"She died never knowing the language"

At the turn of the last century, there lived a woman in Rome, the matriarch of a family.  She was, until the day she died, illiterate in Portuguese, the language of her adopted home.  She moved to Brazil to escape her womanizing husband.  She left with a child.  She worked as a chef for one of the millionaire families, I imagine in one of the mansions that once lined Paulista Avenue.  Her name has been forgotten, even to her descendants.

As I heard this story recounted to me by one of those very descendants, I couldn’t help but gasp at the tenacity of a woman of that time who took hold of her life and fled from a husband who didn’t respect her.  Surely I am romanticizing her life.  

Separated by a century, it is easy to imagine a feminist who fought violently for her own rights, lied to board a boat to a foreign country, and proudly surrounded herself with her countrywomen once she arrived in Brazil.  Perhaps she drove the unknown husband to adultery.  Perhaps she had lovers of her own.

But those are not the stories inspiration spun for me.  The story I found was one of a woman on a mission to raise a child away from a man set on destruction.  Repressed, but content; finding the proof of philandering is what breaks her.  Her heart is unbroken.  Her will remains strong.  It is her complicity which disappears. 

And so, my poem for Gabi.

"She died not knowing the language"

Blood stains darken given hours

Losing their intensity. Lipstick though?

That keeps its hue-- Guarding it lustfully,

 hours after it evilly blooms

Over a woman's mouth and onto hidden seams of her lovers trousers.

Maria never colored her lips.

Her hands were too busy,

Beating laundry,

Forcing baby lips to a weeping nipple.

Pride showed in her work.

In the corners swept clean

The creases ironed crisp

Her child fat

Her husband fed.

She knelt by her bed

To clink the rosary.

Flipped through a Bible

Though the words were embroidery.

Life repeats itself, she thought.

Until the morning

The red bloom blossomed

On the inner seam

Of her husband's trousers.

Maria had friends

Who lied for years.

She would not be like them.

She knew wax from blood.

She knew when to leave.

Calm belied the rapidity with which 

A suitcase was bought 

Hidden away in the pantry

Where he never went. 

Escape took two weeks to plan. 

Two weeks in which she noticed 

Six more marks, 

On six more suits.

But she was busy

Selling the furniture

And buying a passport. 

One night, Maria forgot dinner. 

For that, he slapped her so hard

Blood oozed from her nose

She did not stem the flow

She watched it fall

To her high collar

And change to brown. 

She laughed. 

She left. 

Locked the door. 

Tossed the suits from the window. 

With baby on her hip

She walked to the docks

Bound for Brazil,

Where she'd end her life

With hands scorched by ovens

Ears deaf to the language,

But free.