northeastern Brasil, 1945-1954, part three
(I am counting on you to remember my caveats: 1945-1954 was once upon a time, this northeastern Brasil comes from the reality of a child between two-and-a-half years old and approximately twelve years old.) grownups were so ignorant! they tried to fool me with stories of little bitty short fairies! I knew those were pixies. fairies and elves were as big as humans, had fought alongside them in the Norselands, where men were huge. I wasn't stupid. I looked for pixies under the flowers, not fairies. I knew the elves on Christmas cards weren't even dwarves, toy dwarves maybe, like tiny dogs are called toy dogs. grownups! when I was, I don't know, maybe ten? maybe even nine! we moved into the last house we would live in in Brasil. we didn't know that, of course, it was just another house. except it wasn't. my father must have gotten a promotion and a heck of a raise! I didn't know about those either. what I did know was that we moved into a big house - one and a half stories, a long run from the front of the house to the back of the house - with separate servants' quarters, and a mysterious walled-away back yard out past the pineapple plant. I called it the blue-grey house, first because it was blue-grey. then because so much that happened there felt tinged by that color. (I didn't know that my strange parents' strange marriage was already falling apart; I thought the house did it.) it had a forbidden front yard. that is, it had a front yard with flower gardens and traipsy little paths that one was supposed to walk in around each. it was for grownups to visit and admire, so kids had to stay out, period. the front yard had two tall mango trees that we were forbidden to play in or climb or anything. the front yard was for grownups. along the long run from the front to the back of the house, six mango trees grew, with branches that stretched out toward and into each other. heh heh heh! nobody told me not to climb those! and my goodness, I could climb a couple of them high enough to look down on the roof of our second story! whoa! I also could climb the first tree just high enough to crawl out on one of the thick branches. out to where my weight made the branch sag a little, enough to warn me not to crawl out any farther, then I could reach up and pull myself onto a similar branch from the second tree. I had to be careful and deft, since as I transferred my weight from one to the other, the to-branch sagged and the from-branch swept up. if I didn't hold on tight and get out of the way, I could be somersaulted out of both trees. (guess how I learned that!) Ta-rah! Tarzan! and I could similarly move from the second tree to the third. whoa indeed! I could do that starting at either end, but right in the middle, between the third and fourth trees counting from the front or from the back, the branches just weren't quite thick enough to make a similar transfer. damn. it was a problem that had to be solved. I knew better than to trust any rope I could make from string - that's a good story too but from another house - and clothesline wouldn't bear my weight. nope, braiding clothesline didn't make it strong enough either. somewhere I found some old rope so thick I could just hold onto it, but it was too old. it parted when I tested it close to the ground. (see? I was learning.) whoa! then I found a pipe! it was about as thick as the old rope, only it wasn't old - it hadn't rusted or anything. it was long enough that I could just get it home, carrying it over my shoulder. ooo! it was long enough to reach from tree to tree lying along the ground. I tied a clothesline to the pipe down near the end and climbed into the tree then pulled the pipe up to me, then ever so carefully guided the pipe from a Y in one tree's branch to another Y in the other tree's branch. Ta-rah! it held! oops! there was a problem! the pipe was too slick to walk on! and I could use it like a monkey bar to get from one tree to the other, but there were no branches on the other tree that I could get to like that that would hold my weight. heh heh heh! I learned another trick. if I put enough sap from the mango tree on the bottom of my feet, the pipe was no longer too slick! (later I learned that I only needed to start with the soles of my feet dirty enough.) I could walk out almost to the middle of the pipe holding on to skinny branches of the from-tree to help with my balance then take three quick steps across the middle of the pipe and grab (desperately) at skinny branches of the to-tree, again for balance, and walk to where I could climb onto a branch thick enough to hold me! see? problem solved. I could then get from one tree to another from the front tree to the back, or from the back tree to the front! see? it was a magical place!
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