Maira da Luz

Literary Review, Summer, 1995 by Orlanda Amarilis, Gerald M. Moser

A new life had dawned for Maira Da Luz on the day she began to attend secondary school, the Liceu. She had washed, dressed and perfumed herself, and set out for the first day of classes. She had left early, not only because it was the first day, but also so as not to have to run the gauntlet of the boys lined up to give the freshmen the usual reception.

She had slipped through the vestibule, had, in passing, glanced up to the top of the staircase, and there she was now, in the courtyard. Before stepping down the one stair, she looked with satisfaction at the long, rectangular open space. Wow! Here I am in the Liceu. I'm a Liceu student.

She inhaled the dry, tepid morning air of October and crossed the part paved with large cement slabs.

Having gotten to the other side, she bounded up two steps and made a right turn to the girls' restrooms. This area appealed to her. It offered a refuge, a sort of nook occupying the corner of the two far sides of the courtyard.

The headmaster's rules could be summed up in one sentence: one half of the courtyard belonged to the boys, the other half to the girls. She kept standing there, leaning against the door to the anteroom of the girls' toilets. Beside it, a flight of six wooden stairs led to a veranda made of stone, with three classrooms, the only ones adjoining the administrative office. The shade of a fully grown acacia kept this corner of the veranda cool. A circular cement rim around the acacia provided a place to sit during recess. The girls would gather there and chat in small groups. There were eight other classrooms, plus the room for art class, the gym, and chem and natural science labs, and the library. The latter also served as the teachers' room. All of these rooms were distributed along the two wings of the building, with the large courtyard in between. The long covered veranda of the second floor, wider than any she had ever seen, kept the classrooms cool.

There were no steps except between the columns supporting the veranda, three or four steps at most. After climbing them, there was an archway and finally a broad stairway leading to the upper floor. She went to one end and jumped down into the courtyard. "Ouch."

She went back up and jumped down again.

Wearing a pleated apron, with a pink kerchief tied on her head with a ribbon, Marta was sitting in a corner. Maira Da Luz had not noticed her from behind the columns.

"There you go, starting already. Already acting up. Cool it, o.k.?"

Maira was not startled and pretended not to have heard. Her cousin, a third-year student, used to come to her home and tell about Marta's latest doings. Marta is a meany, she thought. She used to drag the girls by an arm to the headmaster's office, rap their fingers, and not let them play at quoits. The meany!

The racket made by the boys was rising into the air as they hailed the arriving freshmen. They clapped hands for the girls and slapped the boys. The racket would fill the yard, fade close to the ground and then scatter into the air all the way to the window where the school bell was suspended.

Senhor Ludjero showed up at the window's wrought iron parapet, which gave it the appearance of a small balcony. He seized the chain and rang the first call to enter. The first consisted of three peals, followed by five more a few minutes later.

The youngest boys invaded the yard in a gallop, driven by the slaps of a mob of upperclassmen in hot pursuit.

"Get moving, little savage, you!"

Manel Manus Suini, a strapping fellow from Sao Nicolau Island, a senior, chided the bully. "You can give him slaps, kick him in the pants, punch him, anything you want, but you mustn't call him names."

The bully laughed at him. And the mob did likewise. They huddled together. "Manel Manus Suini is crazy." "Don't mind him. When he arrived from Sao Nicolau, he, too, was a little savage. Now he plays the wise guy."

Manel Manus Suini stuck his hands into his pants pockets. His sport shirt tightened on his chest under the jacket of cream-white tussah silk.

The fellows moved on. Senhor Ludjero rang the bell five times. It had not even crossed their minds to make any direct reply to Manel Manus Suini. They were scared of him. And for good reason. They had already gone once to Senhora Bia's house, where he boarded with five others in two rooms, three beds in each.

The entrance to the two-story house was a kind of foyer with a worm-eaten sofa, a chest of drawers filled with old junk, and a sandbag suspended from a beam. They spent an afternoon watching him practice his boxing, the bag swinging back and forth as he punched it, and they made up their minds about one thing: to talk with Manel Manus Suini only from a distance. A small demonstration had convinced them, when he had hit one of them on the head.

"Look here, if one of you turtles sticks his head out of his shell, this is what I'll do to him." He brought his closed fist down on the kinky mop of little Julio from Boavista Island, the nephew of George "Philanthropist," forcing him to his knees.