Courage · fiction
I lost my home: how to go on
Almost a prayer by a mother evicted with her three children who discovers, among boxes on the sidewalk, what no court order can take.
bairogonzalez.com team, drawing on Bairo's story · Published
A vision — a short story.
To whoever is listening, whoever you are:
Today they took our things out of the house. The men arrived at eight, with a paper and a truck. They were polite. That hurt more than if they had been rough. They carried out the sofa, the stove, the boys' beds, the boxes I had packed the night before without being able to sleep, and put everything on the sidewalk, in front of the gate that was mine until yesterday.
My three children stood watching. The oldest, fourteen, arms crossed and the closed face of someone holding back tears. The middle one, nine, hugging the cat. The little one, four, thinking it was a move, asking whether the new house had a yard.
I said it did.
I don't know if it does. I don't know where we're going. My sister said we can stay a few days at her place, which is already small for her own family. I called the neighborhood social services office and they said to come in early tomorrow. I'll go.
I fell four months behind on the rent. I lost my job at the factory in March, and since then I've cleaned houses when the work comes. It isn't an excuse. It's what happened.
The neighbors look out their windows. Some came down to help. One brought coffee. Another brought a tarp, because it looks like rain. I didn't know they liked me.
Now I'm sitting on a box, on the sidewalk, and I'm writing this in my son's notebook, because I need to tell someone.
Just now, looking at our things on the ground, I had a vision.
I saw our things as they were before they were things. The sofa, when we bought it secondhand and my late husband carried it on his back three blocks, laughing. The stove, where I baked the cake for every birthday. The beds, where the boys had fevers and I stayed up all night. I saw that none of that was on the sidewalk. On the sidewalk were wood, iron and fabric. The rest was still with me.
Then I saw my mother. She was evicted too, when I was six. I had forgotten. I remember now: the cart, the pots tied on, my mother singing on the way so we wouldn't cry. I thought it was an adventure. For her, it must have been this. A sidewalk.
And she sang.
I also saw something I can't explain. I saw my oldest son, a grown man, telling this story to someone. Not with shame. With pride. He was saying: "My mother never left us without direction, not even the day we were left without a home."
I don't know if that will happen. But I decided to do as my mother did.
I got up from the box. I asked the oldest to help the neighbor stretch out the tarp. I asked the middle one to choose a box for the cat. And I put the little one on my lap and began to sing the cart song, the one I had forgotten.
The oldest, with his closed face, looked at me. Then he uncrossed his arms. He didn't sing. But he stayed close.
To whoever is listening: thank you for the neighbors, the coffee, the tarp. Tomorrow I'll go to social services early. Tonight I sleep at my sister's, with the boys on the living room floor.
The house stayed. We go together.
Bairo says he too lost his footing, far from home, and started over from what was left, from zero, with the person by his side. His fresh start had a neighborhood address. Read: The sun is for everyone.
The way forward
A house can be taken; what you lived in it can't. In Brazil, go right away to CRAS, your municipality's social assistance center, and to the Public Defender's Office, which helps for free; elsewhere, look for local social services and free legal aid. And let people help: accepting the tarp and the coffee is courage too. If despair comes, CVV answers at 188.