Luna: New Moon

Adriana Corta. Adriana after my Great-aunt Adriana. My clearest memory of her is that she played the electric organ. She lived in a tiny apartment and there in the middle of the room was this huge electric organ. It was the only thing of any value she owned. It was theft-proof: no one could have got it out of the apartment. She would play and we would dance around it. There were seven of us. Byron, Emerson, Elis, Adriana, Luiz, Eden, Caio. I was the middle kid. The worst place to be, the middle kid. But you get away with things when you’re in the middle. Your brothers and sisters are your camouflage. There was always music in the house. My mother couldn’t play any instruments but she loved to sing and a radio was always on somewhere. I grew up with all the classics. I brought them with me. When I worked on the surface, I’d play them in my helmet. Lucas is the only one who has my love of music. It’s a pity he has no voice.

Adriana Arena de Corta. My mother was Maria Cecilia Arena. She was a health worker for a Catholic social charity. Childcare and no contraception. I’m being unfair to her. She worked up in Vila Canoas; when she retired the whole favela turned out. My father burned his hand welding a car one day. He went to my mother to have it treated and ended up welded to her. She was a big, slow-moving woman; stiff in the hips and after Eden she gave up work and rarely went out of the apartment. She couldn’t hope to catch all of us so she shouted. She had a great booming voice that always found exactly whichever one of us was meant to hear it. She was so kind. Papa adored her. She had bad circulation and a sickly heart. Why are health workers always the least healthy?

I miss her still. Of all the ones back there, I think about her most.

Adriana Mão de Ferro Arena de Corta. Mão de Ferro. Iron hand. What a name, yes? All of us were Iron Hands, as was my father and all my uncles. It was the nickname of my grandfather Diogo, from Belo Horizonte. He died before I was born, but he worked in the iron mines from the age of fourteen until they laid him off because he was a danger to himself and others. Ten million tons he shovelled. I’ve shovelled more than that. A thousand times more than that. Ten thousand times. If anyone is Iron Hand, it’s me. Mining and metal. My father was a car dealer. He could strip and rebuild an engine before he could drive. He came to Rio when a recession hit Minas Gerais and he got a job in a cut-and-shut shop – you take two insurance write-offs, cut the front of one, the end off the other and weld them together. New car! He never liked the work – he was a very honest man, my father. Any news of corruption or graft on the news and he would shout at the screen. In Brazil in the tens and twenties he was shouting all the time. That graft on the Olympic stadiums! Working people can’t afford to ride the bus! He got into dealing cars – whether that is more honest than building ringers is a moral hair I can’t split. But he worked up quickly to a dealership, then gambled and bought a Mercedes franchise. It was the best decision he ever made – after marrying Mãe. My father, it seemed, had a gift for business. He moved us to Barra de Tijuca. Oh! I had never seen anything like it! A whole floor of an apartment block just for us. I only had to share a room with one sister! And if we leaned out of the window, and craned around, there, down between the other apartment blocks we could see the sea!