When I woke up, I was lying in a fetal position with my knees under my chin. I rolled over to put my arms around Camile, but she wasn’t there. The image of how she had smiled at me sadly popped into my head, and I broke down. I was alone, and I cried like I’d never cried before. I was under our concrete staircase, and I was completely alone. I would never see Camile again. She would never hold me under our stairs. I would never again hear her beautiful voice and her amazing stories. What was I going to do? I didn’t want to live without her. The pain was so visceral and cut deep into my gut. I couldn’t breathe. It was as if I suddenly didn’t know how to breathe. There was something wrong with my heart. It hurt. It felt like a thousand knives were piercing me, and then everything went black . . .
I don’t know how long it was black. I only know that when I woke up, I was lying next to vomit, my vomit. My eyes stung. I didn’t move. I didn’t care. I lay there, and I saw her smile at me again and again and saw how something happened to her forehead and she collapsed. I knew that life would be much darker without Camile. Please, come back. Please come back!
I knew that she wouldn’t come back. I lay under the stairs for a long time. I remember that it got light, and I remember that it got dark. I remember that I noticed that several times. When I woke up from my fog, I was changed. Something was different. The world was darker. I was darker. Part of my soul died with Camile, and I understood what those thousand knives I’d felt were: it was a part of me dying. I sat up and hugged my knees. I looked at the pile of vomit in front of me. I was tired, so tired. I perceived no hunger, no joy, and no sorrow. I was an empty husk that just sat there. And I planned to sit there for a long time, until I died or until Camile came back.
Mamãe used to tell me that if my heart ever hurt too much, I should sleep, and when I woke up, everything would feel a lot better. I wondered whether death was like that. You fell asleep and then woke up somewhere in the sky, and everything felt much better.
Camile never came back, but my mother did. She found me under the stairs where she knew we sometimes slept, Camile and I. Mamãe came. She stroked my hair, she hugged me, and she whispered away my nightmares. Everything got a little better, and then even a little better still. It’s incredible what a parent’s love can do. Without my mother’s presence, I’m sure I would never have moved beyond the numb stage. I probably would have become a ghost, and incredibly vulnerable on the streets.
Mamãe kissed my forehead and my cheeks and cried with me.
“Christiana, life is terrible and unfair sometimes, but never stop walking. Always keep walking,” she told me. I remember wondering why. “Because after everything that’s happened to us, our hearts want what’s good, and our hearts can’t be the only things that want that. You’re not alone, because there are people who see you and watch over you. Do you understand?”
No, I didn’t. Who’d seen Camile? Who’d watched over her? It wasn’t fair, and I refused to understand it.
“One day you will, and until then, promise me you’ll always keep walking. No matter how much it hurts, you keep walking!”
“Where should I walk, Mamãe?”
“It doesn’t matter. Just make sure that you never stop walking, OK?” She stood up and held out her hand to me. I put my hand in hers, and we walked.
Up There in the Clouds
2015
It may not come as a surprise that later in my life I chose to do track and field. I ran the two-hundred-, four-hundred-, and eight-hundred-meter events. My specialty was four hundred meters. After all, I’d gotten a good foundation in this as a kid. Running was something I could do. Running was something I did most of the time. I was really fast. Unfortunately, my track and field career ended after an operation on my right foot. When I was nineteen, the doctors said my feet were shot. I had the feet of a fifty-year-old.
I’ve always been physically active, ever since I was little. I always want to be in motion, and I love climbing and running. Sports have satisfied that drive in me and become a relief valve to let off pressure.
As I stand in my hotel room now, looking out over the city of São Paulo, which spreads out below me, I wonder if you could do a base jump from this balcony.
A little more than twenty years ago, I had a dream of sitting in the clouds, a dream about flying. And in 2011, I went to the Umeå Skydiving Club’s homepage and signed up for a class. When I told my friends that I was going to try skydiving, several of them wondered what was wrong with me. But I never had an instant’s doubt that I would love flying. Sure, it would be nerve-wracking and difficult to take the plunge and hurl myself out of an airplane, but that anxiety was probably just a sign of being a healthy person.
Six guys and I took the class together in Umeå. Once we were done with the theoretical component, it was time to make the jump, unwind our wings (parachutes), and hope for a soft landing. We got into the cars and drove down to Söderhamn where we, seven excited and somewhat nervous people, would make our first jump. I remember it as if it were yesterday, and I’ll never forget it.
Skydiving is a weather-dependent sport. The wind can’t be too strong, the clouds can’t be too low, and it’s better if it’s not raining.
This weekend it was partially cloudy with some occasional rain showers. The instructors were there to help us and the other would-be jumpers who were also trying to earn their certification. The instructors drew straws to see who would get to jump first so it would be fair. I, who obviously wanted to be one of the first to jump, wound up being one of the last. I didn’t want to have too much time to think. I’d just get nervous. I didn’t want to sit and watch while everyone else jumped. Once you’ve decided to jump, you simply want to get it over with. That’s just how it is.
The first day went by, and I sat and watched as student after student got to go up and jump. They came down. Some waxed lyrical; others were pale in the face. I sat there the whole day and didn’t get to jump. My nervousness kept increasing, and by the next day, I was all wound up. I sat on the ground and ran through the jump in my mind. I would be jumping out of an AN-28 airplane. It had a rear ramp, which meant that my two instructors and I would jump out of the back of the plane standing up. In the air, I would arch my back and maintain a stable falling position. I would jump out at a height of thirteen thousand feet, and when I got down to five thousand feet, I would wave my hands in front of my face to show the instructors that I was planning to pull my parachute. Then, while holding my left hand in front of my face to maintain balance, I would bring my right hand back to grab the hacky (the little ball on the right side of the gear) and open my parachute.
I know that muscle memory is important, so I put on my gear, the parachute, and lie down on the ground on my stomach and arch my back. I watch my left hand where the altimeter will be. I pretend it shows five thousand feet, wave, and then bring my right hand to the ball and pretend to pull my chute. I repeat this several times. Each time, my hand finds the little ball right away, and I feel confident. There won’t be any problems. I’ll be able to open my chute. My two instructors come over to me. They make sure I’ve put my equipment on correctly, and they check my reserve chute. Jens, my primary instructor, asks me to run through the jump. I describe to him in detail what I’m planning to do in the air. Both instructors seem satisfied. After that, all the skydivers start boarding the plane, and I’m one of them. My nervousness kicks into overdrive, my sweat glands activate, and my pulse speeds up.
I try to appear cool, but the looks of encouragement the other skydivers give me tell me that my nervousness is showing. There are twenty-four of us in the plane. The engine starts, and the plane begins taxiing. My heart pounds a little harder, a little faster. I make eye contact with Jens, and he gives me a reassuring smile. The plane lifts off, and there’s no turning back now. In fifteen minutes—the time it takes for the plane to reach thirteen thousand feet—I will fling myself out of a fully functioning aircraft. Am I an idiot? What was I thinking?
I take a few
deep breaths, remind myself why I’m doing this, remind myself of what I believe I can accomplish by going through with this dive. And somewhere in the middle of all this, I close my eyes and picture my legs—next to Mamãe’s—dangling over the edge of the cave. I remember how strong the longing to fly was in me even as a child. And I hear Mamãe telling me that nothing is impossible.
I open my eyes and look at the other skydivers sitting in front of me—if they can do it, so can I. We’re at an altitude of about eight thousand feet now, and Jens turns to me and asks me to run through the jump one more time. I focus on him and take myself through the jump again. After that, we put on our goggles, and suddenly the whole thing is very real. I see how the other jumpers are laughing and putting on their helmets, gloves, and goggles. They look so relaxed. I hear the pilot’s voice on the speaker. The rear ramp opens. Cold air rushes in. I’m sitting fairly far back in the plane but can still see parts of the sky through the hole in the back there. My pulse is crazy fast now. I hear the pilot’s voice: “Green light, green light, jump, jump!” What? I think . . . Are we supposed to jump now? But I don’t know if I’m ready . . .
The skydivers start hurling themselves out of the plane. My instructor and I have taken up our positions, and I feel my legs shaking something awful. I follow the flow and watch as jumpers dive out of the plane. I approach the opening, thinking that maybe I don’t want to do this after all. I look back and see the others pushing forward. I have no choice. I find myself looking into a guy’s eyes, and I see my own nervousness reflected in the look on his face. We’ve reached the ramp now. I turn around and back out to the edge. I try to force the feeling of panic out of my head and focus on what I need to do. I look at Jens, he looks and me, and I nod. He nods back. I repeat the same procedure with my other instructor, Magnus, who’s standing on my other side. I bend my trembling legs and shout, very quickly, the line that I had repeated so many times calmly and slowly down on the ground: “Ready, set, go!”
And then I step out of the plane, out into the air.
On the way out, one of my instructors happens to bump into the plane, and I catch the wind wrong. Instead of landing on a soft cushion of air, I start tumbling. I tumble around and around. One minute, I see the ground; the next, I see the plane and the sky. I remember filling up with joy, thinking, This is how it feels to fly. I smile and completely forget that I have a protocol to follow. I feel my instructor Magnus let go of me, and I start coming back to reality. I remember hearing about situations that would cause the instructor to let go. Wait a second, I think . . . That means things aren’t going that well for me . . . I turn my head and see that Jens has a firm hold on my right arm and my right leg. We’re still tumbling, and I understand that he’s trying to correct the situation and stabilize my fall. I know it’s dangerous to open your parachute if you’re not falling stably. You can get tangled up. I immediately return to reality and arch my back with all my might while gently bending my legs and reaching my arms forward in a semicircle. It takes less than a second before I’m in a stable falling position. I look at my altimeter and see that it shows eleven thousand feet. I’ve tumbled for sixteen hundred feet.
I start the protocol. I look down at the ground, see only a green mass, but choose a meadow on the horizon as my heading (a point I will look at to keep from losing my orientation). When I’m at five thousand feet, I wave my hands in front of my face and leave the left one there while bringing the right one back to grab the little ball. I don’t find it. I try again but can’t find it. I’ve practiced this hundreds of times. It should be there . . . But I can’t find it. I feel the panic setting in. Where the hell is the ball? I need to be able to pull my ripcord.
Suddenly, I feel a yank. I look up and watch as my red parachute catches the air, cell by cell, until it unfurls fully. I realize that Jens must have pulled my ripcord for me. It’s the instructor’s job to make sure the students’ parachutes open if they initially fail. But it’s not over yet. I’m hanging under a parachute three thousand feet above the earth now. And I don’t have any instructors to help me. I look around to see if there are any other parachutes near me. I grab both steering handles to the brake lines and try to see where I’m going to land. I feel panicky. This is the part that’s worried me the most, being on my own for the landing. I grow increasingly nervous when I can’t locate the drop zone. I start wondering if I’m even facing into the wind properly. Am I flying toward the drop zone or away from it? I peek down at the ground to see whether I can tell which way the wind is blowing, but the ground is just green. Then it occurs to me that I’m supposed to have my back to the sun, which is to my left. If I do that, then I’ll be flying in the right direction. Finally, I see the landing field. I brake the parachute and land gently and neatly on the grass.
The landing feels as smooth as stepping off a curb. I did it! I threw myself out of a plane at an altitude of thirteen thousand feet. I fell at one hundred twenty-four miles per hour, sailed with my parachute, and landed beautifully near the other jumpers. I’m so happy, so proud. And for the first time in as long as I can remember, I feel like I’m free.
I probably won’t earn the certification, since I didn’t open my own chute. Still, I feel only joy.
People have told me many times that I must have a death wish to engage in such a dangerous sport, or that I must be an “adrenaline junkie.” But it’s not like that for me. I have fought to live for my whole life. I skydive because I feel free when I’m doing it and because it’s so beautiful up there among the clouds. My brain has to focus 100 percent on being in the present. That means that for the sixty seconds a free fall takes, before my parachute opens, I can’t think about what was or what will be. There aren’t very many other occasions in life when I’ve succeeded in finding moments like that, where I can just exist in the present.
Adrenaline was coursing through my blood as I gathered up my chute and wandered toward my jump mates. Everyone asked how it had gone. I just laughed and said that I thought I probably flunked. Then Jens came over to me and asked me to review the jump. I told him everything I remembered. When I was done, he looked kind of surprised and told me it was unusual to have such detailed memories from a first jump. I remember thinking that this wasn’t the first time my brain had had to operate in a life-or-death situation. And I passed on my first jump.
Only a small number of Swedes are involved in this extreme sport, and I’m one of them. About fifteen hundred of us are licensed, and only 20 percent of us are women. I’ve wondered what we have in common, we women who jump. Aside from our shared love of the sport, we’re all different, with different backgrounds, personalities, ages, and social classes. I assume that these other women have their own reasons for taking up skydiving. For me, it started when I was a kid on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, sitting atop my little cave. A few words from my mother that I have followed my entire life: “Nothing is impossible.” I have tried to live by them. And fears are there to be conquered. I could have made my dream of flight a reality as soon as I turned eighteen, but it took me ten years to unfurl my wings. I believe that everything comes when we’re ready, and once we’ve opened a door, it can be hard to shut again. I pretty much always berate myself when I don’t succeed or don’t do something well enough. And even when I thought I had failed at what I had dreamed of doing for so long, I felt nothing but happiness, total freedom.
I’ve continued skydiving. Every cloud I pass through, I feel that Mamãe and Camile are with me. Maybe I don’t bounce from cloud to cloud, the way I thought I would when I was little, but I fall through them with joy. I still grin with delight every time I jump. The first time I fell through a cloud, one of my instructors, Gunlög, laughed at me because I tried to shield my face. Even though I knew clouds weren’t solid matter, my childhood fantasy that you could walk from cloud to cloud was deeply rooted in me, so deeply that more than twenty years later, I tried to shield my face from hitting something hard when I encountered clouds. Gunlög laughed
at me even more when I did the same thing the next time.
The Story of the Cloud People
SÃO PAULO, LATE 1980S
When I skydive, I often think of Camile. She told me a story once, and it’s imprinted on me. I even wrote it down when I was little because it made such a strong impression. Maybe I remember it so well because it was the last story Camile told me before I lost her.
Camile and I were sitting on some cardboard under a concrete staircase. It was night, and it was dark and cozy where we were, outside some factory that manufactured something, though what, we had no idea. I had always liked the dark, especially when Mamãe and I lived in the woods. There was something warm and safe about being surrounded by darkness. Out in the woods, you could see all the stars and the fireflies. There had been a time when I believed that the stars were fireflies that had flown too high and gotten stuck on black flypaper. I knew better now, since Mamãe had told me that fireflies couldn’t fly that high and that the stars I saw were big, burning fireballs, which looked small to us because they were so far away. I also knew that the darkness, however much I liked it, contained evil as well. Things happened at night that didn’t happen during the day. The darkness hid the evil, and when the light returned, it was as if the darkness had never existed.
Camile and I were sharing an orange, a piece of bread, and two half-eaten sausages that I’d found in a dumpster behind a restaurant. We shared everything equally.
“Tell me a story,” I said to her, my mouth full of bread. Camile would tell these fabulous stories about strange animals, evil people, and different worlds, stories that always ended happily.
“OK.”
We sat in silence for a bit, and I knew that she was thinking about what story to tell. I was impatient, as I usually was, but I knew that if I wanted to hear a story, it was best to keep quiet and wait. A few minutes elapsed, and it felt like an eternity. But in the end, she started to tell the story, and I settled in and pricked up my ears. Camile’s voice sounded like a soft whisper as she began: “In a world above the ground, somewhere between the earth and the sky, lived the cloud people.”
Never Stop Walking_A Memoir of Finding Home Across the World Page 8