In my family, pets were neither dogs nor cats nor birds. In my family, pets were the poor. Each of my aunts had her own personal and incredible poor, who would come to my grandparents' house once a week, gratefully accepting their ration of clothes and food with a smile.
The poor, besides being obviously poor (preferably barefoot to be shod by their masters, preferably tattered so they could wear old shirts saved this way from a natural fate of rags, preferably sick to receive a pack of aspirin) also had to possess other essential characteristics: going to Mass, baptizing their children, not getting drunk and, above all, remaining proudly loyal to the aunt they belonged to. I can still see a man in sumptuous rags, resembling Tolstoy even by his beard, responding offended and proudly to a distracted cousin who insisted on offering him a sweater that none of us wanted.
"I am not her poor; I am Miss Teresinha's poor."
The plural of "poor" was not "poor people." The plural of "poor" was these people. At Christmas and Easter, the aunts would gather in a group armed with slices of bolo-rei, bags of almonds, and other equivalent delights, and would sorrowfully make their way to where their pets lived, in a neighborhood of wooden houses on the outskirts of Benfica, in Pedralvas, near the military road, with the aim of distributing, in a magi-like splendor, woolen stockings, underwear, sandals that were of no use to anyone, pictures of Our Lady of Fatima, and other wonders of the same caliber. The poor would emerge from their shacks, agitated and grateful, and my aunts would immediately shoo them away with the back of their hand, saying,
"Don't get too close; these people have lice."
On these occasions, and only on these occasions, it was permissible to give coins to the poor, a gift always dangerous, as there was a risk they would be spent ("These poor people have no notion of money") in a detrimental and irresponsible manner. My aunt Carlota's poor, for example, was forbidden from entering my grandparents' house because when she placed ten coins in his palm, maternally recommending, concerned for the health of her pet,
"Now be careful not to spend it all on wine,"
he cheekily replied very rudely,
"No, ma'am, I'm buying an Alfa Romeo."
The children of the poor could be recognized because they did not go to school, were thin, and died young. When I asked why these unusual characteristics existed, I was told with a shrug, "What do you want? These people are like this," and I understood that being poor, more than a coincidence of fate, was a kind of vocation, like being suited for the game of bridge or for playing the piano.
At the love of the poor presided two creatures from my grandmother's oratory, one in clay and the other in a photograph, who were Father Cruz and S.
