It Is Wood, It Is Stone

by Gabriella Burnham

  “Of course I remember you. The woman with the shower cap.”

  I felt my face go warm. “Yes. That’s me.”

  “Do you want to meet tomorrow?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I have a special place. Let’s meet on the corner of Paulista and Augusta at three. I can’t talk much now. I have to feed my dog.”

  I pressed the receiver close to my mouth.

  “Sure,” I said as the phone clicked off. I noticed Marta had put the Provost’s figs in a granite bowl on the kitchen table. They were sticky ripe—I could smell them from across the room—and fruit flies had begun to swarm around the bowl. I pulled the trash can over and dumped them inside.

  For the first time in a long time I had a special friend and a special event. I was nervous—I checked the clock obsessively, calculating and recalculating time in my head. It was one, I was meeting Celia at three, and you’d be home at six, so I needed to be home by five thirty. Marta, briskly dragging a broom across the living room carpet, asked me where I was going.

  “Where are you going?” she said, as calmly as that. I was wearing a silk dress and a barrette in my hair.

  “To see a friend.”

  “Will you be home to eat?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll leave dinner in the refrigerator.”

  I should have remembered then that we didn’t need dinner. We were going to eat dinner at the Provost’s apartment. But it didn’t faze me—I kept fussing, throwing shoes on and off, twisting my hair into a knot and then letting it fall onto my shoulders, until it was quarter past two and I decided to go. Better to be early than late, I thought, a novel thought for me, and left while Marta was in another room.

  There is something intoxicating about a secret, like drinking too much dessert wine. As I walked to meet Celia, I passed by a coterie of old women with kerchiefs tied around their heads, pushing grocery carts up the sidewalk. I passed a line of young police officers wearing hats flopped to the side like French berets and AK-47s strapped across their chests. I passed an old tree that had nicks and bruises knotted into its trunk and branches intertwining with a telephone wire. I passed by a world that hovered around me, until Avenida Paulista opened up and I saw Celia.

  I didn’t realize that it was her at first. She wore a floor-length sarong that defined a graceful body that was before obscured, and she had a dog with her. As I approached, she was unraveling herself from the dog’s leash while it barked at a motorcycle revving past.

  “Celia?” I said from behind. She turned and I was struck by her watercolor face, soft and emotive. She stretched onto her tiptoes when she saw me, like she needed to reach up and out to greet me, and tugged the dog in closer to her.

  “Linda. I hardly recognized you without your shower cap.”

  I touched my hair. “I only need it when it rains.”

  There was a vibration in the way our eyes connected, like we saw in each other something deep inside ourselves. I imagined that, in a parallel dimension, we were already holding hands, hugging each other in a long embrace, but in this reality we stood next to each other with excited hesitation, as strangers meeting only for the second time.

  She leaned in to give me a kiss on the cheek and the dog jumped onto my legs with both paws.

  “Claudius!” She pulled him down. “I’m sorry. He’s very eager.”

  I ran my fingers through his thick and prickly fur.

  “What kind of dog is he?”

  “I don’t know exactly. I found him years ago on the street.” She pulled a biscuit out of her purse and fed it to him. “Shall we walk?”

  I followed a couple steps behind as Claudius pulled Celia down the sidewalk. The dog required nearly unbroken vigilance. When he wasn’t charging forward, he would stop abruptly to bark at a passing car, or to sniff a garbage pail, or to scratch his collar. A pink, unneutered sack swung between his hind legs as he trotted alongside Celia. If people tried to pet him, he’d clobber them with so much energy that they would have to back away. Celia apologized to them while Claudius was already on to the next, a string of saliva attached to his lower jowl.

  “So,” I said, hastening up to her so we could walk next to each other. “Where are we going?”

  Celia smiled. “You don’t like not knowing, do you?”

  “I prefer to know, it’s true.”

  “We’re going to a play. And I’m not saying anything more.” She pretended to zip up her lips.

  “Oh,” I said, feeling the disappointment nudge at me. I had envisioned us alone, side by side, talking away the hours. But, of course, I didn’t want my disappointment to disappoint her. “What’s the name of the play?”

  “Uh-uh—I won’t say anything more. It’s part of the experience.”

  “Is it a well-known play?”

  This made her laugh.

  “I won’t tell you!” Claudius squatted, back curled, in the middle of the sidewalk, and a hot stench sank into my nose. Celia took out a green plastic bag and tenderly picked up the waste. “I think you’ll enjoy it. And some friends of mine will be there too.”

  Already I was nervous. “Sounds great,” I said. “Which friends?”

  “Oh, the usual crowd. Simone will be there. You’ll love Simone.” She tied the plastic bag closed. Simone, Celia explained, was one of her closest friends and had been with their theater company for almost ten years.

  “Is she an actress?”

  “She is, but we hired her as a stagehand because that’s the job I had at the time.” Celia had just begun managing the company when Simone applied. “I didn’t know how good an actress she was. One of the best.”

  Simone, who was still Simão at the time, had walked into Celia’s theater without a résumé or a head shot and told the teller at the ticket booth that she was looking for work. Both her parents and her boyfriend had disowned her after she decided to transition—she didn’t have a place to live or any money. Celia hired her and let her live in the costume room in the attic until she collected enough paychecks to rent an apartment near Luz Station. Sometimes she and Celia would bring wine and sushi up the wooden ladder and eat and drink in taffeta skirts and pirate hats.

  Celia tried to convince Simone to audition for a part, but when the next production came around, Simone refused. She had only ever acted in male roles, she told Celia. What if she wasn’t any good? Auditions came and went. Celia pressed and pressed, but Simone evaded her. To earn more money, she began to pick up catering jobs, passing hors d’oeuvres around at cocktail parties.

  I felt I understood Simone’s fear. When you’ve been deprived of your natural self for so long, and then that self appears, the anxiety that you may stumble—out of pure, clumsy inexperience—can be overwhelming.

  Celia turned in to an alley between a nightclub and a women’s department store where mannequins and empty beer bottles had been discarded. She opened a wrought-iron door on the side of the building. The inside revealed a courtyard shaped like a small coliseum, circular and sunken in the middle, filled with people. Two children were running around, weaving through legs, and as soon as we walked in Claudius ran after them into the center of the crowd. We followed.

  Celia introduced me to a man with a long gray beard and a peacock feather in his hat. He was talking to a woman with braids down to her knees, each one festooned with beads and gold clasps. Neither spoke English. Celia was my translator, a job she accepted enthusiastically. She paused to explain who someone was (Thiago, the drummer; Igor, the director; Elena, the actress). She would speak rapidly with them, laughing and gesturing wildly, and then she would pause to explain everything to me.

  This process eventually became exhausting. I watched the conversations unfold in front of me, while Celia would pass me polite glances like salt at the dinner table. Claudius had curled up on the floo
r next to Celia’s feet, eyes closed, and I wished I could do the same, that I had such an easy excuse to fall away.

  The children ran by. One used my body as a hiding spot, while the other searched behind other adult legs.

  “The children think that I am an inanimate object,” I said into the corner of Celia’s ear.

  “Let’s get a drink.” She waved down a server, who brought us two caipirinhas with pineapples splayed on the plastic rims. “The performance is going to start soon.”

  The lights dimmed and the crowd began to assemble at small tables surrounding the stage. I followed Celia and Claudius to a table close to the front.

  A drum troupe, three of them, emerged and set up in the back. One began to beat. Thud, thud, thud, thud. I could feel the vibration echo in the center of my chest. Some of the guests came around and handed us blindfolds. The man with the peacock feather tied a scarf around my face so that I no longer had a perception of how far away my face was from my hands or where Celia was sitting. I felt a gritty, wet surface brush against my hand. It was Claudius. He put his head on top of my leg, and I held on to him as an anchor.

  When they announced that we could take off our blindfolds, two boxers stood in the center of the sunken space, wearing only red silk trunks and rubber guards in their mouths, their hands bare-knuckled and taped. I rubbed the bandages wrapped around my own palms. Each boxer had a stone in his hand. They crouched low, and one boxer picked up his right leg and swung it up and over the other boxer. Once his feet touched the ground, the other did the same, over and around, again and again, until it turned into a rhythmic motion, circles folding into circles. The drums followed. Badum, badum, badum, faster and faster.

  Now the crowd really became excited. Everyone, Celia included, started to whistle and jeer and whip their blindfolds above their heads. The fighters were ignited by the audience’s energy—the more we cheered, the closer they moved to each other, and the closer they moved, the more we cheered. Their slippery bodies were inches from each other, legs and arms twisting and crossing, the drums breaking through our roar like a summer storm, until one boxer landed the first blow. It was the fist with the stone. Crack. Right across the jaw. I froze and instinctively clutched my own face, as if I could taste the metal and grated skin inside my cheek. I looked at Celia, expecting equal shock, but she and the rest of the crowd had erupted in applause.

  The two children were sitting on the floor, cross-legged, sharing a bowl of chocolate gelato. Once one boxer made the first hit, all hope vanished, and they both started to beat each other, blood splashing across the floor until it was dotted red like a poppy field. I couldn’t take it. I did the only thing I could think to do—I put the blindfold back on.

  Once the cheering stopped, I lifted the scarf from my eyes. Blood was everywhere. They had hit each other so consistently that both men lay crooked on the ground, unmoving, their faces smeared with blood. My cheeks were wet, but I couldn’t tell if it was from tears or sweat. I thought they were dead. Claudius rose from underneath Celia, lurched toward the stage, and nudged one of their feet with his snout. I tried to grab on to his leash, but then I saw him lick the blood. Celia didn’t stop him, so he continued licking until he had cleaned up an entire patch on the stage.

  I sat dumbstruck and silent. After the cheering died down, the boxers leapt up, hugged each other, and bowed. The audience stood and applauded.

  Celia turned to me, still clapping, and saw my dismay. She was puzzled at first, and then realized my confusion.

  “Oh, Linda,” she said and stroked my hand. “Querida, it’s not real!”

  She dragged her finger across a drop of blood that had landed on her arm and put it against her tongue. “See,” she said and licked the tip of her finger.

  I tried a lick myself. It tasted like flour and licorice.

  “I didn’t know,” I said. “I was sure they were dead.”

  She consoled me, embracing my hand in hers from across the table, until a group of people swarmed in, congratulating her on the performance. It was her theater company’s production. I sat for a bit, weighing if I should join her conversation, then decided to go search for Claudius. He had cleaned up half the stage by the time I found him.

  We didn’t stay much longer. I told Celia I needed to be home. It was almost seven. I assumed she would stay without me, but she took a last sip of her pineapple caipirinha and said she’d walk out too.

  On our way to the exit we ran into Simone.

  “Menina,” Celia said and embraced her.

  Celia introduced me. Simone ducked her nose into her shoulder and smiled.

  “Oi,” she said and gave me a perfunctory kiss on the cheek, her eyes attentive like a cat’s whiskers.

  “Oi,” I said back.

  Simone spoke in an almost whisper and Celia translated what she said back.

  “She wants to know if you liked the play,” Celia said to me, and they both stood motionless, awaiting my answer.

  I nodded vehemently, and Simone’s face rose with satisfaction.

  Celia and I said our goodbyes and then stepped out into the night. The mannequin bodies formed a ghostly mirage down the path to the street. Claudius stopped at various light poles to mark his territory along the way.

  “So, tell me. What did you really think?” said Celia. “And don’t just say what you think I want to hear.”

  I searched for the right words. In truth, I’d found the play uncomfortable, at times unwatchable. I often didn’t know where to put my eyes, where my hands should go, if it would be appropriate to leave for the bathroom.

  Celia continued. “I noticed you put your blindfold back on.”

  “Yes, at one point I did,” I said. “I’m sorry. It’s not that I didn’t like it.”

  “I know. It’s not easy to watch.” She stopped walking, and Claudius glanced back at her. “But that’s not the intention, either. I want to know—what did it remind you of?”

  I wanted to say the right thing. I wanted her to take me seriously. I clicked through interpretations in my mind, rifling through possibilities as through an overstuffed file cabinet. Was it a metaphor for war? No. Masculinity? Too obvious. Patriarchy? Domestic violence? Environmental collapse?

  And then I said, “When we first met, I told you that I had thought about leaving my husband. Before we came to São Paulo.”

  Celia nodded.

  “Well, I’m starting to realize this is a tendency I have. To fantasize about things that aren’t in my life. To long for something different.”

  As I said this, Claudius bumped into the side of my leg and knocked me off my balance.

  “Here,” I said and reached out my hand. “Let me hold him.”

  Celia passed me the leash and grazed the bandages on my hands in a way that sent goosebumps up my arms.

  “The uncomfortableness of the play reminded me of how painful that frame of mind can be. To live in a constant state of transcendence. There is no real way to escape our selves.”

  Celia placed her hand on my shoulder. “You shouldn’t try to escape yourself, Linda. I love you. You are linda.”

  A smile cropped up from deep inside me. She said “linda” as Marta had, small-el “linda,” and we walked for a bit in silence as I allowed the glimmering halo of “I love you” to sink in.

  “The boxers moved elegantly,” I continued. I wanted to say more, to give her more praise. I didn’t want our time together to end. “It was a nice contrast to the violence.”

  “Did you recognize the dance? The capoeira?”

  I shook my head.

  Capoeira, Celia explained, is martial arts, dance, drums, performance, and acrobatics invented by enslaved African people in Brazil. It’s a huge part of the culture; everyone loves capoeira. Tourists pay money to see capoeira performances on São Paulo’s streets.

  “B
ut do we think about where it originated?” she said. “Do we see the violence that gave us so much of our culture? Capoeira. Carnaval. Even feijoada.”

  We stopped in front of the subway entrance, and Celia picked up Claudius with both arms.

  “That’s what I want to do with my theater. I want to lift the mask and show that Brazil still has a lot of healing to do.”

  “I can understand that,” I said. “I have a lot of healing to do too.”

  Celia began to descend the subway stairs.

  “Yes. But always remember: Your healing should not come at someone else’s expense.”

  * * *

  —

  By the time I got to the apartment, the backs of my heels were torn with blisters. I was lost in thought when I entered the kitchen. You were standing in front of the sink with the faucet on.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “I’ve been waiting for hours.” That’s when I noticed you were in a suit. You had your good dress shoes on.

  “I went for a walk. I got lost,” I said. I was scrambling, trying to think up something to say that would soften the blow. I had forgotten about your dinner.

  “I told you this morning to meet me at the apartment.”

  My mind searched and searched. I had no memory of remembering, and no memory of forgetting. I just remembered that I had never really wanted to go.

  “We had dinner. With Eduardo and Melinda. Remember?”

  “I’m sorry, Dennis. I went out for a walk to get some air. I felt so sick in the apartment— I thought I could take a walk through the park. But then I turned down the wrong road and it was dark. I didn’t know where I was.”

  “I told them you were sick. We’ll reschedule.”

  “I know this was important to you.” I joined you at the sink and tucked my arms underneath yours. I could feel that your body was restricted, hardly responsive to my touch. I held on longer until you softened and rested your chin on the top of my head.

  “Lately it’s impossible to know what you’re thinking,” you said and pressed closer to me. I felt your hand move down the edge of your zipper and rub up against my skin.