by Luiza Sauma
“Where are you going?”
“To see my friend—I told you last night.”
“Did you? Oh, yeah, you did. Who is he?”
“She.”
“She?” Bia grins. “An old girlfriend?” Her teeth are white and straight, contrasting with her reddening skin.
“No, no. Just an old friend from Rio. What are you going to do?”
“Hang around on the beach.”
“Wear a hat.”
She rolls her eyes, takes her phone out of her bag, and starts to untangle her blue earphones.
“I’ll meet you back here. I want to go for a swim before the sun comes down.”
“OK, Dad. Have fun.”
I fix my panama hat on my head and wander off, through the huts, past the swimming pool, wave at the gaúcho, who’s standing in the pool (stupid man, who swims in a pool when you can swim in the Amazon River?), and he waves back, and I reach the street. There are few shadows to hide in because the buildings are so low—just sharp, yellow sun.
“You won’t get lost,” Luana had assured me, evidently unaware of my appalling sense of direction. “Anyway, you already know it.”
No, I don’t really know Salvaterra. The streets look familiar, but only vaguely, like when you recognize someone in your dream, but then wake up thinking, who the hell was that? Sweat streams into my eyes, stinging them with sunscreen. An old black woman in a long white dress walks past, holding a pink umbrella.
“Good afternoon,” I say.
“Good afternoon, senhor!”
A small golden-brown dog starts following me, moving slowly, its tongue hanging in the heat. I pat it on the head. It’s a puppy and still beautiful, despite belonging to nobody. Boys cycle past on bikes that look rescued from a dump. They’re whistling, joyous. The dog runs after them. People have thrown open their windows and doors, and the same song is playing on the radio, out of each house; something old and melancholy that I don’t recognize, a woman singing a love song. When I reach Luana’s street, I stop and try to breathe. I’m sweating like a horse. (I remember riding horses in Teresópolis with Mamãe when I was eight years old, before she got pregnant with Thiago, and when I reached down to pet the creature’s neck, it was warm and damp, pulsing with life.)
I walk up the road, but can’t see any house numbers. A boy is sitting by the side of the road, playing with a dog—a brown-and-black vira-lata of no discernible breed—teasing him with a little stick.
“Good afternoon.”
“Olá, senhor.”
“Do you know where number ten is? It’s a pousada.”
“Luana’s pousada?”
My heart nearly bursts out of my chest. I manage a nod.
“Right over there, the blue house.” He points across the street, a few doors down.
The blue house. Of course, Papai’s house. A sign hangs on it: CASA DA LUANA. Hers now, not his. When Papai died, I noticed that the house wasn’t in his will, but Thiago said it had been sold years earlier—that’s what Papai told him. The garden overflows with bright flowers—pink hibiscus, yellow and purple orchids, others I can’t identify, in every shade—many more than I remember. I walk to the entrance, take a handkerchief from my pocket, and mop the sweat from my face.
A young woman comes out, holding a small child on her hip. For a few seconds, I stop breathing. “Good afternoon,” she says, leaving the door open for me.
But it’s not Luana, because Luana is no longer young. I walk inside.
Rita’s daughter. Our empregada. My father’s daughter. The mother of my son. My sister. My Luana. I recognize her instantly, sitting at the reception of her pousada, in what used to be the hallway. I see her before she sees me. She’s looking down at some papers on her desk, wire-rimmed glasses sitting on her nose. Her face is thinner than it had been—exquisite. She wears a black vest, her ringlets loose, lightened at the ends by the sun. She pushes her glasses back, over her hair, and raises her head. Her eyes are still green, but of course they are.
“Can I help you, senhor?”
“Luana.”
Her mouth stays open. It still has that deep Portuguese curve, my father’s mouth. She smiles, but only for a second, puts her glasses back on, and stands up. Blue jeans and gold rubber flip-flops.
“Hello, André.”
How many years I’ve spent pushing her to the back of my mind. But Luana is here, she’s real, it happened. She’s my sister and I loved her and it’s disgusting and no one has ever come close. She’s standing in front of me, waiting for me to speak, but I can’t because I’m terrified. She frowns, looking at me from head to toe. I feel self-conscious, old and ugly. She is still beautiful, but with a weariness that suits her, makes her elegant, a woman. I don’t know how to greet her. A kiss on each cheek? A hug? A handshake? I wait for her to make the first move. We stand for a few seconds, looking at each other. She puts out her hand, and I shake it, then she smirks at the formality of it.
She takes a step back, away from me. “Where are your glasses?”
“I wear contact lenses. And you, you’re wearing glasses.”
“I had bad eyesight, even back then—I just didn’t know it.”
Why didn’t I remember that? The way she squinted at the TV when the novelas were on—why didn’t I notice? Both of us half-blind, like our father. The air between us crackles with strangeness.
“Do you want a drink?”
“Some water would be good. I’m not used to this heat anymore.”
“How about a cold beer?”
“Even better.”
“Let’s sit outside on the porch.”
We sit in the shade on wicker chairs, side by side, so that we don’t have to make eye contact. Luana arranged the chairs this way. She mostly stares at the road, as though I am unbearable to look at.
“How’s Londres?” she says, sipping beer from a frosted glass.
“It’s fine.” I look at her, but she doesn’t meet my gaze. “Well, it’s home. I’ve been there for a long time.” I look back at the road. No cars, no walkers, but on the other side an old couple sits on their porch, watching us, hopefully too far to hear our conversation. Tiny hummingbirds swoop down into Luana’s garden, moving from flower to flower.
“I know. Matheus told me all about it.”
“Did you see him often before he died?”
“No, not much. After I left Rio, I never saw him again, but we wrote to each other a couple of times a year. I think it was better that way. He was never my father, not really, but I’m grateful to him for giving me this.” She gestures at the house. “I wanted to leave Rio—it wasn’t a good place for … for a boy to grow up—and I liked it here. So we moved up here and I started working in restaurants, as a cook and waitress. That’s how I met my husband, Jorge—he owned one of the bars on the beach. Sorry, am I talking too much?” She presses her lips together and laughs in a way I’ve never before seen, light and relaxed, but then she stops herself and looks back at the road.
“No, of course not. It’s great, what you’ve done here.”
“We just opened it this year, the pousada.”
“After … ?”
“Yes. I wanted to do something new.”
She pauses and drinks her beer. “Did you leave Brazil because of me?” She turns her head and looks straight into my eyes.
Her confidence is unnerving. I look away—at the old couple, still watching us, not talking. The man lights a cigarette and the woman fans herself with a piece of card.
“Yes. It seemed easy, running away—a simple solution.”
“Was it worth it?”
“My wife just left me, so, no, perhaps not, but it was worth it for my daughters. I made the same mistake that people have been making since the beginning of time, thinking that you can change yourself just by going somewhere else. Meu Deus, I sound like a self-help book.”
She snorts—the old laugh. It’s a lovely thing to hear. Her front teeth have a small gap that I don’t rememb
er, and when she smiles, I see a sliver of pink tongue, in between. Another new thing: she has dark brown freckles on her cheeks, brought out by the northern sun.
“I wouldn’t have left if I’d known about Chico. You know that, don’t you?”
She doesn’t react—just drinks her beer. What is she thinking?
“What’s she like, your wife?”
“She’s a doctor too. Her name is Esther. She’s … she’s great.”
Luana purses her lips as if to say, sorry you fucked it up.
“And your daughters?”
“They’re called Hannah and Beatriz.”
“Like Dona Beatriz.”
“She looks like her too. She’s here with me in Marajó. She’s going to study medicine.”
“Like my daughter.”
“They’re cousins,” I say, only just realizing it.
Luana tips some more beer into her mouth, then refills her glass from a bottle. I see a glint of gold on her hand.
“I would have liked to become a doctor,” she says.
“Really?”
“Yes, or a lawyer or something. Something good. I envied you, you know, but in the end I’ve been happy here, raising my children, living with my husband.”
“Where is he, Jorge?”
“He’s in Belém today, but he’ll be back later. We go quite often, especially with our kids … with Iracema living there.”
Our kids. For a moment, she must have forgotten, but she brushes aside this lapse with an efficient smile. It must happen all the time. I can’t imagine how it feels, losing a child. I lost him before I found him.
“And Rita is still in Rio?”
“Yes.”
“Tell her I said hi.”
“No. I won’t. She wouldn’t like us meeting like this.” Luana looks across the road and exhales heavily, trying to stay calm. We don’t speak for a few seconds.
“I’m sorry. Forget I said it.”
“You think you’re still Andrézinho, don’t you? Andrézinho da Rita.” Luana imitates the sweet voice her mother used when talking to us. The voice Luana used too, I realize, but her voice has changed. It’s low and firm, no longer sweet.
“I’m so sorry, Luana.”
“Good. I’m glad you’re sorry.”
I’ve barely had a sip of beer. The glass is warm in my hand. My mouth is dry, so I take a gulp. The moment passes and Luana carries on telling me about her life. She has become a talker in the last thirty years, or maybe she always was and I just didn’t know. She tells me about Jorge, whom she met during her first month on the island, two decades ago, when she worked at his bar. He’s quiet and modest, she tells me, and he loved Chico, who was eight years old when they arrived. Chico loved him too—when Chico went into catering, he was following in Jorge’s footsteps. Jorge, the perfect father. Jorge, the perfect husband.
“I know that’s not much of an achievement to someone like you, but for a boy from Vidigal—”
“He must have been very dedicated.”
“He was going to do so much more. I always knew it.”
I’m proud of him, I want to say, but I can’t. I have nothing to do with his achievements. All I gave him was my blood. I wonder whether he called Jorge “Papai,” but I don’t ask.
“What was he like, Luana?”
“Come and see. I can show you.”
We go inside. Unlike our flat in Ipanema, the original character of the house is almost intact. I wonder if I recognize the paintings on the walls. Luana leads me to the back, beyond the kitchen. The TV room, where we first kissed, was now locked and labeled 1 with a ceramic sign, though I can hear televised laughter from behind the door. Luana has extended the maids’ quarters into a self-contained flat, where she lives with Jorge, but we only go as far as the living room.
“This is him.” She picks up a photo of her family, standing in front of the blue house. Luana with her arms around an older black man, a chubby teenage girl, and a young man, who’s taller than all of them. Olive skin, paler than Luana’s, cropped curly hair, and, unmistakably, Thiago’s toothy, dazzling smile.
“What a beautiful boy,” I say.
“He looks like Thiago, don’t you think?”
“I was just thinking that. Did he use Jorge’s surname?”
“No, mine. Nazaré.”
“Francisco Nazaré.”
She nods, still looking at the photo.
“When was it taken?”
“Two years ago.”
Francisco doesn’t know that he’s going to die. He doesn’t know that he’ll never have children or marry or see his sister become a doctor. He’ll never meet his father and he doesn’t know it. It’s the wide smile of an innocent child. My child. I excuse myself because there are tears in my eyes. I feel Luana’s arm around my shoulder, and then I am in her arms, holding her. Her body feels smaller and harder than it did in my dreams, the body of a stranger. I feel a shudder and know that she’s crying. She says I don’t have to hide anymore, but I can’t do it—I can’t cry in front of her—so I take a few breaths and hold it in.
“I’m sorry for everything, Lua.”
She steps back, lifts her glasses, and wipes her eyes. “You were too young to know what you were doing, and I was too young to stop you.”
“But you liked me too, didn’t you?”
She was the one who came into my room.
“Let’s not go over it. Maybe some other time.”
There will be no other time—this is it.
“Something good came out of it, and that was Chico,” she says. “For twenty-six years I had the most wonderful son. I wish you had met him because you would have loved him too. That’s—that’s why I sent the letters. I wanted you to get to know him. I wanted you,” she says carefully, “to know how it felt to lose him.”
“Thank you.”
“Did they upset you, the letters?” She looks hopeful, and who could blame her? While I tried to bury the past, she had lived with it every day. It had a name, it was a person.
“Yes, very much. I read them hundreds of times.”
“Good. I’m glad.”
They drove me mad, I want to say. My life is ruined. But instead, I say, “Luana, will you come to the beach with me? I want to introduce you to Beatriz.”
She looks shocked for a second, but she’s good at masking her feelings—years of being an empregada, a waitress, of tending to her clients and employers.
“I won’t say anything. I just want you to meet her.”
She smiles. “OK, I’ll come.”
We walk under a Mickey Mouse umbrella, like friends, like siblings; our bodies not close enough to be mistaken for lovers. Luana tells me that Jorge knew all about my visit, about me. Chico had known about me too. Even Iracema was raised knowing that a doctor from Rio was her brother’s papai. Sometimes I forget I that I’m walking with Luana through the streets of Marajó. I catch myself and feel amazed, remembering how we walked the same streets as kids, without the slightest idea of the future. Just today and tomorrow, the beach and the river.
When we reach the beach, I see Bia standing in the shallows. I call her over.
“Meu Deus,” says Luana. “She looks exactly like Dona Beatriz.”
Bia looks perplexed and moody, the same way she looks just before an argument with Esther. When she sees Luana up close, though, she smiles and holds out a hand. Luana ignores her hand and kisses her on both cheeks. Bia still hasn’t learned the etiquette.
“This is my daughter,” I say in Portuguese to Luana, and in English I say, “Bia, this is my old friend Luana.”
“Nice to meet you. How do you know each other?”
“Luana’s mother was my nanny. We grew up together.”
“What did you say?” says Luana.
“Just a bit of the truth. Not all of it.”
“Are you ever going to tell her?”
“I think so. But not today.”
We wade into the river, my daughter and I.
>
“She’s very pretty, your friend,” says Bia as the water climbs our legs.
“Yes, she is.”
Luana stays on the shore and orders a Coke from the beach bar. She tells us she’ll wait for us; that afterwards, we can walk to the blue house to meet Jorge—he’ll be back from Belém. What on earth will he think of me?
Bia is a strong swimmer and is soon far ahead—just a black dot in the water, which is cool, calm, and heavenly. Will I ever swim here again? No. Just in my dreams. I lie on my back and float, as I did back then, and I almost feel the same. Just flesh and bone and water, just another animal, another Indian swimming in the Amazon. Then I look at my arms—covered in white sun spots—and my slack belly, and I call to my daughter because I’m worried that she has gone out too far. I swim back to the shore with Bia several meters behind. The splash of her front crawl reassures me.
When I get out, I look for Luana, but I can’t see her at the beach bar. She’s not at her table. I walk over to the young man who runs the place. He’s standing behind the bar, typing into his phone.
“Hello. My friend was sitting over there—do you know where she went?”
“Who, Luana?”
“You know her?”
“Yes. She paid the bill and left, senhor.”
“She isn’t in the bathroom?”
“No, I saw her walk that way.”
He points away from the river, to the road. “You’re friends with Luana?” he says somewhat incredulously.
“Yes, we knew each other in Rio.”
“She’s probably just gone back to her pousada—you know it?”
“Yes. No worries, I’ll see her later.”
He goes back to his phone.
Maybe we took too long in the river and she needed to go back to work. Yes. She might call later and explain everything, and then we can see each other again tomorrow and talk more about Chico. I’ll sit in her living room and imagine him sitting beside me. He’d be twenty-seven now—still a young man, stupidly young—smiling Thiago’s smile, telling me about his job in Belém. I’d buy him a ticket to London. He’d get to know his British sisters. They’d love him, even though they would share no common language.
A Coke bottle and a glass sit on a white plastic table, a few meters away. Both of them almost empty. There’s a pale smudge on the glass where my sister’s lips had touched it. The grainy pattern of her mouth. Behind me, my daughter is wading out of the river. I can hear her bare feet pounding the sand. I pick up the glass and hold it up to the sun, to look at Luana’s mark—to memorize it—then I place my lips over it and swallow the last drops of warm, sweet liquid.
