A Good Price

Sylvia dug into the burrow until she felt the fiddler crab motionless in the sand, playing dead. She shoveled her fingers underneath to pull the creature out, and, after a perfunctory rinse, tossed it into her mouth. She swallowed the gastric slime as quickly as she could crunch the shell open and spit the shards out. Sylvia stood to adjust her bandana, and saw that the speck she’d observed some fifteen minutes earlier was now the bow of a boat, on course for the island. It was probably Bruno, her uncle by marriage to Geraldo, eight months deceased.

Rita had disappeared around a mangrove spit, so Sylvia grabbed her crab bucket and began the trek back to shore by herself. A couple of fishing boats were already listing in the low water, which meant Bruno had a half an hour to get in, and she wanted to be there before him. Coming off the muddy flats to the hard-packed sand of the cove, Sylvia made straight for the ten shacks that some called a village. They stood high on flimsy stilts, and looked collapsible beneath their tents of thatch, woven into makeshift roofs and walls.

Sylvia remembered seeing them for the first time ten years before, coming from the Brazilian mainland by boat. She and Geraldo had stood at the bow, watching the smudge on the horizon take shape as an island. It seemed quaint then, the pastel trawlers riding at anchor, the cute cabanas standing high above the sand, the post-card image backed by coconut palm trees and mangroves. The island was supposed to have been a “pit-stop” where they’d stay just long enough to accumulate their nest-egg for buying land on the Transamazon Highway. But the pit-stop had become a trap. And now Geraldo was gone.

On approaching the mangrove ladder up to her habitation, a pack of dogs ran from the nearby bushes, barking. Sylvia picked up a piece of drift wood and tossed it. As they scampered off, she climbed the ladder and stooped into the dark interior of the shack. Once her eyes had adjusted, she checked on Isabella, who lay immobilized in a hammock with malaria. She was hot to the touch, so Sylvia dampened her bandana in the bucket water, and knelt to wipe the sweat away. Done with her ministrations, Sylvia glanced for the cove and was happy to see that Bruno had made it in. Within ten minutes, the channel would be impassable due to low water, the anchorage, no bigger than a pond.

Removing the key she kept around her neck with her crucifix, Sylvia opened the lock box in the corner. She picked up an old photograph that showed her and Geraldo on their wedding day, fifteen years before, the nervous man and the full-bodied bride on the eve of their departure for the land of opportunity in the Amazon. That hopeful girl was gone, aged beyond her years with the wrinkling of the tropical sun, with the etching of hunger deep into her boney figure. Geraldo was gone too. Geraldo, so proud of his net-line, so happy he could catch fish without having to set foot on a boat.

“Momma.” The shout came from just outside, and Sylvia walked onto the narrow veranda at the front of the shack to see Rita on the sand below, pointing. She was turning into a beautiful young woman, with her father’s fine European features, and her mother’s sensuous dark molding.

“What?” Sylvia asked.

“Isn’t it pretty?” Her daughter pointed.

Sylvia followed her daughter’s finger to a bird in flight, a scarlet ibis against the silver blue of the morning sky. It looked like a ball of bloody feathers swooping low over the flats.

“Yes, it’s pretty.” Sylvia changed subjects to the more important issue. “How’d you do?”

“I did good, but look.” Rita knelt, jabbing down into the jittery pile of blue-crabs.

Sylvia saw what appeared to be just your ordinary pile of crabs, but her daughter was insistent, so she climbed down the ladder. “Now what’s all this fuss about?”

“There, momma!” Rita pointed to the largest crab in the bucket.

Sylvia squinted, seeing the big blue crab Rita was pointing at, and the smaller crab it was crushing in its pincher.

“Why would it do that?” Rita wanted to know. “It’s a blue crab too.”

“Everything eats everything out here.” Sylvia looked up from the bucket. Bruno had tossed an anchor into the rapidly shoaling water, and had jumped to shore. Sylvia could see his bulky, muscular form in the distance, the yellow T-shirt and straw hat. He was heading for Paulo’s shack, right next to the cove and bigger than the rest because of the pool table and the ice-chest with beer.

“But that could be its own baby.”

Sylvia didn’t like it either, but Rita had to start learning the ways of the world. She was twelve years old, and had already started her period. “It’s still food.”

“A baby crab?” Rita said, outraged. “That isn’t fair.”

No, it wasn’t fair. But life wasn’t fair either. “Nothing’s fair. Now go help your little sister. She needs water.”

Rita stared into the bucket for a long moment before relenting. As she walked off for the cistern behind the shack, Sylvia climbed back up the mangrove ladder, disappointed that Bruno hadn’t come to see her first. True, he was a trader and had to do his business, see who had fish to sell. But at some point he’d have to come and make the offer. The only question was, how much?

* * * *

Bruno hadn’t shown and the sun was high. They couldn’t wait or they’d miss running the net-line, which had to be avoided at all costs. Sylvia and Rita donned their long sleeve shirts and sarongs, and wrapped their bandanas tightly, pulling them down to their eyebrows. Sylvia grabbed a fish stringer on the way out and Rita, a plastic jug of water. By now, the wind was blowing with full volume off the ocean.

Passing through the row of weather-beaten mangrove trees that lay between the village and the windward shore, they came to the beach, glowing like a high wattage bulb in the brilliant light.

“What are they like?” Rita asked, as they followed the sloping beach down to the hard packed sand flats, which were easier to walk on.

“Who?” Sylvia asked.

“The family in Belém. The people I’ll be working for.”

“Oh them,” Sylvia said, as they stepped onto the hard sand. She looked off to the Atlantic, barely visible at the edge of the flats, a mile away. Aquamarine pools of trapped ocean water scalloped the plateau of sand like jeweled insets. “Like anybody, I guess.”

“Are they nice?”

“How should I know? I never met them.” They’d hardly ever discussed Rita’s leaving the island, starting a new life in Belém, the big city at the mouth of the Amazon River. Of course, Sylvia hadn’t given her much opportunity to do so. When Bruno had mentioned the possibility, it seemed like a natural course of action. The only way to save the family, which also meant splitting the family.

“What if I don’t like it, momma?”

Sylvia could tell by the water in the pools that they had less time than she’d thought on setting out. Getting caught offshore was life or death, the first thing islanders taught you, the first thing she and Geraldo had taught their children. And now, Geraldo had up and drowned himself. Not on the net-line, which was the real irony. He’d bought it to avoid going out on the fishing boats because he was afraid of the ocean, but they needed more than the net-line could produce. It was just to be one trip, and turned into forever. The tides had been amazingly high that year. The weekend Geraldo headed for the open sea they washed across the island completely, killing almost all of the mangroves on the windward side. Geraldo was swept away as the trawler staggered through waves bigger than anyone had ever seen.

“What if I don’t like it?” Rita repeated herself.

“Do you think I like checking the net-line?” Sylvia said, picking up the pace, and gesturing for Rita to do so too. “Do you think I like crawling in the mud for crabs?”

That quieted Rita for a moment, giving Sylvia enough time to start worrying about what they’d find today. A couple of villagers walked past them out on the flats, having already checked their lines. They wore coolie-sized straw hats, and wavered like mirages in the humid air. Several hefted large fish on their backs, secured by stringers, but that didn’t make Sylvia any less pessimistic. As they approached the big dead mangrove tree that marked the beginning of Geraldo’s net-line, Rita said, “I like it, momma.”

“Like what?”

“The island, here with you and Isabella.”

At first, Sylvia was touched by the thought. As hard as it had been since Geraldo’s death, they’d had some good times, the three of them. But then the reality of the place knocked her breath away, and she felt like a fish in a net-line. “You’ve gotta get over that, or you’ll be stuck like everyone else.”

“You’re not stuck, momma.”

Sylvia stopped in her tracks. She wanted to take Rita by the shoulders and shake her until she understood. “You don’t know anything, child.”

“I’m sorry, momma,” Rita said, looking away from her mother’s angry glare.

“Don’t be sorry. Just stop with this foolishness.”

They got to the big dead mangrove tree without another word. The net-line started a hundred yards out, its mangrove posts like tick-marks reeling into a white infinity. Rita didn’t wait, and jumped across the first of the aquamarine pools on their way out. Sylvia followed and in a few minutes they began their routine. While Rita ran ahead looking for fish, Sylvia held back, inspecting the net, and pulling out any debris that was caught. Nearing the end of the line an hour later, they’d collected two catfish and one yellow drum, only the latter of which had market value, although it was too small.

Sylvia’s bigger concern was the widening tear in the net. Three weeks before, a section between two of the posts had disappeared, and Sylvia had hoped it was something like a shark doing damage by its sheer size. A couple of days passed without incident, and Sylvia was almost convinced there was nothing to worry about when another section disappeared, then another. In less than a week, she’d lost two hundred yards of line, and her catches had fallen off.

Sylvia knelt to study the tear, running her fingers across the monofilament fibers, feeling the scaly prick of where they’d worn apart.

“Is something wrong, momma?”

Sylvia put her happy face on, the one her children expected from her at all times, and which was proving ever more difficult to find. “I’m just worried for all these poor fish we’re catching.”

“I don’t wanna go, momma,” Rita blurted, unable to put the topic to rest.

“They’re a nice couple. Only one child,” Sylvia said. “You’ll be able to go to school.”

“I wanna stay here!”

“This is something you have to do, Rita. Do you expect me to momma you for the rest of your life?”

“It’s not right, sending me off like that!”

“Now just shush, child,” Sylvia said, not knowing whether she should slap Rita, or hold her tight. Sylvia stood, and turned from her daughter to check the last hundred years of line.

“What’s this?”

Rita’s question broke Sylvia’s concentration on the netting near the last post. Sylvia took what was handed her. “It’s a bone.”

“What kind?”

Sylvia handled the bone carefully, turning it over a few times. She knew what it was almost immediately. “It’s a bird bone. Scarlet ibis.”

“Oh no,” Rita said, stricken. “That’s the prettiest of all the birds!”

Sylvia glanced for shore, at the mangrove forest that had once stood tall, fifty feet and higher, its luxuriant cloud of leaves feathering in the wind. All the trunks had been whitened by the sun, as if drenched in a rain of Clorox bleach. This was where the scarlet ibises had roosted, until the storm that took her husband drowned the roots of the trees, and turned the beach into a wind-swept cemetery. Sylvia braced herself for what she knew was coming, her memories of Geraldo like waking dreams, the walks they’d taken, their conversations, the hideaway they’d discovered in the forest, with its patch of sand, its wreaths of morning glory, its gilded apertures to the blue sky through the prayerful boughs of the trees. There in Geraldo’s arms, Sylvia felt like she was witnessing the miracle of creation, as the sun painted daylight on the sleeping sea, as the scarlet ibises exploded from their roost in swirls of orange wind, as the leaves of the mangroves rustled in the breeze, as the fragrance of the ocean mixed with the blooms of the morning flowers. But the tides had killed all that. Geraldo, the mangroves, the ibises.

“Are the scarlet ibises all dead, momma?”

“Who on earth knows? Now shush, child. I’ve about had it with you today!”

Sylvia turned from her daughter again to head for shore, not bothering to see if she followed.

****

Sylvia waited until her daughters were asleep, then turned the kerosene lantern on, but to low. She applied lipstick and dressed in her only skirt, a tight mini that came halfway down her thighs. Before heading out, she guzzled the beverage Paulo always prepared for her in advance, the aguardiente cut with rubbing alcohol, and left for her discretely in the darkness at the foot of the mangrove ladder. Although she carried the lantern, it was a quarter moon and she could vaguely see the path. She walked towards the windward beach, and then into the bushes to a place with trees large enough to string the hammock. Done, she followed the path back, and took the fork for Paulo’s. Bruno had never shown, and she was anxious to find him.

On approaching, she could hear voices and faint music coming from the globe of light that encircled Paulo’s place like a full halo. She set her kerosene lantern down, rubbed her crucifix, and walked up the mangrove ladder. In the sudden glare of the battery-powered bulb, she made out a couple of young men standing around the pool table, who snickered as she walked in. Bruno and Paulo stood off in a corner talking, each with a beer in hand. Sertanejo music sounded on the CD player, mostly just the monotonous droning of an accordion.

“Good evening, Dona Sylvia,” Paulo said, glad to see her.

“Sylvia,” Bruno said.

After an awkward moment as Sylvia tried to make herself agreeable with smiles in all directions, Bruno put the money in the mason jar on the table in the corner, and nodded at Paulo. Sylvia watched the eye-play among the men, the knowing smirks, then turned to walk out, ahead of Bruno, who followed her down the ladder into the faint moonlight. They set off on the path, side by side.

Sylvia had been irritated that Bruno hadn’t come by earlier, but now she was simply worried the deal had fallen through. To make conversation, she asked, “Did you get many fish today?”

“Hardly enough to cover my fuel.”

But that’s not why you came, Sylvia wanted to say.

“About that other thing,” Bruno said, as if reading her thoughts. Before he could go on, an explosion of barks broke out, close.

“Damn those things,” Bruno said, searching the dark sand for something to throw. He found a loose mangrove root laden with clumps of dried mud, and heaved it into the shadows where the dogs were growling. “We should get some government people out here to exterminate every last one of them.”

The feral state of the island dogs was of little interest to Sylvia, but Bruno wasn’t done. “I’d kill each and every one of those mangy mutts if I could get my hands on them.”

“I’m sure they’d return the favor.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Bruno said, returning to what they’d broached just before the barking.

“No? And this from the man who got me into this mess to begin with,” Sylvia said. It had been Bruno who’d convinced them to stop off on the way to the Transamazon Highway. Basically, so he could sell Geraldo his net-line, which never produced as much as he’d led them to believe.

“Even so…..”

Sylvia cut him off. “From the man who won’t have me or any of my family in his house, because the only thing I can do to feed my children is sell my body?”

This shut him up, and Sylvia finished what she had to say, “I’ve never heard of a good idea. But I’ve heard of a good price.”

In the darkness, Sylvia could feel Bruno’s body tighten as tension gripped hold of him. But it all deflated with a sigh. “OK. 500 dollars, US.”

The magnitude of the number took her breath away, and Sylvia was glad it was dark so Bruno couldn’t see her reaction. She didn’t want to give in too easy, though. “If I go through with this, when we talking about?”

“I can get the money tomorrow. So the day after.”

Sylvia held the lantern high, leading Bruno into the brush. In a moment, they stood in the clearing where she’d placed the hammock. Sylvia went to sit in it, crosswise, and rubbed her crucifix. She hiked her skirt up and leaned back, gripping her knees to spread her legs apart. Then she said, OK. Bruno approached and pulled his shorts down, leaving his shirt on, his half naked body faintly aglow in the pale moonlight.

As he leaned over her and worked himself into position on top, the dogs struck with stealth, padding across the sand in a lightning attack. One of them jumped at Bruno’s leg and bit.

Bruno staggered backwards, howling in pain and rage. He pivoted, tripped with his shorts at his ankles, but stood again and pulled them up, lunging at the shadows, shouting obscenities in a loud, steady stream.

Sylvia wanted to laugh, but let Bruno get it out of his system. She leaned out of the hammock and reached for the kerosene lantern, telling him to stay still so she could see. Indeed, there were bite marks on Bruno’s calf, but it was as if the dog knew better than to draw blood.

“It’s only a nip.”

Bruno glanced down at his leg, inspected the calf. “At least I won’t get rabies.”

After giving Bruno a moment to recover his dignity, Sylvia returned to the hammock. “So let’s get on with it.”

Bruno hesitated, stayed where he was. “It’s gotta be a sign.”

“A sign? Of what?”

“This isn’t right. Me doing this with you.”

The admission stunned her. Bruno had been one of her more enthusiastic customers. “So all this we’ve done together. It’s bad now? I’m bad?”

“Of course not.”

Without Bruno’s cash infusions, she and her daughters would’ve starved. “So when you trade, it’s economy? But when I trade, it’s morality?”

“That’s not it, Sylvia. I’m your uncle. Uncle-in-law.”

“Well uncle-in-law, you’ve already paid.”

“What would Geraldo say?”

The mention of Geraldo’s name was harder than a slap in the face. Bruno had no right to make a point this way. She wanted to scream, but the words came out in little more than a whisper. “He’s the one who brought me here. What could he possibly say?”

“Keep the money,” Bruno said.

“So that’s it?”

“Keep the money.”

Sylvia straightened her clothes and undid the hammock. The fact of the matter was, she’d be able to find another way with the money that would soon to be hers. They returned on the path they’d taken out, in the direction of Paulo’s.

“What can I buy with 500 dollars, US,” Sylvia asked, on approaching the fork that led to her shack.

“Just about anything, I’d imagine.”

“A horse?”

“Sure, but probably not in great shape.”

“A car?””

“A cheap one.”

“A boat?”

“Sure. I’ll sell you mine.” Bruno chuckled, back in good spirits.

“A trip to Rio de Janeiro?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then 500 dollar’s a good price. I’ll do it.”

****

The click click click-ing came from a dream, one that was new to her, the click click click like the greeting of a friend, tactile and comforting, the click click clicking in the vastness of the dreaming silence. It stopped, then started, stopped, and was gone. Sylvia rolled over beneath the threadbare sheet, then back again to where the sound had been, click click click, again, and she knew it was meant for her, a secretive message, the castanets clicking closer now, so close she could nuzzle her baby, or even kiss Geraldo as the dream took form in a silhouette that wanted to eat her. Sylvia woke with a fright and lashed at the dream become real, a giant land crab about to gouge her eyes out. She smacked it hard, then jumped up and tossed the horrible creature as far from her shack as she could. As soon as she got the money, she’d buy herself a hammock.

Sylvia sat for a moment, trembling, rubbing her crucifix. The morning light told her it was time to get going. She had an upset stomach, normal after a session at Paulo’s, both from the rubbing alcohol concoction she forced herself to drink and from recollections of what she’d done and to whom. Although none of this shamed her, Sylvia would have preferred digging ditches, had there been ditches to dig on the low-lying island. At least then, she wouldn’t have to scrub off the fish smell of the men, who were always caked in layers of dried slime. At least then, she wouldn’t have to pretend she didn’t hear the remarks they made behind her back. The men of the village. A pox on them. They’d been Geraldo’s friends, or so they said.

Sylvia dressed and grabbed her crab bucket, setting off quickly. One or two roosters were crowing but even they seemed half asleep, and the wind carried their cackles with solemnity out to the calm waters of the cove. Bruno had left, as he said he would. Sylvia gained the windward beach as the sun was rising. It looked like the eye of a dead fish, bulging through the middle with bloody striations. A couple scarlet ibises flew overhead, but she paid no attention and walked on, imagining the weight of the 500 dollars US in her pocket. She’d have to hide it away in her lock-box, not tell a soul. Past the dead mangroves, Sylvia found the cross-over path, then the stinking creek that drained the leeward side through a maze of stunted vegetation. Walking one of its narrow banks, she approached the bay-side, looking through the shrubs to see the fish-trap, a mangrove fence running perpendicular from shore to a central carousel of stakes. It belonged to O Pau Branco, or The White Stick, as he was known to the islanders, an albino who lived with his family on the far end of the island.

As Sylvia paused to catch her breath, the middle part of the trap exploded with a ball of foam. The sudden commotion startled her, and as she watched transfixed, trying to comprehend what was causing the raucous, the cadaverous form of O Pau Branco materialized in the midst of the froth. He was bent at a crooked angle like a praying mantis, forcing down into the shallows whatever was trying to kick itself free. Resisting an impulse to turn and run, Sylvia put her bucket down, walked into full view on the shore, and began her sliding footsteps over the mud, heading for O Pau Branco. On getting close, she saw the tubular form and the tail fins of the animal. They’d gone completely slack. O Pau Branco sat back in the mud, having just drowned a baby dolphin.

“You can’t kill dolphins,” Sylvia shouted, taking him by surprise. She didn’t know much about the law, but this much she knew.

O Pau Branco looked up. He wore only a pair of shorts, and his white skin was speckled with tumor-like clumps of mud. “It was already dead, Dona Sylvia.”

“Like hell it was dead.”

“You must be mistaken.”

“I watched you from shore. I saw you hold that poor animal down.” Sylvia said with a tremor in her voice. In fact, her whole body was trembling.

O Pau Branco shook his head as if to say, you got me. But he repeated his denial. “You must be mistaken.” He stood, and lifted the animal carefully, even lovingly, in his arms.

“I’ll report this,” Sylvia said, unable to stop trembling. “You can’t get away with it.”

O Pau Branco found his way out through the slit in the trap, holding the animal above his head as if in offering. Heading for the shore, he said, “I’m sorry you feel that way, Dona Sylvia.”

Sylvia went after him, grabbed his arm. She looked into his watery pink eyes and said, “You’ve gotta bury him.” She ran off ahead and started digging with both hands.

O Pau Branco came off the flats. Sylvia shouted, “You’ve gotta bury him.”

O Pau Branco approached her, cradling the dolphin in both arms like a sleeping child. He said, “Nothing stays buried here.”

Sylvia continued digging, attacking the muddy sand with both hands, scooping out big clumps. She couldn’t stop trembling.

“You’ll just be feeding the dogs,” O Pau Branco said.

“And they don’t deserve to eat?” Sylvia shouted. She stopped digging to confront him with her angry glare.

“Can I share the dolphin with you?”

“You mean share in sin?” Sylvia laughed, it seemed so preposterous. She leaned over the hole she was digging, but pounded at it instead of pulling earth out.

“I’ve heard you haven’t been well, Dona Sylvia,” O Pau Branco said. He stroked the dolphin’s forehead like he might a sleeping child.

“And that’s your business?”

“Take some dolphin, we can spare it.”

“And my business is yours, you son-of-a-bitch?”

O Pau Branco hesitated, watching Sylvia. But instead of responding, he walked off in deliberate steps, careful not to disturb the sleeping death of the dolphin.

“I’m gonna report you,” Sylvia shouted after him, as the sobs wracked her body, as she rocked back and forth before the empty grave that was filling with water.

***

Sylvia and Rita stood on shore, watching Bruno approach. Sylvia was dressed in a raggedy pair of shorts and T-shirt. But Rita wore her Sunday best, a pink dress cut from a roll of cheap cotton fabric, then roughly sutured. She gripped a tiny suitcase strapped shut with a belt. Bruno tossed an anchor from the bow, then jumped into the shallows and pulled the stern ashore with a line cleted aft. He’d left the mainland port, on the slack waters of the low tide, so he could get in and out of the cove without having to wait the day. Now, at 3:00PM, the water was high and the sun was baking the wind-swept sand.

“You can get on now, Rita,” Bruno said, nodding at them. Rita didn’t move.

“Can I come home to visit?” Rita asked her mother, rubbing her eyes.

“Of course. You’ll want to see your baby sister, won’t you?”

“Yes,” Rita said.

“She’ll be better, thanks to you.”

“I know, momma.” With that, Rita dropped her suitcase and embraced her mother, squeezing as she sobbed quietly.

“There there,” Sylvia said, nodding at Bruno.

Bruno approached. He reached for Rita gently, and picked her up as he might a bride. He walked her to the boat, then came back for her suitcase. He returned to Sylvia with a box and an envelope.
Sylvia opened the envelope first, counted the money. It was all there, at which she looked at Bruno quizzically, nodding at the box. “The malarials?”

“Yes.”

She opened the box, saw that it was so. “You didn’t charge anything?”

“No.”

“Nice to see your Catholic guilt once in awhile.”

Bruno frowned. “I’d best be going. The tide.”

“Yes, it’s always the tide. The tide, the tide.”

Bruno hopped on board, started the engine, then freed the anchor, and turned his boat to leave the island. Rita stood astern, stiff as a mangrove stake, watching her mother, the wind blowing hard, carrying away any sound she might have made with her crying. Sylvia watched too, as the boat grew smaller in the distance and was just a speck, and as Rita disappeared into the grayness forever.

As she walked back to give Isabella her first dose of medication, Sylvia thought about how O Pau Branco had cradled the baby dolphin, so tenderly.

****

The middle-aged woman, Dona Morango, or Mrs. Strawberry, stroked the girl’s thick black hair from behind, watching her in the mirror. She was certainly pretty, Rita, the girl they’d brought in from one of the islands a few weeks before. Word was she’d come out of a rough personal situation, a death in the family, starvation, malaria. Rita was only now beginning to show that sad, befuddled look, the awareness that something had cantered off center from what she’d been told, from what she’d been led to believe would happen.

The girl had done a good job with eye-liner and shadow, but was struggling with her lashes. Dona Morango picked up a q-tip, dipped it in petroleum jelly, and handed it to her, saying, “That’s too much mascara, Rita. Don’t blink this time.”
Rita dabbed at the clumped mascara with her q-tip, then started over, keeping her eyes wide open.

“Is this better, Dona Morango?”

“Much better, sweetie.” Dona Morango bunched up the girl’s hair, and kissed it.

It wasn’t so bad, Dona Morango thought, life in a high end “house of encounters” in Belém. It was infinitely better than giving blow jobs at truck stops along the Belém-Brasília Highway, or eating crabs fresh off the mud-flats in the delta. True, Dona Morango would have liked to have had children of her own, but the house girls had provided her a family of sorts. You just had to put it all into perspective. You had to keep your expectations within reasonable bounds, and accept the reality of your situation. That’s what Dona Morango had done for thirty years now. And that’s what she tried to teach her girls, to live with a sharp sense of the true abyss, which was life on the streets, with AIDS and a drug habit, fair game for anyone who wanted to mess with you.

“When will I meet them, Dona Morango?” Rita asked.

“Soon sweetie, soon.” Dona Morango said, handing Rita another q-tip. That was the only bad part, really, the questions. And the strange thing was, Rita would probably continue to ask about the couple with the baby for the rest of her life, and she’d cling to a fiction that something had happened, a change of mind or heart, maybe even a deadly accident. Eventually, the urgency of her need to know would diminish, and the question would be asked more out of curiosity than psychic need. That’s the way it had been with Dona Morango, who’d shipped out from a small town on the Tocantins River. Her parents had sent her to Belém to attend a girl’s school, all expenses paid by a wealthy relative, one who didn’t exist. Dona Morango had never made her peace with it, completely, but the sharpness of the betrayal had softened over thirty years.

Only time would tell if Rita would forgive her for lying, but how could you tell someone their mother had sold them? You couldn’t. At least Dona Morango couldn’t. With a little luck, Rita would come to understand this, and forgive her.

Word was, Rita had come with a hefty price tag, 500 dollars US, proof that Belém wasn’t the sleepy place it had been three decades before, when Dona Morango first set foot in town. Indeed, the backwater port had become a city of millions, with Mercedes-Benz sedans parked in the guarded garages of luxury condominiums, owned by rich and decadent men, and women, with money to burn. Everything was through-the-roof expensive now, Dona Morango knew as well as anyone. Even so, 500 dollars US was a damn good price for what your money got, such a lovely, lovely virgin.