enclosures

Since we've arrived in Brazil, I've been thinking a lot about enclosures.

We live in a walled condominium. It's maybe one square mile: a cobblestone driveway that winds from the gate, up a slope to the block of attached houses where we live. There's a swimming pool; a small playground and a bigger one; a soccer field at the bottom of a hill rimmed with cashew and banana trees.

Beyond is a world where cars and buses sit without moving on the Paralela, heat rising in waves from the asphalt, where a tourist is killed in his hotel room and a health department truck releases plumes of pesticide into the air.

I go days inside these walls, leaving only to go to work, driving from one gated space to another.

Early in the morning, I run laps around the soccer field, up and down the driveways. In the evenings, the men drink beer, women sit on benches and nurse their babies, older children swing from the monkey bars.

Everyone leaves their doors unlocked.


We have a Tuesday evening yoga class on the soccer field. There's a seamstress who lives here, who'll hem pants or patch a hole. A neighbor's maid gives manicures. There's a pharmacy that delivers. (One evening I came outside to see the neighbors sitting on the grass eating ice cream bars that they'd had delivered.) You can even call and have someone come to your house to vaccinate your kids.

Sometimes at night, after the children are asleep, I lie in the hammock and listen to the wind in the palm trees.

Behind the wall is the mato: the dunes of Abaeté, a blank expanse. A horse grazes at its edge. A boy gathers firewood. A man who grabs the purse of a maid waiting at the bus stop disappears into the scrub. A vulture settles onto a high branch.

It's a strange, suspended feeling, safety edged with broken glass.

How long can I live like this? Not forever.

But there are advantages. In the afternoon, when the sun is just beginning to dip behind the walls, I take the boys for a swim.

I tip my head back, and the splashing and shouting disappears, and for a moment I can enjoy floating in this calm, blue world.