Crossing the River: A Life in Brazil

by Amy Ragsdale

  This was the second day of our experiment to teach Skyler at home two days a week. The first day hadn’t gone well. But this morning, when he’d asked if he could stay and I’d said he could if he did his work without resistance, he’d affably agreed.

  A new start. Every day, there was a new start; it all seemed so tenuous, both our perch and the place itself. We watched a lizard run out from behind a vine on the backyard wall, the rain causing the vine to collapse behind him as he ran, finally leaving him with nowhere to hide. The vine had just grown in the last couple of weeks. Easy come, easy go.

  The sun and the rain insidiously wore everything down, remelding it into the earth. Even the people. As soon as I got there, my walking pace slowed. That quick New York clip I’d never lost, even after moving to the mountain West? I lost it in Penedo—just like that.

  The passing of seasons was subtle there, the differences so subtle that they dawned on you as bodily cravings. We arrived in winter, and I found myself gravitating toward the churro cart for that skinny donut filled with gooey, burnt-sugar doce de leite. Imperceptibly that craving ended, and I began guzzling cold água de coco or cans of Coca-Cola wet with perspiration, and finally I was simply in desperate need of ice, in everything—juice, coffee, or straight into the mouth in cubes.

  The rain was supposed to have stopped at the end of August. It was October. I was glad the rain was still there, for the sudden gusts of cool breeze, the extra burst of energy, and the chance to take a break from life, to get soaked.

  16

  Forró Dancing with Zeca

  I HEARD PETER on the phone in the other room.

  “I’m going to give you to Amy. This is her territory. Maybe I will, too, but I might be in bed. I have a game tomorrow.”

  Oh, dear. I knew it was probably Zeca with another invitation to a late-night party. We’d consistently turned them down because it was so hard to start to party at ten at night. We were beginning to feel rude.

  “Amy? Hello.” Zeca spoke in considered spurts. “Can you go to forró—tonight? If you want—I can come. I was going to ask-ed Skyler today; but since I know you have—the veto power”—I could hear the smile in his voice—“I thought maybe it is better to ask-ed to you.”

  I laughed. I’d been startled when, soon after we’d met him, Zeca had invited Skyler to go out to the forró clubs with him. A twelve-year-old? Knowing that they didn’t start until at least ten at night, and having just heard from Zeca how he started decanting tequila into super-sized pop bottles at age twelve, I’d let him know that I had “veto power.” Zeca loved to put newly learned English phrases to use.

  Forró music and dance is famous in Brazil (and is showing up in the States as well). There I was, a dance professor, at the source, and I still hadn’t seen this rapid-fire partner dance, with its twitching hips and jitterbug-like turns. I was beginning to feel guilty.

  “That sounds great. Molly,” I shouted down the hall, “do you want to go out to forró with Zeca tonight?” She’d recently been complaining that we did everything unfashionably early.

  “Well, there’ll be at least three of us,” I said, returning to the phone. “What time would be good?”

  “Maybe . . . ten? Or . . . nine? I don’ like this kind of music, but you can see. After twenty-six years, I still can’t do this dancing, but maybe you will see it and you can teach me.” By this time, I’d realized that Zeca could actually do almost anything, but underlying his playboy bravura was this streak of self-deprecation.

  I hoped I would be able to stay awake.

  Zeca’s knock came around 9:30 PM. Anticipating the style of nightclub dress I’d seen on Molly’s friends and their mothers, I’d gotten as dressed up as I could—black pants, a slinkyish (by my standards) black top, dangling earrings, and, well, flip-flops. If I could have been vacuum-packed into my pants and had some teetering high heels, I might almost have fit in. Molly was managing better in her recent purchase of skinny jeans, racer-back silk top, and strappy four-inch heels. Skyler, to my surprise, had selected his orange button-up shirt. I think he’d worn a buttoning shirt maybe four times in his life.

  “Okay, aaare you rehhhhdy?” Zeca’s tipsy speech was slurred.

  As a labor lawyer, Zeca had just been to the house of a client of his, a former security guard. The man had been shot on the job, then fired, and now the company was refusing to pay workmen’s comp. The judge had sided with the company.

  “This man, his house is very poor, an’ he has a little child, by himself, an’ he can’t buy milk for him. It’s very bad.” Zeca looked like he was about to cry.

  It occurred to me then that Zeca was in labor law for more than the money, especially as it appeared that while the law might protect the worker, the judge might protect the company, so Zeca’s share probably rarely came through. His decision to advocate for the little guy would fit his family’s history of taking the high road: the grandfather he admired, who successfully ran for mayor of Penedo entirely on his own money so he would owe no one; his uncle who had become an accountant to expose government fraud.

  At the last minute, Peter rallied and came along after all. We piled into Zeca’s little black Fiat, the bright blue lights of the dash shining in the darkness, and sped off over the cobblestones, tires shuddering, rock music on high. We think a lot about drinking and driving in the United States, but it didn’t even occur to me that taking off with Zeca in his semi-inebriated state might be a bad idea. I knew we didn’t have far to go, there weren’t many cars in Penedo, and frankly it’s hard to go very fast on cobblestones.

  Arriving in a neighborhood a little farther out the ridge, we could hear the scene before we saw it. We parked at the end of a long row of cars and walked toward the bright lights and sound. There was the inside party, at the club, and then there was also an outside party. Two small cars bristled with speakers. This was not about fine listening. It was about a shot of adrenaline straight to the chest.

  “At carnaval [Brazil’s famous pre-Lent, blowout celebration], there are ten cars like these equip som cars with the big speakers. You can’t hear anyting,” Zeca was shouting.

  Zeca waved his hand at the street-side food stalls. “We call these caga já. ‘Crap, now.’”

  The Filharmonica, an outsized club in the middle of a quiet, residential neighborhood, stood before us. Closed gates barred the entrance. At ten, they hadn’t started selling tickets. I watched a man in a red shirt buy beer from a vendor. Cracking it open, he spilled its foaming contents down the front of his jeans. It turned out he worked for the club and had started partying ahead of time. A few minutes later, he let us in.

  The place was cavernous and empty, like a one-story parking garage with a maze of dingy indoor/outdoor spaces. In one, banks of speakers flanked a stage. We wandered out into a back courtyard. The proprietress was starting up a grill. Molly and Skyler went over to check out the club’s other facilities, two pools and a large indoor futsal quadra—part sports club, part nightclub. How many drunks had fallen into the pool?

  Peter dutifully accepted the beer Zeca offered, with a fleeting look of dread as he anticipated the next day’s hangover.

  We killed time. Zeca would not have called it that. “Killing time” implies a hierarchical valuing, implies that some time is worth more than other time. Here, all time was equal. “Productive” time was not more valuable than “nonproductive” time. I think for many Americans, “hanging out” falls into the sometimes necessary but irksome category of stalled, waiting. We want to be doing, not just being.

  The conversation turned to Zeca’s family history.

  In the sixteenth century, the Portuguese had divided their newly colonized land into long strips leading back from the ocean and handed them over to select nobles from Portugal. Here, in Alagoas, we were living in one of the first strips to have been claimed.

  “Yah, so just a few families had all the land. My grand-grandfahdder?” Zeca looked at me for confirmation.

  “G
reat-grandfather.”

  “Yah, great-grandfahdder, had a ranch. It was half of Sergipe”—the neighboring state across the river.

  “We’ve read that it’s still true that there are only a few families who control all the wealth and political power of Alagoas. Who are they?” Peter asked.

  “Oh, I dunno, now. Before—people paid attention to dese tings. But now . . .” Zeca flapped the ends of his fingertips back and forth past each other, like swinging saloon doors, a gesture indicating something was finished.

  I wondered if he were glossing things over. Peter and I had run into two professors from the local branch of the University of Alagoas ordering kebabs at a joint down in the baixa and had asked them the same thing. Taking a quick scan of the room, they leaned into our table and whispered, “Yeah, the . . .” their voices disappeared “. . . they each have their part of Alagoas. People would be killed for running for office against them.”

  It was now eleven, and two women, very big women, in heels, hot pants, and sequined bras strutted in. Both had exceptionally long curly hair, one platinum blond on her large-boned black face. They had a couple of guys in tow.

  “Are they transvestites?” I asked, curious what macho Zeca thought of the obviously gay guys I’d seen around town.

  “Yah . . . probably.”

  “They are?” Skyler looked disbelieving. “Do those other guys know?”

  “Probably they are gay, too.” Zeca thought. “Or maybe they are just drunk. Yah. I had some friends, some gay friends in school. They were nice guys. It’s not a problem if they don’t hit on you. They have many women friends—and that is good, too. They can introduce you.”

  Zeca smiled knowingly at Skyler. I was pleasantly surprised. I wasn’t sure we’d find the same tolerance in all sectors of our Montana town.

  The tall blond was starting to dance now, swinging her hips in a lazy figure eight as her fingers stirred the hair of the man sitting down next to her. Finally, the forró music had started. A man was crooning with an electronic piano and hand drums.

  “What is he singing about?” I asked.

  Zeca held out his right hand, middle fingers tucked, index and pinky fingers extended like horns. “You know this? We do this when a man’s wife has shitted on him.”

  “Cheated on him?”

  “Yah. Shitted on him.”

  “No, cheeeeted,” I laughed.

  “Yah, cheeeeted,” Zeca nodded.

  “How would you describe Brazilian humor?” Peter asked, changing the subject.

  “Humor? Here I can talk about anybody, if they are white or black or brown or red or yellow or gay or have some problem. People outside, sometimes they think we are mean. But I don’t think so. You know, we had this friend in school—he was in a . . .” He mimed pushing wheels.

  “A wheelchair.”

  “Yah, a wheelchair. He would ask to borrow a pencil, and we would say, ‘Yah, if you walk over and get it.’ He didn’t mind. I think it is better.”

  This was what we’d been hearing from Molly and Skyler. They hadn’t found it so amusing.

  Zeca laughed. “There’s a joke about black people. There’s a black man, and he carries around a parrot, here—on his shoulder. An’ he runs into some . . . other person . . . an’ that person asks, ‘Where does that animal come from?’ An’ the parrot says, ‘I dunno, from Africa somewhere.’”

  I laughed, but I felt uncomfortable, thinking of all my black capoeira friends.

  “Are there any jokes about the Portuguese?” I asked.

  “Oh, yah! We say they’re dumb.” He stood up, pulling his chair back. “You know what we say?” He put one foot up on the chair. “The Portuguese tie their shoes like this.” He leaned down and reached for the foot on the ground.

  It reminded me of Giovanni, our tutor, saying that he wished the Portuguese had not managed to expel the Dutch who had invaded what is now Alagoas in 1630 “because the Dutch took what the Portuguese did—raising sugarcane and cotton—and did it so much better. We would be a different country,” he’d sighed.

  I glanced at my watch—midnight. Peter was flagging. Skyler was slumping lower in his plastic chair. Molly, however, was looking ready for anything. I knew she’d been yearning for more nightlife. (“I’m a teenager. I’m not supposed to be going to bed at nine!”)

  “I have a game tomorrow,” Peter began.

  “Oh?” Zeca looked curious.

  “With the guys down by the river. Maybe I will play; maybe half the time, in the second half. Maybe I will be on the side the whole time.” He shrugged his shoulders.

  We made our way back through the dim rooms. Out on the street, the scene was hopping. The “outside” party, of people who can’t afford the ten-reais (seven-dollar) cover, was rocking out to the equip som cars mixed with the forró music, which was by then easily jumping the club’s walls—one big, pulsing soup of sound. I felt bad because the bouncers were saying they wouldn’t let Zeca back in. We flopped into the little black car, Skyler in front, in the privileged “guys-hanging-out-and-listening-to-rock” spot. Although I was disappointed to miss the dancing, it had felt good just to get out—a reminder not to withdraw. The next day, Peter found a text message from Zeca sent at 1:39 AM: All is good. I’m back in.

  17

  Why Are All the Poor People Black and the Rich People White?

  BY OCTOBER, each of us had begun to develop a social niche. Mine centered largely around a widening network of acquaintances made in the course of daily chores focused on household needs and the kids’ school. Peter was a regular at pickup soccer games down in the baixa. Molly, rapidly finding her way into the maze of Portuguese, had been pulled into a tight group of five girls from school, and she had Karol, Victor’s sister, from the neighborhood. Karol had started to drop by regularly for dinner, and afterward, she would disappear giggling with Molly into the kids’ room to listen to music, look up Brazilian and American singers on the Internet, and teach Molly Portuguese.

  Skyler’s classmates were good about inviting him to special after-school events, like birthday parties (though he’d missed the first few because the last-minute invitations directed us to places like “Igor’s house,” no address, no phone). But on most afternoons, the kids’ classmates seemed to evaporate. During school hours, Skyler’s classmates’ primary interest in him seemed to be in whom he was or wasn’t kissing.

  Finally, one day after school in early October, Skyler dragged himself through our front door, dumped his backpack by the shoe basket, passed me at my desk in the corner, and slumped into the dining room. I overheard him asking Peter, installed at his place at the dining table, “What should I do? I’m so tired of Mateus bugging me to kiss Mariana.”

  “Ohhh,” Peter started slowly. “I guess what you’re wanting is some fatherly advice.” He stalled. My ears lengthened. “Maybe you should just kiss her and get it over with.”

  “Really?” Skyler sounded shocked.

  Molly reported later that day that Skyler had done it, before an audience of seven at the clube de ténis.

  “How did it go? What did he say?” I asked her.

  “He just said it was gross and wet.”

  I burst out laughing. But I didn’t really think it was funny. What a way to enter puberty, on stage.

  At school, Skyler had finally let it be known that he liked the looks of a girl in the class below his, Ingridi. The next day, sitting in their antiseptic white classroom, a schoolmate handed him a questionnaire, in English, that had been carefully designed on a computer. At the top in shadow box font, it commanded: ANSWER. Then five questions followed:

  1 – What do you think of Ingridi?

  2 – You flirt with her? Yes [ ] No [ ]

  3 – What is the prettiest? Mariana [ ] Ingridi [ ]

  4 – What has Ingridi what other girls do not have?

  5 – What is needed for a girl to have your heart?

  Questionnaires seemed to be a popular form. Molly had been the subject of
one designed by her friends and handed around to the boys in her class:

  Who do you think is prettier? Molly [ ] Ana Flavia [ ]

  “Why do you think they chose Ana Flavia as the other girl?” I asked.

  “Because she was the girl the boys thought was the prettiest before I showed up. It’s funny. She’s the other white girl with blond hair, dyed . . . I think Leila’s beautiful, but she’s black.”

  Black. At my weekly Portuguese lesson with Giovanni, we’d taken to talking about Brazilian culture and politics. We’d meet in the courtyard at Imaculada, looking down into the green valley and Bairro Vermelho, the largely black neighborhood rising up the opposite side. It was nicknamed Powder Hill, for gunpowder. One day, he said with his usual cynicism, “We have a saying here, that the only people who go to jail are the three Ps: the poor, the prostitutes, and the preto [blacks].”

  “I’m glad we live in the poor neighborhood,” Skyler said out of the blue one day. We were threading our way, single file, along the narrow sidewalk on our way down the ridge to the capoeira salon. I was surprised he thought our neighborhood was poor. Historic neighborhoods tend to have cachet in the United States, so I’d been feeling we were living in one of the more desirable parts of town. But most of his privileged schoolmates lived about a half mile farther out the ridge, in a newer neighborhood, where there were individual houses in walled compounds with yards.

  “Why?”

  “I just feel like kids here appreciate things more.”

  During the previous few weeks, he’d been invited to several birthday parties, to the houses of kids whose parents were doctors, lawyers, and successful business people—Penedo’s moneyed class.

  “Natalia Maria’s was pretty cool; it had a huge yard and a baby crocodile in a pen. But you should have seen Isabella’s. She has the most awesome house, with a pool and a sand court with a volleyball net, and soccer goals at each end and a place for forró dancing . . . Their houses are bigger than even our house at home! They all have computers. Junio has a Wii. They probably think we’re poor.”