Dance Lest We All Fall Down - Margaret Willson [99]
I cursed myself for not being more careful in my phrasing of the sentence on the kidnapping. I had been naive, just writing these letters to people I considered friends. Alice’s KGB reference was nonsense, and some very courageous anthropologists and organizations were investigating the large organ and sex trade that certainly included Brazil; but I should have written that “the parents and Rita were afraid the girls would be kidnapped.” That would have been more accurate.
After all this time working, and one small slip of phrasing would bring a smear that could potentially destroy us. I felt terrible for all the local Brazilians who had come to trust Bahia Street. Local Brazilians often told me that this was the first nonprofit to which they had given because it was the first one they felt confident would actually send the funds to the stated project instead of into their own pockets. I felt honored by their donations. This letter might destroy that fragile trust.
The funding of Bahia Street largely existed because of the good will of others. In terms of sustainability, its good name was our most valuable asset. Bahia Street relied heavily on our Seattle-area Brazilian donors, many of whom made our fundraising possible, not so much in terms of the actual money they gave, but in their generous offers of time, musical performances, and other talents.
I am vulnerable to attack, I reflected, because I trespass on the issue of identity. Brazilians in their adopted country of the United States are trying to be accepted by Americans, the vast majority of whom have never been to Brazil and, in most cases, know next to nothing about it. Yet how these Americans regard Brazil directly affects how Brazilians are treated here. So-called Third World people in the United States are treated completely differently than Europeans. Not surprisingly, Brazilians I knew in Seattle far preferred Americans to think of Brazil as an exotic land of white beaches, great music, and gorgeous people than a poverty-stricken land of racism, death squads, out-of-control violence, and street children.
One Brazilian stated one aspect of the issue very clearly when she said that she had never understood racism until she came to the United States, because only then had she realized that others could consider her—pale-skinned with European features—anything but white.
I sighed. In many ways, it was remarkable that any Brazilians in Seattle supported Bahia Street at all, particularly since so few of them were even from Bahia or of African descent. It said something about their generosity—or about displaced communities—that as relatively recent immigrants they would even care. Indeed, I had noticed that middle-class Brazilians in Seattle tended to express more concern over Brazilian inequality than I had ever seen in Brazil.
I finally emerged from the bath, whiskey bottle in hand. Phyllis greeted me with a dubious gaze. “You look like a prune,” she said.
“Better than being suicidal.”
“Don’t be a drama queen,” she said, taking the bottle. ”If you’d hoarded this bottle of single malt scotch any longer, I’d have had to kill you.” She took out a glass for herself from the kitchen. “See? I knew you could still smile.”
I presented the letter to my board. Joyce, the grant writer, had become a member of the board, as had Helen, a lawyer. I explained who had apparently instigated the letter, probably written it, and what seemed to be her motive, as much as I understood it.
“She sounds disturbed,” Helen said. I shrugged. “We should probably send her a letter,” Helen continued, “telling her we’ll sue for libel. Libel is almost impossible to make stick, but it might keep her from sending more letters. Did you talk with the woman whose name is on the letter?”
“I tried,” I said. “I rang her, but she won’t talk with me. I can understand Alice, in a weird way; she thinks I’ve threatened her work.