My Friend from the Streets of Brazil

I think this is the hardest story I have ever heard on the streets. I had a friend called Lucilene but our crew used to call her by her nickname “Lequinha”. She was 14 years old when I was on the streets and she had a scar to her face that she bragged saying it was her father that did that to her. She used to tell me stories of her siblings and parents and I always felt that she hated her family but I couldn`t say anything to her because I hated my father too.

Lequinha told me one day when we were seating under a bridge downtown Belo and we were watching the cars pass by and we sniffling glue and re-thinking about our past. That is the day she opened herself to me. She walked with that posture that she didn`t care about life and didn`t trust people either. I knew it was going to be hard for her to talk so I gave her a little bit of more paint-thinner to sniffle. I tried to make her feel at ease by giving her that bit of thinner and a cookie I had with me, but she sat there just frozen gazing at the cars passing by.

Her face looked sad and her eyes were always big, almost always she had dried lips and she was so quite and she hated talking to people. She always seated by herself and she always used to sing a song that I knew called “Deus de Promessas” and in English would be “God of promise” and it was funny because I knew that song because they used to sing in my mom`s church. I was always so curious why she would sing that song when she was by herself and I always had that crazy thought that Lequinha had been or grew up going to church with someone.

I tried to make Lequinha to talk but I knew it was too painful to her. Her soul had been scarred and wounded. She was trying to forget her past and I wasn`t helping but I was so determined to talk to her that I was not going to let go. I understood what she felt inside and I think I was attracted to her quietness because most of the girls on the streets were loud and crazy.

She was young but she had seen so much and let`s not even talk about how she had been hurt so severely. Just two years ago she had seen her father beaten and shot, her mother and sisters raped in front of her. She herself was thrown and forgotten for dead in an alley of a slum until nightfall and then someone found her and took her to the hospital. She had been hurted, used, abused, thrown away. Man, I hated life on the streets because I was a lost case and everyone around me too.

It is so sad but funny because where we were seating under the bridge we could see the slum where she grew up from far away. The name of the slum is “Pedreira Padre Lopes” and that is he most dangerous slum in Belo Horizonte or better saying in the state of Minas Gerais. I did ask her if she wanted to go back to her relatives that still lived in the slum and she forced a smile and said “No Way”. She told me about the slum where she grew up and she told me that near her house there were restaurants, bars and magazines stands that there were bullet holes, stains were everywhere. When she was telling me her story I could hear Lequinha` voice drifting through the hot summer, humid Brazilian air.But I knew her mind was churning and she wanted to scream or cry. It was painful thing for both of us but we were glad we were under the influence of paint-thinner.

She began to unfold her story. I had made her feel good about herself I think. For a moment the pain was clear to her. I can`t believe my next reaction My hands reached out for hers and I wanted to hold her hands so tight during her sharing and I remember she kind of hesitated it but she allowed me to hold her hands. We smiled. Our eyes met and we looked at one another and we knew we were very similar in many ways. So after that she talked to me about her pain and her past. She talked, I listened, and tears welled up in my eyes as I heard her story in childlike terms. I felt her heart, I felt her soul, felt her pain. It was as if I was experiencing it vicariously with her and I couldn`t hold but cry with her. She saw my tears, she felt my hand squeeze hers and I could hear her heart beat so fast and she stopped using the paint-thinner and you could see for that moment both of us forgot about our addictions and we were in a time of healing together even though we didn`t know we were being healed by Jesus in that moment.

Lequinha explained to me with details about the ache of her heart and about her rejections, of feeling thrown away like a used Kleenex. I felt so bad for Lequinha because she was dumped somewhere to die by herself. I had never been dumped somewhere to die so I couldn`t really fell her pain but I could image that would be hard as hell. She had so many scars in her life that I even thought to myself that she would never be healed of her past.

That day I will never forget because it was the only time on the streets that I felt someone really understood me and I really understood someone. She wasn`t a close friend on the streets but I will never forget that moment we spent together. After two months and a half Lequinha died in a car accident downtown Belo Horizonte running for her life because there was three other street kids trying to attack her and she crossed the streets without looking.