Valencia, Venezuela, May, 2005
My lack of a quiet and gentle
spirit clearly presented itself with my North American teammates who gave me,
their translator, what I was calling “translation overload.” But my spirit quieted considerably with my
Venezuelan teammates. At a natural break
between activities, one of my Venezuelan teammates, Armando, brought me into a
private room, turned on the CD player and began playing David Bisbal’s
“Silencio.” Silence. The first lyric: Ya no tengo palabras.
I have no words left. The first lyric to the chorus, booming in
volume: Silencio / Eterno y mudo.
Silence. Eternal and mute. The next line of the chorus: Como el
recuerdo. Like the memory. The chorus continues with the repetition of
its title: Silencio.
I knelt like Mary, one of the sisters
of Bethany, sitting at the feet of Jesus, with tears streaming down my face. The
song kept repeating the word I needed, Silencio. Meanwhile, its chorus expressed the word
flowing into me, recuerdos. Later
that evening, one of my North American teammates was also like Mary’s sister,
Martha, quietly but firmly reprimanding me for escaping my job to listen to
music. I simply nodded in silencio.
The song had affirmed my silence and
it encouraged my memories, which I referred to as my cascada de recuerdos,
my waterfall of memories. These were
sparked by the tastes, the sounds, and the sights of the neighborhood of my
Venezuelan partners. They began on our
first day, when one of our Venezuelan partners hosted lunch at her home. The home felt familiar; it was middle-class
and similar to ours in São Paulo, Brazil.
Roughly 600 square feet, it had a small sala, a little living
space at its entry, then a round kitchen table, followed by the kitchen, and
two small bedrooms to the left.
The meal included a little chicken, a side salad of sliced
carrots, cucumbers, and tomatoes, and the main dish, black beans and rice. The black beans had been cooked longer and
slower than we North Americans are used to.
They had likely been soaked overnight, which releases from them a rich
flavor in a natural and savory broth. They
also tasted familiar, likely having been prepared similar to the way they had
been prepared in Brazil, with a little vegetable oil, onion, garlic, salt, and
a touch of bacon, very finely cut, and barely visible. Only a few bites of beans initiated my cascada
de recuerdos.
São
Paulo, Brazil, mid-1970s, as recalled through my cascada de recuerdos
The taste of the rice and beans dish returned me especially
to our dinners with our family friends, the Williamsons. These were very close friends of my parents,
with whom they had attended school in São Paulo. Lucky for me, the Williamsons had three young children of their own; as the second youngest of four, I fit
right in. Unlike our house, their house
had a special room just for eating, with a long wood table, long enough to seat
all eight of us. The Williamsons had a
generous driveway for play and metal cars with pedals that we could get into
and drive all by ourselves. At the time,
I didn’t know that the cars worked like a sitting bicycle. All I knew was I could get in one and drive
it. Power!
Other recuerdos flooded too: our trips to the beach,
the park, my dad’s office at the University, and the Clube do Campo, the
country club, where we often met the Williamsons and other friends. I remembered the play equipment for climbing
at the Clube do Campo and its snack bar, where I always ordered grilled
cheese and Fanta de laranja. It took
many years in California before I learned the English term for this drink: orange
pop. But I found North American orange
pop disappointing: too sparkly and not sweet enough.
The cascada de recuerdos
brought me to recall Mom playing the “little piggy” game with my
toes in Portuguese. She carried out the
littlest piggy’s cries of “wee, wee, wee all the way home” with suspense and
drama: E esse porquinho, esse porquinho, esse porquinho chorou, “Cui, Cui,
Cui, Cui, Cui” todo o cominho de casa! Other
than games like these or reading to me in the children’s books she had picked
up locally, Mom spoke to me mostly in English.
And if I was in trouble, the language was always English.
Dad spoke to me mostly in Portuguese, and he kept pleading
with me to speak the right language, fala en português, menina, fala
en português. Like most preschoolers,
I replied in the language easiest for me: English. But Dad was patient with me, and my cascada
de recuerdos had me relishing in the memories of Dad swinging me, kneeling
down to tickle and wrestle with me, and even comforting me in my crises,
pulling me into his arms and reassuring me: Chora tudo menina, chora
tudo. Cry it all out little girl,
cry it all out.
Valencia,
Venezuela, May 2005
Recalling Portuguese through my cascada de recuerdos may
have prompted me to take interest in the dialect of Venezuela, this neighbor to
Brazil. I discovered the dialect of my
teammates to be not only more enunciated than I was used to, but also more
Brazilian. Having visited Northern
Mexico many times and having studied abroad in Oaxaca, I had become acquainted
with the dialects of both Northern and Southern Mexico. I had never heard the number two, dos,
sounding more like the Portuguese dois.
Nor had I heard the number seven, siete, pronounced more like the
Portuguese sete, which ends with a “che” sound. That led me to notice my Venezuelan teammates
often pronounced the “t” sound more like the Brazilian “ch.” When I shared my observation of their
Brazilian accent with Daniel the young pastor and leader of the Venezuelan team
and his key elder, Samuel, their faces lit up.
They thanked me, saying that a Brazilian accent is prized in
Venezuela. Then they returned the
compliment and anted up: Tu tambien, You too. My accent, according to them, sounded less
like an American’s than it did a Brazilian’s! Verdad? Hijole! With great grins, they repeated Hijole,
a popular expression of amazement in Southern Mexico. I could read their eyes: in Venezuela, it’s
not a common idiom, but they had heard it, and were charmed by my use of it.
Valencia,
Venezuela, a few days later
A twin home to mine in São Paulo. Never would I have dreamed the Spirit had
worked that plan into my three week mission to Venezuela. But Someone was creative. For my prayer for a quiet and gentle spirit
to be granted, my cascada de recuerdos needed something very tangible –
like a replica of my own house. Three
days shy of the conclusion of our mission, another of our Venezuelan teammates
hosted us in her home, a perfect twin of my own home in São Paulo. Entering this house so knocked the wind out
of me that I could barely stand and had to be escorted outside for a drink of
water. The hostess graciously permitted
me to tour through her house with her and a few of our teammates and to compare
her house with the one I had lived in. I
had us start from the back of the house with the hostess’s back door, the one
that opens that into the kitchen, and I explained, a little embarrassed, that
our home opened at the kitchen. I shared
where our small, square kitchen table sat against the wall to the left, with
three short, steel chairs. Our fridge
was in the same location as the hostess’s, as was the stove, and the kettle for
boiling our dirty water, and the oven, which didn’t work, so I said Mom used it
as storage for our pots and pans. Daniel’s
eyes grew big. I then took them to the
“back” of our house with the living area.
It was small, had a love seat and a big chair with a cushion that sunk
down, but we didn’t spend much time in it.
Next came my mom and dad’s room, which had a bed on the left and, just
like the hostess had, a cabinet closet. I
apologized that I remembered little of my parent’s room, as I was rarely in it. Daniel cast his face down, sad.
We then moved to the other side of the hallway, where my room
had been, and I remembered it well: on the right, next to the wall was my bed,
a twin bed, and next to it was a little night stand with my books on it. Then on the left side, I also had a cabinet
closet, like the one the hostess had. The English word “armoire” is far too
sophisticated for these simple closets made of cheap wood, two doors opening
from the center, and no drawer at the bottom.
But, upon opening the closet, mine had a shelf at the bottom. My mother stored clothes for me on top and
toys at the bottom, mostly stuffed animals, the dolls and accessories of Monica,
Brazil’s most popular cartoon character of the 1970s, and then the most special
items: a stash of toy cars. I didn’t
tell them why these were so special: they were the favored toys of Colin, the
brother I had who other people called “imaginary.” I teased with my teammates that I didn’t know
cars were “boy’s toys,” and that it was a good thing no one had ever told me
that. Daniel smiled and nodded,
appreciating my innocent tomboy spirit.
Then he asked about the color of the walls. I thought for a moment and replied, Blanco. White.
He lifted his head, struck, and his eyes gazed at me. I could read them. Daniel knew my story was true, my house was
authentic, and it carried the humble quality of middle class homes of the
1970s.
The following day, we drove down one
of Valencia’s main avenues, one just like mine in São Paulo. On the left side of the road were middle
class homes, those 600 square foot casitas like ours, and on the right side
were slum homes, which in Brazil were called favelas. Since there were only a few across the street
from our home, these would probably not have been assigned the term, favela. But, other than freedom from crime, these
structures were more dilapidated than most in the favelas. These shacks were barely held up with scraps
of wood, tarps, and slats of floppy, tin shingles, collected from the dump. The mish-mash of materials collected from
various dumps left openings that couldn’t protect their residents from the
rain. Our neighbors across the street
cooked outside; the children were barefoot.
At three, looking across the street, I wondered, Why don’t they have
a house like mine?
If you travel to Latin or South America today, you won’t
see many of these.
Today's poverty appears extravagant to that of the
1970s.
While not from Brazil, these approximate what I saw
across the street.
But remove the background, as the shacks sat alone along a countryside,
with open dirt behind.
But remove the background, as the shacks sat alone along a countryside,
with open dirt behind.
When I returned from my three week mission to Venezuela as
one of the translators, I called Mom to give a report. When I shared some of my memories from
Brazil, she was struck by their accuracy.
To the one of my move into a “big girl bed,” she exclaimed, “Karina, you
were only 22 months old when we did that!”
I also had a question for her: In Venezuela, the front door
always opens to the living space, and the back door is for the kitchen. Was it a normal house plan in Brazil for that
to be the opposite? My mom laughed. “Our front door was broken! It wouldn’t open. So we always came in through the back door!”
That Mom responded with such astonishment and joy became an
important blessing. This bonding with
Mom over my cascada de recuerdos from São Paulo proved to be an
essential prelude to the memories that were about to come, now that I was back
in the United States: my early memories, from ages five to seven, in San Jose,
CA.
© 2020
by karina. All rights reserved. Please use with permission or a citation that links to this blog.
Continue to Part 3
Continue to Part 3
No comments:
Post a Comment