Never Stop Walking: A Memoir of Finding Home Across the World

by Christina Rickardsson

I remember thinking that the snake had saved us, and all of Mamãe’s stories about patron saints and angels suddenly felt believable.

The tears of the powerless are not tears of frustration. They’re not tears that gush or tears that burn. The tears of the powerless are silent and resigned. When you know that no one cares, the tears are all you have.

It was always awful to see someone in the slums who’d become a ghost, who was no longer responsive, who didn’t feel anything, who merely existed but didn’t really live.

What had started as a magical night ended in a new day that reminded us of our reality. Santos was ten years old when he killed a man. I remember wondering whether Camile and I would ever do anything so horrible. I was about seven when that happened. We tried to find Santos. We searched for several days, but no one seemed to know where he’d gone. He had just disappeared. I’ve always wondered how he’s living his life today, if he’s living at all. I wish he’d let us be there for him, but he chose to disappear and there was nothing we could do. I liked Santos, and I used to tell him we should get married when we grew up. He would hug me and say, “Sure, whatever you want!” and then he usually gave me a big smile. I’ve always wondered what would be written on Santos’s tombstone: Santos, ten-year-old boy, killed the man who beat him and his mother, fled, disappeared. Murderer. Or: Santos, ten-year-old boy, loved airplanes, wanted to be the best soccer player in the world. Missed. Hero.

I don’t know what was worse, being spit on and pushed away, or being totally ignored. If someone spit on us, at least they saw us, and that was confirmation of our existence. Being totally ignored was like not existing at all, as if you weren’t a human among other humans.

Eventually I heard some children crying plaintively. I heard the men talking again, and knew I was close. A terrible, nasty sense of nausea rose from my stomach. I took a deep breath and carefully peeked around the corner. Five or six children stood lined up. A dark van was parked near them, and there were three men. I remember that I saw an older boy, around ten or twelve years old, holding a little girl’s hand. They both looked terrified. The girl was crying. Camile was standing next to the girl. She looked scared, too. She kept looking around, as if searching for something, someone. She looked so small and frightened. I had never thought of Camile as small or fearful. She was Camile—cleverer than I was at everything, smarter, and better all around. It was weird to see her looking so vulnerable, so little. It hit me that what she kept looking around for was me. She was waiting for me to help her. The men stood with their backs to me, and I dared to peek out a little farther. Camile turned her head my way, and our eyes met. I didn’t know what to do, so I started looking around to see whether I could find anything that might help. What, I didn’t know. If I jumped one of the men, maybe the rest of the kids could take the other two men down? But the men were armed, and I’d never be able to take down one of the men on my own. It would take at least five to ten kids to take one of those men out of commission. I was starting to panic again. I looked at Camile. I’m sure she unde...

“Christiana, life is terrible and unfair sometimes, but never stop walking. Always keep walking,”

When I look out at this concrete city now, where for a part of my life I experienced pain and grief, joy and friendship, it comforts me to think that if I talk about our time together, Camile doesn’t just live on in me. Instead, she lives forever. While so many children disappear, die, and are forgotten, her name will live on, and a part of her story will live on through me and my tale. I know that she would have wanted the truth to come out. And the truth was that the military police, the ones who were supposed to protect the people, cleansed the neighborhoods of street children. Hearing about it today, you might think it sounds like a wicked fairy tale. Unfortunately, it was real. And unfortunately, it’s still happening.

It makes me mad, but above all unbelievably miserable, that at the age of six or seven, I was put in a situation where I was forced to choose between dying with my friend or living with the consequences of not doing so.

It’s hard to say, I forgive you, to yourself.

Had our circumstances been different, his and mine, our biggest problem at that age might have been our parents’ getting a divorce or our not getting the Christmas present we wanted.

I saw how some of the children were kicking her and pushing her away. The image of my crying mother desperately trying to reach me has been another nightmare that has followed me my whole life. The distress I saw in her eyes and felt in my heart is among the most painful things I’ve ever seen or felt.

It was Tuesday, and the routines this morning looked the same as the routines the day before and all the other days: we showered, got dressed, and ate breakfast. When it was time to go to school, to my great horror, the same procedure from the day before was repeated. The children formed rings around me, and we left the orphanage. Mamãe showed up and tried to reach me, and I tried to get to her. That night I got beaten up again. The same thing happened for the entire week. Every day, sobbing and yelling, Mamãe tried to get to me, and every day, I tried to get to her. I spent recesses crying in the same hallway corner. I didn’t do any homework, and I refused to eat any food. I didn’t talk to anyone except my friends, who also got beaten up for siding with me or fighting on my behalf.

Brazil invested billions in building big, beautiful soccer stadiums all over the country for the World Cup. Now they’re empty and unused while people live in extreme poverty. Many of the stadiums have become parking lots.

Brazil, the fifth largest country in the world with a population of more than two hundred million, has a tremendous wealth of natural resources, but the nation has not succeeded in reducing the enormous gap between the rich and the poor. The numbers are frightening: 60 to 70 percent of the total assets go to the wealthiest 10 percent, and scarcely 2 percent go to the poorest 20 percent.

Sometimes you meet people you only get to be with for a short time. What’s difficult is accepting that and moving on.

I learned from her that being gentle and nice isn’t a weakness but a strength.