Serafina watched as Carlinhos dribbled the ball through his opponent’s defenses. How strong he looked, dodging this way and that. As strong as any other ten-year-old boy in the favela. He darted around a girl and dribbled off the dirt road and up the refuse-ridden shore of the Mangrove swamp. As he maneuvered to score, the town bully kicked Carlinhos’ legs out from under him and dropped him hard onto the gravelly beach.
Serafina wanted to run to his side and cradle him in her arms. Instead, she willed him to stand and return to the game. When he did, she sagged with relief.
Carmen chuckled and beckoned Serafina to her paneless window. “He’s getting stronger, eh?”
Serafina shrugged. “Like any other boy.”
It had taken years of coaching in the sport children loved most to make Carlinhos acceptable to his peers. Although he was still weaker, at least they let him play.
Carmen leaned over the rough windowsill of her brick and mortar hovel. She had moved to the Tainheiros slum about the same time as Serafina’s parents. As a result, both Carmen and Serafina’s family lived in sturdier dwellings built on solid ground rather than the stilt-shacks that had extended over the muddy water of the inlet.
Serafina had lost friends when some of those shacks had collapsed, taking the rickety bridges with them. That’s when the government had finally torn them down and built what they had assumed to be affordable housing a few kilometers away. Of course, what the government could not seem to grasp was that when a person had nothing, even the cheapest rent was too much to pay. Instead, the homeless emigrated down the coast and rebuilt their stilts over the next swampy inlet. Now those shacks extended all the way to Rat Island. All the government had accomplished was to shift the suffering from one slum to another.
But who was Serafina to object? She and Carmen now had waterfront property courtesy of the government of Bahia.
“We’ve been lucky,” Serafina said.
“You and the boy?”
“You and me.”
When Serafina was little, the beach was left open for fishermen to drag in their catch, and children could run without dodging wooden posts. After Carlinhos was born, the only concession the squatters made was to dump their garbage in the swamp at the far end of the beach. Every month, more of them came, piecing together their flimsy shacks and bridges from scraps of wood, plastic, and tin. Some survived the storms. Some did not. They were gone. Serafina and Carmen remained.
Her craggy friend sucked air through the gaps in her teeth and spat “Luck got nothing to do with it. I come to Tainheiros Favela early, like your parents, before half of Bahia come to steal our jobs.”
Serafina grinned. “Oh really? You helped build the railroads?”
Carmen waved her hands. “Okay, maybe not my job. But when I first come, the sand was white.”
“White? Now I know you’re exaggerating.”
Carmen touched her heart and raised her hand to the sky. “Swear to God. As white as the mayor’s ass.” She leaned farther out her window and stared at Serafina’s feet. “How you gonna run in those fancy sandals?”
“Why would I need to run?”
“Don’t be stupid. A woman always needs to run.”
“Is that so? Well, maybe I’m not a woman. Maybe I’m a goddess.”
Carmen laughed, doubled over the window sill, and thumped the wall.
“Lean any further and you’ll eat dirt.”
“Ha. I’m not the dumb one who think she’s a goddess. Why are you so dressed up anyway? You don’t look ready to slave in a rich folk’s kitchen to me.”
Serafina smoothed the dress over her flat belly. “They went to the country, so I’m going to the city to surprise Henrique.”
Carmen’s mood pivoted as keenly as one of the futebol players. “Men don’t like surprises, querida.”
Serafina felt a stab in her heart as she remembered that painful surprise ten years ago. It had taken a lot to overcome her anger and resentment, but she had continued the affair to build a future for her and Carlinhos. “Não faz mal. He will like this one.”
Carmen clicked her tongue and frowned. “That’s what they all say.”
“You’re such an old goat.”
“Better a goat than a lamb. You want to surprise your wolf? Go ahead. But don’t come crying to me after he eat you alive.”
“And how would I do that? Climb out of his belly?” Serafina turned her back and waved. “See you later, old woman. I have a man to surprise.”
“Don’t old woman me, I’m only twenty years older than you. When I was your age, boys chased me not the other way around. You hear that? And I never need no fancy sandals.”
Serafina laughed and continued down the road. It took less and less to get Carmen agitated these days. At least it gave her something to do. Serafina had never really noticed how alone a forty-six-year-old spinster could be.
Thank God for Carlinhos and for Henrique, the man who had given her son to her. Although Serafina hated her lover’s cruelty and indifference, she had continued their affair and bound him to her, cock, belly, and soul. She wasn’t a whore, as her father had claimed, she was a pragmatist who understood the limits of an adulterer’s affection. Henrique would never divorce his wife, but he had almost given Serafina enough money to move their son out of the slums. Until that day, she would ply him with fine food and deviant delights.
Her optimism darkened as a storm brewed over the Bay of All Saints and sent a biting wind through the windows of the bus. The pregnant clouds with their bellies drooped over sediment-churned water reminded Serafina of unhappier times. The foreboding continued when she arrived in São Salvador, and the Lacerda Elevador lurched up the escarpment to Upper Town. Stones caught her sandals as she strode down the cobbled road. An emaciated dog lifted a leg and urinated in her path. A gust of wind toppled garbage into the street. Even the Pelourinho’s quaint Easter egg buildings loomed over her, as if threatening to fall. As if the town itself was turning her away.
In Jesus Square, Capoeira players practiced their martial dance to the rhythmic twang of a birimbau’s wire. Serafina paused to watch their languid acrobatics and smiled.
“See,” she told herself. “Not everything is bad.”
As if to prove the point, she turned down her usual street and was greeted by the neighborhood wives as they smoked on a stoop. “Hola, Serafina. Tudo bem?”
She was proud of the courtesy they afforded her after all these years.
Serafina unlocked the alley door and reached for the light switch. It was on. She walked cautiously into the hall. In all the years she had been meeting Henrique, he had never arrived first. Today, he had no reason to even expect her.
A low groan drew her into the apartment..
“God, you are beautiful. Yes…oh…just like that.”
Serafina froze.
Henrique stood in the middle of the room wrestling with the buttons of his shirt. When freed, he let the garment fall carelessly to the floor over the trousers rumpled around his ankles—rumpled—while a light-skinned Brazilian girl posed on the coffee table like a stalking cat. The girl flipped the long strands of her sun bleached hair away from her face and exposed a long neck and an eager mouth.
She could not have been more than fifteen.
Henrique rocked his pelvis forward and offered his erect penis like a treat.
Although Serafina had begun her affair with Henrique at roughly the same age, she saw things differently now and could not stand by and allow him to take advantage of a child. She marched into the room and yanked him away from the table.
Henrique tripped on his rumpled pants and fell on his ass. “What are you doing here?”
“Stopping you from committing a crime.”
He scrambled to his feet and pulled up his pants. “What crime? You were sucking my cock when you were younger than her.”
“You bastard.”
“Come on, Serafina, you know how I feel about you. This is just…” He gestured to the naked girl. “A thing.”
The girl shrugged off the insult then swayed her back to show off the goods. “Forget the old lady and come back to me.”
Serafina didn’t wait to hear more. She stormed out of the apartment and into the alley. A moment later she heard Henrique running behind her, yelling for her to wait.
The neighborhood wives laughed and shouted.
“Better run faster than that, governor, or you’ll lose your precious sweet.”
“Save your legs,” another said. “There’s plenty of pussy right here.”
“Don’t get your hopes up, Olivia. He needs a pro to drown his sorry goose.”
“Oh, I’ll take his money. And he can drown his goose between my thighs.”
The women roared their approval as Olivia raised her skirt and undulated her flab.
Serafina smiled at their support. Let Henrique have his child prostitute: She’d find another way to make money and build a better life.