Stay
January 2, 2014
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The house sits at the end of a tiny, half-concealed road in Rio de Janeiro’s Cosme Velho neighborhood. Daddy knocks on the door. We are greeted by a smiling middle-aged woman. Senhora Maria, she says. I step inside, eager to settle in. Seven girls look up from the dining room table, each with hair pulled up and away from the heat of the day, sweating profusely. It suddenly feels very hot.
My parents and my sister, Lola, pause cautiously at the threshold, peering in like characters in a scary movie. Their skepticism is palpable, but I’m still too excited to pay that much attention. I’m finally getting to study abroad in Brazil. I’d dreamed of and planned for this over the past two years, against the advice of my business school counselors, parents, and a few friends. What about Europe, they all asked me.
If I was going to leave the United States, I didn’t want to be that comfortable. I needed something completely different, a shock to the senses. Besides, Brazil had to be an easier country to maneuver than our beloved Nigeria, with its extremely dense population, political unrest, and religious violence.
Senhora Maria ushers my family forward and closes the door. We follow her through the living room and into the kitchen. Gnats circle around a basket of rotting fruit. Breakfast, she says. I struggle to maintain a poker face. I’ll just buy breakfast down the road, no big deal. After all, I’m not here to live in luxury. The plan is to practice Portuguese and learn more about Brazilian culture.
She leads us beyond the kitchen and towards the back of the house. We follow, single-file, still hopeful and curious, taking note of the familiar trappings of home. Mommy stops short.
A section of the roof is missing. Repairs, Senhora Maria says.
Lola looks from me to the open sky beyond the roof and then back to me. Yikes. Nervousness begins to knock gently at the base of my stomach. I am painfully aware of my own self-consciousness and embarrassment. I don’t want to appear spoiled and intolerant of such small inconveniences. However, this is not at all what I expected, and certainly not the picture I’d sold to my parents. As much as I’ve tried to assert my independence, I care very much what they think, especially my mother. If she’s unhappy with my living arrangements, I won’t get any peace of mind.
Mommy looks at Daddy, her displeasure prominently displayed between knitted brows, lips parted in protest. Ask her how long the repairs will take, Daddy says. I translate in Portuguese. A few weeks, she says.
Daddy opens his mouth, but I hurry forward to avoid further questions. Anyone from a developing country can tell you; a few weeks never means a few weeks. If I give my parents, who are attorneys, any room to investigate, we might end up boarding the next flight back to Houston.
Mommy’s concerned gaze bores into my back as we continue. Senhora Maria leads us up a winding staircase and through a narrow corridor. I can hear my parents whispering fervently between themselves. She pushes a door open. We stand shoulder to shoulder, frozen in disbelief. Three thin, twin-sized mattresses lay pushed together on the floor.
“Are you meant to sleep like that?!” mommy hisses, breaking the silence and jabbing a finger into my side. “Ask her, ask her.”
With a sigh I confirm that, yes, I am indeed meant to sleep here, alongside some of the other girls. A slurry of questions trip and tumble out of my parents’ mouths. Before I can fully translate one question, they are demanding that I ask another. Before I can hear her responses, they are interrupting with more thoughts. Lola chimes in with a few observations. I cut her a look.
This is the overflow house, Senhora Maria admits sheepishly. This place is for students who have not been assigned a proper homestay or who have had issues with their existing arrangements. I look at Daddy; he doesn’t ask for a translation.
I was originally assigned to an elderly woman living in Jardim Botânico. The night before moving in, I received an email from the Coordinator of Foreign Students at Pontifício Universidade Católico do Rio de Janeiro, P.U.C. for short. “You have been reassigned,” it read. “Your new homestay is in Cosme Velho. See contact information below.” When I had called to ask why, the coordinator said that my host mother was ill. There was something in the wavering lilt of his voice that told me he was lying. I pressed further. He said that the woman was uncomfortable that I was a girl. Because of her old age, she didn’t want to be worried about me wandering around the city. He was still lying. I had a feeling it was something else entirely, but I thanked him and hung up the phone.
“You need to call Georgetown. This is unacceptable. You can’t stay here,” Daddy says.
There is no debate or further discussion. We say our thank yous and leave the house, promising to call the woman tomorrow. I feel deflated and on the brink of tears. Everything is going wrong.
We pile into a taxi, unsure of what to do now. Daddy needs to return to work in a few days; Lola needs to go back to school. My parents discuss which of one of them will stay behind with me. I’m at once filled with gratitude for their love for me and frustration at how much I still need their help at twenty years old.
Sitting up with a jolt, I remember the lovely woman I’d sat next to on the plane. We’d spoken at length, in Portuguese, for what seemed like the entirety of the flight from Houston. She sat on the aisle seat to my left, a row in front of her husband and daughter. Call me Dulce, she said. I winced at the informality. My Nigerian upbringing would not allow it. We settled on Senhora.
Although I knew Brazil to be as diverse a country as the United States, her blonde hair and blue eyes shocked me, nearly as much as my dark brown skin and long braids seemed to shock her. She wondered aloud how I could speak Portuguese and why I would want to live and study in Rio. Her husband, Senhor Mauricio, sent warm smiles my way. Her daughter, Lucila, a pretty, brown-haired girl a few years younger than me, actively chimed in from the space in between the seats, even trading places with her mother for a while. By the flight’s end, Senhora Dulce had given me her email and phone number.
I call her now, thinking she might be able to suggest a few apartment buildings. She promises to call me back tomorrow with a few listings. She calls a few hours later instead. Bring your family for dinner, she says. I cover the phone and look to my parents for confirmation. This invitation excites me more than anything else about traveling, more than the site-seeing and beaches. I live for the simple thrill of peeking into the everyday lives of people who inhabit a place.
The taxi stops in front of a lovely apartment building in an affluent neighborhood called Gávea. The evening rolls quickly by, each of us enjoying the light conversation, getting to know more about one another. Although I must translate most of what is said, no one seems to mind the small stops and starts. I feel oddly on display, aware of every mispronunciation and incorrect conjugation of a verb. When needed, Senhor Mauricio, Senhora Dulce, and Lucila kindly correct me in turn.
My family enjoys the traditional Brazilian meal of feijoada, a black bean stew with beef and pork. Mommy and Daddy exchange observations about the slight similarity between the stew and some of our Nigerian dishes. I’m happy to see the warm balls of pão de queijo, cheese bread, on the table. Lola eats a few, and then a few more, forgetting her picky nature.
As the banter winds down, and everyone scrapes the last of the dessert from their plates, Senhora Dulce takes her husband’s hand, looks around the table, and smiles at us. We’ve talked it over, she says.
“We would like you to stay with us until you can find an apartment. Your parents can leave on time with some peace of mind.”
I translate, flustered. Mommy and Daddy look at each other. A collective hesitance settles on our side of the dining room table. Senhora Dulce explains that she observed us on the plane. She was touched by the way we interacted with each other, the way I would occasionally get up to go check on them. She could tell, even now at dinner, that our families held some of the same values.
“Besides,” she says, looking lovingly at her husband and daughter, “we can all use the English practice.” Lucila nods her head vigorously.
After nearly a week with her family, a week of conversing animatedly around the dinner table, a week of sharing political opinions, religious thought, and plans for the future, Senhora Dulce comes to me again, a similar smile on her face, after another conversation with her husband. Stay, she says, for the duration of your time in Brazil.
Photo Credit: Raphael Nogueira @phaelnogueira
