Dance Lest We All Fall Down - Margaret Willson [62]
“Will we have boring meetings?” she asked.
“No, no. We’ll have fun, exciting meetings. In a bar.”
“Then sure.”
I asked Eduardo, an African-Brazilian musician who lived in Seattle. He had worked in education in Salvador. “You have started a project for my people, in my city,” he said. “How can I say no?”
“Rita and I are starting it,” I said. “Together.”
“Well, I know you. I’d love to do it.”
And finally, Mark and his wife. Mark was a retired marine ship designer whose mother started a school for orphaned girls many years ago in the eastern United States, so he already had a commitment to the idea of girls’ education.
We had our first meeting at a pizza joint. I explained the project as Rita and I had put it together so far. We would start with one girl, send her to a top quality private school, and give her tutoring as needed. If all went well, we would expand to a few more girls. We would pay all their expenses for the school and hire a tutor. I then explained my concept of an infrastructure. The group didn’t seem all that interested in my exciting infrastructure. They nodded pleasantly and grew distracted.
They were more excited by the project itself.
“Together we can do this,” Meps said. “We’ll each put in fifty dollars and think how we go next.”
“To change with my people,” Eduardo said. One by one, they each laid their hands on the table, one on top of the other, unified.
I looked at their faces and hands and curbed my impulse toward tears. These people didn’t know Rita, and had never, except for Eduardo, even been to Brazil. They only knew me, and not very well at that. I realized that I was the cornerstone for the U.S. group. I had focused on Brazil, the responsibilities we were building there. But, I realized, I was also cementing a contract here in Seattle, one that was being constructed entirely upon my words and people’s trust of those words.
I was scared. It was a strange feeling for me. I didn’t fear the project in Brazil. That part was exciting—and I was doing that with Rita. I was not alone. But Seattle was different. I was expected to figure it out all by myself. Would I be able to do what was expected of me?
But then, what right did I have to be scared? Jill faced lurking, leering Death every time she sat up. With humor and grace, she made even her doctors laugh, cracking puns, making her pain easier for all of us to bear. Where did she find this courage? This love? My fears had no place in the face of such strength. I just wished Jill were well again, and that she could have been part of this project. We could have laughed over foibles. She would love Rita.
Eduardo thought of a name for the organization, which I broached to Rita: Bahia Street. She liked it. So did I. It contained the name Bahia, where we intended to work, and which represented the African culture and influence in Brazil. Much of life in Salvador took place in the street, so “street,” an English word we thought most Brazilians would understand, was for the action, the activity, the life of the group. And we were hopeful Americans wouldn’t get too confused by one foreign word.
During summer break, I returned to Brazil. When Rita asked how I could afford these transcontinental trips, I laughed ruefully. “I can’t,” I said. But I managed. I had lived a life for so many years in Bahia that required very little beyond subsistence and beer that I had lost the habit of spending much. My salary seemed huge. It was easy to save for flights; I just didn’t save much beyond that.
A few days after I arrived in Salvador, Rita and I visited some prospective girls for the program.
“You know, Rita,” I said as we walked up a shantytown hill after one visit. “I don’t really like children that much. I mean, some are OK, but generic children, just the mere fact of them being children—it’s never grabbed me.”
Rita stretched her back and gazed at me over the tops of her recently acquired glasses. “I’ve never had children either, but I think I’m definitely