Crossing the River (5 page)

“Oh, it's lovely,” I sighed, propping my elbows on the two-foot-thick windowsill. I looked down onto the spreading scarlet of a flame tree and across the plaza to a broken balustrade rimming a now-languid Rio São Francisco. It had been a long time since I'd had the time to just look out a window—fifteen years to be exact, since I'd moved from twelve-hour days for my teaching career to that plus two children. We stowed our bags and clumped back down the wide stairs to interrogate Katia at her old rolltop desk by the front door.

“
O mar é longe daqui?
”—How far is the ocean? Is there a hospital? A school?

She assured us there were two schools: private, Catholic, one run by nuns, one by priests.

“I'm not sending Skyler to a school run by priests,” Peter said. Thinking of my cute, blond, eager-to-please little boy, who would be unable to understand the local language, I had to admit, after all the scandals, I kind of agreed.

Both schools were K-12, which was a relief; Molly and Skyler could be in the same building. While I didn't expect supremely social Molly
to have any major problems adjusting, I was more concerned about Skyler. He, too, could be socially adept but was initially more reticent. It would be good for them to pass each other in the hall, especially in the beginning when, without Portuguese, they'd be unable to talk to anyone else.

We ducked through the stone-walled restaurant on the
pousada
's ground floor and headed up the hill to check out the school with the nuns. Half refurbished and half falling apart, Penedo's narrow cobblestone streets were lined with mostly nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century row houses—in oranges, pinks, blues, and greens—which chugged, like strings of sorbet-colored train cars, up fingerlike ridges that stretched away from the river.

Crossing another
praça
, a plaza, at the top of the hill, we rang a buzzer outside tall metal doors and waited to be admitted to the imposing block of building that was Colegio Imaculada Conceiçao. Once in, we peered into the front office through a bank-teller-like barred window. Elizia, the school's bookkeeper and general manager, peered back.

“
Vocês vem de onde?!
” she asked. “You come from where?!”

Tall and black, with 1950s glasses, she wore a form-fitting T-shirt emblazoned with the Virgin Mary—in sequins. We suspected the school might not be what we'd anticipated. Then her stern face unexpectedly exploded into laughter.

“
Vêm por aqui!
”—Come here!—she commanded, and she led us into the cavernous office of the school's director,
Irma
, or Sister, Francisca. Tiny and white, with a broad smile, twinkling eyes, and gray hair poking out from under her habit, Irma Francisca sat behind a broad, immaculately shining desk backed by Christ bleeding on the cross. Peter and I sat down across from her. Peter was beginning to sweat through his shirt, apprehensive about the sure-to-be cryptic conversation ahead. We bore in, trying desperately to understand what she was saying and to make sure she understood us. That she understood that we had two kids who wanted to come to her school; two non-Portuguese-speaking kids who would come sit in class and understand nothing.

I realize one could wonder why we thought this would be a good
idea; one might think that from an educational standpoint, the request sounded absurd. But Peter and I hadn't thought twice about it, nor had our kids. After all, my parents had done this to me, and I had been the same age as Skyler. I had attended Franciscan de Marie, a small French school in Cairo. It catered to the kids of diplomats. In those first few months, as I sat blankly listening to the sounds of this foreign language washing over me, one might think I would have been bored, or distressed. But I don't remember being either. I suppose it's like being a toddler, or a dog, trying to figure out what sound or word goes with what, whether the teacher or your fellow students are happy or upset, and whether they're upset with you. I remember walking up, one by one, to stand next to our teacher, Soeur Marguerite, to recite a memorized poem or paragraph out of our science text. I'd deciphered the content from a dictionary and the pictures—this must be about the measurement of liquids; this about solids and gases. The fact is, you begin to ferret out meaning almost immediately with any tools you have, interpreting body language and actions—everyone is getting up and leaving; it must be recess. Peter and I knew our kids would miss some content areas like seventh-grade social studies. But we weren't worried. Whatever they might be missing was likely to be covered again in high school. The one high school course Molly had to take that year in order to graduate was U.S. History. She could take it online. Nothing felt irreplaceable. In our family-value system, the advantages of learning to be fluent in another language, of learning that one could start from scratch and successfully navigate another culture, would far outweigh the disadvantages. But no one said it would be fun or easy. I'm not sure Molly and Skyler quite understood that.

Elizia and Irma Francisca were quite the odd couple. But they seemed curious about us, kind, and, by the end of our conference, open to taking us in.

Penedo seemed to fit the bill: not too big, not too small; not on the ocean, but close to the ocean and on a big river; a charming hill town with colonial architecture, a lively market, friendly people, a possible school. In the end, we chose Penedo largely for its aesthetics.

Well, not only aesthetics. We also wanted a place that felt safe
enough for our kids to have some freedom, not like Maputo in Mozambique. There our house had had bars over the windows, walls around the compound, twenty-four-hour guards. Our kids were now teenagers. Our lives would be a lot easier if they could move around on their own.

So far, as a family we'd lived in Cadiz in Spain—also a small town, also in language immersion—but only for five months, and the kids were so young that their regular vocabulary was half sign language anyway. We'd tried Maputo in Mozambique, a big city with a big international community. Although we'd been disconcerted by the underlying class tension and high rate of crime, it had been a blast. Within the ex-pat community, we'd just had to “add water and stir” for a social life; Peter was engrossed in a book project, and I was blissfully taking my first break from my overwhelming work life at home. I could feel, however, that this year in Brazil was going to be different. With older kids and total language immersion in a small town, it was going to be the real test of our resilience and adaptability. But I was already falling in love with Penedo and felt confident we could hack it—maybe too confident.

The scouting trip was great. We were moving fast, laughing a lot, heady with the freedom of choosing a place to live. Brazil was getting into our blood.

Seven months later, we made the jump. We'd cleared our closets; packed away valuables; forwarded the mail; found caretakers for pets; cancelled our Internet service, our recycling and garbage collection, our cell phones and car insurance; submitted ourselves to a raft of vaccinations; turned our house over to renters; and spent hundreds of dollars on visas and thousands on airplane tickets.

Molly, Skyler, and I arrived in Brazil on July 8, 2010—winter in the Southern Hemisphere.

“There's Dad!” the kids chimed in unison.

Peter was in the crowd on the other side of the glass doors as we emerged from customs in the airport in Maceió, the capital of the state of Alagoas. Three hours from Penedo, this was the closest place we could fly into. Craning to see us, he looked tired and hot, but tan
and pleased. He'd come a couple of weeks earlier intending to find a place to live (and watch the World Cup with Brazil's soccer-crazed population). On the house front, he'd had no luck. On the soccer front, he was doing better. The doors slid open, and we pushed our luggage cart through. Hugging Peter, I thought he felt thin.

He gestured to two taxi drivers waiting outside by the curb. He'd hired them to take us, and our year's worth of luggage, to an empty lot where we could catch one of the many vans that run every few hours between small towns. This would be the last leg of our two-day journey.

We each had one duffel bag of clothes, a daypack for books and games, and a computer. We were sweating in our jeans. As we sped down a boulevard, I stared out the window at the jumble of boxy shops and tire stores, the nests of electrical lines, and the parade of billboards with words in Portuguese that I didn't understand. It's so disorienting to drop out of the hushed limbo of airplane flight, with its muted light and numbing shot of American movies, into the psychedelic collage of the real world, especially one as kaleidoscopic as Brazil.

We arrived at the van lot early, staked out seats, and crammed in our bags. Now there was nothing to do but wait. Peter left to check out the convenience store at a neighboring gas station. I propped my feet on a duffel and hugged the daypack and computer in my lap. Winter in northeastern Brazil was warm. I wondered if the van's windows would open.

“Want a bag of
Hoofles
?” Peter asked on his return, grinning as he tossed a bag of Ruffles potato chips in to Molly, seated next to me in the back. “In Portuguese, the
r
at the beginning of a word is pronounced like an
h
,” he went on. “Like
hestoranchee
. That's
restaurant
. It's really confusing. So, when we get to Penedo, we're going to stay at the Pousada Colonial. We've got two rooms, that great airy one in the front, where you and I stayed”—he nodded to me and smiled, knowing I'd be pleased—“and then one for the kids. We can stay there until we find a place to live. Too bad Ianca has left,” he added, glancing over at Skyler, who had squeezed himself into the van's back corner. “She's the eleven-year-old daughter of the family who owns the
pousada
. She's
really fun, kind of a live wire. Her classmates were over the other day and whipped themselves into a frenzy when I showed them Skyler's visa photo and told them that he had
blue
eyes.” Skyler's face went taut as he tried to swallow his smile. “You'd like that family. The dad's a hot soccer player. But they just left for the Middle East. He got a job as assistant coach for the national team of Dubai.”

Over the next half hour, the van filled. Our giant duffels ended up under not only our feet but also everyone else's. No one complained. Finally, the man who collected the money nodded at us and slid the side door shut. We were off, the four of us scrunched, like our bags, into the back row of seats. At home, this would be the moment we'd yell, “One, two,
three!
Hit the road, Jack!” and pull onto the interstate for a long trip. It was a declaration of freedom, of let the adventure begin! This time we sat quietly, looking out the window at our new home. I wondered what our kids were thinking. Did it seem exotic? Or were they already jaded, after living in Mozambique five years earlier? Had we made the right choice?

3
3

Flies
Flies

W
E HADN'T EVEN BEEN
in Brazil a week!

“Go get your husband,” the older doctor in the long white coat at the Penedo emergency room gently suggested in Portuguese.

They would bandage Skyler's head and prepare him for the ambulance trip to the trauma center in Arapiraca, an hour away. He needed a neurosurgeon and a CAT scan, more than they could handle here.

I hustled out the front door to go find Peter and Molly. Skyler's new friend Victor still stood outside, but the unmarked car had left. Piling into a taxi waiting at the end of the block, we were halfway back to the Pousada Colonial when I realized I hadn't even told Skyler I was leaving. I was stricken, imagining him unable to understand what anyone was saying, wondering why they were loading him into an ambulance, and then, why he was all alone.

Back at the
pousada
, Katia told me that both Peter and Molly were still out. Where were they when I needed them?! I threw passports and clothes into a bag and, most important, scrambled to find the English-Portuguese dictionary. This idea of living abroad every few years wasn't starting off quite as planned. In all my years abroad as a child, it had never turned out like this! Peter returned just as I was leaving—someone in the
praça
had intercepted him to tell him something had happened to his son. We agreed that he and Molly would follow in a taxi once Victor had found her.

By ambulance, the hour-long trip took thirty minutes, even over the bucking, shoulderless two-lane road. Sitting in the windowless back of the little van with Skyler stretched on a gurney in front of me, and Cassia, the nurse from Penedo, poised over his head, I would later realize we'd passed ambling villages with plaster houses rimmed in cool verandas, surrounded by the eye-popping green of rolling sugarcane fields. But at the time, I barely looked up from Skyler's face.
Initially, he was talking a lot, frustrated with himself for getting hurt, peeved that he was missing the World Cup soccer finals, which we had planned to watch that afternoon. Portuguese was the first reason we'd decided to spend a year in Brazil. Soccer was the second, at least for Peter and Skyler.

But now Skyler's eyes were beginning to close and his speech to drift. Cassia, with her broad smile and beautifully coiffed poof of black hair, had been deftly changing his blood-soaked head bandage as we jounced through the potholes. She shook her head as he drifted toward sleep, looking worried.

“Skyler, let's do some math problems!” I said urgently. He'd always been good at calculating numbers in his head. “What's, uh, what's thirty-six times . . . times 412? No, maybe that's too hard. Would two digits be better? How about thirty-six times fifty-two?”

He seemed to think. “One thousand, eight hundred . . . and seventy-two?”

“Great. That's great,” I said, having no idea what the answer was myself. “How about twenty-three . . .” I continued on. I just wanted to keep him talking, awake, alive.

We were dipping into a gully when the pavement turned to dirt, and we were suddenly caught in a twisting knot of cars slowly picking their way through water-filled ruts. Were we going to put on the siren, flash some lights? But we just slowed down, patiently waiting our turn.

“
É perto agora
”—It's close now—Cassia whispered under her breath, sensing my alarm.

Up the other side of the gully, the boxy, modern buildings of Arapiraca heaved into view, much grimmer than the quaint town we'd left behind.

Within minutes, the ambulance slid into the carport at the trauma center, another nondescript white concrete building. We had arrived. The back door ripped open, and Skyler on his gurney was slid out. I followed as he was whisked through an opening without a door, past rows of chairs with a few waiting people, and through a floor-to-ceiling accordion gate. It clanged shut. He was in. I was out? The gate was manned by men in khaki, their pants tucked into leather boots, machine guns slung casually over their shoulders. One put his arm out
and softly motioned me to the side. I watched, my mind beginning to race, as Skyler was rolled away. I had no room to wonder why everyone had guns.

The receptionist was asking me something. “. . .
djefshhhhwquwhah . . . ne?
”

Huh? “Skyler Stark-Ragsdale?” I hazarded, hopefully.

He smiled and tried again. I finally managed to give my name and relationship; Skyler's name, age, and nationality; and, throwing my raised arms and head sideways, a mimed description of a side flip, of his accident. They let me through. An armed guard with blue eyes, unusual in northeastern Brazil, led me down the dingy hallway and pointed me through the door of a room on the left.

An intensely bright light was being trained on Skyler's head. As always in Brazil, there was a crowd, most in scrubs, some in masks, some focused on Skyler, others just chatting with their neighbors. Two flies buzzed through the circle of light.

“. . .
tem dor?
” Cassia, from our ambulance, was asking me. It sounded kind of like “Nintendo.” I flipped through my dictionary but couldn't find it and apologetically shook my head to signal
I don't understand.
Days later, I would figure out that she'd wanted to know if Skyler “has pain,” since she had had no way to ask him herself.

“How're you doin', Skyler?” I asked as the surgeon buried another long needle into the thick flap of scalp, squeezing in a three-inch syringe of Novocaine.

“Okay,” he rasped.

“Is this almost over?” he asked twenty minutes later, sounding tired but almost matter-of-fact. I was relieved that he seemed so normal.

By the time Peter and Molly got there by high-speed taxi forty-five minutes later, Skyler had gotten seven Novocaine shots and a Frankensteinian stripe of nineteen stitches arcing from the top back of his head down to his left ear. His CAT scan had checked out normal, and I'd been able to give him the running score of the World Cup finals, which, of course, the CAT scan technicians had been watching in between patients.

But it wasn't over. They wanted to keep Skyler for observation, be sure he could keep food down, be sure there was really no brain
trauma. As the evening wore on, Skyler and I were transferred from room to room, as space was needed. We watched as the gate clanged open and an increasing number of cases, each more gruesome than the last, were wheeled through. Was this standard Sunday-evening fare, or had things been exacerbated by whipped-up passions surrounding the World Cup? We shared rooms with men who appeared to have been shot, knifed, beaten. We listened to them wheezing into respirators, watched blood clotting their bandages. Privacy was not an option.

I've always dreaded the possibility of ending up in a rural hospital in a developing country, with their mildewed walls, gaping entrances, and flies in the operating room. I remembered my mother talking about a hospital in Cairo when I was twelve. She'd gone in to help a young American woman who'd been turned inside out by the local food. When my mother found her, blood was going up her IV tube rather than the rehydrating solution going down. As an adult, I've heard that's not so uncommon, but as a child, it left a graphic picture of why you should never end up in one of those hospitals yourself. I now know, however, that they can be full of smart, experienced, kind people, capable of saving your son's life.

We met a lot of people at the trauma center, which served the surrounding fifty-two towns. They came to help, to interpret, or just to check in on the
Americanos
(clearly a novelty): Fabiana, a rotund, genial surgeon who spoke good English and gave me restaurant recommendations for her hometown of Maceió; Dr. Lobo, the taciturn neurosurgeon; Lima, the blue-eyed guard who gently ushered us from place to place; Tonya, the whiskey-voiced head nurse; Ivanildo, a lab technician who wanted to practice his English and talk about American music; and of course, Cassia, the ambulance nurse from Penedo, who stayed with us for the next four hours when she could have gone home. She held me tight when my eyes filled with tears, on hearing Skyler's CAT scan was normal.

Being a person who is quick to tears (not necessarily of sadness, but of inspiration, empathy . . .), it was surprising I didn't bawl with relief. But I find in crises like these, my mood drops to calm, like a Ferrari dropping its weight into the pavement getting ready for a high-speed ride through unpredictable curves. Instead of feeling hysterical
about Skyler, the emotional intensity of the situation bound me fundamentally and unforgettably to everyone around me. My tears came months later, when I ran into Cassia on the street in Penedo. Then, my gratitude for her companionship and care in this moment came flooding out.

Released too late to go back to Penedo, we spent the night in a small hotel and delivered flowers to the trauma center staff the next day before returning home. Thanks to the Brazilian healthcare system, the entire event, ambulance and all, was free.

When we got back to Penedo, everyone seemed to know what we'd been through.

“
Seu filho?
”—Your son?—strangers stopped to ask.

I knew they were wondering who we were, how, like aliens, we had landed in their town. But no one addressed that now. This was more important. I was a mother with a son, and he had been hurt.

You'd think I might have asked myself at this juncture whether this had all been a mistake—this pulling our kids out of school in the United States, away from friends, putting our jobs on hold, risking our kids' lives (or so thought some of our friends). But as a person who tends to keep moving forward once I've taken a step, it didn't even occur to me.