The Marble Army. Gisele Firmino

his hands together with that earth in between as it slowly fell back to the ground. It was as close to black as his hands would get from then on. This was his new coal. He suddenly saw his wife’s garden blooming there. He saw her sitting on the porch, knitting, while that same gentle breeze brushed her light brown hair. He saw Pablo and me playing soccer out on the street. My father had made his decision.

      …

      Pablo would disappear for whole days, meeting up with Rita or his friends after school. When he was around, he was so quiet that he might as well have not been there at all. Our mother didn’t mind his silence as long as he sat with us for supper.

      One day, Mãe asked me to feed a chicken we kept separate from all the others to make a broth for Tia Mercedes, who had stopped coming to our house now that her baby was about to be born. Our mother had insisted Tia Mercedes should rest, and she listened. It was customary for neighbors to feed a new mother with the ‘cleanest’ bird in an effort to strengthen her body and her milk after going through labor.

      It was late in the afternoon. The clouds could be so thick and low some days that one couldn’t even trace the sun behind them. It created a stillness in the air that almost felt as if we all lived inside an opaque bubble, where every sound and every smell lingered around us. I smelled tobacco and wondered if our father had taken up smoking again. He’d quit not long ago, after spending a whole month in bed with a cough that just wouldn’t let go of him.

      I followed the smell quietly, knowing how loud things were on days like those. Pablo sat on the grass with his back against the rear wall of the tool shed. He watched the stillness in the mine. His eyes brooded across the meadow we used to play, over the mine and the horizon. I then saw a little spark and realized that a cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth. He took a drag, then held the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, the same way our father would do, while he contemplated the shapes he created with the smoke coming out of his mouth. I didn’t know that he smoked, but I wasn’t surprised. I thought about going up to him, about asking him what the hell he was doing, but since he didn’t notice me I figured it was best to just let him be.

      Later that evening, I watched the rain run down the windowpane as I waited for our mother to call us at dinnertime. I wanted to cry, to seek some kind of release from all the fears I had, from this new life and this new family I sometimes felt stuck with. And just like that I became aware for the very first time of one’s loneliness. The entire concept of family suddenly seemed like nothing more than an illusion. In the end we were all alone. I craved my brother’s company. I needed him to explain things to me, all the things I could not know. And I resented his absence, his selfishness.

      I put the downstairs mattress right by the window and lay down on it, staring at the water, gradually washing away the coal dust that couldn’t have been there for more than two days. I traced the fading gray streaks and listened to the sound of that tainted water hitting the earth. I imagined it gliding above the mud and slipping below our home, finding its own temporary home there, so that one dry windy day it could be swept up in between the wood planks of our floor for us to breathe it all over again. I folded my arms, resting my nape on top of my trembling hands, and crossed my legs as if I was a miner about to nap in a quiet cave. All the while pretending that life wasn’t scary, that I wasn’t afraid, because that was what I thought men did. That was what I thought that men should do.

      …

      We left Minas do Leão two days after Pablo’s graduation. The sun succumbed behind dense clouds, heavy with rain, threatening to release themselves on most of our furniture as we loaded Tio Joca’s truck with the few things our parents had decided on taking with us. We were mostly quiet. All we heard were the thumps and clacks and bangs of our belongings hitting the floor of Tio Joca’s dirty truck, while its radio hummed a highly inflected, almost theatrical speech, what I had begun to associate with political propaganda.

      As we got through the morning, a few neighbors stopped by to say their farewells. They would wish us luck, and that God would guide us. Some would lament our departure, clasping their hands together, tilting their heads to the side or simply staring at the black dirt beneath us. But we knew my father had become a liability, and deep down they all must have felt great relief in seeing him go. Whenever someone came with a sad face, or a farewell gift, I went inside the house pretending to focus on the boxes, but eventually my name would be called, and I would have to show my face, my smiling and polite face, and say goodbye, and thank them for whatever it was that I had to thank them for.

      As we were getting ready to leave, Pablo and I went around the house taking one last look at its empty rooms, silently saying our goodbyes. While I was still inside, Pablo had hid himself behind the shed once again. I found him kneeling down, and kissing the ground that stretched all the way to the mine. Pablo lit a cigarette and studied its quietness, while the cigarette burnt itself up to the filter. I walked up to him after I said goodbye to our chickens, that Tia Mercedes would keep, and Xuxa the stray dog I had adopted a couple months prior, when our parents didn’t care enough to say ‘no’. Xuxa didn’t like being petted all that much, but she enjoyed my company. She’d follow me around like a younger sister, watching my every move. I wondered what would happen to her. Xuxa was lucky that she got to stay, that she got to have such independent life.

      When I went up to Pablo, it was as if my presence reminded him of how tough he had to be. He squinted as he looked at me, and took a long drag of his so far ignored cigarette.

      “Big city, huh?” he offered.

      “É.”

      While Pablo took his time in the backyard, saying goodbye to the piece of land where we had always played, the shed, the meadow and its smells, our mother took some time inside the house. I could hear her clogs slowly thumping against the wood floor. I saw her through the kitchen window, staring at the vastness outside. Meanwhile, our father waited for us in the car.

      We followed Tio Joca’s truck. Our father and Pablo took one last glimpse at the mine as we headed down the main road, without saying a word. Our mother gently caressed the rabbit foot she held in between her fingers with one hand, while bringing her golden São Jorge necklace pendant to her lips with her other. She kissed it gently. Her eyes shut.

      The rain never came, much to our mother’s disappointment. She had spent the entire morning saying that a big heavy rain would be a blessing when anybody showed signs of concern for our furniture. She made herself believe the rain would clear everything out from bad spirits, negative energy, karma, whatever it was that shook people out of synch in their lives. And when we didn’t see a drop of water hit the windshield, I realized that my mother feared that the change of houses, of schools, of cities, was all for nothing. That regardless of where we were, the ghosts of who we used to be would be with us. Quiet. Dormant. Like uninvited guests.

      Our father held firmly onto the steering wheel, looking straight ahead, without so much as glancing at the farms on the side of the road. He seemed relieved or hopeful to have succeeded in leaving that town and its mine behind. If anything, he looked determined. He watched our belongings sticking up from the truck, bouncing with the road’s unevenness, as though certain of a brighter beginning.

      Pablo and my mother observed the side of the road, the scenery they knew so well, refusing to look ahead. They paid attention to every cow lying around, to every yucca plantation, to every strawberry farm. They watched some of the people who walked alongside of the road with a hint of jealousy in their eyes. Every once in a while my mother would remember to gently caress her São Jorge, hanging over her chest. Our father turned the dial on the stereo, while we all stared at his hand hoping that something would magically play itself. Any cheap melody to save us from ourselves. But nothing. None of the radio stations worked.

      It was mid-afternoon when we arrived, and the same thick clouds had followed us, covering the top of some of the city’s higher buildings. Pablo watched the commercial buildings go by, and streetlights change colors, and billboards announce movie premieres, cleaning products and beer.

      The city seemed chaotic at first, but it wasn’t at all. Everything and everybody seemed to have a purpose, more so than where we lived. People were everywhere. There