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A winter sun is pouring over my shoulder as I finish writing this, that wonderful warmth interlaced with a crispness we get this time of year. I wish you all a wonderful next few months and look forward to seeing you soon.

All the best,

Margaret

twenty-five

barriers of glass

I went to visit Jorge’s family during my next visit to Salvador.

“A toast!” Lula said. He had recently had surgery for prostate cancer. “Now, only a sip!” Zezé waggled her finger at him. He was not supposed to drink alcohol, but to Lula, that translated into “not much alcohol.” Their little house near the beach was almost finished and they would be moving soon.

We sat on the front verandah—perhaps for the last time, I thought—and drank beers in the warm late afternoon sun. Jorge came by with his girlfriend.

“I’m going to be a father!” he shouted to me, his eyes dancing. His girlfriend had quit school to have the baby. Jorge was working as a night guard at an office building. He’d built them a little place across the lower sewer behind his sister’s place. It had two rooms. “And I own the land legally!” he told me proudly. “We didn’t invade it or anything. They can’t take it away from us.”

I congratulated him and laughed to dislodge the lump in my throat. “Did you hear that Dona Cida is sick?” Jorge asked as he handed me a beer. “Something to do with her heart.”

I shook my head.

“That’s a woman I admire,” Zezé said. “She grew up a hard life with almost no opportunities and then devoted her adult life to helping other women. She teaches about childbirth; she’s like a midwife. Did you know that, Margaret?”

“Yes,” I said. “I do know that. I admire her, too.”

“She’s been sick for a while, apparently. Gato’s gone to their village to take care of her. And one of his brothers, the one who used to be the policeman, he’s out there, too.”

“Her medical knowledge certainly helped you, didn’t it?” Jorge said. “The time you were out there and fell off the bike.” He turned to the others. “Did you ever hear about this? Margaret was visiting and borrowed their bike, only she neglected to notice that it didn’t have any brakes. She takes it for a ride on one of the trails, starts to go down a hill—there was barbed wire on both sides of the trail—and couldn’t stop. You hit a rock, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It was probably what saved me since the trail went straight into a ravine after that.”

“So, she crashes, rips all the skin off one arm, the muscle off one entire thigh—wasn’t that right?—tore herself to pieces. When she got back to Dona Cida, after the shock wore off, she couldn’t walk anymore.”

“You act like you were there, Jorge,” I said.

“I almost feel I was since I’ve heard it so many times from Gato and his family.” He shook his head and took a sip of his beer, timing his story. “There’s no road to their village, so Margaret was stuck, no doctor, no hospital, nothing. Dona Cida took you to a neighbor who stitched up your knee, right? The bone of your kneecap was all exposed.” I nodded, and my leg twitched in a muscle memory. “They stitched it with a needle and thread, no anesthetic. Dona Cida, she knew her medicine, she went into the bush and came back with herbs, made a paste that covered your wounds, and took care of you for, how long? Three weeks before you could walk. Made you special food and everything!”

I stared at the shadows that slid across the broken bricks of the shack across the street. ““She saved my life,” I said.

“She did,” said Lula, “with the tropical infections—”

“The Killers!” somebody shouted from the street below. “The Killers!”

“Oh, my God,” Zezé groaned. She pulled me to the ground. Jorge grabbed his girlfriend and pushed her quickly inside. We followed, running and crawling, staying as flat as we could. We heard submachine fire moving down the street. We all scuttled to the back of the house, and lay beneath the washing trough. The gunfire grew deafening, then moved by. None