Categoria: Uncategorized

We put the equipment in the car and I hugged my mother. All I could think about was taking her and my brothers somewhere better than that colony of ignorant people. I hit the road with blood in my eyes and didn’t let my father stop in any town we knew on the way. We only stopped at a distant gas station on the highway.

It was more than 600 miles between where I was and the big capital I wanted to reach. While my idea was to fill up the tank and do it all in one day, my father wanted to get to know the route and work and earn money until he got there.

The truck drivers were our biggest fans because we sang the best of the sertanejo raiz and some trending and famous songs. Our modus operandi at the time was to arrive at a roadside restaurant and ask to sing in exchange for lunch. This made it easy to sell K7 tapes and the first CDs to this distinct audience.

It was my strategy to stay on the highway and not enter the German colonies. I needed to show my father that there was much more to the world than that, even if I didn’t know if it was true.

I needed to see in the real world what I saw on television. São Paulo and its huge cities with the big stages where the artists I admired performed. I wanted to meet Sandy, who was my age and very famous. Could I sing with her one day?

We sang in the restaurant. It was packed. People came in, ate, listened to us sing, bought a cassette and left. More and more people arrived. Before I knew it, I’d been singing for more than four hours straight. My father was grinning from ear to ear as he saw the box of tapes and CDs emptying and his pocket full of money.

Every now and then I would take a break and go from table to table selling. Everyone complimented my voice and my beauty. I told them all I was trying to get to São Paulo and people would buy something or simply give me money to help me realize my dream.

A man pulled me close to him and said in my ear: Let’s go to my truck and have sex and I’ll give you a lot of money. A shiver ran down my spine and my panties got wet. He held my arm with that impish look on his face. Immediately, a warning went off in my head: this was very wrong. I let go and ran back to the stage.

I took the microphone and said: that guy over there offered me money to go to his truck. One by one the truck drivers got up and went towards him. He was thrown out of the restaurant and the gas station.

I wouldn’t go with him to the truck, not that day and not today, just I won’t lie that I didn’t get wet at his proposal. It was the first time a man, not a boy, had looked at me with that devilish gaze and I found myself desired. Something changed in me at that very moment. Looking out at the crowd, I could see all those eyes of desire towards me, now almost a woman.

I almost fainted from singing. Lunch and dinner became one event. Exhausted, I ate and went to the Caravan to sleep in a makeshift bed. My father was storing the equipment and, while he didn’t come, I took a siririca – portuguese for women masturbation – thinking about those desires. I fell asleep. A difficult, troubled sleep, full of nightmares. It’s not easy to sleep in the car.

The next morning I woke up all wet. A very strong smell. My father had already left, so I put my hand in my panties. It was soaked. When I took my hand away and looked, it was blood.

I sat up quickly, holding back a scream. What was that all about? I remembered two things right then, neither of which was a good thought: first the priest telling me that god was watching everything, and then my mother talking to her friends about cancer.

Both ideas came together in one. I masturbated, god gave me cancer and I’m going to die. I went into complete despair. Couldn’t breathe. I was going to bleed and I was going to hell where I was going to burn on the marble because I couldn’t hold my fingers and my itch. That man in the restaurant was the devil and I had fallen into temptation. I was doomed.

I stumbled out. My father was talking to the gas station attendant. I hid from him and snuck around the walls, holding on so I wouldn’t faint. I didn’t want to die there like that. I went into the bathroom, took off my clothes and went into the shower, watching the blood pour out of me non-stop. My hands were shaking and so were my legs. I leaned against the wall and cried.

A woman came into the bathroom and heard me. She knocked at the door. I was startled and tried to hold back my tears. She asked if everything was all right and I couldn’t hold myself, just started crying and sobbing even more. The girl peeked under the door, and I was leaning against the wall, the water pounding and my legs bleeding.

– Do you want some help, young lady? – She said.

I just cried and sobbed. I didn’t want her to call my father. He’d beat me up and I’d go to hell for good. Giving up, she left a small package under the door and left.

After a while I stopped bleeding. I turned off the shower, a little calmer, and picked up the packet. I’ve seen it in my mother’s grocery store, but I’d never known what it was and never been curious enough to ask. Now I was. I opened it and a cloth shaped like a pair of panties appeared. I read: sanitary towel.

There was some glue on it and I thought it might be a kind of band-aid to put on my cancerous pussy. I stuck it to my skin and got dressed again. In the mirror my face looked like a red potato and I was still sobbing a little.

I got into the car and waited for my father. He got in and offered me a coxinha, without noticing my swollen face. We hit the road and I ate. Coxinha is the bread of the traveler, and I love it. It’s a it’s water drop shaped fried mass, the size of a closed fist, filled with chicken and Catupiry – a special brazilian cream cheese. There’s even a joke about it:

The girl comes up to her mother and asks:

– Mom, why is my cousin’s name Rose?
– Because her mom loves roses. – replies her mother.
– And my name?
– You ask a lot of questions, Coxianne Catupyrellen!

There’s another version of the joke in which the girl’s name is Willyanne Johnson.

I leaned my face against the glass. There’s nothing more enjoyable in the world than watching the scenery go by. I thought for a long time and finally found a question I could ask my father.

– How long does it take to die of cancer?

He startled. What a question to ask out of the blue! Then he started telling me a bunch of stories about relatives, neighbors and acquaintances. Some had lived only a few weeks, others had lived for 15 years. They languished in bed and some tried to treat it and lost all their hair and ended up dying anyway. It was the mid-1990s and cancer treatments were still very precarious.

For each story he told I held my tears. I don’t know how I managed it, really regreting the question. When we arrived at the next gas station I had a bubble in my throat and was about to burst. He got out of the car, picked up his guitar and went into the restaurant. I sat down on the sidewalk and cried. I was going to bleed for a few weeks or maybe 15 years, lose all my hair and then die. And all because of an itch on my perereca.

Speaking of which, that glue was bothering me, pulling at my pentelho – the portuguese for pubic hair. It was very uncomfortable but I couldn’t touch it or the blood could leak out and my father would see that I have cancer. I didn’t even know if he’d be sad or if he’d find out I’d touched my perereca and kill me himself. So I had an idea.

I took the package and walked around the station until I bumped into a woman and asked if she had one of these to give me, since there was no grocery store there. I got it first time. Later I realized that there is a silent pact between all the women in the world: no one is ever denied a tampon. To this day, I carry an extra one in my handbag, even when I’m not on period.

I thanked her almost tearfully and kept it with me. She just nodded like someone who had done no more than her duty. My father had already returned and was picking up the equipment. I took a deep breath and got ready for a few more hours of music.

Soon I was on stage. A packed restaurant and the same routine: sing, take a break, sell the tapes, get the money. The saying goes, “She who sings, sings away”, and soon I had forgotten about the blood, the cancer and the band-aid pulling out my pentelho. My attention had already turned to the eyes of desire again. I felt myself getting wet.

The look in the men’s eyes scared me. It was an energy I felt I wasn’t ready to handle. It was a waiter, a young man, who ended up catching my gaze. He walked past me, looking at me not with that impish look, but with an enchanted, passionate gaze.

After long hours of work I was finally able to eat and get back to the car. The waiter walked out of the restaurant and I stared at him. He stared back at me. I fiddled with my hair and he pretended he wasn’t looking at me. We stayed like that, two idiots, for a long time. I honestly had no idea what to do if he got close, and from the looks of it, neither did he. Finally he hitched a ride and left.

It was my first flirtation and I was all wet. I felt the itch and my fingers trembled. That’s when reality hit me in the stomach. Cancer! I tried to run to the bathroom but at the first jump the glued tampon ripped off my pentelho. I held back a scream of pain and crouched down. It was worse than hitting the corner with my little finger. I recovered and crawled out.

I went into the shower cubicle, took off my skirt and panties and tried to pull off the band-aid. It stuck. Terribly stuck. I started crying again. After a while, I had an idea. I remembered that when I used to bandage my wound and got it wet, it would come off by itself. I turned on the shower and put my perereca under the water. It took a long time and the hot water finally started to loosen the glue. Still with a lot of effort and losing a lot of pentelho in the process, it came off.

I checked the blood. It was still there. I took the new pad and looked at the glue. My groin was all red, with half my pubic hair. And if I stick it to my panties, will it work?

I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t. The crying came again, but I couldn’t wake my father. I thought I should swallow my tears once and for all and accept that I had made a mistake, that I had sinned and that my doomed fate was certain. I took out the rosary I carried in my glove compartment and started saying Hail Marys. I prayed until I fell asleep.

Over the next few days I tried to concentrate better and stop thinking about the itch, even though it wouldn’t let me sleep. If I got any free I would pray without stopping, but while I was singing I would feel that fire inside me. I’d get in the car and pray myself to sleep. A few days later I stopped bleeding.

***

Another day, another station, another restaurant and the same routine. We had to order more tapes and CDs – there were 18,000 copies in total, all sold from hand to hand. Every restaurant was a flirtation. The boys didn’t have the courage to talk to me and I didn’t have the courage to talk to them, and so it went for a few weeks.

I was sitting on top of the car when this young man approached. He looked less silly than the others and started talking about something, I don’t even remember what, and in a few minutes we were in the shade of a tree, where my father couldn’t see, kissing. His kiss wasn’t very good, but it was definitely better than the one at school. Enough tongue and no teeth.

That was my first real kiss. I pressed his body against mine. His hands in the middle of my back, well behaved. I got all wet. An intrusive thought tried to overwhelm me telling that this was wrong. I couldn’t agree, it was tasty.

My father came back and I ran out. I went to the car and stared at the ceiling with butterflies in my stomach. How nice it is to kiss someone and the feeling of being loved. With less guilt in my heart, I pulled out my rosary and fell asleep to the repetitions of Ave Maria. Another troubled night’s sleep.

The next morning, blood. I was already so sad that there was no more room for despair. No one escapes divine wrath. I got up without my father noticing, crawled into the bathroom and took a long shower. In addition to the blood, this time I was in excruciating pain. In my head, imps were poking my belly with forks.

Maybe I won’t last long.

I sat on the sink in my underwear and waited for a woman to come in. The unfortunate person who opened the door looked worse than me, pale and dragging herself along. She looked at me, smiled and went to wash her face. She opened her handbag and started desperately taking everything out. I saw lipstick, nail clippers, a wallet and, finally, a sanitary towel! What she was looking for came soon after: a bottle of pills. She took one out with trembling hands and swallowed it, drinking tap water with her hands.

She looked herself in the mirror, took a deep breath, turned to me and said:

– Cramp is a bitch, isn’t it?
– Do you have cancer too? – I replied.

Her mouth became a line and she locked her gaze on me. I wanted to grab that second of her attention with all my might, but tears came from deep inside and I exploded. I must have said something like this:

– I scratched my (sniffle) perereca and god (sob) gave me cancer and (cough) now blood is coming out (another sniffle) and it hurts and I still want to (another cough) do siririca and (another sob) I’m going to hell and (cry).

She fell apart as I spoke. Picked up the packet of pads and walked over to me, seeing my panties lined with toilet paper. Without saying a word, she helped me put the pad on (the glue actually sticks to the fabric, not the skin) and gave me one of her pills. When I finally stopped sobbing, she told me:

– You don’t have cancer. You’re on period. Is this your first time? – I said no. She asked if my mother was around and I started crying again. I felt like going home. She told me to always carry my pads and pills with me and left me the ones she had with her. She gave me a hug and left, still writhing in pain.

Fully equipped, I returned to the car. My father was waiting for me with coffee and coxinha. We set off for the next place. I ate my coxinha, drank my coffee, opened the window and put my head out to the wind. I don’t have cancer!

***

I’m an exhibitionist. I love to be seen. On stage, in the street and on your screen. I’m also shy. I didn’t have the courage to get close to the boys, to my flirts. I went from restaurant to restaurant with my silly flirtations and innocent looks.

It was only a few periods later that another boy finally had the courage to come over and talk. I’d forgotten what it had been like last time. Hiding from my father, we went to the back and kissed. This one was a bit better – or was I learning?

In a more hidden and comfortable place, his hand slipped from the middle of my back to my ass. I shivered, got wet and also freaked out. I pulled his hand back up. A few more kisses, another attempt at a silly hand. We went back and forth for a while until I felt comfortable and let go. He held my buttocks firmly and squeezed. I let out a moan and he laughed.

It was then that I felt a bulge in his thigh against mine. It was as if all those images from the bible flashed through my head in a second. I pushed him away and ran out to the car. Alone and safe, I pleased myself with a siririca.

***

The journey was past too long. It was as if São Paulo was at the end of the world or as if it didn’t exist. A magical land from television, Oz, Narnia, Middle Earth. We’d been going from city to city, restaurant to restaurant for almost a year.

I was trying to be happy where I was. Another city, another flirtation. Little by little I got used to the hand on my ass, to their bulge in my groin. Those were the boys, the silly boys. I knew that men did much more than that and my curiosity only grew.

They still scared me. That day I was singing with great enthusiasm. A man looked at me from the table closest to the stage. He was handsome and I stared back. The devil’s eyes creating imaginations in his head and mine.

During the break I went to the bathroom. As I was washing my hands, he came in and walked towards me. His eyes sparkled and he unzipped his pants. I was paralyzed. He reached me and put his hand on my waist, but before he could grab me I heard a revolver click. My father was at the door, gun in hand, asking if the man was on the right place.

He left and I got really scared. I also realized that my father was watching much more than I had imagined. I definitely wasn’t ready for a man.

***

The journey seemed almost over. A few more restaurants and I could see the big lights of a real city, far away from the German colonies.

It was at one of those gas stations along the way that we met a music entrepreneur. He fell in love with our voice and our talent and offered to help us. Arriving in São Paulo without knowing anything or anyone could have been very dangerous for two colonos – portuguese for settler, equivalent to a redneck. It would be much better to arrive with someone who already knew the way and was going to open all the doors.

São Paulo, here I come!