MY ROOM IS LITTERED with crumpled balls of paper. Page after page of impotent introductions to an article I need to submit by the end of next week.
I light my last cigarette, toss the pack onto the paper-strewn floor. The air conditioner is broken. I order up chunks of ice to my room. They melt in half an hour. I’ve taken to dipping my facecloth in the cold water and rolling it over my neck and shoulders.
Taking a long drag, I write, Pó was born with albinism, a recessive trait she inherited from her dark-skinned parents. Her skin is bone white, her hair a pale orange shorn close to her head, her eyesight weak.
It’s fuckin’ terrible. Earlier attempts sucked people in with pity. I have to figure this out.
I will not be returning to Brazil. My plane leaves from Beira to Maputo. From there I’m off to Cape Town to begin my new assignment—an investigative piece on worker exploitation in South Africa’s wine-producing area.
Thousands of kilometres separate me from my previous life, if it could be called a life. Distance is simply measured, but time…time grabs ahold of your throat and doesn’t let go.
Under a pale, unimpressive sky, a doctor working with albinos, or PWAs (persons with albinism), explains how misinformation about these people abounds. Locals believe they are ghosts or spirits that cannot be killed. Others believe the birth of an albino child is a curse.
Where am I going with this? Do I open with shock—inform readers that healers entice people to hack off albinos’ limbs to put in magic potions that promise prosperity and cures for what ails them? Or just lay it out there: An albino “set”—ears, tongue, nose, genitals, all four limbs—can sell for as much as $75,000?
It’s what I came to do, lay the facts bare. But that feels like a betrayal.
I switch the lights off. I remove the cap from my eighth or ninth bottle of beer, I’m not sure. The moon’s light spills into my room, a long rectangular strip across the floor.
I am under no illusion about why writing this piece is so important to me. I have shed the guilt that I am using Pó’s life to provide meaning to my own. I am writing it for me. It’s all I have.
“What is it you want from me?” I ask out loud, and like a match striking its strip, I think I have an answer. The recordings and the transcripts I have made of Pó are an intimate invitation to experience this world through her recollections. Unencumbered. Raw. The question What for? comes back at me.
I flick my cigarette over the balcony, orange ember spinning.
I don’t know how this story will end. But I know how it began.
I press my pencil to paper, write They are called children of the moon.