In Americana

She never really spoke of her past. Maybe she thought, or feared, I wouldn’t understand. All I know about her are fragments of what other people have told me.

She did mention her relationship with her father. She used to say he was a good man, who educated her and her brothers in a serene, yet strict, manner. Her mother had died when she was only two, and her memories of her were vague, practically nonexistent.

Her father soon married another woman who, interestingly, shared the same name of her mother: Alzira. Despite birthing one of her brothers, the woman started to treat my grandmother badly after the death of her father when she was only fifteen.

Some time later, my grandmother was kicked out of their house. In search of renewal, she, the oldest of the four siblings, parted from Palmares to Campinas. A few years later she finally settled in Americana, where she remained for the rest of her life.

In Americana, she met a man whom she fell in love with. When she got pregnant, the man left and never returned.

A few years after giving birth to her first son, she met my grandfather, Paulo, who helped her and my uncle with their necessities. They soon married and from this union, two other boys were born. 

The first years of their marriage were filled with love and tranquility, but difficulties eventually emerged when both were fired from their jobs. Little by little, everything around them disappeared. They lived in the dark with no gas or food.

But when my grandmother found a new job, my grandfather started to drown his ego in liquor. The walls of their house compressed the darkness into his cup and blinded his eyes as if they were covered in tar. My grandmother left, leaving her three sons under the care of their father. Only a year later did she come back for them. My grandfather had been abandoned, alone within enclosing walls.