Crossing the River (36 page)

Postscript
Postscript

W
HEN WE RETURNED
to Brazil three years later, nothing had changed, and everything had changed.

Penedo appeared much the same. Some houses were newly painted, others faded; the market was still covered in black plastic; brightly striped
lanchas
still plied the river; music blaring from mobile speakers still bounced off plaster walls. But the rusting shells of the old buses had been replaced by Mercedes-Benzes; the motley collection of taxis at the ferry slip were now a uniform, shiny white. The peeling face of the capoeira salon continued to peel, but on either side were now a black-glass-chandeliered pastry shop and a designer clothing store.

“
É nossa, é nossa
,” Skyler laughed as he danced across the tiny
praça
, rolling the soccer ball forward, back, kicking it into the steps to ricochet into the goal delineated by two flip-flops against the retaining wall. “
Gol!
” he and Italo shouted, their fists raised triumphantly in the air.

His old friend Victor gave him a friendly shove on the back, a good-to-see you, but how-did-you-get-another-goal shove. Victorhad grown a foot and was filling out into a man. But he was still as patient and quick as ever.

We were back in the site where they first met, the very first night we arrived in Penedo four years earlier—the Praça do Convento, the tiny, bricked-in area sandwiched between the steps of the tiered plaza and a stone cross. Same people, same place, doing just what they'd done then, but now deftly using the stairs, the statue, the retaining walls to ricochet the ball around their opponents to their partners.

Though we'd arrived in town late at night, the first thing Skyler wanted to do was to run up the cobbled street to Victor's house, the blue house with the worn steps and dark, cool interior. Despite all
the trials of his year in Brazil, now, at sixteen, Skyler was thrilled to be back.

Peter, Molly, and I, tired after a day of bus and van travel from Salvador, had retreated to Oratorio, the airy restaurant cantilevered out over the river that had been Peter's and my date-night spot. We'd installed ourselves in the hard wooden seats, ordered beans and rice, fried fish, beer, and
caipirinha
s. The waiters smiled in recognition and welcome. I felt a wash of contentment as I relaxed into the warm, moist night air.

Appendixes
Appendixes

W
HERE
A
RE
T
HEY
N
OW
W
HERE
A
RE
T
HEY
N
OW
?

Ana Licia
,
Keyla
,
Leila
, and
Sara
(Molly's friends) have enrolled in universities in Maceió to become nurses, physical therapists, and chemical engineers. When we visited, they returned to Penedo in force to pull Molly out to
passear
around town and dance till dawn.

Aniete
has married Roberto, a man she'd just met when we lived there, and has a baby daughter.

Bazooka
killed a man—a vengeance killing for the death of his brother—and is in prison.

Bentinho
is teaching capoeira at the Centro Cultural, where I'd gotten him a job before we'd left, and is now employed by the city, teaching capoeira in all the public schools.

Elizia
is still there behind the teller bars of her bookkeeper's office at Imaculada, her seriousness bursting into smiles and engulfing hugs.

Fabio
left the sugarcane factory to enroll in the small local university to study tourism.

Giovanni
is finishing law school and is hot to become a labor lawyer, defending the worker.

Junior
had been arrested again, but when we visited, he was still playing soccer on the ragged field down in the
baixa
and wanted to see if Peter remembered the victory dance.

Karol
has moved south to São Paulo to become an airline attendant, pursuing her dream to travel and speak English.

Katia
continues to manage the Pousada Colonial as efficiently as ever.

Robson
and
Shirley
have a new son and continue to run their store down in the
baixa
.

Zeca
is married and has become a professor of English in a language institute in Maceió.

Skyler
is a junior in high school in Missoula and has just won several slopestyle ski competitions flipping on skis.

Molly
is a junior at Macalester College, double majoring in media and cuture/international studies and interning at the Minnesota AIDS Project. She's preparing for a junior year abroad to be spent on a sailboat off New Zealand.

Peter
sold the new book proposal that he began developing in Brazil, and that book,
Astoria
, published a few months before our return, is selling better than any before.

I
decided, on leaving Brazil, to continue with the dance company, but after several gratifying years, I am finding I have come to the end of that chapter, at least as it was written. I feel sure my next adventure will be a full one and will include more travel. I continue to grapple with balance, but I am lucky to find joy in so many people and in doing so many things.

P
ORTUGUESE
V
OCABULARY
P
ORTUGUESE
V
OCABULARY
:

água de coco
: coconut water

atabaque
: drum played by
capoeiristas

baixa
: below; often refers to the geographically lower part of a town, which can also be the business center, or downtown, in port towns where shops cluster around harbors

berimbau
: the one-stringed instrument played by
capoeiristas

cafezinho
: demitasse cups of strong, sweetened black coffee

caipirinha
: a popular drink made from
cachaça
(sugar cane alcohol) and usually limes

capoeira
: a Brazilian martial art/dance form

capoeirista
: a practitioner of capoeira

carnaval
: a multi-day pre-Lent festival

empregada
: a house cleaner and cook who comes in during the day

equip som
car: a car equipped with massive sound speakers

Eskyloh
: Portuguese pronunciation of Skyler's name

favela
: urban slum

feijoada
: celebratory Brazilian bean stew

fica
: to make out

forró
(pronounced
foho
): type of music and social dance found in Northeastern Brazil

frevo
: a form of music and dance originating in Pernambuco, Brazil; the form it took most often in Penedo was of a small marching brass band

futebol
: field soccer

futsal
: small-court soccer

graviola
: the green spiky fruit known in English as soursop

lancha
: a passenger ferry shaped like a long tube that's not quite high enough to stand up in

lanchonete
: lunch spot with cafeteria-style home cooking

maracujá
: passion fruit

Mela-Mela
: the flour and food-coloring fight that takes place in Neópolis during
carnaval

obrigado
(
a
): thank you; the -
o
ending is used by males and the -
a
by females

pandeiro
: a tambourine-like instrument played by
capoeiristas

pousada
: a bed-and-breakfast

praça
: a plaza

real (reais)
: Brazilian currency (singular and plural)

roda
: the circle made by
capoeiristas
within which two players spar

sim
: yes

tchau
: bye

tudo bem
: all is well

Acknowledgments

I
WOULD LIKE TO THANK
my writing coaches, Peter Stark and Caroline Patterson, and my many readers along the way: Jane Ragsdale, Noel Ragsdale, Elke Govertson, Jen Ellis, Karen Sandstrom, Caroline Lonski, John Brown, Brian Gerke, Joy Harris, Jennifer Weltz, Lisa Hendricks, and Molly Stark-Ragsdale. I am grateful for the encouragement of friends: Rosalie Cates, Martha Newell, Tom Duffield, Paul Elliott, and Stephanie Daley-Watson. Thank you to Whitney Dreier at
Outside Magazine Online
for her interest in trying out some of this material for the nascent column
Raising Rippers
. Thank you to The Break Espresso for offering a warm place to work and keeping me fueled with generras. I want to thank Barrett Briske for her eagle eye as a copyeditor and her rigorous effort to grapple with all the Portuguese language references. I give special thanks to my developmental editor Anne Horowitz for her thoroughness and insight, humor and tact (how am I doing with the dangling modifiers?), and to my executive editor Laura Mazer for her clarity of vision and enthusiasm. I am most grateful to my agent Judy Klein for her astute guidance, her belief in this book, and her willingness to stick with me.

Most of all, I want to thank the people of Penedo for their incredible kindness, generosity, and friendship: Katia for her ongoing support and Suzy for taking us into the Pousada Colonial; Giovanni for his friendship and instruction in Brazilian culture and language; Elizia for her enthusiastic open arms; Iracema for holding my hand through the challenges of my children's schooling; Mario and Valmir for their quiet bolstering of Molly and Skyler at school; Karol, Leila, Keyla, Ana Licia, Sara, and Larissa for being such wonderful friends to Molly; Victor, Ricardo, Breno, Paulinho, Pedro, and Giovanni for being such great friends to Skyler; Fernando for pulling Molly and me into dance; Aniete, Gel, and Shirley, Aunt Laura, and our landlady Ilda
for their support in our home and guidance through Penedo's daily mysteries; Bentinho, Fabio, Azul, Taciana, and the many capoeiristas, and the soccer players Lu, Manuel, Junior, Frankie, and Dalan, all of whom gave us a community; and, finally, two open-hearted, wonderful families—that of Maria and her children, Victor, Karol, Italo, and Junior, and that of Zeca and his parents, Valter and Vilma, sister Rafaella, and uncle Robson, aunt Shirley, and their children Julia and Mateus. We are eternally grateful for your friendship. My ultimate thanks go to my adventurous parents for setting me on this path; to my two sisters, Noel and Dana Ragsdale, world travelers in their own rights; and to my children, Molly and Skyler, and husband, Peter, for their tremendous courage and willingness to step into the unknown. I feel so blessed to have such a family.

About the Author

A
MY
R
AGSDALE
is a writer and choreographer based out of Missoula, Montana, who was born in New York City and raised in Madison, Wisconsin; Asia; and North Africa. She earned a BA in Art History from Harvard College and an MALS from Wesleyan. Her articles on travel and dance have appeared in
High Desert Journal
,
Mamalode
, and
Outside Magazine Online
, where she initiated the column
Raising Rippers
.

Ragsdale's dance career included performing with Impulse in Boston, Fred Benjamin, Laughing Stone, and Ze'eva Cohen dance companies in New York, and as a guest with Bill T. Jones and Douglas Dunn. She moved to Missoula to head the dance program at the University of Montana. She has also taught contemporary dance in Spain, Indonesia, Martinique, Mozambique, and Brazil. Her choreographic work has been performed throughout the Northwest, in New York, and televised on CNN's
World News
. She is the founder of Headwaters Dance Co., the recipient of the University of Montana's Distinguished Teaching Award, and a 2009 Governor's Arts Award for the State of Montana.

She is married to writer Peter Stark. They have two fabulous children, an ancient imperious cat, and a relentlessly enthusiastic puppy.