Free Kicking the Sky by Anthony de Sa Page B

roared.
    “Edite, do you believe that stuff?”
    “What stuff?”
    “That homosexuals are to blame for what happened to Emanuel.”
    Edite shoved her cigarette butt into the pipe where all the grey water from the wringer washer drained. “Bad people did a bad thing. They’re to blame, no one else. But Antonio, don’t get caught in it.”
    “In what?” I asked.
    “Don’t be afraid, that’s all.” She blew her bangs into the air. “It’s when you’re afraid of the world that bad things happen.”
    I looked into the tub of the washer. The load was almost done.
    Edite leaned in and her breath tickled my skin. “I can tell you’re itching to get out of here. Before you go, though, I want to tell you something. Remember, when you fight monsters, be careful that you don’t become one. Do you understand?”
    “Is that a proverb?” I asked.
    “Yeah, the gospel according to Edite.”
    I hugged her, and lingered in the smell of smoke trapped in her hair. She hugged me back and wouldn’t let go. I wriggled my way free, ran up the basement stairs, three at a time, then burst onto the veranda and jumped down the stairs in a death-defying bound.
    The march had begun Monday afternoon. Our neighbours walked out their front doors and basement entrances onto the street. Senhora Gloria wore her wool dress but without the headband. Instead her hair was pulled back into a bun. She beamed hate rays at me because of what I knew about her. I turned away, pretending I hadn’t been looking. My uncle David had decided to take a vacation day and was in shorts, black socks, and sandals. He topped off his outfit with an oil-stained
Kiss me, I’m Portuguese
T-shirt. I ducked behind a parked car, afraid he’d make me walk with him. He closed his gate and walked down the street, toward the crowd that had swelled. Senhor Anselmo stopped cutting his lawn and, with grass clippers in hand, joined the march.
    At first I walked on the sidewalk, but then I followed everyone else’s lead and began walking on the road. Beside me were strollers filled with crying babies, and old people with canes dressed in their Sunday best. A man in a wheelchairrolled himself along. I heard a little girl tell her grandmother she would skip rope all the way to City Hall, and as she began to skip she created space around her like a bubble. I waved up to Mr. Wilenski sipping from a tumbler on his porch. He wore sunglasses and a Chinese hat, like the ones people pictured in
National Geographic
wore when they worked in the rice fields. Mr. Wilenski and Mr. Robins lived together. They were always kind to us. After fishing at their cottage, they would often offer my mother the bass or trout they had caught. She accepted the gift with a smile and thanks, but then she’d order me to bury the fish in the backyard for fertilizer. We only ate ocean fish. The sea salt was what kept it healthy and free from disease. My mother explained once that Mr. Robins and Mr. Wilenski were brothers. I never told her I knew they had different last names. A couple of jeers were aimed at Mr. Wilenski. One guy cleared his throat and horked a greener toward him. Mr. Wilenski fumbled with his chair, then stumbled inside, slamming the door behind him. I walked along carefully now, more aware. People came down their walkways and through their front gates to merge with others that passed by in a rising jumble of roars. These were the same people who only a day before had been so sad at the funeral. Now they punched the sky with their fists.
    A man held a placard that read TAR AND FATHER THEM . Photographers and television cameras were recording the march, recording the spelling mistake for the rest of the country to see. As we turned left onto Queen Street, chants for death battled it out with the honking horns of cars trapped in the jam of people. One driver in a Gremlin yelled, “Get off the fuckin’ road!” A group of men and women, includingSenhora Rodrigues, who delivered homemade