Teresa had been a good girl who went to church; the priest and the teacher in school liked her and told her parents this daughter of theirs was a gift from God. She had become someone people shouted ugly names after. She felt ugly. For those weeks of walking from the north she had worn old jeans that had holes in them and a shirt that had been her father's. This was what she still wore, here, to entice custom and was why she could charge so little. There was no proper place to wash. Her hair was greasy. She knew she smelled bad.
She had to force herself to go into a shop as she was and buy a dress. She was afraid they would simply throw her out. She knew exactly what she wanted: she had seen the dress on a rail, from the pavement. She walked in, the money in her hand, and said, 'I want that one.' She knew she could not try it on, being so dirty. The assistant took her money, and put the dress in a bag, giving Teresa cold angry looks. 'I want you to keep it here for me just for a few days,' said Teresa.
The assistant did not want to, but Teresa's pleading eyes did speak loudly enough to make her change her mind. She would put the bag aside, but only for a week. Teresa knew she could not take that dress into the favela: her mother would have it off her, to sell for food. And Teresa privately agreed that her mother would be right. She knew too well the anguish of watching children ask for food that wasn't there.
Teresa was stood up against a wall, in the dark, and even in daylight, until she had money for good shoes. She got the dress from the shop, and put it on, a red dress, with a cleavage, but not too much, tight at the waist she was a different person. She did this behind a bush in a public garden. She put on the shoes, high-heeled, delicate: she was going to find it hard walking in them. And now she had to find a way to clean herself, and this needed more courage than anything she had done. She went boldly to a big hotel, one of the best, and into it, as if she belonged there. The hardest was walking in those shoes so people would think she was used to them. The employees in the hotel lobby did take a good look, but thought she was off to join some man in his room. She found a toilet, and no one else was there. She lifted up that dress and, using a rag she had brought with her, washed her legs and up to her waist; slipped the dress down and washed armpits and breasts. Tempted to take the soap away, to give her family, pride stopped her: I'm not a thief, she decided. Someone came in, hardly glanced at Teresa, used a cubicle, came out, washed her hands, standing beside Teresa who was washing her hands.
The intruder went. Now Teresa was clean, except for her hair, and she had to take her biggest risk yet. She washed her hair, unable to hear properly for that time, and was lucky enough to have her hair out of the basin, while she was standing leaning back to squeeze water out of it, when a woman came in, and stared, but did not say anything. She left. Teresa combed her wet hair. She knew that now, clean, in her new red dress, her tall white shoes, with her hair smooth and sleek she was as good as anybody, and she walked out of the hotel and sat down at a table in the sun, so that her hair would dry. It was late morning. She did not know how to judge the people there, tourists mostly, except for the girls whom she knew to be from the favelas, like herself. Like herself, they were all good-looking. With a nice dress and shoes and the price of a drink a pretty girl from one of the worst slums in the world could sit at a table outside a fine hotel and no one would say a word. A waiter might, though. The other customers might not know who they were, the waiting girls, but the waiters would have understood it all.
But when one came, she ordered an orange juice and sat there, by herself, a long time. She saw one of the girls go off with a man into the hotel. At last a man did come to sit at her table, and she had to be courageous. He was a tourist, and spoke ten words of Portuguese. He was a German. He asked how much, she told him a sum so enormous she waited for him to laugh at her: but this was a famous hotel, she knew that, and everyone here was well-dressed, and very well-fed. He said, yes, he agreed. Now she had a bad moment: was he going to ask her if she had a room? But no, he took her arm and they walked back through the town to a smaller hotel, where no one stopped him, with her, going to the lift. She was carrying with her, in the glossy bag of the dress shop, her old clothes, which did not smell nice. She managed to leave this bag in the lift, as they went out of it.
This man liked her, and asked her to come every day he had a week here. This was a stroke of luck: she did not know yet how big a one it was. But perhaps it was not only luck. She was beautiful, she discovered, looking into the long mirror in the room. She was beautiful and she had an aptitude for sex. She did not mind him. He was not like the soldiers.
At the end of the week with the German she took her mother more money than she had ever done, at one time. But it was not all she had, and she was becoming obsessed with the danger she was in, carrying wads of money taped under her breasts. Banks were not for people like her. She did not even have an identity card yet, and knew that if the police caught her she would be in bad trouble. She stood in line for a day and got her card, a piece of paper saying she was Teresa Alves. She felt let down by this identity card, which did not match what she felt about herself. And the card did not solve her problem with the money. A certain shopkeeper would keep money for customers, for a price, but she did not trust him. Yet she had to, and did give him half of what she had.
She did not go to the tables outside that first hotel for a week, and when she did, she had bought another dress, a green one, and she had been to a real hairdresser for the first time in her life. She was by far the prettiest woman at those tables, and she got another customer at once, a Greek. Her career at that hotel went on well, for a couple of months. The family was being fed. Her nest egg was growing. And she was planning how to escape being a tart. She was less afraid than she had been, in the time of the soldiers, about disease, but she was nervous, although she had been to a doctor who told her she was all right so far.
Being a whore was expensive. She knew that her profession was costing her, in clothes and expensive drinks and make-up and the hairdresser and paying a maid in the hotel to keep her good clothes safe for her, what her father had earned in years of his life of being a poor farmer.
Then she had another lucky break: she was lucky, she knew. One of her customers, an American working in the theatre, used her for information about local manners and mores, took her on trips to check out locations, asked her to translate simple things by now she knew some English, not much, but enough to make it seem that she knew much more. And so she was becoming known in that world: television, film, theatre, and was offered work. And she gave up whoring, though she would earn less money being respectable. She went back to the favela every few days; she had a cheap room in Rio: at last she had a place to keep her money and her clothes. Her mother said to her with bitterness that soon she would take herself off, ungrateful daughter, and leave them all to starve. But Teresa could never do that, and her mother knew it. Both understood the mother was angry out of shame. Now Teresa told her that she had a good job, but her parents did not believe her, but pretended to, to save her face and theirs, so they were not living off a tart's wages.
The family was better off than many in the favela. The father had built a little brick house with an iron roof, where the rain banged and thundered. There were two rooms and in them not six people, but three, mother, father, and a sickly little girl. The two boys, the one nearest to Teresa, fourteen, and the one down from him, twelve, had joined the gangs of boys that roamed the streets, stealing, taking what they could. If they did return home it was only to demand some money and they were off again. Sometimes Teresa saw a gang of street kids, looked out for her brothers and saw them rushing past, or idling with blank eyes, on the pavement edges. Drugs. They took them and they sold them. She scolded them, but knew she ought to be afraid of these cool, cruel street children who killed for the sake of a handful of reals. But she had helped bring them up, recently had fed them, and so she felt she had the right to scold. She gave them money. And then had to keep a lookout for the gangs, because it might not be only her brothers she could expect to come demanding money.
She did not go to the tables outside that first hotel for a week, and when she did, she had bought another dress, a green one, and she had been to a real hairdresser for the first time in her life. She was by far the prettiest woman at those tables, and she got another customer at once, a Greek. Her career at that hotel went on well, for a couple of months. The family was being fed. Her nest egg was growing. And she was planning how to escape being a tart. She was less afraid than she had been, in the time of the soldiers, about disease, but she was nervous, although she had been to a doctor who told her she was all right so far.
Being a whore was expensive. She knew that her profession was costing her, in clothes and expensive drinks and make-up and the hairdresser and paying a maid in the hotel to keep her good clothes safe for her, what her father had earned in years of his life of being a poor farmer.
Then she had another lucky break: she was lucky, she knew. One of her customers, an American working in the theatre, used her for information about local manners and mores, took her on trips to check out locations, asked her to translate simple things by now she knew some English, not much, but enough to make it seem that she knew much more. And so she was becoming known in that world: television, film, theatre, and was offered work. And she gave up whoring, though she would earn less money being respectable. She went back to the favela every few days; she had a cheap room in Rio: at last she had a place to keep her money and her clothes. Her mother said to her with bitterness that soon she would take herself off, ungrateful daughter, and leave them all to starve. But Teresa could never do that, and her mother knew it. Both understood the mother was angry out of shame. Now Teresa told her that she had a good job, but her parents did not believe her, but pretended to, to save her face and theirs, so they were not living off a tart's wages.