There are more things by Yara Rodrigues Fowler

Author:Yara Rodrigues Fowler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

(this is this is what happened)

There was a family story. Catarina had heard it in parts, from Tia Lamis, Tia Lygia and Vovô Olga, and from the history books.

On the night of the 31st of March 1964, the military surrounded the presidential palace in Brasilia.

That night the military surrounded the governor’s palace in Recife.

That night Vovô Lipo was put in prison.

But that afternoon Vovó Olga had taken their children and she left the governor’s palace. She took her children back to their family house and pulled off the dustsheets. And when the military came and when they asked her, guns in their hands, guns along the length of their torsos, if she was harbouring enemies of the state in her house, communists like her husband, she said to them that she would never tell. She kept her chin high and her voice did not shake. Her ancestors had survived worse. The military police stepped through her house. Boots on the tiled floor. Her husband was not at home. Her cook and her children were in their beds. Her youngest, Sônia, was five years old.

Seven years later, the military police came again. They asked her, guns in their hands, guns along the length of their torsos, if she was harbouring enemies of the state in her house. Communists like her daughter. Vovó Olga clenched her lips and mouth at the sound of the name. Laura. This time they hit her when she did not speak. Their rifle butts made bruises on her belly and her breasts. She said she would never tell. They pulled her out onto the street, where she did not trip over the cobbles. They shouted, Where is Laura? Where is your communist daughter? Terrorista. She clenched her whole body. She said she would never tell, and this time she shouted it. Every neighbour heard her say it and her two youngest daughters heard her say it from their beds. Every neighbour and her two youngest daughters heard the military police beat her in the cobbled street. Vovó Olga did not know where Laura was. Vovó Olga would have killed a man to know where in the wide and infinite world her eldest daughter was.

Vovô Lipo was not killed in prison. He fled for Paris, where he lived apart from his wife and his daughters for fifteen years. Vovô Lipo came back to Recife after the amnesty in 1979, which protected him from prosecution just as it protected the generals and the torturers. And, when state elections resumed in 1986, Vovô Lipo was elected governor of the state of Pernambuco for the second time. Sugar cane land. He rolled his sleeves up. He was a hero. His hair was grey. His wife slept in another room. The sugar mills had been industrialised, machines raked the earth. The unions weren’t asking for land reform anymore. It was true now that everyone could vote, although not everyone was literate. 1994 he was re-elected again.

There were many history books about Vovô Lipo and some statues of him and one street named after him.

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