The Backyard

Those were the days of humble living in suburban São Paulo. My father, working as a rigger, a Spanish exile, alive still in his face the sadness of past years of resistance fighting in the romantic mountains of Andalucia, sometimes hiding, others ambushing, so as to keep the balance of things in this funny world of ours. My mother, although entrusted with domestic duties, caring of my brother and I, had enough energy to run a small business selling clothes in the markets, a kind of street markets we had, and which survive to this day, taking place in different suburbs each day of the week.

My brother and I called our house "the train", carriage after carriage it was.

First the locomotive: Mum and Dad's bedroom.

Then the lounge, an austere room, cemented floor already showing a few cracks, always shining with its red wax finish. The length going between doors covered with a long strip of rug. A redish fabric clad sofa and two armchairs was its main feature. A small table to one side had a big radio on top and a wooden chair beside it. This is where Dad used to sit at night, toiling with the dial button, trying to tune into those different short wave stations. "This is Voice of America" it blasted sometimes, or "for the workers and comrades of Latin America, this is Radio Moscow".

Next our bedroom. Wood planks made the floor, varnished with a brownish wax. My bed stood at one corner, facing the lounge door. My brother's at the opposite corner left the space between us for the long rug cover the stretch that took from the lounge to the kitchen, crossing the room in a diagonal. These first three rooms were painted in a pale blue, with wood panelled ceiling, painted brown. A length of two entwined electric cables held the socket and lamp in each room.

A door with lock and key separated us from the kitchen, which my parents considered vulnerable to break and enter. Maybe because it was far from their bedroom, maybe because it had no ceiling, you stared at the tiles as you looked up. And in those days the concept of breaking in involved the forcing of a back door or entering through the roof by removing tiles.

And last, a room which combined the functions of pantry, store room and sewing room. Big sacs of rice, beans, potatoes and maize for the chooks took one corner. A deep home made shelf held all sort of food supplies: 5 kilo bags of sugar, salt, spaghetti, peas, chick peas, coffee, biscuits; and so placed in an ascending order, so that my brother and I were physically disadvantaged in terms of reaching for those goodies in a moment of temptation. The back door opened to the backyard.

The dunny sat to the left beside a shed where dad kept his tools and all sort of bric-a-brac, which as he would say, always serve for something and should be there for they would be needed.

As it happened everyday of the week, in the still unbroken darkness of the morning , Dad would have crossed our bedroom, going to the kitchen have his breakfast, which consisted of diced bread in a soup of coffee and hot milk, enough to almost fill the bowl. This he ate with a soup spoon, and when little was left, he would raise the bowl on his hands and bring it to his lips, tilting the bowl over his raised chin, as in a religious ritual, so that no drop of that morning nectar was wasted.

Next, it would be time for Mum to cross into the kitchen and quietly close the door behind her. Another door opened from the kitchen to a shed covering the well. She would slide open its plank cover, unlock the windlass and throw the bucket down to hit the water, which sat about ten metres deep, and then hoist it up, the ratchet clicking its morning song till the bucket came to rest and filled the basin where we would wash our faces.

That Tuesday morning we all left early, Mum and Manoel, my brother, to the markets; while I went to school. By noon I was back home, quickly took off the school uniform and rushed to the backyard.

Linda was our dog, a big Alsatian, jumping, wagging her tail and running all the way to the back fence and again towards me, coming to a sudden stop, stooping on her front legs, tail high in the air and stay like this for a while, only to take off again.

I loved that reconnaissance routine, check out the trees for fruit, watch the pigeons courting, cooing and performing those side steps while pouncing their heads, and fly away to their boxes under the lemon tree.

I had my two favourite pigeons: Daniel, a dark bluish one, his feathers acquired different shades under the sun. I started feeding him when he was still very small, and as he grew adult he let me hold him in my hands, stroke the soft feathers covering his chest while I talked to him, taking him against my chest and carrying him around the backyard, invariably leading to a spot where I broke pieces of old bread for our mutual pleasure; his of eating, mine of observing. The other one was Bianca, a white female, a tender body, she shrugged her wings and lowered her head as I approached my hands and caressed her back. I placed her on my stretched palm, she stayed quiet as if sitting on a nest. Cradled like this, I brought her against my face. The soft rub and fragrance of her feathers was unique. After eating her meal, she also flew away.

Then my mother arrived, tugging along a couple of shopping bags and got stuck into lunch preparation. Manoel, excitedly tried to tell me all that had happened that morning in the markets.

We headed then to Dad's tool shed, grabbed a hoe and a shovel, and got stuck into our latest adventure: the making of a pond for the ducklings.

We dug a bit more, Mother Duck trying to get under the hoe every time the worms came out wriggling, which was more often than not each time the hoe hit the ground; fertile land that was.

"Come on, wash your hands! Lunch is on the table!"

It took a while before we came to terms with stopping our exciting task to listen to Mum. This was one of those days we just swallowed whatever was in our plates and made right back to our pond building exercise, filling the edges with the loose soil which we sprinkled with a bit of water and pounded hard to form the high edges of a crater, then back and forwards to the well until we were satisfied it was time to muster the ducklings for their first swim.

Time just flew by, afternoon coffee came and went, so did "Dad is arriving!" and dark it was. The door to the yard would be locked, silence restored. We tucked ourselves up in bed, hugging the pillow, dreaming of what to do tomorrow in the backyard.

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