Dance Lest We All Fall Down - Margaret Willson [102]
“Oh God, Rita.” Phyllis silently handed me a cup of coffee and returned to the kitchen. I sipped it gratefully. “You know what’s going on Rita, don’t you?”
“Not exactly. I hope it isn’t as bad as I think. So you see you have to come.”
“Yes, yes, I see that. I’ll figure it out. I’ll come down in December.”
“She won’t even talk with me, Margaret. I’m not sure she’s going to school anymore, but she comes to Bahia Street every day. And she never wants to leave. She starts crying when we shut the doors. At eleven, I’m afraid Christina’s struggling with the kind of knowledge that makes people old.”
Then, so quietly I almost couldn’t hear her, Rita said, “I wish she weren’t so pretty.”
I slumped into one of the kitchen chairs. Phyllis served me toast and scrambled eggs.
“So, you’re going to Brazil,” she said.
“Oh, thank you, Phyllis. You could understand what we said?”
“Enough from your side.” She sat across from me. “You have that anthropology conference on the East Coast, don’t you? You could go directly from there.”
“Oh boy. I suppose so. If I give essay finals and do the grades at the conference.”
Phyllis patted my hand. “While you’re gone, I’ll feed your cat.”
I was in my hotel room in Salvador pretending to write notes on my laptop, but I was really just staring at the wall. I never stayed with Rita anymore. The shootings had increased dramatically in her neighborhood. She said that next time I came it might be better, but right now she was too worried about my safety. I was worried about her safety. I decided not to tell other friends I was coming to Salvador because I knew that then I’d be swept up into a social whirlwind and not get any work done. I’d just booked into my usual cheap hotel.
It was strange how, in the outer physical reality of the world, the spaces and conditions of Salvador and Seattle were so far apart, yet in my mind, within the confines of that internal space, they joined in a turbulent mix. The Salvador communities like Rita’s and Christina’s were changing. Could we even call them communities anymore? Each person was fighting for survival alone. When murder becomes the norm, everything else gets twisted. Torture loses its meaning; the suffocating scent of death stifles any shred of humanity. I looked into the eyes of these twelve-year-old boys, all of whom now carried guns. Most sniffed glue. I saw nothing but my reflection in their eyes. They knew they could die tomorrow. They literally did not care if they killed you, if you screamed in torture, you and the rats. It was all the same.
I sighed. I’d blown my paper at the anthropology conference. I’d given it on drugs, gangs, and violence in Salvador. The people listening, hardened anthropologists, were visibly disturbed by what they heard. My images were too raw. The listeners distanced themselves through abstract comments: “Impressive ethnography, Margaret.” I was too edgy; I was too deep inside for distance.
After so many years in Salvador, I had seen a lot. I knew horrific violence was perpetrated against children, that it happened all over the world. But why Christina? Of what depravity are we humans capable?
I had talked with Zezé, Lula, and Jorge. It didn’t take long. Everyone, it seemed, knew what was going on. Christina’s mother was jealous of her. She wanted to go out dancing and didn’t want to take care of her kids. But she wouldn’t give them away either. While she worked, she left the kids in a shack alone with her new twenty-year-old boyfriend. Some months ago, he had started raping Christina. He gave her money. I gathered, although no one would say this directly, that he was pushing her to be a prostitute since this would make them all money. Since she was so pretty and all.