Sea of Tranquility

Maria da Conceição is a Brazilian woman who is twenty-six years old. She has a degree in finance from a university in Brazil, but she wanted to emigrate to Canada. However, she didn't know anybody there. As well, she neither spoke English nor French well enough to have the qualifications necessary to stay in the country permanently, according to the Ministry of Immigration and Citizenship. So she decides to immigrate illegally, staying after the expiration of her visitor's visa. She finds a job in a clothing factory, "under the table," without paying any social insurance. At the factory, another female worker, a Chinese woman, advises her: "You should marry a Canadian citizen right away. Otherwise, you'll be deported if they catch you."

Worried, Maria asks: "What do I do? I don't know anybody."

The Chinese woman replies as she shrugs her shoulders: "Maybe I can ask someone. But don't tell anybody, eh?"

Maria doesn't say anything, dreading deportation all the while. Then she forgets about it. A few weeks later, however, the Chinese woman tells Maria over lunch in a whisper: "It looks like I found somebody."

However, the woman won't divulge any details: she has to talk about it with someone else, "another party." The Chinese woman arranges through this "other party" a meeting with a man who's willing to sponsor her. The man, whose name is Gilles, meets her at a restaurant to negotiate the terms. They hit it off, they like each other — they even laugh. Gilles seems nice, but he only wants to sponsor her at the price of thirty thousand dollars, deducted each week from her check over the next six or seven years. She can't believe it — that's a lot of change! But Gilles smiles at her and says: "Don't worry, my dear: I'll take good care of you. That's a guarantee..."

Reluctantly, Maria agrees. So they move in together into his little apartments in the Plateau, a low-rent district of Montreal at the time, before the yuppies started to take over. Then he goes with her to the office of the Ministry of Immigration and Citizenship to formally sponsor her. It's official: Maria da Conceição is now a permanent resident of Canada, as long as Gilles agrees to sponsor her over the next six years, as well as her son, if he ever comes to Canada. She doesn't have to live with him, he says. However, it's better this way, so that the people in the Ministry of Immigration and Citizenship will think that he's able to support her. If Gilles can't support her, it's grounds for expulsion for her and imprisonment for him, if there's any false pretext. As they understand it, the whole process would start all over again, if she had to find another sponsor. It's very complicated: an honest mistake could mean deportation for her, or even imprisonment for him. However, the neighbours think that they're a couple, which is part of the plan.

However, they aren't really a couple: she doesn't want to sleep with him, but in her own bedroom. She has a flag of Brazil tacked to the wall, with a green background, a yellow diamond in the centre, and a globe with the stars of the southern sky. Across the globe, like a sash across a soldier's chest, is Brazil's national motto: "O ordem e o progresso." Order and Progress.

Gilles is over forty, never married, no children, tall and thin with stooped shoulders. He's unemployed because of a back injury in an industrial accident: a shelf of automobile chassis fell on top of him at work, several tons — he was almost killed. He's living on monthly disability cheques now. It's doubtful that he'll ever work again. Life is therefore bitter for him sometimes. Because of a chronic backache, he's really suffering. In order to sleep, he has to take a lot painkillers. Even with the painkillers, he can't always sleep. Maria feels sorry for him. He doesn't want to complain about it, but you can hear him groaning at night sometimes.

During their daily meetings, they often feel uncomfortable together, ill at ease. Gilles is short with her, their conversations, without intimacy. Like most couples, they talk about the bills for the hydro, the gas and the telephone, but they're strangers to each other. There are long silences between them, silences that are unbearable at times. Maria is open in personality, gregarious but emotional: she cries easily, whereas Gilles is charming but less open than her. But she tries to show him some consideration, because of his back. For example, she massages his back for him whenever he asks. As well, she buys what he likes to eat when she does the grocery shopping without him asking. Gilles, he isn't a bad devil, showing some appreciation sometimes: "You're a good woman," he says ironically. "You could be a good wife to someone..."

However, Gilles is a devil: difficult, unbearable at times, hateful. For example, he complains about the apartments not being sufficiently clean, of the dishes in the sink. Maria works six days a week at times, but Gilles — who's unemployed — expects her to do the housework as well: cook and clean, do the laundry. Maybe it's only the demon of middle age: he wants a woman from time to time — sometimes, any woman. Because she doesn't love him, maybe that's the reason why he feels himself starting to hate her. But maybe he doesn't understand that love is compassion towards strangers, as well as the sexual desire for another person. But in the end, he doesn't like living with someone who doesn't love him, who doesn't want his love. So he and Maria argue sometimes, usually because of some little thing. Since she works all day, sometimes twelve hours a day, she's tired at the end of the day. It isn't fair, she thinks. Finally, they get into an argument argue about it. She yells out loud: "I'm human, not an animal!"

Then she starts to cry. Gilles is silent, realizing that he has hurt her. She's very tired: she needs sleep more than anything else. So he says in a low voice, with some shame: "I'm really sorry, Maria, I was wrong, okay? But I can't do some things anymore..."

He holds her in her arms and lets her cry. She has more respect him more after that incident, because he has apologized. But Gilles' back gets worse and worse: the pain is no longer bearable. He can't sleep at night, and he needs a cane; he's barely able to walk without it. When she comes back home from work, she can hear him moaning painfully in his bedroom. Sometimes, she can hear him crying. It's evident that the painkillers are no longer effective. In the end, Gilles cries in agony, after many nights without sleep: "I want to die, I can't take it anymore!"

Maria replies softly as she cries for herself as well as him: "You'll have to kill me too, Gilles: I need a husband. I'm the one who's facing deportation..."

Then she holds him tenderly in her arms in an attempt to console him. The next morning, she takes a day off to go with him to the doctor, without him having to ask. It has to be done, she thinks: he's in bad shape. As well, there are people who think that he's her husband. We don't exist all alone in a vacuum, you know: we worry about what other people think, openly, if not subconsciously.

The doctor tells them that he needs surgery, because of pressure to the sciatic nerve. But the doctor warns: "I can't give you a guarantee. The surgery might not work..."

But Gilles chooses the surgery anyway, no longer able to bear the pain. The rehabilitation is difficult, the physical therapy, arduous. At times, he wants to give up the rehabilitation because of the pain and stay in bed for good. He's depressed, but she tries to encourage him: "Don't give up, Gilles," she says, "don't give up..."

She telephones furtively from her cell phone at work every day when she has a break, so that she doesn't lose her job — they don't allow cell phones there. She takes care of him at home after work, out of compassion, because he needs her. As well, she needs him too, that's true, but she doesn't like to see anybody suffer — anybody.

After a few months, he can walk to the park with the aid of a cane. After a few more months, he can walk without the cane. When it's possible, the weather permitting, when she doesn't have to work, she goes to Mount-Royal Park during the weekend. She learns that there's tender side of him: he likes children, he likes to watch them play in the park in all their innocence. If they're allowed to listen by their parents, he even reads books to them from the library at times. He also does magic tricks, him, the amateur magician. He's a different person then: happy, no longer angry; he's not such a bad devil then. He always returns from the park in a better mood, on his plate, though the rehabilitation is difficult, if not painful. But he tells her one day: "Life is good, Maria, despite everything..."

Maria merely nods her head. Without him saying anything, she realizes that he wants children.

With obvious pride, Gilles shows her the city of Montreal. From their balcony, they can see all the neighbours and gossip with them. Whenever they move to new apartments, usually around the first of July, their friends and neighbours always help them. The Metro, with the souterraine and its underground stores, is new and clean, so they ride the Metro to various parts of the city: to Old Montreal, to the centre-ville. They stroll up and down St. Denis Street, with its fine old buildings, and St. Catherine Street, with its many stores. The stroll up and down St. Lawrence Street with its night clubs and ladies of the night. When one of them greets Gilles, he talks with her without embarrassment as he introduces her to Maria: he knew her in the past, from Catholic school, he says, but Maria feels herself getting jealous. They see such futuristic monstrosities as the Biodome and Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome across from the Old Port: "Look at that building there," Maria exclaims, pointing to the geodesic dome. "It looks like a moon that is just landed!"

"That's right," Gilles replies in agreement. "It looks like the moon..."

In the winter, Maria sees the snow for the first time: it's a lot of fun. The earth is beautiful when it first snows. The branches of the bare trees are still covered with a thin coat of fresh snow, not a dry and light powdery snow thrown up in circular gusts by a violent wind. But there's a lot of snow in Montreal in the winter. However, Gilles feels sufficiently recovered from the surgery to go ice skating. "You must be crazy," Maria exclaims, doubtful. "You're going to re-injure your back!"

"It's cool," Gilles replies. "Me, I was born on skates."

That Sunday, Gilles persuades Maria to ice skating with him. In Mount-Royal Park, they lace up their skates, then they skate between the tall maples and tall oaks; it's a lot of fun. Gilles never falls down on the hard ice, not once, whereas Maria falls several times. But the second time, then the third time they go skating, Maria knows her stuff: she learns to skate before the end of the winter, when they have to hang up their skates, like everybody else in Montreal. He who hates the winter in Montreal, in the province of Quebec, ought to live somewhere where it doesn't snow, like Florida.

Maria da Conceição is mysterious to him, an enigma. Maybe she isn't beautiful in the classic sense, like a star in Hollywood, but she has a certain charm. She's nice, pretty in the face: she has her own beauty. With medium dark skin, frizzy hair, medium brown, down to her shoulders, and eyes almost black, she's of uncertain ethnicity — exotic even. Well in the flesh, with large breasts, she will probably get bigger when she gets older, he knows, when she has had children, but she's pleasant to the eye now as well as in personality: he likes her shoulders and hips, her entire bone structure. When he sits with her at the table on the balcony of their apartments, with her all alone in a reverie, he asks himself what she's thinking, what poverty, what personal troubles in life she has experienced. But her beautiful dark brown eyes are opaque: they reveal nothing about her past life. He would like to ask what she's thinking, but maybe she can't articulate very well what she's thinking. Maybe she lacks the fluency in either French or English to articulate what she's thinking. Or maybe she's only shy. He doesn't know, but he doesn't want to be too curious.

So he sits down at the table next to her without saying anything. He's about to touch her hand when she sees a sparrow, crowned with white feathers on its head, with brown and black stripes, landing in front of the sliding door on the balcony. She whispers, all excited: "That's a tico-tico! You always see them in Brazil..."

"There's lots of sparrows here," he replies. "They don't usually migrate in the winter like other birds, but stay the whole year. They like the city, the sparrows. But that one there, it's very rare, like teeth on a chicken. You don't usually see them here anymore. Or at least I don't see them..."

On weekends, she makes telephone calls to Brazil. She doesn't offer any information, it's none of his business. So Gilles decides to mind his own business: he doesn't say anything while supposing that she's talking with family members. But he wonders about these telephone calls. Then she cries after she hangs up the telephone, after she has been shouting. He asks gently: "What's wrong, eh?"

But she shakes her head: she's unable to talk about it. But she lets him hold her in his arms while she cries. He understands, he thinks: it's an argument with someone close to her — a boyfriend in Brazil, perhaps. He's a little jealous.

In July, some months later, Gilles and Maria go to the Jazz Festival. St. Catherine Street in the centre-ville is partially blocked. There's music everywhere: in the clubs, in the parks, in the middle of St. Catherine Street that's closed to traffic. There are so many people there, like everybody is at the festival. The place is jumping — they even see people in seventeenth century costumes rented from Joseph Ponton's. Maria da Conceição can really dance the samba. With her brown body well in the flesh, as she wears a short green light dress, the colour of the flag of Brazil, she's very sexy. Her movements are graceful, hot. He's really attracted to her that night; he wants her. They spend several nights together like that during the Jazz Festival, talking, drinking beers, laughing their asses off. Then one night, at a table under the terrace of a restaurant over dinner, they make eyes, play footsie and kiss. As they return to their apartments, he kisses her hard on the mouth, full of desire for the woman who's practically his wife without really being his woman. A little confused, not really knowing for sure what the rules are, he asks the question somewhat timidly: "Do you want to sleep with me tonight?"

She shrugs her shoulders, smiles at him and says: "We're almost married, Gilles..."

They sleep together that night in Maria's bedroom, under the flag of Brazil on the wall at the head of the bed, the one with the globe of the southern stars in the middle of a yellow diamond, with a background the colour of her dress, light green, with the Portuguese words: "O ordem et o progresso." Order and progress. She's gentle with him that night, since he's still recovering from the surgery.

The next morning, Gilles wakes up and sees Maria sitting naked on the bed while she holds a photo on her knees. It's a photo of a child, a little one, around three years old. He asks: "Is that your son, the little one there?"

She nods her head. "His name is José," she replies. "I really really miss him..."

Gilles extends his arm and caresses hers with his hand: "That's too bad about your son," he says. "When I return to work, he can come live with us, okay?"

Maria turns around and looks at him and asks: "Are you being straight with me?"

"Yeah, I'm going to return to work. That's the plan."

Maria responds by giving him a kiss on the lips and a hug. They sleep together many nights, many weeks, many months. Maybe Maria will leave him in the end, after she has obtained Canadian citizenship. Maybe, because they argue from time to time. However, Gilles thinks that he has a debt to pay: she has taken care of him, before the surgery, and after the surgery as well. As well, she works full time, under the table, and pays most the bills while he receives disability cheques from the government to pay the rent. So he wants to help her bring her son to Canada, if it's possible. Maria, she has a debt as well: he has been letting her live with him so that she can obtain Canadian citizenship. But Gilles has a reason to recover now, a reason to live: he wants to help Maria bring her son to Canada. It's a marriage of convenience, but more complicated now. Then it's official: they get married at the palace of justice, because they love each other. However, she's still only a permanent resident, not a citizen.

After six months, maybe a year, it seems that Maria has morning sickness. So he asks the question: "Are you pregnant?"

She replies while vomiting in the toilet: "I think so..."

At the doctor's, it's confirmed: she's pregnant. Gilles is with the angels, then he's a little bit worried. He asks: "What about your job: are you going to lose it, you, being pregnant now?

"Don't know..."

"What about the factory?" he asks. "Is it very loud?"

"The looms are really very loud," she admits.

He's worried about her health, and he's afraid that the noise from the machines will make the unborn baby deaf, so she quits her job and becomes a maid for a family in Rosevere. It's a job, but she has to quit that one too after the mistress learns that she's pregnant. What do they do? Together, they look for a solution: she can sew clothes at their place and sell them at clothing outlets, if she only had the cloth, if she only had a sewing machine! So they buy the sewing machine, then she sews the clothes while he gets the cloth and delivers the clothes to the stores. So that she can sew more clothes faster, Gilles helps her with her work. It isn't easy to sew as well as her, she, ever the good seamstress, Gilles, always awkward. But they have to do it: she has been supporting them with her ability with a needle and thread, with the sewing machine. So they work together early in the morning and late at night to the whirring of the sewing machine. Physically, the work isn't too difficult for the mother-to-be, but she has need of more and more rest towards the end of the third and last trimester. However, it's illegal for her to work, because she isn't a citizen, and she hasn't been able to get a work visa.

Late in the evening, someone knocks very loud at the door, angrily. Afraid that something is wrong, Gilles opens the door a little. It's a man, dark like Maria, with a boy around five years old with him. The man is polite at first, speaking English haltingly, but the man stinks of alcohol on his breath. Then the man gets really angry when he hears Maria ask Gilles what's wrong. When he sees Maria, very pregnant, he threatens both Gilles and Maria with violence. Maria and the man argue loudly in Portuguese while Gilles tries to protect her from harm, the boy still standing in the hall, very frightened. Then there's an angry exchange of words between Maria and the man. Completely forgetting Gilles' presence, forgetting, apparently, that Maria is pregnant, the man tries to strike Maria. Gilles can't believe it! He punches him in the face in an attempt to protect his wife, despite his back pain. With the men fighting in the hall, Maria calls the police. Then she has sharp pain to the stomach as she falls to the floor. She has been so angry, so afraid, that she's about to have a baby now.

Really in a panic, the man flees, abandoning the little boy, who still remains standing in the hall. Gilles telephones the ambulance after he invites the boy inside. He is in pain, because of his back. The police come, then the ambulance. The police later arrest the man. Maria, she tries to talk with her son in the ambulance, but it's almost impossible: she's about to have the baby. The contractions are closer and closer together, the cervix, more and more dilated.

At the hospital, with Maria about to give birth to a son, Gilles and José sit with her in the triage room, then in the delivery room, the whole time. Gilles and José can't talk to each other very much, since José only speaks Portuguese, but Gilles does magic tricks for him, pulling a coin from his ear, for example. For a few months, until he has learned a few words in French, José can only communicate verbally with his mother. However, Gilles and the boy hit if off: they play tic-tac-toe and card games in the obstetric ward as well. At the hospital, after having given birth to the baby, Maria relates the whole story:

"José's father was supposed to follow me to Canada, that's the reason why I had been sending money by post. We were going to get married, but we argued a lot, then we broke up. He was accusing me of being unfaithful, but he was paranoid — he got drunk a lot. Of course, I denied his accusations, several times, but he threatened to prevent me from seeing my son, though José was living with my relatives: that was the reason why I was crying that one time. When he appeared at our home at midnight, I was speechless like you: I didn't think that he would follow me to Canada. I'm sorry, Gilles, really sorry! Please forgive me, it's all my fault!"

She offers him her hand. Gilles takes it and asks: "Do you want to live with me for always?"

She replies, very tired: "Of course. We're married, Gilles..."

She doesn't leave him, but there's an investigation some months later by the Ministry of Immigration and Citizenship after the incident with José's father. Maria's former boyfriend has claimed that they are married, so Maria and Gilles have to prove that their own marriage is legal, not just a marriage of convenience. This is really serious: in Canada, bigamy is illegal, grounds for deportation, so Maria must convince the official that she's not a bigamist. Even more serious, Maria's former boyfriend also claims that she has been working in Canada illegally. So they will need an immigration attorney, so that Maria and José can sort this mess out.

At the interview before the official from the Minister of Immigration, everybody has to be present: Maria, Gilles, José, and the newborn, Mario, who's about six months old. Maria's former boyfriend is also present. But at the interview, the official asks: "Do you love each other, sir and madam?"

Gilles protests: "She has taken care of me: I have a chronic back pain, you know. Me, I was trying to protect her when that guy was trying to beat her. What better proof of love is there?"

Maria replies by showing the official the baby on her knees: "This is our son: Gilles is the father."

The immigration official seems satisfied that they love each other. However, Maria's former boyfriend has given some very damning testimony against her. Logically, it would be impossible for Gilles to support both her and a baby on his disability cheques alone. However Maria never admits that she has been working, despite a grilling from her boyfriend's attorney. "What do you do for food, for clothing?" the hostile attorney asks.

Fortunately, Maria can tell her: "We get them from a church," she replies, shrugging her shoulders. "They give us food every month..."

Then Maria gives the name of the church. But there's another matter: the immigration official wants to question José, because the boy might want to return to Brazil with his father, he doesn't know. He has to consider the little one, though the final decision isn't the boy's. But he isn't a bad devil, he thinks of himself: he wants to do right by them. Afraid, perhaps, that it might not be his day, he asks José with sympathy in his voice: "Would you rather live with your mother and her husband here in Canada, or with your father in Brazil? Remember, my friend: your parents live very far away from each other. It's possible that you might never see your mother or your father again..."

But the boy doesn't understand the immigration official: he's only able to speak Portuguese and a little bit of French. Maria's lawyer protests when the official won't let Maria interpret for her son, but the official ignores his protests. So the official looks for someone who can speak Portuguese. Maria starts to cry, afraid of losing her son again. The official finds the interpreter, a woman born in the Azores, who admits that she didn't understand everything that the boy has said, since she isn't from Brazil. But she concludes: "He would rather live with his mother. He says that's afraid of his father..."

Then the boy says in French: "Gilles is my friend. He's nice to me."

Then the immigration official asks Maria: "Has Mr. Ribeiro ever beaten you, madame?"

Maria glares angrily at her former boyfriend, who glares back at her defiantly, then says coldy: "Yes, several times..."

Her attorney shows the official a copy of the police report, stating that her boyfriend had assaulted her the night that he was arrested. Then he says in a dry monotone: "I would like to request that Mrs. Meloche and her son, José, be granted political asylum, on the grounds that their lives could be in danger if they were deported to Brazil, as Francisco de Assis Ribeiro is clearly a violent and dangerous man. After all, he assaulted a woman who was eight months pregnant at the time. He has even confessed..."

The whole thing takes a long time to resolve: it isn't until six months later that the Ministry of Immigration informs Maria et José that they can stay in Canada with Gilles as political refugees. Eventually, Maria da Conceição becomes a Canadian citizen, as well as a nurse, though she works in the United States now. She has since given birth to another child, a daughter named Sonia, their third child, since Gilles has accepted José as his own son. Gilles returns to work with the permission of the doctor. Though he can't do everything that he could before he was injured, he works in the tool crib, checking in tools. But he has remembered his promise to Maria and José: to treat them right, no matter what, like she has treated him right during his long convalescence from the surgery on his back.

Of course, all is not milk and honey even in the land of milk and honey, even if they love each other. The Sea of Tranquility is a dried-up lake on the surface of the moon, not the true state of marriage. But their marital problems are another pair of sleeves.