A Trip to Brazil

I needed some new photos for my promotional material. I originally intended to ask a friend about recruiting her two sons for the photo shoot. They were unable to make the first date because they had a Brazilian Club afternoon that day. My friend Naomi is French and her husband is Brazilian. Once a month, the parents drag their children to a park or amusement center where in the midst of running around, eating hot dogs and playing games, the children are supposed to speak Portuguese to each other. I asked Naomi if they'd be interested in having me tell stories in exchange for letting me take some photos and use them in my promotional material. She gave me the name of the organizer.

After several rounds of phone tag, I finally talked to Beatrice. She was excited about the program and set a date. When I asked her about when I should be there, she warned me, “Most of the people in the club are originally from Brazil. We're supposed to start at four thirty, but most people show up between five and five thirty.” I had recalled during college the notion of Hawaiian time by the many students new to the main land and its obsessive devotion to mechanical time. I figured that it would be an opportunity to go with the flow.

The day rolled around. Beatrice had called to inform me that it had been raining throughout the day where they lived. It was bone dry outside my window. Such is the nature of Houston. In the fall, the temperature can change fifty degrees in about an hour. During the rainy seasons, the huge black clouds that gather on the horizon can cut across traffic, drenching the car in front of you, but leave you dry and sunny on your side of the street. She said that if it was too wet at the park, that they'd have the session at her home a few blocks away.

My friend and photographer, Anna, drove us to the park. We arrived and saw that it was largely deserted. We walked past the spongy grass, past the drying playground equipment toward the band of trees that stood gathering puddles of water underneath their roots. A few more car arrived and a boy ran out onto the wet equipment with his mother yelling at him with a guttural sounding Spanish. “This must be the right place,” I said to Anna. Another gentleman joined them. He was wearing white shorts and t-shirt. He had black aviator's glasses on and the bushiest little caterpillar of a mustache. “Hi, I'm Beatrice's husband. We decided to have it at our place. Do you know how to get there?” He spoke with perfect american English.
“Yes, Beatrice gave me directions.”
“See you over there.”
We left and drove the couple of miles to their house. Cars lined the street near the house. “All the houses look alike to me in this part of town,” I said to Anna, while I pointed to the pale red-brick houses with beige wooden siding.

We parked and walked toward the house. Through the kitchen window, I saw Naomi and Augustin, her husband. Already, I could hear the sound of the children through the heavy wooden door. I knocked and Naomi answered the door. She greeted us both with a hug and kisses on the cheek. Some of the children were playing with a doll house and plastic furniture in the living room. Others were doing what children excel at when they congregate, running around chasing each other. It's not fancy, but it's a genetic imperative. As we spoke, the most-ancient ritual had been invoked, unfortunately it was ushered in by Naomi's younger son, Vivian. He'd been attempting to crawl over the back of the white-sheet covered sofa, when he'd fallen down and banged his knee against the metal strip underneath the cushions on the front. Tears rolled down his eyes as his mouth grimaced back into a howled in pain. Naomi shook her head and clucked her cheek then administered the medicine only a mother can. She held him in her lap and applied a band-aid to the red welt on his knee. He curled up on her lap for a moment, then erupted out of it when he saw a friend running by with something green and furry in his hands. With that ritual out of the way so soon, it should be a piece of cake to tell stories to a crowd of squealing, jumping, running children.

I sat on the low arm-chair in the living room. Because of my brown farmer's hat, some of the children had paused for a moment to shoot me a sly glance. I pulled my red string out of my pocket and turned to one of them and said, “Would you like to see a trick?” She nodded, not quite entirely sure what I was doing or who I was.

I went through my routine of showing them magic tricks and string figures. Slowly, one by one, they sat on the carpet. Some were sprawled out and others sat cross-legged. When most of them were sitting with rapt attention, I said, “Would you like to hear a story from Brazil?” They nodded eagerly.

I started with the Monkey's Tail, a cumulative and participation story. One little girl laying down participated some, but she was the only one. I then told “The Juruna and the Sun” about a jungle village boy who kills the sun. It's a long story about the hardship the boy faces and how one of the sun's sons becomes the new sun after his father is killed by the boy. It's a long violent story, but one that captures many of the beliefs of traditional people. They sit quietly. I finish with “How the Beetle got its Beautiful Coat” about how the beetle beat the rat in a race to the top of the hill. Some of the mothers in the kitchen nodded their heads when I mentioned how some people in Brazil wear beetles like jewelry. I finished and they wanted to see more tricks. I showed them some more.

Afterward, they resumed their duties. The parents had begun to corral some of them to eat a bit at the table. Some one had brought a chicken from which they'd torn off strips and laid atop mounds of basmati rice flavored with bacon and carrots. Just like the beetle picked out the shimmering golden and green coat, the mothers picked out their children. I could not have guessed who was related to whom. Some children had dark shiny skin like freshly roasted coffee beans with curls as tight as winding confetti others were ivory with dark, thick hair. Still others like Naomi's children were swimming pool bronzed with sun-tinted straight hair. One of the mothers with skin as dark as the dining room table said to me, “Thank you for your stories.” Her words stumbled out of her mouth. “They were very,” she paused for a moment and spoke to her pale son in Portuguese. He answered back and she continued the sentence, “They were very entertaining. I remember about the beetles.”

The children gathered around the table slouching on chairs far to big for them as they spooned scoops of rice into their mouth, some devouring the chicken other picking at it. When the sugar cookies, topped with white icing and pink sprinkles arrived, the children met them with the gusto of men returning from the jungle. As the continued their Portuguese tinged conversations, the children continued to throw themselves into their childhood work.

When it came time to leave, Beatrice gave me a big hug and kiss on the cheek. She said, “Whenever we try to get the kids to sit and listen to the stories, they can't sit still. What you did was amazing.”

I had remembered a dinner recently with some distinctly American friends, we finished and went on our way with sterile waves of hands. In this simple suburban home, I had experienced a sloppy stew of cultures and ethnicities, new flavors of old recipes, and a warm embrace by a stranger. Yes, what had happened was amazing.


- posted by Brian Herod @ 3:11 PM