Dance Lest We All Fall Down - Margaret Willson [7]
I followed their example, cast my eyes away, and wouldn’t dance with him. But I kept seeing him in the surging crowd. When he smiled at me, I wondered if I could love someone with whom I had not exchanged a single word. I danced lambada with Andrea, close and sexy, giggling, knowing I was showing off, intoxicated by the assurance that this tall man watched me.
When I looked around, the crowd had taken him. Ana and Andrea wanted water, so we struggled out of the swell.
“Camila!” Andrea shouted. “Over there! She’s selling water. That’s our cousin!”
We all hugged, and when I tried to pay Camila for the water, she refused and laughed at me. After she handed us our waters, she quickly replaced the lid of her vendor’s Styrofoam box. “The ice inside is expensive,” she said.
We slid into the crowd again. I turned and saw the man dancing behind us again. I smiled at him and then looked away. He danced near Ana and began talking with her. I had begun using an infantile Portuguese, heavily supplemented by university French. Ana and Andrea spoke slowly for me, explaining things I didn’t understand, seemingly clairvoyant in their ability to understand me. But I couldn’t understand this man at all. His accent was completely different; he could have been speaking anything. Ana translated. He told them he was from Arembepe but had also lived in Penambuas, in the valley near the sewer canal where the wind never blew. He had stayed there three years, but couldn’t find a job so he came back. Ana then told me I could dance with him.
The four of us danced together, then he showed us the special sights of Arembepe. We embroidered the night with joy, planted our feet wild in the street, ate from the mouth of the trio elétrico, the deep throb of the bands. The light of our smiles pulsed with reflections of the moon and popcorn machines.
Sometime, very late, when the crowd began to thin, we all walked to the beach. Ana took a candle from the small bag she carried and lit it. She and Andrea curled up in cangas, long pieces of cloth people often wore over their swimming suits, and tried to sleep. The man took my hand and led me to the sea. We waded in the low surf to soothe the cuts and bruises of our soles. He kissed me.
We sat on the sand near Ana and Andrea and tried to talk. He told me he had nine brothers and sisters, that he lived in a nearby village, that his father was dead, and that most of his family worked in the factory. When he told me his name, I couldn’t understand him.
“They get sick there,” he said. “That’s how my father died. I didn’t want to work there, but....” He shrugged. “You’re from São Paulo?” he asked, touching my sun-blonde hair.
“No,” I said, “I’m a foreigner.”
“You’re a Spanish factory worker,” he said, smiling.
“No,” I said, “I’m an American.”
“From where?”
“From the United States.”
He took his hand from my hair. “Maybe I don’t understand you. What’s your native language?”
“English.”
He crouched in the sand then, head between his thighs. I sat beside him and said nothing.
“America must be very beautiful,” he said to the sand. His voice fell bitter like dead leaves. “What are you doing here?”
I wanted to lie, but didn’t. “Visiting.”
His laughter came, a burnt stick. “Don’t you have family at home? Why have you left them?”
I touched his shoulder because I felt him shivering. “You’re cold,” I said.
He pulled my hand away, took my head between his fingertips and kissed me again, this time a strong and violent kiss, as if he wanted to suck my insides to the bottom of his throat. Did his soul reside there, I wondered, or did he want mine so he could spit it into the sand?
His hands moved gently across my belly and over my hips where my shorts had pockets. He was feeling for money. He shook, I was sure, not from desire, but because he didn’t know what he would do if he found some. I took his hands in mine, glad for both of us that I had none.
He glanced over my shoulder. “Someone has stolen your