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— Stay, Carmen! There’ll be cake! We bought it just for you! Stay!   It was twenty past seven in the evening, and Carmen wanted to go home She lived in Ladeira dos Tabajaras, two blocks away from her bosses on Santa Clara Street Carmen’s mother, Dona Jandira, never let her forget how lucky she was that she could just walk down the hill to her job in Zona Sul Dona Jandira had lived most of her life in Nova Iguaçu and had to start her commute to Leblon, where she worked, at four in the morning This went on for over 40 years How many times had Dona Jandira hesitated at the bus stop? She might have been happy if she’d gone and sat on the opposite bench and caught the bus to Juiz de Fora, where her parents lived Who knows, maybe she could have found a piece of land there, and even had the time to see whether her children really went to school when they left the house But the months went by and Dona Jandira never crossed the street, nor did she change buses Each day she got off in Leblon and each night she slept in Nova Iguaçu Then she caught an illness which ended up devouring her from the inside without her even knowing Carmen, who worked for the Ortega family on Santa Clara Street, was the only one of her children who stayed with her After Dona Jandira got sick, they managed to move out of Nova Iguaçu to Zona Sul, nearer to the hospital where Dona Jandira was being treated The important thing to Dona Jandira was that life was improving with each generation: Carmen didn’t have to wake up at 4 am She woke at 630 and by 730 she was already at work in Santa Clara It was a blessing   On the day of the cake, Carmen could no longer bear to be around her boss Dona Rafaela, her spoiled children who she had pretended to love for over 20 years, or her smarmy husband, seu Roco A strange name, but