Dance Lest We All Fall Down - Margaret Willson [46]
“You’re the only Brazilian I know who has designed her kitchen so that it’s part of the dining room. This looks much more like a European home than a Brazilian one.”
“I designed it the way I thought I’d like my house to be, light and airy. The main difference, Margaret, is that I have designed it to never have a maid. Nearly all Brazilian homes, including the apartments, have a maid’s room. The kitchen is closed off because that’s where the maid is. You don’t want to have to encounter her cooking and washing in front of your guests. I’ll never have a maid, so I’ll be doing the cooking. And I want to talk with my friends while I cook.”
“A political choice, I gather.”
“Yes, of course. The only way the patronage system of Brazil is going to change is for the middle class to start taking care of themselves and cleaning after themselves—in more ways than one.” Rita laughed again and took a sip of her tea. “This is easy for me to say, of course. I love to cook.”
ten
burnt knives
Local research assistants have always formed the backbone of anthropological research. I was very lucky to have worked with first Fernando, and then Rita. My anthropologist friend Don also had a brilliant research assistant, Keila. Keila was a transvestite prostitute, mannish, squat, medium dark skinned with frizzy hair that she dyed blond. She was also highly intelligent. She had an analytical mind and explained to Don the meanings of colloquial words. She helped him transcribe and interpret interviews. She also read Brazilian research articles about transvestites and offered her opinions of them to Don. On top of all this, Keila was a wonderful cook and had several times prepared special meals for Don and myself, examples of her own particular Bahia recipes.
She often regaled us with stories of her previous night’s encounters. She had plenty of business. Men with particularly large members often got sex for free. Keila would graphically describe their huge dimensions. I had no idea if her stories bore any relationship to reality or if, in the manner of a good fish story, size depended upon the audience.
Among anthropologists, there are some who conduct their fieldwork at a distance, remaining in comfortable living situations and visiting their field site each day—the kind of anthropologist Mauro wished I were. Then there are those, and my friend Don was one of these, who live cheek by jowl with the people with whom they do research. In keeping with his (and my) idea of “good” fieldwork, Don rented himself a room in the tenement where the transvestites lived. This tenement was located on a street that my friends who have lived in the favelas all their lives were nervous to walk during the day, let alone at night. The building was late eighteenth-century and had not been repaired for more than fifty years. The planked floors were rotted, the walls dripped mold. The building housed perhaps fifty people who shared a single toilet at the back. Rats hid beneath the meager furniture and bolted across the room if someone sat on a sofa too hard. Behind the toilet was a large open area a floor below the level of the main building floor. Everyone threw their garbage there. This garbage was never removed, and with the coming of dusk, the entire pile would become a swarming, seething mass of huge rats. One could lean over the concrete railing on the main floor at dusk and watch them.
Beside the toilet was a dark stairway that led below. There, beneath the stairs, lived those who could not afford the rent of the rooms above. They still paid rent, however. These basement dwellers included a few families who survived by selling cafezinhos–small shots of coffee–or popsicles on the street, but most were prostitutes, often single young mothers, who had few possessions and preferred to spend their money on clothes