Crossing the River: A Life in Brazil

by Amy Ragsdale

  We found Brazilians living their lives, slowly and languorously, feeling the weight of the lemons in their hands, savoring a morsel of roasted meat at lunch, enjoying the sexual electricity of hips moving in tandem to samba music, lounging in the blissful cool shade of an almond tree. This seemed to be true regardless of class, at least in the Northeast. It was not just street kids who, at loose ends without lessons and school sports, had this kind of time. We saw it with Zeca’s family, too, among the successful lawyers and businessmen. They made the time to be in the present.

  I knew I was romanticizing. But maybe in Brazil, expectations weren’t so high; consequently, the production was lower, and maybe that was okay. Maybe the added misery of “I should be doing better than this, more than this” was not so profound.

  Molly’s idea of ending her high school career with a bang was to do everything, and as a result, she wasn’t sure she wanted to go at all. Fun and excitement had turned into a slog and a chore. Molly is a smart, perceptive person who often surprises me with her thoughtful reflections. But being thoughtful takes time, and the SAT test is not about taking time. It’s about speed. Who cares about thoughtful?

  “Molly, how are you scoring your tests?” I finally asked, beginning to think that maybe there was something wrong. Could she really be getting three hundreds out of a possible eight hundred?

  She showed me how she’d been calculating the score.

  “Sweetie, you need to add these first then divide that,” I said, reading the directions for scoring for the first time. Her scores more than doubled.

  “Oh my God, I’m so relieved.” A gush of air seemed to whoosh out of her.

  Why was it that Penedo seemed to have only new cars—until you needed one to take you long distance? The driver of the shared taxi jiggled and yanked the passenger door open. It emitted a rusty yawn like an irascible heron. I usually happily ceded the front seat to Peter, preferring not to see how abrupt the shoulders were and how close the oncoming trucks, but as Peter wasn’t there, I seemed to be the next in line and landed shotgun. Once the four of us were seated—two other women, Molly, and I—the driver crossed himself, and the car rolled uneasily forward. Some metallic thumping rhythmically pumped up into my right foot.

  Despite my trepidation, I found I enjoyed speeding past the orderly rows of eucalyptus plantations on the other side of the river and was beginning to feel nostalgic, realizing that this would be our last trip to Salvador. The clanking had disappeared, and we were skimming along the two-lane road at one hundred kilometers an hour. We passed the sod farm, with the same arcing rods of irrigation pipe that we had at home, like linked dinosaur skeletons. The grass looked as smooth, and out of place, as a golf course.

  As we sped along past the more-prosperous fields in the state of Sergipe, I immediately felt more at ease. It made me realize how emotionally stressful it could be to be surrounded by hardscrabble lives, even when you weren’t living one. It reminded me of how guilty, but relieved, I had felt when I had left New York City and its sad panhandlers behind to move to Montana, where there were so many fewer. I knew then I was avoiding taking my share of the responsibility—out of sight, out of mind—but I was relieved nevertheless.

  We got to the bus station in Aracaju with an hour to spare.

  Molly and I talked for the entire, luxurious, six-hour bus trip to Salvador—of family and friends, our choice to live in Penedo, and then through ten SAT essay questions. Questions like: “What is your view of the idea that every obstacle can be turned into an opportunity?” “Does having courage mean that we have no fear, or that we act despite being afraid?” I knew she needed to bolster her answers with examples from art, science, and politics. Too bad she couldn’t just write from personal experience. She would have had a lot to say about overcoming obstacles and the nature of courage just writing about her year in Brazil.

  The bus slowed as we hit Salvador’s evening traffic. Rolling into the station an hour late, we found a taxi to the beach suburb where the international school hosting the SAT was located.

  The next morning, we walked to the school, passing the jumping ring of an equestrian center, which reminded me of the afternoons I’d spent on a horse circling a tree, learning to post, English style, when I was twelve years old in Cairo.

  The school guard took down our passport numbers and admitted us. The place was so different from Imaculada, so light and airy with its sprawling white buildings connected by aerial ramps and bright blue awnings against expanses of green grass. A book fair was spread out on tables inside the entrance. Bright collages, students’ artwork, were displayed along the walkway; so like Sussex, the kids’ school at home. Two boys, about Skyler’s age, ran past—speaking English. My chest tightened, and my eyes began to tear.

  “Oh no, Mom. Not here,” Molly whispered.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t,” I said, doubting my own words. I walked over to look at a framed certificate in the reception area, trying to get a grip on my welling emotions, then walked up to the receptionist and asked what time Molly should arrive the next day. She answered politely in good English. I thanked her, then turned to Molly. “Sweetie, I need to leave.”

  Once outside the gate and across a weedy median, I let myself cry. The year would have been so different, Skyler would have been so much happier, if we’d done what we’d done in Mozambique, if we’d chosen an international school in a big city. All the pain of his year flooded through me.

  “Mom, it’s not your fault.”

  “Sweetie, it’s okay. I know why we made the choices we did. I just need to cry for a bit, and then I’ll be fine.”

  We hailed a passing cab. I took a breath and asked for the biggest mall in Salvador. I had promised Molly she could buy a pair of sandals.

  I cried for much of the twenty-minute ride, but by the time we pulled up in front of the enormous glass-and-marble complex, I’d stopped. I’d convinced myself that the experience of language immersion and the hardship of coping with the confusion and feelings of inadequacy would still be worth it in the long run. But I knew the jury was still out. I barely glanced at the driver as I paid, wondering how many sobbing women he carted around in a normal day.

  Salvador Shopping was like a scene from a futuristic cartoon. Workers wearing roller skates skimmed by mopping the floors; security guards, tall, bereted figures in black, passed silently on two-wheeled Segways; frosted-glass stairways, shining escalators, and black glass elevators connected floors of swank shops—Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Billabong, Jorge Bischoff, Sony, and Apple.

  “Coffee shops, Molly, they have coffee shops.” We immediately settled in for a café mocha and “chease chake.”

  Brazilians have raised the flip-flop to the level of haute couture. You’ve got your sequins, your gemstones, your encrusted sea shells, your gold and silver and glow-in-the-dark; and then there are the leather options: glossy and suede, woven, braided, ruffled, studded with gemstones and bows, wrapped in straps and buckles. We scoped out every shoe store in the place.

  We spent nearly ten hours in that mall, more time than I—a hard-core anti-mall mom—had spent in such a place in years. We squealed with delight on our discovery of a Brazilian clothing brand called Skyler and bought him several shirts.

  “Do you think he’ll wear this one?” I asked Molly. “The name is so big; he’s always worrying about looking as though he’s bragging.”

  We ended the day in the Bom Preço, a gourmet grocery.

  We stocked up on Gorgonzola, Parmesan, and Gruyere, Toblerone chocolate, raspberry jam, and Argentinean wine. I was eager to take our treasures back to Peter, the true gourmand in our house.

  Finally, after dark, we headed back to the hotel, made a picnic in our room of good, seedy, whole wheat bread, strawberries, and cheese, and tucked into bed, listening to Inkheart, a children’s tale of medieval characters who come alive out of books. I hoped this would take Molly’s mind off her impending test and drown out the TV we could hear through th
e thin walls from the room next door.

  Looking at her drifting into sleep, I thought that one of the great results of this year was that Molly and I had shifted into another phase. We’d become friends. I found her interesting and funny and was often in awe of how well she handled herself.

  I knew she was worried about how she’d do on the SAT. But I wasn’t. She’d do however she’d do; in the long run, it wasn’t going to matter. She was going to forge ahead with the same ease and confidence, the same gracious openness, the same curiosity and energy with which she’d approached the year in Brazil. And the year we’d spent in Brazil would only enhance what she already had.

  42

  Floating Anger

  I WALKED INTO the garden room to my desk, to be greeted by a giant FUCK shining out of my computer screen. I had to laugh. It captured so perfectly how I felt.

  It was one of the random photographs on my screen saver. Skyler, the artist who’d meticulously dug the word an inch deep into beach sand during a trip to the coast the previous October, was the reason I’d been ranting that morning to Peter. I was feeling exhausted and out of strategies.

  After the lovely, mostly stress-free weekend in Salvador with Molly, I’d wakened that morning to hear Skyler storming out of the bathroom.

  “I need to work out more!”

  Oh. My. God. “Skyler, you don’t need to work out more.”

  “I do. I’m so out of shape!” He was looking really distressed.

  “How can you be out of shape when, yesterday, you surfed, played a soccer game, then ran nine miles on a soft sand beach?!” He and Peter had gone to the ocean while Molly and I had made our trip to Salvador. “Out-of-shape people can’t do that,” I protested.

  “Why am I getting side aches then?!”

  “I don’t know!” I was at a loss. “Let’s research it,” I said finally. After Molly left for school, Skyler and I Googled. With three weeks left of our time in Brazil, we’d given up on pushing Skyler out the door on time.

  “The cause of side aches is unclear . . .”

  “Let’s look at another entry,” I said starting to feel desperate.

  “No, I need to get changed.”

  “For what?”

  “I’m going to school.”

  Ten minutes later, Skyler walked out the door, in time for his second class. I collapsed into my desk chair, exhausted and angry.

  What do you do with anger that really has no place to land? I wasn’t angry at Skyler. It was hard to feel angry at someone who was struggling so much that his mind was sprouting strange fruit. I think I was angry because of Skyler, and because I couldn’t, for this hour at least, hold anything more up. I couldn’t think of any more convincing arguments. I couldn’t find any more engaging distractions. And I couldn’t stand the thought of another three weeks of this.

  The thing that kept me forging on that entire year was the conviction that things would surely get better. Had to get better. That as Skyler spoke more Portuguese, he would feel more at ease. As he felt more at ease, he would like school better. As he liked school better, he would have more things to do, more people to hang out with. As he had more people to hang out with, he would feel more connected to Penedo, maybe even come to like it.

  But none of this had happened.

  Well, he had come to speak more Portuguese. He could rattle away without thinking, sounding like a native Alagoano, even conjugating verbs! Incredible. He was bilingual. But then the rest didn’t follow. Why not, God dammit!

  In my calm, collected, rational moments, I can see—now—that this year was not a good setup for a twelve-turning-thirteen-year-old boy, especially not one with perfectionist inclinations. This was not a good time in his life for language immersion in a strange, macho culture.

  So what does one do with floating anger?

  In my case: cry. Sit by the back window and cry and watch the sheets of rain blowing sideways across the valley. We were coming full circle. The torrential rains that had sent me diving for cover when we’d first arrived eleven months earlier were returning.

  From our perch on the ridge, the picture was one-quarter land and three-quarters sky. I’d never been so aware of clouds. I felt I was looking down at the whole planet and out into the universe. It was good for perspective. I remembered once thinking—as I strode at high speed across the University of Montana campus, head down, planning my next class—that I needed to remember to look up, both literally and metaphorically. Now was a good time to look up.

  When some people look up, they’re looking for God. I’d wondered a number of times about ducking into Nossa Senhora dos Pretos, the church down the street. As a person raised without a religion and little experience of going to church (my foreign catholic school experiences hadn’t been encouraging), I didn’t know quite what I’d do once in there. Just sit, probably. Its giant open doors spreading into that arching white space seemed inviting and peaceful. Perhaps that arching space would make room for thoughts and feelings that might not be able to squeeze their way in otherwise; perhaps they’d be able to spread out and sort themselves.

  But I never did. I felt too watched in this town, and religion is such a loaded subject, like a freighter lying low in the water, waiting out in the harbor for permission to come in. I’d always been afraid to let it in, afraid to let go of my rational grounding in the world, afraid to make those leaps of “faith.” Funny, as there were lots of leaps of faith I was willing to take, like moving to a foreign country, with my kids, to live in a town where we knew no one and couldn’t understand what anyone was saying. But then, those leaps of faith were familiar to me from my childhood.

  So instead, I went to the back window and looked up, out into the sky—the infinite, ever-changing, expanding sky—and it calmed me down. By the time Skyler clunked back through the door at eleven thirty, I was able to be half civil.

  “How was school?”

  “It was okay.” He cocked his head, assessing the morning. “It was actually pretty good. Hey, you want to see my drawing? It started out abstract. Guess what it is.”

  I looked at the paper he held out. On it in pencil was an intricate mandala of tiny puzzle pieces.

  “Well, it looks like a city.”

  “It’s the planet. You know, how it seems really full, but really varied. That could be New York or Paris,” he said, pointing to a skinny rectangle with a spiked top. “This is a forest, these are the Himalayas or the Andes . . .”

  I felt so much relief hearing him prattling away and so much love for this boy who kept getting knocked down, by the place, and by his own brain, but kept getting back up, over and over again.

  Maybe this was all going to end up all right after all. Maybe he’d end up loving this planet, his planet, with its confusion, its challenges, its infinite variety.

  43

  More Important Things

  I WOKE UP EARLY on Good Friday. Peter had his back to me, his bare shoulder poking out from under the soft white pile of our blanket. It was only 5:45, but it was light. I padded barefoot down the white-tile hallway to the back window, slipped the key into the padlock, and opened the windows wide. It was like letting your breath out, a huge sigh of relief spreading down the hill, across the meadow, up through Bairro Vermelho, and out to the river and hills beyond.

  There was the usual morning rooster orchestra. It didn’t change in pitch so much as shift in density and location, a sudden clatch to the right, a pair below, pulling to a chorus in the distance, spraying left. A furry clump of sanguin picked through each other’s fur on a palm frond at the bottom of our yard. Half-clothed people appeared in open doorways, tiny across the valley, wandered aimlessly into the dirt streets to stand for a minute before disappearing back into the dark maws of their houses. Nothing moved quickly.

  A church bell began to clang. It had a hollow, toneless sound that said, This is a practical bell—announcing the time, calling people to prayer—not some highfalutin musical thing. It reminded me of the proc
ession Molly and I had run into the night before with monks and nuns in robes of brown or white stepping slowly in time down the cobblestone street. Their somber chant, “Nossa senhora . . .”—Our mother full of grace—filled the darkness.

  I poured cold coffee, milk, and a lot of sugar into a glass and folded myself onto the bench by the window. It was overcast, but not that taut, Saran Wrap sky—rather pillows of jostling cloud. One burst, and the rain came in a gushing drop. Within minutes, it was pinging on the PVC ceiling in the dining room. There must have been another hole in the roof tiles. I felt so grateful that the rains had come, to beat back the heat.

  The isolated thunderstorms brought a little relief after the sodden lethargy of March and April—a lethargy that I’d begun to feel might never go away. I think this tendency to wonder whether this is it, whether this, whatever it is, is now for the rest of my life, started at about age forty, when it suddenly felt like my body was falling apart and like Humpty Dumpty wasn’t fitting back together again, at least not “good as new.”

  Finishing my coffee, I headed out to the market, squeezing onto the bus just before the rain hit again. By the time I got off, the streets were flooded, ankle-deep by the curbs. I carefully hopped from bit to bit of visible sidewalk. Somewhere along the way, I’d learned not to flip my flops when it was wet. Just as somewhere along the way, I’d stopped saying everything in my head in English and had jumped directly to Portuguese.

  This was a day for circling crowds in the praça near the ferry slip. Some things are timeless, like snake-oil salesmen with a good patter. A group pressed in to see the burly bare-chested man, who was putting screwdrivers and kitchen knives up his nose. For the finale, he dove through a lethal-looking bicycle rim spiked with inward-pointing machetes. All the while, he sold small tins of salve, guaranteed to cure everything: headaches, sore throat, back pain, and even your crotch (whatever ailed it).