Vanilla Sky

“They look like two eels going at it,” Lily says out of the blue. We’re sitting on the sidewalk, under the awning of the Vanilla Caffe on Augusta Street, São Paulo’s grimy freakshow strip. I give Lil’ a look that says, info please, and she gestures keenly toward the interior of the café. There, through the Blindex-thick glass, I see two lithe boys pressed up against each other. They are writhing like two cobras – legs slung over one another, hands exploring crevices and sometimes slapping moistly against the window, faces suctioned onto each other with tongues flicking in and out, eyeballs rolled back.

“That’s definitely not bananas in both their pockets,” Lil’ tells me. I blush.

I’ve never seen such a display of lust in my life. Even the most wanton hoodrat ho-bag would avert her eyes. The two boys, lovely as they are, call forth my prudish Catholic school senses circa 1992. Dry humping at its best, I’d say of the scene, done in public and in Brazil!?  How could I not stare?!

And kudos to the two of them. They were practically doing the nasty, in plain sight of  a hyper homophobic South American population. Granted, Augusta is where you’re supposed to come and play at your “alternativo,” as the Paulistanos claim. Nevertheless, the sexual earthquake happening across the glass from me and Lily has to be some sort of social experiment – and each shockwave is a 10 on the Richter scale of hormones.

“This is a great place for a secret encounter,” Lil’ says all ‘a sudden. Here eyes are a little shiny and buggy. A flag runs up its mast in my head –  Why’s her wedding ring bothering her enough to fiddle with so much? Why’s her head cocked to the side in a coy, secret-secret stare?

And then, I remember – She’s been texting ferociously since she got here. I haven’t asked why; didn’t wanna be a buttinsky. But in fact, I actually am, always have been.

So, I fake innocent. “Uh, you think so?”

“Yeah,” she says, squeezing her eyes into little slits. She’s all wound up; I can see it in how she holds her latte. Her fingers are all stiff as she pours sugar into the mug.

“I mean, yeah,” she repeats, “Nobody in my circle would even think of coming around here…I could do anything I wanted and not get caught.”

I reflect on this for a tad, and realize that, yeah, nobody would. Her friends are typical Brazilian squares. Family is king and friends are for life, but also never new, always old and stale. If you didn’t run around in diapers together, you might as well take a hike. Lil’s a bit of an exception, and that’s why she’s here with me – a bohemian gringa with feminist tendencies.

to be cont’d…

Parque Mário Covas

I just discovered the FIRST ever, first-world tourist booth in São Paulo. For a city this huge and old aaand famous,  SP should’ve had visitor centers long ago. And though it claims to have them (in less than a handful of spots, by the way!), they are in wacky, scary locations such as the totally tourist-unfriendly, confusing, and smoggy local bus depot.

Needless to say, I was psyched to discover that the Central de Informações Turísticas in the Parque Mário Covas atAvenida Paulista 1853 has not only a well-stocked, hyper-useful info counter, but also actual English speaking attendants – a rarity!

And boy is it good. There are literally 20 or 30 bi-lingual pamphlets, publications, calendars of events, suggestions for walking tours and other turista goodies. The space is housed on a lovely piece of greenery with cool shade, sprinklers where you can frolick (this is Brazil, anyone can), and most importantly -another rarity- pristine public bathrooms!

So, if you’re lost in Sampa (and face it, you probably are), go to Parque Mário Covas and pick up a map or three from the buffet they’ve got waiting. You won’t regret it!

He makes me wanna be a Mozambican…

This time last year, I was all about fleeing this tropical misfit of a society, convinced I could no more make it in Brazil than I could in the icy stretches of Antarctica. Today, I’m a fluent Portuguese speaker (and writer!) and can think of nothing else than to read my next all original Portuguese language novel.

Why the change?

One of many factors is that only this year did I realize that to get a people you must read their writers. I stopped reading translations of other books (Eat Pray Love, Sophie’s World, Snow…. to name a few I’d picked up in their Portuguese version) and made it my business to read only native Brazilian, Portuguese, Mozambican, Angolan writers…. any book originally written in Portuguese.

I started light. Pulp novels. A couple children’s books by Monteiro Lobato. Then, a few essayists like Fernando Sabino. Some Luis Fernando Veríssimo satire. And for dessert, clippings out of the Folha de São Paulo newspaper, randomly picked over Sunday coffee.

It worked.

I started to get what I call the essence of “life in the Portuguese.” I realized how shallow my understanding of Brazil was without first seeing how it, and the Lusophone world, saw things. The only way to do such a thing from the position of an outsider is to read, read, read.

And so, after a few months of this, I picked up a book by Mia Couto. He’s from Mozambique and a difficult read – too poetic at times…magical realism, they call it. Too African at other times, where you just have to be Mozambican to understand him.

I read Couto’s Um rio chamado tempo, uma casa chamada terra (A River Called Time, on Amazon.com) with a Portuguese-to-Portuguese dictionary in my lap. The protagonist, a college student back home for the funeral his grandfather, talks “western” enough, but the massive load of aunts, uncles, secret lovers, and African lore around him gets difficult to interpret – a mix of dialect, colloquialisms, and  Couto’s magical writing.

Which is why the book is so delicious.

Mia Couto’s pen is otherworldly. He writes about the mundane yet makes it seem fantastical. There’s an echo of teenage fantasy/sci-fi geek, if you look deep enough (but really deep!) and threads of Shakespeare if you’re just too classy for that.

On a personal level, Couto inspires me as a writer and makes me feel like I can live in the southern hemisphere, despite the struggle of always being an outsider. Couto is white, and an African, yet he doesn’t limit himself to the shackles of his European descent. He is who he is…fluid, in word and pen. Which is precisely why he’s #1 on my bookshelf.

See for yourself: Sleepwalking Land

It’s amazing.

A Gringo Joke by Dona Helena

To be told in a British accent:

Mary e John, dois gringos velinhos, estavam juntos na sala de estar. John, tranquilíssimo em sua sagacidade, aquela que só vem com o contar dos anos, olhou para a Mary, e so pôs a falar.

“Mary, quando você morrer eu vou madar escrever o seguinte em sua lápide: Aqui jaz Mary, fria como sempre era durante a vida.”

Mary olhou para o John com um olhar sereno. O brilho de um solzinho de primavera entrava pelos embaçados vidros  da janela e batia no olho da velha, esbotado de cor. Ela fechou as pálpebras até a metade e disse:

“Que bom meu querido. Eu também vou mandar esculpir uma frase em sua lápide. Mandarei escreverem: Aqui jaz John, duro que nunca foi na vida.”

Os dois se olharam, um para o outro, e continuaram sentando ali no sofá, curtindo o sol de uma tarde velha.

*Não sou brasileira, por tanto, absolvo-me de quaisquer erro de ortografia, sintática, ou mesmo… humor!

**Ah, e mais um aviso: É de fato que liberades artísticas foram tomadas na recontagem.

Loitering isn’t a word in Portuguese

As calçadas

O inglês tem um verbo curioso, “to loiter”, que quer dizer, mais ou menos, andar devagar ou a esmo, ficar à-toa, zanzar (grande palavra), vagabundear ou simplesmente não transitar. E, nos Estados Unidos (não sei se na Inglaterra também), “loitering” é uma contravenção. Você pode ser preso por “loitering”, ou por estar parado em vez de transitando, numa calçada. O que constitui “loitering” e portanto crime e o que é apenas inocente ausência de movimento ou direção depende, imagino, da interpretação do guarda, ou daquela sutil subjetividade que também define o que é “atitude suspeita”. Mas é difícil pensar em outra coisa que divida mais claramente o mundo anglo-saxão do mundo latino do que o “loitering”, que não tem nem tradução exata em língua românica, que eu saiba. Se “loitering” fosse contravenção na Itália, onde ficar parado na rua para conversar ou apenas para ver os que transitam transitarem é uma tradição tão antiga quanto a sesta, metade da população viveria na cadeia. Na Espanha, toda a população viveria na cadeia.

Talvez a diferença entre a América e a Europa, e a vantagem econômica da América sobre os povos que zanzam, se expliquem pelos conceitos diferentes de calçada: um lugar utilitário por onde se ir (e, claro, voltar) ou um lugar para se estar, de preferência com outros. Os franceses, apesar de latinos, não costumam usar tanto a calçada como sala, não porque tenham se americanizado tanto que adotaram o “loitering” criminalizado para aumentar a produção, mas porque preferem usá-la como café, e estar com os outros sentados. Desperdiça-se tempo mas ganha-se anos de vida, parados numa calçada. 

As grandes cidades brasileiras que perderam o seu centro também perderam o hábito do papo ocioso na rua. A falta de segurança nos transformou em assustados bichos de toca. No nosso uso das calçadas, não somos mais europeus folgados e não somos americanos determinados. Somos fugitivos.

L.F.Verísssimo 

O Mundo é Bárbaro

People are people; they’ll always be different, similar, precocious, mercurial, outgoing, shy, etc. Above all, differences will sometimes rub against each other, and create a bit of friction.

The maid made me cry!

First of all, let me just fess up – I have a maid. Well, my mother in law does, and since I live with her…

I’m not gonna launch into the sociological underpinnings of Brazilian society to justify just how it is that I can afford this luxury. I’m just gonna lay out the facts.

She’s been burning me. Inferno. Ok, well, just my clothes on the iron – a curious Brazilian obsession which I do not share, but cannot convince her to abandon (though they are my clothes…ugh). I’m pretty sure it’s part of her job NOT to roast my nickers, and anyway, the only person I complained to about it was my mamis-in-law.

In passing, as I then took it upon myself to hoard my clothes in my room, and wash them myself on the weekends. I was doing just fine with this system. Thought it would solve the issue with minimum trouble for everyone.

I am, obviously, not Brazilian.

I woke up today to the Monday morning whirl of Fernanda (that’s her name) running the washing machine. As usual, I took hubby-boy’s laundry, which he doesn’t seem to care about scorching, down to her. I did this even before digging the sleepy crusties out of my eyesockets.

This is when she chose to strike.

“I HEARD,” she said with a yo-sistah twang, “that you don’t think I do my job right, and you don’t want me touching your clothes anymore.”

“Huh?” my eyecrusties and I piped up timidly over such a grandiose statement so early in the morning. My exact query had been, “Does Fernanda burn your delicates, too?” Clearly, my mother-in-law’s gringa-Portuguese to normal Portuguese translation had grown with embellishment.

“Do you not wash your own clothes nowadays?” she demanded, jury style.

“Damn right!” a voice inside my head affirmed, but what came out was just another squirmy, “Huh?”

She stared at me from behind her thick black glass frames – the violent, mustachioed stare of Benito Mussolini. Razor thin, tight lips. Coal black eyes.

“Well, then, you can wash your own clothes,” she spat…a death sentence onto my laundering needs. Wait a minute, wasn’t I already doing that?

If it had been in English, I would’ve defended myself, despite the sleepiness. “What would you prefer I do?” I’d have asked her, “Demand money for the ruined items? Be a confrontational bag like you’re being right now?”

But here in Brazil, I’m slow on the uptake. I just ran to my room and started to cry. What? Why’d I do that?

But then, I realized that what I was really shaken by was how she made it seem like someone  had ratted me out, like I’d been gossiped on by my thus far lovely in-law. “I heard you’ve been saying…” Catholic School, 7th grade springs to mind.

A little while later my mother-in-law came up timidly to say she’d mentioned my name as “absentminded support” for a general argument. Fernanda was indeed slashing, burning, discoloring and ripping, and it had to stop.

“I didn’t mean to get you in the middle,” mamis-in-law said, practically in tears. I had only one conclusion to make:

No matter how sweet your mother-in-law, you still need to watch out. She might rat you out.

Oh, and even though it’s “socially acceptable” in Brazil to have a maid…if you’re a gringa (or just someone who doesn’t want to look like Swiss cheese in her finest skirts and tops), then just avoid the whole enterprise.

Left fork, Right fork

When I was little, I started to use both my hands for things. Like every kid, I was figuring out if I was right handed or left handed. My grandmother, on the other hand, thought this was the mark of the devil. She was also in the practice of spitting on twins and detesting albinos (jk – just kidding). So, she started slapping me on the wrist, and when that failed, tied my left hand to a chair. “Wtf?” I asked my mom (in Polish, of course).

She told me the story of how my aunt Lucy, who actually is lefthanded, showed up home from school one day crying and spitting up snot balls. Her teacher, a Communist by revolution but a Catholic and Slav by birth, told her she was cursed for the use of the hand that was meant for #2 work. He told her that she was effectively eating poo every time she clutched her fork or spoon on the wrong side of the Borscht plate. From that day on, I think she developed a tortured relationship with food, because she dried up like a prune and only showed a healthy apetite in pre-1st grade photos.

Here in Brazil, you can tell who’s from repressed old Europe (or North America), and who isn’t. By watching the cutlery, you can also tell the wanna be’s. Those clutching the fork in the left hand belong to the home team. Those swinging from la derecha are playing an away game.

It is a mystery to me where the switch got flipped or why. Comparable to puzzling over why some countries use a wedding ring on the right and others on the left hand. Does it really have to do with the scatology of Aunt Lucy’s Commie teacher? Well, the wedding ring theory blows that to pieces… Some etiquette rule surely lies at the root of, but who can explain? Is there some bizarre sphere of history buffs who know these types of things? I can only search and pray I find one.

Alleluja

Walking around tonight. The purpose – train the overly fat labrador to walk obediently upon the sleepy streets of small town Brazil. It was a task that led us through winding streets and surprising bends, and yet not very far from each place the dog chose to pee, there was a church. Or a big airplane hanger with God inside, judging by the size . Evangelical depots of devotees.

At one point, we reached a square that was neatly ringed with parked dilapidated cars.. The owners had to be nearby. But where?

Two churches. Not one. Battling it out, staring each other in the face, with tinted Byzantine windows, claiming a stake on the Catholic deco that greedily hogs the founding square at the center of town. Every Brazilian town has a “founding square” where the Portuguese claimed their stake with a huge metal cross instead of a flag.

“How do they choose?” I said to Jota El, looking at both churches; they were bumpin’! I imagined it could only be an innie-minnie wag of the finger selection process cause as far as I could see, the two barge like structures were exactly alike, as was their content.

The people inside stirred about, to and fro. The women in both churches wore skirts below the knee and hair nearly to the ground. I thought hair was for strength, so, Samson…sure…But why the Delilah’s? And why so identical? These churches should form an alliance, I thought, like gangsters in turf wars or political parties between elections.

And a curious thing did I observe, as my labrador laid hot poo in the grass nearby.

All the faithful milling about couldn’t hide a slow, visual scanner mode, like a Terminator machine looking for the kill through x-ray eyes. Obviously, they couldn’t really pay attention to whatever it is they were doing inside their churches. They had to look every which way about, measuring the surroundings like ninjas about to throw down.

Why were they so on edge? so profoundly paranoid? Back and forth, they walked about and scanned, scanned, scanned mostly each other and whoever passed by the gaping door (in other words, my dog, Jota El, and I).

As the dog tugged in her ever present quest for a place to irrigate, the cord twisted around my arm, and I thought I saw a quick glance from a woman with a burberry skirt and bunched up sweater. I looked back at her, but, infected with the shyness or paranoia or whatever it was… a furtive glance is all I could muster. In a creaky voice, I said, “Let’s get outta here,” and Jota El, the labrador and I made off at a trot. As we rounded the corner, a booming voice broke out from one of the churches, “The Lord is coming, are you ready for Him!?!”

A shiver ran down my spine.

What if feels like to be far from home

Living abroad, it’s easy to feel disconnected from what’s going on in your place back home. I feel like my umbillical chord is somewhere, tethered to an empty womb that’s fallen ill with abandonment. I have waking dreams of my hometown and of Brooklyn, the last place I lived. Little tumbleweeds of melancholy memory roll through me in the shape of sad, electric currents of familiarity that’s been discarded. I can’t help but feel like I wasn’t done living in New York and re-connecting with childhood Philly. 

Is that something everyone feels, when they’ve moved abroad? I’ve met a million people who’ve “moved” for a year. They always knew they’d come back. I never met someone who stayed away, like I’m supposed to. 

Life here, in Brazil, isn’t hard for a foreigner. Or at least, for me, it isn’t. I haven’t much to complain about… except that I miss home so much! It’s like a spirit has lodged itself within me and taken over what was to be a fun, delicious sub-tropical life, one I’d tasted before, after all! I knew what was here, waiting for me. I liked what lay before me; I had no illusions. I just didn’t expect that the United States would turn out to have a psychic grip on me, a sense of unfinished business, of having abandoned something. 

Maybe it’s my loyal nature. I can’t give up on things, people, experiences. And of course, I’ve done just that by moving abroad. I haven’t turned my back on 20 years of my life, but my waking dreams the feeling of sadness that spreads through me like a virus sure make it seem like I have.