Two Sides of Me

by Nora Sarel

  “Yes, I know her. She’s the one who told me to come to Olinda and look for you,” Gadi said quietly.

  “Father Carlos sent you to Bernardo?” she asked.

  “No, we met by coincidence.”

  “There are no coincidences,” Nessia pronounced and went on, “you’re so handsome and tall, I immediately knew you were my son. I felt you and dreamed of the moment we would meet.”

  Nessia kept talking, no one dared interrupting what she held in all these years. No one could tell whether Gadi understood her quick speech. He wandered off with his thoughts, not even trying to understand what she was saying. He imagined himself as Marco from the Heart novel, looking for his mother who left to Argentina. He crossed with Marco the Apennines in Italy and the Andes in South America. They crossed valleys, climbed mountains, and were finally excited to find his mother weary and sick. It was Marco who brought her back to life, Gadi said to himself. I read this book so many times, when I was a child, followed Marco’s journey, imagining this moment happened to me, too. I crossed continents to find the woman who gave birth to me. Apparently, it’s a basic human necessity, reserved only to human beings. His thoughts weren’t with Nessia, yet she kept on talking, her voice was the soundtrack to his thoughts.

  What did Marco say to his mother when he found her? He couldn’t remember this small, yet significant, detail. I think he just cried, kissed and hugged her. But Marco remembered his mother while Nessia will never be a mother to me. I have no doubts in mind, Dafne is my only mother. She’s the one who cried when I was in pain, who cheered and encouraged me when I was sad, she is my one and only mother. She would wait every weekend for me to come back safe and sound from the army. Nessia doesn’t even know I was warrior, that I had fought. She’s barely making it through life, and cares only for herself, not ever the children she didn’t give up for adoption. I’m not Marco, I didn’t look for my mother. I looked for the woman who birthed me, whose genes I have.

  Nessia’s voice kept sounding in the background, but Gadi didn’t hear a thing. His thoughts were miles far, lost in memories of childhood home, in Israel, thinking of Friday night dinners, his father proudly patting him on the shoulder, the smell of Grandma’s apple pie and the pastries she made, his mother’s caring gaze when he left the table to meet his friends.

  It was evening and string of colorful lights decorated the streets. The restaurants were ready to seat diners, especially sell beverages and sandwiches. People were walking towards the lighthouse. Gadi’s thoughts fused with the downtown carnival noise. Gadi looked around him and saw Anna-Maria’s head resting on Bernardo’s shoulder; both had fallen asleep in. Nessia kept talking, not noticing what was happening around her.

  “Where will we sleep?” Gadi interrupted her endless speech.

  “Not at my place, but there’s a motel right here,” she said and pointed at one of the buildings.

  “Motel?... Bernardo, wake up.” Gadi shook his brother.

  “In Brazil, isn’t a motel somewhere people meet to have sex?” he asked with hesitation, the tip of his lip curled with disgust and wonder.

  “Usually that’s true, in Brazil that’s what people do in motels. But you can also rent a room for the night.”

  They crossed the road and stood in front of the “Florida” motel. When the door opened, a bell rang indicating people had entered.

  “No, miss, we’re full, today is the carnival. You should have booked rooms two months in advance,” said the receptionist, who had jumped out one of the corners.

  “Maybe in that motel,” he directed them to the blue house across the road.

  The grabbed their belongings again. Gadi hung his heavy backpack on his back, to which his walking shoes were tied and dangled with his every step. They were tired, simply wanting a place to sleep in.

  “Maybe we should go to Senhor do Bonfim street,” Nessia suggested, “that’s the best spot to celebrate the carnival.”

  “Who wants to celebrate?” Anna-Maria said, “we want to sleep.”

  Despite what her daughter had said, Nessia took them up town, through the beautiful reconstructed streets, to a motel on Senhor do Bonfim street, by the Bonfim church. She then begged the receptionist to find a room, until he obliged.

  That night they didn’t take part in the carnival, but the noise from the street burst into the room and the flickering lights shone on their faces as they slept. None of this prevented them from falling into a deep sleep, laying on red sheets covered with golden flowers. They woke up only when dawn broke and the streets were silent again. Gadi woke up first, yet kept laying in bed, looking at Anna-Maria’s and Bernardo’s faces to see if he could find similarities between them. A month ago, he didn’t know of their existence and suddenly, these strangers have become my siblings, he thought. This was the first time he tried delving into the deeper meaning of the concept of ‘sibling’; he was raised as an only child and now he had so many of them. He felt that the moment he had longed for, meeting Nessia, had fleeted by. What will he take from that moment? Why didn’t he feel as close to her as he did with Bernardo and Anna-Maria? Will they stay in touch? Would they come visit him in Israel? Perhaps he’ll move to Brazil? What would he say to his parents? His biggest dream came true, is this how he had imagined it? These nagging thoughts pecked his mind and he was obsessed.

  Anna-Maria woke up and smiled a large, understanding smile.

  The Bonfim church was only a few miles from the motel. “It’s a great opportunity to visit the church,” said Bernardo, who had visited the church a couple of years earlier.

  “Great,” Anna-Maria was happy. “Mom won’t be here on time, she never arrives on time.”

  “You should come with us, it’s an interesting and important church,” Bernardo invited Gadi.

  “What’s interesting about it?” Gadi asked.

  “Come and see,” both replied.

  At the entrance to the church stood vendors selling red ribbons. Gadi thought it was just like back home; religious Jews believe that the dead can help them. When they come back from visiting the Graves of the Righteous, they wear a red ribbon on their wrist. Perhaps it’s a universal custom, he thought to himself.

  The shops surrounding the church sold figurine body parts, legs, hands, heads and even fingers. “Very strange, what is this?” Gadi asked Bernardo and Anna-Maria.

  “Let’s go inside,” they kept their explanations to the bare minimum.

  In one of the church rooms, were strings hanging from the ceiling, on them were tied hundreds of plastic body parts. Beside them were letters to God.

  “Can you explain it already,” Gadi asked. Anna-Maria went right to it, “if someone has a problem with their legs, perhaps they’re paralyzed and can’t walk, they pray to God, ask for his compassion. Then they write a letter and hang legs to remind God their intention. They add the letter to the legs, got it?”

  “What a strange tradition,” Gadi commented.

  “I heard you have a wall for tears, where people wail and asked for God’s assistance. You write letters to him and hide them between the rocks,” Anna-Maria showed her knowledge of the West Wall.

  “Yes, you’re right,” Gadi said as he stood amazed by the organs dangling from every corner.

  “One second, wait here,” Gadi said and quickly ran out the church. He bought a heart from one of the shops. He took a piece of paper out of his backpack and wrote in Hebrew,

  “Hello God of all religions,

  I, Gadi from Tel Aviv, ask that you touch my heart so that I feel something towards the woman who birthed me.”

  He went back into the Bonfim church, hung the heart he had bought and attached the letter.

  “What did you write?” Anna-Maria asked, “Why did you hang a heart? Do you have a medical condition?”

  “I asked God to make room in my heart for Nessia,” Gadi replied. “I don�
�t know why, but I can’t let her in.”

  “I feel the same,” Anna-Maria answered, “me too,” Bernardo added. He then went to get a heart for Anna-Maria and himself. They both attached the letter addressed to God to their hanging hearts in the middle of the room. Gadi wasn’t surprised.

  When they came back to the motel, they found Nessia leaning against the reception desk. Her buttocks stuck out while she stood on her tiptoes, as if trying to display her breasts on the counter to please the receptionist who took them in the other day. She was too busy schmoozing to notice they arrived.

  When the receptionist greeted them ‘bom dia’, she jumped and said, “here’s my boy who traveled a long way to see his mother.” For a moment, she forgot her two other children and hugged Gadi who tried to wriggle free after the two traditional kisses. Nessia noticed his resistance and repeated the same worn out sentence, “blood is thicker than water.” But Gadi didn’t respond. The pangs of excitement refused to come and he felt the sentence no longer applied to him, although he wanted it to.

  “What an amazing mother you have,” the receptionist chuckled. She walked as proud as a peacock to kiss Bernardo and then Anna-Maria, according to their order of birth. “Today we’ll tour the Florinio quarter,” Nessia suggested and wore a tour guide hat, wanting to entertain and make them like the city. “We’ll go up town, walk through the narrow stone-paved allies, and if we’re still up for it, we can walk through the streets with ice-cream colored houses. Most houses were built in the Baroque style and were recently were renovated and repainted. Now they’re very expensive.” She sounded like an experienced tour guide; no one could have guessed she was a wealthy family’s empregada.

  At the foot of the buildings and close to the churches, restaurants and cafes began taking their tables out to the streets, so that they would have enough space to receive thousands of tourists for lunch. Dark women dressed in white dresses, wearing colorful necklaces and white coifs on their heads from which dangled huge hoop earrings, sat at a corner on the street and sold bean patties fried in palm oil and stuffed with coconut, shrimps and garlic. Other women, also wearing their traditional clothes, persuaded people to take a picture with them, for the right fee. “Salvador is a city of churches and cathedrals. It is known to have three hundred and sixty-five churches, a church for each day of the year,” Nessia kept narrating. “But the most beautiful church of all is the San Francisco church, who’s walls are covered in gold. I often ask myself how did they have the money to coat an entire church in gold? The answer is one of the two, either the plant owners who lived in Salvador abused the black slaves they brought from Africa and made a fortune by selling the sugar they harvested, or gold was especially cheap back then.” She profoundly said.

  “But mammy, no more explanations, we want to have lunch.” stated Anna-Maria.

  “Haven’t you eaten?” Nessia asked, trying to avoid the situation.

  We haven’t even had a single cafezinho,” Anna-Maria complained.

  “All right, let’s eat here,” she gave in, pointing at one of the humbler and smaller restaurants.

  They sat quickly on the colorful chairs and ordered carne con farofa – meat with toasted cassava.

  “I don’t have money to pay for it,” Nessia announced, leaving no room for mistake.

  “We know,” Anna-Maria and Bernardo replied, each in their own way.

  The sun peeked every now and then from between the clouds and balconies. It finally settled for half an hour on a TV antenna and blinded Nessia, who didn’t order a thing and just kept talking.

  “Eat something,” Gadi said to her.

  “I don’t have any money,” she replied shyly.

  “I’m buying,” he whispered, “don’t worry.”

  “Thank you,” she casually said, and immediately asked the waiter for the same. Even while eating she kept talking, although she was evidently very hungry.

  I really don’t know how I feel about her, Gadi thought to himself; sometimes a sense of longing, then happiness, immediately after repulsion and now pity. I didn’t expect such a storm of emotions. I just can’t love her. Perhaps God hasn’t visited the Senhor do Bonfim church yet, nor read my request.

  “You have the same father,” she suddenly blurted out the declaration.

  “Who does?” Bernardo asked, “me and Anna-Maria?”

  The three stopped eating and watched her mouth speaking and chewing simultaneously.

  “No, you and Gadi,” Nessia used his Hebrew name for the first time.

  “Who?” Bernardo repeated, as if he didn’t comprehend.

  “The two of you,” she said with her mouth full and kept eating.

  “Do you understand what she said?” Bernardo now turned to Gadi.

  However, Nessia continued, “After I gave away the first Bernardo, I got pregnant again from the same man. Can’t you see how much you look alike?”

  “But didn’t you say he died?” Gadi interrupted.

  “I had to lie. I had to explain why I was thrown out of the house I worked in. I didn’t think I would go back.”

  “But you still went back,” Bernardo said with anger, as if offended for her.

  “What could I have done? They were happy to take me back, and were even happier I got rid of the proof of my relationship with Francisco.”

  “But you said I was born in Recife,” Bernardo claimed.

  “Yes. Right after the first Bernardo was born, they left Curitiba and the shame drove them all the way to Recife.” Nessia detailed. “But we still loved one another and kept in touch. He finally took me back to work. After a year I got pregnant again, I had a boy, and named him also Bernardo. I thought they wouldn’t throw me out this time. I thought Francisco, your father, would be happy to have a son because he never had any children and said he was sad I had to give the first Bernardo away. He said he and his wife Zelia would have raised him as their own. But when my belly grew big again, and I showed, his wife didn’t hesitate and threw me out once again.”

  “And Francisco?” Gadi asked.

  Nessia kept quiet.

  “What did my dad say? He let you leave?” Bernardo wouldn’t let it go.

  “She told him to drive me away,” Nessia said, then spat on the floor while muttering “filha daputa–daughter of a whore.”

  “And him? He didn’t say anything?”

  “He didn’t say anything. Not a word. He saw me leaving, having no place to go, carrying his baby in my belly, and didn’t intervene. I cried, begged, humiliated myself, but nothing helped. She didn’t want to see me. She didn’t want people to say her husband had a child with some empregada. She was too ashamed; how could such an important man have children with a poor maid. Believe me, he doesn’t deserve children like you, you’re so amazing.”

  “I think he’s just as much an asshole as she is. Who is he, that you keep saying he’s such an important man?” Bernardo said with disdain.

  But Nessia continued. “I raised you up on my own, with devotion and no help, but I made it.”

  “Who did you raise on your own? Me? Him?” Bernardo suddenly blew up. It seemed he took out all the rage that built up the last few days, perhaps, years. “You didn’t every raise Gadi, you gave him away. Is that what you tell people when they ask about your children? If you call that devotion, then I really don’t get it.”

  Gadi wasn’t sure he understood every detail of the emotional conversation, which is why he turned to Anna-Maria, who sat frozen and silent. “Explain to me, por favor.” She began explaining to Gadi the chain of events.

  “What is this? A telenovela?” Gadi laughed, but no one joined him.

  “Reality is stranger than fiction,” Bernardo said to Gadi angrily and added, “reality is a telenovela.”

  Then he turned to Nessia and shouted, “why haven’t you ever spoken to me about this?”

 
She ignored his accusations and continued telling her story.

  “I stood in the street and didn’t know where to go. I swore I wouldn’t give my child away. This time I would raise him. I didn’t want to go back to my grandmother, I couldn’t be there, she didn’t have money. I didn’t have any other choice but to go back to a shelter, like the one Dona Anna had, where I was lovingly accepted. I tried calling Francisco but his wife, the bitch, hung up. If he would have wanted to, he would have known how to find me. He just didn’t want to.”

  “Do you know where he currently lives?” Gadi asked pragmatically, as if it concerned someone else. His legs weren’t shaking either, but he felt Bernardo’s legs shake, his voice was breaking. It’s hard for him, Gadi realized. He looked at him and noticed Bernardo was crying. Dozens of tourists were walking around, the souvenir shops were packed with vendors and goods. During all this, Bernardo sat and didn’t hide his tears. Large tears dropped down his dark face, the sun shone through them like glistening crystals. Anna-Maria hugged him from one side, and Gadi, who couldn’t find the exact position from which he was comfortable, finally placed his hand on Bernardo’s other shoulder. Nessia, on the other hand, kept eating as if nothing had happened. “In Brasilia, the capital,” she replied casually while chewing. Gadi was embarrassed. The passers by didn’t even glance at the surreal scene. Suddenly Bernardo fell on Gadi’s chest and his tears stopped. Yet Gadi could hear Bernardo’s heart pounding, as if it were his own.

  “I would come with you to Brasilia,” Anna-Maria said abruptly, and they, who haven’t even discussed the option of going, broke away from one another. They looked at her with confusion, but she continued, “But I can’t, someone needs to take care of the children back home. We can’t burden Francisco with all that responsibility.”