elisebeta almost as much as Brother Amos. Most of what he understood he got from gestures or the context of single words he thought he recognized. They seemed to understand nothing of what he said, though their manner was so stiff it was hard to tell.

Chance had brought him into the home of two of the first American missionaries of the Assembly of God to reach Brazil. They have had chilling success since then.

He could easily see that Brother Amos and Sister Elisebeta were prosperous, even rich. Theirs was the first house he had ever been in with electric lights. He wasn't sure whether that prosperity came from God's blessings or from being Norte Americanos. He could admit he was ignorant, but he knew what Brazilians knew: All Americans were rich. Perhaps, it was God's blessing that had made them Americans, but why?

At dinner, Brother Amos and Sister Elisebeta treated the beans and rice as only an accompaniment to the pork cooked in coconut milk, the potato bread, and the fried cabbage. At the end of the meal, there were slices of apple. It was a delicious but not a pleasant meal. Their effort to converse ground down into silence, sputtered once, and then turned to English between the Americans.

***

His hammock was strung indoors, which seemed strange. During the night, he was afraid to get up to use their indoor toilet - not because he didn't know how to flush it but out of fear of knocking something over in an unfamiliar darkness stuffed full of knickknacks. He spent the night in restless thought instead of sleep.

The people he'd met of the Assembléia de Deus were uncannily prosperous, and their prosperity seemed to come by magic – or else, as they said, by God's blessings. However it happened, he couldn't see how it worked or how it would apply to his family. Still, he had a strong temptation to bring his family there and trust in God, as both the pastor and his father had told him to do. To be able to return so soon with a plan so close at hand would be a great thing, but it was not the solution his father told him to look for, and it would likely be received as another failure. He knew the Americans were good to him, and he tried to ignore his dislike for them. The pastor said they would take care of him for a week until he could learn the truth about God and be properly baptized, but just how they would help his family wasn't clear.

He began the night feeling ambivalent toward the Assembléia de Deus, but in time, the grinding together of his thoughts wore away one side more than the other. It began when he found himself reviewing the questions the pastor had asked him. They reminded him of his father's claim that the purpose of confession was to give the priest knowledge he could use against you. He didn’t think this pastor had questioned him that way, but he wondered what his father would think, and then there was his mother. She was as regular in her Catholicism as his father was eccentric, and João could not imagine her praying to anyone but Mary.

The pastor's wealth seemed to argue that he knew a thing or two, but if misdirected prayers were responsible for his family's poverty, it seemed cruel. Could God be cruel? Time was passing, and his maddeningly slow progress toward the mountains began, perversely, to urge him to move on rather than return home. He could almost hear his father, So that's your solution. Are you telling me there's no drought two days' walk from here?

The argument that had begun evenhandedly turned into a torrent of his father’s imagined complaints, and an idea came to João that seemed to have been waiting for this moment. Suppose he succeeded in finding free land where there was no drought. It didn't matter. Even if he found his way across the mountains into a land of milk and honey, when he returned home his father would find something wrong with what he'd done. If he could find a place to sleep for four months, he could wake up, turn around, go home, and tell any story he wanted. The result would be the same. His father would decide he’d failed and refuse to move the family.

He told himself that must have been why he’d already started thinking about killing his father rather than Madalena. He now thought he could do that, but João’s mother knew murder was a Cardinal sin, and so, João knew it was a Cardinal sin. He was afraid even to have had the thought. It did not rest easily on his conscience and wouldn’t leave him alone to sleep. In his imagination he promised his mother he would do what his father wanted without thinking of murder. Then, of course, he could not stop himself from  promising God.

The promise was barely made when he opened his eyes and was startled to see the form of Madalena, outlined in the dark, staring down on him. She did not move, and fear grew in João. No, it wasn’t Madalena. It was Sister Elisebeta.

Every sane reason he could think of for the woman being there was benign. She must have been concerned about him, but when she finally turned and left, he felt the same fear he had felt in the darkness when he left Quitaiús. Only one thought penetrated this fear: His mother's faith had to be right. Her prayers would be sufficient, and he could stop thinking about killing anyone.

Perhaps, he thought, it was God who showed him the silent way out of the house, past the lamps and bric-a-brac that could have gone crashing to the floor.

Day 4 - Milagre de Maria...

“What the hell's wrong with you? You didn't dress like that. The men in church may want to take a whore to bed, but they don't want to marry one.”

Interrupting scream: “I don't want to get married!”

Ignoring her: “Never mind, I can find a husband for her.”

“No!”

Day 5 - José de Alencar...

When he found the dark, empty marketplace, it felt as full of numinous forces as a graveyard. He decided to continue his journey forward, along the road that had brought him from Milagre de Maria, but he did not find the decision comforting. As he walked, irrational fears began to subside only to be replaced by more rational ones. He still felt lost. He had no idea where he was headed. And there was the fear that, as he moved away from the few streetlights, his irrational fears would return embossed with the outline of Sister Elisebeta watching him in the dark.

He walked among innocent shadows he knew should not agitate him. Within an hour, he had reached the edge of town. There, the road he'd chosen ended. He cursed, almost aloud, and began his return through those shadows to seek the advice of a stranger.

He walked thinking the Americans had already discovered he was missing and were looking for him. He wasn't afraid of them. He just couldn't confront them when their generosity commanded so much obligation. What would he say when they said they were only trying to help him?

***

Shortly after five o'clock in the morning, João was back in the center of town across the street from a bakery. Coffee was being brewed and the first of various kinds of bread was coming out of the oven. Four men already occupied a small, rickety table that only failed to spill someone’s coffee because the cups were still waiting to be filled.

João walked up to their table and stood silently. He began thinking, anxiously, about how he could get information without having to explain himself, expose himself to ridicule. He was still waiting for an idea when one of them looked up from his black, ungroomed beard causing a break in the conversation. João had to use the opportunity to speak and blurted out, “What road goes to the mountains? My family's going there.”

He thought he'd surely made a mistake and was about to be asked what on earth he was doing out at five o'clock in the morning asking for directions to the mountains for his family. However, the four men just sat with blank faces until the one who had looked up at João felt obligated to give some kind of response. So he looked puzzled. Then, he shouted at the door to the kitchen, “Pedro! Can you explain how to get to Quiterianopolis?”

For almost a minute there was no response, and then instead of a short, fat, pale baker in a white apron there was a tall, dark fellow in threadbare overalls standing in the doorway. “Quiterianopolis is a long way. Maybe you go through Cedro,” and he was gone. The mouth in the unkempt beard held a puzzled twist over shrugging shoulders. João hoped the expression meant going through Cedro made no sense. He would not be able to stand being sent backward. The moment passed, and the man with the black beard said, “You can start by going to José de Alencar. When you get there, ask how to get to Quiterianopolis. Do you know the road to José de Alencar?”

When João said, “No,” the man went on.

“Here, I draw you a picture.” He got up and went behind the counter where he took a pencil from the cash drawer. He grabbed a day-old newspaper that lay on an adjacent table and, sitting down, began to draw a map in the margins.

***

When the sun rose, he was almost out of Cedro and began to feel free of the Americanos. It was a good feeling, and moreover, he was headed west as his mother said he must do to reach the mountains.

The heat kept João reminded of his need for some kind of water bottle, but the road beyond Rendinha brought João back to a country where he occasionally passed homes with wells, and the need didn’t seem pressing. There were enough smallholders to support a village, but the village seemed to have been spilled and scattered, like a drop of mercury fallen from a table. He passed through dozens of tiny hamlets and, by mid-afternoon, he began to wonder whether he could be on the wrong road. Stopping to ask for water and then, successfully, for rice, he also asked, “How much farther is it to José de Alencar?”

“Oh, it's a long way. As slowly as you walk, I don't think you'll get there by dark.”

“Thank you” was all João could say as he turned and started down the road. A few seconds later, the man he'd been talking to started after him.

“That's the wrong way. José de Alencar is in the other direction.”

It took some time and repetition for João to understand what he was being told. He was on a road that paralleled the road through José de Alencar, and he was in the presence of a man who knew the way to Quiterianopolis.

Unfortunately, the way forward was through a sizable city, Iguatu. There was no point to following his father's instructions, literally, by going in the opposite direction. So he asked about getting around the city. He was lucky. The man seemed to like giving directions more than prying into his business. In particular, the man didn’t question his father's fear of big cities. But he did tell João it would be difficult to bypass Iguatu because of the Jaguaribe River.

“The river goes right through Iguatu. I don't know where you could cross it except over the bridge there. Maybe at Cariús, but that's way south. Cariús is right across the river from Jucás, so there's probably some way to get across.”

Of course, south was the wrong direction, but João knew what he’d promised his mother, and even if he wasn’t certain he’d also promised God that he’d do what his father wanted, he felt compelled to stay out of Iguatu. And so the village named Jucás was to become the residence of all his nightmares.

Day 5 - Milagre de Maria...

When dealing with machismo, do not confront a man's ego with reality. Do not insist that you are not a whore; you will not cause him to think carefully about the evidence of your whoredom; rather, you will force him to take action on his certain knowledge.

“How do you know she's still a virgin.”

“Mothers know things.”

“She can't find a husband whoring on the street. I won't stand for it. She can meet her husband in church.”

“Where do you think we've been?”

“You've been out collecting whistles and catcalls on the street! We'll solve the problem of the food she eats in our house by putting the whore out of it.”

“Stop calling me a whore! I dress the same as any of the other girls!”

“You're all whores. Get out of my house. Do it now.”

***

“How do you think she's going to survive out there on the street?”

“What do I care? She's your daughter, not mine.”

***

It was not difficult for Lorena to steal her way back into the hammock that still hung by the side of the house. The small ball of rice her mother brought to her seemed extraordinarily white - as though it glowed with fear in the darkness .

Day 6 - On the Road...

The size of Iguatu began to impress João while it was still a day away. Motorized trucks began to appear on the road, or what the road had become. On muddy days, trucks had churned the road into great heaves and sags that were difficult for donkey carts to manage. So the drivers of donkey carts created new paths beside the road which were again taken over by trucks until the ruined swath of ground was three hundred feet wide.

Later in the day, when the road became paved with potholed asphalt, he knew he was headed toward a place his father forbade. He reminded himself that it didn’t matter what he did, his father would reject the result, but he also remembered that he wasn’t on this journey for his father, it was for his mother and siblings. So he did what might appease his father, what he knew his father wanted.

Day 6 - Milagre de Maria...

“Where have you been?”

“Senhor Sequeira gave me a day's work.”

“What did he pay?”

“I don't know, we have to go back tomorrow, but he's going to pay us in beans at the price he paid in Fortaleza, not the price in the mercearia. That's a good arrangement.”

“So how much is he paying?”

“Whatever he says tomorrow. There's no point to trying to dicker.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. Davi worked on a fence a little bit, but if he'd fixed it, there wouldn't be any work for tomorrow.”

***

Joaquim knew where his daughter was sleeping. He did nothing about that, but there were not many places to hide the small ball of rice Larissa must have saved for her. Of course, he found it. He luxuriated in eating it. It was as though he were just learning the taste of rice, and he felt each bite collapse in his mouth yielding individual grains he could feel on his tongue. It was a pleasure that momentarily distracted him from an incipient feeling of guilt.

Day 7 – Umarizeira...

The sun rose under a caul of dust and filled the morning with unclean light. Once again, it was a night on the hard ground but, for a while, exhaustion had overcome all the reasons for being unable to sleep. He still wanted to sleep so badly, just a little longer... He would have sobbed out loud if there'd been anyone to listen. He was alone, but he could hear traffic on the road - enough to give João the expectation of a ride in a donkey cart.

The ride was easy to get, but he set off hungry. A vague nausea revolved inside his exhaustion, and as the morning dragged on, his eyes closed more often. His thoughts sank among shadows and sometimes became brief dreams. Madalena haunted these dreams, flickering into consciousness and giving his waking mind a feeling of being followed.

Crossing a gully, the cart lurched unexpectedly. He looked up and saw the Jaguaribe River, and beyond the river, Iguatu. He suddenly remembered something that had happened to him during the night, and fear claimed him. He had heard his father speaking to him, clearly, as though his father were speaking directly in his ear, not through his imagination. His father berated him for his weakness, for his stupidity, for choosing a path that would take him so close to a city. Briefly in the night, that voice had made him afraid of what was happening to his mind, and now the memory of it made him afraid of being so close to Iguatu.

Forgetting his manners and his fatigue, he dropped off the cart without a word and began retracing the donkey's footsteps backward to a dirt road he vaguely remembered crossing. It was a road that seemed to lead south - south as though he were a bird caught in the claws of a cat. It was all a “bagunça,” an irreparable mess gone beyond frustrating.

***

Various sources of shade traded places in his imagination, most of them realistically meager, but unrealistically convenient to whenever he might want them. The dirt road south seemed to scoff at the heat that rose from black asphalt roads. It threatened to blister his feet but only succeeded in making him try, without any hope, to put on the sandals Dona Isadora had given him.

The malignant road took him slowly south and west away from the Jaguaribe River and offered no crossroad that might take him over the river and around Iguatu. It was midday when a man leading a donkey said he didn't know how to get to Cariús, but thanks to the drought, João could set out cross-country and wade the river anywhere. But the river had slithered off far from the road and, thinking about the cost of tramping through untended fields, João accepted the cost of staying on the road.

By afternoon he was ready to give up. Even with the heat, he didn't understand why he should be so exhausted. It wasn't his feet or the muscles in his legs, but it was almost everything else. He was short of breath. He was nauseated. His head ached as though there were a hundred tropical suns. Looking down the road made him dizzy and he staggered. When he staggered, he was no longer sure of how many steps he'd taken. His ears rang.

He spent an hour looking for one of those sources of shade he'd imagined and then gave up. He lay on his back in the dirt with the sun showing through his closed eyes. In a few minutes he thought he heard his father speak. The voice was not clear, but he began walking, again, still more slowly, in the direction the cat with the claws called “forward.” He walked, but he was looking for a place to rest, a nicer place where he could rest for all the time in the world.

***

João sat with his back against a cashew tree that survived, carefully tended, in the yard of a smallholder. Cashew trees were common in Ceará, but to João, finding it was like escaping from the cat's claw. The tree was not tall, but cashew trees spread their profound shade like no other tree. Beneath the smooth, horizontal limbs of a well-tended cashew, there is space enough for a man to walk and cool shade that rivals the inside of a cave. The trees often come with a child sitting on one of the lower limbs.

He still felt awful, but when the rare donkey cart appeared heading his way, he was well enough to signal the driver that he wanted a ride by pointing to himself and pointing up the road.

The cart that stopped belonged to Senhor Euclides Amado who began his relationship with João by asking why a boy who wanted a ride couldn't get the hell up on his feet to ask for it. João replied by saying he was not well, but he needed to get to Cariús that same day.

“What's the matter with you?”

“I have a headache. A really bad headache, sir.”

“Is it because you have the grip?”

“No, sir.”

“Are you nauseated?”

“No, sir.” Perhaps it was a lie because his nausea was recent and still squatted somewhere in the back of his mind. Nonetheless, it had to be the truth because he had already figured out that Senhor Amado would not take him if he sounded contagious.

“What else is wrong with you?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Then why do you have a headache?”

“I don't know, sir. It happens to me sometimes.”

“Can you climb up here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I'm Euclides Amado. And you?”

“João Cardeira.” And as he tried to appear energetic climbing onto the bench at the front of the cart, the nausea welled up to make him a liar and passed slowly enough to make Euclides Amado suspicious of the long pause before João answered his next question.

“Where are you coming from?”

“José de Alencar.”

“And you're going where?”

“To Cariús.”

“To Cariús?”

“Yes. I need to get there today.”

As the cart began to move, Senhor Amado went on with his questioning, “Cariús is a long way. Why are you so anxious to get to Cariús?”

“I don't want to sleep on the ground again tonight. I think that is what has given me the headache.”

The facile answer gave João a moment of pride.

“So what was taking you there in the first place?”

João thought the questioning would be over when he got in the cart, and he didn't want to tell his whole story again. He was tired of it. If telling it didn’t produced more ridicule, it produced more questions. To explain what he was doing there would require explaining why he couldn't go to Iguatu, which would mean explaining his father. Impossible.

But if he didn't tell his story, he had no reason for going to Cariús – not one at the ready. So he told Senhor Amado that Cariús was not his destination, that he was going to the mountains.

“But you know someone in Cariús so you will not have to sleep on the ground?”

This Senhor Amado was worse than a priest. Perhaps he was a priest, or rather from his look, a pastor.

“Yes.”

“And who would that be?”

“Senhor Gilberto Ferreira.” It was the name of a neighbor back in Milagre de Maria.

“Senhor Ferreira! You expect to stay with a man with a reputation! How is it that a boy like you knows a man like Senhor Ferreira?”

The only answer João could think of was, “My parents know him.”

“Are your parents in José de Alencar?”

“Yes.”

“So your parents are people who would know Senhor Ferreira, but they let their child travel alone and sleep on the ground.”

“I'm fourteen.”

“Fourteen, eh? I guess I'm going to have to teach you how to lie.”

What did he mean? Was he just referring to João's age, or was it everything he said? João knew he'd been taken far out to sea and did not know how to respond. Eventually he said, “Are you a pastor?”

“A pastor! What on earth makes you think I'm a pastor?”

“You ask so many questions, and you aren't dressed like a priest, so maybe you're a pastor.”

“Well, I would not want to be mistaken for a pastor, so maybe I'll have to stop asking so many questions.” Pause. “No, it's my cart and my donkey, so I get to ask questions. Now, everything you've told me so far is a lie. I'm going to ask you a few more questions. You don't have to answer. No, if you want to ride in my cart, you do have to answer. Of course, you can lie, again, but if I catch you in a lie, you can walk. Now, however, I don't have a question. Give me a second.” And after no more than a second, he was already going on, “If I ask all my questions over, again, will you tell me the truth this time?”

“I did tell you the truth.”

“Let's see. You're headed from José de Alencar to somewhere in the mountains. So of course, just at the moment you are walking in the opposite direction of the mountains headed for Cariús without being on the road to Cariús, but you expect Senhor Gilberto Ferreira to put you up for the night. Never mind, it's all bullshit.

“And by the way, it doesn't matter who you ride with, or which road you take, you won't get to Cariús today. It's too far.”

João was already tired of this man who was going to ask still more questions, but he felt too ill to get out of the cart. He put his head in his hands, and Senhor Amado let him ride in silence for a while. Then João spoke, “I'm from Milagre de Maria, but no one's ever heard of Milagre de Maria, so I just say I'm from José de Alencar.”

João should have known this cautious admission was not a good defense against his determined interlocutor.

“And how old are you?”

“Fourteen.”

“Bullshit. Why are you on the road? Running away from home?”

“Please, Senhor, I don't feel well. I'll get off the cart if you want.”

“Are you completely lost?”

“Not exactly. I'm going far, and it doesn't matter how I get there.”

“Someone on this road would be more likely to be coming from Iguatu. Are you in trouble there?”

“No, I'm not in any kind of trouble, I'm just not feeling well, but please, I'll just get off and rest for a while.”

“I don't think that's the best idea. I think you're a child in need of help. My house is near Umarizeira. There's someone there who might be able to help you if you decide you can tell what your trouble is. If not, when we get to Umarizeira I can put you on the road to Cariús.”

They both sat in silence, and to himself, Senhor Amado thought João was probably lying about everything. João thought that if he’d killed his father while he was still in Milagre de Maria, he wouldn’t be lost and sick on his way through a journey that couldn’t end.

***

Thanks to Senhor Amado, João traveled a full twenty miles that day, though half of it was backward or in the wrong direction. He hadn't eaten since the morning of the previous day, but his nausea reduced his urge to complain about his hunger, and he was afraid to complain about his nausea.

Umarizeira was hardly more than a bar and a mercearia at a crossroad. And the bar was just a shed among some dead trees. The shade that once made the bar hospitable had blown away, but the owner of the bar also owned the hamlet's mercearia and could afford a generator. So there was a refrigerator that kept beer in what was to become the Brazilian style – cold enough to form ice inside the necks of the bottles. The beer was now served at a few tables under a sheet of canvass strung between dead trees, and the bar's customers still came in search of some relief from the sun. The crossroad was the road to Cariús.

Senhor Amado ordered João out of the cart, and strode past empty tables to one occupied by a single, well-dressed man of about fifty years. There he began a conversation with Senhor Fonesca while impatiently motioning to João to move more quickly and sit at an empty table nearby. João did not move more quickly, but he did collapse in a chair and lay his head on the empty table. He wanted to lie in the dirt and dry leaves under the dead trees.

Umarizeira was too small to have a physician who could treat an ill boy. People took their health problems to a small pharmacy (the parlor of Senhor Fonesca’s house) where they purchased whatever was recommended to them by anyone who had ever had similar symptoms. The proprietor had no formal training in pharmacy or any other aspect of medicine. However, experience and the pleasure he took in reading taught him things none of his customers knew - more than were needed to keep up his reputation as the person to consult if you were ill.

Senhor Amado explained, “I have been plagued by this boy all day. I found him beside the road. I believe he is ill, but when you ask him why he is traveling, or where he is coming from, or where he is going, you only get lies. He wants to get to Cariús where the famous Gilberto Ferreira has a bed waiting for him. He says he is fourteen years old, but I don't believe it. I don't know whether he has run away from home or got himself in trouble in Iguatu. If he has run away, he seems determined enough so that maybe he has a good reason to run away. I don't know what to do with him.”

Their conversation went on, more quietly, until Senhor Fonesca gave a short laugh and then looked at João. “Come here, boy.”

João thought he would pass out, but he stood in front of Senhor Fonesca with his head bowed.

“What's your name?”

“João.”

“Again?”

A little louder, “João.”

“You feel ill?”

“Yes.”

“What's the matter?”

“Headache.”

“What else?”

“Everything.”

“How is it that you know Senhor Ferreira?”

“My parents know him.”

“What do you know about him?”

“Nothing.”

“But you know he's important?”

“Yes.”

“We never heard of him. Did you just make the name up?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, progress. What do you eat?”

“Rice.”

“What else?”

“More rice. Sometimes people will give me a meal with some beans.”

“Have you run away from home?”

“No, I was sent to find a place for my family where there is no drought. Please, may I sit down? I'm sick.”

“Of course.”

João thought he was trapped and would have to tell the story he was trying to avoid, but Senhor Fonesca surprised him.

“What kind of things did you eat before you left home?”

“Rice.”

“What else?”

“More rice.”

“Anything else?”

“Not for a long time.”

“Stand up for a moment and unbutton your shirt.”

João complied, and Senhor Fonesca pressed his ear briefly against João's chest. Then he turned to Senhor Amado with an exaggerated expression that meant he was overwhelmed by the odor. Then to João, “You may sit back down.”

Turning again to Senhor Amado, “The boy is obviously anemic. Judging from his swollen feet and what he says about his diet, I'd say he is badly malnourished. I think he’s seriously ill. I mean seriously. You should take him to the clinic in Iguatu. The sooner the better.”

João raised his head and almost shouted, “I'm not going to Iguatu. I can't.”

The two gentlemen looked at him with sudden interest. It sounded as though they were about to learn what sort of trouble he was in. For his part João knew they had already got to the place in his story that was impossible to explain.

Senhor Fonesca spoke first, “Why can't you go to Iguatu?”

“My father told me not to.”

“Are you in trouble there?”

“No, my father told me not to, and that's the truth.”

“Is your father in trouble in Iguatu?”

“No.”

“But he told you not to go.”

“Yes.”

“Why did your father tell you not to go there?”

“It's a long story. I don't feel well enough to tell it, and no one believes me, anyway. Just leave me alone. I'll be all right.”

Senhor Fonesca spoke to Senhor Amado, “First, we'll take him to my shop and I'll give him some iron tonic. Then you can take him home for the night. Give him a decent supper, and bring him back to my shop in the morning. We'll decide what to do then. Just now, you've made me late for my own dinner. My wife is already preparing the expletives she's going to serve me when I get home. And by the way, I do not want my wife to learn about this boy before your wife does.”

“I've already driven out of my way to bring him here. Why don't you take him? You seem to be good at getting the truth out of him.”

“I'm not taking him off your hands, Euclides. He's your problem. I'll help with advice and a bottle of iron tonic, but you picked him up, and he's yours.”

João interrupted, “I'm not anyone's problem. Just leave me alone. I'll take care of myself. I am fourteen, and I can take care of myself.”

“Whether or not you're fourteen, you are not in any condition to take care of yourself.

“Euclides, you will bring him back in the morning, or do I need to ask your wife to look after him?”

When Senhor Amado told João to stand up, he raised his head off the table and asked, “Why do I hear a cicada all the time?”

***

Euclides Amado was poor, but he had a reputation for generosity. This reputation was shared with his wife, Dona Ledina, who wanted to fix every problem she saw and knew her husband had a talent for fixing things when she couldn't. Accordingly, Senhor Fonesca knew perfectly well that he could refuse to take João off Senhor Amado's hands.

When João arrived in Senhor Amado's home, Dona Ledina treated him like a patient in an infirmary. She hung a hammock in their tiny living room and fed him black bean soup from hands that never stopped in their agitation to do something. She thought it a good idea to start out with a double dose of the iron tonic. She rejected the idea that he was fourteen and began silently debating whether he was well enough to bathe himself. Fortunately for João, Senhor Amado knew his wife was not done fussing over him and insisted they let him sleep.

And after Senhor Amado extinguished the lamp, João went to sleep thinking, “Quitaiús, Sitio Cacimba, Cedro, Rendinha, José de Alencar, Umarizeira.”

***

In the dark of their bedroom, the Amados resumed their conversation. It was a predictable conversation. It was the conversation they always had regardless of who was in need of help, but it had to be revisited once more.

Their conversation began before João was born. Prior to the revolution of 1930, they were supporters of the Liberal Alliance, and they never quite gave up on its inheritor, President Getúlio Vargas. In the beginning, Dona Ledina had been the political activist with her eye on what the federal government could do to fight the poverty and inequity in Brazil. Senhor Amado was better known as the ex-military man with the voice that gave orders and the soft heart that organized welfare for the church. Dona Ledina was focused on political movements that might help vast numbers of people. Senhor Amado was focused on the suffering of the person in front of him.

Senhor Amado, as both a liberal and a military man, had been thrilled when the coup brought Vargas to power, but the Vargas government could not move forward under the weight of the Coffee Oligarchs and, as the Great Depression deepened, everyone suffered. Senhor Amado's loyalty to Vargas was torn lose by his distrust of dictatorship and his anger at corruption, and his support for the government was reduced to a simmering hatred of the oligarchs. He joined a small, liberal, opposition party, and when he couldn't find anyone to run for Deputy in the national legislature, he ran himself.

He was soundly beaten, but the experience changed his focus from helping widows with children to national politics. At about the same time, just before the election of 1934, women were finally enfranchised, and Dona Ledina decided her political inspiration was burned out. She settled into working on local charities. Now it was Senhor Amado who supported grand political objectives and his wife who looked after their neighbors.

Accordingly, they reversed their positions in the discussion they always had when help was needed. They argued, politely, over how they should spend their resources – on individuals they knew they could help, or on movements they hoped would help millions. Of course, on this occasion the argument was moot. The individual who needed help was in the next room.

Day 7 - Milagre de Maria...

Lorena was back among her family, and Joaquim was shouting, “If you can't find a husband, I will find one for you.”

Larissa was praying that her daughter would just close her mouth and be quiet. Machismo could be handled. If she would be quiet, there was every chance he would forget most of what he had said, and she could propose what was reasonable. But if Lorena kept arguing, his mind would become set like the foundations of Hell. His irrationality would flare out to encompass matters far beyond anything remotely connected to the nidus of disagreement.

“No! The only men you know are lecherous old men and no better able to put food on a table than you are. I'll kill myself before I'll marry anyone you know. Mama is looking for a husband for me in church. That's what you said you wanted.”

“Your mother has one week. A week after that you will be married.”

Day 8 - Undecided in Umarizeira...

During most of the night, João cycled between a kind of restless sleep that included awareness of a headache, and periods of wakefulness in which the headache seemed less severe. When he finally awoke to broad daylight, he had slept soundly for several hours, and while he still had a headache, he felt improved. He was embarrassed at having slept so late and thought he was giving leverage to anyone who wanted to tell him what to do. But as he did not know what he should do, he lay in his hammock letting the morning grow older.

He needed to decide what to do about these helpful people. He felt just well enough to set out, again, but if he were to collapse the way he had the day before, he might wish for the help he could accept, now.

After the second time Dona Ledina called João to a breakfast that had been waiting for him for hours, João staggered out of his hammock. Just as he finally sat down at the table, Senhor Amado entered the house and sat opposite him.

“How are you feeling? Ready to walk twenty miles today?”

“Maybe.”

“But you're not sure.”

Silence.

“Suppose I don't ask you any questions now. I told Senhor Fonesca I’d bring you back to talk to him. I don’t suppose we both need to try to figure out what should be done with you. If I let you be, will you talk to Senhor Fonesca?”

“Maybe.”

“Yes or no!”

“Yes.” At least, he could get a ride as far as Umarizeira, and he could decide, then, what to do.

***

Senhor Fonesca was not in his shop, but they easily found him in the bar having his second breakfast. It was Dona Ledina’s insistence on being included that decided João on cooperating.

He answered Senhor Fonesca’s first question, “It doesn't matter how I feel.” His mind flickered, and he began again. “It doesn't matter how I feel. What I must do for my mother is what matters. I don't like telling about myself. I don't think it'll do any good. A lot of it is hard to explain. People don't get why I can't go to Iguatu.”

He told a lot. When he finished telling, he did not say he was finished. He just stopped talking.

Senhor Fonesca didn’t wait long. He began speaking emphatically, “I think you must take him to see a physician.”

“I’m glad you’re so clear about my task, but let me ask. If we persuade him to see a physician in Iguatu, what will the physician do?”

“Tell him to eat more fruits and vegetables. Just a moment...” and he took João's wrist to feel his pulse. “His heart rate is not so frightening just now, but I don’t know when the pulse I felt last night will resume.”

“So answer my question. What will a physician do?”

“At least he’ll tell the boy to rest and get a better diet until he can go on.”

“You can tell him that as well as a doctor can.”

“Of course, but I’m not a physician, and I don't like pretending to be one.”

“You pretend all the time.”

“I think this boy is far too ill for me to be making up advice now.”

João didn't like people ignoring him while they speculated about him. “I already told you. I’m not going to Iguatu.”

Shrugging and turning to João, Senhor Fonesca began asking, “Do you have any money.”

“No.”

“Of course not. Then I have two pieces of advice for you. First, stay here a few days, rest and eat some vegetables. You know yourself you can't travel far in your condition. And for God’s sake don’t try to go on before you’re ready.” And shortly after that, “Secondly, you must learn to steal because you are too malnourished to travel and you must improve your diet.”

João was appalled. How could this man of property, who was almost a physician, be telling me to steal? And there was no question as to his meaning what he said. João's mother was Catholic and knew that stealing was a sin, so João was Catholic and knew that stealing was a sin. Of all the mistakes João had made as a child, even in poverty he'd never stolen anything. His father wasn't really Catholic, but if he’d ever heard João accused of theft, he’d have given João a beating he might never have recovered from.

Dona Ledina spoke, but João was too distracted by his own thoughts to know what she said. When he finally began to speak, he didn't know whether he was interrupting anyone. If he had been, no one would have heard him whisper, “I don't steal, it's a sin.”

The timbre of his voice asked that he be left alone, and Senhor Fonesca realized his own decisive, full-throated voice was not what was needed. He went on quietly, solicitously.

“It's a greater sin to abandon your family. You will never get well enough to travel on nothing but rice.”

“People have been giving me beans sometimes.”

“You will never get well enough to travel on nothing but rice and beans.”

Dona Ledina could not stay silent, “We can't start him on a career of theft.”

“What else do you propose?”

“Something else. Surely we can do better. Can't he beg more than rice?”

“Well, yes, he can beg. I would say he should try to beg, first, but people are not likely to give him what he needs. They might give him some cassava, but that's no better than rice. So he's probably going to have to steal. A lot of people beg from you, Dona Ledina, maybe you can give him some pointers.”

The impatient final remark was rude enough to invoke silence. Then Senhor Amado spoke, “You can provide him with some vitamins from your shop. We have some vegetables, mostly onions. I think those are helpful, aren't they?”

“Yes. Onions are as good as anything. Maybe he's been getting some in the beans he eats. I don't know why he doesn't have scurvy. He's iron and protein deficient. So give him more beans. Corn if you've got it, but corn's not as good. Then I don't know, but not more rice – more kinds of vegetables than just onions.”

Dona Ledina spoke before her husband had a chance. “We can keep him for a few days, but we don't have any vegetables other than onions. Tell him, again, what he will need in his diet, and we'll see what can be done.”

But Senhor Fonesca began by telling João how fortunate he was to have fallen into the hands of Senhor Amado and his wife.

“These are the people who make this part of the world livable. Three times in three weeks Senhor Amado, at his age, has been down a well with a shovel, digging it deeper with his own hands. No one has had to leave this community, and that is only because Dona Ledina handles the church's charity.” And turning to Senhor Amado, “Next year, we will get you elected. We cannot buy votes, but I will threaten to poison anyone so ungrateful as to forget what you have done for them.”

His attention had slipped away from João and returning to the person he was supposedly addressing, “As for what you must provide for yourself, onions are good and probably easier to get your hands on...”

João heard what Senhor Fonesca had to tell him and learned what he needed to know, but his mind constantly flickered back to the idea of becoming a thief. How could he? Of course, he knew how he could, but how could he? His mother told him he could live off his good manners, but Senhor Fonesca knew he couldn't. Dona Ledina knew stealing was a sin, and she could stand in for the priest, but she hadn't answered the question, “What else?” He knew his father had an opinion about this. If stealing vegetables will cure you of being a weakling, steal the damn vegetables. But if you disgrace me, I'll kill you. What he needed was an opinion of his own.

Day 8 - Milagre de Maria...

João’s brother, twelve-year-old Miguel, inherited the job of carrying water from the neighbor's well. He also inherited João's attitude toward the task, and there came a day when his attitude did not serve him well. It could be said, with misleading understatement, that there was no way Miguel could prepare his father to hear there was not enough water for two households.

“Who says there's not enough water!?”

“The widow woman. She said all that was left for her yesterday was one bucketful. She said you have to dig the well deeper.”

Joaquim replied with the consistency of machismo and some of the randomness of insanity. “I already said I'm not going to build a winch for someone else's well, and I'm not going to haul buckets of mud out of it without a winch. If she wants to hire me, I'll work for cash.” It was absurd. What cash? kept echoing in Miguel's thoughts.

Day 10 – Jucás...

Two mornings later, João awoke early with a wretched feeling he didn’t know how to describe. It was not just knowledge of helplessness, it was an emotion of helplessness, an emotion that felt like fingernails scratching on the blackboard. It was pain that didn't hurt, it was wanting to thrash around in his hammock and pound on the walls, and he had no idea how to make it go away. He lay in his hammock trying to think.

He had never before experienced what modern psychologists mean by “clinical anxiety,”  but it was to become a frequent beginning to his day. In time he would learn to drive it out of his mind by making himself angry. However, this morning was to be a moment to moment struggle to maintain his composure in the presence of the Amados.

He'd already decided he must resume his journey that day, and while João's decisions were generally subject to revision, this one was not. João always understood an offer to help as an accusation of weakness. It made him angry, and controlling an anger he knew was unjust was just as hard as controlling any other anger. He'd had enough of that. Moreover, if he'd suffered this anxiety the day before, he would have left the day before, and had he suffered it the day before that, he would have walked away from the table in the bar in Umarizeira. He had to get away from it. He needed to be on the road and counting his steps.

And while he slept, it must have been this anxiety that brought his father to him, complaining, not like someone in his imagination - his father had spoken clearly and distinctly in his ear, chiding him for his weakness, frightening him.

He wanted to sneak away without confronting Dona Ledina. The idea of facing Senhor Amado's generosity was bad enough, but there was more to leaving Dona Ledina - there was a gnawing attachment. She somehow set a price on generosity that he could only pay by accepting more of it.

João was prepared to move on. He had his own opinion about stealing, now. He wasn't going to steal for himself. He was going to steal for his family, and what did the loss of a few onions mean to a shopkeeper compared to what slow starvation was doing to his family? His conscience would not leave this opinion alone, but he had decided. It was his opinion. He knew this opinion about stealing didn't apply to stealing from the Amados, but what he was about to do wasn't stealing. He was only going to take what he knew they would freely give to him if he asked, which he couldn't do.

When Dona Ledina said she had laundry to organize and walked into her bedroom, he took the opportunity. With his conscience buried in his anxiety, he grabbed his bag and walked to the kitchen counter. He opened the drawer where he'd seen Dona Ledina get onions and found a paper bag with a single onion in it. He couldn't steal the last onion, so he dropped it out of the bag into the drawer and opened a drawer that he knew contained a sack of beans. He scooped three handfuls into the paper bag and put that into his rice bag. They might not notice the beans he'd taken and only wonder about the paper bag. He rapped twice on the bedroom door and, without waiting for a reply, announced that he was going outside to talk to Senhor Amado.

He found Euclides Amado looking blankly at some cassava that was not doing well and said as politely as he could manage, “Senhor Amado, I am leaving now. I know what your advice is, but I can't stay. I just can't. I can't stand sitting here when I should be on the road. I think I am losing my mind. Please thank Dona Ledina for me. I can't tell her I'm leaving.”

He started toward the road but stopped after his first step and spoke without turning around, “Thank you.” After his third step, he stopped and again spoke over his shoulder, "I'm stealing a handful of beans. If you want me to, I'll put them back."

He was relieved he'd left the onion for the Amados.

***

Senhor Amado’s travels as a candidate had given him a useful knowledge of the roads in his district, and he had been able to give useful, if complicated, directions on how to cross the river and reach Quiterianopolis. João set out with the sandals Dona Ledina had given him on his feet but, as he expected, they only fit because she had made him keep his feet elevated for two days. After half-a-mile, he had to remove them, and the effort needed to squat and stand up again made him fear the days ahead.

The road was a tiresome repetition of the other roads he'd walked. He reached the Jaguaribe River between Cariús and Jucás. Senhor Amado had explained to him that, beyond Cariús, the road petered out and ended at the river as a foot path. However, even in wet years it was usually possible to ford the river on foot, and he would find trails on the other side that would lead him to a road he could follow north into Jucás.

He reached the river in the late afternoon heat. Having spent most of the day anticipating relief in the river's cool water, he found a series of tiny pools connected by streams that oozed through the mud more than they flowed over it. The water was viscous with algae and smelled of fish that had died in the anoxic slurry. Perhaps, what flowed past him was the raw sewage from Iguatu. He was hot, and angry, and disappointed, and a thought about killing Madalena quickly slipped into how much easier and righteous it would be to murder his father.

There was nothing worth calling “water,” but there were healthy trees that darkened the bank with a quantity of shade almost forgotten in Ceará. It might have cooled his temper, if it hadn’t been for the way he sank into the mud until he was almost sitting in it.

Across the river, the path he found led him out of the shade, under the late afternoon sun, and into a field that had once grown rice. Being so far from any proper road, he had to keep telling himself he wasn’t lost. When he met the road that was to take him north, again, it was little different from the trodden path he had just followed, and he went on relieved at having found the road  but still feeling lost.

***

Watching his feet as usual, he was startled when he looked up to see three men, quite near, walking toward him. They appeared to be in their late teens or early twenties – ages he did not trust at all. They were drunk, two of them giggling, besotted. When they reached him, they spread across the road obviously meaning to prevent João from passing. The one in the middle staggered. Even just standing in place he repeatedly put his right foot forward to keep from losing his balance. He was the one who spoke first – with slurred speech that was not easy to understand.

“What the hell're you doin' on our property, you little prick?!”

“I didn’t know it was anyone’s property. I'm just trying to get to Jucás.”

“I said, what the hell're you doin' on our property, little prick?!”

“I just crossed the river from Cariús and followed the path to this road. I'm going to Jucás.”

“I don't give a shit where you're goin'. What are you doin'? You're stealin’ our vegetables is what you're doin'.”

João held his hands out palm up to show he didn't have any vegetables.

“They're in the bag, asshole. Jose, take his bag.”

João shouted, “It's just got rice and a few beans. I'm traveling. It's my food.” But his outburst had no effect on the drunk, presumably Jose, who staggered toward him with as much menace as his instability would allow.

João didn't know what to do. There were three of them, one of them seemingly not so drunk, and all big enough to make João feel his slight build. João expected Jose to rip the bag off his shoulders, but when he got there, all Jose did was look inside.

“It's just rice, Diogo.”

“Dump it out. See what he's got buried in it.”

Jose just shoved his hand into the rice, felt around, and said, “Nothin'  there.”

The drunk, now named Diogo, drew out a hunting knife, “You ain't from around here, asshole, and we kill trespassers we don't know. You seen our irrigatin' system?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“And we kill assholes who lie to us.”

The one who might have been half-sober finally interrupted, “Leave him alone, Diogo. He's just a kid.”

“He's a lyin' asshole is what he is. I kill little pricks who lie to me.”

João concluded that the only one who was actually a threat to him was Diogo who was probably too drunk to be able to do him much harm even with a knife. Still, he wasn't prepared to confront a knife, so he just turned around and headed south again.

When he heard the rustle of footsteps behind him, he wasn't sure whether it was best to ignore it or turn around. Before he could decide, Jose caught him and pinned his arms. João had time for one breath before Diogo was spitting words into his face with the hunting knife against his throat.

“Sometimes I let little pricks who trespass our property live, but I never let little pricks who disrespect me live.”

There was an angry shout from a voice that meant to be obeyed. “Let him go, Diogo!”

João heard the words “I was just jokin'” before he felt the knife slash across his throat. His knees buckled, and he waited that long fraction of a second for the pain to arrive. Then there was a full second with his knees on the ground, but still the pain hadn't arrived. And there was laughter and confusion and the slow realization that it was the dull side of the blade that crossed his throat. João rose as quickly as he could and ran in spite of his feet.

“Don't let me catch you on our property again, little prick asshole.” The words came, duplicated but out of synchrony, from both Diogo and Jose.

***

He was still headed south when the light from the setting sun began to fail. He knew he should try to find water and a place to sleep, but finding them would not return normalcy. He would still be afraid, and he still would not know where to go next. He capitulated to fear. He walked into an empty field and lay down in the dirt - invisible to anyone who passed on the road.

While a little light remained he debated whether he should get up and continue south looking for a place to sleep, but that would take him farther from Jucás and deep into a more acute sense of being lost. If he returned north, he still had directions from Senhor Amado, but that way led back to Diogo.

***

The moon cast shadows deep enough to mark the road. After hours of lying flat on the ground, João's fear was less intense, and he began to imagine a new voice, not his own but too polite to be his father's: You let fear of Iguatu turn you south. If you let this fear of Diogo turn you south, again, what will come next? Another fear and another turn to the south? He imagined a pause, as though the voice were waiting for his reply, and then it continued: This is just fear of the dark. Diogo is sleeping the sleep of the dead. It's safe. But when he started to get up, he found his fears were not so easily set aside.

Day 10 - Milagre de Maria...

Miguel called his father an idiot, his mother told him not to do that. So, having his invective frustrated, Miguel built a winch, himself. The only tool he needed was a hammer, and as he said, he could have done it with a rock. The widow woman told him to tear apart an old out-building for the wood and nails he needed. Then she helped him disassemble her donkey cart to get an axle. It could be reassembled if God ever gave them a reason for doing so.

***

“I'm not going down that well. I'm too big for that kind of work. Miguel can go down the damn well, and you and the widow woman can haul the buckets of mud out. Good luck. That winch looks like it was built by a monkey.”

Day 11 – Quincoe...

The road he followed was lonely, and he walked in a fog of sleep deprivation – a fog that confused and derailed his thoughts but left images of his confrontation on the road to Jucás. Vivid sceens came unwanted a dozen times every hour. At times he questioned how much danger he'd been in - perhaps the threats were just a game the three drunks played whenever they came across a suitable victim, but the intensity of the words “Let him go, Diogo” said the danger was real.

Early in the afternoon, he was offered the use of a barn with enough straw to be almost as good as a hammock. Exhausted, he accepted and slept away most of the remaining day, undisturbed. Later, after waking up long enough to prepare a supper of rice, he returned to a sleep darker than the night that surrounded him. A dozen times he struggled to wake himself only to find himself asleep, again, before he could escape from the nightmare.

In all his dreams, his throat was cut. He tried to get help, but he was paralyzed. Once Dona Ledina was in the dream, but she could not understand his garbled cries. In other dreams, he was near enough to wakefulness to know he had survived. In these dreams, he struggled to tell his mother he was all right, but he couldn't because his larynx was cut. Between dreams, his father spoke clearly in his ear demanding to know why he had slept the afternoon away. Twice, he awoke believing Madalena was following him, causing his troubles – believing she was somehow responsible for his encounter with Diogo.

***

Daylight brought the same horrible feeling of anxiety he'd had the morning he left the Amados. And, again, there was the ringing in his ears – a noise like cicadas. It was his father's voice at night and these cicadas in the day time. The sum of an afternoon spent nearly comatose and a troubled night did not come to enough sleep to relieve his exhaustion. It was all he could do to remind himself he needed to count every step until these awful sounds went away.

He came to a tiny church that marked a crossroad leading north, away from Iguatu. It seemed to be the road Senhor Amado had recommended as the best route to a town named Acopiara. There were so many tiny churches he still felt lost, but the road took him north, and that was good enough.

At mid-morning, he passed a bar that had once had a lake-side view. To João, it seemed early for a bar to be open, but a table of drinkers called out to him, “It's quafftide! The barkeep will sell you beer on credit!” The barkeep, himself, was standing in a door that led to the rest of his home. He locked eyes with João and shook his head, no, but then grinned. João decided to try the barkeep for directions to Acopiara, but his question got an answer from the table of drinkers while the barkeep was still thinking about it.

“If you stay on this road, you will come to Quincoe. There you can ask which road goes all the way on to Acopiara.” The rest of the table chimed in with assurances that he could not get better advice. João looked to the barkeep for confirmation, but all he saw was the man disappearing into his house. At least the answer was simple.

***

Seven hours of labored walking beyond the bar, João was resting in the shade of a tree in a once damp place at the bottom of a hill - one of many hills he’d had to climb. He was listening to the pulsing, high-pitched whine of a cicada, trying to decide whether it was made by an actual insect or was a variation on the tinnitus he was now certain came from inside his own head.

He had decided he would not reach Quincoe that day, and might not even find a house with a well before his thirst overcame him, when he saw someone on foot come over the hill behind him. He thought, at first, that it was a young man, but as the figure approached it became a girl a little older than himself wearing pants. He almost never saw a girl in pants, and he thought they were ugly the way clown shoes would look ugly.

When she reached João, she looked at him, green eyes against brown skin, and said, “Hello. Are you traveling or do you just sit under trees in the middle of nowhere?”

João replied without getting up, “I'm traveling, but it's a long way, and I'm tired and thirsty.”

“What's a kid like you doing traveling way out here on the long way to nowhere?”

“It's a long story, and I'm too tired to tell it.”

“Well, are you going my way or the other way?”

“I'm going your way, but I'm resting.”

“Well, are you about done resting?”

“I was thinking of getting up.”

“Here, I'll give you a hand.”

Isabeli had no more beauty than the cuteness that a thin, teenage girl can’t avoid, but she was the kind of self-confident, chatty girl that men find sexually attractive out of all proportion to their looks. Accordingly, João reacted to her with apprehension. Madalena was this kind of extrovert, cunning in her ability to draw people out to their own embarrassment. He declined her offer of help and struggled to his feet.

She immediately asked where he was headed.

“Quincoe.”

Isabeli stopped, perplexed. “Quincoe?”

“Yes.”

“First, of all, you're headed in the wrong direction. And second, why would you be going there?”

João was confused. Isabeli stared at him as though she expected an answer to be immediately forthcoming, and failing in that, João must be mentally retarded. Still, she did not speak before João eventually said, “I've been walking all day without passing a single village. Have I taken the wrong road?”

At first Isabeli was even more perplexed. Then she made a wild guess and said hesitantly, “Quincoe is not a village.”

“It's not?”

“No, it's just a place. There's an abandoned fazenda about half a mile off the road, but that's all.”

“Someone said I could stop there and ask directions – maybe find a place to sleep.”

“There's nothing there, you might as well stop here.”

João knew he'd been gulled by the men in the bar, but he spoke calmly through his anger. “It doesn't matter. I stop wherever I can find a well. Mostly I go on until the day is over.”

“So you're not going to Quincoe?”

“It was just a place on my way that I thought must be a village. I still have a long way to go.”

“How long have you been traveling?”

“More than a week. I'd have to count to know exactly.”

“Where do you sleep? On the ground?” The pitch of her voice rose sharply on the word “ground.”

João did not like the implication he heard in that question and nearly shouted his answer. “Don't I look like I sleep on the ground?!”

“You look... disheveled. That's not as bad as looking like you sleep on the ground.” She would have taken back the remark about sleeping on the ground if she could have.

“Sometimes, someone gives me a hammock for a night.”

“Well, you're very handsome even if you do sleep on the ground.”

João was quiet, unsure of what Isabeli might be thinking.

“Why are you in this out-of-the-way place walking along where I never meet anyone? What are you doing?”

“I told you, it's a long story.”

“Well, I want to know, and if you tell me, I might ask my parents to lend you a hammock tonight.”

He didn't think he could trust such an offer from a young woman, but a decent place to sleep was worth some risk. “Can't you ask them without the story?”

“I can, but I won't. Besides, they won't let you sleep at our house if they don't know anything about you, and you have a better chance with them if you tell me first so I'll know how to introduce you.”

He started by telling her he was searching for a place for his family to live and that he was fourteen years old. Without seeming to doubt him, she told him she was fifteen.

Telling his story took longer than ever because Isabeli had so many comments of her own to make. She started by complaining about how João was slowing her down, but none of her other comments were obviously critical. They were about herself.

“I don't have anyone to talk to. My mother just criticizes me all the time. I can't start a conversation without it becoming a conversation about what I've done wrong. How could I do anything wrong? No one lives out here except us. She says I'm rude. Who could I be rude to except her? And I'm only rude to her when she's rude to me first.”

“What about your father?”

“He's sort of here, but he's gone all day. I don't know exactly what he does, but he brings home money. Actually, I not only don't know exactly what he does, I don't know what he does at all.”

“So he's home in the evening?”

“Yes, but then he's mostly just my teacher. My life is backward – nothing to do during the day, school at night.”

“So you can read?”

“Of course I can read. You can’t?” She knew that was another blunder. Words just flew from her mouth so fast that sometimes she had a hard time supervising them.

After he marked down the cut, João continued as though nothing was wrong, but his impression of the girl as a Madalena deepened. “You're lucky to be alone all the time. You don't have to put up with all my brothers and sisters, and you don't have a father who criticizes you all the time and thinks that every criticism requires at least a slap if not a real beating, and you don't have to work all the time. Do you have a well at your house?”

“Of course, how could we not have a well?” The “of course” annoyed João but not beyond being able to understand that a family living alone in the bush had to have a well.

“We don't have a well, and every day I have to bring water in a five-gallon can from a neighbor's house. It's heavy.”

“I thought we were poor, but I guess not as poor as you. At least I haven't been sent away to find someplace better for us to live. Actually, I'd like to be sent on a long journey, but I suppose not if I had to do what you're doing. We used to live in a city, but I hardly remember it, just a little about being in a real school.

“I've been alone up here for years. Once a month we go to Acopiara for supplies. We stay overnight, but I don't know anyone there. I talk a little to the people in the hotel. My parents don't know it, but once a guy bought me a drink at the bar.”

As they changed from walking uphill to down, Isabeli's home came into view. It was a five-room, tijolo house recently painted white. There were tijolo out-buildings, and not only a well, but a well-house. It was not what João expected. He wondered what Isabeli had meant when she'd said she was poor. Was her isolation so extreme that she didn't know she was well-off or was there some hidden reason she said she was poor?

As they approached the door, all she said was, “You'd better let me do all the talking.”

***

Isabeli's mother just said, “No.”

“You haven't even heard his story!”

“No, he's filthy.” He was dirty, his clothes were torn, and his feet were swollen and sunburned to the point of weeping a serous fluid. But her dislike of him covered more than all those things put together. She did not like vagabonds even if they were only eleven years old.

Isabeli objected, “We can give him a bath, and I'll wash his clothes.”

“You stay out of it,” and turning to João, “There's a well at Rafael Sousa's farm just half a mile up the road. It would be a good place for a traveler who's camping out.”

“No one has lived there since before I was born!” Isabeli was not one to stay out of things.

“The well hasn't caved in, and you don't need to hassle your father about this.”

Isabeli just gave João a look that was like stamping her foot and said, “Come along. I'll show you the way.”

“No, you will not show him the way. There's only one road. He can't get lost.”

João understood. Isabeli's mother was another Madalena and if he'd been wondering about Isabeli... Like mother like daughter.

***

At dinner that night, Isabeli told her father the story of the boy she met who was walking over the mountains to find his family a place to live far away from the drought. Her father asked whether he had family in Maranhão. Isabeli answered, “He didn't say. I think probably not. He had the worst sunburn I've ever seen. There was skin peeling off his face, and his feet were bloody in places. He doesn't look anything like fourteen. I think he's courageous through and through.”

Her father asked whether Isabeli thought there was anything they could do for him, and her mother answered, “He was filthy.”

***

There was nothing of any use to João in the remains of the Sousa place. In particular, there was no bucket for the well. He was exhausted and had no idea what lay ahead and, thinking to himself that he must beg a container to carry some water, he lay down in the dirt. He had no idea whether he was on the road to Acopiara. He didn't even know whether it mattered.

For a while, he tried lying on his back with his head propped up on a small stone. Of course, sleep did not come. He took off his pants, rolled them up, turned on his side, and stuck his pants under his head. The sensation of tiny pebbles and grains of sand pressing against his bare legs would have to be endured. He turned back and forth trying each side and his back in turn. All he got for his restlessness was dirt ground into his skin as well as his clothes.

Before midnight, the moon rose above the dead brush and, soon after, Isabeli arrived with a bucket in her hand saying she was going to give João a bath. He grabbed his pants to cover himself as well as he could – afraid to try standing up to put them on.

Isabeli gave a short, amused laugh and said, “It doesn't matter if I see you naked. I'll see you naked when I give you a bath, anyway.” His anger flashed among memories of Madalena, but he held his response to a short “No! I don't want a bath.”

Isabeli insisted, “You do need a bath. You'll get along better with people like my mother if I give you a bath.”

João insisted, “You heard me. I said I don't want a bath. Go away.”

Isabeli stood staring at him.

He went on, “Did you bring water in the bucket?”

“There's a well.”

“Did you bring a rope?”

“No.”

“There's no rope. Why would anyone expect one?”

“I can go fill the bucket and bring it.”

“Don't bother.”

“I want to give you a bath.”

“What good will it do? Lying in the dirt, I'll be filthy like your mother has never seen by morning.”

“I could bring something for you to lie on.”

“No!”

“I would lie down with you.”

“Go away!”

“Isn't there anything I can do for you? I'll do anything.”

“No!”

There was a long pause before Isabeli picked up the bucket. Then a few words percolated up through João's anger without disturbing it. “I'm dying of thirst. You can bring the bucket with some water in it. I don't want a bath.”

When Isabeli returned, João had his pants on and was squatting, uncomfortably, on the small stone. She handed him the bucket. “Here.”

He took the bucket and drank from the edge of it, spilling more water than he drank. There was a moment of silence, and he drank again.

“I can still get you water for a bath.”

“I don't want a bath,” and he threw the rest of the water on the ground.

“I brought the horse blanket for you to lie on. We don't have a horse, but my father hopes to get one, again, so we keep the blanket. It isn't too horsey.”

“Leave me alone.”

Isabeli inched backward, slowly.

“Go away. I don't like you.”

And with that, Isabeli turned to go away.

“Stop. I don't know whether I like you or not. Thank you for the water and the blanket, but you can't stay. Take the bucket with you. The blanket will be here in the morning.” It was the best he could do through his anger and fear of ridicule.

When he slept, he again dreamed of Madalena following him on his journey and inciting people to deceive him. In his dream, he knew she was nearby, but he could never turn fast enough to catch her. Still, he knew the fleeting shadow that disappeared into darkness was hers. Unless it was Isabeli.

Day 11 - Milagre de Maria...

The rising sun had barely edged its way into the haze when Miguel and the widow woman managed to drop the heavy rope-ladder into the well. Miguel tossed the widow woman's shovel in after the ladder and pushed the bucket off the edge of the well. It didn't weigh enough to overcome the friction in the winch. So he started to lower it, cranking the winch, but after a single turn he quit and started down the ladder dragging the bucket with him.

Larissa was still crossing the field from her home when she saw the winch collapse. The widow woman turned, raised her arms, and looked at the sky. Miguel's mother shook her head and began to wonder what they would have to do. She watched the woman turn slowly back to the well to assess the damage. Then, hearing in memory what she had heard when the winch collapsed, the widow woman broke into a frantic race. A moment of silence already seemed to echo the shouting that was about to come. The words in what the woman cried out were unintelligible, or perhaps there weren't any words, but the alarm in her voice was clear and Larissa knew what to fear.

The pile of dirt at the bottom of the well had dragged the ladder across to the far side, but it still clung to where it was anchored at the top. Her foot missed the first rung twice before she controlled herself well enough to start down. She knew what she faced and had less hope of rescuing Miguel than she had of being buried with him in a further cave-in. She did not cry. Tears could not possibly have conveyed her anguish.

Day 12 – Acopiara...

In the earliest light, his dream of Madalena felt true to João, but when the sun rose above the horizon shinning directly into his eyes, it was as though he awoke a second time and knew it was just a bad dream. Isabeli could not have been Madalena following him all the way from Milagre de Maria. Still, he wondered whether someone was finding people to trouble him.

João had no water to cook any rice, so his preparations for the day consisted of picking up his bag and taking his first step. As he walked, he could not stop remembering the dream in which Madalena followed him, and even knowing it was just a dream, he couldn’t stop himself from turning quickly to look over his shoulder.

At mid-morning, the path he was on joined a broader road, heavily trafficked, and João soon found himself riding in a cart. He was relieved to learn he was on a road to Acopiara. However, when the road turned to asphalt, he feared he was coming to another Cedro. In fact, he was coming to a place worse than that.

He rode fifteen miles in the cart and got dropped off at the market in Acopiara – another market that was still active in the early afternoon. There, he felt called upon by Dona Ledina to try begging.

It was hopeless, and when he had tried as many vendors as were needed to make him give up, he sat down on the edge of a curb. There he thought about the pleasures of dying, he was too exhausted to face another night of tortured sleep.

As he sat on a curb with his feet in the street, João thought he felt the swelling worsening and lifted his feet onto the sidewalk. It was the first step toward lying down on his side. A dream was already starting to infest his thinking when a shopkeeper poked him in the back with the toe of his sandal. When he sat up, startled, the shopkeeper waved at him with the back of his hand, silently insisting he move on.

He moved as far as a park bench and found himself too tired to resist its miserable, wooden embrace.

Day 12 - Milagre de Maria...

Joaquim grieved for Miguel as he had for the other children they'd lost – silently, but with a strong sense of responsibility. For a while after the loss of a child, a close observer could get a glimpse of a better man. He understood the need for a coffin and the necessity of persuading the priest to properly bury the child of a man not well regarded by the church. This time, these necessities had to be set aside. They had to have a source of water.

Milagre de Maria was typical of rural villages in the Northeast of Brazil – it spread out like a cancer in the bush. The nearest well was on Nicholas Arantes' property, but Joaquim was not on good terms with Nicholas Arantes, and the next well was a quarter of a mile away. He asked himself who in his family could be assigned to bring water such a distance. He could not keep Lorena from coming to mind, but being dependent on a daughter he'd disowned was out of the question. The other children were too small, and that left his wife. He admitted to himself that his daily search for food or work had become dilatory and that Larissa did not need another task, but he had never seen a respectable man, the head of a household, carry water.

Day 13 - The Thief of Acopiara...

João awoke to the scream of a braying donkey nearby and, in the background, the brisk sounds of the market opening up a block away. He was suffering from the same inexplicable anxiety he now felt every morning, but at least his sleep seemed to have been free of dreams. He wondered whether the modest discipline he had shown counting steps could account for the absence of that night's demons.

He walked to the market thinking he would try honest begging once more. He practiced introducing himself and saying, “I am traveling to help my family find a better place to live, but the doctor tells me I am malnourished and must eat fruit or vegetables to be able to go on. You can see that even this morning my feet are already swollen. They will be much worse in the afternoon, and I have no stamina to walk. Could you let me have...,” and he would ask for whatever would do him some good.

It was impossible. Customers crowded the vendors as they were still stocking their tables, trying to get the best produce. The speech he practiced was too long, and it was impossible to get a vendor's attention for more than four seconds. He fretted, thinking he had to steal something, and it had to be at this market or he would have wasted hours since his arrival waiting for the market to open.

He had pictured himself stealing something from a vendor who was inattentive because he was bored. There was no such vendor, and he decided he had to depend on the chaos.

It wasn't clear who was the busiest vendor, but among the possibilities he saw two who had a few mangoes among their vegetables. In years before the drought, mangoes were so plentiful they were free. No one who had a mango tree ever objected when a child pulled a few off it, and feeling as though it must be wrong to charge for them, he decided a mango was what he would steal.

He tied his bag around his waist and slid it behind him. Then, keeping his hip against the table piled with vegetables, he worked his way among the customers until he was quite close to the vendor. When the man turned to him, he began his prepared speech, and the moment the vendor looked away, João reached behind his back and started to slide two mangoes into his bag.

It didn't work. The draw strings kept pulling shut. He turned around, grabbed a mango in each hand, and shoved his hands in his pockets. He successfully resisted the urge to run, but he still left with a peculiar walk and an uncontrollable urgency that should have called attention to him.

Those who saw didn't care.

***

They were small Julie mangoes, not nearly enough to call breakfast. Still, he took them to be the kind of food Senhor Fonesca told him to steal, and he ate them with a speed that was equal parts hunger, joy, and desire to destroy the evidence. He tore the skin off with his teeth and, before he was finished, he sucked the seed until it was covered with nothing but fine white hairs. As he finished, he thought about what else he could find in the market, but even as he had this thought, he knew he would wait for another day.

***

Sleeping in a field that had once supported a small dairy herd, João couldn't escape a dream in which he had a knife and was searching for Madalena. He knew she was nearby, following him, and he was frustrated by his inability to see properly. Each time he awoke, he thought it was more reasonable to dream that Isabeli was following him, but he returned to the same dream. Once, when he awoke to full consciousness, he rejected the idea that he should add Isabeli to the list of people he should kill, but he didn’t reject the idea of the list.

Day 13 - Milagre de Maria...

Joaquim Cardeira's default emotion was anger, and that is what he felt toward the obligation pressed forward by his own sense of decency. He told his wife, “You will have to make some sort of arrangement for water. I have to get Miguel out the well, get a coffin built, and deal with the priest.”

“No, you go ahead and get us some water. Leave Father Cardoso to me. If you're the one who goes to Father Cardoso, he won't bury Miguel in consecrated ground.”

He acquiesced, but it was too much. The water would take most of the day. Then the casket would be trouble. Joaquim did not have the tools or the wood or even the skill to build one. And there was still the problem of retrieving Miguel. To get his neighbors' help, he would have to place the obligation squarely in front of them. They would help him haul the body out of the well, but no one was going down a hole in unstable, dried-out sand for him. There was already criticism of Joaquim for letting Miguel go down such a well.

Day 14 – Catarina...

In Trussu, passing a tiny mercearia, João succeeded in stealing a handful of beans. For a moment, the shopkeeper was distracted, by his own need to distract one of his rare customers while he got a blemished tomato into her bag, and João got a handful of beans out of a fifty-pound sack.

***

In spite of the desolation along the road beyond Trussu, João found himself walking in the company of a man not quiet old enough to be called “elderly.” His movements were stiff, machine-like, and his spastic toe-walking made his progress slow even compared to João's. It was obvious to João that the man often slept on the ground, and Senhor Artur was soon just “Artur” to João. The man was on his way to Catarina.

Artur's physical problems and obvious poverty made it easy for João to talk about himself, but he cut his own story short to ask questions of Artur. He abandoned “What's wrong with you?” as impolite and asked, “Why are you going to Catarina?”

“I have family there. They will not be happy to see me, but there is no work in Fortaleza. Perhaps they will feed me. I am not out of favor with them, it's just that another mouth to feed will not be welcome.”

“Why don't you earn a living in Fortaleza by stealing?”

“Stealing is not honorable. For you it is not so bad because you are a boy trying to help his family, but I am a man who is supposed to be able to take care of himself. Besides, the shopkeepers in Fortaleza have eyes in the backs of their heads, and the police administer justice to thieves without wasting a judge's time.”

“You could just stay on the road begging for rice like I do.”

“You are an attractive boy who gets everyone's sympathy. I am an ugly old man who gets everyone's enmity. I could not get a mouthful of rice if I was dying in the street. Hopefully, I will be more welcome with my family than I expect. I am my family's raconteur.”

“You're a story teller?”

“That's what I said. At least, some people say they like my stories.”

“Could you tell a story as we walk along?”

“No, I need a beer to tell a story.”

“Will your family have a beer?”

“No, but if I'm going to ask them to feed me, I'll have to make an exception.”

At noon, João shared a cup of his rice with Artur and then demanded an exception.  Artur could hardly say, “No,” and began...

Many years ago, I lived in São Paulo and, for a while, I worked as a hod-carrier for brick layers who were building a large apartment house the likes of which I have never seen since, even in Rio de Janeiro. It is well known that São Paulo is the most evil place for a working man in Brazil, and one night, the boss kept us working until long after dark.

I lived in a favela far from where I worked, and there was no streetcar service to where I lived. So I was not happy with the long walk I would have to make in the dark, even though cities were safer then than they are now.

To make matters worse, I started thinking about a woman I was having trouble with. She did not want to marry me, and deep in melancholy thought I walked past a corner where I should have turned onto a street that would have taken me across the city. When I realized what I had done, I had no choice but to retrace my steps.

But I don't like going back over ground I have already covered, and I soon came to a brightly lit street that obviously paralleled the street I intended to take. So I took it thinking I would take the first crossroad back to my usual route. The street I turned down was called Perdition Road.

I walked a good long way along Perdition Road without coming to a crossroad, but as the road started getting darker, I did come to a bicycle sitting in front of an empty building. It wasn't locked, and by this time I was concerned about walking down a dark street with no crossroad. I should have turned around, but I didn't want to waste all the progress I'd made. So I just got on the bicycle and peddled off, telling myself I would return it on the way to work the next day.

Stupidly, I still hadn't realized that Perdition Road is the Road to Perdition. And by the way, there are no crossroads on the Road to Perdition. It's only forward or backward. Eventually, I had traveled so far I knew I must have gone past the area where I lived, and I was thinking about turning around. At least I would have a bicycle to get home on, though I was a little uncomfortable about riding the bicycle past the place where I had borrowed it.

I was thinking about turning around, but before I decided to turn around, I found myself inside Perdition. And let me tell you, once you are inside Perdition, they do not want to let you out. I found all the roads suddenly blocked, and while the creatures that maintain the blockades are polite enough, they do not look like anything you would want to challenge.

But I did start shouting at them. “I ain't dead yet!”

They replied calmly, “There's nothing in the rule book about ʻain't dead yet.ʼ There is something about stealing bicycles, which you did less than half an hour ago, and by the way, you have not confessed that sin.”

As they were being polite, I took the chance of asking to see the rule book, and I have to say they were nice enough. They hauled out a steamer trunk that barely held the book and hefted it out onto a table for me. They even showed me where the index was.

So I started looking for things like “If not dead yet,” but there was nothing. Still, I knew there had to be a mistake, so I asked whether there was a supervisor I could speak to. They replied, “Certainly, but we are very modern here. You can only speak to a supervisor by telephone.” They handed me a card with a phone number. It was six sixty-six. Then they pointed me toward something that looked to me sort of like an outhouse and told me it was a phone booth. Well, when I looked inside I discovered that you had to put a nickel in the phone to make it work. So I complained that I didn't have a nickel, and they said it was okay, that if I pounded on the phone, a nickel would fall into a tray and I could use that.

Well, it worked, and I dialed six sixty-six and an operator answered right away. She started talking, "You have reached the earthly residence of Satan. If you know your party's extension, please hang up and dial again. If you want to recommend someone for hell, we already know all about it. If you wish to speak to a supervisor, please stay on the line, but remember that the supervisors have all eternity to attend to business."

Well, I knew I really would be dead by the time that got me anywhere. I needed something more reliable than a miracle, but an inspiration didn't seem much more likely. So I went back to the roadblock where they had the rule book. I was pretty desperate, but I got an idea - maybe that was a miracle. I remembered that Dante Alighieri got out of hell alive. They still had the rule book out for me, so I looked up Dante Alighieri.

Now, I'm not allowed to tell you how I got out of hell, but I will tell you that I had to do something so good that I'd be too embarrassed to ever tell anyone what it was, even if I hadn't signed an agreement not to tell and put up my soul as collateral.

The end.

João had never used a telephone and couldn't have said he understood all that Artur said. Still, he doubted the propriety of the story. He wasn't sure it was appropriate to be so cavalier about Hell. On the other hand, he wasn't sure it was wrong, either. So he applauded the story but wasn't going to ask for another. Rather, Artur said it was João's turn to tell a tale.

“But I'm not a story teller.”

“It doesn't matter. When someone tells you a story, you have to tell one back. You want to see the rule book?”

“I don't even know any.”

“Then make one up.”

João thought for awhile before he said, “I guess I could tell one of my mother's jokes.”

“A joke? It can't be a one-liner. There has to be a story to it.” So João began.

Back home in Milagre de Maria, Senhor da Silva was tending his bar as usual when a stranger walked in. The stranger had a parrot on his shoulder and the parrot shouted out “cachaҫa!” And the stranger said, “Yes, we each want a shot of cachaҫa.” Well, Senhor da Silva had never seen the man before, so he asked to see his money before he poured the cachaҫa, but the man said, “I have no money, but I can show you a thing so wonderful it will be worth far more than the price of the cachaҫa.”

And Senhor da Silva said, “If it has anything to do with that parrot, I've met plenty of parrots who can talk.”

The man said, “I was not joking. For the price of the cachaҫa, we will show you a marvel.”

Senhor da Silva is no fool, so he said, “You'll have to show me this marvel, first. Then I'll decide whether it’s worth the price of two cachaças.”

Well, the stranger set the bird on the counter, and the bird sang – not squawking like a parrot, but with a gorgeous voice it sang.

Go bluebird, my companion, go!

Go and see my ungrateful love

Say that without her

The forest is no longer the forest!

Alas, fly bluebird,

Go and tell her, my companion, go!

Well, Senhor da Silva was impressed and poured two shots of cachaҫa. The stranger gulped his down, but the parrot, having only one beak to both hold the glass and swallow the cachaҫa, spilled most of his. So the stranger said they'd need another round, but Senhor da Silva is not easily swindled. “No,” he said, “I've heard what your bird can do. That's enough.”

Then the man pulled a frog out of his pocket and said, “You haven't seen what my frog can do. He's even more amazing than my parrot, but it will cost you three shots of cachaҫa”

Well, Senhor da Silva was curious. I think he was curious just as you would be. So he said, “Okay. Show me, but once again, I will be the judge of whether or not it's worth three shots of cachaҫa.”

So the stranger put the parrot back on his shoulder and set the frog on the counter. The frog sang with trills and fancy turns in a voice that would make the best singer in Brazil jealous.

For he's a jolly good fellow,

For he's a jolly good fellow,

For he's a jolly good fellow,

Which nobody can deny.

Senhor da Silva had never imagined a frog could sing. So even though the song was short, he served up the three shots of cachaҫa – of which the stranger drank two. The parrot did somewhat better with his. The frog disapproved of alcohol.

Senhor da Silva thought for a while about what he had seen and he said, “What would you sell that frog for?”

And the stranger replied, “I'm tired of the frog. I'll sell him to you for three bottles of cachaҫa, but he's worth a lot more than that, so don't try to bargain with me or I'll be out the door before you finish your first sentence.”

Senhor da Silva paid the stranger who promptly got up and started toward the door, but as he was about halfway there, Senhor da Silva shouted, “Why did you sell the frog so cheap. Anyone would have paid more.”

And as the stranger disappeared out the door, Senhor da Silva heard him say, “Oh, I can always get another frog. It's the parrot that's the ventriloquist.”

***

Catarina was a substantial town, many Milagre de Marias. As they passed through it, João thought he and Artur would go their separate ways, but when Artur failed to turn aside, João began to question him, “Where are you headed?”

“I think I'll stick with you for tonight. I can see my relatives later. I'll help you steal some onions in the morning. Maybe some other things. I know the town pretty well.”

João had never been taught to be wary of strangers, but he immediately saw Artur in a different light. Earlier, when he shared the food he had with Artur, the briefest thought had flitted through his mind. There were hungry people even worse off than he was. The thought left just enough residue to trip an alarm. João told himself it was ridiculous to think Artur wanted his rice, but there were other alarms – the sacrilegious use of Hell, his lack of interest in the relatives he traveled so far to see, and truthfully, his shabby appearance. The connections to trouble were all tenuous, even unjust, but there seemed to be too many of them. And João didn't want help stealing. He could imagine Artur somehow getting the goods while he got the punishment.

João felt a need to be free of Artur, so he forced himself to control his growing agitation and said, “I am going on. It has been a pleasure walking with you and good for me to walk as slowly as you do, but I must travel farther today.”

“But the sun is already setting. You won't get anywhere before dark.”

“Sometimes, I walk by moonlight. It is better to walk in the cool of the night. Tonight the moon will be rising well before midnight, and my father is telling me I must go on.”

“But there is nothing ahead of you. No place to stay. It's fifty miles to Taua, and there is nothing between here and there.”

“There won't be anything between here and there tomorrow, either.” And with that he stepped forward and held out his hand. When Artur took it with a firmness that implied he would hold João in place, anger replaced João's careful self-control. He jerked his hand back, turned abruptly away from Artur, and started off, ignoring his swollen feet, at a pace meant to emphasize how much Artur slowed him down.

Artur watched him walk away, not knowing what to do. He thought he'd been friends with the lad who had somehow attracted him even before they spoke.

***

For exactly the reasons Artur had given him, João did not go far. A barkeep suggested a pocket park for the night, and he went in search of it, thinking he would rest for a while and then try begging a meal.

As he walked, he passed a vendor who was slicing pieces of beef off a roast prepared in the Brazilian style (heavily salted, truly well-done on the outside, and returned to the fire with more salt after each slice). As always, when he passed anyone selling food, João's eyes stayed on the vendor's cart. He watched as the man's knife slid rapidly into the roast and, in that moment, he had a vivid hallucination. He saw the blade passing across his throat in Jucás. It was so real it panicked him, and he sprinted a hundred feet before he regained any control of himself. He stood motionless except for looking suddenly over his shoulder several times before he went on into the deepening darkness.

When he reached the park, it only offered a dead tree and a few wooden benches. He began to dread the possibility of Artur showing up. If Artur was not going to the family he claimed he had in Catarina, was this the place he would sleep?

Day 14 - Milagre de Maria...

“But Mother, if Miguel is gone, why can't I stay? Why do I have to get married?”

Larissa kept asking herself the same question. How could God insist that a mother who had just lost one child be required to send another away?

As usual, God kept his own counsel.

Day 15 – Barriguda...

The night was crawling with demons. Each time he awoke from a nightmare, he heard his father's voice as clearly as if the man were standing over him. He wanted the sound of his father's voice to be another dream, but he thought he must be awake. If he wasn't awake, how could he know the nightmare had been a dream? His father repeated every complaint he had ever made against João, and all of them together seemed not to add up to the stupidity of wasting a day walking with Artur.

The nightmares were bad enough, but hearing his father's voice seemed to be the herald of insanity. João berated himself for not having counted steps during the day. He'd thought about counting, but he couldn't count while he was talking to Artur.

***

A barely perceptible red glow suffused the air and slowly coalesced into rays that drilled up from the horizon into the dust. The first vendor arrived, but the few small piles of produce in his cart made the trip seem a waste of time for the donkey.

João wondered what it would be like to live in a family that could afford to buy what it needed in the market, and then he thought it wouldn’t be different from being able to steal what he needed in the market. The thought of what he was about to do made him feel prosperous.

When the time came, he did not pick the vendor who had a fifty-pound sack of onions as his prey. Instead, he picked a farmer who had a wider variety of vegetables to sell and was sometimes dealing with more than one customer. João saw two women looking at this produce from a short distance. He hurried in ahead of them and started his pitch for charity. As he hoped, the women arrived right behind him, and when the the man turned away from him, he backed up to the table and managed to get two onions into his bag, but again, it took both hands, and there was nothing casual about his movements.

He felt exposed and walked away holding back the impulse to run. His sense of urgency caused him to lose track of the number of steps he'd taken, but it didn't matter. Only the steps that took him forward mattered. Steps spent stealing might only bring on his father's wrath.

A figure was moving across the road that was his outlet from the market square. The figure seemed bent on heading him off, and João was not sure he felt relieved when he recognized Artur's gait. João stopped while Artur continued toward him saying, “You won't be able to get away with that many times.”

João turned away, but Artur took him by the arm, and before João could resist, turned him around so he was looking at João in profile. “What's the matter with you? You walked all day with me, yesterday, and didn't mind that I'm a cripple. We were almost friends, but then you turned on me. Are you embarrassed by me?”

“No, I'm not embarrassed by you. It's my problem, I've had a hard couple days. I don't want any more company. It's not your fault, and there's nothing you can do about it.” And with that, João pulled away and started on his day's journey.

Artur called after him, “Be more careful.”

Six steps later, João called back, “Thank you.” He knew the time he spent walking with Artur had been easier than the days before (or the days that were likely to come).

***

His day beyond Catarina was better than expected. There was a steady breeze all day so his sweat cooled him and didn't just sting his eyes. Wells were far apart but spaced regularly enough so that he was never seriously dehydrated. At one house, a kindly woman brought out a pair of rags, cut a hole in each for his big toe, and tied them around his ankles so they fit like spats to protect his feet from the sun.

By mid-afternoon, João had walked fifteen miles and had come to an abandoned farmstead with a working well and a bucket. He had time left in the day, but he was not going beyond this place he'd come to. It was almost as though the last resident had deliberately left it for travelers. Before he brought up the water for his thirst, he found the strength to scrub out the pail, first with sand and then with some of his rice. He didn't like the idea that someone might have bathed and washed his clothes in it.

The place looked as though it had been prosperous. There were outbuildings that might yet contain prizes for a traveler and a fence that seemed to have been meant to keep animals out of a large garden. João was surprised to find some machinery needed to make farina unmolested next to one of the outbuildings. Faintly, he could still detect the fetid smell of the cassava that had once been left to soak, preparing it for milling and the oven. He remembered the days when his family occasionally ate farina with goat's milk for breakfast. Walking through the abandoned garden, João saw bits of green showing through the bramble, but they were only the last remnants of weeds trying to claim their land back from the depredations of men.

As evening approached, he started a fire and, while the rice cooked, he took off his clothes and washed them in the bucket. Then he used his wet shirt to scrub his body. He didn't touch his feet or his face, they were too burned by the sun. His hands were badly burned, but he'd had enough of eating with dirty fingers, so he sloshed them back and forth through the water as vigorously as he dared.

As often happened when he was naked, he remembered a blond boy who used to live in Milagre de Maria. The boy's hair was almost as white as the hair of the albinos he'd seen, but it was fine and straight and looked exquisitely soft. It was through his memory of this boy’s hair that João tried to understand why people would want to touch someone they meant to ridicule.

***

There was tall, dead grass to sleep on. It contained annoying stiff, dry shoots, but it was better than the hard ground with its small pebbles that could never be swept away without sweeping new ones into their places. After about five hours of restlessness, he judged some beans he had left in his fire soft enough to eat. As he sat waiting for them to cool, light from a gruesome-looking half-moon set the colloidal sky aglow.

Somewhere in the distance he could see a row of tiny, dancing, yellow lights – most flickered into existence for only a moment, but a few withstood his exhausted stare. He knew he was looking at another field on fire, pumping smoke into the air in case the dust should start to settle.

An hour before the sun rose, he could have set out walking, but he had a plan for the well-bucket. The plan was too much to ask of himself, so he sat in a kind of stupor. But when the growing light seemed to put out the distant flames, he began. Feeling rightly sorry for himself, he whispered a swear word and started removing the thick, stiff, wire-handle from the well-bucket. Of course, it was even more difficult than he feared. He could have managed it easily with a pair of pliers but not with his bare hands. He cursed and gouged his hands repeatedly, and having it finally free, he was not done with frustration.

Not wanting to leave the well useless for the next traveler, he split the end of the well rope into two strands, intending to tie one to each side of the bucket. But the ends of the two strands wouldn't fit through the holes that had secured the wire. So he tried pulling a strand apart. The rope frayed, his anxiety erupted, and he barely stopped himself from throwing the bucket into the well. Knowing it was wrong, even sinful, he abandoned the bucket and turned to what interested him.

He passed the stiff wire alongside the string that held his bag of rice closed. And yes, it would help to hold the bag open – a mouth waiting for an onion. The bucket would get repaired – if need forced the next traveler to have the patience.

Walking with his head down, watching his feet, he never saw a small collection of houses fifty yards off the road, and he never knew the place where he'd stopped for the night had a name – Barriguda.

Day 15 - Milagre de Maria...

“Senior Silva says we can have drinking water, but that's all. He's already sharing water with the Salvadors and says that if the water gets any lower, we will have to be the first to stop using it. That won't do. We have to move. We will have to look for someplace we can live near the market, there are more wells around there.”

Larissa finally cried – not for the loss of her child, or out of nostalgia for the home she would be leaving. She cried because she knew God was not done with her for the sinful thoughts the priest had warned her against.

Day 16 – Taua...

When he reached ten thousand steps, he quit counting.

Sitio Campos and Barra were each so small he was unaware of being in a place with a name. Taua, however, was a town as large as Cedro or Acopiara.

He'd been on the road for sixteen days, walked two hundred miles, and was in bad shape having just covered twenty miles entirely on swollen feet in one day. Twenty miles of stumbling over the rags he wore like spats. Twenty miles and he was desperate for sleep. He decided he would go to the church and ask for a better place to sleep for just one night. He would have to face a priest, but he might get a meal, as well.

***

“When was your last confession?”

“Three weeks ago.”

“I can hear your confession, and then I will see what can be done to help you.”

João's anxiety showed itself in a voice both strident and frustrated, “I can't confess. I just want a hammock to sleep in. Or a pile of rags. I just don't want to sleep on the ground or on a bench. I can't do this, anymore. I can't sleep.”

“Why can't you confess?”

João stood and turned his back as if to leave, but then turned back.

“I'm a thief and I'm not repentant.”

Out on the street, he remembered the days when his father had asked the priest for help. It made him wonder whether it was right for him to spend so much time thinking of murdering his father. He should not give up on the idea of meeting Madalena, or even Isabeli, again someday.

Day 16 - Milagre de Maria...

The youngest Cardeiros weren't cold, hungry, or sleepy. So they wondered why there was crying. Their older siblings all silently pledged never to forget Miguel. But, one day when they were old, they argued over what his name had been.

Day 17 – Carrapateiras...

Sunrise found him sitting up with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, unable to sleep on the concrete bench in front of the church. His thoughts continued from the night before. He’d tried waiting until the vendors were closing up at night to begin begging for leftovers. He failed to get so much as a pleasant reply and was once more left in the dark with no fire to cook his own rice. He obviously needed a can he could carry some cooked rice in for nights like that. If he left the rice a little sticky, the can didn't even need a lid. He could also use a bottle for water, but it would require a stopper, and it would be another thing he would have to carry always and use rarely. He could postpone a decision about the bottle, but he was hungry and he was going to get a can out of somebody's trash heap that he could use to hold cooked rice.

He hated being both exhausted and inactive, waiting for something other than silence from the nearby houses. He knew there must be people awake and preparing for the day, but he did not want to aggravate some late sleeper. Eventually, someone cranked open the louvers that closed a window. He knew that was not a sign anyone inside was ready to have their gate rattled, but doing nothing was stoking his anxiety.

Unexpectedly, he found the gate unbarred, so he let himself through and began calling “Hello” and clapping his hands until he reached the front door. Something reminded him that he was a beggar and should be at the backdoor, but soon the slats in a window opened, and a pair of eyes looked out from between them. A moment later, the door opened and a woman, tall and thin, looked down on him. She stood, silently appraising him while her two daughters arrived and, standing behind her, began their own appraisals. João had an odd feeling as though, in this household, mornings had two discontinuous parts. The first, in the earliest stillness, was for activities that could be accomplished in silence. Then there must be a second time for preparing for the activities of the day. The women seemed still adapted to silence. Perhaps the time he spent under their gaze was not really so long, but João's discomfort increased steadily. When he had to speak, it seemed as though speaking caused an important silence to be broken and lost.

He introduced himself and asked for an empty can, explaining its purpose so he would not be offered the sardine can that dominated trash heaps in Brazil. When he finished speaking, there was a moment of paralysis until the younger child began hitting her mother with a doll made from corn husks. The woman turned to her older daughter and asked her to see what she could find in the trash and then wash it. The child, almost a woman, broke off her interest in the gorgeous boy underneath the dirty rags and turned to her errand.

Then the woman spoke to João, “You're up early.”

“I didn't sleep well last night. There was no point to trying to sleep any later. I'm sorry if I disturbed you too early.”

João heard the backdoor slam. The older girl was headed to a trash pile guarded by a vigil of vultures on a nearby roof.

“You're traveling?”

“Yes.”

“With your family?”

“Yes.”

“Where are you headed?”

“To the mountains.”

“Where in the mountains.”

“I'm not sure.”

“Do you do all the asking for your family?”

“Yes.”

“Because you're beautiful?”

“Because my father is a coward.”

When she handed him the empty can, he asked for a half-cup of rice, and after she poured that into his bag, she said “Wait, I'll be back in a second.” She returned with a bowl of farina soaking in milk that was only just beginning to sour. “This is just for you.” And the woman and her daughters stood looking at the beautiful boy while he ate standing on their veranda.

***

João passed through Carrapateiras before noon. It was a small village, but it adjoined a fazenda that João was never to forget. Like Senhor Sequeira's fazenda, it existed more for the gratification of the fazendeiro's ego than for the profit it generated. It harbored the most exotic creatures João had ever seen.

As he approached the house, the peacocks raised a ruckus that stopped him in his tracks. The birds were so beautiful that it would have been reasonable to think João was just standing stunned, admiring them, but the respectful distance he maintained told another story. Of course João knew he was bigger than they were, but what was the point to antagonizing all that aggression? The racket promptly brought a woman dressed as a housekeeper running. As she approached the birds, she began walking rapidly, firmly through the flock and reached João short of breath. He blurted out, “What are those things?!” And without waiting for an answer, he asked,  “Are they dangerous?” and “Do they come from Amazonia?” He eventually ended with “Can they talk like parrots?” and “Are they smart?”

“No, they are the dumbest things I have ever seen. They are only pretty.” And while concluding the whole flock wasn't worth half a parrot, João introduced himself.

The housekeeper took him by the hand and walked him briskly, determinedly through the peacocks, past the main house, and into a shed where, without consulting the fazendeiro, she fed him along with half-a-dozen employees.

At first, the beans-and-rice and the salad fully occupied João, but a few questions were asked, and soon he found himself the center of attention. For a while, João tried to steer the conversation onto parrots and peacocks. However, he was alone in that interest. The others at the table were interested in João for what he could tell them. Their own situation got them quickly past questioning whether João was fourteen. It didn't matter. He was someone who had walked two hundred miles and might have useful information.

The men at the table were the remains of a larger crew, most of whom had been let go because of the drought, and they were not sure how much longer they would be employed themselves. The work they were still being given was clearly make-work found for them because the fazendeiro didn’t want to keep firing men but also didn’t want to pay them for doing nothing. They earned enough to make them as well off as a small farmer, but most of them wanted their own land, anyway, and they wanted to know what João could tell them.

What he could tell them was as vague as his own understanding of the world, but they listened to him, and they asked questions and accepted vague answers. They all speculated about what João would find when he reached Maranhão. There was even brief talk of one of them going with him, but none of them thought he could give up the salary they were still receiving for what could be a wild goose chase. At one point or another, each of them asked João to stop on his way back home, and tell them what he learned.

João wished he could waste the whole afternoon with these men, but not only were they required to return to their work, the description he had given of his own task made it seem imperative for him to move on. When he finally turned onto the road, he walked a little faster with a sense of being someone who knew things.

For years after that day, whenever a conversation turned to parrots, João would ask, “Have you ever seen a peacock?” Of course, he made it clear that, all things considered, peacocks were no match for parrots.

Day 17 - Milagre de Maria...

“There will be no help from the church. They say we are not a Catholic family because the head of our household is not a Catholic. I'm not going to blame you, Joaquim. Dona Rafaela says they're not helping anyone. They're just using you as an excuse to torment us because you won't go to church.

“She also says there's supposed to be some help from President Vargas, but the Mayor says there's no such thing. She says there is, that there's rice and beans, but you have to bribe the Mayor's deputy.”

***

“When there is only seed left to eat, we should go to Fortaleza before we starve to death here.”

“Fortaleza! There's nothing there but thieves who would steal everything we have.”

“Which would be what?! It can't be worse than watching our children slowly die and not doing anything. Why don't you just throw the rest of them down that well. Then you wouldn't be bothered by any of them anymore!

Day 18 – Araca...

Araca was a small town just like any of the other small towns he passed, and as far as he could tell, populated by the same people. He arrived before noon and stopped in a bar filled with empty tables waiting to be set out in the street. There was a wooden case on the counter with a glass panel through which a few pastries filled with ground meat or cheese could be seen nourishing a cloud of flies. While the barkeep poured him a glass of water, João automatically evaluated the risk in stealing one of the pastries and, without giving serious thought to the question, decided it would be too difficult.

After he gulped down the water, he asked the barkeep, “What's the best way for my family to get to the mountains from here?” It was the question he had kept using because it seemed to keep him from having to explain his story, but it was the wrong question.

The barkeep was struck by the easy familiarity of this ragged, sunburned, but still handsome child and almost started to answer his question before saying, “There are a lot of ways to get to the mountains. Where in the mountains?”

“It doesn't matter.”

“Why does your family want to go there?”

“What's the easiest way to get to the mountains without going through Quiterianopolis?”

The barkeep knew the answer was evasive, but before he could decide how to respond, a man just entering the bar spoke up from behind João, “Where are you coming from?”

João replied, “Taua.”

“I have relatives in Bomsucesso. It is gorgeous up there. You should go.”

João surprised himself by how quickly he saw opportunity. “Bomsucesso! Are your relatives Cardeiras?”

“No. I don't know of any Cardeiras in Bomsucesso. Most of my people are named Silva.”

“Oh, that's a common name in Bomsucesso [as it is throughout Brazil], which ones are your people?”

The barkeep knew there was something wrong with this conversation, but it wasn't obvious to him just what it was, so he warned himself against sticking his nose into other people's business and went back to his modest accounting. By the time the conversation moved on to directions to Bomsucesso, João had already figured out that Baltazar was the most likely Silva in Bomsucesso to assist a friend of Carlos Silva of Araca. In some ways, João was maturing.

***

Reaching Araca had only brought João fifteen miles closer to wherever his journey might end, but those miles were enough to put the lie to his mother's promise that the walking would make him stronger. Facing another afternoon in the worst of the day's heat, João decided it was his turn to give himself the advice he kept getting. He would celebrate learning that he was only two days walk from the mountains by resting for an afternoon in preparation for the next day.

He wasn't in a bad mood. His physical exhaustion felt well-earned, the talk of his travels had played well with the workers on the fazenda, and he had cleverly extracted information from Carlos that could be useful when he reached Bomsucesso. The anxiety that had greeted him in the morning was hardly noticeable, and questions such as What would he do when he got to wherever he was going? were out of mind. He even set aside a decision he'd made outside of Jucás to spend his small sum of money.

Day 18 - Milagre de Maria...

“But Mama, I can't!”

“You must. The men in church who are looking for wives aren't looking for someone they have to feed. They're looking for someone to feed them.”

“Mama, you can't make me. Please.”

“He's the best man in ten Milagre de Maria's. Make that a hundred. He's kind. He's gentle. Quiet. Generous. He has a good farm and works hard.”

“His skin is grotesque. How could I touch him? Or let him touch me?”

“His skin can't take the sun. The sun has ruined it. But still, he works his farm. Inside his skin is a man who will make up for his appearance.”

“Mama! He's an albino!...

Day 19 – Cruz...

The road beyond Araca was bad. João thought he'd encountered desolation outside of Quitaiús, but this road... For most of the morning his thoughts were binary, switching between wondering why the untraveled road existed, and wondering whether he was on the wrong road. This road was like the other roads he traveled but plucked of any sign of human usage. Long before the drought, grass had grown in the road. Now, the dry grass left only two bare tracks fit to the wheels of a donkey cart, and as for its current usage, it looked like an archaeological artifact.

When he had walked ten or twelve miles, the sun was already almost overhead, and the landscape was so still even the air seemed baked into place. His shirt was soaked with sweat, and thirst was starting to drive his thoughts. The absence of the usual roads leading off to places too small to name brought back the memory of Artur's story about the road to Perdition. However, he did come to a track that could be called a crossroad. There he saw a faded, wooden sign that pointed up the crossroad to Cruz. Wondering what sort of place Cruz could be, he stopped and rested, leaning his back against the signpost. He was a little afraid of the afternoon. There could be all this heat with no water, and no more shade than the signpost provided.

He pondered. He could go back to Araca and confirm that he was on the right road, and possibly find out when he would come to water on another try up the same road. Turning back would be the safest thing to do, but it would waste a day, and it would not be easy - another five hours in even worse heat without water. Or, he could go on. There might be a freeholder just over the hill with water and knowledge, someone he could ask for directions. Or he could try walking down the side road to Cruz. Perhaps it would turn out to be nearby and a source of water.

He finally reached a decision that was made by the landscape. From the top of the last hill he crossed, he had seen a saw-toothed shadow in the far distance. He only knew what distant mountains looked like from photographs, but this shadow had to be his promised mountains. He decided to press on.

And in a hundred yards, he changed his mind. He was afraid.

Day 19 - Milagre de Maria

Butchering the cat Joaquim caught was a bloody mess. Then there was a row over who would go for water to clean up.

At dinner, he said it was cat meat, and one by one the children refused to eat it.

Day 20 - On the Road...

When he returned to the signpost, he had a container of water, an onion, and a can of cold rice and beans boiled slowly the previous night. The quart canning jar filled with water had come as a surprise. Afraid to steal a jar of tomatoes from a mercearia, he asked the owner for an empty one. He did so boldly, “Please, if you can give me a jar with a lid, I won't be compelled to steal one.” The lid had been hammered a little to get it off, but it was good enough.

As before, he sat with his back against the signpost. He opened his water and took three large swallows; he only meant to take two.

In a reverie, he thought about his options, the same options he thought about the day before. With no intention of turning off the road, he thought about the possibility of visiting Cruz. He thought, too, of turning back, but he thought of it only because it was in the reel of memories playing out in this reverie. He thought of the possibility that there was a freeholder with water and knowledge just over the next hill. And he thought, again, about how he could spend his money and murdering Madalena.

***

There was no freeholder, over the next hill. He imagined he was stationary, making progress by slowly pushing the world around under his feet. As night emerged from the horizonless dust, there was no point to building a fire or preparing food. He was hungry, but he was out of water for cooking rice. So he walked until there was just time to find some dead grass, to lie down in, before nightfall turned the dust-thickened air to tar.

Day 20 - Milagre de Maria...

Joaquim still had not found another place for them to live. Perhaps, it was impossible. At night, Larissa dampened rags for them to wipe their bodies, but it didn't remove the ancient, human odor. The smell wasn't a novelty in her family, so she accommodated to the new strength of it, but she did not accommodate to the knowledge that she no longer wanted to touch her own children.

Her next daughter after Lorena was Alice. Alice volunteered to help with the task of carrying water each morning, but her help only consisted of staying cheerful while they walked and complained about men. Oftentimes, when their chatter lapsed into silence, one or the other would mention João.

“Maybe, he's walking along a road just like we are.”

“You mean carrying a box of water on his head?”

And instead of laughter, the remark brought silence. Each feared João was dead and worried about what the other might be thinking. So they resumed their constant complaining about the revolting dust that saturated the air – dust that did not match the priest's description of a fiery hell and made them wonder whether the priest really knew much about hell.

Day 22 - On the Road...

Nothing was helping him recover from the worst two days of his life. He knew he could turn back and rest for still another day and sleep in a bed. It was not even an hour's walk back to Dona Júlia's home, but there was the price of embarrassment to pay.

He still felt sorry for Dona Júlia. He'd never seen anyone starve to death, but when she said she was afraid of dying, he hadn't thought she was exaggerating. Her fears for her two children had stopped João from thinking of himself.

Her husband had gone to Fortaleza to try to earn money to save their isolated farm. A decent man, he even lived on the street as though he were homeless so he could send everything he earned back to her. But it was Brazil. His friends were no more trustworthy than strangers. She knew at least some of the money reached a woman in Araca who bought a little food and sent it with anyone she could find who would be passing up the road to Bomsucesso. Not enough reached Dona Júlia to keep her children alive.

She asked João to write a letter for her – to someone she knew in Fortaleza who she imagined could find her husband. João couldn't write, but he gave her his sack of beans and half his rice. He knew how to replace them. He told her to take her children to Araca and steal in the market, and he demonstrated how he did it. She was afraid she didn't have the strength to make it to Araca. João shared her fear.

Day 22 - Milagre de Maria...

“You're our mother, can't you do something?” And Larissa thought, When we are down to the seed for next year's crop, if the drought still holds, we can eat the seed and then starve. But if the rain has returned, we can plant the seed and starve that much sooner.

Day 23 – Bomsucesso...

The moon rose as God had promised, but João still didn't set out until the sky began to pale in anticipation of the dawn. The day seemed fated to be another disaster. He set out angry at his slow progress - specifically angry at his swollen feet and at all the people who seemed to grasp at him to slow him down.

He still wondered why a woman in that condition would crawl into bed with him when he was naked. When he recoiled she had only told him the beans were ready. He was angry at the same time he felt sorry for her with those children. He didn't think it was Dona Júlia who angered him, he was afraid he was angry at God.

The road was almost always uphill. It was tiring and if he could have sweat any harder, the climb would have made him do so. The land was dotted with struggling remnants of a time when it was green. Clumps of stunted bushes stood up from the dry grass. Leaves as new as the last spring competed with older growth for whatever the roots could provide. There were scattered trees João knew, if not by name, well enough to know it was the right time of year for the savanna to bloom. From the higher ground, he looked backward and saw miles of brilliantly colored trees all fabricated from memory.

During the afternoon, the road began to follow a creek bed, and soon passing through a canyon raised the temperature to something João had never experienced. Attempts at resting only seemed to increase the time he would have to spend in this inferno, but there came a time when his fatigue still forced him to stop walking. As he sat in a small puddle of mottled shade, he developed cramps in both feet that only gave way to cramps in his legs.

At the end of an unbroken mile of climbing upward, away from the creek bed, he suddenly realized he was walking in a daze, passing a collection of half-a-dozen houses set close beside the road. He walked back to the shady side of the nearest house and sat down.

***

When he opened his eyes, a man and two women stood over him, and behind them a quiet group of children stood as though precipitated out of their usual chaos. The man was tall, bearded, darkly tanned, and peculiarly weathered - weathered like a pock-marked rock not like a piece of leather. The women were obviously mother and daughter, both with Nubian skin that glistened along curving lines turning them into negative-image sketches. The man was asking João whether he was all right.

“I'll be okay if you will give me permission to use your well.” The man responded by telling the oldest boy behind him to fetch a cup of water from the crock, and when he was satisfied that João really was okay, his gestures sent the Negro women off for a hammock. When it was strung, the man spoke again saying simply “Rest yourself” before walking off.

The older of the two women helped João to stand by grasping his forearms. When he was settled in the hammock, she began stroking his cheek with the backs of her fingers. Momentarily, the younger woman began to imitate her mother, silently stroking the opposite cheek. The paucity of words in this place was intimidating. He reached up, as calmly as he could manage, and grasped their wrists. He moved their hands away, but the feel of their skin made him hesitate. It had a sensuous pliability he had never felt in anyone's skin.

***

João awoke to a scene lit in red by a sun setting out of sight on the other side of the mountains. He thought about the Negro women who had been the last people he saw before falling asleep. He had not seen many such people while growing up in Milagre de Maria. The women were kind, and he thought living so near the mountains might make people kind. He thought Bomsucesso would be a good place to live, but of course, it was a hopeless idea. The drought was as present in this place as in Milagre de Maria. The soil was thin and poor. But he liked the place because it was wild and lonely, and it was a place that would change people. It wasn't the first time he'd met people who helped him, but these people... Their silence made their kindness different.

He was alone, but rolling out of the hammock and walking around the corner of the house, he heard children's voices. He was tired and felt peaceful, and it felt easier to go to see where the voices were coming from than to go on walking.

Over a small rise, he found a dozen adults and the familiar children at work hauling water out of a well for a garden. They were farming a dried up mud flat, the remains of a dried up pond. There was no obvious dried up stream that once fed the pond. It looked more as though the dust in the air had settled out onto low ground where it was sintered into place by the heat. The man was resting from his turn at the winch and merely looked up as João spoke to him.

João did his best to be polite. He introduced himself and apologized for not showing more courtesy when he arrived. He waited for the man to say he understood that João was exhausted. He at least expected the man to introduce himself. When there was no response, João said, “I think I'm lost.”

“If you are here, then yes, you are likely lost. How can we help?”

“I am trying to get to Bomsucesso, but I was so tired I must not have noticed when I took the wrong road. Can you tell me how to get back on the right road?”

“Son, you are in Bomsucesso,” and each began waiting to hear what the other would say next. During the silence, the two Negro women fell into place a step behind the man.

Eventually, João said, “How do I get over the mountains?”

“From here? There is a road over the mountains from Quiterianopolis.” And that is when João discovered that “How do I get to the mountains?” had been the wrong question. It's not the same as “How do I get over the mountains?”

After a while, João asked whether the man's surname was Silva.

“Yes.”

“You wouldn't be Baltazar Silva, would you?”

“Baltazar? Baltazar Silva has been dead, I'm not sure, four or five years.”

The older Negro woman shook her head in a way that seemed to mean it was more than five years.

“How do you know about Baltazar Silva?”

“A man in Araca told me about him. I think his name was Carlos.”

“Carlos? Did Carlos send you here?”

“Yes.”

“I'll be damned. The fool hasn't forgotten.”

The man finally introduced himself, saying his name was Roberto, Senhor Roberto if João liked, and then went on. “You must be hungry. And if Carlos got you up here, perhaps we owe you a meal. Well, I suppose we'd do that for a lost child, anyway. It’s not long until we stop for this day and take our supper. You may eat with my family. Then you can explain to me what a boy is doing lost in these mountains, and then we can discuss going over the mountains.”

“I'm older than I look.”

“Ah, perhaps you are an elf. We will find out what you know of elfdom after supper,” and with that he gestured to the two Negro women sending them silently away. Roberto stood up and turned abruptly toward the well, leaving João feeling dismissed.

In the brief time between dinner and darkness, João asked Roberto how he could get across the mountains without passing through Quiterianopolis. He had to ask even though he knew there would be questions, and he would have to explain his father.

***

"So what makes you think Quiterianopolis is a big city?"

"I've been hearing that I have to go through there almost since my first day on the road. To hear about it so far away, it must be big city."

"It's just a village, it just happens to be on the way over the mountains."

João was embarrassed and angry that it was Roberto who had embarrassed him.

That night, João lay in the hammock wondering about the Negro women. He thought the pleasant way they treated him might be because they were Negro. He thought it more likely that Roberto knew how to train women to defer to men. He thought he should ask Roberto how he did that, but when he tried to think of how he would put the question, there always seemed to be something wrong, something slightly offensive. He couldn't think of the right way to ask. The women were so silent, maybe they didn't speak Portuguese, but he thought it more likely that Roberto had taught them never to speak.

He went to sleep remembering the feel of the Negros' skin and trying to think of a way in which he could touch the younger woman without seeming rude. He left with that problem in his head for the rest of his life.

Day 23 - Milagre de Maria...

They were married in the church. The albino arranged it. The priest scowled at Joaquim, whom he regarded as a fallen Catholic, and shortened every part of the service. He knew how much the bride’s father would pay him for his services – not even gratitude.

The government did not accord any legal standing to church weddings. To have a wedding recognized by the state, it was necessary to pay for a document. Of course, it is the same in wealthy countries, but no one notices the cost of the document. In rural Brazil, the people spoke of having two weddings – religious and civil. The poor didn't pay for the latter – well, not until the state refused a widow her social security.

Day 24 – Roberto...

The road to Quiterianopolis took him back down the mountain, and the walking soon became easy. However, his first night out from Bomsucesso was the first of a series of bad nights – all in some way the result of his own impatience and pointless urge to make up for lost time.

Each night, as he lay on the ground hungry and sleepless, he sought out memory of Roberto's soothing voice. He still wondered how that tranquil man could tame women. He'd spent time trying to think of a way to ask the question and then didn't get the asking  done. Blaming himself, he decided training was probably done with anger first and the tranquil voice after. He started to think about what it would take to tame Madalena instead of killing her, but taming her wasn’t  punishment, and punishment was what she deserved. Perhaps, Isabeli could be trained.

Day 24 - Milagre de Maria...

Joaquim found them a place near enough to the market – the well they could use was only forty yards away. Seen from a distance, the new house looked like the one they were leaving behind, but as they approached, Larissa's complaints accelerated into meaningless gabble. It was not the house she had cared for. She wept. She wept until the bucket of water arrived and with it a neighbor's donation of the remains of a bar of soap. Then she set to work on cleaning the new house as well as she could.

Day 28 - Barra Velha...

Beyond Barra Velha, the road, once again, began a winding ascent among low mountains. Far off to the east, João could see the higher peaks that had been hidden from him in Bomsucesso. The road was well traveled and he feared it must lead to a big city, but people assured him there was no city before Teresina, two hundred miles away.

Passing through a village, he found a 10,000 réis coin lying on the ground. It reminded him of his intention to spend the money his parents had given him. He held the coin in his hands for a long time. It was free money, and he did not want to join it to his parents' money. He wanted to spend it frivolously.

Day 28 - Milagre de Maria...

“She's run away.”

“Lorena?”

“Of course, who else?!”

“I'm the head of this family, I told you I was the one to choose her husband!”

***

“But what's she going to do?”

“She's going to get hungry, come home, and we'll take her back to the albino. No, we'll tell the albino to come and get her.”

Day 30 - Assunção do Piaui...

After two more days of walking uphill, he came to the top of a long rise and looked back down the road at the plain he had spent a month crossing. The air he looked through hid the details of the landscape below and totally obscured the horizon. A traveler coming from the opposite direction might have thought he was looking down on the plains of Hell, but João looked down on both grandeur and escape.

The greater peaks of the Serra da Ibiapaba were too far away to be seen in any detail, but they had a color. They were a blue-grey haze rolled up against the brown haze he was used to. They were not chlorophyll green, but they were not the color of drought, either.

Three hours later, the road started downhill, and the first curve revealed the plain on the other side of the mountains. He was elated, triumphant! The mountains had always seemed so far away that reaching them hadn't seemed real until he saw the other side. In a state approaching joy, he turned down a ride in a cart. He decided not to ride because indulging an entirely pointless whimsy was the only way he could think of to celebrate.

Then a thought came to him just in time to temper his mania. Passing through Barra Velha, João had learned that the next town of any size was Assunção do Piaui. Why hadn't he thought about the name before? Had he somehow wandered into the State of Piaui instead of Maranhão?

When Senhor Gustavo stopped, João leaped into his cart, urgently talked through the polite introductions, and blurted out a few bits of his story almost without concern for the questions he would get. Then he released his question, “So what state am I in? Maranhão?”

“No, you’re in Piaui.”

“How did that happen? Did I cross the wrong mountains?”

“If you cross the Serra da Ibiapaba from Ceará, you wind up in Piaui, and I don't think there are any other mountains you could have crossed.”

“My father said Maranhão would be on the other side of the mountains.”

“Well, yes, it is on the other side of the mountains from Ceará, but you have to cross Piaui first.”

At last, embarrassment caught up with João, and Senhor Gustavo quickly reinforced it. “You really don't know much about this country, do you?” And more kindly, “I don't know much about Maranhão, but it would be a better place for your family than Ceará. I have no idea why anyone tries to live there in the first place. This is not the first drought you've suffered.”

João took some time to think about what he needed to know, but for as long as it took the donkey to take him to Assunção do Piaui, he thought of only two questions.

“Is there land for squatters in Piaui?”

“Land for squatters? Is that what you're looking for?”

“Yes.”

“I have no idea” and finally the urgency in this child's voice reached Senhor Gustavo's heart.

“Well, there might be, but people like you are not welcome. Your family will suffer. You can't squat without some latifundiário claiming he owns the land. Pretty often they don't go to court to push squatters off. They just do it.

“You said you were headed to Maranhão. It might be better if you kept that destination. Vargas's party controls the government there, so maybe the latifundiários aren't quite so aggressive.”

João had no idea what Vargas's party was or what it had to do with the latifundiários. Senhor Gustavo did seem to be the sort of kindly stranger his parents had said he should ask for advice, but his experience with travel only recommended skepticism.

“How far is it?”

“Teresina is on the border. That's maybe two hundred miles, but you will have to go still farther.”

“I have five months.” But João had already lost track of how much time had passed. He counted the number of towns on the list that would show him the way back home and estimated fairly accurately that he still had four months, but he thought he had better start counting the days.

Half an hour later, Senhor Gustavo began speaking again. “Five or six days walk beyond Teresina there is a town called Codó. Some of my wife’s family live there. Maybe, it's too big for you, but there are villages around there. I have no idea whether you should go there, but that's where I'd go.”

“Can you tell me the names of some of your wife’s family?”

“I'm not sure I should be sending you to Codó. I am sure I should not be sending you to my in-laws.”

Senhor Gustavo’s advice was not definite enough to make João shout housanas, but he began to feel the sense of relief that would come if he had a destination, and the first hint of that relief made Codó his destination.

***

As always, the onions and a few wrinkled potatoes were in the front of the greengrocer's, but there were tomatoes in unusual abundance in the back, and they were bigger and healthier looking than could be expected. Unfortunately, Assunção do Piaui was not busy enough that day to provide the proprietor with frequent distractions. Moreover, João knew ragged boys a person could smell as they walked into the shop were watched.

The proprietor sat on a low chair behind the checkout counter. His eyes peered over the counter following João as he passed in the street. João hesitated. He wanted another look at the place, but he knew better than to make himself conspicuous by inspecting the greengrocer's more than once.

He felt Senhor Fonesca urging him on.

The shop was just one large room with vegetable bins against each wall and a square island of bins in the center. There was no aisle to hide in. If he just outran the proprietor, this theft would not give him the sense of competence some of the others had, but it would give him a tomato and wasn't that the point? Still, he was unsure what the new risks would be.

As he walked slowly, hesitating, a woman began crossing the street toward the greengrocer's. If he were to steal a tomato, this was the moment.

He carried his bag in his hand and stopped as he walked past the tomatoes. As the woman stepped up onto the curb, the proprietor turned toward her, and in that instant, João turned toward the tomatoes, shoved one into his bag, and started briskly toward the door.

As he picked up his pace walking past the cash drawer, João found himself surrounded by two moderately obese, middle aged, strongly motivated proprietors. The distance from the dress shop next door to the greengrocer's had not been great.

After a scuffle of no more than four seconds, João was in a full-Nelson, bent over the counter with a proprietor shouting, “I got him! I got the thief! Get the police! Get the police! Lucca, get the police! I got the thief!” João struggled, but if the proprietor's hold was not, by itself, enough to control him, the head-banging he got was enough to reduce his struggling. There was a moment when he thought he might escape, but the full-Nelson of the proprietor of the dress shop was handed over to the greengrocer, becoming a half-Nelson which was a lot more painful even if less constraining.

It was a long wait for the Policia Civil, and as the wait lengthened, the crowd of gawkers grew. The greengrocer finally released João when it was clear to everyone that, if he tried to run, the crowd would make him sorry.

During the wait, the arrival of each new gawker set off a round of shouting. João lost track of the number of crimes he was accused of. When two officers finally arrived, the police seemed uninterested in either his accusers' claims, or in João's protests. They thought a list of their own was the necessary and sufficient list of recent thefts in Assunção do Piaui.

***

They stopped within sight of the town, and the two officers got out of the car. One of them opened a back door and asked João to do them the favor of stepping out of the car. Knowing what was coming, João complied. The first blow was only a hard slap to the side of his head that started his ears ringing. He appeared to be only a child, and he was to get only a child's beating. The second blow was coordinated with a trip and a shove that sent him down on his back with no way to break his fall. A kick into the ground next to his head sent dirt into his face, and then the beating began.

When it was over, the child's beating had been worse than anything his father had ever done. One of the officers held out his hand to help João get up. Movement hurt. As the pain receded, João had a wry thought that his father, in his wisdom, had prepared him for this beating, and then the anger finally ignited – at his father for sending him on this task, and at the police for the injustice of the beating. Uncontrollably, João lashed out at them with words he had only heard, never used.

“You assholes. You incompetent assholes. I just got to your damn town. I can't have stolen all your crap, but I can take your damn beating. My father taught me how...” The outburst was cut off by a punch in the face from a hand holding a pistol. He collapsed and, when he could hear a voice telling him to get up and get in the car, he did.

João saw the judge within an hour of being beaten. The judge held court in a room that was barely big enough for the purpose, poorly lit by a single window, and dusty - not just in the corners but in a way that meant infrequent use. The judge sat in a wicker office chair behind a desk that was missing the piles of yellowing legal-papers the room seemed to call for. In addition to the two officers, the judge and João, there were present: five proprietors of various businesses, and the mayor. Behind them were several citizens who came more out of interest in what sort of beating João may have received than in the judge's decision. The officers showed no sign of discomfort in court over João's swollen face and difficulty moving.

The judge held a notepad in his lap and began recording the proceedings in longhand. This involved frequent orders to stop talking while the judge caught up. However, not far into the police officer's reading of a list of recent thefts, the judge put down his pen and did not pick it up again. It was a fountain pen, and it was not clear whether he had run out of ink or out of patience.

João had little understanding of what was happening and did not have to be told to wait for his turn to speak. He was afraid to speak. He was never asked whether he was innocent or guilty, the police just told how he was caught red-handed and held him to be obviously responsible for a recent rash of petty thefts. They pointed out that they would not have come to court over someone who had done nothing more than steal a tomato.

When the judge asked João what he had to say for himself, João was paralyzed. He had no expectation that he would be given any opportunity to defend himself. He was still unaware of the magical virtue of his child’s face and translucent skin.

The judge was unexpectedly patient while João composed himself. When he finally began, he inadvertently demonstrated some wisdom. Skipping the part about stealing the tomato, he began explaining how he could not have been responsible for that whole list of crimes. What he told about his journey was enough to make the judge decide some skeptical sympathy was warranted.

“How long have you been on the road?”

“I'm not sure. Maybe a month.”

“That seems like slow progress for a boy who says he's fourteen.”

“It's been hard. My feet are always swollen, and I went the wrong way sometimes. A doctor in Umarizeira said I'm malnourished, and that's why I'm small and my feet are swollen. He told me that I would have to steal better food to be able to get to Maranhão.”

“He said you would have to get better food.” There was some emphasis on the word “get.”

“Sir, he did say steal. He knew I was begging rice, but I could not beg much else. I guess, when I think about it, the food people have given me on the road is sometimes better than what I got at home before I left. I hoped my feet would stop swelling because someone gave me some sandals, but I still can't wear them. I don't know why I keep carrying them.” He turned and lifted them up so they could be seen by everyone. “My food is all ruined now, because they broke a jar in my bag that I used to carry water.”

The judge wanted to be patient listening to João, but not as much as he wanted to finish up.  “Has anyone in here seen this boy in town before today?”

There was no response, and after a moment of silence, “Did you steal the tomato?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What else have you stolen?”

“Nothing since I left Barra Velha. I stole an onion and a box a matches, there.”

“I see the crowd that captured you has already provided some punishment. I further sentence you to one day in jail. I also direct the Policia Civil to provide you with an opportunity to bathe before you are inflicted on any other prisoners. They will also provide decent meals and something for carrying water. Oh, and they will provide you with half-a-kilogram of rice. Make it brown rice if you can. There are vitamins in brown rice.

“As for your future conduct, I understand that life is difficult, especially now for people in Ceará. It may be easier for you to beg here, where food is more plentiful than where you have been. However, if you cannot beg anything but rice, you must offer to work for the other things you need. Surely, there are people who can provide you with enough work to earn an onion. Your five months allows you some time along the way to work. It would be hard to convince me that working your way along was not your parents' intention. If you cannot find work, you must turn to the church for help. It is my truest hope that you know in your heart that stealing is a sin, and that you will let your heart guide you in the future. If not, I hope you have learned something from the beating the townspeople have given you, and that you will let fear guide you in the future. I am telling you the truth when I tell you that you can earn your way along, and that God will help you on earth and have a place for you in heaven if you do.

“God bless you and good fortune to your family. Your parents should be proud of you.”

Day 30 - Milagre de Maria...

“No one I know has seen her. I'm not sure she's still in the village.”

“When she's hungry enough, she'll be back. She might have begged some food from someone, but she won't be able to keep that up, and what else can she do?”

“What else is exactly the possibility I am afraid of.”

Day 31 – Assunção...

He spent the night alone in the jail. The door to his cell was open, but the only reason he had for thinking of leaving was to escape from nightmares in which he was being chased, sometimes by the police and others by Diogo. In his dream, when he felt Diogo nearby, he was ready to turn himself in to the police, but then he couldn't find them. He awoke before dawn with intense anxiety. For once, he knew its cause. He needed to get on with his decision to spend his money - he hadn’t forgotten Madalena.

A good long while after sunrise, a policeman appeared with a bowl of cold rice and beans left from the previous night's slightly warm supper. The officer took João's bag out of a cupboard, dumped everything out of it, and turned it inside out to check for broken glass. He stuck João's cup and tin can back in along with a small bag of white rice. It was nowhere near half-a-kilogram, but there was also a small bag of black beans. He finally added an empty, half-liter beer bottle of a kind that carried a stopper that could be flipped in and out by means of a wire basket. João noted that the black beans would take longer to cook than the beans he'd been stealing, and the bottle would be awkward to fill from a bucket, but it was better treatment than he'd expected.

The policeman handed him his bag and spoke for the first time. “The bottle is from my own collection. Now get out, and we do not want to see you in Assunção again.”

Day 31 - Milagre de Maria...

Larissa was desperate, afraid her daughter was lost, not knowing where they’d gone. Perhaps, she thought, Lorena is hanging around our old house, and she began walking back to the old house each day to look for any sign of Lorena.

Day 34 - São Miguel do Tapuio...

There were three nights between the Assunção do Piaui jail and São Miguel do Tapuio. Lying on his back on the ground, sleep was always full of restless awakenings, but each night until the gibbous moon rose, the clear night sky was animated as though time itself was twinkling. João knew the Southern Cross, and each time his eyes swept across the sky, the name passed through his mind. He wanted the repetitive naming to stop, but it was a small tax on his release from suppurating darkness. The names of towns he recited seemed almost like the names of stars: Quitaiús, Sitio Cacimba, Cedro, Rendinha, José de Alencar, Umarizeira, Jucás, Acopiara, Trussu, Catarina, Taua, Araca, Quiterianopolis, Barra Velha, Assunção do Piaui.

The recitation brought on sleep, but after the beatings, the scintillating darkness was full of nightmares. João stopped looking forward to sleep. There were things in darkness worse than mere nightmares. Several times he awoke thinking he could see a shape standing over him. Each time, it began as a shape so vague that he didn't know whether something was really there but, as he stared, it became more clearly the shape of his father. That presence kept João paralyzed until he forced himself to reach out. Of course, there was nothing to touch.

He'd known all along the shape wasn’t his father, but among the phantasmagoria of beliefs in his world, there were many evils that could stand over him as shadows, or worse, inhabit his mind. And he was too exhausted and sleep-deprived to fight against them.

***

As he walked, he sometimes thought about what the judge had told him. But he knew that trying to beg an onion would only make it impossible for him to steal the same onion. As for offering to work, having five months did not mean he should use five months. Every day he spent traveling away from home increased the risk his family would be gone when he returned. So he was committed to stealing, but his clothes were in tatters and street urchins were closely watched. When he angrily blamed his troubles in Assunção do Piaui on his clothes, a cautious voice within made him promise to stop at a church and ask what clothes they could give him.

***

He reached São Miguel do Tapuio early in the day. He walked through the village, slowly, with an eye out for what the place might offer. There was nothing of any particular use to him, but he came to a bridge, and below the bridge flowed a river. The water was colored brown by tannin acquired from the river's close association with living trees, but it was as clear as a cup of tea.

Day 34 - Milagre de Maria...

“They're sick!”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“The whole Alves family! Where we get our water! They're all sick!”

“And so?”

“What if it's the water?”

“What makes you think it's the water?”

“I don't know it's the water, but it could be. We need to get our water someplace else.”

“It's probably just some bad meat.”

“What makes you think they have any meat?”

“What makes you think it's the water?”

“Things get in the water. Remember what happened in Pombal. Thirty people died. They said it was the water.”

“They said! They said! The Alves family is not thirty people. It's not a town.”

“It still could be the water. We need to find a different well.

Day 38 - Alto Longá...

Reaching Alto Longá was four days of misery not easily distinguished from any other four days of misery. Still, João was in good spirits. He had crossed the Rio Gameleira flowing as though drought was a fable told to give children nightmares.

The streets of the town seemed to have reached a small lake and then recoiled from it. The water was stagnant and smelly, but for João the lake was memorable even if it was not a place for a bath. To sleep for a night beside a lake, to watch long-legged birds demonstrate their cumbersome flight, to listen to the frogs that made invisible lumps in the green goo, this could restore the unremarked joy he had once found in living close to the earth.

***

He had not given up his hope that street vendors closing up for the night would share unsold food with a beggar, but hope was always a foreign currency for João. He walked out of town hungry with only a can of cold rice and beans in his future. But in sight of his no longer inspiring lake, he passed a woman tending her brazier under the last street light. His anxiety was boiling away, and the effort needed to overcome it and speak politely to the woman seemed almost more than the possibility of getting a meal was worth.

The woman watched him pass and found herself vaguely interested in the boy’s obvious indecision. When he returned, she found his voice beautiful in spite of its pleading whine, but she did not immediately commit herself. With a motherly gesture, she took off João's hat to remove the shadows that hid his face and discovered that the voice was only a device for drawing her to the beautiful child. She held onto his cap - as though that would hold him in place and keep him from changing directly into a sublime vapor swirled into the wind. She was nowhere near sure what instinct was awakened in her. When her rational mind took charge, she decided he was just a beautiful boy she wished was ten years older. So she gave him the rice and beans, and a little salad, and was annoyed when a customer showed up and kept chatting away while the boy finished his meal and took his polite leave of her.

Day 38 - Milagre de Maria...

“I carry water to them, but I just leave it by their door. I'm afraid to go in. Dona Helena is too sick to look after the children. I don't know what's happening inside. You have to find us a new well.”

“If the well was the problem, we'd all be sick, too.”

Day 41 – Altos...

As he walked, an evil sun seemed to try to work its way underneath his painfully sunburned skin.

The road from Alto Longá on toward Teresina changed. He felt the cat’s dragging him toward an odious place. He considered following his father's order to turn away from the big city, but there was that contradiction in his father's advice. Hadn't he also said, “Trust God. Ask anyone who is kind for advice,” and hadn't kindly people told him to pass through Teresina?

The road was no longer a track that connected scattered villages with their tiny mercearias selling a few bare necessities. There were no villages and no small farms. Teresina was the capitol of the State of Piaui and a city beyond the imaginings of an uneducated, rural boy from Ceará. Teresina had long since vacuumed up all the commerce for many miles in every direction and with it the small villages that served small farms. The road lay between great fazendas with many square miles of pasture used to raise the beef that remains the center-piece of the urban diet.

This change in the economy reduced the number of donkey carts on the road, and made larger, horse-drawn wagons more common. At intervals of a few miles, the road was blocked by livestock being herded from one pasture to another or to a rail yard and sudden death.

***

It was Sunday when João reached Altos. There was no point to looking for an open mercearia where he could spend his bit of money on the purchase his nightly fears still kept demanding. Of course, there were bars, and he interrupted two drinkers to confirm that he was on the road to Teresina. When he asked for the name of the next town of any size, they looked at one another, looked back at João, and almost spoke in unison, “Teresina.” He was within two days of the city, and he was going to defy his father. If his father disapproved, too bad for his father.

Day 41 - Milagre de Maria...

The Alves' house was among the largest in Milagre de Maria, but it was in disrepair. The mud-smeared walls had once been brightly painted stucco, but no more. Where the stucco was not fallen to the ground, the paint had faded until it was just more dirt. As Larissa limped toward the house under the weight of a bucket of water, she saw two small children outside sitting in the dirt. Both were picking up small handfuls of pebbles and throwing them back where they found them.

The front door was partly open, allowing the stench of liquid feces to reach the three steps up to the veranda.

Day 43 – Teresina...

The asphalt road ran for miles straight across a plane that some geological force had tipped upward toward the hills surrounding the city. Once João had rounded the last corner before the straight-a-way, he could see a heat-roiled blotch in the valley below from which a few tall structures emerged marking the center of a city. A puddle that looked like a puddle of water preceded João down the road, but of course, it was a puddle of hot air rising from the black asphalt. João walked slowly, ever downward into still hotter air, ever thinking of the mirage as something ahead of him rather than as something boiling up around him.

The road was crowded with donkey carts, wagons, a few bicycles, a few pedestrians like himself, even a couple of motorcycles, and through this crowd came the trucks – huge vehicles driven at speeds he could not put words to by men who understood that their only responsibility to safety consisted of continuously sounding a terrifying horn. João walked uneasily by the side of the road and did nothing that would suggest to anyone that he wished to ride – not even in a donkey cart which obviously could not escape from the path of a truck.

There was one distraction from the heat and the fearful confusion, one which even broke up his effort to count his first ten thousand steps. The trees in Ceará that only bloomed in João's memory were blooming here. Looking over the valley, it was marbled with thickets of Pão d'Arcos trees, and they were in bloom – dense, thirty-foot-tall mounds of brilliant yellow, purple, or pink flowers. It looked as though the land was fracturing all over and the stars of Heaven, itself, were spilling up out of the fissures.

***

Once inside the city, João felt like the child he appeared to be - out of his depth, lost in an utterly foreign place. Following the advice of an unsympathetic stranger, he found himself in a rail yard where the lights tormented his sleep and made him afraid to escape into the impenetrable darkness beyond the lights.

He spent most of the night drifting near consciousness, and whether he was angry at his father, or the other way around, depended only on whether he was closer to wakefulness or sleep. His father’s voice did not reach him as something imagined - it sounded too real. In a string of threats and oaths, the man didn’t bother to shout the cause of his anger. João knew: Teresina was the strike-anywhere match.

At times, his father's voice came from the mouth of Diogo.

When he was closest to full consciousness, João knew Madalena had followed him all the way from Milagre de Maria. He had to murder her.

The city offered one compensation for the hundred sources of light that vexed his sleep. They also kept any vague shapes from standing over him and then silently disappearing as he reached out to touch them.

Day 43 - Milagre de Maria...

The front door was still open, and two small children still sat in the dirt picking up pebbles and throwing them down again. This time they complained of hunger. So, after making her hopeless pilgrimage home in search of Lorena, Larissa returned with two small balls of rice.

***

“I know we can't take them in.”

“It's the bloody flux.”

“Don't say that! You don't know it's the bloody flux!”

“Nicholas has a stomach ache.”

Day 44 – Teresina...

João awoke with raging anxiety and tinnitus that made him want to claw the cicada out of his inner ear. The only thing he could say for daylight was that he was free of the outright paranoia of believing someone had followed him all the way from Milagre de Maria. He knew why his night had been so bad and resolved to count every step that day.

***

Just how civilization survives in Teresina's climate is a mystery, but the surest signs of civilization are bakeries open in the morning before any other business. In Teresina, small padarias were almost as common as Catholics. Standing at a corner two blocks from where he had endured the night, João could see three bakeries. He chose the one straight ahead, and when he arrived he found it was too small to have the tables and coffee pot he expected. The only person who could give advice was a woman hustling in and out of the back room where the oven belched out the odors of pastries denied to João.

When he asked the woman for directions to the church, she asked which one. Remembering Dona Isadora, João specified the Catholic Church. The woman smiled. It was the kind of ignorant answer he was afraid of giving. Realizing there were a lot of churches in Teresina, he added, “The largest one.”

“The largest? Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

The woman thought there was more she should ask him, but she knew he was embarrassed, and if something was wrong, what better place could he be asking for than a church?

***

It was a long way, but at least the street was cobble stone instead of asphalt. There was even a sidewalk, but it was useless to pedestrians because every business blocked it with goods spilling out of a doorway. The road was wide enough for two lanes of traffic in each direction. The inner lane was filled with trucks, buses, and a few motorcycles and automobiles. João shared the outer lane with carts, other pedestrians caught up in the general chaos, chickens, and sometimes a roaring automobile whose driver sped recklessly through the mélange in order to pass a slow truck in the inner lane.

***

It is many years since the Catedral Metropolitana De Nossa Senhora Das Dores has had the power to intimidate with its grandeur, but as João walked across the tree-shaded square in front of the cathedral, the great wooden doors at its front grew until they forced the questions: “How do I enter? What is proper? Is the small door on the side private?”

So João stood facing the church. He felt exposed, fearing passersby could read both ignorance and uncertainty in his motionless staring. After about ten minutes, an ordinary looking man started up the steps, and João chased after him – unsure of himself. João feared the man had some special duty that gave him exclusive cause to use those doors.

Inside, two people were sitting in prayer near the front of the church. The man João was following reached the front row, genuflected, and sat down. João sat behind him not believing he would be able to control his urge to leave long enough to figure out how to find a priest. He hadn't come to confess. He'd come to ask for a decent long-sleeved shirt and a pair of long pants.

Just as he was starting to get back up, four more people arrived and, embarrassed, João sat down again. He was waiting for his inner voice to finally decide that leaving was less embarrassing than staying when a priest entered and took his place in the confessional. The two people who had been present when João arrived stood up and started forward. One sat back down.

***

Waiting in the church, he tried to think through a confession, but his agitation kept interfering with the effort, and then there came a moment when no one rose to go ahead of him.

João gave the priest an almost incoherent account of his travels, trying to be brief but looking for sympathy. He managed to tell the part about Senhor Amado fairly accurately. Then he confessed to his anger at his father, and to stealing, but he added that he was getting better at begging and thought he could quit stealing.

The priest listened until his patience ran out, and he spoke. His accent was almost as strange as the accent of the American missionaries, but there was no doubt that his tone of voice was meant to sting.

“A Catholic boy your age should know how to make a proper confession. No one cares what excuses you have for being angry at your father. Excuses only mean you're not repentant. Then you tell me that you might be able to quit stealing because you're getting better at begging. Where’s your contrition for stealing?”

When João tried to respond, the priest shut him up. “It is not your turn to speak.”

João scrambled out of the confessional wishing there was a door to slam. He took a step, turned around, and spoke without hiding his anger. “I didn't come here to confess. I came to get some clothes. I can't beg anything in these. I have to steal.” He stood in silent rage for a moment and then turned to leave just as the priest began to speak.

“Return after Vespers. Ask whoever you find here to show you to the rectory. There you ask for Father Doyle. I'll give you your penance then. I may also have some clothing for you, and if you leave your anger behind, I might even have some supper for you.”

***

Knowing he was beyond reason didn't make any difference. The only thing that made a difference to João was that he had decided he was going to spend his money. Being in the center of the city made it easy to find a mercearia where he could buy a knife.

He couldn't afford the knife he wanted, but the knife he bought was close enough to the knife Diogo held against his throat. He bought the knife in a frenzy without any consideration of the possibility that another merchant might have a better one for the same price.

The possibility of using his knife frightened him more than it made him feel secure. It was the ignominy he'd felt in Jucás that made him want the knife more than he feared it. But what mattered most, what helped him regain control of himself was this: It was the only thing of any value he had ever owned.

***

The Father who had scolded him in the confessional had fair skin, freckles, curly red hair, and moderate obesity. Moderate obesity João had seen, but the rest? No. Never in his imagining of things in the dark. Lying in the grass in front of the church, waiting for the day to pass, his anxiety urged him to forget the clothing and move on. He did not look forward to the ghastly-looking priest taking any further interest in his salvation. When he found himself thinking about his embarrassment in the confessional, what he made himself think of instead was, I am a thief. I am too modest. Why don't I steal a donkey to ride?

***

Finding Father Doyle after Vespers involved subduing his anger and asking several people he found in the church for directions to the rectory. Eventually, he found a nun who actually showed him the way. She knocked on the priest's door, then barely waiting for a response she turned the doorknob and pushed João ahead of her. The priest looked surprised, both startled and stunned by the two of them barging in on him. His eyes flicked from side to side before he focused on João.

“Oh, the boy from confession. I wasn't really expecting you to come back, but never mind, it’s okay, I guess you aren’t still so angry... I haven't dined, yet.” Then, looking at the woman who brought João, “Please tell the new cook... I've already forgotten her name... Tell her I have an unexpected guest for dinner. And tell her it won't happen again.”

João had almost as much trouble understanding Father Doyle as the American missionaries. It wasn't just the accent, the priest had learned his Portuguese in Portugal, not in Brazil, and he spoke it with with a mysterious, formal grammar learned from a textbook.

João understood, in broad terms if not in what seemed to be unnecessary detail, that Father Doyle had been sent to Brazil because there were not enough Brazilian priests with the education needed to look after the church's property. He also understood that Father Doyle did not often hear confessions, but it was his duty to do so once in a while and, perhaps, Providence had brought João to the church just as he was doing this duty. The priest talked on about himself, glad to have anyone to listen even if it was an ignorant child, until he realized he should be asking João to talk about himself.

Thinking the priest somehow both understood and remembered the incomplete and incoherent account of himself he’d given in the confessional, João jumped to talking about his fear that his family would be forced to move before he returned. However, that reminded him of a question that had plagued him during the night. In fact, he thought it had been secretly troubling him ever since he had begun to believe he could find land for his family. How in God's name will I be able to feed my family on a journey from my old home in Ceará to anyplace in Maranhão? Before he spoke, he corrected the first phrase and began, “How on earth...”

Father Doyle advised him to pray constantly and then talked about the Irish potato famine. It was not helpful to João to learn about the Troubles, especially from an Irishman who spared him nothing of the suffering and death of those who fled to America.

Just as the conversation finally turned to the clothing, João had a sudden impulse to interrupt. He blurted out the problem he'd been having with nightmares and asked whether Father Doyle had any suggestions.

“Have you prayed?”

“No.”

“Because you didn't think to?”

“Yes.”

“There you go. These things cannot be helped by teachers or doctors. They require prayer.”

Day 44 - Milagre de Maria...

“Of course it's your fault! You kept bringing water to them and feeding those two children!”

Day 45 – Teresina...

When Father Doyle woke him for Lauds, João had to seek consciousness from something like the sleep of a Cretaceous fossil. He rose in the dim light thinking he owed Father Doyle some enthusiasm, which he found by reflecting the priest's own smile for a brief moment while his eyes were open. After prayers were said, there was breakfast. João watched as the priest prepared the eggs, himself.

When they parted, João had a pair of sandals that would fit his swollen feet and a long-sleave shirt he wasn’t sure he could wear because it was a priest’s shirt. There was also a satisfactory pair of pants. He rejected a second pair as a nuisance to carry as well as two shirts because they had short sleeves. He wanted to express his appreciation but not so much for the clothing, or anything tangible, as for something he could not articulate. He almost wanted to start a conversation about his failed confession, but he could not find words to fit ideas that were both vague and complex. So he stood dumbly in front of Father Doyle who offered João his hand. After they shook, the priest said, “Wait, there is one thing I must explain to you before you go,” and he taught João the importance of a firm grip.

***

On the street, João learned that the road to Codó could be found in a district called Timon. People he met were consistent about that, but the directions he got could have made him think the entire population of Teresina was conspiring to confuse him.

“Timon? Across the river.”

“What river? Where?”

“That way.”

The most common way of giving directions was just to point, which would have been good enough if there had been any consistency to the waving arms and flapping hands. The only thing that was clear to João was that there was no direct route but there were a myriad of alternative landmarks and changes in direction. The person who seemed to be most anxious to be helpful and provide clear directions offered João three different routes and left João to decide for himself which set of directions was easiest to follow.

Eventually, the owner of a hardware store overheard a woman tell João that she knew how to get there but couldn't explain it. The man tapped João on the shoulder and said, “Come with me. I'll show you.” But instead of walking down the street, the man walked into his shop. João stood perplexed, but the man waved him inside. João followed out of politeness, thinking he would be shown a map that he would, out of further politeness, pretend to understand. Instead, the man took him up three flights of stairs onto the roof of the building and pointed.

“There, there is the bridge. You see it?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

João almost cried with relief.

***

The narrow bridge was shared by everything, not only people and carts and cars and trucks that could not fit past one another, there was a railroad track with ties and rails that still had to be negotiated even when there was no train.

After he crossed the bridge, there was what seemed to be a main road that a passerby told him would take him to Timon. Thank heavens, but João's uncertainty returned, and when he asked a clerk in a bakery to point the way for him, the clerk told him he had to cross the river.

River towns naturally acquire streets that are laid out to exploit the waterway rather than serve the aesthetic sense of a surveyor. Teresina is located at the junction of the Rio Parnaiba and the especially sinuous Rio Poti. These rivers give the city special stature among tangle-towns. Still, once he figured out that there were two rivers to cross, the main flow of traffic seemed to be as good a guide to the Rio Parnaiba as the directions he got from passersby.

It was late-afternoon when he reached the newly-built “Iron Bridge,” more properly called the “Ponte Metálica João Luis Ferreira.” The Rio Parnaiba is many times larger than the Rio Poti, and the Iron Bridge was proportionately more terrifying than the bridge over the Rio Poti. It was not yet falling apart, but it was higher and longer, and had all the dangers of a newly-built version of the bridge he had just crossed.

Day 45 - Milagre de Maria...

When Joaquim and Larissa were both ill and three of the children were still able to eat, Joaquim shared the difficulties better than might be expected. He crawled on his hands and knees into the kitchen and set the rice to cook. When it was ready, Larissa crawled on her hands and knees to portion it out to the children.

***

Their house was beginning to look like the Alves'  house. They were out of water, and who would help? Joaquim crawled out of bed and got as far as their bedroom door before he collapsed. They both wished they'd never been married, never had children, never had anyone to care for or support, never, never, never... never been born in a place where they didn't know how to live anywhere else.

“How many of the Alves are alive?”

“I don't know.”

Day 46 - On the Road...

As Father Doyle suggested, João prayed for an end to his nightmares. If his prayers were answered, they were answered by Satan. His prayers focused his attention on the content of his nightmares just as he was going to sleep, and his brain responded with nightmares.

Twenty miles beyond Teresina his father's voice spoke to him clearly during the daytime for the first time. It was only a few words, but it frightened him. His fear of losing his mind stopped being something he laughed at, and he wondered whether he would ever be all right, again.

He found himself feeling the knife in his pocket and thinking about Madalena or his father. He knew from the confessional that thoughts alone can be sins, and he knew he should purge himself of what he was thinking, but he couldn't. So he wondered whether he was evil.

***

Thinking about stealing a donkey was an entertaining distraction – a sin but a relief from darker thoughts. He was, after all, a thief. So why shouldn’t he ride? Well, donkeys are prolific animals and are often found wandering around the villages unclaimed, but a feral donkey won't agree to be ridden. Even a tame animal isn't much use without a bridle. If you slap one on the rump, a donkey will move forward, and if you slap it in the face, the it will turn, but if you slap a donkey on the rump and the face, it will get stubborn. João knew that stealing a donkey was mainly about stealing a bridle, and what matter if he spent his days thinking about theft if he could do nothing about his nights being filled with nightmares and hours of semi-consciousness filled with plans for murder.

Day 46 - Milagre de Maria...

Larissa could not tell whether she thought five thoughts all at once or thought nothing but static. But what she barely whispered was “It's her.” When she could summon a voice that could be heard, she said, “Go away. You will die here,” and to herself she thought, She is the last of us with a chance to live.

For a long time, Lorena stood still, once breaking the silence with a few soft mewing sounds. It was hard to think. She'd seen the youngest child, Jason, barely two, lying on the ground underneath his hammock. When her thoughts cleared a little, she knew Jason wasn't who she should worry about. The other children might still be alive.

Day 48 – Caxias...

Only Portuguese colonial rule could have produced the inequitable distribution of land found in João's Brazil. President Vargas had promised land reform, but he reneged, and ever since, no mere political movement has ever loosened the grip of the latifundiários on the land. So the only hopes squatters had were in the vagaries of royal grants and haphazard surveying. Of course, even those hopes had to overcome both the guns of the police and the gavels of the judiciary. In court, the latifundiários had a simple argument that covered all the vagaries. Any piece of land obviously had to belong to someone, and who else other than themselves?

***

Senhor Souza offered a ride in his cart. The man was kindly, friendly, and talkative. Responding to a bit of João's story, he pointed out a small collection of one-room, clay houses – and began to sound fantastical.

João was especially skeptical of Senhor Souza's claim that a court had ruled against the latifundiários. Still, the man hadn't exactly said the squatters won, he said their syndicate won. João wondered what a “syndicate” was, but he didn't ask. His attention was on the collection of one-room, clay houses slowly receding behind them. It seemed to be the beginning of a village, and he asked, “How long have they been there?” What he wanted to know was whether those houses were proof that squatting on a piece of land was possible.

“I don't know, maybe six months."

Six months?... Six months?... He wondered whether that proved anything.

"Are they the ones who won in court?"

"No, no. You misunderstood what I was getting at. The ones who won in court are all gone."

"What happened to them?"

"Who knows. A lot of people say they were murdered, but I don't believe it. There were too many of them. You couldn't keep murdering that many people a secret. They just left."

***

Evening found João resting comfortably in a hammock. He had exhausted his ability to worry about the latifundiários, and his thoughts were captured by the other questions the little collection of mud huts raised. He began to think about how getting started as a squatter had to be done. He could see how difficult it would be for one family with too many children too small to help. It would be impossible. João pictured himself and his father, alone, trying to build a house and dig a well with no crop in the ground to harvest.

The one thing that was clearest to him was that his father would have no idea what to do, but would shout orders at everyone. His father would somehow have to be left behind in Milagre de Maria.

He began to think about what a group of several families might accomplish, and soon the question became, Do I know how to start a village? The way ignorance had plagued his journey, he felt arrogant answering the question with Yes, but his answer went on. I know how to build a house, a better house and just as easy to build as those mud huts. You weave mats and pour mud between them to make a wall. I know how to dig a well. I know how to plant and harvest. Everyone else knows, too, but I have seen how Roberto gives orders. And he became distracted by a grandiose fantasy in which he imagined himself leading a migration out of Ceará. And he would be the one who knew things.

But there was still that problem. No matter what plan he came up with, his father would feel obliged to belittle it and obstruct it.

When his mind was clear, these difficulties were not depressing. Even without solutions, he could live with well-defined problems far better than he could live in the world of vagaries he'd entered at the start of his journey. Unfortunately, his mind was not always clear. Much of the time, he had difficulty recalling what he had thought just a few seconds before. While he could think of skills needed to start a village, when he tried to make an orderly list, he was lost and his thoughts were recaptured by his fear of what could be happening to his mind.

***

Caxias was the second-largest city on his journey, but his experience in Teresina had decided him on an attitude toward his father and large cities. He was now a thief and a liar, and he could become anything else he wanted to be. Bringing his family to Codó, he would be in charge, and he would deal with his father as necessary.

As he entered the city with Senhor Souza, he automatically began scanning the side of the road for anything useful, and he promptly discovered two donkeys ambling along. They were not just any pair of burros, they had been improperly tied and had pulled themselves loose wearing their harnesses and trailing their reins behind them.

João wasn't even sure he really wanted a donkey, but not wanting to miss the opportunity while he decided, he jumped off the cart and slapped each of the animals on the rear sending them off at something resembling a walking pace. As for whether he still wanted one, the answer was obvious. It would be a long journey back to Milagre de Maria, and he was a thief. Why shouldn't I have a donkey? Besides, if he didn't get one, he had just given up a good ride in a cart for nothing.

He crossed to the opposite side of the road and, trying not to look like a thief, he watched the animals' slow progress. When they stopped (which was often) he crossed back to their side of the road, gave each another slap on its hindquarters, and walked on down the road trying not to look too interested in donkeys.

An hour later, the animals hadn't shown any sign of being near their own home. So João decided it was safe to liberate one into his own custody. He chose the donkey with the fewest scars on its nose, thinking it might have been abused less because it was more tractable. Of course, it might have just been younger.

João slung one leg over the beast and pitched himself up onto its back thinking there was every likelihood the donkey would balk. In that case, he would just have to abandon an hour's work and start off on foot, again. However, the humble creature proved to be better than just tractable. She started off at an obedient trot, bouncing João uncomfortably on her back.

***

João wanted to be through Caxias before stopping anywhere with his stolen donkey. By the time he was looking back on the city, the road was dark except for the light of a gibbous moon and the occasional blinding light of a truck. He was already tired of his new possession. He'd been unable to find water for her. He was just far enough out on the edge of the city so there were homes with wells, but not farms with their own livestock and watering troughs.

Coming to a field of grass being grown for pasture there seemed to be no point to going on. He dropped the reins (which belonged with a cart and were long enough to be a nuisance riding bareback). João was angry at the donkey even though he knew it to be faultlessly compliant. He had other sources of anger to add to it. He had nothing but rice to eat, and that was the cold rice in his can. Riding had chafed his thighs and, worse, split the seam of the pants Father Doyle gave him.

Once he'd eaten, he pulled some small green sticks off a plant and used them to suture the seam of his pants. It wasn't satisfactory, but what else was he to do? Then he lay on grass that was spotty and lumpy and couldn't sleep. Reciting the list of towns that marked his way back home was no longer soporific. It had become an unwanted obligation. It made him angry, it failed to give him any sense of where he was, and it made him lonely.

Day 48 - Milagre de Maria...

“Of course, it was your fault. You kept going over there and bringing them water and taking care of those two children. It's a miracle any of us are still alive. And what are you going to do with those two children? You have to stop feeding them from our food.”

Day 54 – Parceira...

Days later João was dreaming. In the dream, he was leading his family to free land in Maranhão, but he was still in Ceará in a desolate place. There was no wind, but the air was opaque with dust. He was lost, and his siblings had run off. Once, he thought he caught a glimpse of them through the dust, and he started after them. Then, as soon as he took his eyes off his mother, she wandered off. He was separated from everyone. Even though there was no sound in his dream, he somehow knew his mother was calling him, but he couldn't tell what direction she was calling from. They were next to a busy, four-lane road, and he was afraid she had crossed it, or else he had crossed it unaware and left her on the other side. He didn't know who was in the greatest danger, but he knew his mother was close and tried to run after her. His legs barely moved, and he couldn't shout more than a whisper.

The struggle to shout started to wake him, and he became aware he was dreaming, but before he could rouse himself, he was lost again. He thought his mother might be just on the other side of the road, but he could not see well enough to tell whether a truck was coming and he was afraid to cross. His father must be there, too. His father would be angry because they were lost. He wanted to find his knife but wasn't sure why or whether he even owned one. He remembered buying one, but that was in another dream.

Then he found himself halfway across the roadway but paralyzed and unable to get out of the way of traffic. When his own physical struggles again began to awaken him, the dream decayed into his father's voice in his ear berating him for going to Teresina. His father's voice went on until he awoke with unbearable anxiety, insects crawling all over his brain, and diarrhea. It was horrible, but at least it wasn't one of the Jucás nightmares.

A scintillating scotoma flickered like an arc of carnival lights in the periphery of his vision. It was the first time he had ever experienced such a thing, but he associated it with his anxiety. He had come to see anxiety as at the core of his mental issues. His father's voice, the flashbacks to Jucás, the tinnitus, the irrational beliefs that troubled him when he was near sleep, they all came after the anxiety.

Finally awake, he finished the rice he'd boiled the night before, got his meager kit together, located his donkey. He had developed too much sympathy for the animal. He seldom rode her for long at a time, and when he needed her most, in the heat of the afternoon, he didn't see why she should be expected to endure the heat carrying him. Lamentably, he had let the animal become familiar. He was already accustomed to the sound of her hooves, even her smell and the flies she attracted. He had begun thinking of the donkey as his partner. He spoke to her often and found himself calling her Parceira.

With the donkey in hand, he decided there was enough sunlight to travel. He was ready, but he stood distracted, wondering about the scintillating lights dancing beside him wherever he looked. Then he swung his leg over his donkey. The donkey took ten steps before a pounding headache seized João.

The boy slid to the ground and sat in the grass holding his head. For a minute, he was afraid he was going to die. He was incapacitated. He didn’t move until he had to seek shade when the bright light of sunrise stoked the pain.

It was early afternoon before he began to recover. The headache wasn't gone, but it was tolerable, and it seemed to be what he would have to live with for a while. He considered spending another night where he was, but he had to find water for a donkey that was much more trouble than she was worth.

Day 54 - Milagre de Maria...

She could not stop herself. A hundred times a day, she tallied up the children she had lost: the two, long dead, who would have been older than João, now Miguel and Jason, and Lorena who had saved the rest of them. And then there was João. She didn't know. Nine children. Of eight she knew about, half were dead.

It was not an unusual number for that time and place.

She could remember them, but not well enough. Memories are illusory and seldom exactly true. So she began, again, tallying and remembering. Sometimes she included João, always in the column of the dead. Always, she prayed she would live to see one of them marry and produce a grandchild.

Day 55 – Codó...

When he saw Codó through a gap between two hills, he knew he had reached the promised land. He wanted to feel like celebrating, but his anxiety had given him diarrhea, and he had no place to bathe. He couldn't rejoice, but he felt the weight fall away. It was the end of walking, day after day, away from home.

It was too late in the day for the market to be of any interest, so he decided to follow the highway he was on through the town and out the other side just to see what the place had to offer. He found that Codó was large enough to have a daily market and enough shops scattered around so he could remain there for a few days without having to steal from the same merchant twice. A few blocks from the market, he came across a mill. There, the next morning, he could expect to find men with a little time on their hands and a willingness to chat with a stranger.

He also found that the highway fell apart as it passed through Codó, emerging as four rugged, dirt roads connecting the town to minor villages. It was an encouraging discovery. João could easily imagine each of these roads passing through hundreds of square miles of unused land.

At the edge of town, he found an abandoned building slowly collapsing under its own weight. It had probably been a small, unproductive factory. The fallen roof held together well enough to make a lean-to that would protect him from any rain - if he was lucky enough to need it. It was surrounded by a weedy bramble that would feed a donkey, and about fifty yards away, there was pasture that looked acceptable to a boy who had slept on hard dirt and pea-gravel.

It was the middle of the afternoon when João lay down in the pasture to rest. Lying on his side with half his face buried in the grass, one eye looked far out to the edge of the earth, and he captured in memory a dichromatic image of sublime simplicity. Living green spread all the way to the horizon and not a single cloud huddled in the blue that curved over the limitless grass.

He wasn't sure what he thought about the cloudless sky. He had not felt a drop of rain since he crossed the mountains. If such proof that he was in the right place would only come, he thought he would just lie where he was and let himself be soaked by the evidence.

Day 56 – Wednesday...

His headache always seemed worse while he slept than when he was awake.

When he reached the mill, the only person present was an assistant to the millwright making notes on a clipboard. The first smallholder to arrive did not have a cart, only a burro carrying two sacks of rice. João thought the man must be as poor as his own family, or rather, as poor as his family was in wet years. However, the moment João began to speak, the fellow turned away from him saying he didn't have time for beggars. João protested. He was only begging information, not the man's rice, but the man ignored him.

Not all the men he spoke to were so rude. Some said they thought there was quite a lot of land that had gone unused in living memory, but they seemed unable to be specific. Some of the land seemed unwanted, but who knew which latifundiário would insist it was his? And as for migrant families, no, they had heard of squatters but didn't know any of them.

By mid-morning, João was discouraged and wished he'd brought Parceira with him. He’d come to town thinking she would just be an encumbrance, but watching farmers come and go, he began to think that being the owner of a donkey might entitle him to more thoughtful answers.

By afternoon, the mill was empty except for the millwright and his lackey. However, there was still activity around the market. It wasn't the usual market square but, rather, a street that was unusually wide for about four blocks. Even in the early afternoon, it was an energetic place full of dilapidated stalls, open tables, vendors who only claimed a patch of bare pavement, smells that were an amalgam of the fetid and the aromatic with notes of carnation or raw sewage and a long finish provided by the abattoir. It was a highly entropic free-for-all that oozed into the side streets - a divinely inspired haven for weary thieves.

João  saw two men in conversation who looked as though they owned the two carts he saw lined up on the side of the street. The two donkeys assigned to the carts stood motionlessly in their traces waiting for the end of the day only to wait for the beginning of another. João walked up to the men and casually started talking about the weather. That led to an opportunity to talk about the weather in Ceará, an admission that he was from Ceará, and in response to one of the men asking what he was doing in Codó, João found an excuse to ask his questions.

The men engaged with his problems and his questions, but it didn't help. The best either of them could say was, “You really can't tell who claims unused land or how good their claim is. If you're looking for a place to squat, you just have to pick one and hope.”

“But how can I tell whether it's being used? Could you show me?”

“If it looks like it's not being used, it's not being used and probably hasn't been. Just go look for yourself.”

“What direction?”

“Any direction.”

When the two men decided João had put an end to their own conversation, they each started for home.

He'd heard this advice before and thought he might have to settle for it, but he still believed there was better advice if he could find it. He even had an alternative plan – in fact, a better idea than accosting farmers at the mill. The only problem with this alternative plan was that it involved a priest. He thought a priest would be sure to know who in his flock João should talk to. It was a large parish, there must be squatters who attended mass. Finding out what he needed to know was only a matter of facing a priest - of reminding himself of something Roberto had told him about resolute self-discipline.

The need for the sought-after self-discipline came suddenly, before he'd prepared himself. The square in front of the church was a meeting place for fifty people about his age, and he was not comfortable with the prospect of walking through them. Instead, he started walking aimlessly back and forth across the street from the square.

***

It was a waste. The interview did not go well. The priest was not just another difficult interlocutor. The man's voice rose, and he could not withhold hints of anger. He informed João that squatting was theft. The latifundiários owned the land, whether they used it or not was up to them. Laws that provided even the slimmest of protections for squatters were the work of radical communists who were a great danger to the country.

He had not gone there to confess his sins, but the priest found it necessary to accuse João of wrath, reminding him as though he were too stupid to be a real Catholic that it was a cardinal sin. When the priest began talking about how the Pope had divided South America between Portugal and Spain, João sensed the beginning of a lecture he was not going to attend.

The priest was right about the wrath. João left the church in an uncontrollable rage alongside his uncontrollable headache.

As he stepped out of the building, he took several steps and stopped. His eyes flicked back and forth, seeing nothing until they landed on three young women sitting on a bench watching him. They looked a little older, and João started to shy away from them but then thought, No, he wasn't going to do that anymore. As he passed them, one of them said, “You should get your mother to sew up the back of your pants.”

João glared at her. He gave a quick look at the other two and then focused on the one who'd spoken. “My mother is a thousand miles from here. And you have no idea who you're speaking to.”

One of the other girls had the next clever remark. “If you take your pants off, I'll sew them up for you.”

João walked slowly toward her until he was close enough to make it difficult for her to get up from the bench. Then he pulled out his knife, passed it to his left hand, and began showing it to her. He had to relax his jaw to speak, “I tame whores like you, Madalena!” His open hand caught the girl hard on the side of her head. Walking away, it took all his self-control to keep himself from looking back at her.

He knew he should go back and let her hear his voice with Roberto's calm modulation, the taming voice, but he couldn't. He should have stabbed her, it would have rid him of the headache and the cicada and the awful anxiety that was burning up his brain.

***

He lay down in the same field that had brought him some peace when he arrived in Codó, but his anger burned, kindled by darkness. He spent hours reviewing his paranoid thoughts about Madalena, seeking a way to make them true. In an early morning dream, he confused the words “father” and “Father,” and his father's voice confronted him with the authority of a priest, castigating him for spending the money they’d given him on a useless knife, but he knew it wasn't useless.

Day 57 – Thursday...

João had no idea what he was going to do – who he was going to ask for advice or what advice he was going to ask for. With a bitter laugh he supposed he would take his father's advice and ask God for inspiration. He was not optimistic about the day and no longer saw much reason to bring a donkey with him, but he'd made the decision to bring Parceira the previous day and didn't change it.

He set out for the marketplace but decided on a detour that would take him past the square in front of the church. He saw the square was empty and went on into a morning troubled by an irrational urge to return to the empty square.

He spent some time talking to farmers in the market but only convinced himself he wasn't going to get any better advice than go look for yourself. He was asking himself whether he had really given up, when he passed a bakery, and from habit, he began evaluating the people inside. Three women huddled around a table for one brought him to a stop. It was many seconds before he even took a breath. They were clothed alike in ankle-length dresses with long sleeves. He had wondered, scornfully, whether his father was right, that he should ask God, and now here were these women of the Assembléia de Deus. Of course, he wasn't sure they belonged to the Assembléia, but he couldn't move fast enough to get Parceira around the corner and tied up.

He couldn't think fast enough, either. He churned through a hundred thoughts that all started with This may be your only opportunity, but finally, a cunning idea bubbled up out of two months of hard lessons.

Standing near them, quietly, he first drew the attention of a woman in rose-colored plaid. The other two followed her gaze, and João spoke.

“Excuse me, Senhoras, but I am compelled to ask. Do you happen to belong to the Assembléia de Deus?”

The woman in the rose-colored plaid replied with just-detectable skepticism, “Yes, we do.”

“I need to be baptized.”

***

There is no reason to think that João had learned to like being interviewed by religious authorities. Nonetheless, he was relieved when the woman with the rose-colored dress, who was too heavy for a quarter mile walk, finally stopped gasping for breath and saying “Oh, oh my” and introduced him.

His relief was short-lived. He knew he had to overcome the fatigue that clouded his mind. He had to decided what parts of his story he could tell and how to tell them.

He left out everything about the Catholic Church.  He thought his concerns about his own mental health could either cut for him or against him – for him by making his trials seem worse, but against him if he seemed to be trying to manipulate them. He didn't mention either begging or stealing. He hoped they would assume he had worked his way along. He thought it best to exaggerate how much of his five months he had used up in case he needed an excuse to extricate himself from the Assembléia de Deus. He explained that the generosity of the members of the Assembléia de Deus he met in Rendinha made it clear they were the true Christians, but he let it be understood that he did not actually need their generosity. He said he had stayed with them for a few days because of what they said about baptism and other matters of doctrine. It was almost the truth. Then he talked about how he had been looking for more members of their church ever since he left Rendinha. He even wondered why God made him wait three days in Codó before revealing the presence of His church in the town.

The whole time he spoke, his father's voice kept distracting him, urging him to talk about how the evil Catholic priests kept wanting him to confess and tell his secrets. He stuttered and, while he feared he sounded as though he were making up lies as he went along, João could be said to have successfully laid it on with a trowel.

***

It did not take long for Pastor Vinicius and the three women to decide that João could lodge with the pastor and his wife until he could be baptized on the Sunday three days hence. These decisions were reached quickly, but the review of them went on seemingly without end. They talked about João, analyzed his personality and motivations, and made decisions for him without consulting him - as though he were a loaf of bread being made from a recipe they hadn't tried before. At least Pastor Vinicius was dark-skinned, short, and overweight like a middle-aged Brazilian, and there was no talk of American missionaries.

As the discussion went on, João let his posture express, more and more deliberately, how exhausted he was. It was the pastor's silent and patient wife, Sister Luiza, who finally put an end to circling through the plans for his stay in Codó. She did it by stating, in an authoritative voice, how the practical details no one had considered would be handled and then standing up to announce it was time to begin by getting João cleaned up.

***

Pastor Vinicius showed no sign of the kind of wealth his coreligionists in Rendinha seemed to have. His home consisted of three rooms plus a toilet and shower wedged into a laundry room outside. The concrete floor was only waiting to be tiled, but the various spills that had resisted the bleach and scrubbing Sister Luiza gave them made it obvious that the floor had been waiting to be tiled for a long time.

Dinner was nothing like what the American missionaries had given him, but it was still unlike anything he could have expected. “Queijo” in rural Brazil was never anything other than unripened cow's cheese, as nearly tasteless as cheese can be. Sister Luiza served it on pieces of coarse bread, melted with pulverized basil leaves and thin slices of peppers she grew. João thought the food was excellent but unsatisfying. Without rice, it wasn't dinner.

Fortunately, João was able to say a proper grace, though over the course of the meal he kept steering the conversation onto his own lack of knowledge of religion and his need for instruction by someone like Pastor Vinicius. Several times, he recycled the sentiment that the Catholic Church's idea of education was to give orders and threats without an explanation that made sense. It played well. He said he knew he was ignorant and that was why he was interested in what the people in Rendinha had told him.

It was long after dark when Sister Luiza strung a hammock for him on their tiny veranda, but the kernel of excitement inside his exhaustion kept him from going immediately to sleep. He could see the possibilities in this relationship. He was now inside a group of people he thought would be diligent in their efforts to give him helpful information, and he could leave knowing he had done as well as could be done. Beyond that, there was the hope that, when the time came to discuss his own plan, some practical help would materialize. He was about to drift off to sleep when an immediate problem leaped to mind.

Parceira. The poor donkey was still tied around the corner of the bakery or, if she'd got lose, was just wandering around town.

Day 58 – Friday

João awoke from forgotten dreams. He had his usual anxiety, and one decent night’s sleep was not enough to release his thoughts from a cloud of fatigue, but he was already trying to think of an excuse for getting out of the house to look for Parceira. He hadn't mentioned his burro because the addition of a donkey might have made his travels seem less difficult.

João knew he had to set his sense of urgency aside. He didn’t want to be called upon to explain his agitation. Moreover, the troubles he imagined were all problems that would unfold slowly whether he boiled frenetically inside himself or not. Besides, breakfast was worthy of João's attention. There were rice cakes – deep fried lumps with the taste and texture of doughnuts shot full of tiny, crunchy infinitesimals of uncooked rice. The Pastor and his wife thought sweetened coffee was overwhelming with the sweet cakes, and they were the only people he had ever known to serve coffee black. He was still struggling to accommodate to the taste when it became clear breakfast was going to be a long meal. It had barely begun when Sister Luiza began acquainting João with his new religion.

“You seek to better understand God because the Holy Spirit is already in you. The purpose of baptism is to encourage the release of the Holy Spirit, and the total infilling of you with the Holy Spirit. Filling with the Holy Spirit is not done at the moment of conversion, at the moment when you become a believer. It is done when people already believe, which is the real reason infant baptism makes no sense.

“When the Holy Spirit comes on you, you will become imbued with power for life and service. The power will include the ability to witness for Jesus Christ, but there is a more dramatic, defining evidence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Ezekiel speaks of a dramatic out-pouring of the Spirit that results in prophesying, dreams, and visions.

“This prophesying may be done in English, but it may be in a language, a tongue, unknown to you. In Biblical times, people prophesied in tongues unknown to them but understood by people who spoke those languages. Today, when people speak in tongues, it is always in a language of Heaven unknown to anyone on earth. However, when you join us in church on Sunday and you hear people speaking in tongues, you will know they are filled with the Holy Spirit, and it is a great thing.

“We do not know how long it will take for the Holy Spirit to be released in you, but we know, already, that it dwells within you, and you will soon feel the dramatic effect of baptism in the Holy Spirit. To be certain that your baptism will have the greatest effect on you, Pastor Vinicius believes in full immersion. So, after his sermon on Sunday, the congregation will accompany us to the river where he will take you into the water. There, he will lay you down until you are completely submerged and the cleansing waters can wash over you.”

There was more, but João had long since passed the limit of his ability to try to understand what Sister Luiza was telling him. He did get the part about full immersion. It sounded reasonable to him and he assumed the rest was okay.

***

When breakfast and Sister Luiza's instructions finally ended, João knew he could give the wrong impression, even raise questions, if he immediately rushed off to tend to Parceira. Instead, he went outside and sat quietly on the veranda for a while intending to hide his agitation, perhaps even to appear to be thinking about religion. He did wonder, briefly, about his previous morning's obsession with the church square, both why it had started and why it was gone. Then, when anxiety overcame self-discipline, he went back inside and, finding Pastor Vinicius occupied at a small desk in his bedroom, sought out Sister Luiza.

By now, their plans for João seemed unalterable, and he decided it was time to temper the impression of strength and independence he had given the day before. He was, after all, going to need their help. He told her about the events in Jucás, his nightmares, his father's voice, the tinnitus, and even the incapacitating headache. He tried to explain the anxiety he was feeling even as he was speaking to her.

When he finished, Sister Luiza called Pastor Vinicius. She asked João to tell her husband what he had just told her, and when he finished for the second time, the pastor did not need time to think over what he'd been told.

“What has happened to you is clear. God has a plan for you. Of course, God has a plan for all of us, but I think Satan especially hates the plan He has for you. In order to keep you from coming to us, Satan has sent demons to trouble you. Fortunately, you have had the strength to endure, and now that you are here, we can help.

First, you must pray as nearly constantly as you can. Whenever you can, picture these demons in your mind, picture them being driven out, and pray on that mental image. In addition, Sister Luiza and I will pray with you every night and every morning. And on Sundays and Wednesday evenings, our entire congregation will join in a unified prayer for your release from these demons. Ours is a powerful prayer group. We are people who have been properly baptized and infilled with the Holy Spirit. Be assured, we will drive these demons from you...”

João thought demons were a satisfactory explanation of his mental problems, but he'd already tried praying away his nightmares before he went to sleep, and he wasn't going to do that again. He needed to get out of the house, so he told Sister Luiza he needed to walk to reduce his anxiety before he could completely focus his mind on prayer.

As he set out to rescue Parceira, his thoughts did turn to religion. He wondered whether God might have abandoned him to demons because he had stopped loving God. He remembered a time in his childhood, years before the start of the drought, when he had loved God as his mother had taught him to do. But while her love for God gave her a refuge from João's father, the father God chose for João seemed a pointless evil. It led to João's emotional estrangement from a God he still mostly believed in.

***

He was both upset and relieved to find Parceira still tied around the corner from the bakery – upset because the donkey was without water, and relieved because, now, he could do something about it. He stroked the donkey's ears, partly because they were large and easily reached, partly because he thought she liked it, and partly because of the separation they faced.

Feeling he had abused her, he did not feel free to ride Parceira. So he led the donkey, or perhaps they could be said to have walked together. They found a filthy stream Parceira had insisted on drinking from when they first arrived in Codó. Then he led her upstream, expecting the water to get cleaner out of town. Beyond the last house, they found a path that continued into the bush for almost a mile. A hundred yards beyond the end of the path, João stopped where a narrow strip of trees separated them from a small field of corn stubble. There, he removed Parceira's bridle and hung it in a tree. He thought about hobbling the donkey, but he didn't know when, if ever, he would return. So he slapped the donkey on her haunches to get her moving farther up along the stream while he turned around and ran back toward the path and into town.

***

By the time João returned to what he had learned to call the “parsonage,” the noon meal was long past, and João's absence was commented upon in deliberately neutral tones of voice that were not lost on João. While he explained that he’d got himself lost, he remembered enough of Sister Luiza's lecture to be able to say he spent some time thinking about the possibility of learning to read, so he could read Ezekiel for himself.

***

Late in the afternoon, Pastor Vinicius went out, giving João an opportunity to have a private conversation with Sister Luiza. Not knowing the Pastor's purpose, he was unsure whether there would be enough time for this conversation. Still, his desire to try it out was strong and he planned on making this conversation short.

He had it in mind just to talk about the problems he thought he would face getting his family to Codó – his real ambition could wait. He hoped that, if he just began casually musing about his problems and was only talking with Sister Luiza rather than the Pastor, himself, it would not seem as though his main purpose was to get something out of them. It amused him to think that modestly abandoning the opportunity to speak directly to Pastor Vinicius also worked to put him in the hands of the person who held the brains, if not the charisma, of his new champions.

He began by talking about the weather in Codó, saying that he hoped it would rain before he left just because he wanted to see rain again. “It would be a great pleasure to be able to tell my family that I have actually felt rain, especially my father. They will need a lot of encouragement to get here. I don’t know how I’ll feed my family on the road. We don't have a donkey and, even if we did, we wouldn't have any food for it to carry. Since the drought, we've lived off our neighbors. They give work to my father, but most of the time I don't think they really need him. It's just a charity. Coming here, I had a hard time earning enough food to live. I don't see how my father and I, together... how we can get my whole big family here – even if we took the awful advice one man gave me to start stealing.”

He spoke more as though he was thinking aloud than begging for help. In a day or two he could start making his problems seem more and more intractable until either Sister Luiza or Pastor Vinicius decided to pitch in.

But João did not have to wait. Sister Luiza said she had an idea she could discuss with the Pastor that might help a little along the way. João replied that she might as well not bother, that he was afraid that by coming to Codó he had come too far. Without help, he and his father could not get a well dug and a crop harvested before his family starved. Everything depended on finding other refugees who could help start a village.

And Sister Luiza said, “Let me talk to Pastor Vinicius.”

But at dinner, Sister Luiza did not bring up João's fears. João was not only disappointed, he was alarmed, and sleep that night was a long time coming as he wrestled with how to broach the subject directly with Pastor Vinicius. When he tried to put himself to sleep by reciting the list of towns that would take him back home again, he couldn't remember half of them.

Day 59 – Saturday...

By breakfast, Sister Luiza had discussed João's problems with her husband. Both of them saw an opportunity in those problems and were ready to take advantage of God's gift. Pastor Vinicius let his breakfast go cold in his excitement to tell his plan to João.

“João, Sister Luiza and I have been thinking about your task and your problems. The difficulties God gives us are always opportunities. We have prayed, and we believe God has a plan to help you. We think you are not just traveling to help your family. We think you are traveling for God, that you have a special role in God's plan.”

João could barely control his excitement. He crossed his fingers. You could say he prayed that he knew what was coming next, though prayer wasn’t actually on his mind. What was on João's mind was, And I will be the one who knows things.

“You have talked about the difficulties you see ahead of you when you bring your family to Codó. I think we see even more difficulties you haven't thought of, but we also see a way through them, and João, the way is glorious! It is simple, and it will bring your people, and others, to God.

“You had not even heard of the Assembléia de Deus when you left...” He paused almost imperceptibly while he tried to remember the name of João's village. “...your home. That’s not surprising. There were Swedish missionaries of the Assembléia in this area many, many years ago. However, the real success of the true church waited for American missionaries who only arrived in Brazil five years ago. Now, already, there are congregations scattered here and there all over the northeast of Brazil.”

João felt steadily more confident in what was coming and wondered how many times Pastor Vinicius had practiced this preamble.

“João, you say you know you should settle around Codó. We know that is God's plan, but you fear you don't know where the land is that is free and safe to settle. There are farmers in our congregation who can be put to work finding a place for your people to settle. You say you see a need to find people who would settle with you to form a community, that there are many ways migrant people need to work together. João, you can bring a dozen families all the way from the village you come from to found a settlement of people of the true faith. In time, God could help you bring even more. There aren't Assembléia de Deus congregations all along the way, but there are enough to provide a great deal of help.”

Knowing exactly how Pastor Vinicius would respond, João interrupted for effect, “But there aren't any members of your church in Milagre de Maria.”

“With your help, there will be. Farmers are not fools. They are the blessed children of God, and it will be perfectly easy for them to see the hand of God in their rescue from the drought. They will surely see it is His true church that is rescuing them. Of course, it is not really the drought they are being rescued from. God did not have to create the drought in the first place. The drought is the vehicle by which God is rescuing them from the Catholic priests. First there is the drought that puts them in difficulty. Then, there is God's true church that rescues them.

“Now, we understand the urgency with which you wish to return. So here is what will happen: It is most important that the people you bring understand it is the work of God that is bringing us together. This fact, alone, is ample evidence that the Assembléia de Deus is God's chosen church. So, I will spend the rest of today teaching you a simple message you can use to proselytize, to teach about the true Christianity.

“Tomorrow, my sermon will be on the importance of helping those coming to Christ, especially those who are poor refugees fleeing problems beyond their control. Then I will introduce you as a new member of the congregation whom God has sent to us with a plan for bringing more people to a true understanding of Jesus.

“We will then walk with the congregation to the river for your baptism. After that, I will also recruit a group of farmers for the task of finding the best place for migrants to settle.

“By Monday, I will have a list of people you can contact for help as you return from... your home. I will give you a letter of introduction that will get you most of the help you need. It would be a good idea to contact as many of those people as you can on your way back home - of course, without delaying yourself. They will be better able to help if they know in advance that you will be returning through their villages with a lot of new Christians in the true faith.”

Pastor Vinicius continued until Sister Luiza picked up his plate, reheated it, and set it down again telling him it was time to eat his breakfast.

João retired that night thinking about the people he might bring from Milagre de Maria. He knew he should bring as many adults and as few children as possible. Senhor Pedro and his wife would be ideal because they had no children, only Chico. And then there was Madalena. Her family was as poor as João's, but Madalena's family would not be coming.

Day 60 – Sunday...

João awoke before sunrise in a mood so dark there was no accounting for it. As the possibility of success confronted him, he felt too enervated to go on. He could not understand why he should give up at this moment, but he could barely imagine getting out of bed. As each moment went by, he knew he should be on his feet, but he could not stop postponing the effort to the next moment. He waited until Sister Luiza shook him and told him he had to get up.

She promptly sat Pastor Vinicius and João down to breakfast with an admonishment to hurry and began telling João what to expect during the service. When she got to the part about praying away his demons, he stopped her. He didn't understand exactly what Pastor Vinicius had in mind, but he thought a full immersion baptism sounded like enough for someone who was just beginning to take up their religion.

“Besides, they're already gone. Your prayers were all it took.” Just what was gone wasn't entirely clear. However, it was true that he was momentarily free of anxiety and the tinnitus that had come to accompany it. His headache was gone, and he had not heard his father's voice in three days. It seemed all right to attribute this improvement to their prayers - although João thought these improvements were more likely the result of three nights of decent sleep.

Then the coin dropped, and João knew he had to back up. What pastor is going to give up... throw away an opportunity to pray away a demon?

“It must be a demon making me not want to be prayed over.”  João was pleased with himself.

***

The church was a room on the ground floor of an unfinished building. The walls were tijolo awaiting plaster; the floor was bare concrete; the two light fixtures swung from wires dangling out of open junction boxes. The room was thoroughly crowded by the time thirty people squeezed themselves onto folding chairs facing a choir of nine who stood behind the Pastor.

The service began like any other service with Pastor Vinicius reminding the congregation of the need for money to build a proper church. From that point on, the service was unlike anything João could have imagined. All the boring Latin ceremony was gone, and in its place was a transformed pastor leading believers in exulted praise of God. The pastor shouted wisdom from the pages of a Bible in front of him, and the truth of each admonition was verified by the choir. Members of the congregation cried out their passions, free to interrupt their pastor. Then both pastor and choir began a long decrescendo ending in silence. Pastor Vinicius paused dramatically and then quietly introduced João, telling a version of his story that even João found inspirational. He felt himself almost moved to tears by his own suffering.

He thought the sermon ended when Pastor Vinicius instructed the congregation to follow him to the river for João's baptism, but no, not at all. Pastor Vinicius restated his opening financial reminder and sealed it inside the opportunity God was giving the congregation by sending João.

“God is telling us we must have a CHURCH! A CHURCH when Brother João returns with his converts from the evil doctrines of the Catholic. Not the second time he makes his IMPOSSIBLE, his MIRACULOUS journey to bring us souls to save. Not the third time he makes this journey ORDAINED BY GOD. The FIRST TIME HE RETURNS we must be ready to receive many souls for their SALVATION. And God has given us Brother João, himself, to show us what it is to make a sacrifice for GOD. God did not give Brother João a train ticket to come here. GOD sent him into a wilderness he knew nothing about. GOD gave him a diseased body for his journey. GOD gave him hunger, thirst, loneliness, and the hard ground to sleep on each night. God gave him only one thing to help him. God gave him faith – faith that he was doing God's will, faith that God would see him through.

“And God has given us one thing. He has given us João's example of how to do HIS WORK.  He has given us João's example of how to SACRIFICE to build HIS CHURCH!”

The Pastor's voice was still and then slowly rose out of silence. “There is something we must do for João. His suffering is not over. The Devil did not want him to reach us. So the Devil sent demons to plague João's mind. Even now, as I speak to you, he is tormented, afraid, beset by indescribable sensations, nightmares, perhaps Even Images Of Hell.

“João has prayed. Sister Luiza and I have prayed. Now, we must all pray, each with all his strength, to cast these demons out of João. Let us get on our knees...”

When everyone was settled, he began again. “Picture his demons in your minds. Pray on seeing his demons. They do not want to be seen – to have their presence known. But we know they are within his body, AND KNOWING THIS, WE CAN SHOW THEM WE KNOW THEY ARE THERE, WE CAN PRAY THEM OUT.”

Pastor Vinicius struggled back onto his feet and placed the palm of his hand against João's forehead as he had sometimes seen faith healers do.  For a minute, he simulated fighting to keep his grip on the boy, and then resumed shouting. “Close your eyes hard, reach up to heaven, and pray to God for the power to see these demons!”

A man in the congregation began shouting words João could not understand. When three or four others joined him, the Pastor burst out, “I see them! I see them! Three! No, four! At least four demons! Pray! Pray! Out! Out! Out of this good Christian boy. Who else sees these demons?!”

João cooperated, dropping to his knees and shouting, “They're gone! They're gone!” It was too soon, more struggle was needed, but taken altogether it was good enough.

***

The congregation stood far away from the river while João and the Pastor crossed forty yards of mud. Pastor Vinicius and João both removed their sandals and sank calf-deep into the goo to reach the Rio Etipecuru. For a moment, João lost track of the solemnity of the ceremony and thought of the occasional squeak inside the sucking sound of their feet as the cries of little demons under the muck. The river, itself, looked like flowing mud, ripples seemed to move in slow motion and damp themselves out when they touched the shore. When the Pastor and his convert were waist deep in the water, the last thing the Pastor said to João before dunking him was, “I'm sorry about this river, but it's all we've got,” and the cleansing filth poured over him.

Day 61 – Monday

João awoke before sunrise feeling the relief that comes with the disappearance of a chronic irritant. He’d dreamt of Jucás, but it was just an ordinary nightmare that left him afraid of the dark. He didn’t spend the night constantly agitated, half-way between sleep and wakefulness. He wasn’t free of anxiety, but he was free of the tinnitus and headache that accompanied it. He didn’t feel as though he were about to have a seizure. He felt as though he’d had his first decent night’s sleep since he left Milagre de Maria, and he thanked God that he was on his feet before Sister Luiza.

There was some trouble putting together the list of Assembléia de Deus churches that would help João bring his migrant proselytes to Maranhão. To this day, the North American Assemblies of God regard the Brazilian Assembléias de Deus as their mission churches, but the Assembléias de Deus not only regarded themselves as independent, the Assembléias de Deus of each state regarded themselves as independent of the churches of any other state. Accordingly, as Sister Luiza explained, Pastor Vinicius had a list of all the congregations in Maranhão, but not in Piaui or Ceará. The Pastor had already begun writing to other pastors João might encounter in his state. However, João quietly noted that not much of his route was actually in Maranhão. The other two states would require a separate plan.

The Pastor wrote an impassioned letter asking the pastor of any church along João's path to provide food and to accompany João at least as far as the next church along his route. The Pastor read the letter aloud to João who was impressed with its eloquence - so impressed that when Sister Luiza expressed her certainty that the pastor in Rendinha would want to be as much help as Pastor Vinicius, he set aside his desire to never again meet any member of the Assembléia in Rendinha. Still, João would have felt more comfortable if Pastor Vinicius's instructions had been less frequently laced with the idea that João would succeed because God had chosen him for this task.

João did not think the plan foolproof, but he was no fool, and he knew it was better than any plan he had when he met Pastor Vinicius. João listened to all their instructions with a demeanor that suggested subservience, but that was not what he was feeling. He was thinking of two things. The first was that the Pastor had committed himself without reservation to this project in front of his congregation. The second was that João, himself, had never actually agreed to the Pastor's plan and was now in a good negotiating position.

His position was that he had several needs that had to be met to make his journey a success. The success he had in mind consisted mainly of being able to intimidate his father when he arrived home, but that is not how he explained it to Pastor Vinicius and Sister Luiza.

He began, “If I agree to do this...”

The Pastor was so stunned by João's accent on the “If” that he lost track of what João said next. Sister Luiza followed what he had to say in close detail because she knew the consequences of a refusal were awful. She didn't have to enumerate them.

João began, again, “If I agree to do this, it is not just the trip back from Codó you must help me with. To get home, I must not go through what I went through to get here. You must provide me with enough provisions for a two-month return trip – rice, beans, and onions, and fresh vegetables for the first few days. You must also provide me with an equal amount of food to bring to my family so they will know I have succeeded and they will have your true support. You must also provide me with two compliant donkeys to carry the supplies.”

Pastor Vinicius was relieved that João didn't want more than he thought his wife could organize, but Sister Luiza wasn't promising anything. “We are a poor community. We haven’t suffered with the drought the way your family has, but that is still a lot to ask for. I think your request is reasonable, and we will do as much of it as we can, but I'm not sure what that is.”

“It is a lot to ask of them, but it's a lot less than what Pastor Vinicius asked of them just yesterday. He asked them to build a church.”

The three of them sat still, looking sidelong at one another. Finally, Pastor Vinicius spoke.

“We can get you a donkey and provisions. Even that will delay your departure.”

“I also want a horse to ride. I have injured my feet enough. As for delaying my departure, you rise early. It is still only the middle of the day.”

“There is not one horse among all our flock.”

“Okay, no horse. Now, we must get started or my family will be gone when I return.” But the image in João's imagination, the one in which he arrived in Milagre de Maria riding a horse and leading a donkey loaded with food, did not disappear.

Pastor Vinicius was about to tell João he needed to stay a few days to improve on the scanty instruction he had received in religion, but he saw there was no point to it. Instead, he asked, “How do we know you will even return after we provide all these things?”

“What?! Do you think God made me walk all the way from Ceará just to abandon you? You and those like you I met in Rendinha are the best people I have ever met. I can't wait to tell the people of Milagre de Maria about the Assembléia de Deus.”

“But do you know what to tell them?”

“Absolutely. I will tell them, as you have told me, that it was God's plan to inflict drought on them so they will recognize the true church coming to rescue them. I will also tell them God has made the members of your church prosperous. Finally, I will tell them that I have heard you preach, and the connection between you and God is obvious. The connection between your whole congregation and God is obvious.”

Pastor Vinicius gasped at the first part of that message, but facing the need to educate the ignorant, rural boy, he felt helpless. There was nothing to do but pray that God knew what he was doing.

***

As João set out, he thought to himself that Pastor Vinicius would be disappointed with the number of people he planned to bring back. João wanted to see for himself how much support each of these churches, especially those in Ceará, would provide. Perhaps, after he returned, he would consider the second trip.

As João set out, he briefly thought to himself that if baptism was supposed to transform him through the release of the Holy Spirit already present in him, it still had something to prove. If he felt any new spirituality, the feeling was caused by nothing more than the enthusiasm he had for Pastor Vinicius's sermon.

As João set out, he mainly wondered whether he could find Parceira.

FIM

Clarification

I have no reason to believe that any Assembléia de Deus has ever descended into the kind of cult depicted in this book. However, speaking in tongues is enthusiastically encouraged.

There is a story that my parents-in-law were married, hardly knowing one another, when a woman in their Assembléia de Deus congregation announced that she had received a message from God that they must marry. The story is believed by members of the family who are members of the church. However, my mother-in-law claims it is not true. I tend to believe my mother-in-law, noting that it still says something about her congregation that the story is believed.

Acknowledgments

Each of the following people have contributed in some significant way to either the discouragement that led to much needed revision or the encouragement that led me a long way down the asymptotic approach to finishing this book: the late Marilyn Sullivan, Patrick Sodak, Florence Boos, DragoTesanovich, Barbara Bendzunas, Eric Vogel, Gwen Hirsch and lastly, the late Mark Freeman who read Book 1 in its most primitive state and replied, “I hope you don't take offense at my saying so, but this is much, much better than I expected.” I took that as encouragement to finish the novel, but when he read the first draft, he told me Book 1 was repetitive and boring. As I have made diligent revisions, I hope it is less so.

GLOSSARY

PORTUGUESE

Aposentado – Retired.

Assembléia de Deus – Assembly of God, a protestant denomination. North American Assemblies of God regard the Brazilian Assembléias de Deus as their mission churches, but the Brazilian churches not only regard themselves as independent, the churches of each state regard themselves as independent of the churches of any other state.

Bagunça – Thorough chaotic destruction and confusion. Far beyond kaput.

Bolo de maracuya – Pineapple upside-down cake.

Cachaҫa – A distilled spirit similar to rum but made directly from cane juice rather than molasses. May cause swearing.

Ceará – An extremely poor state in northeast Brazil.

Congresso Nacional – National legislative body – Senate and Chamber of Deputies. Long live Lula.

Cuscuis – A pleasantly chewy breakfast dish made by steaming coarsely ground corn or rice usually mixed with cassava starch (tapioca).

Deputy – Member of the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Brazil’s bicameral legislature.

Farina – Flour. The word used without a modifier usually refers to coarsely ground corn flour.

Fazenda – A farm or country home, generally of someone of a bit more than average wealth.

Fazendeiro – The owner of a fazenda.

Feijoada – A kind of stew made with beans and meat. In the hands of the poor (or their decendents) the meat is likely to be pigs’ feet or snout and sausage. Be prepared.

Igreja de Deus – Church of God but used generically not as a reference to the protestant denomination.

Latifundiário – Literally “landowner.” Used to refer to the inheritors of great estates left from colonial times. Because of their political power, Brazil still has not had satisfactory land reform.

Maranhão – A relatively poor state in northeast Brazil.

Mercearia – A general store largely focused on nonperishable food. (The addition of a few perishables makes it a “super market.”)

Norte Americano – A United Statesian, not a Canadian

Oh meu amor, qual é o ponto – Oh my love, what’s the point?

Padaria – Bakery.

Parceira – Partner.

Patrão – Boss

Piaui - A relatively poor state in northeast Brazil.

Policia Civil – Local police. Should be avoided by tourists.

Policia Militar – Not mentioned in this book. Should be avoided by tourists.

Policia Federal -  Not mentioned in this book. Should be avoided by tourists

Praҫa – Public square.

Queijo – Cheese.

Real – As inflation has driven major currency reforms, the Brazilian currency has been called the “real,” then the “cruzeiro,” and back to the “real” again. However, the plurals of the two “reals” are not spelled the same.

Réis – Correct plural of the original real.

Sala de viva – used to suggest something more general in purpose than the Portuguese word for living room, “sala de estar.”

Tijolo – A small, fired, red-clay brick with holes so that it’s shaped a little like a small concrete block.

ENGLISH

Engram – The nerve cells in the brain and the changes in them that encode a specific memory. A Rube Goldberg device.

Hypnagogic – Due to a rare brain state occurring between sleep and wakefulness. It may be thought of as being a state in which some parts of the brain are awake while others are not. Common examples include a sensation of being smothered or having a great weight on one’s chest which along with sexual feelings have led to belief in demons such as incubus and succubus.

Phosphenes – The colors seen when one’s eyes are closed.

Scintillating scotoma – An arc of tiny, flashing lights in the periphery of vision. Usually experienced by age forty.

Sessile – Attached to a base without a stalk.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shortly before his fifth birthday, David Vogel announced he wanted violin lessons. When his father insisted violins were too expensive, David went knocking on doors and came home with the loan of a half-size violin. Growing up, it was assumed his older brother (who was a science geek and good student) would become a scientist while David (who was only distinguished by his poor grades) might find a place in the arts. When he graduated from high school, the principal called his parents in for a conference and informed them that it would be a waste of David’s time and their money to send him to college. But in college, he and his brother switched places. His brother became an actor while David earned a PhD in biophysics (but with a subspecialty in eccentricity).

Most of Dr Vogel’s writing  has been educational, and almost all of it (including an introductory physics textbook) has been humorous.

Facing retirement, Dr Vogel took the opportunity to begin writing fiction. (Well, the physics problems about his Hemi powered Smart Car were already fiction.) Day of the Dragonfly is the first novel he has let out of his hands, and it is the first that is not humorous. “It was an unexpected book that came chasing after me while I was sitting with my wife on a long, hot, tropical day in Brazil. It didn't have a single joke in it, but it insisted on being written. It seemed to write itself. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t stop writing itself, and when it went past three hundred thousand words, it had to be hacked back like an acre of kudzu.”

David Vogel presently resides in Hull, Georgia. He’s easy to find. Hull is just one vowel from Hell. The serous tone and formal style of the new book have not stopped him from doing stand-up comedy. He can be reached at Democrat@mailbox.org.