Crossing the River by Amy Ragsdale Page B

had nineteen.
    The students gathered in the courtyard to sing a song painted on the wall with lots of references to Deus , the only word I could catch. Then Molly and Skyler were swept away. Well , I thought, here goes .
    Four hours later, Peter and I waited for them under the voluptuous red lips painted on a hanging sign that advertised Boca Cheia, “The Full Mouth,” a lanchonete across the street from Imaculada, where we’d agreed to meet for lunch. Kids were beginning to spill out of the blocky yellow building. My eyes rapidly sifted through the flood of blue and white to find Molly and Skyler.
    Then I spotted them, in separate groups. They seemed to have friends! Before leaving for Brazil, I’d laid out colored sheets of construction paper around our dinner table one night. “We’re going to make a mobile,” I’d announced, trying to imitate the hands-on approach of the kids’ small, progressive Missoula school. “You can do whatever you want with the paper, but on each piece, you’re going to write what you hope to get out of this year in Brazil. Things you want to do or learn.”
    Twenty minutes later, the table was covered with orange and lime-green triangles, rectangles, and Matisse-like squiggles, and Skyler had made an origami canoe. Both kids had said they hoped to “make friends.”
    Now they crossed the cobbled street to where we stood.
    â€œMolly, you’re out early. How was it?”
    â€œMom, it was crazy! It’s totally chaotic,” she started, bubbling over as usual.
    We had been braced for the strict, banished-to-corners, writing- I will not talk -1,500-times Catholic schools of my traveling childhood. But it turned out this was the chaotic, talk-anytime, move-your-desk-anywhere, apply-nail-polish-during-class, leave-the-room-to-answer-your-cell-phone, write- Fuck -on-the-board kind of Catholic school. Brazilians are all about fun.
    â€œSkyman, what about you? How was it?”
    â€œFine,” he said, eyes down, tugging on the brim of his cap. He didn’t offer any more.
    Imaculada would become the center of Molly’s social life and Skyler’s nemesis. It didn’t help that he was starting out the year defying the dress code by wearing a hat. And it didn’t help that we’d been advised by the school’s director to put him in the Sétimo Ano , thereby skipping the first semester of seventh grade, because they thought it would be better for him to stay with his age group. Molly dropped back to the Primeiro Ano , a repeat of the end of her sophomore year in high school, so that she could focus on learning Portuguese. That turned out to be a better fit in every way.
    After weeks of living out of duffel bags at the Pousada Colonial, we suddenly found a house to rent for $350 a month. A professor of pedagogy at a community college down the backside of the ridge had introduced himself to us when we were catching lunch one day at Boca Cheia.
    â€œ Vocês são os Americanos ,” he said—You’re the Americans. “It’s a pleasure . . . you can call me the Professor. I know of a house for rent, and I know the owner. I will talk with her for you.” The house was just across the plaza, four doors down from Imaculada, on the Praça Jácome Calheiros. How had we missed it?
    â€œBe careful how you say Jácome ,” Peter later noted. “My soccer buddies laughed hysterically when I said Jacomé . If you put the accent on the third syllable, it means, ‘I’ve already eaten,’ or, more specifically, ‘I’ve already eaten her .’ Get it?”
    We crossed the praça to check it out. The house sat on one edge of the town’s main ridge and was structured the way all the old houses were, like a railroad apartment, attached to buildings on either side. There were only two windows—one in the front and one in the back.
    â€œI’m afraid it’s