Never Stop Walking_A Memoir of Finding Home Across the World

by Christina Rickardsson

  After everything I’ve heard during these hours, I suddenly feel completely wiped out. I can tell that all the interpreting has really taken its toll on Rivia, too. I ask her if maybe we ought to go back to our hotel and rest. She flashes me a look of irritation and says that there’s not a chance in the world that she’s going to tell my family that we’re heading out now when we haven’t seen each other in twenty-four years. I know she’s right, but I’m so tired. So many things on this trip have made such an impression on me. There’ve been so many memories to process, and most of all I realize that I was extremely wound up in anticipation of this meeting. I have been for so many years. All those times as a child when I missed Mamãe and wanted to see her, wondered how she was doing and whether she was alive. All those times as a teenager when I thought about her and whispered to her when I was alone. All those times as an adult when I’ve thought she was probably no longer alive because I couldn’t see how she could manage to get herself out of the destitution we’d lived in. All those times I’d wondered what I would say or do when I saw her again, if I ever saw her again. And now, so many years later, I’m standing here with this woman I’ve missed so much, and I’m just completely drained. It’s as if I’ve been carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. I can finally stop carrying it, but my muscles are cramped and aching. I know I ought to make the most of every single second of this time that life is now giving me with my mother, but all I want to do is go lie down in the bed in the hotel and sleep. I mean, now that we’ve found each other, I’d really like to believe that we have a new chance and a little more time. But I stay. I have no way of knowing how much time life will give us. And I’m grateful for the time we have now, so I muster up the last little dribble of energy I have left and do my best to enjoy what feels like a miracle.

  Eventually we head back to the hotel and rest for a while. Later that evening, there’s a party, and I change into a long black-and-white dress. I meet more members of the family, some of my cousins and some of their children. There’s loud Brazilian music and laughter and hugging. People are drinking beer, and even though I’ve never been much of a beer drinker, I’m on my third. Delza, one of my cousins, passes me another beer. I take it and thank her. She laughs, seems pleased with me, and says it’s in my blood. The whole family agrees, and I’m proud that they seem to think they can see a bit of the Brazilian in me. Even if it is only in my beer drinking. At the moment, I’m just so happy that I’m welcome here and get to be part of the family. As the evening goes on, a couple of people cautiously wonder whether I’m angry with the family, because everything turned out the way it did. Whether I’m angry because they didn’t take care of Mamãe and me when we were living in the cave and on the streets. Whether I’m angry that they gave up and never searched for me and my brother. That they didn’t take better care of my mother.

  That is hard to answer. I can honestly say that there are still things I wonder about. But I do also understand that we live in such different realities, that life is hard, and that I can’t expect to understand everything. What I feel most strongly is that I am so fervently grateful that I got to see them again. I do my very best to convince them that I don’t carry any grudge, just joy at being reunited and getting to know them all. After all, bygones are bygones. What could have been done better, who did or didn’t do what, what does that matter now? What would be the point of being angry at my family? The future will be what we make it, and I’m not planning to wreck the chance for me and my Brazilian family to find our way back to each other. We hug and start dancing in the little TV room. They teach me some dance steps. Mamãe and I dance with each other. Her hips aren’t so good, so we sway from side to side to the beat of the music. Then a faster song comes on, and my aunt Elsa, who’s eighty-six, starts full-on dancing, and I don’t understand how she can move so smoothly. I can barely keep up. I laugh and think that her genes bode well.

  Everyone is taking pictures. We keep dancing, and I can’t think of a better, or more Brazilian, way to wrap up the evening. I glance at Mamãe and suddenly realize in my euphoria that it doesn’t make any difference to me, to my memories, and to my feelings that she’s sick. Given everything she has had to endure and being sick on top of that, she’s even stronger than I’d thought to begin with.

  When she asks about Patrick again, I tell her that he’s coming in a few days and that he’s really looking forward to seeing her. I so desperately hope that they’ll have a good reunion. Patrick was so little when he and Mamãe were separated, I don’t know what kind of relationship they’ll build in the future. But I hope they’ll have a strong bond, the same way that I hope that my mother and I will keep our strong bond and be close. And at the moment, I have no doubt that will happen. I’ve learned that a person can be stripped of everything, but also that everything is possible as long as you never stop walking. And one of the women in my life who taught me this is now standing before me and talking to me as if no time has passed. I call her Mamãe, and my fear that that might feel strange is completely gone.

  When I get back to the hotel that night, I search online for information about Mamãe’s disease. I don’t know very much about schizophrenia. All I know is that it’s some form of psychosis that makes a person interpret reality differently from how the rest of us do. And that it’s a disease people usually have their whole lives. I read that it develops from a combination of hereditary and environmental factors. There’s a genetic susceptibility that makes it more likely that you’ll experience psychosis when you’re exposed to stressors or difficult experiences. That’s the least you could say of what Mamãe has had to go through. I wonder who wouldn’t be insane if they were forced to fight every day and on so many different levels to survive.

  I spend the following days socializing intensely with my mother and my family. At one point, she asks me whether I can see my father or God or Jesus. When I respond that I can’t, she seems a little disappointed but says that maybe I will be able to see them one day. I think to myself that I really hope that I won’t. I wonder about the times when Mamãe and I sat in our little cave looking out at the beauty of Diamantina—whether the stories that she told me about God and Jesus were times when she was receiving a visit from another world. I’ve been a little afraid of this moment, that it would feel weird to hear my own mother disappear into another world, or more like another world coming to visit her. To hear her talking to someone the rest of us can’t see or hear. But I discover that it feels fine, like a fairy tale from when I was little. Mamãe says that she sees my father—Beto—and God and Jesus. She seems happy when they come to visit, and for some reason it makes me happy, too. She laughs a lot, and I am astounded that after all she’s been through, she can still genuinely smile and laugh. I think about what she told me the first day we saw each other again after twenty-four years. How after everything she’s been through, she doesn’t cry easily anymore. It pains my heart, and I picture the blows that I saw her take when I was a child. She was poorly treated, and I feel my eyes begin to burn. My mother didn’t just make sure to give me the words and the strength to keep walking; she never stopped following her own advice. She never stopped walking. And I’m grateful that we have both continued and not given up along the way, and that we have finally walked so far that we’ve come all the way back to each other.

  One night, when we’re late getting home, I crawl under the covers and think about Mamãe. I’m sad that she’s sick, that no one took care of her or helped her when she was having trouble. Sad that the social-welfare protections that exist in Sweden and other countries don’t exist in Brazil. But when I start crying, it’s out of pure gratitude. To think that three little words can make such a big difference. Never stop walking. I also think about my other mother, Lili-ann, and how much I wish she were here, sharing this with me. I’m sure that both my mothers would have liked and respected each other. And somewhere in my imagination, I can see Lili-ann, Petronilia, and me in the little cave. My Swedish mother Lili
-ann in her fancy clothes, Mamãe Petronilia weaving palm fronds and how they’re both yelling at me in unison to be careful and not fall when I climb.

  Learning to Breathe Again

  1999

  After my adoptive mother’s passing, I did everything possible not to feel. All my energy went into not feeling. I had so many emotions, so many old, new, and especially frightening feelings. So much was totally different, and yet nothing was new. I was constantly drained and empty.

  Not long after my Swedish mother Lili-ann’s funeral, I was sitting alone in my room in our basement in Vindeln. I was staring out at the darkness. It was night. It was after midnight, and I couldn’t sleep. It felt like there was a weight pushing on me, and every breath was a struggle. Then quite suddenly, a calm came over me. I could feel the warmth from the darkness and the security it provided. I felt numb.

  I began to try to gain control of myself and my pain. When no one was looking, I would sit in a corner and try to remember what it felt like to breathe, to breathe normally. It was hard for me to remember what you did when you breathed. I would lock myself in one of the school’s restroom stalls and try to find a way to breathe that wasn’t like gasping for air through a straw. Sometimes I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, at first silently to myself, that everything was going to be OK. I could fix this. Then I kept looking at the mirror and thought a little louder: I will fix this. Then I opened the restroom door, stepped out into the school hallway, and smiled at the first person I saw or knew, a smile that said that everything was fine. I rarely asked for help.

  Of course, that wasn’t enough. Gradually I realized that. Without help, I was going to drown, and once I drowned, there wouldn’t be any help. They could do CPR on me for however long they wanted, but the day I drowned, I was going to die. The realization that what comes between breathing and drowning is a little beverage straw was unbelievably frightening. Being aware that everything is falling apart and going to hell is not always best for the feelings of panic. I started to understand the power emotions could have and how hard it can be to change them via rational thought. Pain, grief, rage, hatred, confusion, frustration, bitterness, loss, loneliness, guilt, disappointment, fear, and obligation can all lead to chaos if your emotions are given too much space and have a chance to join forces.

  We’re all alike and yet so different. If we’re subjected to the smallest extra amount of pain, pain that then joins forces with guilt, and then together they find their way home to loneliness, we will find ourselves putting up the strongest of walls. Walls that reason can never penetrate. Reason basically does what it’s good at: it works its way around, over, and under the walls.

  My foundations were laid when I was little, in the slums and on the streets of Brazil. My foundations were fear, loss, loneliness, physical and mental pain, death, injustice, and a lot of other negative stuff. Thanks to my adoptive mother’s stubbornness, love, and desire to do good, I got another chance. Now she was no longer here. For the majority of my life, I had been afraid, afraid of all kinds of different things—a consequence of the unstable foundation that had been laid for me. I was forced to build a wall around myself. And my reason has run around and around it, trying to get in.

  On Top of It All

  DIAMANTINA, 2015

  We’re back in the caves, Mamãe, Rivia, and I. The landmark I always looked for when I was little and got lost is there. I sit atop the cave and dangle my legs over the edge. I look at the landmark: a steep, sixty-five-foot-tall white rock. I turn my head and look straight ahead. I am met by a familiar view, Diamantina’s wilderness of green mountains stretching as far as the eye can see and the sky, which is clear blue with fluffy cotton-candy clouds. Below me in the cave, I hear Rivia and Mamãe chatting with each other. I inhale the warm air, which is clean, unlike in São Paulo. I hear the crickets. It sounds like I’m surrounded by thousands and thousands of crickets who’ve decided to play a staccato symphony. I wasn’t prepared for the caves to feel so small. Everything’s the same, but I feel like a giant sitting here. Mamãe and I used to sit here, and she would tell me her stories.

  I listen to Mamãe and Rivia. Mamãe’s words come slowly, as if each breath is difficult. Her voice trembles a little, and I can tell from how Rivia is talking to Mamãe that she’s gone off into her own world, or that her world has come to visit her here in ours. I hear Mamãe say my father’s name, Beto. I have no memory of Beto, my biological father. I try to feel some emotion for this person whose DNA I share, but that’s all he and I are ever going to have in common. How can you miss someone you don’t remember? My only memory of him is his not being there. I was never mad or upset at him for it. It’s hard to be mad or upset at someone you don’t know. Since Mamãe said that he’d been murdered, I’m glad I’ve never been mad at him. It wouldn’t be fair to him to be mad at him for not being there when it was physically impossible. Being murdered seems like a valid reason for being absent. But I’m not even curious about who he was. I haven’t asked Mamãe about him, and what I know is what she’s volunteered to share. Maybe that will change, but right now, all the information, all the questions and ideas I already have about everything else are enough.

  My grandmother gave birth to twenty or twenty-one children. My grandfather took his own life. My mother jumped out a window to escape from her brother. My father was murdered. One of my brothers is dead, and no one knows where the other one is, and above all—my mother has schizophrenia. I’ve got all I can deal with right now just trying to process all this.

  I dangle my legs, behold the beauty of Diamantina, and take a deep breath. I try meditating. I want to be able to take in all the beauty before me and bring it home with me to Sweden. I can’t meditate. Over the years, I’ve tried various methods of finding the way to that peaceful silence within. How people manage to do that is a mystery to me. My brain is always in overdrive. I’ve tried yoga, too. But when I sit there in those various positions and try to forget the world around me, it’s like I become hyper-aware of the world around me. But here I sit now, out in this natural setting, looking out at all this beauty, and I think that maybe I can pull it off now.

  Wait now . . . Is that a mosquito on my hand? I mean, I have been vaccinated against everything imaginable. I did it at the last minute. The doctor said it wasn’t optimal to have the shots so close to leaving on my trip, but that it should work. I feel mosquitoes start sucking my blood, and I wonder what a malaria mosquito looks like. I try to wave the mosquito away, but there are just more and more of them. I have no memory of there being swarms of mosquitoes in the caves when I was little. I realize that there’s not going to be any meditating today, either. I’ll be happy if I can just get down off this mountain with half my blood left. I yell down to Rivia that I don’t recall there being so many mosquitoes. I hear Mamãe laugh a little. Rivia tells me my mother says we used to make smudge fires and burn plants around the cave to keep the mosquitoes away. I yell back that I’m going to climb the white rock behind me to get a better view. Mamãe immediately starts to protest. I can’t help but laugh; it’s just like when I was little. I climbed, and Mamãe protested. I tell Rivia to assure Mamãe that there’s no danger. I kind of know what I’m doing.

  On my way toward the cliff face, I realize that the vegetation is out of control. I would need a machete to make any kind of headway through this. Instead, I use my hands and feet to try to create a path. I hear rustling noises in the undergrowth and the small palm trees. I try to summon up the tough little girl inside me, the girl who ran around here as a kid and knew how you made your way through a forest. I’m not looking where I’m going and miss the gigantic spiderweb right in front of my face. I walk straight through it and feel panic rise in me. I run the last little way as hard as I can. The shrubs and branches hit my body, and they burn exactly the way they did that night so many years ago when Mamãe and I ran and hid here.

  When I make it to the white cliff face, I leap up onto a big stone. “Ha-ha!” I yell in vict
ory to the plants I just emerged from. I look up toward the top and start climbing. I have always loved using my body. It feels right. We’re not supposed to sit around all day long in an office in front of a computer. We’re supposed to use our bodies to run, climb, jump, dance. I very quickly realize that sneakers are not ideal. I miss my climbing shoes, which I left in my closet back home in Umeå. I hear Rivia calling to me from where she and my mother stand waiting until they can see me on the top of the rock. “How’s it going?”