What are you laughing at, girl?
Do you know what the SESC employees who worked in the capital of Minas Gerais did on weekends in the 1960s? They traveled to towns near the capital with their co-workers. Considered family programs, low cost and with excellent hotels, the SESC excursions were famous and a hit among middle-class workers. It was on one of these trips to Poços de Caldas that Aninha traveled for the first time in her life, in the company of her mother, Dr. Nair, a SESC employee. And it is on this trip that our little story begins.
Before joining the group that Saturday morning, Aninha had been properly catechized by her mother: "Please don't embarrass me in front of my colleagues. Behave yourself and don't be rude. If they speak to you, answer loud and clear. Don't hide behind my skirt and grumble like an animal. Pay special attention to Doctor Gregório, who is Mom's boss. He's a very serious man, and if you do anything wrong, he could fire me." "Okay, Mom. Fine," replied Aninha for the thousandth time." Watch out, daughter, here he comes."
"Doctor, how cute! Is this your daughter, little Nair? How old are you, dear?" Aninha, annoyed by the adults' habit of calling her by the diminutive of her mother's name, looked seriously at the gentleman standing in front of her, waiting for an answer. A little unwillingly, she showed six little fingers, hoping that the suffering would pass quickly.
- Nair, how nice of you to come! Aninha, how beautiful you look in this miniskirt! - it was Valdete, the radiologist, who interrupted the embarrassing situation and was the first one who managed to get a smile out of Aninha that day. Finally someone had noticed the outfit Aninha was wearing, a Topo Gigio T-shirt and a red miniskirt that had been a case of love at first sight! Beaming with pride, Aninha showed Aunt Valdete all her teeth. It was at this moment that Beth arrived to greet Dr. Nair. "What's up, doctor?" asked Beth, and in one continuous movement, she turned to investigate that insignificant little being who was beaming at her with the glow of a smile intended for Valdete, her competitor.
Valdete and Beth were both single and emancipated. And, despite the conventions of Minas Gerais society in those distant years of the 1960s, they enjoyed relative sexual freedom. However, Valdete, with her open smile and spontaneous manner, was more successful with the opposite sex. Eternally annoyed with the other members of the so-called weaker sex, all of whom were potential competitors, Beth took one look at that miniskirt-wearing girl and unleashed her venom: "Why are you always smiling, girl? Did you hit your head?". That day, Dr. Nair repeatedly examined her daughter for signs that something was wrong with her, but Aninha seemed to be the same as always.
Twenty-one years later, during her recruitment exam, Ana would hear the same question again during her interview with the psychologist. After answering all the usual questions about her childhood and the reasons why she was applying for the job, the psychologist diligently closed the folder with her notes on the candidate, removed her glasses and, with a puzzled look, asked Ana if she had ever hit her head. Ana hesitated nervously, not knowing what to say, remembering that day more than 20 years ago when her mother had examined her closely when the same question was asked by her colleague Beth. "My God, did my fall leave any symptoms?", Ana thought as she desperately searched for a suitable answer. "No, of course not," she finally replied, as she squirmed in her armchair, trying to relax her hunched shoulders.
That same evening, Ana went to a bar at Savassi to meet her college classmates who were going through the same admissions process to work at USIMINAS. While they were looking at the menu and choosing snacks to go with their beer, Ana pulled Luiz Carlos by the arm and asked him quietly, "Can I ask you a question about your interview with the psychologist today?". Luiz Carlos, who was her best friend in the Metallurgical Engineering course, replied "Of course, Ana, you can do anything". "Did the psychologist ask you any strange questions, Caco?". "She asked me if I'd ever had homosexual relations," Luiz Carlos replied with a yellow laugh. "Ahhhh," Ana replied with a sigh of relief. Caco was the biggest stud in college and was very popular with the girls. A stupid question like that could only be a sign that psychologists used to ask questions about some taboo subject just to see how the interviewee reacted.
However, in the weeks following their admission, Ana noticed that Caco seemed discouraged. None of the girls on the college's 10+ list provoked any reaction in him when he met them on the street. Ana, too, was no longer the same. Although she had been hired, that interview with the psychologist had left her suspicious. Again she thought of Beth, that bastard. "Why unleash your demons on a poor child, you old hag?" she said excitedly, drawing the attention of her new work colleagues, who were waiting paitiently in the restaurant queue at lunchtime. When she saw that all the people in the queue were staring at her in amazement, Ana turned around and apologized. At the end of the queue, someone made a nasty comment: "Ihh, she must have hit her head on the edge of the bathtub when she was a baby", and the others immediately burst into laughter.
Yes, Ana had indeed hit her head when she was little. She had taken a tumble on the sidewalk and the blow had been so hard that it had caused a concussion followed by epileptic seizures. The pediatrician diagnosed dysrhythmia and recommended that she take Comital. And so it went for the next nine years, until one day her pediatrician passed away. It was then that her mother decided to take her to a specialist. After examining all the electroencephalograms from her childhood, he told her that Aninha had never had any neurological problems, but that she should now spend two years reducing the dose of the medication until she stopped taking it altogether. Her mother, however, never really believed the specialist, after all, Aninha was her daughter and if someone had said there was something wrong with her, they must have been right. Ana grew up being treated as if she were sick. "Poor thing," her mother would say whenever someone criticized her. No one bothered to teach Ana how to defend herself against nasty comments, and she ended up becoming the perfect victim.
Years passed and Ana was now married to Nestor, a civil servant working in Contagem whom she had met on the bus on the way home from work. That night, lying in bed, Ana read the article "How to spice up your relationship", published in the latest issue of Marie Claire magazine. After a while, her husband began to nibble on her neck, while his left hand clumsily invaded the T-shirt she was wearing to bed, which she had received as a gift during the last presidential elections. "Oh, Nestor, come off it. I'm not in the mood today. I've got a crazy headache...". Nestor, his macho pride wounded by yet another refusal to have sex, thought about forcing the situation a little. But these were 'No, it's not' times... He then decided to turn on his side and go to sleep. But at the last second before turning off his bedside lamp, Nestor didn't hold back and secreted a pearl of evil: "Ana, you should see a neurologist. A headache like that can't be normal!".
At that moment, Ana's chest contracted in a spasm. It was the birth of a laugh, without beauty or rhythm. A laugh that burst out irrepressibly. "How much time I've wasted believing in nonsense," she finally said, wiping the tears from the corners of her eyes and taking a deep breath in an attempt to regain her lost control. Nestor, unable to understand what was happening to his wife, repeated quietly, "You're crazy, you're crazy, woman!"
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
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