Father never calls me “nigger,” and his “Blackie” sounds sweet to my ears. It’s his way of telling me I can come close to him, that he wants to show me something interesting, or comfort me. He’s proud that there are no niggers in the family, and he keeps saying so to get under my mother’s skin. He’s big and blond with blue eyes and a brush moustache — all the neighbours call him “the German.” He likes telling everyone how what he does is so different from the blacks and mulattos. They work like pigs, he says, whereas he’s a skilled worker, an electrician, he can even repair radio sets. He can read books, has fine handwriting and a complicated signature. He wasn’t able to study for long because his family kicked him out of the house when his father died and his mother wanted to remarry. But he’s not like the niggers. He finished a correspondence course, which is probably better because you learn by yourself, you don’t just get a mouthful of chewed-over stuff like all the other loafers. The neighbours respect him, and only my aunts say bad things about him behind his back.
My mother is smaller than he is, smaller than us almost. She should be called “Blackie.” Before she goes out, she puts on thick make-up and bright colours that bring out her dark hair. Our aunts and her friends called her Gypsy, and that makes her smile proudly.
I can’t figure that out either, because she’s always threatening me with Gypsy women, saying how they steal bad children and tell the future by reading the cut-open insides of babies. Whenever a Gypsy woman passes us on the street, my mother stops to chat without paying any attention to us. Then Lili comes over, even though she’s carrying the baby. The Gypsy women are darker than my mother, they’re dirty and they go around barefoot, but they don’t seem to care about us kids. They’ve got plenty of kids themselves, mostly little girls who crowd around my mother and my aunts to get in on the magic spells. Maybe they eat their little boys right away, or maybe they keep them somewhere until the time comes to look at their guts. Like in the story of little Hans that my aunts like to tell me to prove that people really do abandon bad little boys, and never come back for them. My father gets angry when he hears that story. Nothing but women’s lies, he says, we might get a hiding for our own good, but he won’t let the women abandon us. It’s against the law. All you have to do is call the police, and they’ll go straight to jail. My brother says so, too. He says it right to the women’s faces because he’s not afraid. He threatens to tell our father everything and they start shouting, but they don’t punish him.
Still, their threats do bother me. I’m sure they’ll never hand my brother over to the Gypsies because he’ll start yelling, and afterwards, my father will kill everybody. They won’t give away the baby either. They like it too much and besides, Lili needs it to stay on good terms with St. Anthony. But if they ever get it into their minds to give me away, I don’t know what I could do. So I make a point of not getting too close to Gypsy women. I watch them from a distance, ready to run. I’m scared of the tramps, too, because they catch little kids and carry them away in their sacks of old newspapers. But they’re no danger to me because the women won’t go near them. They’re afraid. I don’t like them, but I’m not as afraid as I am of Gypsies. If I look at them close up they seem sad, or else they make funny faces. Some of them try to make me laugh, like the one who drinks at the back of the bar, and who gave me magazines. He waits there once he’s emptied his glass, hoping the Portuguese guy at the counter or another customer will buy him a drink. Sometimes he starts singing. If he’s not too drunk and if he doesn’t start pissing on the floor, people leave him alone. He’s got a sack full of old newspapers, too.
My brother doesn’t like to go out at night, and anyway, my aunts would rather he didn’t come along. He’s always in a hurry, and he doesn’t know how to wait. No sooner is he out the door than he wants what they promised him to make him behave. Or he wants something else, then and there. He doesn’t like the bar because it’s dirty, and if he has to walk, he wants to go back right away because he’s tired. If Lili loses her temper, he threatens to tell everyone everything back at the house, which makes her nervous and puts her friends in a bad mood. He doesn’t know how to go for a walk. He’s always asking where we’re going, how much further it is, why we’re going there, what the joke is ... He’s a pain in the ass because he knows very well we’re not going anywhere. We’re just walking to pass the time. If he comes along it’s no good for me either, because the atmosphere gets tense. The baby doesn’t come along because he’s too little and besides, he’s a bother. My mother says people might think he’s Lili’s son, and then it would look like she’s a whore. So I go alone. Maria gets in on the conversation, too, and before long they’ve forgotten about me. If I follow along and don’t run off in all directions or lag behind, nobody will get mad at me.
Praça Tiradentes is their favourite destination. First we cross the avenue, then follow the streetcar tracks along Andradas, a narrow, dimly lighted street lined with old Portuguese houses. At night the bars are all but deserted, with a handful of customers drinking a beer or two before calling it a night. The women stop to chat with girlfriends who sometimes join the outing. They might encounter a group of men, and get caught up in introductions, laughter, bored but inquiring glances, with growing nervousness and much jealousy. If that happens, it’s all over for me because we’re not likely to be going anywhere far. I wait around for them to forget me, then sit down on the curb to watch the roaches and rats climbing in and out of the gutter. It’s better when the men invite them to a bar, on account of the interesting people who tell stories or leave magazines full of pictures lying around. Sometimes they give me sugared beer. The women are so pleased that they accept a round, too. While they’re having their fun, I fill my pockets with beer-bottle caps which, the next day, will become flying saucers setting out from our window.
Their suitors are no big deal. All they talk about is love, they make comments about how beautiful the women are, about their hair and other dumb things. Sometimes a quick remark about soccer. They mustn’t displease the women. They’re clerks or waiters in other bars, nothing special. No sailors or pilots, not even stevedores, smugglers or crooks. Certainly not firemen or policemen. They don’t have much to tell. They look at one another and smile, waiting for the evening to end or a miracle to happen. My aunts love it.
When they don’t meet anyone, the walk can go on longer, which they obviously find boring. Their greedy eyes are on the prowl instead of enjoying the landscape of overflowing garbage cans, cats on the hunt and couples rubbing against each another in dark doorways. That doesn’t matter, as long as I get out of the house. The further the better.
At the end of Rua Andradas is a small square named for Sao Francisco. I can tell we’re getting close from the strong smell of coffee. There’s a bar where they roast coffee before they serve it at the counter. It makes the whole neighbourhood smell good, even when it’s closed. The place makes me think of my father: he always stops there to drink two or three cups and smoke a cigarette, very slowly, while watching the passing streetcars. He’s completely different from the women in the way he observes things. Their eyes are always searching, as if everything had to be a mirror for them.
We continue on our way, and turn down the street where the theatres are to look at the well-dressed people as they leave the show. The street is wider and brightly lit, and decorated with posters showing exotic costumes and tuxedos. The place is swarming with transvestites. The women don’t stop. This street is only a passage for us, a place to provide food for dreams. They seem to be ashamed of their dresses, which frankly aren’t much to look at under the dazzling lights. A bit further along is their destination, Praça Tiradentes, a place full of working-class dancehalls and women with too-tight dresses and violet make-up that accents their mulatto colouring. The broad square is crammed with all-night bars, with legions of sailors, soldiers and vagabonds. Here, the lights are softer, and the music of dance bands keeps the atmosphere warm. All the benches are taken. There are people sitting on the grass at the foot of the martyr’s statue, others are lying down, couples and groups of tramps. Maids and kitchen help from the surrounding neighbourhoods gather here to show themselves off. Timidly, my aunts try to join this world in hopes of making new friends who will invite them dancing. The place is more like a country fair with its hurdy-gurdies, and wandering vendors of popcorn, roasted peanuts, cotton candy and ice cream in supernatural colours whose smell sets off the odour of underarms sweetened