Dance Lest We All Fall Down - Margaret Willson [76]
I showed her the book, holding it close to her eyes so she could see. “Look, Mabel,” I said. “It’s you.”
She smiled. “I’m famous,” she whispered. She ran one frail finger lightly along the contours of the photo of her smiling face. “I was so beautiful then.”
I sat at the little table in my hotel room trying to write, making notes of what I had learned that day. I had spent the day visiting with Jorge and his family, then the evening out at our usual bar with Rita. The hotel room was insufferably hot. I opened the wooden shutters wider and splashed my face with water. Rita had been talking about her time at university. She said that nearly all her close friends—who were, like her, African-Brazilians—were from the rural interior of Bahia, not the city. She thought this was because the infrastructure in the small towns and countryside was much better than in the city. Families in the city, she said, lived in bairros that had no central community. The children got lost in the streets while parents worked to survive.
“And you, Rita, why are you an exception?” I asked. “Why does one child make it and millions don’t.”
Rita had laughed. “Don’t make me so exceptional,” she said. “Although I grew up in the city, both my parents are from the interior. And remember, Nordeste was like a small village when I was a child, nothing like it is today.”
We talked about how these neighborhoods were always changing. Bonocô, the neighborhood where both Jorge and Christina lived, was better at present in terms of street violence and gang activity.
“It’s because they killed them all.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
Rita shrugged.
I tapped my beer glass in frustration. Jorge had told me exactly the same thing—and had been just as vague on the identity of “they.” Jorge seemed to think the killings were fine as long as “they” kept to the more violent offenders who, in Jorge’s opinion, were trying to take over the neighborhood.
Rita smiled ruefully when she saw my exasperation. “Bonocô may be getting better,” she said, “but Nordeste Ameralinha is getting worse. Three or more young men are killed a weekend.” She paused.
“That makes about 180 a year in Nordeste alone.”
“Who’s killing them?” I asked, yet again.
Rita filled up our glasses and looked over her shoulder. “Gang activity, police, death squads. My street is particularly dangerous right now because the young man next door, Pedrinho—remember, you met him last time you were there—he’s become an assassin lately and accidentally shot the wrong person in a gang fight. Now, the opposing gang is taking pot shots at his house hoping to kill him. I can’t go out on my verandah anymore. I might get shot.”
I said nothing, and Rita waved to Nelson to bring us another beer. “And make it really cold!” she shouted. Nelson laughed and gave her the thumbs up.
“I read today that there used to be more men than women in Salvador,” Rita continued, “but now the ratio is 800 men to every 1000 women. And that deaths are almost all in neighborhoods like mine.”
The beer Nelson poured from the frosty bottle was so cold that it came out in a slush of ice. Rita looked at it suspiciously. “Doesn’t look very cold to me. Warm, just like always.” She flashed her eyes at him, and Nelson laughed as he walked away. Rita sipped her beer with a satisfied smile.
“Everyone has guns for sale,” she said. “The police, kids… ten-year-old kids are selling them to each other. It increases the boys’ professional options—they now have a choice between the time-honored drug seller or the up-and-coming paid assassin. Good money, with a life going at about twenty reais each.” I glanced at her. “Do I sound jaded or cynical?” she asked. “Last weekend, two young men were shot on the next street to me; I’ve known them since they were born. Then, the police came and shot a third young man. I knew him, too. I start to feel battered after awhile, all this waste of young lives. How can we have a community when we all have