Beauty Lives Forever

The House That Built Me

Today, I find it hard to believe I couldn't just make do with the realization that she was breathing, her chest inflating and deflating at regular intervals, so she was just fine. It would have been so much easier, so obvious, really. How could I not see that? What was I thinking?

My dad, for his part, worked harder than a woodpecker in a petrified forest. He always left home early in the morning and didn't make it back until late at night. It was unusual for him to sit at the dinner table with me and my mom—unless she stayed up till late and waited for him to arrive so they could eat together. When at night it took him too long to come back, however, here's what I'd do: I'd lie on the floor, behind the closed front door (as if that would enable me to more easily hear, through the gap, his footsteps approaching), and then I'd wait there for what seemed like hours until he finally arrived. I was three or four years old, tops. And I just waited and I waited. Until I'd fall asleep. There was nothing my mom could do to talk me out of lying on the floor in anticipation for my dad to arrive. When at last he arrived, knowing that his son would be there fast asleep, because it had become just such a habit of mine, he'd open the door slowly, pushing me back carefully, trying his best not to wake me up.

My dad was a photojournalist in the civil police corps. He worked for the government during the week, covering the sort of events where the governor inaugurates police stations and unveils new police cars, you know, that kind of stuff. Other than that, what really made a difference in his earnings was not his public servant salary, mind you, but the odd jobs he was doing as a social event photographer. Weddings, christenings, birthdays, and everything families want to save for posterity with the quality that an amateur camera and an amateur set of eyes certainly cannot deliver. And you must remember that was the time before digital cameras and cell phones, so professional photographers made all the difference. Thus, my father used to spend most of his "free time" working, too. Especially weekends.

He'd carry around this heavy, sturdy leatherette suitcase, which looked more like a pharmacist's suitcase, and up and down he'd go, all across town—and sometimes out of town, too. In that suitcase of his, he'd take a couple of 1950s twin-lens RolleiFlex cameras and this very large Metz flash unit. Its battery was a bulky and weighty unit in itself, and I remember the thing took quite a while to recharge. Like, the whole night, really. There were these three columns on one if its sides, with these colored plastic beads floating in acid solution to indicate when the recharge was complete. What I really don't recall, though, is the accident that caused my father to lose all eyesight in his left eye when the damn thing exploded and the acid solution sprayed everywhere. I must have been two or three, no more. I don't think I was around when it happened. That was such a shame, really, but my dad was not one to sit around moping and complaining. He just accepted the inevitability of his fate and carried on working.

Because my dad didn't own a car, it took him as long as three hours to go from some elegant family gathering in the western part of town (the nice part of town) back to where we lived, in the northern part of town (not as nice). São Paulo was not to have a subway system until 1975, when I turned four. Buses were few and they were slow, so it took them forever to come by and forever and a day to reach their destination. Longing for my dad coming back from work was one of the most frequent and intense feelings I experienced in those first few years.

My mom, as impulsive as she could be, would cry her eyes and her heart out whenever she believed it was just taking my dad too damn long to get back home already. Like, beyond all reason, really, which could only mean something had happened to him. And something terrible, no less. She never thought the event he was taking part in could have lasted longer than it was expected to, and it never ever so much as crossed her mind that maybe my dad could be, well, up to no good. Nope. What she'd do is, she'd become desperate with fear, and, consequently, would make me desperate, too, filling my heart with apprehension and anxiety. I mean, what did I know, right? In those days, whatever she'd tell me was whatever I would believe in, the undisputed truth. The fear that my father could have been in an accident, the fear that he could have been mugged, the fear of much worse, those were very palpable emotions. Nothing bad ever really happened, fortunately, but the sensation that it had always been a close call was unbearable, I tell you.

Back then, we didn't have a telephone in our house (a luxury millions in Brazil still could not afford in the early 70s, imagine that), which made everything all the more complicated. So my mom and I would both lean against the window for one, sometimes two hours, past midnight, trying to listen for the sound of the bus in the distance, hoping that could be the one bringing my dad back home. Then we'd count each second of each minute that separated the bus stop, all the way down on the avenue, from our house, all the way up on the hill. As our house was located in a narrow alley just off the main road, we couldn't really see anything. All we relied on was sound. Sometimes my dad would cough, way off in the distance, which always came in handy because we knew exactly what his cough sounded like, and that would bring us this immense rush of relief: "He's alive. And he's back."

When at long last we could see his moonlit shadow in the darkness of the night, his body inclined to one side to balance the weight of the heavy suitcase, pacing fast, impatiently, almost like he was running from something, my mom and I would smile at each other and hurry to the front door. My dad would barge in, seemingly breathless (which only helped confirm my theories of back-to-back close calls), and we'd hug him frantically. A few seconds later, he'd get really angry at my mom for causing me to worry like that every time he had to work until late. He really thought our terrors were unfounded, unjustified. There was never any danger, he kept repeating. He simply could not understand why the two of us were still not sleeping soundly in our beds when he arrived.