ZECA

ZECA
C 2008 JoJo

I was 19 years old when my family and I moved to Rio de Janeiro. Father had been made Chaplain of Christ Church, located at Rua Real Grandeza in the suburb of Botafogo. The first Christmas we spent there is one I will never forget.

It’s hot in Brazil at Christmas time because it’s the start of summer there. For that reason, I chose to do my last minute shopping in the evening, in the hopes that once the sun had set, it would be cooler.

I was walking down the Avenida Atlantica on Copacabana Beach, one of the most beautiful locations in the world. Under my feet was the world famous mosaic crazed paving – little black and white tiles set in a twisting, serpentine pattern. There was a faint and very welcome breeze coming off the water, and I was enjoying this welcome respite from the unbearable heat.

Totally absorbed with the beauty surrounding me I was jerked back to reality by the sound of a child crying. I looked for the source of this sound and caught sight of a small street urchin, sitting on the curb with his head down on his arms. He was sobbing uncontrollably. I noticed that it wasn’t the crying of a child who had accidentally stubbed his toe or lost his favourite toy. His grief held a note of despair no child should ever feel. I sat down next to him on the curb and gently touched his shoulder.

What’s wrong “garoto (boy)?” I asked. He looked at me with tears streaming down a very dirty face. No more than eight years of age he was a handsome child with curly black hair, a cafe aux lait skin and big brown eyes. He wore a ragged pair of shorts which were about two sizes too large for him, tied at the waist by a piece of cord. I noticed that he was painfully thin and his feet were bare. The shirt he wore was equally tatty and dirty and had several buttons missing.

“Please won’t you tell me what’s wrong?” I asked again.

He didn’t answer and broke into fresh sobs. I sat patiently beside him, waiting for him to gain control. After a while when his sobs had subsided, I decided to try a different approach. “What’s your name?” I asked.

“Zeca,” he replied, choking back his sobs and wiping a grimy little hand across his face. “Zeca de Andrade”.

Slowly I was able to draw his story out of him. Zeca had grown up in one of Rio’s notorious favelas slums and was one of the city’s many abandoned boys. His mother had put him out on the street to fend for himself six months previously, because she had two younger children to feed with another on the way. Besides, her latest boyfriend was a drunk who didn’t want Zeca around.

“What about your father? Couldn’t you go and live with him?” I asked.

“I don’t know who my father is,” Zeca said. “He left my mother before I was born.”

On the streets, Zeca lived off his wits. He sold candies for which he was paid a small commission. To augment his income, he carried parcels for ladies coming out of shopping malls, and “looked after” people’s cars while they were absent. This involved keeping an eye on them and making sure no one stole their hub caps or vandalized them. He scavenged the garbage dumps behind food stores and restaurants and stole fruit and vegetables from the mercados, open air markets. At night, when the weather was fine, he’d sleep on the beaches or in parks. When it rained, he’d sneak into parked railway carriages and sleep on a seat or (if they were all taken), the floor, providing he could find any space available which would accommodate his small body. Railway cars were the preferred sleeping quarters of all abandoned boys and on occasion, there simply wasn’t any room for him.

“So what do you do when it’s raining and you can’t get into a railway carriage?” I asked.

“I crawl under the railway car and sleep there. But this is muito perigoso, very dangerous. One morning I overslept and suddenly found that the railway carriage had been attached to the train engine and was beginning to move. I barely managed to crawl out in time.” He wrapped his arms around himself and shivered as he recalled this close call.

Having managed to draw him out in conversation, I felt it would be safe now to get back to why he’d been crying so once again, I asked him for the reason.

His eyes welled up with tears. “I can only eat once a day,” he whispered, “Because I don’t have enough money to buy more than one meal a day.”

One meal per day for a growing eight year old boy. What a terrible thing for a small boy to be so hungry, completely alone and friendless in a cruel and uncaring world.

“I was about to go and buy my meal,” he continued, “When a boy much older and bigger than me, beat me up and took my money. I haven’t eaten since yesterday, and now I won’t be able to get any food until tomorrow evening. I don’t think I can bear to go another day without food.” He lowered his head and wept.

I looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. There was no point in giving him money because if some bully had stolen his meager earnings once, he could do it again. I wanted to make sure Zeca got fed that night.

I put my arm around his skinny shoulders. “You won’t have to go another day without food,” I said. “Come, I’m going to take you to a nice restaurant and buy you a wonderful meal.”

He looked up at me, his eyes shining with unshed tears and hope. “Do you mean it Senhora?” I nodded. He grabbed my hand and kissed it awkwardly, which brought a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes.

We got up and walked together, down the Avenida Atlantica to the nearest restaurant. We must’ve made a strange picture – a blond woman holding the hand of a small, grubby street urchin. People passing by gave us curious looks.

We came across a restaurant, and walked up the steps which led into a fine foyer. The Maitre D’ gave me a welcoming smile, but it froze on his lips as he looked down and beheld Zeca.

“Madame,” he said “You can go into my restaurant, but you can’t take that muleque (a rude, disparaging word for street urchin) into my restaurant.” Zeca pulled away from me and tried to beat a hasty retreat, but I held onto his hand firmly.

“I beg your pardon?” I said “What do you mean I can’t take my friend here into this restaurant? I’ll be paying for his food so what grounds do you have to deny him the right to eat here?”

The Maitre D’ was adamant. “I’m sorry, I cannot allow dirty muleques to go into my restaurant,” he hissed. “My patrons wouldn’t like it.”

By now I was getting angry. I looked him straight in the eye. “And what would your patrons say if I was to tell them that you were preventing me from feeding a starving child?”

The Maitre D’ shrugged. I walked right up to him and said quietly, “Tell me something – do you want me to throw a scene? If you don’t let me take this child in and feed him, I can assure you I won’t have the least hesitation in throwing a very big scene. And you’d be surprised just how big a scene I am capable of throwing when I put my mind to it.”

He believed me. I noticed that he’d paled and looked anxious. Heaving a big sigh, he gave in. “Very well you can bring him in – providing you take him to the banheiro washroom and clean him up first.”

Well that was fair enough. Taking Zeca’s hand, I led him down the hallway to the ladies room. As we walked along, Zeca dug his bare toes into the plush carpet, marvelling at its softness. When we got to the bathroom (which thankfully was unoccupied) Zeca stood there for a few moments, dumbfounded. It suddenly occurred to me that he’d never been in a proper bathroom before in his life. His ablutions had always taken place in slimy public ponds and fountains, late at night when there wasn’t anyone around. After a few moments, he rushed around, turning taps on and off and then gleefully ran from stall to stall, flushing the toilets, marvelling at all that water swishing around.

When he’d had his fill, I sat him on the counter and proceeded to clean him up. When I’d finished, he looked infinitely better – in fact, other than his dirty clothes, almost respectable. Before leaving the washroom, Zeca surreptitiously slipped a bar of soap into his pocket while I turned a blind eye.

We made our way back to the main entrance, and the Maitre D’ ushered us into corner of the restaurant, as far away from his other patrons as possible. Once again, people watched us with curiosity as we walked by.

When we’d sat down at our table, our waiter came and gave me a big beaming smile. Quietly he whispered, “I was a street child too. Deus te abencoe God bless you for feeding this little boy.”

We got the best service in the whole restaurant. The word got around and several waiters came by to have a look at us. I was finding all this love and attention heaped on me embarrassing but relaxed when I saw how Zeca blossomed under it. Even the chef dashed out of the nearby swinging doors leading into the kitchen and wrung my hand, choking back emotions before dashing back to work. Meanwhile, the Maitre d’ scowled at us angrily, which gave me this unholy desire to laugh in his face! I always want to laugh at the most unfortunate times! But I am happy to say I managed to repress it, or he might’ve tossed us out of his restaurant then and there!

Naturally, we ordered the staple food of Brazil: feijoada completada, black turtle beans cooked with assorted sausages, salt pork and beef jerky on a bed of rice. This was topped with farofa, manioc flour fried in butter with onions, eggs and olive slices. Our waiter and the cook saw to it that Zeca’s plate was piled high.

Zeca fell on his food like the voracious little animal that he was. His utensils were ignored. I am certain he’d never used s knife and fork in his entire life. He’d grab a handful of food in his hands, roll it into a ball then toss it into his mouth. I sat there enjoying every moment of watching a small boy’s complete, rapt absorption with eating his food.

When he’d wiped his plate clean I asked him if he’d like a sobremesa dessert. His eyes grew big with wonder, and then in a hushed voice he asked me if he could have a sorvete de murango, a strawberry ice cream.

“A lady dropped her cone on the street one day and I scraped it up and ate it”. His eyes grew dreamy. “It was so delicious I think that it surely must’ve been made by the angels in heaven.”

So I ordered a large strawberry sundae, topped with cream and nuts, and when the waiter placed it down in front of Zeca, he looked at it in awe for a few moments. His terrible hunger having been assuaged, Zeca took his time eating the sundae. He dipped his fingers into it and licked them with a rapturous expression on his face. The spoon was only used at the end in order to scrape up the last tiny morsel.

Meanwhile I had been sitting there wondering to myself what to do about Zeca. He’d thoroughly wrapped himself around my heart and I couldn’t see sending him back out onto the streets to God only knew what fate. Then I hit on a fabulous idea.

The American Episcopalian Church ran a home called “Boys Town” in the city of Teresopolis, located in the mountains behind Rio. It was a farm where abandoned boys grew their own food, under the watchful eye of a team of workers. When not working in the fields, they attended a school on the premises where they were taught to read and write, and also learned a trade. My father sat on the Board of this home and used to go up there to run services on a bi-monthly basis. Why not take Zeca home with me, I thought, and get Dad to take him up to Boys Town on his next trip.

I told Zeca my plans and his eyes lit up with delight. He leaped to his feet with excitement. “Can we go there right now?” he asked eagerly. I laughed and told him he’d be taken there very soon and that meanwhile, he’d live in my house.

I paid the bill and we walked down the steps of the restaurant – two very happy and contented people. Then something happened which changed the entire course of Zeca’s life. Two policemen came walking down the street towards us. Zeca was mortally afraid of the police, and with good reason. The cops in Brazil considered abandoned boys the future criminal elements of society. They didn’t hesitate to abuse them and even kill them on the premise that one less abandoned boy in the world would mean one less future criminal they’d have to contend with at a later date.

As soon as Zeca saw the cops, he reacted instinctively. He let go of my hand and before I knew what was happening, he’d disappeared into the darkness. I called out to him, begging him to come back, assuring him there was nothing to fear and I would see he’d come to no harm. But in the six months that Zeca had been out in the cruel world on his own, he’d learned to trust no one. Much as I hate to think it, I believe he’d instantly concluded that I was responsible for those cops having come along at the precise moment we were leaving the restaurant and that I’d intended all along to hand him over to the enemy. After the cops had passed by and gone on their way, I stayed where I was, crying my eyes out, calling his name and hoping against hope that Zeca would come back. Although I waited for an hour, he never returned. Sadly and with a very heavy heart I made my way home. I never saw Zeca again.

To this day, I think of Zeca and wonder what became of him. There was something unique and very special about him. When he fled into the darkness, he left behind an aching sadness, and a sense of desolation and emptiness in my soul. I will never forget him.

****************************************************************************************************

Well, I hope you enjoyed my blog and I’m sorry it was so long, but it wasn’t a story that could be told with few words. I remember this event as though it happened yesterday. Realistically, Zeca’s chances of survival were dismal, at best. Abandoned boys were killed almost daily, either by older boys, pedophiles, street accidents, disease, starvation – or the police. But I like to think that Zeca made it, in spite of the enormous odds against him because, during the brief hours I spent with him, I grew to love him dearly and would’ve done anything on earth to have helped him. I wish this story could’ve had a happier ending – I like happy endings – but unfortunately, it didn’t.

Have a great day. Hugs, JoJo
P.S. The “e” in “Zeca” is pronounced the same way as the “e” in “eggs.”