Night fell on the favela with a threat of violence in the air. Maybe it was the rumbling of thunder which frightened Maria as she quickly took in the clothes from the line in the alleyway. She feared the rain as much as nightfall. Both brought danger to the shantytown where she had lived for the past eight years in a shack which they had pieced together as best they could.

She dashed out and unpegged the clothes which she had washed and would later iron to supplement the money she earned as a daily maid in the houses of the rich in the better off districts. Well to Maria they were rich but they probably earned less than the average American family. But they had their own homes and drove around in good cars and had cable tv and their children could go to high school and didn't have to drop out at twelve or thirteen like her boys and join the gangs of the unemployed in the favela'.

She worried about her boys- Richardo, José and Marcos. She worried about the gangs and the dealers and the drugs they fed to the boys. Ricky, the eldest, had smoked crack for ages. That she knew for sure. And he was getting more and more brazen with it. She knew he smoked in the waste area where the youths hung out and when he came home his clothes reeked of the weed. Lately he had taken to smoking at home when she was out at work and that was bad. Because she knew he couldn't pay the guys who sold him the drug and feared what would happen when they called to collect.

Already she had paid the dealers about two hundred reais (US$100) to keep Ricky out of trouble. All that she had put by for a rainy day in the savings account Dona Carmen had opened for her in a bank far away from the 'favela'. She hoped that Dona Carmen wouldn't find out that she had withdrawn all the money. "You must save for your old age" Dona Carmen had advised her with the good intentions of a matron and wife of an executive for an insurance company. Her husband was always buying them insurance policies and he had the couple and their two children insulated and hermetically protected from the ravages of South American inflation.

She wished that Ricky could take after Dona Carmen's boy and study at a private school and work out at the gym after school and dress in neatly pressed clothes and go around with nice friends and hang out at MacDonalds instead of smoking crack on the waste ground and get into debt with the dealers. Maria knew what happened to people and their families who owed the dealers money. These guys didn't mess about and retribution was swift and brutal. They came at night; there was a quick spray of gunfire and there were no survivors. The local tv stations showed what happened night after night- the bloody interiors of the humble shacks, the grieving relatives and the tongue tied neighbors who heard nothing, saw nothing and did nothing.

She, her mother and and boys would become just another statistic in the records of the local police station. The rate for solving murders was something like 2% in the Greater São Paulo area. A sprawling conurbation of over ten million people and the third most populated city on the planet. So nothing would happen to the killers. But maybe somebody would remember them as the tv reporter commented on yet another 'unsolved' chacina or mini-massacre of the poor. But she hoped that they would be buried decently and not left to rot in the local morgue.

'Three hundred reais' (US$150) Ricky had whispered to a friend late last night and she knew that was the sum he owed the dealers. For her it was an entire month's salary from Dona Carmen. She could ask for an advance of maybe fifty percent of salary but that was the maximum. And then when he had paid them he would get into debt again as repayment was merly a sign that your credit was good.

"Have you bought the lottery ticket yet?" Her mother asked her later when she returned from the local store with some shopping.

"No, mae," Marie answered the old woman, " anyhow you know we never win- it is better to buy some food with the money. That's what the pastor says.."

"Maybe you should give the pastor the two reais and buy a place in heaven," Ricky added acidly as he watched football on tv.

"Don't be so cheeky !" Marie answered as she put the food away in a cupboard, " the pastor is a good man..."

"He just wants your money," Ricky stated as he stretched out in front of the telly, "it's better to buy a ticket and maybe we'll become rich !"

"And what would you do, if we won the lottery ?" Marcos asked.

"Won the lottery !" Ricky thought for a minute or two before replying, "..well I'd buy everone new clothes and get me a brand new motorbike. Then I'd bring us all go out for a big steak meal and drink a lot of beer..."

"I'd get granny's leg fixed," Marcos said, " and bring Mum to the beauty parlor...."

"You're go'in be a faggot like your brother José," Ricky put his younger brother down.

"Don't you call José names," Marie defended her middle boy who was attracted to older men and was having an affair with a 'gringo'. She didn't want to moralise about it. It hurt her when the pastor said that the boy would be dammed but she knew that the older man looked after José and was helping him to get an education. She couldn't blame the boy. After all his Dad had left them high and dry and run off with another woman years ago and left her to bring up the boys alone.

"José called while you were out," her mother announced, " he said that he will visit on Sunday."

"With or without the bisha?" Ricky asked.

"Why can't you be civil to José's friend?" Maria turned to Ricky, " the man looks after him well and he is paying for his schooling. And he always brings us food and presents. He even offered to try and get you a job."

"It's probably cheaper for him to fuck our José than pay rent boys," Ricky changed channels, " and as for his job offer I told him to stick it.."

"Don't talk to your mother like that," Granny called out, " and when are you going to get a job and help support this family? Just tell us that?"

"When you people get off my fucking back, that's when !" Ricky got up from the dirt floor and dusted himself off. Maria thought that he was going to hit her mother. His anger glinted dangerously and she thought that his eyes looked so strange. The boy is moody from the drug. That boy is trouble. Big trouble.

She had thought about throwing him out several times. To try and bring him to his senses. But what would he do out on the streets but drift from petty theft into armed robbery or become involved with some kidnapping gang. She knew he nicked things from stores in the downtown area and flogged them for a few reais to a fence. Sometimes he brought them chocolates he had stolen from a supermarket or fruit pinched from a market stall. But that was rarely.

"What would you do Mum if we won the lottery?" Marcos asked her. "If we won?" She almost laughed at the idea. It was so fantastic that their situation could be transformed from their present squalor. But she didn't have to think long about the answer. She would bundle them out of the favela and away to a place in the country- away from the violence and drugs and degradation of the capital. Once she had gone with Dona Carmen to their situ in the interior of São Paulo and smelled the fragrant orange groves and dug her hands into the rich red earth and longed to have a piece of ground in this enormous country. Just a few hectacres to call her own. A place to plant things and see her boys grow into manhood away from the dealers.

"It's started raining," her mother stated, " we need to put buckets near the beds. Marcos get the buckets from outside like a good boy."

The boy rose and grumbled that it was always his turn to take in the buckets. He seemed to be gone for ages and Marie wondered if he hadn't gone in next door to watch a video. Their neighbors had won R$2,000 in a bingo game and splashed out on a 29" tv with video which was like a home movie theatre and half of the kids from the favela were sprawled before the large screen watching cartoon shows.

The drops started falling faster and harder. They hopped off the galvanized sheeting on the roof with a vengeance. They pounded against the cardboard walls like battering rams and the whole place shook. She hated when it rained like this. Their shack was on a hillside and last year some shacks had been washed away in the rains. The people had lost everything. Their documents, electrical goods, bedding and household things. All gone.

"Is that you Marcos?" Marie asked as the door swung open. But all she could see was the glint of a gun as the hooded men entered and soon the sound of gunfire was drowned out by the infernal thunder of the rainstorm.

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