I look out the car window at the gigantic highway we’re on. A bus squeezes by, going much too fast. I definitely prefer the traffic in Sweden, even if I personally drive like I live in São Paulo. We’ve left the part of the city with the skyscrapers and the big galleries, and are now greeted by smaller buildings, little shops, and big wooden telephone poles with a crazy number of electrical wires, a design that looks extremely dangerous. We exit the big highway and drive on smaller streets. People are strolling along the streets in their flip-flops, and we drive past a coconut stand where someone is selling coconut water. Someone else is selling whole ears of corn on the cob, and everything feels familiar to me. It’s hard to describe, but it’s like I know this world, and yet at the same time it feels so foreign.
The driver stops the car outside a shop. We climb out and go into the shop to look for my Bon O Bon candies. I walk past several shelves, and then I see them, the yellow boxes of chocolates. They look almost exactly like I remember them. I show Rivia that I’ve found them, pick up one of the boxes, and look at it. It feels smaller as I hold it now than it did twenty-four years ago. I smile and feel my eyes well up; it’s ridiculous to cry because I’m holding a box of chocolates, but that’s what I do. Eagerly, I start loading my arms full of boxes. We realize that I’m not going to be able to carry all the boxes, so Rivia approaches one of the employees to ask if we can get a big cardboard box to put them in. There are about twenty children living at the orphanage, so I put about thirty boxes in the cardboard box, and we load that into the car. We don’t have far to go now, and during that brief trip, I can’t help but wonder why there are only twenty children at the orphanage. When I lived there, there must have been two to three hundred. Not that I’d counted them all, but there were definitely more than twenty of us.
I know that many of my memories are reliable, but I also know that children experience things differently. For example, I remember when my mother and I wandered into Diamantina during Carnival. I remember seeing the devil come dancing down the street. My mother had told me many stories about God and Jesus and the devil. And there he was, dancing in the street, and I was terrified that he was going to get me. I remember how I hid behind Mamãe. For a long time, I believed I had actually seen the devil. Something that felt so real to me when I was four became unreal to me as an adult, and I can laugh at it now. But that doesn’t change how I experienced it at the time. So, as I climb back into the car with all my boxes of chocolates, I ask myself, Am I remembering wrong? How many of us kids were there? I’ve been so afraid of my memories but have also relied on them, and it’s extremely important to me now that I’m back that they’re correct.
We get out of the car, and I stand outside the orphanage and wait. I look at the little yellow gate in front of me. In my day, the gate was black. The yellow paint has come off in a few places, and where it has, I see the black paint shining through. I realize that I’m still compulsively clutching the gate.
Eight Years Old and Alone in the World
1991
I really didn’t know what had happened. What had changed? I don’t know why they thought my mother wasn’t a good mother. I only know that someone decided that I didn’t get to be her daughter any longer, that they took strong and decisive action to keep us from seeing each other and to keep my mother from coming near me.
After the matron explained to my mother and me that we wouldn’t get to see each other anymore, life at the orphanage became really tough. I remember when it started. One day, a sunny Sunday, when the kids were visiting with their relatives in the backyard, the other kids, the ones who didn’t have anyone to come visit them, started running around. Some were whispering and some were yelling, and they were all in high spirits. Something out of the ordinary was obviously going on, and all the fuss got Patricia and me curious. We followed the stream of other kids. It seemed as if something was happening by the front door of the orphanage. A lot of kids were clustered around the gate, and we were at the very back of the crowd, so we couldn’t see anything. The employees were yelling for everyone to back up and return inside. Patricia asked one of the girls standing next to us what all the commotion was about. The girl said that apparently a parent was standing at the gate and yelling for one of the kids. Patricia stiffened and looked at me. We were thinking the same thing, and her hand had already found mine and was holding it tight. I can’t explain how I knew. Maybe it was the mother-daughter bond that gave off a special energy that only the two of us could feel. Maybe it was all the love my mother had given me, which gave me the knowledge deep down inside that she loved me despite everything that had happened. But I just knew that it was my mother who was standing outside the gate. I started pushing my way through the crowd and yelling for the kids to move. As I neared the gate, I could hear her voice. I’d never heard my mother yell like that. It was a desperate yell, full of fear, rage, and helplessness. I could hear that she was yelling for me:
“Christiana, where are you? I want to see my daughter! I have a right to see my daughter! Christiana!”
“She’s not here!” an angry-sounding woman’s voice responded.
“I know she’s here! You can’t take her away from me!” my mother replied. She continued to yell hysterically for me.
It hurt so much, and yet relief washed over me. My mother had come. She hadn’t abandoned me at all. She loved me. She was here now. I was running, pushing my way through, up to the gate, and then I saw her. She had completely lost it. She was crying and screaming; I had never seen her so upset. I started yelling for my mother, but a hand grabbed me. Just then, I heard my mother scream my name again. The hand stopped me, and one of the women who worked there held on to me firmly. I was upset and frustrated and extremely angry. I kicked the woman as hard as I could in the shin and hit her face with my free hand. She lost her grip on my arm, and I ran up to the gate. I reached my hands out to my mother’s and felt her hands in mine.
“Mamãe!”
“Christiana!”
“Mamãe!” I was wailing and sobbing, and my mother was crying.
I felt a woman grab me and hold me tight. My mother’s hold on my right hand grew firmer, and I grasped the gate with my left hand. The woman started pulling me away from the gate. I held on to Mamãe and the gate with all my might, and Mamãe held on to my hand. She shouted at the woman to let me go, and I cried out to Mamãe over and over again. I yelled at the woman to let go of me. I kicked at the air and tried to wriggle out of her hold. Another woman came over and grabbed my left hand and ordered me to let go of the gate. I yelled, “No!” over and over, and Mamãe kept hollering for them to let me go, that they should leave me be.
One of the women started prying up my fingers one by one to get me to let go of the gate. I yelled and yelled. It was hurting my fingers, but I kept trying to hold on. She was forced to use both hands to undo my grasp, and she yelled at me to stop my foolishness. I screamed that I hated her. She yelled to some of the children that they should come help. I managed to get my left hand free from the other woman’s grasp, and I was holding Mamãe’s hands tightly again with both of my hands. The children were tugging on me now, too, and in the end, the two women managed to separate my hands from Mamãe’s. They picked me up and Mamãe yelled to me and I yelled back. I heard Mamãe yell that she loved me, and I yelled back. I hit and kicked at anyone and anything I could get at. While they carried me through the sea of children, I heard Mamãe’s yelling get quieter and quieter until I couldn’t hear her voice anymore. The last thing I heard was the matron telling all the children to move away from the gate. At that moment, I hated her. I hated all the employees and all the children. I was more than mad; I was filled with hate. I wanted to hurt everyone, because everyone hurt me, and I didn’t understand why. I screamed, and then I don’t remember anything more.
When I woke up in my bed, I was huddled in a fetal position. Patricia was sitting next to me, and I could see that she’d been crying. She asked me how I was. I didn’t resp
ond, just shook my head. My throat hurt, my head hurt, my eyes hurt, my body hurt. My fingers ached, and I was completely exhausted. But what hurt most of all was my heart. I started thinking about what had happened, about how Mamãe had stood there, yelling and crying and trying to hold on to me. I started sobbing again, and Patricia stroked my hand. I didn’t go down to dinner, and she sat with me the whole time. I cried and slept, woke up and cried, slept and woke. It was like that for the rest of the evening. Patricia sat with me the whole time. When it was time for the other children who slept in the same room as I did to go to bed, they came into the room in silence. I heard them whispering, and I pretended I was asleep. The lights were turned off, and then it was dark. The whispering gradually died away, and the children slept. I lay awake and cried, but I tried to cry silently. Patricia heard me anyway and asked if she could get into bed with me. I said yes, and she lay next to me and held me.
So many nights I’ve had nightmares about what happened that day. This memory and these feelings are hard to express in words. They ripped me away from my own mother and didn’t explain anything to me. I was almost eight years old and completely brokenhearted. My feeling of loneliness grew stronger. Most of all I felt, and still feel, sorry for my mother. I don’t have any children myself, but the thought of someone physically tearing my child away from me makes my heart ache. There are no words strong enough to describe how horrifically cruel what they did to me and my mother was on that day and the days that followed.
When I woke up the next day, Patricia was lying beside me with her arm around me. I was tired, broken, and empty. All of the children got up, but very few looked my way. Those who did had pity in their eyes. I hated that and pretended I didn’t notice. I wasn’t going to show them how upset I was. Gabriela and her clique sneered at me; I could handle that. I felt hatred for them, and that made the whole thing easier. I wanted no part of the other children’s feeling sorry for me. It was enough that I felt sorry for myself. I didn’t want to be reminded of that by everyone else around me. Patricia and I walked to the bathroom and got into the shower line. Everyone pretty much knew their places, and there wasn’t any fuss today. It went quickly: into the shower, out of the shower, dry off quickly on the damp towel, get dressed. We went downstairs and ate breakfast. I can’t remember a single breakfast from the orphanage. I have no idea what we ate. All I remember is the coffee with a lot of milk and sugar.
After we’d eaten, it was time to go to school. We walked to the gate where the matron stood waiting with one of the employees. Something was wrong. The matron wasn’t usually at the gate when we left for school. Once all the children had gathered, she called me over. I felt a little confused. Why did she want to see me? What had I done wrong now? I walked up to her, and she gestured with her hand that I should stand next to her. Then she started talking to the children. She explained to the children that they should form several rings around me and that we should walk to school like that. I would be in the middle, and around me would be a ring of about five or six children, all of them holding hands. And around the first ring, the children would form another ring, then another, and finally one last ring outside that one. All the children in the rings would hold hands. She was building a jail out of children around me. The matron showed the children where to stand: the youngest would be in the innermost circle and the eldest and strongest children would be in the outermost ring. She continued her instructions, and the words that followed came as a shock to me. She explained to the children that under no circumstances could they let go of one another’s hands or let my mother get to me.
The matron said that if they let my mother close to me, they would be punished. I stood there completely flabbergasted in the middle of the first ring, still not properly grasping what was happening. The gates were opened, and we started walking to school, with me in the middle and the children hand in hand in circles around me. We were about halfway to school when I heard my mother call my name. I turned around and saw her come running toward me. The children started walking faster, and I noticed that some of them looked worried. My mother called to me several times, and when she reached us, she yelled very clearly that they should let her through. The children were walking fast now, and I was being pushed along. Mamãe was crying and she started tugging on the children’s hands and arms. The children shoved her away; I yelled for them to stop, yelled for them to let her through. I tried to push my way through to Mamãe, but there were too many children blocking me. I saw how some of the children were kicking her and pushing her away.
The image of my crying mother desperately trying to reach me has been another nightmare that has followed me my whole life. The distress I saw in her eyes and felt in my heart is among the most painful things I’ve ever seen or felt.
We reached the school, and the staff there met us and helped the other children drag me into the school. The gate was closed, and I could hear Mamãe crying and howling that they couldn’t do this, that they couldn’t take her child away from her. That day at school I did nothing. At recess, the other children played in the school yard. It was paved, and there was a climbing structure where I had dedicated many recesses to perfecting my climbing technique and balance. There were three swings, which the children fought over. But on this day, I spent recess crying in a corner in the hallway.
I didn’t understand why they were doing this to me and Mamãe. I didn’t understand how everyone could be so cruel. For all the world, I couldn’t understand how they, all of them—the matron, the orphanage and school staff, the children—could be so cruel to my mother. All the other children who had parents or a relative got to visit with them. Why was it any different for me and my mother? When school ended, the children encircled me again, and we walked back to the orphanage. A part of me was happy that this time my mother didn’t show up. Seeing her so sad and not getting to be with her was terribly painful. When we reached the orphanage, the circles around me dissolved, and one of the women asked the children how everything had gone. I didn’t stick around to listen, but as I was walking, I saw some of the children who’d been in the outermost circle glaring at me.
When evening came, four of these children sought me out. There was a fight. I wish I could say that I won, but the truth is, I took a licking. When the fight ended, the children said they expected my “damn mother” not to cause any problems the next day.
All I could think was, The next day? This is going to happen all over again tomorrow? How long is this going to go on?
That night, as I lay in bed, I tried to figure out how I could successfully escape from the orphanage.
I fell asleep and woke up tired. I had a terrible headache, and my knuckles were sore from the previous evening’s fight. It was Tuesday, and the routines this morning looked the same as the routines the day before and all the other days: we showered, got dressed, and ate breakfast. When it was time to go to school, to my great horror, the same procedure from the day before was repeated. The children formed rings around me, and we left the orphanage. Mamãe showed up and tried to reach me, and I tried to get to her. That night I got beaten up again. The same thing happened for the entire week. Every day, sobbing and yelling, Mamãe tried to get to me, and every day, I tried to get to her. I spent recesses crying in the same hallway corner. I didn’t do any homework, and I refused to eat any food. I didn’t talk to anyone except my friends, who also got beaten up for siding with me or fighting on my behalf.
By Friday, I was a physical and mental wreck. The whole week, whenever she walked by me, Gabriela whispered into my ear that my mother was crazy and that I was the child of a whore. I didn’t say anything. I ate for the first time, but I still didn’t talk to anyone except Patricia. She had held me and cried with me many times. When night fell and all the other children were asleep, I lay awake.
I got up and snuck over to Gabriela’s bed. I clenched my right fist tight, pulled my arm back, and then punched her as hard as I could in the face. I hit her cheek, and she woke up sh
rieking. I hit her again and again. All the children woke up, and it ended in a huge brawl with everyone fighting. Gabriela took a real licking from me, and with every punch I landed on her, a small portion of my anger seemed to melt away. Hitting felt good. An orphanage employee, awakened by the noise of the brawl, ran into our room. Most of the fighting stopped then, but Gabriela and I kept hitting each other.
When the woman managed to separate us, she asked who had started it. I screamed that it was Gabriela, and she screamed that it was me. The woman looked at the other children, hoping that one of them would provide the answer, but she was met with silence. Many of the kids probably had no idea who had started it, and the few who did knew better than to blab. I came out with a lie. I said that Gabriela was mad at me because my mother had tried to take me out of the orphanage, that my mother had hit her, and that that was why she wanted to get back at me. Gabriela said I was lying. The woman chose to believe me. I don’t know whether it was because I lied well or because she wanted to put an end to all the fuss. Maybe she chose my version because she knew what a tough week it had been for me and that I didn’t need a whipping right then. When Gabriela was allowed to get back into bed, she looked over at me, and I flashed her one of my biggest smiles. The woman turned off the light after a couple of carefully chosen words about how if she so much as heard a peep from this room, every child in it would get a taste of her belt. It was dead quiet in the room. We heard the door close. I fell asleep that night with a cozy feeling, and I remember that when I woke up on Saturday morning, I was well rested. After that, Gabriela didn’t dare go after me again.
Never Stop Walking_A Memoir of Finding Home Across the World Page 13
