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A former Peace Corps Volunteer candidly writes about a special romantic interest who made his journey in the state of Espírito Santo, Brazil even more special. Excerpts from his autobiography.
It was February 1967 and oh, so very hot in Baixo Guandu. Simply walking home from the movie theatre at 10:00 p.m., a half-mile away, often produced a mild sweat. Towards the end of that steamy month there was a huge baile or dance at the club with a terrific band similar to the then popular Tijuana Brass. The publicized commencement of this event was 10:00 p.m., which meant that the music would more than likely start around 11:00 p.m., when it actually did. It was a wonderfully spirited evening. Part of the delight for me was meeting a lovely woman by the name of Maria do Carmo, or Ita, as she liked to be called.
We danced a few dances and I was smitten. When she and her younger sister decided to leave around 3:00 a.m., I asked if I could walk them home. She sheepishly agreed. That evening began a friendship and romance, which endured, helping to sustain and nurture me until the day I departed Baixo Guandu for my return to the States.
I was fast approaching the tender age of 23 and Ita was 21, a teacher at a rural school further in the interior. She earned practically nothing teaching farm kids in a small farming community, located a half-day’s drive from Guandu. She would depart before sunrise on Monday morning and return late Friday afternoon to the house she had lived in forever with her parents, two younger sisters and one older brother. Ita cared for the younger sister, around six years old and born Down syndrome, as if she were her own.
Plain and simple, Ita was a wonderful young woman, a gift I appreciated as best I knew how. I was more successful at being a PCV than I had ever been as a participant in a meaningful relationship with a woman. Back then I was undernurtured, oversexed, unsure of myself and confused about what I might want in a romantic friendship. Hell, when out hiking in this beautiful land I could catch the scent a delicious natural fragrance while looking at a palm tree undulating in the gentle breeze and become turned on!
The first time Ita and I were out hiking on a Sunday afternoon is an example. After only a few minutes of holding hands she thought I had developed a stomachache because I began walking slightly hunched over. There was nothing wrong with my stomach. I started bending over consciously because I had obtained an impromptu, untimely and most unwelcomed erection, and I was embarrassed! Rather than risk further discomfort (emotional and physical), I jumped on her stomachache diagnosis and we sat down for a few minutes until I, umm, what shall I say, calmed myself.
I began the ritual of seeing Ita on Friday and Saturday evenings. She would invite me to her home around 8:30 p.m., a time when her entire family had pretty much gone to bed. Her dad owned the two rickety buses, which transported folks between Baixo Guandu and the neighboring city of Aimores, just over the border into the next state of Minas Gerais, where I taught at the parochial school. Ita’s father and brother drove those busses 12-hour days, six days a week and understandably crashed early (pun intended).
My going to her home was the most socially acceptable maneuver to seeing each other during that era, for if anyone saw her enter my place, the rumor in this small town of less than 6,000 people would have been that Ita was having sex with the Americano. While part of me wished that to happen, I was keenly aware that any such innuendo might very well doom Ita’s future prospects as being an eligible maiden. This was a time when girls were expected to be virgins when they married, especially in the interior.
Also, it is important to remember that there were no stand-alone restaurants or coffee shops in small towns like Guandu. There were only bars and the praça, the central garden in the square where members of the community of all ages congregated. No girls or women and I mean NO females ever, ever, entered the bars. They were male bastions.
So, upon Ita’s invitation I would schlep to her home where we would sit in a kind of love seat on her small front porch. It was extremely private as there were only a few houses on the clay hardened road with the nearest streetlight a few blocks away. We would sit and talk, pausing to listen to the crickets blending with the melody of the nearby stream, and end up making out like bandits. There is part of me which is grateful I was not more sexually sophisticated as I believe if I had suggested intercourse, Ita would have eventually agreed. In fact, she did, but let’s not go there yet!
It is striking to me now, that while Ita appeared shy, she possessed a solid sense of who she was as a person. She was smart, sensitive and cared about people. These are three of the many qualities Nancy, my wife and love of my life, possesses. When I met Nancy, she, like Ita, was on the quiet side, but oh how she has mightily claimed her voice since!
Ita was the first girl friend who told me she loved me and, as our entire relationship was in Portuguese, she said late one evening in a passionate embrace, “Eu te amo, Timoteo.” I was so caught off guard I had not a clue as to how to respond other than keep holding her close, express my gratitude and moan. Actually, not bad for an amateur!
While my relationship with Ita began as a kind of novelty, I found myself looking forward to the ritual of our weekend evenings together. Occasionally, she would come home early because of a religious holiday. When that happened she would send her 18 year old sister to my house during the day announcing she was back in town early with an invitation to arrive well before our usual time.
Once, after Ita had consumed a rare beer with her family at dinner, she spontaneously made the 25-minute walk to my place by herself to retrieve me early. We’re talking big time risk-taking here! She was ever so careful to stand on the dirt street in plain sight, talking to me in front of my open door. After I agreed to come to her house earlier than usual, she asked me give her a 5-minute headstart. Once again, Ita didn’t want any of my neighbors to think she had been alone with me in my house.
When she had the time she would bake a delicious cake, simple, but delicious. We would sit in her kitchen and I would have a piece or two with a glass of milk, then retreat back to her porch where it would only partially digest due to our passionate embraces. It was generally after such culinary endeavors that she would ask if I would be staying permanently in Brazil. Her face often saddened when I gently, but consistently replied, “No.” Ita had made it clear that she would never, ever, leave Brazil.
While I was never in love, I was ever so fond of Ita. I knew she loved me, but I had difficulty letting in her love. I felt like I should be or do something special in return…like care for her more than I did or consider something dramatic such as to remain in Brazil. However, the relationship between us was easy. Ita became a good friend and painfully, she eventually accepted that I would be returning to the States where I would make my life, while she would continue making hers in Brazil. She often talked about her dislike of the men in Guandu and after meeting me, she didn’t think she would settle for a local man (or another Americano).
Ita spoke occasionally of her dream of one day moving to Brasilia, the Capital city, where she had heard they needed teachers and paid well. She also thought her chances of meeting the kind of man she would want as a husband could better be found in Brasilia. The more I encouraged her to go for her dream, if just to go for a visit, the more I began to think about my dream…that of going home before the end of my tour. No matter how much medication I was ingesting, I was finding only partial relief for my asthma. I was not aware of how frightened I was about my condition.
We had occasionally talked about spending a weekend together, which, back then, was virtual heresy! There was a wonderful Peace Corps couple stationed in a small town about 4 hours away. I had talked to Peter and Diane Sysyn about Ita and I spending a weekend with them and they were thrilled about the possibility. While they had each other, some of their weekends could be lonely. The condition went with the territory. However, Ita eventually decided against it and, while I was disappointed, part of me felt greatly relieved.
Towards the end of my tour, when I was being ordered home on a medical, I introduced the possibility of Ita spending 2 days with me in Vitoria before I departed for Rio and the flight home. To my utter amazement, she was enrolled! However, during the last few days I was in Baixo Guandu, I anguished about my plan to get a room together at one of Vitória's few hotels. I was frankly afraid of getting her pregnant. I would then imagine being back in the States and receiving a letter from her announcing she was pregnant.
For a multitude of reasons, such an outcome would have pained me into despairing. I finally told Ita I didn’t want to follow through with our plans. While she was visibly disappointed, she accepted my candor and vulnerability.
On my last night in Baixo Guandu, I told Ita I thought it best to say our good byes right there at the place which had been our hang out, her cozy front porch, rather than for her come to the train station in the morning. She agreed and we shared a tender good bye with promises to write. I told her how having her as my namorada (girl friend) made my life so much easier, so much more rewarding. I openly told her she had been one of my best Brazilian friends, one of my teachers, a comforter and my lovely Brazilian love. I told her she was a remarkable woman and deserved a good man to love and cherish her all her days. I didn’t cry much back in those days, but my eyes had lots of tears as I held her hands and told her these things.
Walking home that last night I felt mostly relief. The earlier fantasy of Ita getting on the train with me evoked not excitement as much as embarrassment or scare. Like what would my friends and Brazilian family in Guandu think of me “taking” Ita to Vitoria?
Yes, it would be easier to attend to my other good byes without her there.
The next morning after the breakfast ritual of café com pão (bread), I said my good bye to a man I had placed in the role of my Brazilian dad, Sr. Alvinho. Then the rest of the family and I hopped in the big jeep and headed to the train station at 7:30 a.m. Arriving at the quaint terminal we were greeted by 10 to 15 of my friends, young and old, gathered to give me a warm send off. I was deeply moved by the show of such affection and kindness.
I was saying good byes individually as the 6-car passenger train approached the station with its horn blaring. As the train came to a screeching halt, I was hurriedly taking last minute photos with my 35mm camera with promises to send copies. As the conductor began the motions which we know as “all aboard,” I threw my two suitcases onto the platform of the second car, standing there teary-eyed and waiving. No sooner had the train begun to move when through the small gathering burst Ita, jumping onto the stairs next to me! With more clarity than I had ever heard from her, she announced she was going to Vitoria with me. Then, with only a small handbag, she quickly helped me store my luggage in the overhead. We easily found a seat allowing us to sit side by side in the sparsely occupied car.
She quickly reached for and clasped one of my hands with both of hers as we sat in silence for a long time; she looking down at our three hands, while I absorbed the remarkable rural scenery I had passed so many times before, now for the last time and with such mixed emotions. After initially grumbling about my upset regarding her maneuver, I smiled, acknowledging her courage and telling her I knew how much she cared for me. Smiling at each other, we both began relaxing.
Now it is important to remember that in the short time I had been in Espírito Santo, I had made more trips and spent more time in Victória than did Ita over the course of her entire life! During this era women from the interior did not travel alone and they certainly didn’t travel with their namorado (boyfriend) very far by bus or train.
I was gentle, but firm, telling her that it was not a good idea to come with me to Vitoria as I was already going home in my mind and heart. Besides, I had already made plans to spend the last night in Vitoria with my host family before heading to Rio. I suggested she disembark at the next stop, a farming village located between Guandu and the large city of Colatina called Mascarenhas. That way she could catch the already departed morning train from Vitoria, waiting perhaps a half-hour for its arrival. If she disembarked further down the track at Colatina, the train from Vitoria would have already passed through and she would have to wait some 5 hours to catch the afternoon one.
She said she had a girl friend, a teacher in Mascarenhas, and decided to disembarque there. I was immediately relieved and began relaxing. In her innocent and childlike manner she told me she had planned to come to the train station before she went to sleep the night before, but it was only at the last minute that she decided to jump on the train without a ticket as it began moving! We both laughed and I was deeply touched. “I wished we had done this earlier,” I said. “Me, too,” she quickly replied!
But whatever delicious fantasies we had respectively created about a romantic getaway would forever remain fantasies. As the train slowed and then screeched to an abrupt halt in Mascarenhas, Ita and I embraced. After holding each other a very long time, right there in public, she gently took my face in her hands, tenderly kissing me and, with tears running down her cheeks, whispered a gentle good bye. I was watching her walk down the station platform as the train resumed its task of getting me closer to home. My God, she was lovely…
I have mentioned that one of the reasons I did not want Ita to spend a weekend with me was the social stigma that would be attached to her doing so. There would be guys who might not date her because she was “tainted” in “truly” having been with the Americano. There I was, trying to defend her honor, and surprisingly, to little avail.
Ita later wrote me that she ended up staying, not an hour or so, but two days with her girlfriend in Mascarenhas! It was as if she wanted local folk to think exactly what I had been defending against by not going to Vitoria together! However, she reassured me that it was no big deal and no one said anything. This was later expressed in correspondence from my good friend, Nelson.
Ita and I exchanged a few letters and in my last one, indicated I would not be writing again. I truly thought that would be the end of the story, but it wasn’t. Some five years later I returned to Brazil and Baixo Guandu with my new and now, former wife (whole other story). We were only spending a few days in Guandu and the father of the family who hosted us, told me I still had money in an account at the bank. He would have known because he was its president!
On the second or third day there, Elin and I were having a leisurely walk around the town and passing the bank, I decided to retrieve my fortune. Just as we approached the entrance, Ita and her sister were exiting. You could have knocked me over with a feather! With all my nervousness I did rather well - making introductions, paying compliments and asking only a few questions. In this town of six thousand inhabitants good news apparently traveled fast. Ita had already heard I had arrived with my wife, disclosed she had never gone to Brasilia even to visit, was continuing to teach in the interior and sadly, had dated only one guy since me, but she didn’t like him. She was kind in saying Elin was pretty.
With that, we both smiled at each other and said our good byes. Entering the bank I greeted old acquaintances, closed my account, retrieving the 15 or so dollars in Brazilian currency and quickly left. After unexpectedly seeing Ita again, it was all a blur. I was disturbed that I had experienced in Ita a deep sadness, with which I may have resonated with a sadness of my own, which had little to do with seeing Ita. My sadness had to do with my own losses and confusions not fully clarified or healed. But damn, I was angry that Ita never even visited Brasilia! I was sorry she never went for her dreams. Coming out of the bank with my new found fortune and watching Ita and her sister walking further into the distance, I was sorry I was so unsure of my own dreams. I was sorry I was so uncertain of myself with the woman standing beside me whom I had recently married.
It would be many years and a number of significant relationships before I truly knew what I wanted and needed in a partner. However, not surprisingly, some of the characteristics and qualities in my wife, Nancy, the love of my life, resided in Ita so long ago. Now, when I think of her, I say a prayer expressing my gratitude that she was with me back then, as well as for her health and happiness today.
Tim Schnabel, M.Ed., is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, trainer, consultant and writer. He lives in the greater metropolitan area of Atlanta, Georgia. His email is: tim.schnabel@mindspring.com
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