We would hide our machete in a hole in the wall of the cave and put a rock in front of the hole to keep out venomous creatures. Neither Mamãe nor I wanted to be bitten by anything when we stuck in our hand to get out the machete, our most valuable possession. Without it, we would have been helpless. Mamãe used it as a weapon, and we used it to make our way through the dense vegetation of the forest. We also used it to open nutshells and cut down edible plants—it kept us alive.
I remember that I had an armadillo and a little monkey as pets. Maybe pet is the wrong word, because they weren’t really tame and we didn’t have a house. The armadillo was kept more or less against its will, and the monkey came and went. My relationship with the monkey was anything but reciprocal. It used me for food, and then it would throw pebbles, nuts, and anything you could think of at me. As soon as its hunger was satisfied, it would quickly disappear. Mamãe would say the monkey was like a man, which didn’t make sense to me. A monkey was a monkey, and a man was a man. When I asked her about it, she laughed. Once, I fed both the monkey and the armadillo at the same time. The monkey took its fruit, didn’t thank me, and disappeared again just as quickly as it had appeared. I could have sworn the armadillo gave the monkey a look, as if to say, You lucky monkey, run while you can! I gave the armadillo a look to tell it that kind of thing was not OK. I was about to pick it up, when it rolled into a hard, little ball.
Mamãe used to say we could always eat my armadillo if it became too disgruntled with its situation. When she saw my reaction, she would laugh and tell me she was just joking, but if I changed my mind, we could still stuff it in the pot. I didn’t understand what was so funny and felt angry when Mamãe said things like that. I loved eating meat, but I hadn’t really understood that I was eating animals. Later, when I understood what meat actually was, I refused to eat it in protest. My protest didn’t last long, though, since we were poor and hunger always won. But my armadillo wasn’t there to be cooked. I used to feed it insects because I thought insects weren’t animals. One time I got so mad at the armadillo that, barefoot, I kicked him after he had rolled up into a ball. I made that mistake only once; an armadillo’s armor plating is as hard as stone, and it hurt like crazy.
Mamãe taught me which plants I could eat, which fruits and berries were poisonous, and how to make fire. She taught me which animals were dangerous and which were less dangerous. However, that didn’t stop a curious kid from constantly getting into trouble. I remember picking berries off a big bush. The berries were yellow and almost as big as table tennis balls. I knew that Mamãe had said I absolutely couldn’t eat them, but a hungry stomach took over my three-year-old mind. To her horror, Mamãe saw me stuff my mouth full and start chewing. She came running, screaming for me to spit the berries out at once. I chewed a little faster in an attempt to swallow before she reached me. I remember her grabbing my mouth, jamming her fingers in, and scooping out the chewed-up berries. It hurt, and I started crying. She screamed at me to spit, and I did. Something in her voice made me understand that she was scared. She picked me up in her arms, carried me to the cave, and washed my mouth out with water. As she started boiling water in our little makeshift fire pit, Mamãe asked me over and over if I had swallowed the berries. I shook my head, but I was starting to feel sicker and sicker. I remember Mamãe swearing while she mixed some dried green leaves into the water. She stirred and then poured the water into a brown canoe-shaped plant that we used as a cup. She ordered me to drink it all. It tasted bitter. She asked me how I was feeling. I just shook my head, and not long after, the stomach pains started. I remember being in agony all day and all night, and I drank Mamãe’s medicine water the whole time. I never again ate berries that Mamãe said were poisonous.
I used to climb to the top of the little hill above our cave and sit, dangling my legs over the edge. From there, I looked out over the mountains, the woods, the dirt roads, the water, and the sky and thought it was beautiful. Where I sat, I could see all the big mountains that surrounded our cave; everywhere I looked was green. The sky could be such a light blue, and the water gushed down over the stones. The only sounds I heard came from the woods, from the crickets and the other animals that lived there. A few times, I heard the sound of a car driving on the red dirt road down below. I didn’t hear any voices other than Mamãe’s and mine. Sometimes I came alone, and sometimes Mamãe came, too, sitting next to me and dangling her legs over the edge of the cliff as she told me stories. It was usually warm, and there was no wind. Some days, there weren’t any clouds; others, there were tons of big, fluffy, cotton-candy clouds in the sky.
Once, when we were sitting there talking, I looked at all the clouds and thought that one day I would sit on a fluffy white cloud with Mamãe. I imagined that we would sit there and look down at the woods, the water, and Brazil. I would hold Mamãe’s hand, and we would bounce from cloud to cloud. I remember saying I wanted to sit on the clouds with her. And she said she didn’t know whether that was possible, but she promised we would try. One day, Mamãe and I would fly.
Mamãe told stories about animals, angels, and God. I listened eagerly and had thousands of questions. Sometimes it felt like she wanted to scare me a little, like when she told me the story about the cow that was eaten by an anaconda.
There was a farmer whose farm was not far from our cave. One day, he was walking his cows down to the water to drink. After a pleasant afternoon siesta in the shade, the farmer woke up because the cows were running away in a panic, except for one lone cow that remained standing out in the water, not far from shore. It moved back and forth. The farmer walked closer and saw that a large anaconda was biting the cow’s face. The farmer didn’t dare go into the water to help the cow. All he could do was watch, hour after hour, as the snake tired out the cow until it couldn’t struggle anymore and finally collapsed, exhausted. Then the enormous snake started coiling its body around the cow, and the farmer could hear the cow’s bones being crushed as the snake constricted. Then it started swallowing the cow, head first.
Mamãe looked over at me when she finished telling the story and said that you never knew what was hiding in the water’s depths.
I protested and said there was no way a snake could eat up a whole moo-cow, right? Because if it could, then it could eat me up, couldn’t it? Mamãe said I was probably pretty tasty, and it would be a lucky snake who got to eat me. “But, Mamãe, if a snake eats me up, then won’t I turn into poop?” I asked. Mamãe laughed and said that was exactly what I would turn into.
I remember that I didn’t want to believe Mamãe’s story about the cow and the snake, but her cautionary tale worked, and I was always extra careful when I went swimming—and I am to this day.
The time we spent together in the caves was mostly happy. Those memories haven’t haunted me. The biggest things we had to contend with were finding food, hunger if we failed to find food, and surviving venomous snakes, spiders, and scorpions. I remember waking up in the middle of the night because a giant poisonous centipede was crawling up my thigh. I just swatted it away and went back to sleep next to my mother. I felt safe and warm. Whatever Mamãe did, I did. I spent my days playing with tadpoles and all the creatures I could find.
One day, I found a bird’s nest in the cave with a chirping baby bird in it. Mamãe said the bird’s mother wouldn’t come back because it was afraid of us. I said we had to save the little bird; the feeling I had of wanting to protect and help it was unbelievably strong. I cared so much about that abandoned bird. It had an orange beak and pink skin peeking through downy black feathers. I named the bird Downy. Downy squeaked, and he opened and closed his beak. Mamãe said the bird was hungry, so I took a little rice from the old paint can Mamãe used for cooking. I tried feeding the sticky rice to the bird but without luck. Mamãe gently took Downy from my hand, killed a beetle, mashed it up, and fed it to the baby bird. I remember how happy I felt when my little one ate. When I asked whether Downy would survive, my mother said that all she knew was that he would
die sooner or later, but he was here now and all was well. When I asked if we would die, she said we would always have each other.
I didn’t really believe that was the answer to my question, but all I cared about was us being together forever. I didn’t know what death was, just that it had something to do with going away and not being visible anymore. Sometimes if I closed my eyes, I felt like I was the only one alive since I couldn’t see anyone else. What I remember clearly is that I thought and felt that dying wasn’t anything good.
Mamãe usually told me the truth, no matter how bad it was. Poor people like us couldn’t afford not to know the truth. “Without it, we wouldn’t survive,” Mamãe used to say. We could dream ourselves away, dream of a nice house, warm beds, food and so forth, but we always had to keep dreams and reality separate. The reality was that we would never be rich and that we would always be considered “rats.” The sooner you accepted it, the better your chance of survival.
When I think back on this as an adult, I realize that my mother usually told it like it was, but in the best and gentlest way she could. She chose to tell me the truth, and that has always made me feel loved. She saw me and took my ideas seriously. Who knows, the situation might have been different if we’d had money and a stable home with a father and all the material things that many people consider necessities. But our everyday lives were different, and at least, right then, it wasn’t such a hardship that I had no home, only a cave. Don’t get me wrong: things were incredibly difficult for us, and I don’t believe anyone should grow up that way. We fought to survive, and those times we went to Diamantina and slept on the streets, we were very vulnerable. But the cave was my security. I played, and when I wasn’t doing that, I was doing what I could to help Mamãe get food and money. I fetched water, made brooms out of twigs and palm fronds to sweep and clean with. I picked flowers and searched for food. I didn’t know anything different. That was my everyday existence.
I remember how happy I was when Mamãe taught me to make a proper slingshot and how to aim to hit my prey. It took me quite a while to learn how, but ultimately, I got to be quite good at it. Once I managed to shoot down a small bright-yellow bird with a black pattern on its wings. When I picked it up off the ground, I felt bad. But that quickly passed when I saw how very proud my mother was. I remember how proud I felt then. We ate the bird for lunch. Mamãe grilled it over our little fire pit. Once Mamãe plucked all its feathers, the bird was half its original size. There wasn’t much actual meat on its tiny body. We ate fruit and some berries and nuts with the grilled bird, and Mamãe joked that soon I’d be ready to hunt jaguar. When we finished eating and Mamãe had tidied up, we played Indians. Mamãe put some of the yellow feathers in my hair. It wasn’t hard to get them to stay in; she just pushed them down into my curls.
I have carried with me my memory of the slingshot, the bird, and playing Indians as a sort of proof that it’s important to be aware of your goals, strengths, and rewards. As an adult, every time I set out to tackle a difficult task that I feel unsure about, I think back to that.
One day, Mamãe and I had been in Diamantina and got a ride home in a pickup. The driver stopped and dropped us off, and we thanked him for the ride. We started walking up the little path we had worn, which, after a few miles, led to our cave. When we got there, some cows were standing outside the mouth of the cave. They didn’t seem as surprised to see us as we were to see them. Two cows had found a couple of our big bags of rice. They’d chewed through the plastic and eaten half the contents. When Mamãe saw that, she started screaming. She picked up some big branches off the ground and started hitting the cows. I realized Mamãe was crying and screaming at the same time, so I picked up some sticks and went to help her. But she yelled at me to stay where I was so the cows wouldn’t trample me. Once they were gone, she walked over to the rice sacks and sat down beside them and sobbed. I walked over to Mamãe and stroked her hair, the way she usually stroked mine when I was sad or sick. She hugged me and said not to worry, that I didn’t need to be afraid. I was anything but afraid right then. I was sad, because I knew what a struggle it had been for us to save up the money for the rice and how important it was to our survival. I sat down next to Mamãe and saw that the ground was covered with little white grains of rice. Mamãe started gathering all the rice, and I helped her. I quickly realized that it was going to be nearly impossible to pick up the rice without getting a bunch of dirt with it. Mamãe said it was OK, that we could rinse it. We stuffed all the rice, along with the dirt and grime that we couldn’t get off, back into the bags. Mamãe carried the sacks into the cave and hid them from any other uninvited guests we might have.
I have many recollections of how we walked up our little mountain and down the other side to a big creek to bathe and fetch water. Often when we got there, Mamãe would build a fire. She would fill the large paint can with water and put it over the fire. A big thick tree lay across the creek and served as a bridge. The tree, which had probably been there for a very long time, was overgrown with green moss and other little plants. While Mamãe heated the water, I would walk back and forth on that old tree, looking for something to play with. Suddenly, I spotted something moving. It was a weird little animal with two small claws on its front, several legs along the sides of its body, and a tail that curled over. I stood there for a bit, watching it. It moved cautiously and turned around to face me. I slowly leaned forward so as not to frighten it and started reaching for it, to pick up my new buddy. Then I heard Mamãe scream, “Christiana, noooo!” Hearing the fear in her voice, I froze. Mamãe came running, her flip-flop in her hand, and before I had time to do anything, Mamãe smacked my new friend. The front half of the animal was smashed, and its back legs and tail kept moving for a while. Its tail jabbed at the air until Mamãe gave it another whack. I was terrified. Mamãe exhaled, grabbed me, and hugged me tight. She told me the animal was a scorpion, that it was dangerous and stabbed its prey with its tail. It poisoned you, and you died. I decided I would never play with a scorpion again.
When the forest couldn’t provide food for us, we hiked into Diamantina. Mamãe picked various plants, and I picked a certain kind of flower. The stems were long and green, round and smooth. At the very tip, the flower was like a bristle of little green sewing pins with compact white flowers at the ends. We were going to sell them in Diamantina. I don’t know if they were good for anything. They certainly weren’t the prettiest of the flowers in the forest, so I assume we picked them for some other reason. Maybe they were the only flowers that could survive the long hike into the city.
The walk felt like an endless march, mile after mile. It probably was only ten miles or so, but when you’re little and your legs are short, it feels a lot longer. I was always tired when we finally got there. I didn’t own any shoes, so my feet hurt and sometimes bled; my muscles were sore and stiff. I had learned that there was no point in complaining. To stop walking before we got there wasn’t an option, because if I stopped, Mamãe just kept going. I remember on those first long treks into Diamantina—I couldn’t have been more than three years old—I would cry, and my mother would usually carry me for a little while. But then she told me I had to learn to walk on my own. So, I didn’t complain, I just kept up. To pass the time while we walked, Mamãe would tell stories. When I was at my most tired, she used to take my hand and pull me along a little so it would be easier for me to walk. When we finally reached Diamantina, there were places where we usually sat to sell what we’d picked. But we rarely managed to sell anything. We had to beg instead, asking passersby for money for food, but without much success. Some people pretended we didn’t exist, others smiled and said hello, and a few gave us coins or a piece of bread or fruit.
One strong memory I have from Diamantina is of the bus station. Every now and then, Mamãe and I spent the night there. It was around that time that I first started to understand that we were poor and what that really meant. People would look at us funny. Some spit on us as we sat there beggin
g, and for all the world, I couldn’t understand what my mother or I had done wrong. We were nice people who hadn’t done anything to anybody. We were just trying to scrounge a little money so we wouldn’t starve to death. I didn’t really understand what money was or why it was distributed so unevenly among people. I knew we needed money to get food, but I didn’t really understand how people got money. Begging and selling flowers were clearly the worst ways to get money. I saw that other children had better clothes than I did, that they had toys, that they had so much that I didn’t have. I saw that other women were doing better than my mother. I was starting to understand that maybe I wasn’t as good as the other children. When I asked my mother if I was worse than the other children, she said I absolutely wasn’t. She said I was good just the way I was.
When we managed to scrounge a small amount of money, Mamãe bought what we needed to get by for the next little while. Then we started the long trek home, back to what felt like security at the time. On a few occasions, we hitchhiked with someone who was going in that direction. Those few times when we got rides and I got to sit in the back of the pickup were unbelievably fun for me. The road was bumpy, and bouncing up and down on the hard truck bed in the back hurt my bottom, but it was the closest I came to riding a carousel. I loved it!
The strongest and most wonderful memory I have comes from that time. It’s of the two of us running in the rain. Later, as an adult, I realized how much pain and sorrow the recollection of this one experience had offset. When everything in my life felt like a struggle, when I felt like life was meaningless or that maybe love wasn’t something for me, I closed my eyes and pictured Mamãe and me running in the rain. I saw her smiling, her love for me shining, as if I were the center of the world. I don’t recall where Mamãe got the umbrella. I’m sure I was with her when she found it. I wish I could remember why we were on that gravel road in that downpour. That kind of rain only happens in the tropics. The sky opens up, and in just a few seconds you’re drenched. When it rained, Mamãe said that was God crying. I asked her why God was sad.
Never Stop Walking_A Memoir of Finding Home Across the World Page 2