The next day, Mamãe went off and took Patrique with her. For a long time, I sat on our cardboard down that little alley where we’d spent the night. I looked at the clock she had drawn on the asphalt for me. I was mad at her for thinking about leaving us. I was sure she was. I sat there and refused to do anything. I was hungry, but I was too mad to care. After a few hours, my mother returned, without Patrique. She sat down next to me.
“Have you eaten anything?” she asked.
“No!”
“Here you go.” She handed me a banana.
“Where’s Patrique?”
“He’s at the children’s home I told you about last night.”
“So, you just left him, and now you’re going to leave me?” I yelled.
“Christiana, you know I don’t want to leave you guys. I love you. But you know how dangerous it is on the streets. Do you want something bad to happen to him?”
“No, I don’t want that,” I said.
“Where he is now, there are people to take care of him, to give him food and a safe place to sleep every night.”
“But I won’t get to see him!”
“I talked to the matron, and she said they might be able to take you, too.”
“I don’t want to go.”
“Do you remember what happened to Camile? I don’t want that to happen to you. Do you want that?”
“No!”
“Then the children’s home is the best I can do for you. Our lives aren’t going to get better unless we make some changes, Christiana. When you’re older, you’ll understand. My life is no life for you, not if there’s a chance of something better. We’ll see each other all the time, and you’ll get to live there. I promise you.”
I sat in silence. On some level, I think I understood that she was right. I remembered what had happened to Camile and so many others, but I didn’t want to leave my mother. When you love someone, you don’t leave them. That’s what I thought at the time.
A short while later, the orphanage accepted me. The first thing I did was go see my little brother. He seemed to be doing well. He had his own bed with a railing around it and slept in a room with a bunch of other babies. I stood by his bed and talked to him.
“Mamãe’s going to come see us. She said so. She told me to tell you that she’d be back soon. She’s going to earn some money so we can be better off, and she promised she wouldn’t leave us.” As I told him this, I felt the fear creeping in. I was not at all sure of the truthfulness of what I’d just said. I was not at all sure that Mamãe would come back to us. I remembered the look on her face when she left me. She looked sad, and she was crying.
“Christiana, I’ll come back. Take care of Patrique and look after yourself. Don’t cause trouble. Do you promise me?” This was the last thing she said. I received a long, tight hug from her at the gate. Then the matron escorted me back into the children’s home. The gate shut behind me. I looked back and saw her holding the gate with one hand and crying. Tears welled up in my eyes and ran down my cheeks. The matron showed me into her office. She asked me to sit down on a brown chair facing her desk. She eyed me thoughtfully. I wiped away my tears and sat up straight.
“What’s your name?”
“Christiana Mara Coelho.”
“Do you know why you’re here?”
“Because my mother doesn’t have any money and because I’m not safe out on the street.”
“How old are you?”
“Seven years old.”
“How long have you been living on the streets?”
“A long time.”
“Do you know what an orphanage is?”
“A home for children who don’t have a mother or a father.”
She studied me for a bit. It seemed like she was contemplating something. It seemed strange that she was asking me questions she already knew the answers to. She gave me another contemplative look.
“Christiana, do you want to be here?”
It felt like a dangerous question because of the way she’d asked it and because of the tone of her voice. I might not have been the smartest little girl, but I wasn’t dumb. I’d been living on the streets too long not to understand that a question, an opinion, could mean much more than just the words that were used. I knew I mustn’t give the wrong answer now. If I said that I wanted to be there, I might lose my mother. Maybe I would never get to see her again. But if I said that I didn’t want to be there, maybe they would throw me back out on the streets. Patrique would be alone. My mother would be disappointed in me, and I would be breaking my promise to take care of Patrique. I had to answer. If I gave an answer that was neither yes nor no, then I wouldn’t be answering wrong, I thought.
“I want to be with my brother, but I really want to see my mother again. I would be sad without them both. But you are so kind, ma’am, to grant us protection from life on the streets.” I held my breath. Had I said the right thing? I had answered as nicely as I could, and I looked her in the eye while I answered, so she would know that I was telling the truth. She looked into my eyes for a bit. Then came a question I wasn’t prepared for at all.
“Why do you think you and your mother have been living on the streets?”
“Because no one cares about us.”
“Why do you think no one cares about you?”
“Because people who have money don’t give us anything at all. Because we don’t get any jobs and because people hate us.”
“Hmm,” she said, as if urging me to continue.
“They call us rats and hit us. The police don’t care, and they hit us, too.”
“That was a hard answer. You seem quite smart for your age. You’ve had to grow up a little too fast, like so many other children.”
She took out some pieces of paper and started jotting down notes. I sat quietly while she wrote. I still wondered if my answer had been right.
“Christiana, you’re going to live here starting now. This is your new home for the time being. You’ll sleep in a room with other girls your age. Here at the orphanage, there are both girls and boys of various ages, from little babies to a few who are as old as fifteen or sixteen. There are a number of rules you’ll have to follow. If you break them, you’ll be sleeping on the streets again. Christiana, do you know what rules are?”
“Yes, I know.”
“Explain it to me.”
“Rules are something everybody has to follow. Rules are decided by the person in charge, and everyone else follows them.”
“Exactly! I am the person who makes the decisions here. I am the person in charge. Me and everyone who works here. You will do as you are told. Is that understood?”
“Yes!”
“Causing trouble is not acceptable. We have certain things you need to be on time for. You will go to school, and you will get good grades. Is that understood?”
“Yes!”
“Good! If anything happens, anything serious, I want you to tell me about it, understood?”
“Yes!”
“Good! Then you can go acquaint yourself with your new home.”
I felt a little out of sorts. I had a hundred questions, but I knew that I could only ask one. There was only one question that was important. I’d get answers to all the others sooner or later. I tried to figure out the best way to ask the question.
“Excuse me, ma’am. I’d like to know . . . I was just wondering if Patrique and I will get to see our mother again?”
She stood up behind her desk and walked around it to where I was. I felt uncomfortable and had to tilt my head back to be able to look her in the eye.
“Every Sunday, some of the parents come and visit their children. They can stay for a few hours. If your mother wants to and is able to, she knows that she can come see you then. However, I would not count on her coming, Christiana.” She gave me a strange, thoughtful look. Then she turned around and started to go.
I followed her in silence. I had dared to ask the question, and it had been answered. She didn’
t think Mamãe would come visit us. But Mamãe had promised to come. I was confident she would come. Although maybe not entirely confident.
I was scared, so I did what I was good at doing. I stretched my back and pushed my feelings aside and followed the matron into a room crowded with children. When we walked in, the room went quiet, and everyone looked at me. I looked down at my bare feet. From somewhere I heard the matron say that my name was Christiana and that I was going to live here now, and that I would be their new friend.
When I first came to the orphanage, everything was good. I had Sundays to look forward to. And I quickly made a friend. Her name was Patricia, and she became my closest friend in the orphanage. She was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. I think she was a year younger than I was, but she could just as easily have been a year older. I know that she told me how she’d wound up in the orphanage, but I can’t remember now. Patricia was shy, reserved, and calm—everything I wasn’t. She was white, had brown eyes, and her hair was the color of gold with big loose curls. It was cut short like mine. All the kids at the orphanage had short hair, boys and girls, since that made it easier to combat lice. She was nice, and for the most part, the other kids left her alone. She never hurt anyone, and I looked up to her so much. But I couldn’t let her in all the way. I hadn’t forgotten the feeling of having lost my best friend. I never wanted to feel that again. But Patricia got as close to me as a best buddy can get without getting all the way in. She sang, too. We used to sit together and sing Xuxa’s songs. “Ilarie” was our favorite. Xuxa was a woman who had a children’s TV show, which we got to watch once a week. Patricia used to laugh when I sang. One time she said that what I lacked in voice I made up for in volume. After many songs and a lot of laughter, I realized she meant that I was off-key. It took me many years to accept that I wasn’t going to become the next big singing sensation. Patricia was one of the few people in my life I listened to, really listened to. She had also been going to school and living in the orphanage longer than I had, and I could always rely on her for help.
I was lucky to have Patricia. With so many children in one place, there couldn’t be anything but trouble. It gradually became clear to me that there were quite a few rules to follow. The days were very similar. Each started with all the kids gathering outside the shower room in a line to go into the showers, a few of them at a time. There were only a few towels, so you really didn’t want to end up toward the back of the line. If you did, you had only cold, wet towels to dry yourself with. Usually the strongest kids and the loudest ones ended up toward the front of the line. I was one of the kids who would wind up in the front, but every day I let Patricia, who was always one of the last in line, go ahead of me. One time I ended up last in the shower line, and I swore that would never happen again. It wasn’t really because it was gross to dry yourself off with a cold, wet towel or that all the warm water had been used up. It was more about the principle of the thing, a matter of pride. The system of lining up for the shower and all the other lines we had at the orphanage worked very simply: The stronger child stood in front of the child who was a little weaker. If you wanted to advance in the line, you had to fight the person who stood in front of you. If you won the fight, you could pass the person you’d defeated in the line. Patricia was able to cut ahead, because the kids behind us in line weren’t required to fight her, but rather the person who had let her cut—me. If you decided to accept the fight and lost, you risked ending up at the very back.
There was a hierarchy in the orphanage, just like on the streets, and you did not want to be near the bottom. I realized it wasn’t going to be that easy for me here. Among the children there were some who really disliked me, because I was a bit of a favorite with the staff. My mother had taught me good manners and how to help out and be nice. Those things will take you far in life. But if you wanted to survive among the kids, you were forced to share with the right kids so that you had someone who would watch your back, and then you would watch theirs in return. On your own you were weak—that was something you learned fast on the streets. I had always been a little calculating and fairly street-smart, which had sometimes served me well and other times not so well. At the orphanage, it mostly served me well. I also quickly made enemies. Gabriela was one of them.
There were certain unwritten rules at the orphanage. Rule number one: Do not tattle to the staff. Rule number two: Don’t make friends with the wrong people. Rule number three: Don’t suck up to the staff. Rule number four: Don’t own something no one else has (items that the children had received from their families or from the staff would be torn to pieces). Rule number five: Make sure you don’t do anything that causes the staff to have to punish you.
These were simple rules that got broken all the time, sometimes by me.
Sunday Is My Favorite Day
Mamãe came to visit my brother and me on Sundays. We met in the backyard out behind the orphanage. There were bushes out there and avocado trees. There was also a kind of stage. The yard was quite big, but we children weren’t allowed to go out there very often. But on Sundays we did—those of us who had parents, relatives, or close friends. Some of the kids, ones who didn’t have anyone to come visit them, chose to remain inside the orphanage then. Others came outside and jealously and longingly watched the kids who had people who missed them. I loved Sundays. They were good days, and I always longed for them.
Sometimes we kids put on little shows for the people who came to see us. I remember one time we were going to put on a play. We had gotten a book called Marcelo, Marmelo, Martelo. The book was about a boy, a shoe, and a hammer. We were going to perform it, and I was super nervous. I had never stood up in front of a group of people and spoken before. Even worse, now I was supposed to do it while pretending to be someone else. I don’t remember what part I played. I think that’s a little odd given how nervous I was and that I still have the book today. But I was happy, and I wanted to make my mother proud. I wanted to see her smile, and I wanted to be better than all the other kids. Mamãe had always said that if I had my mind set on something, I could do it.
When the other children teased me, and tried to make me nervous before the big day, I thought about what my mother had told me. I could do whatever I wanted if I just made up my mind to do it. And I had decided to be the best. So I read the book over and over again. I read it slowly, very slowly, not so the words would have more or greater significance or so that I would achieve some true understanding. I read slowly because I could barely read.
Sunday approached, and I grew increasingly nervous. All I could think about was that I wanted to make Mamãe proud. I only got to see her a few hours a week, and I wanted her to leave the orphanage feeling like she had a good, talented daughter and feeling like she wanted to come back the following Sunday. The day before we were supposed to perform, we rehearsed in the yard, and while I waited for my turn, I sat by one of the bushes and picked the hard berries that grew there. They looked just like beads. I didn’t know what they were called, but you could make bracelets out of them. They were green, almost as hard as rocks, and little, like real beads, but with holes right through them, which made it easy to string them together into a bracelet. I sat there making a bracelet for my mother. I remember that I was trying to figure out how many beads I needed. I mean, Mamãe’s wrist was bigger than mine, so if I made the bracelet too small, she wouldn’t be able to wear it. On the other hand, it couldn’t be too big, either. I didn’t finish the bracelet that afternoon, but I had gathered enough beads to finish what I had started later that evening.
That night I wasn’t tired at all. I was full of expectation and excitement about the next day and nervous at the same time. I slept fitfully that night. When morning came, I woke up, exhausted.
After we’d showered, gotten dressed, and goofed around like we did most mornings, we headed off to the cafeteria for breakfast. We were wearing the nicest clothes we had. Once I was down in the cafeteria, I sat next to Patricia. I was too nervous
to eat anything, so I just drank a cup of coffee with milk and sugar. A lot of sugar! My tummy settled down after the coffee, and I felt a little better. I don’t know if it was the coffee or having Patricia there that calmed me down, but she held my hand under the table.
It felt like it took forever for noon to arrive. That was when our parents and relatives could come. With each minute, I grew more and more tense. I tried to slow my breathing and think positive thoughts. And then, finally, the clock struck twelve. All of us kids who were going to be in the play were already out in the backyard. Any of the other kids who wanted to were allowed to come outside, too, and today quite a lot of the kids without relatives had come outside. They wanted to watch the play. Some of them were there because they thought it would be fun, others to see if any of us made fools of ourselves onstage. Gabriela was there with her little clique. She looked at me and jeered. As I walked by her, she hissed, “Good luck, you fucking rat! Do your best—you’re going to be a disaster.”
The kids’ families poured in, and I searched for my mother. I was going to run to her the way I did every Sunday and give her a bear hug, and she would hug me back just as tight. But I didn’t see her. Everyone had come in, and there wasn’t anyone else coming through the gate. Where was my mother? Why hadn’t she come? Had I done something wrong? Maybe she was just a little late. That must be it. Mamãe was running a little late. I sat by my bead bush and waited and waited until finally I realized that she wasn’t going to show up. For some reason, she didn’t want to or couldn’t. I sat and watched the other kids, who all looked so happy. The air was filled with laughter and hugs. I sat there, sad, and watched all the love that was there, right in front of me. Now I understood how the other children felt, the ones no one ever came to visit. I wondered why my mother hadn’t come.
“Oh, poor little Christiana! Did your whore of a mother abandon you?” Gabriela hissed. I got so mad, it was all I could do not to jump her in front of all the parents. Had I done that, the punishment would have been extreme, so I just glared at her. “You know what?” Gabriela continued. “We know where your mother is. She’s out whoring around on the streets and doesn’t give a shit about you.”
Never Stop Walking_A Memoir of Finding Home Across the World Page 11