February 16, 2009

• I am wearing a little heart necklace today. Jaciara gave it to me. it is hard to write about Jaciara, because i haven’t understood what it is like to be her. Sometimes i try to imagine.

  Jaciara grew up in Guadalajara, Pernambuco, Brasil. Paudalho is a poor rural city in the interior (redneck) of Brasil. Guadalajara is like the poor reject of Paudalho, sitting on the outskirts of town. There is just not much there.

  When Jacicara was a girl, she looked between the bars of her window to the street outside. there, under the streetlight, a man held a Bible. He talked about knowing a Man who was God and is God. He talked about a God you could talk to personally, instead of paying homage to the clay statute of the city saint on the street around the corner. He talked about a Friend who came to give life, and give it more abundantly.

  Jaciara began to attend these meetings. and these meetings grew into Bible studies in homes and then came the day when they rented a small house, and called it church. Jaciara was in charge of the children. all the lovely children.

  While she had always worked to help her family get by, when she was 13 she began working full time during the day and then going to night school. But age 15, there were no more jobs in her little community, so she began taking the bus to Recife, the big city an hour away. Every morning the bus was full with tired people and every night those tired people returned–the bus so full that there were more people pressed into the aisles than had seats.

  Jaciara didn’t get to come home during the week, only for the weekend, and her church. church was becoming central to who she was.

  Her education suffered during this time. It was hard to work all day and then go to school in a rough and unfriendly place. When she was 18 her pastor asked if she wanted to study at Bible College. The idea seemed impossible. She had not finished high school, and she was needed to help support her family. She was a girl who picked up her responsibility–and would not put it down lightly. Some people from across the equator wanted to help her out, her pastor said. The seminary would be paid for. She would receive training to minister in all the ways she longed to. It would not be easy, he said, she would have to help out at the college, share a small room, and do a large amount of the cooking.

  i met Jaciara a summer after she began Bible College, and she was loving it. i didn’t speak a bit of Portuguese, and she didn’t speak any English except the  “Father Abraham” song i had managed to teach at the first English camp. She was in my very first English class, where i mumbled and jumbled my way through a pile of notes and no experience. and she loved me through it.

  i sat in her room one day and she presented me with a heart shaped necklace. the one i am wearing today.

  Jaciara was not able to finish college, but she did meet her future husband there. she had to stop and go back to work in Recife for her family and to prepare for the future. i didn’t see her for a long while. She and Arthur slowly saved up money to have a small wedding and an even smaller house. He is the new co-pastor of their church. i got a message from her last year–would i come over and see her wedding pictures?

  i had missed the wedding due to miscommunication. I jumped at the chance to see her now. i took the bus to Guadalajara and her proud husband met me at the bus stop and took me to their house–through mud streets and back allies and down a set of steps cut out of the hard packed dirt.

  Jaciara lives on the side of a hill with a view worth a million: rolling hills and sugarcane waving in the sunshine and wind (for Brasil is always sunshine and wind). i pushed the rough wood door into her small cement house. we passed single file through her kitchen and living/dining room that was occupied by a stove, refrigerator, and a table with four chairs. And one wedding picture on the wall.

  On the left side opened up three doors–their bedroom, bathroom, and spare room (which i was told was for me at any time). Each room was so small the the sparse furniture filled it up. Jaciara was so proud of her house. HER house.

  we had our “lanche” and then washed the dishes outside (the sink was outside) while the wind blew our hair and we talked about all that had happened since we had last been together…the popular question of when i was going to marry and how i needed a Brasilian…and her gettting married, of course.

  Two ladies from church came down the dirt stairs and we sat around the table and looked at her wedding pictures. Jaciara’s face was stoic in every one but two. those two of her smiling were my favorite. she had been so nervous it was hard to let a smile out. They’d had a two day honeymoon and then she’d gone back to work and he’d gone back to pastoring.

  She says it is a little better now. She can come home once during the week. She works Monday morning until Wednesday night, comes home for the night and half a day, then works Thursday afternoon until Friday night. i imagine it must be hard to be a newlywed when you are only home four nights a week–maximum. She says she comes home to clean the house since Arthur isn’t such a good cleaner. But i don’t think it bothers her to clean up. She loves that little house that could fit inside my living room.

  She still does the children’s programs at church, with all her “free” time. Arthur likes to have her along when he does marriage counseling. i look at her with amazement. i can’t understand this life. it is not fair that she should have to work so hard. i turn my face into the wind and let the tears blow off.

  it is beautiful. it is hard and sad and happy and longing…it is Saudades–the Brasilian word for an emotion that completes all of these things–and all of them mixed together.

  *

  so today i am wearing my little heart necklace. and a lady purchasing $225 of clothes tells me it is pretty. and i say thank you.

  it is hard to write about Brasil in a room of overpriced clothes. with people who swipe their plastic card and use more money than Jaciara has ever had in her whole life.

  when i write about Brasil, it is hard to look up and see i am still here. so very far away from my memories. i start writing and Carsons and the mall and the busy lights limp into the distance. all that is before me is the ink that leaves my pen.

  • 11:20 am
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