II. Valcena
4.
It was her last day in Valcena, the quiet town where Dee lived. Rachel had arrived two weeks earlier, she had planned for a shorter visit but she ended up loving it so much that she decided to stay a little longer.
After all the turmoil and work from the last months, Rachel was exhausted. Actually, now that she looked back she was realizing that she hadn’t stopped since her breakup with Chase. She had hidden herself in her music, her work, she was focused and just wanted to keep herself busy so she wouldn’t have time to think. She thought she was doing fine until she actually stopped and realized that she had just been procrastinating. That the pain was still there and that she would still need to find a way to cope with everything, so when Dee invited her to go over for a week she didn’t think twice about it.
After the second visit in London the girls kept in touch and even though they didn’t get to see each other that often they became really close. Rachel enjoyed talking to her. She was still having troubles believing she could be so young. Rachel was 27 now and she had always seen herself as a mature person, but this girl was something else. Even if she claimed not to be good with people it seemed Dee always had the best timing and right words to say. They would spend hours on the phone, chatting about the most trivial stuff or discussing some deeper issues. Dee was a good listener, she didn’t judge her, and that was a change for Rachel. Dee would just get her, what was going through her mind, and she liked the way she would make her think and deal with her inner demons.
Now that she looked back, it seemed that it had been an eternity since she first got there. So much had happened. Dee had picked her up at the airport, a thirty minute drive and they had drove to her place.
She lived in the suburbs. The place was divided in half by a busy road. On one side there were the beautiful houses with the nice yards. On the other side was a degraded neighborhood with old and grey buildings and broken swings. After a quick look Rachel thought that it looked like any other segregated city. She remembered wondering how two worlds could be so close, and yet so far apart. She would later discover she couldn’t be more wrong.
Dee lived alone since she was 16.
“What made you move out so early?”
“I couldn’t fit in. I just never felt I belong there” – Dee confessed.
“Was it hard in the beginning?”
“To be honest the hardest part was to make the decision…
or better, to communicate the decision.”
“Were they really mad?” – Rachel wondered how her parents had felt.
“They thought I was just acting like a spoiled brat. That I was
doing it just because I had the money and I could do it…”
They parked next to the most beautiful house on the street. It was huge but somehow it fitted well with the rest of the neighborhood.
“Wow” – Rachel was impressed – “it’s gorgeous.” “Don’t you think it’s too much?”
“Do you regret it?” – Rachel had noticed that even though Dee had a lot of money she didn’t like to show off.
“The house? It was actually a gift. I got it as a high school graduation present from Tom and Sarah. I think they imagined I would never spend this much money on a house for myself.”
Rachel couldn’t agree more.
“Let’s go inside. Let me help you with that” – she said picking up some of Rachel’s luggage.
Apparently Dee’s big break had happened when she was only nine. She was in the USA with her family for vacation and she got lost in Central Park. She wandered around and ended up finding this woman crying on the floor. She went to her and tried to comfort her. The woman was an actress (Tom’s wife) and was so appreciative with her kindness that after contacting her parents, she drove her home and asked them to see her again. The couple ended up getting attached to the kid and she would visit them occasionally. On one of those visits Dee gave Sarah a book that she had wrote for her. She loved it so much that when she saw an ad looking for young talented writers she didn’t hesitate to send that work. Dee ended up winning the first prize and getting a big contract for publishing her books. Ever since then she had continued writing and her success had been unstoppable.
They walked in and this beautiful Golden Retriever came to greet them at the door.
“This is Elphie” – she said petting her – “Let’s leave the bags here. We’ll ask the boys to take them upstairs when they come.”
“Oh you’re here!” – they heard a nice voice coming from the one of the bedrooms. A young girl came running down the stairs.
“I’m Inês” - she said, introducing herself to Rachel. – “Nice to meet you” – her accent was really good.
“Hi. I’m Rachel.”
“I know” – the girl said nicely – “Are you hungry? I made some lunch.”
The young girl was twelve and was obviously very independent. She looked like a younger version of Dee, with the same blue eyes and a similar smile. If she didn’t know she would swear they were sisters, but they weren’t, just cousins. Inês was having troubles with her family too and since she and Dee had always been close her parents had let her move in with her.
They went to the kitchen, had some lasagna and orange juice and chatted for a few hours.
“How long will you stay? You’ll like it here it’s quite nice. You’re going to meet so many people. Maybe you should go to one of the dance classes. The girls would really enjoy that!”
Rachel had not made any specific plans for the trip, but Inês seemed to have everything under control.
“I’m sure we’ll have a great time” – she said laughing with that enthusiasm typical of teenagers.
“So what do you want to do now? Do you want to rest for a bit?” - Dee asked Rachel.
“Oh I’m not tired. Just whatever you girls have in mind will be great. I’d love to meet your organization though.”
“ValSocial? Well, that’s a nice place to start” – Dee agreed – “Let’s go. Are you coming with us Inês?”
“I have some homework to finish. I’ll meet you there later, ok?”
“Sure.”
They walked outside. The weather was pleasant, the sun was shining but it wasn’t too hot. “Do you want to drive or walk?”
“Let’s walk. We’ll get to see more.” – Rachel claimed.
She knew ValSocial was an organization that Dee and her friends had built up from scratch. It had all started as a college project that they ended up making a reality. She knew they helped people, but she wasn’t exactly aware about what their work involved.
They reached the busy road and crossed to the other side. They left behind the fancy houses and Rachel entered the ghetto for the first time. She didn’t know exactly what to expect but she was excited. Dee was like a star in that place. Everybody knew who she was and every step they would take someone would come over to say hi. Rachel thought that was really sweet.
After a closer look Rachel realized that some of the houses had been fixed and that the whole neighborhood seemed to be getting ready to be restored.
“Are they going to fix the whole thing?” - she asked Dee.
“Actually it’s part of our project” – she replied proudly – “we tried to convince the major they could fix it but they said they didn’t have enough money. So we gathered all the residents, we diagnosed what needed to be fixed, what was more urgent and calculated the estimate cost of the whole process.”
“That has to be an insane number right? I mean, most of the houses seem to be in very bad conditions” – stated Rachel.
“Trust me it was, but that was only the first step. Afterwards I got together with Alexandre, Miguel and Kate and we tried to find different ways to cut expenses. Like, you do need some expert to make sure that the foundation of the building is safe, or to repair the water pipes and so on, but a lot of the work, like painting, gardening and some furniture restore can be made by amateurs. Even though materials are not cheap, if you don’t have to pay the workers you can save a lot of money.”
“That makes sense, but who’s going to do it for free?” – Rachel asked.
“That’s the thing, we asked for volunteers from the community. We showed them the project and how we thought that with their help we could make it work.”
“They agreed?” – it seemed like a very interesting concept but Rachel was skeptical. Would it really work?
“As you can tell we still have a lot of work ahead of us but so far we cannot complain. We’ve been able to fix a lot of houses and people had been contributing a lot.”
“Don’t they get impatient? Won’t they all want to fix their house first?”
“That’s why it was important for us to determinate urgency and plan the whole project so people could have an idea of when we were planning to take care of their home. We wanted to be honest with them. Communities like this are not used to having a lot but they’re usually very cooperative and tend to take care of each other.”
“That’s true, but people have to trust you guys too. To believe that you weren’t just going to fix a couple of houses and then get tired or run out of money and give up.”
“Well, we all grew up here. I mean, Alexandre and Miguel had always lived here. Both Kate and I lived on the other side of the road but we’ve always spent most of our time here any ways so people know us. Plus we had already built ValSocial and people liked what they saw.”
“It’s amazing.” – Rachel said finally – “You’re doing a great job.
Look there they are!” – she whistled and waved to a group on the corner. They smiled and came towards them.
“Alexandre, Miguel, Kate. I introduce you to Rachel.”
Rachel had heard a lot about them before but had never got the chance to meet them. She greeted them all. Both the boys were tall with chocolate-brown skin. Alexandre had the deepest eyes Rachel had ever seen and his head was perfectly shaved. He talked to her and kissed Dee on her forehead, Rachel thought it was so tender. Miguel had a more exotic look, with green eyes and some looser locks falling on his face. Kate at last had a flawless porcelain skin and beautiful brown wavey hair. They all welcomed her with enthusiasm, like she was an old friend. She liked that about people there so far. Nobody seemed to care she was famous. They were genuinely nice, but they didn’t worship her.
“Alexandre is responsible for the Arts program” – Dee explained – “We have music and singing lessons as well as dancing groups. Their specialty is street dancing but we’re trying to incorporate different styles too.”
“Really? I love street dancing! I used to be a tomboy and I always wished I could street dance. I think it’s so cool!” – Rachel confessed.
“Just stop by one of these days and give it a try” – invited Alexandre.
“Are you serious? Can I?” – she was really excited.
“Of course. Listen, there’s something you have to understand about ValSocial and this neighborhood. We’re an open community. We’ve created this organization, this center, not only for the people that live here but also so that all the others could come and get to know us. So everybody is welcome to come and try out our activities. We actually have a demonstration in a couple of days” – Alexandre added – “You can watch and then if you like what we do, you can give it a try.”
“Sounds great! So what else do you have?”
“I’m responsible for the Sports program” – Miguel said – “At the moment we mainly have Basketball and Gymnastics. Occasionally outdoor activities like hikes, but our goal is to widen our options so that we can get to more people.”
“So do you have competitions and stuff?” – she asked.
“Actually, yes we do. However, for now we mostly aim to get kids out of the streets and keep them away from trouble.” – Miguel explained – “If they can have a place to play and spend their time doing something they actually love it helps. Plus most of them need to work on their social and team skills so that helps too.”
“That’s really good, and what do the girls do?” – she asked Dee and Kate.
“I’m responsible for the school and kindergarten and Dee’s responsible for the orphanage and homeless kids” – announced Kate proudly – “we all work together and with the families. We just try to provide these kids with the balanced environment they need to achieve their potential.”
“I’m truly amazed. You do have it all covered don’t you? You’re all so young. So I know Dee’s a Kindergarten teacher already but how about you? Are you all in college too?”
“Miguel and I already finished. Alexandre still finishing because his degree takes longer.”
Rachel was confused. She knew Dee had gone to college way earlier than usual, but these kids were all 19 now so they were too young to have finished.
“The four of us went to college earlier” – Kate explained – “Dee and I were in the same class and we graduated together. Miguel finished the same year, he’s a physiotherapist and Alexandre is going to be a pediatrician.”
“You did all of this while in school?” – Rachel was incredulous – “What are you people, some kind of geniuses?” – she joked.
They laughed at her reaction – “Not really we just got very stimulated when we were kids I guess” – Dee said – “in a good way, you know? We were never forced to memorize this or that but we had such a rich childhood and were surrounded by so many interesting people that somehow it ended up helping us in school.”
“I wish I had had that” – she said – “I was never that good at school.”
The four of them gave Rachel a full tour of ValSocial. They showed her the school, the studios, the gyms and sport rings. From a community center with a library and day center for elderly people to the local stores they had helped people revive, the project was amazing.
Where did you guys learn English? – Rachel asked them that afternoon. She knew Dee’s English was great, the girl traveled frequently and had lots of friends abroad. She was surprised, however, to see that Alexandre, Miguel, Kate, and even Inês were that great too. She had noticed they would switch from one language to the other with no problem. They would easily adapt to the environment so if everybody was speaking Portuguese that’s what they would speak, but if she was present they would always speak in English.
“Kate’s family is American.” – Miguel told her.
“So, you learned from your parents?” – Rachel asked her.
“Actually when I was little my mom would never use English with me unless she was really mad or happy” – Kate clarified – “it was her emotional language, you know?”
Rachel nodded.
“It became ours too – Dee continued – we started to use it as a joke, just for fun, but then it became a habit. Kate’s mom realized that we were actually good at it, so she started to teach us more and more.”
“It was something private, something ours.” – Alexandre concluded.
“Nice” – Rachel said.
Dee was right. There was still a lot of work do to, but they were definitely on a good path and Rachel felt the urge to be involved. So for the next two weeks Rachel went with them to work almost every day.
She spent time with the babies (lately her biological clock seemed to be ticking), she helped paint some walls, she tried the street dance class – and loved it – she even accepted the invitation to collaborate in the summer concert the kids were putting together to raise money for the community. Rachel did a little bit of everything, and she had the best time of her life.