September 21, Monday

The restaurant is closed today so we are testing some spring recipes. Shrimp moqueca, the spicy Bahian stew. Collard greens with cumin, mustard seed and wilted onions, very different from the usual collards with bacon. Sorbet of jabuticaba, the Brazilian grape tree.

Jaxi has no available weekend reservations through the new year. The main newspapers in Rio and São Paulo have done pictorial features, and I was invited on a women’s TV show to talk about the farm-to-table movement and demonstrate a recipe; I did a vegetable risotto.

Michael and I are bustling around the kitchen making recipe notes as we go, when Anderson pops in. “Dona Eva, there’s a woman here asking to talk with you. I told her we don’t have any open positions, but she said she’s not here about a job.”

Yet another distraction, but I try to keep an open door to people in the community, so I wash my hands and go through the carved moon doors to the host area. The light is fairly dim in the foyer so I open the front door and invite her outside. “I could use some fresh air, and it’s a lovely day. How can I help you?”

She is a beautiful woman in her mid-thirties, her hair with loose, silky, dark curls wearing simple but fashionable clothes. She gives me a shy smile. “Dona Eva?”

There is something familiar about her but I can’t put my finger on it. “Yes? And you are?”

“I saw you on TV and I came up from Maceió to see you.”

That’s way south of Recife, quite a journey. “Well, that’s a long way to travel.” I wait for her to tell me her name and why she came.

“You don’t recognize me, do you?”

It hits me like a giant wave. “Miriam? My sister, Miriam? Oh my God!”

We are hugging and crying. I keep stepping back to look at her in amazement, and then we hug again.

“All these years! I’m so sorry I didn’t recognize you at first. You were only eleven when I left Picuí. All this time I hoped I’d find you. Please, come in.”

We’re laughing and wiping our tears as we walk in the dining room. Anderson looks at me questioningly. “Seu Anderson, this is my sister Miriam. I haven’t seen her in more than twenty years.”

I pull out a chair for Miriam to sit and excuse myself for a moment. Michael looks at me as I enter the kitchen. “Michael, you won’t believe this. Remember I told you about my sister Miriam, who my stepmother told me ran away from home as a teenager? She saw me on that TV show and came all the way from Maceió to see me.”

Michael shakes his head in wonder. “Wow, that is amazing. You need to spend time with her, I’ll keep on with the show here. Don’t worry.”

I introduce Miriam to Michael, give him a kiss and nod my thanks to Anderson, and Miriam and I go up to the apartment. I put cups of espresso on the coffee table for us. I can’t take my eyes off her. “Tell me about you? Do you have kids? What do you do in Maceió?”

She sighs. “My daughter, Bruna, is five. It’s just Bruna and me, her father left us when she was two years old. I work doing various things to pay the rent: cleaning, I’ve been a restaurant hostess and washed dishes, and some sewing, which you taught me.”

“You were almost twelve when I left Picuí. I couldn’t get back until 1968. I sent letters for years but the letters I got back from Papai stopped after a few years. Amara was putting my letters in a box after Papai had a stroke, she never opened them or read them to him. She didn’t bother to contact me, not even when Papai died. And she told me you ran away as a teenager.”

Miriam shakes her head. “Amara may have given birth to me, but you were my real mother. You always protected me from her. When you left, and then José had a stroke, she unleashed her true feelings toward me. I figured out that José was not my father, though he was always kind to me. But Amara resented me, because she wouldn’t have had to marry José if she wasn’t pregnant with me. And then I was dark, not like the blue and green eyes in your family.”

“So how did you get by, when you ran away? How old were you?” My heart aches as I imagine what she must have gone through.

“Well, I went to Recife for a while, I was sixteen. I got a job as a maid for a couple of years, but I never went back to school. I met Bruna’s father and moved with him to Maceió, because he worked as a merchant seaman. He treated me pretty well, and he wasn’t home much. But he was unhappy about having a child, and, well, you can imagine the rest.”

“Oh, Miriam, I’m so sad things have been difficult for you. But you are a survivor. Do you have to stay in Maceió? Could you move here to João Pessoa?”

Her voice catches. “I don’t have any money, Eva. Not enough to rent an apartment and all. I’ll work toward that goal, though, because I’d love to be back in Paraíba.”

I move next to her on the sofa and give her a hug. “Miriam, there are a couple of small apartments for rent in this building. Go get Bruna and I’ll arrange for you to live in one. You’ve worked as a hostess and you can help me out by doing that. After that we’ll figure out what you want to learn, and I’ll teach you.”

She pulls me into a fierce embrace. “Oh, Eva, it would be a dream come true. I can never repay you but I will spend my life trying.”