Decency is an abstract notion

When I was seven I moved to Brazil with mum and Gael. I still remember when we landed, I remember the brightness and the suffocating and humid heat.

But before mum met her Brazilian boyfriend in a place called “Poco Loco” and decided she wanted a second chance in life we lived in a small town called Durham near to Newcastle. I never met my biological dad, he run away as soon as he found out mum was pregnant, probably because he was sixteen and mum fifteen.

It has been twenty years since then, now I am a Brazilian woman with memories from a little British girl in my mind.

One of my firsts memories of Foz de Iguazu comes from a Saturday morning when I went with mum to the mercado to do the shopping: there was three young women standing next to the road.
I thought they should be going to a party or somewhere nice because of their colourful clothes and high-heeled shoes. But then I rose my head and I saw mum´s face: she was peering at those women with a disgusting look in her face. Immediately after, she said : they do not know what decency means! And we continued our way to the market. But while mum was discussing prices with the shopkeeper I was feeling worse and worse. DECENCY . I had not got a clue about what decency meant but I could not tell mum because she would hate me then, like those women next to road!

Now twenty years later, I think: They knew what decency means. They knew better than any other woman there. Decency is an abstract notion. But we were unaware of a concept which was well known by them: POVERTY.

(Written by an scribbler pretending to be a novelist)