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“Wilson,” I asked. “Did you actually get that thing running?” Wilson flashed me a huge grin. “I certainly did! You know, I was laying in bed last night thinking about this engine. I kept asking people to help, how I could get it running, but then, last night, I realized I could do it myself. I laid there and figured out what I thought was wrong. A simple thing, really. I couldn’t wait. So, this morning, as soon as it was light, I got out here. And I was right. I did it!”

“Congratulations, Wilson. That’s fantastic.” He waved his screwdriver at me as I crossed the street to my own house.

“Breakfast!” I shouted to Phyllis as I entered the front door.

She walked out of the bathroom rubbing sleep from her eyes. “You’re not supposed to call me until the coffee is already made,” she said.

“Sorry. You don’t have me trained well enough yet.” I ground some coffee while Phyllis put a CD in the CD player she’d brought. The fridge was leaking again, I noticed.

“Aren’t you supposed to call Brazil this morning?” Phyllis asked. “Yeah. I hope I can get through. Rita’s got a new cell phone, but it never seems to work. And Telebahia, the telephone company there, they put this message on it asking you to leave a message, but apparently you have to pay to receive the message. Nobody, including Rita, does that, so even if I left a message, she wouldn’t get it. But, if I can get through, it’s good. She doesn’t have to pay for calls she receives, just the ones she makes. So she uses the phone to receive calls and makes calls from a phone box.” I poured the ground coffee into the coffee maker. “She sent me an e-mail.”

“Rita has e-mail?”

“She sent it from a friend’s house. We have to get her a phone line so she can have the Internet. Of course, the phones don’t work most of the time, and the price to put in a phone line is insane. But Rita says with the competition from cell phones, that’s going to change.” Phyllis wiped the table and covered it with a red and purple patterned cloth. “Nice cloth, Phyllis. When’d you get that?”

“Oh, you know. I just got paid, so I thought I’d brighten this place up a bit.” She began making toast. “What’d she want to talk to you about?”

“I don’t know, but it’s not likely to be good if she’s sending me an urgent message.”

“So, maybe you should call her before breakfast so you can eat.”

“Good idea.” I went into the dining room and dialed from the phone Phyllis and I now shared. Another expense helped by having a roommate. Astonishingly, the call went through.

“Hey Margaret,” Rita said. “I think you have to come down. Can you?”

“What’s up Rita?”

“It’s about Christina. I’m really worried about her.”

I felt a pang. I still felt most connected to those first girls we took, girls who had grown alongside us, especially Christina. I think we all held a special love for Christina. Her spark, her shy glances interrupted by flashes of illuminating joy when she laughed. She was perceptive.

“Something’s changed,” Rita said. “She’s started coming to the Center dirty. She’s got lice. Sometimes I find her crying. She won’t study. She gets angry at nothing and shouts at the other girls. Lately, she spends half the afternoon in a corner holding herself and singing.”

“Singing?”

“Not really singing. More like a chant, something unintelligible, like a low, toneless murmur.” The line crackled.

“What’d you say, Rita? I couldn’t hear you.”

“I’m scared, Margaret. Sometimes, she comes with money in her hands.”

“Money?”

“Yes. Ten or once twenty reais notes. How does Christina have money?”

“Oh Rita, that’s not good. Have you talked with her mother?” Rita laughed a short and uncharacteristically bitter laugh. “Her mother’s part of the problem. That’s why you have to come down. People in Christina’s neighborhood know you better than they do me. You can talk with the neighbors and find out what’s happening. And if it’s, well, if it has to do with her mother or someone in her household…”

“What?”

Rita sighed. “Margaret, this is where you being the white foreigner