“Rosa,” Lula’s picture whispered from the bedroom wall, “everything will be fine. I promise you. You will get a new, strong heart, and after that you will be a new person.” “But, Lula,” Rosa whispered as she packed her bag with clothing, nice-smelling skin oil, and a stack of thin magazines to cheer her up, including two-year old copies of Claudia (orgasmo inesquecível!), last year’s Ana Marias (12 kg em 1 mês!), and an ancient Uma (Horóscopo 2007: amor, saúde, dinheiro, sucesso, amigos!), “it’s so much money, eight thousand reais! What if I die? What will happen to Davi? What will happen to Leticia, Raquel, and Alessandra?” “Dear Rosa,” Lula said with a smile, “don’t worry. Seize the moment. You have to save your life. That is your duty as a mother. You’ll find the money!”
Rosa Imaculada pressed her lips to Lula’s glass-covered paper lips, locked the door of her home, and left with her son and grandmother on the bus for Fortaleza, for the apartment of her cousin’s husband’s brother’s friend’s wife, where they would be able to live in one room for a small fee until a new heart was found.
Not a single person on the road died during the bus trip, and so Rosa and her family ended up in her cousin’s husband’s friend’s wife’s apartment waiting for someone else to pass away. Those were dark, hazy days, with nights that were even more full of impending death, and, what was worse, chillingly lonely, because Davi (thankfully) slept and Grandmother—now, there was sleeping! Each woozy exhalation hissed as an interlude to a growling snore. The whole building shook. The whole city trembled to the random rhythm of those croaking jerks of breath. But Rosa couldn’t sleep. Rosa had nightmares with her eyes open.
Rosa had already waited 138 fear-filled days, punctuated by visits to the Ceará University Hospital for additional tests and mandatory stupid walks to keep up her health, which Rosa did obediently on doctor’s orders, even though taking any steps felt bad, and every swing of her leg felt as though it sapped strength from her pump. The panting began when Rosa got out of bed, which was where she preferred to spend her time. She didn’t have the energy to read any more, and even women’s magazines felt heavy in her hands. Rosa wanted noise around to cover the feeling of her heart, and that was why all day every day she kept the flickering television that was bolted to the wall turned on, watching everything that came from it, from reruns to new telenovelas, each more suspenseful than the last. She watched a serial named The Chilean Mine Disaster, which happened on precisely the same day (it must have meant something!) that she was placed on the heart waiting list. The bouncing flesh of her arms, legs, and backside had started to sag. Her skin had begun to turn gray, and her magnificent breasts had turned to dozing bats, mournful, empty leather bags. Her entire body felt like a strange, angry accessory that was welded to a separate headlike thing built of heavy stone. Time just passed and passed but never revealed its bottom, the end of the waiting, and day by day Rosa became increasingly sure that she wouldn’t get a new heart in time. Until, on the twentieth of December, she finally received the good news: a donor had been found!
Anesthesia. Cleaning of the skin of the chest. Crack open sternum. Affix rib spreader. Attach heart-lung machine and switch on. Begin external blood circulation. Blood is oxygenated, temperature control carefully monitored. Blood back into patient. Ribs spread apart. Rubber-gloved hands grip stopped heart. An incision in the pericardium surrounding the heart. Heart disconnected from arteries and veins. Heart removed. Say goodbye to heart: Bye, bye, heart. New heart positioned, skillfully sutured to veins and arteries. Does it work? Yes, it works. Is it pumping? Yes, it’s starting to pump! Heart-lung machine turned off. Tubes inserted in the thoracic cavity to allow fluid to drain. Tubes set to exit skin at an appropriate point. Set spread ribs back in place. Stitch split sternum back together with wire. Sew skin tissue back together nicely. All done—there you go, Rosa Imaculada!
* * *
Rosa woke up after the more than three-hour operation pleasantly high. The doctor had two faces and eight arms. The nurse’s voice welled out of a hollow cavern in varying octaves, her words echoing like a church choir belting “Ave Maria”. Somewhere on the ceiling Lula floated and hummed a familiar lullaby: Nigue, nigue, ninhas . . . Lula’s beard had grown, and it tickled Rosa’s nose, prickling her sides, her toes, the insides of her thighs . . . Then Lula’s head descended onto the doctor’s shoulders and the long beard flicked under his arm like the tail of a fox. A warm, soft fur began to
