Michael Anthony is a writer and artist living in New Jersey in the United States of America. He has published fiction, poetry, illustrations, and photographs in literary journals and commercial magazines. Most recently these include the Tall Tale TV Podcast, Dime Show Review, Apeiron Review, and Goat’s Milk Magazine. His work may be viewed at: MichaelAnthony.MyPortfolio.com.
I did not come to Rio for its world-famous beaches, churrasco restaurants, or pink sunrises over Sugarloaf Mountain. I came because it was as far away as my money could get me from Manhattan.
Far away from conference room meetings; weekly sales forecasts; drinks after work with a potential client; the dreaded phone call I was going to be late again and no, don’t hold dinner; the climb up the stairs to the third floor; the steel door left slightly ajar; the sad eyes peering into mine silently saying I should quit the investment firm and study design at Cooper Union; the claustrophobic nights staring at the invisible ceiling wondering if Ida still wanted a baby after what she had gone through the previous year; and, as far away as possible from the night we strolled Delancey Street, ice cream cones in hand until that shadow leapt from the alleyway.
Everything from that moment on is a blur; everything except a puddle of blood and melted ice cream on the sidewalk. No matter how many months or thousands of miles away, I cannot escape that image or the echo of my words, “Take it easy, man.”
That is what brings me here, the search for a world so different, so foreign, so isolating that not a single thing will resemble New York. Maybe I have a death wish; a need to confront another trigger-happy lowlife who will erase my guilt and leave me dead on some nameless back alley.
Knowing neither the language, nor customs, nor even what neighborhoods are safe, I check into a dingy hotel in one of the favelas that ring the city. The taxi driver looks incredulous at my decision before he speeds away shaking his head. Perhaps the seclusion and penitence I seek will be found in the dark hotel room that reeks of previous guests and unspeakable acts.
I rely on feeble hand gestures and the limited English of locals who take pity on this crazy American. After swallowing a cup of tar-like coffee and a coconut pastry in the tight hotel lobby, I ask the diminutive woman who runs the place, how I might get to the statue of Christ The Redeemer that looms over this favela with its arms outstretched high atop Mount Corcovado. She draws a map to a bus stop on a scrap of paper. In a nearly indecipherable jumble of English and Portuguese, she warns of favelados, who will attack for nothing more than a cross look.
The decrepit bus is packed with people carrying bags of food, others with stained boxes containing who knows what on their laps, and still others half asleep, their heads resting on greasy windows. With the hotel woman’s warning fresh in my mind, I make no eye contact. Nor does anyone else. We pass through one favela to another farther up the mountainside.
Peering out the window of the bus as it slows, I spot a woman in a tattered flower print dress trudging up a path alongside the narrow roadway. Seen only from behind, her arms and legs are the color of honey. Long waves of chestnut brown hair sway with her every step as she balances a wicker basket atop her shoulder. What color are her eyes? Ebony? Hazel?
Frustrated by the gridlock of cars and trucks and screaming motor scooters, the thick-necked bus driver leans on the horn while shouting out his window. Passengers chatter and laugh. With the bus now stopped, the distance between the woman and me grows. I’ll never know about those eyes.
A trio of teenage boys approach from the opposite direction. One picks up a rock and launches it, likely aiming for the basket on the woman’s shoulder. It misses, but not her head. The basket and its contents scatter as she crashes to the ground, her hands cradling her unseen face. Unintelligible comments ripple through the bus. Yet, no one moves. No one rises to help.
The woman curls into a fetal position as the three taunt her; kick her; and grab the spilled fruit. The image of melted ice cream flashes through my mind.
I yell out the window, “Hey! Stop!” With an audience, their tormenting escalates. Charging up the aisle of the bus, I shout, “Let me out!”
The bus driver barks, “Nao Corcovado.”
“Out,” I demand as I push against the door, which springs open and then slams shut the instant I’m on the pavement.
Music blares from a small café up the road where two men watch from the doorway. Bus riders just stare.
“Stop!” I shout as one of the toughs launches a vicious kick to the woman’s hip. Infuriated, I run the last few steps, driving my shoulder into one guy who tumbles into the gutter like a drunk. The second one darts for the trees across the empty lot. The third digs frantically in his pocket.
For a knife? A gun?
Before he can find whatever it is, I plow into him as well. We both go down hard. He lands on my ankle. A burning pain shoots up my leg. I holler, “Get the hell out of here!” They flee down the street to an open-air market overrun with shirtless children, bandy-legged old women, and balding men with bent cigarettes dangling from their lips. The injured woman reaches for the lemons and oranges and mangos strewn about the dirt. Long hair hides her face like the dark mantillas old Italian widows wear to Sunday Mass at St. Lucy’s.
Trying to stand, I realize instantly my ankle is sprained, or possibly broken. Either way, I’m hobbled. The whoosh of air brakes announces the bus’s departure, leaving only a cloud of diesel exhaust in its wake. With no way to make it back to the hotel, I’m screwed if those punks return.
I spin to the woman. Her eyes are not the ebony I expected, but the color of a gray November morning haloed by the purest white. In that single moment, I see all of Brazil in her face. The left side is the serene beauty of endless golden beaches and lush rainforests – mysterious, perfect. The right side is the country’s wretched underbelly of poverty and squalor.
Blood, from where the rock struck, trickles down to her right eye, which sags towards a patch of grafted skin that stretches from cheekbone to jaw. Half her mouth is upturned; the other half cruelly contorted. Scarlet ridges snake up her neck, disappearing under her hair.
“Inglês?” I ask.
She shakes her head.
“Jack Crandall,” I say while balancing on one foot. Still no reply, I repeat, “Jack,” this time tapping my chest.
She nods nervously.
I limp to a crumbling block wall where I sit; hoping the pain will subside. She pushes her hair forward, trying to shield the scarred side of her face. Several locals pass doing nothing more than whisper.
The nameless woman points to my ankle, then motions as if snapping a twig.
I try to put weight on it. No way I can walk without help.
Hoisting the basket to her hip, she gestures for me to stand. She coils her free arm around my waist and leads me through thigh-high grass. The few people still outside the café turn away as we inch down a narrow path past a building plastered with signs for Guaraná Antarctica and Esso petrol.
The path tapers to little more than trampled weeds strewn with empty bottles, rusted car parts, and blanched animal bones. Like veins of a leaf, side trails shoot off left and right. At each juncture, the woman silently signals the way.
I tap my chest, saying, “Jack.” Then, I point to her and shrug.
She whispers, “Doralice.”
We maneuver through a dense thicket of trees until we reach a white stucco house behind palm fronds that arc to the ground. Purple jacaranda blossoms weave a fragrant carpet beneath us. Doralice unbolts a rusted iron gate and eases me against the door, which unlocked, swings open. Carved mahogany moldings and tiled floors suggest this once might have been the home of a prosperous family. But, such days are long gone. Walls crack from floor to ceiling. Meager furniture tilts on broken legs. Despite the condition, the place neither smells nor offers even a mote of dust anywhere. Clearly, the woman takes pride in her own isolated refuge away from malevolent whispers and physical threats.
Doralice smiles, and though imperfect, it is the first she has offered.
In a flurry of gestures and one word questions like, “Taxi?” and “Bus?” I learn both are unlikely.
‘How the hell do I get back to the hotel?’
Momentarily forgetting about my ankle, I go to step inside. Suddenly, I’m on the floor, my leg folded beneath me, my head twisted against the door jamb.
Doralice attempts to lift me, but can’t. I drag myself to a chair in what appears to be a kitchen. Once seated, I scan the interior looking for signs of a husband, boyfriend, roommate, anybody. None are visible.
Doralice opens a small battered icebox to reveal several bottles of good old coke, a pineapple, and something wrapped in brown butcher paper. She runs a cloth under a weak faucet and offers it for my ankle. I thank her with a timid, “Obrigado.”
She sits across from me at the table. Then, while dabbing the bruise on her forehead with a tissue she looks away, as though suddenly self-conscious. When she does, I study the old wounds that have etched her mouth and cheek. Scars from failed reconstructive surgeries are evident. Her face is a dichotomy of beauty and its opposite, each existing mere inches from the other. One eyebrow arches gracefully, the other a jagged cypher. Ropes of scar tissue run down her neck and under the collar of that flowered cotton dress.
Her scars are visible; mine lay hidden beneath layers of self-loathing.
Doralice turns back and smiles until she sees my wedding ring. After several uncomfortable seconds, I fold my arms in an X across my chest; tilt my head back; and, close my eyes. Then, I open my cupped hands as though freeing a dove to fly away.
“Morta?” Doralice murmurs.
I nod. Sweat beads my forehead. I am suddenly uncomfortable, weak. Motioning I need air, I wave my hand in front of my face and pant.
Doralice disappears into another room, returning with a cane, its handle worn smooth. I limp outside and rest on a bench beneath that jacaranda. A bright green parrot clicks and clacks overhead, offering the only sound in the leafy canopy that veils the house. How different from Manhattan, where the incessant hum drowns out the plaintive song of the lone bird.
The air is thick as Doralice hands me a chilled bottle of coke, its surface damp. Sipping it, I realize how bizarre this all must be for her; opening her home to a man who does not speak her language, a man unknown to her but an hour ago, a man whose intentions remain unclear.
She is either very trusting or very naive. Either way, I mean her no harm. The throbbing in my ankle eases and my body begins to relax. I close my eyes and lean against the trunk of the tree. For the first time since that night no memories of New York stab at my conscience.
When I awaken from a nap of uncertain duration, I see Doralice standing in a shaft of afternoon sunlight. Gold gilds her hair. Her mocha skin shimmers. She is radiant, like those paintings of The Madonna that line the walls of St. Lucy’s.
Doralice helps me inside to the table on which she has placed another coke, a paper towel, and an orange, peeled and sectioned on a blue and white plate, its rim chipped but spotless.
I thank her and nibble the orange. With no common language, we sit like two old friends exchanging simple smiles and stolen glances. Blinking eyes and twitches of her misshapen mouth suggest she is trying to communicate.
Yet, the more I look at Doralice, the fewer scars and imperfections I see. It is as though the hand of some phantom sculptor smooths her skin; erasing the jagged lines until my eyes can no longer discern what my brain knows to exist. Gesturing if I want another coke, Doralice stands. I shake my head. She appears newly nervous as she walks to a frayed sofa and kneels with her back to me. The thin dress stretches tight across her hips while she pulls something from beneath the furniture. In a fleeting moment of carnal desire, I crave the touch of a woman.
Returning to the table, Doralice places a worn, old leather album between us. After pointing to her face and then the book, she pushes the album towards me.
It holds a ragged collection of yellowed newspaper clippings some quarter century old. I don’t need to read Portuguese. The grainy photographs tell her story. A small girl lies in a hospital bed, her head, face, and neck encased in bandages. Standing next to her, a bearded elderly man holds a long hunting rifle and what looks to be the severed claw of a jaguar.
Later clippings show a somewhat older girl with smaller bandages beside a doctor in a white lab coat. The caption is indecipherable except for the doctor’s name, James Malone; the words Estados Unidos; and, the name Doralice Vidal. The most recent clipping, from fifteen years ago, has a photograph of that same doctor and a taller Doralice standing in front of the house in which we now sit.
I run my finger across the album page, then point to her.
She nods, her smile flawless; her face smooth as alabaster. Has it changed? Am I insane? Does it even matter? With her story now known to me, I want to share mine. But, how do I tell her I failed to save my wife near the base of the Williamsburg Bridge? That blood-streaked ice cream puddle returns.
We watch the orange sun disappear behind that cruciform silhouette high atop Corcovado as strains of pagode music float down from the favela.
While I search for words, Doralice motions to my ring; pats her chest imitating a heartbeat; and makes that breaking gesture again. She’s right. My heart is broken. She holds her hands open in front of her heart; points to me; and, slowly brings her hands together, signaling what was once broken in her is now whole. Despite Doralice’s belief I saved her earlier this day, I know it is she who has saved me.
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