Dance Lest We All Fall Down - Margaret Willson [27]
“Hey Amiga!” the same boy I’d confronted the night before shouted. “What you got for us?”
I crossed the street and held out the cup. “Take this,” I said.
Three boys leaped up. “Genipapo!”
“Now you’ve got a drink,” I said, “and a starry tropical night,” indicating the cloud-heavy sky. It was sure to rain and they would get soaked. My drink gave them about a sip each. The kids laughed at my irony and began splitting the drink. I waved and continued on my way.
A few minutes later, a taxi cab slowed and pulled up beside me. “Hey girl,” the driver said. “Where’re you going? You want a ride?”
“No, thank you,” I said. “I live only around the corner.”
“Are you sure? I’m going the same way you are.”
“No,” I said. “Thank you,” and I walked to the inside of the sidewalk. After a brief pause, he drove away. Five seconds later, I heard someone running up behind me. I consciously relaxed my body, waiting for whatever attack might come.
“Hey lady!” I heard someone shout.
I ignored it.
“Hey lady!” The person ran up beside me. I turned, poised to kick. Then I realized the person was a girl from the group of street children. She was barefoot, wore a ragged cotton skirt and T-shirt. She looked to be about twelve.
“What did that man want? Where did he say he was going?”
“He asked me if I wanted a ride.”
“What did you say?”
“I said no thank you.” I wondered if the girl thought I was a prostitute intruding on her territory.
“That’s all you said?”
“Yes.”
The girl paused for a moment, then walked with me a few feet.
“You know, he didn’t want to give you a ride, he wanted sex.” She looked at me, her mouth tight. “He didn’t want to take you home.”
I looked at the girl and tears welled in my eyes. She could hardly have survived this long on the street without being raped, probably several times. Her eyes had the look of someone who hasn’t eaten enough for a long time. She was barefoot on this filthy street. If she looked to her future, she saw prostitution, begging, and death. I wore comfortable jogging shoes, fashionable shorts, a bright colored shirt. My belly was rounded with good food. I was the symbol of everything that oppressed her.
“I understood what he was saying,” I said softly. But I wasn’t sure I understood her.
six
a dangerous embrace
When I wrote my year-end report on my research and requested a renewal of my grant, I assumed Fernando would continue as my research assistant. I had come to rely heavily on his textual knowledge. We had spent months collecting capoeira chants, researching, and translating them.
One night after we had struggled for several hours transcribing some difficult chants relating to the time of slavery in Brazil, I threw down my pen and stretched.
“This is so complicated,” I said. “Not straight resistance, not straightforward hatred of whites, shape-changing when captured by the police... How am I going to explain all this in English to a non-Brazilian audience?”
Fernando laughed. “Race and its history in Brazil is complicated. It’s like that Black American guy we met last week.”
“Yeah, what did you think of him?” An African-American who was learning capoeira from another teacher had joined us for drinks after a capoeira gathering. He’d been in Salvador a few weeks and did not speak Portuguese. He had ignored me.
“You’re an American, so please excuse me if I insult Americans,” Fernando said, “but he really annoyed me. He kept calling me and Gato and Jorge ‘brother!’ And Angela his ‘sister.’ He isn’t our sibling. He’s a middle-class American. We are Brazilians. And then—” Fernando tapped his pen on the table in irritation, “he had the audacity