The librarian

When my mother came to town to attend my wedding, she brought with her my dead aunt's gold watch and ring.  Without a living daughter to inherit her heirloom pieces, I decided that I should.  I put them on and thought that they really mean nothing to me.  I don't remember my aunt ever wearing those old pieces of jewelry and therefore have no recollection of her having any sort of feeling for them.  There is a lot about my aunt that I will forever cherish.  Her jewelry is not one of the memorable aspects of her.  Even though I cannot throw her jewelry away, I cannot wear them either. 

What means a lot to me is the fact that my aunt loved books.  She was a librarian and worked with a bunch of nuns. She preferred the marine world of whales and sea creatures to the fetid politics of the Catholic Church.  If she could have had it her way, she would have found total refuge in the a little marine biology library somewhere faraway from the waters of Rio.

Dindinha Lua,
There is a witch who is unforgiving.  She lives in many of the women of my family.  And she lives inside of me, too.  Now that the moon is full, I want to release her on her journey to the dark side where I will not hear from her for a while.  One day, hopefully, the release will be eternal.  There will be, is, not the thought of unfulfilling.   The moon is full, the heart is full, the soul is full.  Good night Dindinha Lua.

Black Fairy

She arrived to us not through natural child birth.  There was no blood relationship.  Abandoned by her parents, she was picked up by my grandmother when she was only seventeen.  Her skin was super dark, her teeth remarkably white.  At four feet, ten inches, she was a minuscule woman who occupied an enormous emotional space in our lives.  Big almond-shaped eyes and the brightest of smiles that helped focus our attention on her face.  She spoke in a very soft-voice so that the White Witch would not attempt to control every single thought she expressed.  Her magic was stronger when the Witch was away.  She took advantage of the gift of time to tell stories about the vastness of the universe.  I particularly enjoyed the evenings when she showed me the moon and taught me a spellbinding verse to revere it.  She was a master of cat's cradle:  We sat at the small rectangular kitchen table as she taught me how to delicately weave strings into figures and shapes in a choreography that I never managed to mimic to perfection.

She never initiated the conversation about what was obviously the source of misery in the household.  At the age of six I already knew that the White Witch would never be able to find happiness. She had come to understand her role in life as the proprietor of wisdom which she alone was to impress onto others.  There was no room for flexibility and the Black Fairy knew it well.

Initially, I refused to accept that the Black Fairy could stand to live in such state of servitude and disrespect for her own wisdom, womanhood, and skin color.  Although I can't remember if I actually asked the Black Fairy the question, I constantly asked myself whether she ever had the desire to leave.  I know she did.  But how could have she escaped?  The White Witch never allowed her to learn any skills that would provide her with the ability to fend for herself.  She was also never given permission to enter in courtship with anyone.  Thus she was also forbidden to develop herself as a woman and gain her independence from the bondage of eternal childhood.  Her own skin color was the unspoken demarcation and limitations of her power.  Over one hundred years after the abolition of slavery, I felt embarrassed that the White Witch was keeping the Black Fairy against her will.  Could she have left, I often wondered…

She took care of all the White Witch's children and grandchildren.  She fed us, dressed us, bathed us, and put us to sleep.  She nursed us to health and told us about the sky and the earth.  Ultimately, she became our mother, grandmother, sister, and friend.  She loved all of us.  In every action I felt her love deeply.  She loved us.

When she left I was living in Ghana.  Having left to live in the continent I thought would help me understand why the White Witch and our ancestors decided to capture and dominate so many black fairies.  The middle fairies in our family thought it was best to protect me from the awful news regarding her illness.  But when it was no longer possible to hide the truth, they explained that she was going to leave us peacefully and pain-free, as the morphine drip would guide her to the other side.

In many ways I understood how utterly selfish it would be for me to wish that she stay.  Her departure meant the beginning of a life that would be the fairy's own life of choice:  love could be chosen, words could be spoken clearly, and laughter openly and loudly expressed.  Her departure would also mean, although this was not clear at the time, that I could begin to let go of the shame I felt for what my ancestors were to blame.  I too would be free:  of guilt and mortification.  Or so I hope. Farewell, my dear fairy.

My grandmother Olga

Today my brother and sister took my only living grandmother, Olga Lobao Ribeiro, to a nursing home.  This once-independent, almost indomitable, and today mostly wild woman, accepted her new home without a fight.  It was almost as if she had been waiting for this moment of surrender her entire life.  My family (and I - even though I am thousands of miles away) will be calling in the antique dealers to evaluate her estate.  Everything will be sold.  And there will be nothing material of my grandmother left for us or me.  She will enter a new stage of her life in her new home, surrounded by old intellectuals and creative types who have too much wisdom and anxiety over what's coming up next.  But for us, next is here.  What was my grandmother -what was left of her material life - will be disposed of without a funeral.  And so as we watch and orchestrate, the last living grandparent will become a ghost of herself.