I recently took a writing class offered by the Flat Iron Writer’s Room in Asheville. (Classes during the pandemic are now offered on Zoom and even attended by aspiring writers outside of Asheville.) “Speculation and Invention in Nonfiction Writing” is a way of using techniques of guessing or wondering, to enhance larger truths in a memoir. Imagining what might have happened if you weren’t actually present or if something occurred long ago, is a an effective technique in nonfiction writing. It should be used as a means of understanding a character more fully or perhaps a situation that you might not know all the details about.
Tessa Fontaine, who taught the class, had us practice various ways of doing this in short writing prompts during our online classes. Then, we were assigned to write a longer piece. I wrote about an incident that I remember vividly that happened when I was a teenager living with my family on Rua Terra Nova in São Paulo, Brazil. It was disturbing and since I have had many questions about what I remember, it was a good way to practice the “art of speculating” in memoir.
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A Casa em Rua Terra Nova….
São Paulo, Brazil - 1960
A black taxi drove into the cul de sac and stopped at #31. I watched from an upstairs window, as the driver unloaded a battered cardboard suitcase and a birdcage on the cobblestone sidewalk. A gray haired, heavy woman in a black skirt and frayed bedroom slippers got out. The doorbell shrilled. I heard Feli, the Spanish house maid, open the glass front door that echoed in the marble hallway and then unlock the outside gate. The new cook walked in.
Anna, was unlike any maid we had ever known. To us children, she was old with limp gray hair pulled into a tight pony tail as she shuffled along the tile kitchen floors. She didn’t speak much and when she did, her Portuguese had a foreign accent. Possibly she was from Eastern Europe or Russia and might have immigrated to Brazil after the World War II. Perhaps she had had a family of her own, though now she only had a parrot in a cage, as far as we could tell. My little brothers were delighted and ready to adopt the parrot as a pet. Anna was not pleased and kept them away from her bird whom she treated as her child. There was something sad about her that frightened me. It could very well be, that Mother hired her not knowing about the bird. She told Anna the parrot could stay but he’d have be in his cage in the laundry room on the shelf above the wash tubs. At night when she went to bed she covered the parrot’s cage with a cloth and all was quiet.
Anna and the parrot may have lived with us a few weeks or perhaps a month or two. Mother must have known that she would have to be let go when she found another cook. Bringing a pet parrot into our house was not ideal. Feli, who lived in the tiny maids’ quarters with Anna might have objected. Perhaps Anna wasn’t a very good cook, although Mother did the food shopping and made up the menus. She ordered dishes that we would eat and taught Anna how we liked things cooked “the American way”.
While Anna worked for us, she took the parrot outdoors in the garden occasionally. She hung the cage by the back door while pinning the wet laundry on clothes lines. She sang to the parrot and was kind to him in a way that she wasn’t with me or my brothers. My brothers were impatient wanting to touch the parrot and begged Anna to let him out of the cage. She wouldn’t.
The boys spent time coaxing the parrot to speak. Como vai? Alo! Obrigado…were a few of the parrot’s greetings – “How are you? Hello…Thanks.
Anna told my brothers he didn’t talk much because he was old. “Éle e velho.”
Thinking back, she might have trained him not to talk so she could take him with her wherever she worked and lived. Perhaps he was really old, as Amazon birds do live from 25 to 75 years depending on their species. But age does not limit them from talking.
Like most large Brazilian houses, ours had a high stucco wall around the garden with broken pieces of glass on top for security. We heard conversations, noise and barking dogs from surrounding houses but never saw anyone. João, the gardener, tended the dense tropical plants. There were banana trees that regularly produced green fruit. A giant fig tree took over half of the yard. We didn’t eat the figs as the gardener told us they were poisonous. It was the fig tree that was my brothers’ favorite hangout. With branches that were low enough to climb up on, they picked the gooey fruits and threw them at each other as boys do. Stray cats sometimes came over the wall into the garden but Anna was careful to keep an eye on the cage while she allowed the parrot some fresh air… um pouco de ar fresco.
I heard the scream from downstairs early one morning. Then there was silence. I listened again as I crept downstairs and went towards the kitchen and laundry room where I heard loud moaning and weeping. Mother was there murmuring kind phrases in broken Portuguese.
Sinto muito…tudo ficará bem.. she said to Anna. “I am so sorry…everything will be alright.”
Anna was weeping inconsolably as she clung to the bird cage. The parrot was not on his perch but lying on the bottom dead. Mother gave me a look that said I should leave.
As I backed out of the room, my little brothers were pushing behind me to see what had happened. I heard Anna shriek, as she saw them.
“Foram eles”, she said pointing in a menacing way accusing my brothers. “They did it!” She broke into heaving sobs again.
Mother fixed us breakfast that morning which none of us ate. The driver took us to school and as we drove away from 31 Rua Terra Nova, I wondered what would happen to Anna now. I was scared.
In the afternoon when we were back from school. The house was quiet still holding on to death. Mother had afternoon tea ready. She sat down with us and said that Anna had packed up her things and left.
“Anna is going to be alright,” she assured us, “and I’ll be looking for a new cook.”
No one ever talked about what killed the parrot. Had he died of old age? Perhaps he had picked up one of the poisonous figs that were all over the garden. Could one of my brothers have fed him something behind Anna’s back and made the parrot sick? Maybe one or both of them was too scared to confess their guilt. Could this be a secret they still carried with them? I had never asked.
Mother never said what happened to the dead bird. João, the gardener, could have been at the house that day and dug a hole to bury the parrot in the back garden. Or, Anna, who treated the parrot as her child, could have taken him with her to bury somewhere else. Perhaps she had a friend or even a distant relative in the big city of São Paulo who would help her. I comforted myself imagining she did have a place to go beyond our house…but I didn’t know for sure.
We never talked about Anna and the parrot again. But when I think back to our lives at 31 Rua Terra Nova in São Paulo, Brazil I have never forgotten Anna and the parrot. For me, they remain one of the most vivid memories of that house and a mystery that has never been solved.
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