Adriana Maria do Céu Mão de Ferro Arena de Corta. A Outra. Outrinha. The other one, the little other one. Average Jane. That’s my final name. That’s the name that has shaped my life the most. The average one. Not the best looker, not the brightest and most outgoing. Not the one vovo gave the Easter money to first. Average Adriana. I had good legs but my body was too short and my nose and ears too big. Little slitty eyes, and my skin was too dark. My parents thought they were doing me a favour. They didn’t want me to have any illusions. They said, you’ll never be a looker, you’ll never be the golden one, the lucky one, so don’t expect the world to fall into your hands like a peach. You’ll have to work for it. You’ll have to use every one of your strengths and talents to get what others get because of their looks, their smiles. The Other One. No one has called me that in fifty years. You are the only person on this world knows that name. And I can feel my jaw setting hard. My teeth are clenching. All because of that name. Fifty years on this world, and still that name! That name!
So: I was born without grace or favour. So: my nose was too big and my skin too dark. I would make myself exceptional. I would be the one who would do anything, dare anything. I knew I would never be caught. In school I was the kid with her hand up first. I was the girl who wouldn’t shut up when the boys were talking. I was the one who hacked into the school network and changed exam results. The obvious geek boy did it. I asked Baby Norton, the futsal star all the girls worshipped, to slip his hand down the front of my skirt. And he did and everyone was so shocked. I wore the camouflage of the pretty around me. I was never again picked for the girls’ futsal team. So be it: I found my own sport, Brazilian jiu jitsu. My mother didn’t approve at all. Pai loved MMA on the cable and he found me a dojo. I was small and sneaky and dirty and could throw boys twice my age. I was in secondary school then. Oh I was bad. I beat the pretty girls to the guys because they knew I would do anything. I did, but not as much as the pretty girls thought I did. The legend was enough. The pretty girls cut me out of their social cliques and parties. Big loss. They tried schemes and stings to humiliate me but none of them could dream up a social scam worth a damn. They put stuff about me on Facebook; I hacked them back ten times. I could code better than all of them put together. And they didn’t dare try to physically bully me or throw battery acid at me; I was quick and I was hard and I could throw them around like Barbie dolls. Secondary school was war. Isn’t it always, everywhere?
The guys were mostly okay, by the way. They talked anal but guys always talk anal. A blow job and they were satisfied. They were as scared of me as the girls.
Isn’t this scandalous? A lady of my years talking about anal and oral sex.
Papai was delighted when he heard I was going to study engineering. Extraction engineering: I was a true daughter of Minas Gerais. A true Iron Hand. My mother was ten types of horrified. Engineering was a man’s thing. I would never marry. I would never have children. I would eat with my fingers and have dirt under my nails and no man would look at me. And in São Paulo. That dreadful dreadful city.
I loved São Paulo. I loved the scary ugliness of it. I loved its anonymity. I loved its banality. I loved the endless vista of skyscrapers. I loved that it didn’t compromise. Compared to the moon, it’s an angel of beauty. There is no beauty on the moon. São Paulo was like me; nothing to look at but bursting with energy, ideas, anger and spit.
I found a good group of friends. Guys most and first – it was still unusual to find a woman studying extraction engineering and I knew better how guys worked than girls. Men were simple and straightforward. I found I could have girls as friends. I found out what how the friendship of women differs from the friendship of men. I found I could like girls. I found I could love them. I was an opportunist, I was flagrant. I knew tricks. I think of that young woman and her boldness and brashness and I adore her. She wasted no opportunity. I had only just moved on to the campus when I painted myself in the national flag, head to toenails and went on a naked bike ride through the streets of São Paulo. Everyone looked at me, no one saw me. I was naked and invisible. I liked that very much. Oh, the body I had then. So much more I could have done with it!
I will tell you now about Lyoto. He is a name trawled up from deep – do you know what trawling is? I sometimes forget that there are old world words and ideas the new generations have no reference for. Animal similes – my grandchildren just frown. Luna has never seen a cow, or a pig, or even a chicken, alive and clucking.
Lyoto. I can’t see him clearly any more, but I remember his voice. He had a southern accent – he was from Curitiba. I think he was my first love. Oh, you smile. I didn’t flirt with him, tease him, seduce him, play sexy games with him so it must have been love. I met him on the jiu jitsu team. Sports teams, they’re all sex sex sex; everyone is doing it all the time. We were at a competition – I was on the women’s team, Light class, Purple belt. He was Heavy, Black Fifth. I remember his weight and his belt, but not his face.
Papai would borrow the flashiest Mercedes from the showroom and drive to home competitions. It was a long drive but he enjoyed it. Afterwards he would drive me through Jardins and take me out to dinner somewhere expensive. I would step out of that big car and feel like a millionaire.
Then one time he drove up and I didn’t get in the car and go with him. I wanted to go drinking beer with Lyoto and then on to a party. I remember the sad look on Papai’s face that we wouldn’t be driving down Rua Barão de Capanema again checking off the menus on the car screen. I think I made him feel like a millionaire too. He still came to the tournaments, right up until I went to Ouro Preto for post-grad. It was too far for him to drive and I was losing interest in the fighting by then. Year after year, tumbling about on a mat, to advance by a Dan here, a belt there.
Lyoto had been dead two years by then. We had been lovers for over a year. I wasn’t there when he was shot down in the Praça da Sé. I was working on a term paper when the word came. I never was the political one. I was an engineer, he was a literature student. An activist. I was just a natural capitalist who had never taken a position because I had never really thought about politics, he told me. I had pragmatism. He had theory. I could never debate with him because he had everything thought out; argument after argument like a colonial army. When one line fell, the next would advance, firing. The world order was rotten. Diseased with social injustice, racism, sexism, inequality and bad gender politics. I thought that was just the natural state of Brazil. But even I could see the number of helicopters that flew over USP campus increasing every day: the limousines of the hyper-rich, the people who lived up there among the tower-tops and never touched the ground. The changes fell like micro-meteors, like hundreds of tiny impacts. The bus and metro fares going up again. My friends tagging their bicycles, because theft was going up, because fares were going up. Shops buying full shutters because more people were sleeping in shop porches. More cameras on the streets, because of the street sleepers. Surveillance drones. In São Paulo! Maybe in some European state, or the Gulf, but it is not the Brazilian way. Where there are drones, there will always be police. Where there are police, there will always be violence. And every day the price of bread went up, up, up. If there is one thing that will bring people on to the streets, it’s the price of bread.
Lyoto was committed. He went down to Praça da Sé and painted placards and occupied spaces. He thought I was uncaring. I was caring, but not about people I didn’t know. Not about Chinese companies buying up whole provinces and driving people off the land. Not about refugees from the country, who even favelados looked down on. I could only care about what I knew. My family, my friends, the family I would have some day. Family first, family always.