Crossing the River (30 page)

40
40

The Sensitive Cross-Cultural Approach
The Sensitive Cross-Cultural Approach

I
CALLED
S
KYLER
to the window. The
sanguin
, the little monkeys, were climbing the tallest coconut palm in our neighbor's yard. There were five of them, including a mom with her tiny baby burrowed into the fur on her back. The palm must have been fifty feet high, but they walked up it as though they were going upstairs to bed.

“How do they hang on like that?” Skyler exclaimed with admiration.

As the last one reached the fronds, a light rain began to fall. It looked cozy up there under the palm thatch.

A couple of days later, Peter walked into the garden room.

“A guy's in back climbing the big coconut,” he announced offhandedly.

Skyler and I hurried to the back window. A man was squatting in its top, hacking off the lower fronds. They'd turned orangey-brown in the last few weeks—the palm's way of shedding as it put out new fronds above to continue its upward climb. The man hopped himself down the long skinny trunk, placing his left hand, fingers pointing down, between his squatting feet, to hold his weight as he jumped his feet down—like a monkey. He repeated this—hand, feet, hand, feet—until he landed lightly in the weeds at the bottom.

Skyler was an intrepid tree climber, but coconut palms were in a category all their own. There wasn't much to hang on to except that snake-like trunk.

“Could you teach our son to climb the tree?” I shouted in Portuguese to the man below.

He looked up at our window, surprised, but nodded tentatively.

“Do you want him to show you how he climbs?” I asked Skyler.

“Sure. I guess so,” he replied.

He left to put on a T-shirt, then sauntered down our back stairs, through the laundry room, and out into our overgrown backyard.

The man demonstrated walking up the tree. He looked as casual as the monkeys had. Hands looped around the trunk like a tree climber's belt, he just walked up it, hips jutting out into the air, taking big steps so his feet were always in front of him, not below, where they could slide down. Skyler tried. He made it about ten feet, once, twice, three times, then would get too tired and back his way down. Skyler thanked him and reemerged up the stairs.

It turned out the man was doing more than trimming our neighbor's palm trees. A couple of hours later, he'd uprooted the entire yard's entanglement of green, revealing an astonishing amount of trash—plastic pop bottles, cans, white Styrofoam takeout boxes. Our neighbor, a bachelor who'd had a hard time pulling his eyes out of Molly's cleavage, must have been chucking his dinner “dishes” out the window. Peter, Aniete, and I peered out the back, surveying the destruction.

Aniete explained that our neighbor had killed a big, venomous spider in his house and thought it had come from outside. So this: Aniete waved at the denuded plot.

Peter shouted down to the tree climber in Portuguese, “Are you going to clear the trash as well?”

“
Sim, sim
.”—Yes.

We looked out the window that evening; the plant “trash” had been assiduously cleared, leaving nothing but bare ground and the human trash that had been left behind.

For days after that, I went over in my mind how I might ask our neighbor to clean up his backyard. It was an eyesore for us, never mind a rat haven. Using my Portuguese dictionary, I carefully planned out the sentences.

“Did you know men from the city come every day to pick up our trash, right here in front?” Maybe too indirect.

How about, “
O lixo
”—The trash behind your house—“
não é muito bonita
”—is not so pretty. We'd be happy to pay someone to pick it up.” But maybe then we'd become the perpetual pick-up crew.

How about the sensitive cross-cultural approach, “
Nos Estados Unidos
. . .”—In the United States, we collect our trash to be taken away by
the trash collectors. I know the custom is different here, but . . .” I decided I'd try this.

But then when I ran into him the next day washing his motorcycle in the
praça
and the day after that sitting on a plastic chair blocking the sidewalk, I just couldn't quite do it. Was it because I was questioning whether it was my place, as the foreigner, to ask the locals to change their ways? Partly, and partly I just didn't want to embarrass my neighbor; but then who's to say he'd have been embarrassed?

41
41

The Long Arm of American Ambition
The Long Arm of American Ambition

T
HE LONG ARM
of American ambition had finally snaked its way up the Rio São Francisco. Molly, a high school junior, was in crisis over the upcoming SAT, which she was registered to take in Salvador in early May.

Molly had come to Brazil armed with the Princeton guide to practice tests, which she'd begun to plow through a few weeks before.

“Everybody quiet. Molly's taking a test. She's being timed,” I'd hiss at the parade of people slamming through our front door.

“Mom, all my friends back home are getting tutors or taking prep courses,” she said, sounding increasingly dejected as she ticked off another practice. I had to admit, her scores were surprisingly low, but not wanting to discourage her, I said nothing.

“Mom, I feel so overwhelmed. I don't even want to think about going back to the United States.” Molly groaned. “I can't fit everything I need to graduate into my schedule next year. It's ridiculous that I can't get language credit for Portuguese, when I'm practically fluent . . . And there's so much I want to do outside of school—
The Nutcracker
, a play, soccer, the newspaper. At home there's always so much to do!” she continued. “It's so much easier here.”

She was experiencing what my father, giving it the good spin, would have called “an embarrassment of riches.” In the United States, if one has the means, there are many activities to choose from. In Penedo, Skyler's street friends do the same thing every day after school: look around for something to do. They house surf, hoping to juggle some lemons here, scare up a ball there. In the States, one can try out for myriad sports, join extracurricular clubs to fit any interest, and suffocate under the load. In the States, the current norm of “I want to do it all”—or is it “I
should
do it all,” or maybe “everyone else is doing it all, so . . .”—has turned excitement into dread, at least for Molly. In
my own life, I've often felt relief—relief that I'm done. I check things off the list, and, in the process, I check off my life.

Molly had been Skyping with friends back home, which you'd think might have established a reassuring and calming camaraderie, but instead they seemed to relish whipping themselves into a stressed-out frenzy, as though the height of the stress were the measure of the import of the situation. And God knows the situation was important. They were suddenly standing at the gateway to the rest of their lives: that gateway to college, the name of which was going to determine everything that came afterward. At least that's how they seemed to feel.

Finally I was beginning to worry myself. Watching Molly struggle to pick up her speed on the practice tests reminded me how much Americans value “fast”—fast food, fast answers, fast results. (This is probably why we also value “young.” We don't have time for the not-so-fast old.) We want things
now
. This leads to 24/7, to sound bites. If you can't give me that information, that service, those goods
now
, I'll find somebody else who can. So of course, to get into college, our kids need to prove that they are not just smart, reflective, and knowledgeable, but fast.

Brazil is the opposite. It is the country of “slow,” the country of waiting, the country of patience. The country where you assume you can't get it
now
; in fact, you might never get it. So the question becomes:
When?
And the answer is: “
Quem sabe?
”—Who knows?

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 the 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.