The first time our family’s chauffer drove us through
the gargantuan favela, my younger brother
and I cowered in the backseat of our grey Volkswagen station wagon. Had Mother
known about our driver’s brash decision that morning, she would’ve fired him on
the spot. But rush-hour traffic heading into the city from the southwestern beachfront
properties of the rich was heavy, and the winding, uncongested road into the shantytown
ended on the other side at the American international school’s main gate.
The school—six hexagonal towers that rose from a lush
forest like giant honeycombs—educated the sons and daughters of foreign
diplomats, country managers of multinational corporations, wealthy Brazilian
families and Protestant missionaries. Students’ padlocked metallic lockers
lined each floor’s long encircling balconies and the view east showcased at a
distance Corcovado’s arm-spread Christ and Sugar Loaf. Even the buildings’ less
privileged sides were witnesses to nature’s beauty. From my English classroom,
its wide doors shrunk like oriental folding screens into the greenness that
surrounded us, we saw macaques swing from limb to limb, gnawing on anything
edible and chattering in the same way preschoolers do.
Like my brother and me, students wore typical American
brands and head-banged to typical American bands. For the studious, school time
was for sealing a spot at an Ivy League or Stanford; for the lazy, smokes,
gossip and sexual innuendo in an isolated vertex of one of the hexagons. After-school
hours were spent figuring out how to hit B-Flat on a saxophone or a worn-out softball
over the school’s massive fences that protected its grounds from the
neighboring slum’s miscreants. Students vacationed in Miami, Aspen or Paris and
came back each time with scrummy candy, fashionable alternative music and hip
haircuts. There was little life beyond those blocks, the southwestern high-rises
with their private pools and garrulous maids, and the shopping malls, movie
theaters, and country clubs that served as weekend escapes.
I didn’t know what to expect but I imagined a scene
out of a Hollywood action movie. A potholed road narrowed by thousands of
haphazard shacks made of cardboard boxes, aluminum panels and mud spread out
like an infection into the mountainside. Rotting garbage piled up outside and
the acrid smell that impregnated itself onto one’s hair and skin was impossible
to scrub off. Scrawny children ran barefoot behind a wobbly ball, while older
versions of themselves, bandanas covering their pursed lips, manned each
meandering passage with rusty weapons and vicious stares. These same men—I pictured
them as dark skinned and muscular versions of Tony Montana—catcalled aging prostitutes,
who traipsed along the streets revealing too much of their product and
expecting too little in return, and sold tainted drugs to addicts that floated along
like ghosts. Any random dark overcast afternoon, a swarm of rainwater, sludge
and human waste would slither down the hill like a nest of snakes, knocking
down the makeshift homes and slowing to a halt with all of its weighty baggage on
a wide sandy beach in front of the Atlantic Ocean.
The car pushed its way over a few bumps on the main road
and I took a quick peek out the window. Our chauffer, a potbellied older man
who’d been with our family for about a month, caught sight of my trepidation
from the rearview mirror. He chuckled and shook his head in disbelief while expertly
shifting gears.
“There’s no danger, boys. Take a look,” he said.
I sat up and pressed my face against the window. Motorcycles,
cars and trucks rumbled up and down the hillside. The nondescript
structures—homes, shops, apartments, schools and offices—that skirted the road
were bunched like books on a shelf, combinations of brick, concrete and tiles
that swallowed most signs of plant life throughout the neighborhood. Mothers
dressed in work attires held uniformed children by their hands and waited in one
of many sheltered and well-marked bus stops. Shop owners unlocked their
storefront security gates and slid them open for their employees to mop the
floors and sweep the dirty water down the storm drain. Pushy street vendors
peddled traditional foods and drinks to pedestrians who consumed them on the run,
and boys selling chewy candies, tropical fruit, gossip rags or windshield wiping
services approached stopped cars eager for a shiny coin or crumpled bill. It
was a hustle and bustle similar to that I experienced on visits with my family
to fancier neighborhoods like Ipanema or Leblon.
“Jorge, it’s busy like this every day?” I asked.
He nodded.
“How about at nighttime?”
He laughed again and told me it was sufficiently lit
and safe as long as we didn’t wander into the alleyways that branched off the thoroughfare
like dark tributaries to a major river. I unbuckled my seatbelt and jumped into
the empty front seat for a better view of the controlled chaos.
“Do you know anyone who lives here?” I asked.
“Yes. Actually, we all do.”
“No way. I do not,”
I quickly retorted.
“Don’t be so surprised,” he uttered as the German car
hit a final left turn and shut down its engine outside the school’s heavily fortified
gates.
“See you kids at one-thirty, okay?” Jorge said.
We swung the car’s doors open and jumped out. Our bulky
school backpacks dangled off of our feeble shoulders as we darted past the armed
guards to catch up with our friends and finish last night’s math homework.
Jorge sped away to run endless errands for Mother.
On the way back from school, Jorge swerved off the favela’s main road and parked the car
outside an unfinished two-story house. A group of laughing older women sat on
plastic lawn chairs outside a contiguous home fanning themselves with old
newspapers and drinking hot coffee in espresso cups. A few stray dogs rummaged
through garbage bags that had been piled next to a lamppost and a hand-painted
sign signaled left to the neighborhood’s Assembleia de Deus temple.
“This is my home,” he said. “I would like you to meet
my wife.”
My wide-eyed brother turned to face me and reached for
my fingers.
“We want to go home, Jorge,” I pleaded, my heart
skipping a beat.
“That’s fine, boys. If you don’t want to get off for a
few minutes, I will take you back.” Jorge restarted the car and took a deep
breath.
“My wife and I cannot have children,” he blurted out
and rubbed his eyes with the palm of his calloused hands.
“We tried and tried. We prayed each Sunday and
confided in our pastor for strength. But God preferred for us to be alone and we’ve
learned to live with His decision.”
A slim snowy-haired woman—she wore reading glasses, black
rubber sandals and a white and blue flowered dress that fluttered with each
measured step—tapped the driver’s window with her bare knuckles. Jorge rolled
it down and smiled.
“Hello, dear. Boys, this is my wife, Sônia,” he said.
My brother and I apprehensively waved. Sônia greeted
us and asked about our day. At first, we hesitated but her motherly countenance
and the warmth of her voice put us at ease. I told her about the tying goal I
had headed in during recess and my brother revealed how he pretends to be a Japanese
television action hero around his classmates. She clapped her hands and chuckled
at our childish tales.
“My husband talks about you all the time. He says
you’re wonderful children and I’m happy to have finally met you. Would you boys
like to come in for a snack?” Sônia asked. In unison, we shook our heads and
grimaced.
Without saying goodbye, she turned around and walked
back into the exposed brick house. Jorge stormed out of the car and told us to
stay inside. “I will be right back,” he repeated and locked the doors. My
brother and I got scared; he whimpered and I banged the car’s paneling with my
clenched fist yelling out our driver’s name but he disappeared behind his wife.
I cradled my brother and waited.
Minutes later, though, Sônia, followed by Jorge,
returned lugging a large wicker basket. Upon opening the front passenger door,
she set the container on the rubber floor mat, kneeled down on the leather seat
and yanked out a variety of foods.
“We thought it’d be nicer to have a picnic. What do
you think?” she asked.
My brother wiped a few tears off of his cheeks and we
nodded. Jorge said a short prayer before his wife served us chocolate chip
cookies out of a sealed pack, some banana slices on paper napkins and plastic cups
topped with lukewarm milk.
“Don’t worry about making a mess. I’ll take the car
for cleaning as soon as I drop you off,” Jorge assured us. Sônia grinned and
spoke to us forever about crocheting, cooking garlicky black beans and her
favorite evening soap opera. We stuffed our faces to our heart’s content and
never told a soul.
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