Bridge Retakes

by Angela Lopes

  first edition

  Copyright © Angela Lopes 2017

  The production of this book was made possible through the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. BookThug also acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Book Fund.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  library and archives canada cataloguing in publication

  Lopes, Angela, author

  Bridge retakes / Angela Lopes. — First edition.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  softcover: ISBN 978-1-77166-302-1

  html: ISBN 978-1-77166-303-8

  pdf: ISBN 978-1-77166-304-5

  kindle: ISBN 978-1-77166-305-2

  I. Title.

  PS8623.O62B75 2017 C813’.6 C2017-900740-8. C2017-900741-6

  To our mothers

 

  For Sofia and Giovanna

  Phila is out in the state capital São Paulo, Brazil, to help her cousin with her beauty salon. Phila loves her family and friends in Brazil, plus she loves the food, forró and sertanejo music, and the land. She goes to Brazil at least one time every year. This time, Phila thought she’d try out a local dating site. On this dating site she met Zé. Zé posted photos of himself in his car, at his sister’s beauty salon and after one of his soccer games. Zé works in a photo lab in São Paulo. Phila works three different jobs in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada: editing theses, cleaning and telemarketing. Her father and mother were born in Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil. Phila was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Zé was born in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. He still lives with his mother and siblings, in a better favela in São Paulo. Zé’s family is composed of devout Catholics with robust African traditions embedded in their daily interactions. He is extremely close to his siblings and mother. Phila’s parents were raised by Phila’s grandmother on her father’s side and both grandparents on her mother’s side. Both Phila’s mother and father came from lower middle-class families. All the money they had got invested into learning English. Her mother and father met in English school at the ages of twenty-one and twenty-three. After two years of study, each working three jobs and getting married, they immigrated to Vancouver. Phila was born a year after they landed in Vancouver. Three siblings followed.

  Phila decided to never forget where her parents came from, their economic struggles and spiritual suffering. Phila has little desire to buy anything, and all her savings from work go into her journeys to Brazil. She still lives with her parents in a middle-class suburb in Winnipeg. Zé has always dreamed of leaving Brazil. Zé has never ever left Brazil. He often thinks of it as a trash can. What the First World can give his family and him is economic stability, something they only get in month-long spurts, maybe two per year – a feeling of stability. Zé believes if he were ever to move to Canada to work, he could drastically improve his family’s economic situation and help provide more opportunities for careers for his siblings. In São Paulo, Zé makes just enough to help out his family and finally he bought his very first car. To be approved for a Canadian tourist visa, he should own a home, have a certain amount of money in the bank, own a car and have a family that he could return home to. He only has the family and car aspects covered.

  What if we met bigger than we fathom we are in this disorganization?

  Phila, March and April 2015, São Paulo

  This age is interesting, this being thirty and all. I never thought I’d make it so far. The disorganization speaks to me at a time when I finally have some inner stability. I am always trying to understand, always trying to organize. I’m not gonna lie, I kinda like the disorganization here. It means I can organize my beginning with you. I am trying, trying to understand this disorganization. My life is getting better the closer I get to God. Here I meet Zé. Zé is a part of this disorganization, I am a part of this disorganization. Going back and forth from São Paulo to Winnipeg, twice per year, suits me. I can work in both cities. But this city São Paulo is the craziest ever. Here we get through everything and anything, so much so that all we go on is feeling. Our families are the backbone to this feeling. It may be absurd to some people, but I can no longer go on what some people say. It’s not so bad that I left. We do not know my story. I remember when we walked to the car and you pulled me in, I couldn’t make the next move. The car smelt of wet carpet. We wanted to stay, but we wanted to go. We bounced into the rain forest. How love can grow out of us growing out of each other. Sometimes I see you bigger than you think, like is there potential here? I wasn’t sure which direction to move, all seemed resplendent. Sometimes I think I can really put it all together. Like this moment is everything with you. Like tomorrow has no matter, no place in my thoughts. I have little money because I spend it all on going to São Paulo. Sometimes I do not wanna be near you, the feeling is too robust. We are just beginning. Every time you reach out, you want to deny me. Into a must-see, must-do. I revel in the limit against what cannot be known. All my endeavours facilitate a sparser sea of flame. And if I cannot be bigger I will do more than I can, but this more is untidy. It gets ferocious. So I fabulous my eyes to a longer lash. One, two, fancy.

  We cannot manage to get paid enough. To look for more work, I travel. The cleaning, telemarketing and editing are not enough. I love to engage with the people here, by any means teaching English or French or whatever. Maybe translation sometimes, too. There is something I am here that I adore, to adjoint to that family feeling. We expected nothing, I am not denying the joy in this. Being critical left us lonely, we were always forgetting ourselves, texting glamour. Every passage is vast with a catcall. But you wouldn’t let me go. Our first moments together just cannot let me go. You see, sometimes my illusions are my reality, this is how I get things done. I walk differently now. All I could do was feel for you. Sometimes I didn’t account for it. You gestured me where to go, and I reminded you where you’re from. There is something in the water where you live. How could I leave you. But I’ll be honest: my fear is that I fall drop dead in love with you, and then you leave me. I like very much being afraid. I like getting to know you, and moreover I like you telling me what to do. Every step is virtually desired. I breathed in so much of who you are, I now truly understand you. It was all so sudden.

  Sometimes conceptions of webs of thought absconding reality are the gesture to reveal it. Like my mother’s phrasal structure. She gets me to do things I don’t usually wanna do. But my mother is not here. It is hard to organize beyond the family here. Wild like boars, we always have something to do. They say the beginnings of love relations are too passionate. I had to put my books away to be my body. You, you just had to conquer me. And, boy, did you ever. I swear no man in Canada has moves like you. Something like wanting to be gotten becomes imperative, pastures a similar entitlement, though not a lodge in mind, rather murmurs. Did I ever tell you I know more than this? You see something virtuous now. I organize what I thought I never could. You, you are seeing me plan life, putting pieces together of our beginning.

  Phila and Zé’s first encounter can be encapsulated in their first kiss: slow yet with an intense beginning of love, smooth and confident. No one could tell them otherwise. It was the point where sky and ocean meet. They know very few people sense this unison. Like however they are very different, they belong together. Like it’s required that they be together. It was a hot night in the state capital
São Paulo. Phila’s journey to Brazil this time spans two months, March and April. Phila managed to get time off work in Winnipeg. She is fortunate her jobs let her do this, as they are mostly on-call and/or online.

  Phila and Zé met by the bus station. He picked her up with his car. Though Zé and Phila met online and have been conversing for almost three months, this was the first time they were to meet in the flesh. Ten years ago, when Phila was in Salvador, Bahia, for the first time, she had her wallet stolen while she was sleeping on the bus. But shortly after the experience, a beautiful man invited her to his home, fed her, gave her money and gave her his phone to contact her mother to wire some money to Salvador. Phila has never been able to forget this man, to forget Bahia.

  After Zé and Phila’s first kiss, in his car, a kiss that lasted for ten minutes, they drove down by the beach to have some pizza and wine. Phila could see Zé was really trying to impress her. After each having a slice of pizza and kissing a lot within a two-hour span, the waiter asked if they would like to take the rest of the large pizza home. Zé gave a flat out “no.” While driving after leaving the restaurant, Zé pointed to various favelas and said, “Ó, que vergonha, ne?” Phila didn’t think they were that embarrassing. She had become so used to seeing favelas; her cousin lives right beside a well cared-for favela. Phila’s never lived in one, though.

  Phila had no idea Zé was driving them to a motel. She had never been to one. When they approached the motel, a receptionist asked through a microphone behind the receptionist glass, “Documentos faz favor?” Phila forgot hers, but the lady let it slide anyways. Phila had no idea what to expect. Zé parked the car in a garage stall and there was a door inside the stall. The door led to a lush room, one of the fanciest rooms Phila had ever been in. A hot tub, king-sized bed, mirror on the ceiling, over 134 channels from the satellite dish, a small refrigerator with many drinks in it. Phila was not impressed. Zé was shocked she wasn’t impressed. They began making love. As Zé came inside Phila, he asked her to marry him. It was a night of ascension. Nothing ever gets created without risk. Precisely because Zé and Phila didn’t know and still don’t know what is being created, it is creative.

  What’s a date?

  Phila, April and May 2015, São Paulo and Winnipeg

  I, Phila, couldn’t work it out. I am not liking myself today. I just can’t work it out, can’t put it together. I am sometimes inundated with so much felicity that I destroy. I know my body well. I return home in heart.

  Zé is an extraordinary man. He’s like my father; when I was born I met him on the edge of our lineage. But is it not in our blood to elude? I visit my parents and sometimes I live with them. Yes, my mother submitted to divinity. She always looks like she never wanna go anywhere. To see is to transcend it. This leaving-behind toward an inaccessible total other beyond a sensible. I adored my grandmother’s home. She never allowed me to cook in her kitchen. Her home married matter with spirit. I want to become this woman.

  The winter is long and spring is being lithe. Creative ways to make money, no TV, loads of books, a Turkish carpet and the smell of sweet paprika, bay leaves and cumin. I return to drawing life, to storytelling at the university. In this, I make all the family members have a role, no discrepancy, no profligacy. Female roles are intact, male roles are far from the home. These are their only certainties, otherwise they are appeased, engaging in perhaps. Responsibilities excite them unknowingly. Hunter/gatherer tautology traversing continents. Female roles, male roles. This makes it clear. So alive, close to death.

  What’s a date? Sometimes I think we are too concerned with dates. Like we’ve gotta remember this event. It is this one marking of culture, one out of many. A silent wall of love is an invisible wall. I am certain I am foreign. That’s the silent wall of love. I read because I desire to belong or I desire to lose myself, or desire because I desire loss and thus I belong. I imagine telling my family about Zé. They will hate the idea of us ever being together. I can’t make peace with those that start a war with you. I see and this daggers me like tentative dates for things I really want to happen now. Sometimes I wanna live in a full house, other times I want no contacts. I actually lost my contacts. I re-meet them at work. Sometimes I remain awake at night with prayer. I believe so much of life is believing. A through-bridge. I have lived for numerous years and still have yet to be born, charity replete. This acting not for something I cannot accord, or even seeing it revolts in more me. Like this notion of going forward gets to me. I don’t believe in death. I am not afraid of being my body. Lovingly rooted in my grave, I stretch out to give with little eye contact. Sentiments with sediments. We undervalue sound. The sounds of mother’s voice. I cannot put a mark on this, nor attach it to numbers. Frisky yet panacea, men truly cannot be friends with me. I wanted to hide my relationship with you, Zé, for what I’ve always loved. And from UV rays and into our home, our dinner table. A delectable fruit that gives me so much energy. I wanted to contribute name to family. I re-experienced problems yet portions in moving between you and I on time. I wasn’t sure where I found this polite awakening. My body nudged me to endeavour extraordinary. Squally effervescence in my mind sometimes so I vacate into heart. Male roles far from home. I have always known my father has regrets. This maybe is why I cannot tell my family about Zé, not just yet. Even though Recife was good to be left behind for a few years, my father always wanted to move back. Certainly we were not enough. I recall Max Weber, one foot in, one foot out. Two spheres of belonging at once. The windows were always closed in the university, some romantic egoists. Lighter than ever, I bear this pain.

  All these ideas come to me while editing at the university. There’s no way I can make a date for telling my family about Zé. Where would we go? My mother is my fortress, predating all. I love it when my mother penetrates me as if she knows more than my birthday. When I hide my errors, she smacks them like waterfalls on my head. Me, I love playing, still. I never want anything more than this feeling on the tips of my fingers. How to act I love you through a room of guilt when we only knew shame? As if being shy held some kinda stigma. I was never into being super social. I thrived striving to know everything. I always re-dream this. Basically my life is contagious. What I be, others watch trembling. Don’t tell anyone about this clandestine drift of thought while at work. I’m not really doing anything now, but editing some thesis on the philosophy of time. As with waves, being with others excited me. So I call it a day. Where could I go? My thoughts didn’t match a quotidian frame. Only friable fibs come from hearts. Just for a moment of security. What if I knew you were hiding from me? I wouldn’t tell you I know, because you know I could snatch more of you. But I don’t snatch.

  On what day did I born. I love Phila, love myself. Will you love her more than me? I will ask this trepidation. 5 a.m. called me to work on the farm. You, Zé, said there was more to life than work, but couldn’t do anything else. I only cared about where my blood came from. This severance from my ancestors is fabricated. I know them. They inhabit me when I am at the library and when with beloved in bed. The voice of all spilling all over my body. Rivers colliding, so I speak one way one day and another way the next day. I feel adored by my feet. They hold all my ancestors’ respect in feeling all I know. I can handle this. Before it was too much. Now I ease in feeling too much. As the moon blazes through my bedroom window at night. I always desire something new because I never tried to work it out with my first love. Wanting wouldn’t be good enough. How one can say who one is without effort. I always want to play with my friends, being alone sometimes I was defelicitized. I like hanging out. Existentially I could handle it. My family is a part solution, part problem. They have their ways. They wanna forget where they came from, and expect I do the same. The talks about eluding city would encourage less spending was distant to us. Cash was present as a mystery. The revived desire of nothing held my spoon higher out. The dates sat on the table at the centre of a love circle. How could we replic
ate your harmony, oh dear one? Study, you caribou. I am turning thirty in December. I just can never be that kinda parent sitting by some pool in the sun. So let’s be a lion. Being real secure, I soared today, fell yesterday. I couldn’t sit still. All I was knowing came out in a tantrum tidal. The room grave in continuous check. It was the way it entered me. There is no plane on which to measure this. All I could feel was present’s breathing. All the acts going around, come through. So much of life is believing and sprouting. The photo ripped through me. A scene of my family. It is time to get my life together. My parents say by this age I should know what I want. What cannot be seen nor thought. Like the microbes on this chair. A microscope can date in anti-euphemisms. Opulent palpations. Salubrious still sit here because belief is tougher than meat. My loins billow because it’s simple, being everywhere every time is delectable. Like the saccharine dates on the table, I encounter you whole generations. What more can be said, except that truth is a dagger and we don’t mind being cut once in a while, do you understand?

  I picked guarana berries one day, united with you in the bushes. We became elusive. You knew this about me before I opened up. It is all. Yet I will howl at ill shoves. Or maybe I’ll kiss them. I’ll be so deprived due to calculated timelines.

  The time is hard to follow. Phila read that waiting until September 6th to make a firm decision is best. There would be a series of supermoons: one in August, another in mid-September, and the last in early October. The first supermoon would take place in Pisces during Virgo’s time. Zé and Phila never spoke about the moons.

  Zé and Phila differ grandly with their sense of time. For Zé, it is all about the now and the next step into the very very near new. All New Age books must have learned from Zé and his family. For Phila, it is all about planning, reworking. Looking into the past to plan for the future. Their relationship is very past and future heavy. When they are together, their time is vast as the black hole. The gravitational singularity of massiveness in an infinitely small space. Space and time and density and gravity become infinite infinitely. Any secrets shared in the black hole stay in the black hole. There is no way of them getting out. Zé and Phila don’t want to share too much about what they feel for each other. They know people will try to ruin it. They are not ready to face this challenge yet.