The Hotel Blue Tree: a gorgeous red ribbon–shaped five-star hotel, designed in the modernist aesthetic of, of course, Oscar Niemeyer, with geometric lobby tables and chairs and glorious bright blue pools. My mother has invited a troupe of family and friends to meet me at their extravagant Easter brunch buffet. Tomorrow, we are going to stay overnight in the hotel as a special treat.
The smell of chocolate accosts me before we get near the restaurant entrance. Chocolate eggs, chocolate bunnies, chocolate fountains, chocolate truffles, chocolate cookies, chocolate centrepieces, chocolate trees—yes, chocolate trees the size of adults. And the buffet boasts rampant hot and cold dishes: omelets, hard-boiled eggs, sausages, frittatas, pancakes, waffles, cinnamon buns, croissants, pasta salad, green salad, crab salad, chocolate cake, cheesecake, pineapples, mangos, watermelon, pears.
And then the people assault begins: twenty-five well-wishers to congratulate my mother on her daughter’s arrival and to check me out with fanfare like the final float of the Easter parade. I wish I’d brought one of my hats. Keep calm and carry on. Keep waving. Keep on waving until the end.
Before I have a chance to put down my purse—in the middle, my mother insists, we must both sit where everyone can see us and speak to us—an old professor friend of my mother’s—he must be Áurer César from the card—juts in to inform me that in Brazil they do not hide eggs or have Easter egg hunts on Easter morning. The chocolate eggs and bunnies are a new thing of the last twenty years. Could have fooled me. A chocolate bunny at least five feet tall guards our table.
I met your mother when she was eighteen and attending the university. You look exactly like she did then. Exactly. His wrinkled eyes sparkle.
I smile because I realize this is intended as a compliment, that people are attempting to forge connections by saying I share my mother’s nose, dark-brown eyes, writing talent, but it only reminds me that no one actually knows me here. In fact, I have my grandmother’s nose and eyes, shape not colour. I have my mother’s hair and hand gestures. I notice over the course of the brunch that the people who I think are the most sincere in trying to get to know me are those who have not resorted to this kind of perfunctory comparative statement. I guess I should be thankful people are being kind and leave it at that. Keep on waving. Though I really wish I had a hat. With a veil.
She was terribly, terribly timid, he continues. Hard to believe. He obviously likes her a lot. When I am about to venture off to the oasis of food, he stops me with a tweed arm. People want to meet you, not watch you stand in a line. I will bring you food. So I sit. He doesn’t ask what I’d like to eat, but I don’t care, I’m not fussy. This buffet isn’t about food. Like the chocolate eggs littered on each seat, family and my mother’s friends fill out around me. A melody of languages erupts into a translation experiment.
Uncle Wilhelm and Aunt Victoria both speak English. Cousin Elizabeth, although she has taken English lessons and can identify English words and phrases, is much more comfortable talking in French, which she learned when they were stationed in Paris; her father teases that she learned no English in London, and maybe even forgot Portuguese. I have no idea if my cousin Guilherme, Elizabeth’s brother, can speak French or English, because he doesn’t speak to me, only to his fiancée in Portuguese. Everyone is talking over one another, repeating questions in different languages, translating answers back and forth. I’m trying to keep calm and collected and decipher broken English and French as they decipher my foreign tongue. At least we have such delicious food to share—when I can’t think of anything to say, or when it’s apparent that the person in front of me has no idea what I am saying, I just smile and bite into a pineapple or warm chocolate croissant.
Once everyone has settled somewhat into their seats, plates piled with breakfast goodies, my mother passes around the original photograph of me before my first book launch. Uncle Wilhelm asks me about it, and while others are engaged in their own Portuguese conversations, I am suddenly aware that the group is half-listening to me at all times, like a puppy underneath the table whose little barks attract excessive attention.
What does this title mean, How to Draw Blood from a Stone? he asks, putting down his camera. His voice is boisterous; due to his job, he’s a man accustomed to conversation with foreigners. He doesn’t speak to me like I’m his niece, but more like I’m an invited dignitary.
Do you have this expression here? I ask my mother.
Yes, yes, she responds, nodding vigorously.
The exact same expression? I query again.
Yes, yes, except here we say tears from a stone.
Now I know these two phrases can’t possibly mean the same thing. It means you can’t pay?
Pay? Pay what? my mother asks.
I explain the implications of the English title to the table.
You see, Priscila has followed in my footsteps, my mother beams.
Only in writing, I say as cheerfully as I can, so it seems more like friendly banter than a correction. We write very different things.
Uncle Wilhelm nods, pours me watermelon juice.
We do write very different things. As far as I know, she’s never published a book of poetry or a novel, only articles on the internet.
Tell me the plot of your novel, Uncle Wilhelm commands as I indulge in my first brigadeiro, a rich dessert made out of chocolate and sweet milk, like fudge. Not my last.
I oblige, outlining the murder mystery aspects of the story and the genesis of “my little nun” narrator.
How does it end?
I can’t tell you that. You have to read the book! I counter, and we both laugh, Aunt Victoria tapping affectionately on her husband’s hairy forearm.
It ends with the girl dying and then deciding that because there is no judgment there is no forgiveness, my mother intercedes.
Did she really just do that—not only give away what happened to the girl but offer a misguided moral interpretation to boot? Does my mother’s rudeness and narcissism know no bounds? I guess this is what family holidays are like for some people, a constant struggle to keep one’s cool among the outrageous behaviour and infuriating comments of one’s relatives. I’ve always suspected I’ve been spared such nonsense by growing up in a fractured family, and now I’ve been proven right. No, I say, unnerved by having to defend my work in front of strangers, that’s not correct. I hope my voice sounds explanatory, not condescending or angry.
My mother recoils like a snail into her bulky frame. Then you tell him.
I take a moment to collect my thoughts into an English explanation that I hope can be easily understood. I am about to speak when—
Art has many interpretations. Some people say the ending is sad, others that it is happy, and they have watched the same movie.
Maybe it has to do with reading in another language. I direct my words to Uncle Wilhelm and Aunt Victoria in an effort to ignore her outburst. Because—
Priscila and I have only communicated by email until now, my mother booms over top, turning this way and that so it is clear she is addressing all her guests, because speaking in person someone can very easily become upset when the language is not exact . . .
That’s the last straw. No more sympathy for this woman who won’t even let me speak about my own work to people who have asked me directly about it. Who has misread my novel and doesn’t care. Now I regret sending her my books before I arrived. She has projected too many of her own emotions and judgments onto the pages, dismissing or ignoring the actual content. The last page of my first novel is very specific about forgiveness. Not another valid interpretation, this is outright misreading—and careless reading is upsetting, even dangerous. I’m embarrassed, hoping the guests won’t think I am being unkind to my mother in arguing with her, that they will appreciate my frustration, but it’s hard to tell. They are her friends and colleagues and relations, not mine. And we’re supposed to be on “good behaviour” because no one really knows how to behave. This is a warm brunch, but not a comforta
ble one. I am the prodigal daughter after all, from Canada, who has plopped into their laps like a strange Easter gift. Unwrap with caution.
The ending of the book does not take such an easy view of forgiveness, I say. One of the virtues of art is complexity.
Art is not complicated. You might not understand your own book, but I do. My mother looks about her people, smugly sipping her juice and smiling that wide-faced steel-armour smile. She’s been waiting for this day her whole life. Waiting patiently for me to unroll the stone.
I’m done waving. Now I really need a hat with a veil. A black hat with a black veil. I realize my mother doesn’t want forgiveness. She wants to be resurrected.
After a second (or is it a third?) round of desserts, my grandmother once again pulls gently on my arm. An Easter present. For me. A mink stole, given to her on her birthday in 1975 when she was living in Ottawa, from Dworkin Furs on Rideau Street. And now it is going back to Canada on my granddaughter! she exclaims, wrapping the dark-brown and black fur around my shoulders.
I know people get angry about fur. I don’t want you to get hurt. So I’ve made this wine velvet covering, my grandmother explains, extracting the fabric from a second bag.
Secured with snaps, the covering envelops the entire stole, the red unleashing a festive Christmas air. Now I have two stoles, I say, thanking her.
This only looks right on someone tall, which is why I barely wore it, and why I did not offer it to Elizabeth. It has been waiting for you.
Everyone is snapping pictures. My digital camera (not yet commonplace) is a great conversation piece with no language barrier; everyone wants to experiment with it and experience the novelty of viewing your photo seconds after taking it. So I oblige for a good twenty minutes, even though I’m boiling under the weight of the stole, ridiculous attire for the desert heat.
As Elizabeth and Guilherme play fashion photographer, grandmother tells the story of her silver anniversary party. They discovered, after the event, that no one had remembered to load film into the camera. Everyone in the family, except my mother’s brother, my Uncle Fernando, who wore a suit for the only time in his life and refused to do it a second time, dressed up again several days later for new portraits.
It isn’t the same. You can’t reproduce it. There aren’t enough flowers or other decorations. It isn’t the same day, she reports sadly.
I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet your husband, I reply. And I mean it.
Enormous and blue, her eyes take me in like a planet with gravitational pull, and as she squeezes my arm I have the urge to lift her up into the sky. You have a picture. It is 1975, your birthday, and he is holding you.
Yes, I reply, yes, I have this picture. I do have this picture. I remember it now. It never meant anything to me before. It’s at my father’s place in a box of other old pictures that never meant anything to me, but I’ll retrieve this one. That’s when I met him, she is telling me. It’s all right. I was loved by him. I was a loved granddaughter. Perhaps I am sorely mistaken, but I feel as though my grandmother must have been convinced to try and help my mother take us away from Canada out of love, not out of spite or anger. She seems genuinely regretful to have missed out on our lives, all the photos that exist without her.
As everyone calculates their bills, I am asked, for the third time today, to visit Uncle Wilhelm and Aunt Victoria at their home. I relate this to my mother, but she refuses to alter her plan and says briskly that we cannot. Guilherme, who is apparently a bit of a vain showboat, and his stereotypical blond fiancée soon-to-be Air Force wife invite my husband and me to visit them in Recife the next time we find ourselves in Brazil. We have beautiful beaches there. Very warm. Lots of good shopping. We say there is a shopping gene in the family. You must have it too. I laugh. I suppose I do. Now I know where it comes from. Now I also know Guilherme can speak English. The benefits of an Air Force education: flight training, weapons training, and language training. No wonder my mother is a triple-threat.
Next I am driven about the oddly named artificial Lake Paranoá and then to the Oscar Niemeyer cathedral, in architectural terms a hyperboloid structure, designed to mimic hands in prayer, the white beams (fingers) interspersed with swirls of blue, yellow, and white stained glass, with a below-street-level entranceway—a tribute to persecuted Catholics forced to practise their religion underground. Because of the glass, only crazy people attend mass during the day here, I’m informed, you could burn alive in the noon heat. In front stands a massive statue of the four gospel writers, where old women sell dried flowers. These are the only flowers natural to Brasilia, my grandmother tells me. All that was in Brasilia before was red dust. A dream wrapped in red dust.
At the base of the ramp entrance, we are halted. Because it is Easter and a late-afternoon mass is in progress, tourists are not permitted entry. Dozens of disappointed foreigners stand squinting behind a rope barrier and two very stern security guards. This, however, does not deter my grandmother.
You will see the church, she whispers. Follow me.
Because the elderly are revered in Brazil (if you can live this long in such a dangerous country, you must have learned a thing or two), no one interferes as my grandmother walks past the rope barrier and into the church, very slowly but absently lifting her head up and down and weaving from side to side, as if she doesn’t quite know where she is.
Look at as much as you can. The angels above you are beautiful, and the confessionals, and the shroud, and then come back for me, she instructs, kneeling at one of the pews, pretending to pray. You have about ten minutes.
I do as she says, gazing upward into the swirling light at three angels in descending order of size, the smallest on top, attached by cables to the ceiling, as incense fills the room and a dark burly security guard trails me, monitoring my movements through his walkie-talkie. I proceed to the modern confessionals, minimalist wooden containers, confessor on one side, sinner on the other, talking through a hole in the shape of a cross. I have less time with the shroud, which looks like a corn sack but is rumoured to possess the imprint of Jesus—I can’t find it and feel silly, like I’m looking for the face of Jesus in an artichoke or grilled-cheese sandwich. In my periphery, my grandmother rises and delicately weaves toward me. Believers kneel, then sit. Communion is about to begin and we have drawn attention, so I take my grandmother’s hand and lead her slowly back up the grey ramp to the outside twilight like a real granddaughter would.
Thank you, I say, squeezing her fingers. You are sneaky, Grandmother.
Sometimes, she smirks, this white hair is very powerful.
To Pátio Brasil shopping plaza, top-floor food courts, which house everything from fish and beans to tacos and beef teriyaki to McDonald’s and pizza. Here various friends of my mother’s, who were not invited to the brunch, eagerly await us. Each coos about how much my mother loves me and how I should return to Brazil many, many times. Before landing in Brasilia, I decided not to blame the rest of the family or my mother’s friends for her behaviour. I do not refuse love. I did not survive my childhood and other difficult times by refusing love—I’ve needed to detect it and accept it from the most unlikely places. Anyone can love me. My mother, my next-door neighbour, my students, God. But it’s my choice whether or not to return it. Just because I share blood with someone doesn’t mean I share, or should share, an emotional bond. Too much manipulation and exploitation justifies itself under the heading “but we’re family.” As for my mother’s friends, since she doesn’t share personal information with them, I assume they are all colleagues and therefore might have very different emotional lives and values than my mother. I should not recoil from them because my mother is repulsive. I should welcome the opportunity to discover what good qualities they respond to in my mother.
Your mother was very kind to me after a horrible divorce, one confessed as soon as she shook my hand. I am a single mother and your mother doesn’t look down on me, says another. If I didn’t have my group of female friends,
I would be so lonely; my husband and I separated a few years ago, admits a third. These lonely women seek solace in each other, especially in a machismo society where attractiveness and desirability depends on your ability to interest and keep a man. I can’t quite tell if they actually like her or what she seems to stand for: a strong career woman who doesn’t need a man, or children for that matter, to fill her days and give her satisfaction in life. An admirable role, but my mother doesn’t quite fit the bill. Or at the very least, she’s peculiar casting.
A woman in her nineties dressed entirely in layers of black lace and a pearl choker is my mother’s favourite aunt, Aunt Maria des Gracas, whom she calls Aunt Gracinha. I think my mother forgets that she’s said all family should be loved equally and unconditionally, but never mind. My mother is also Aunt Gracinha’s favourite niece. I’m amazed this ancient woman, who sits as quietly and calmly as a black-cat figurine, lives alone with all her faculties intact. Apparently, my mother spends every Christmas with her. I am about to ask why she doesn’t spend Christmas with the rest of the family, but stop myself. Evidently there are tensions that go further and deeper than Easter; no one wants to allude to any of them today. My grandmother, rather than complain that my mother has not yet ordered us food, rises from the table, orders her own—a plate of vegetable rice and a cup of coffee—and carries it back on a heavy tray. She hands the bill to my mother. I love her.
Did I feel that correctly? Is it love I’m feeling for my grandmother? Do I even know what that means? Or is it just that I’ve recognized the aura of someone who has no intention to hurt me—an instinct I’ve relied on for much of my life. Chris has so much family that family is a word and concept as ordinary as tea or car or book. For me, family is a landscape I am travelling through, staring out the window and taking notes, unsure of what I’ll retain when it’s all over; attempting to overcome my barrier as a tourist but fearful, no, terrified, of crossing over into unsafe territory and exiting the bus in case I’m robbed. I’ve never loved a female family member before; but I trust her, implicitly, with my heart. I am confident she will not crush it. Or hold it for ransom.
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