The Marble Army. Gisele Firmino

waited on a red light. Our father didn’t hesitate despite the traffic. It was clear he knew the rules and knew where he was going. Our mother, next to him, looked as if she wasn’t there at all.

      We pulled up to a one-story house, the second from the corner. It looked plain with its white stucco and dark brown windows. The front yard could have used some work, but it wasn’t bad. My mother watched it carefully, probably wondering which flowers she’d want blooming there in a few months. An iron fence circled the property. It was plain and not very tall, standing level to my twelve-year-old chest.

      “This is it!” our father announced. He walked up the steps of the front porch and looked at our mother who still studied the garden.

      “There’s a nice breeze here, Rose,” he said. He spread his arms to cover both sides of the porch. “I think you’ll enjoy sitting here to do your knitting.”

      “I’m sure I will,” she said. “The house is lovely, dear.”

      My father let a childish smile escape him, and we all went inside. In the living room sat a deep avocado-green rotary-dial phone. Pai pointed at it with the same excitement he’d shown before.

      “Rose?” he called. “What do you think?”

      It was our very first telephone. Whenever necessary, we’d use the mine’s. Our mother smiled at the gadget sitting by the fireplace mantel.

      “That way you can stay in touch when Mercedes’ baby is born, or with whoever you want.”

      “Wonderful, Antonio. Thank you,” she said while he gently kissed her forehead.

      Pablo and I picked our rooms without much of a fuss. I kept the room between Pablo’s and my parents’. It was smaller but closer to the bathroom. I stood in the hallway that led to all of the bedrooms and looked for any signs of an incline. There was nothing. I wondered if given enough time, if this house would also become slanted. If it would ever feel as though it was ours. I remember thinking that a leveled house would probably be a good thing at that point. I was too old to play with marbles anyway.

      …

       Inside the mine is quiet. I walk by myself through the empty gallerias, and they look darker than I remember. Darker and vaster. There isn’t a worker in sight, but several abandoned wagons; some half-full, others empty. It’s all just sitting there, forgotten. I must have broken into it. I’m looking for something, or for someone. The mine’s paths are not as clear when nobody is working it. I must be looking for Pablo. I’m always looking for Pablo. I see one wall in the galleria to my right lighten up in a fading, almost imperceptible orange color. The light shifts around. I walk towards it and sense the smell of sulfur being overtaken by another smell. It’s tobacco. I must have found Pablo. Why does he insist on smoking? I keep my slow pace and study the light’s patterns. It moves up every once in a while, but it mostly illuminates the ground and lower sections of the walls.

       My breathing weakens as I walk. Shorter breaths, as if my lungs are being consumed by poison. With his body leaning against the opposite side, I find Pablo staring at a wall, his right foot pressed against it as if he’s studying the horizon, as if he’s studying something beautiful. But there is no horizon. It’s just a black wall he’d seen many times. He looks as though he was expecting me, but he doesn’t notice that I’m standing right there.

       I touch the rough surface with my right hand. My hand isn’t mine. It looks more like Pablo’s; wider and stronger.

       “What are you doing here?” As the words come out of my mouth, I sense a kind of burnt wood taste rising in my throat, all the way to the insides of my cheeks and the tip of my tongue. I smell the cigarette smoke coming out of me. A dense cloud hangs in the air, and I can barely make up Pablo’s figure.

       “What are you talking about?” My mouth makes up the words coming out of his mouth. He sounds like me. Or I sound like him.

       “Why are you smoking?” That strange taste again. Another cloud forms in front of my face, my view of Pablo polluted.

       “I’m not.” He’s smiling a smile I don’t recognize. Wicked almost.

      

      FOUR

      I longed to go outside like we used to back home. I missed going to the mine, watching our father work, and trying on hardhats with a bit of carbureto left in their little containers. Pablo and I would collect all the saliva we could manage and spit into these containers to light them up real bright. Then we would find the darkest and emptiest galleria around, and pretend our light beams were swords, and just bobble our heads around to put on a good fight. We mostly just laughed at each other. Our father wouldn’t let us stay there for too long, though. He said the stench had to be bad for our lungs, and he was right as it turned out. Pablo and I always tried to keep as quiet as possible in hopes that he would forget we were still in there.

      The longer we stayed inside the mine, the more blinding the sun could be once we made our way out of its tunnels. Pablo had our mother’s hazel eyes, which were more sensitive to the light than mine. It would take him a good five minutes to actually see straight. And I loved pointing at obstacles that didn’t really exist, just to trick him. Sometimes he would get back at me by pretending that he wasn’t seeing clearly and purposely bump into me, or ask me to guide him. He would hook his hand around my arm, and pull me downward, tripping on my foot, making us both lose our balance and fall, then just laugh in my face in the end.

      …

      We had only been in Porto Alegre for about six months. Winter had proven itself just as unforgiving as the ones back home, and one afternoon Pablo walked into my room, with the thickest jacket he had, and the last scarf and beanie our mother had knitted for him. I was sitting on the parquet floor with my homework spread across my bed, and Pablo went straight for my wardrobe, grabbing my navy coat.

      “Are you done with your homework yet? I want to take you somewhere,” he said. Pablo’s face was changing. At almost eighteen, he had no fat on his face at all; his cheeks were hollow concaves shadowed only by his protruding cheekbones, making him look a lot older than me, a lot older than he actually was. And when he smiled, you could see the places where he would have had lines around his eyes and where his cheeks would’ve been vertically marked by age. He had the kind of smile where people seem to be smiling at something but are actually thinking of something else. As if he knew something you couldn’t possibly know, as if he was in control of all the things there were for me to know, and I depended on his good will to share them with me. For most of his life, he did.

      I jumped up and dropped my pencil, which fell on my math book and rolled off the bed, bouncing off the floor for a second. “No, but I can finish it later!” I said.

      “Look at you, mister!” he teased, and handed me my coat. “What do you have on under those?”

      “PJ pants, one long sleeve, one thin sweater, and this,” I said pinching the pants and sweater that covered all these layers.

      He curled his lips in an upside-down smile, and then turned to the window. The light coming through the slats of the window blinds was turning burnt yellow, if not orange. The sun would soon set.

      “That should do,” he said. “Where is your scarf?”

      “It’s in my backpack.”

      He pulled my scarf from the backpack’s front pocket and left the room. I heard him telling Mãe that he was taking me out while I struggled to get my shoes on over the wool socks our mother had also made.

      “We’ll be back for supper,” he told her as I met them in the hallway. She had her hands wrapped up in a dishcloth.

      “It’s too cold today, honey. Are you sure you don’t want to wait until tomorrow? It’s supposed to warm up.” She tilted her head to the side as she took note of what we were wearing.

      “Nah,