Free Crossing the River by Amy Ragsdale

flattered that Os Americanos had chosen it, out of all the possible places in Brazil.
    Peter and I weren’t so sure. We were questioning whether we’d chosen the right place after all; wondering how well life in this town—with no bookstore, no movie theater, no stoplight, no lane lines—was going to hold up; wondering whether we should not have listened to the kids, knowing as we did that total, unrelieved immersion could be hard, that it might mean no friends for them and surely none for us, that after the initial novelty wore off, it could be a year of spinning our wheels, lonely and tired of each other’s company. In short, it could be a disaster.
    Two months in, “I hate Brazil” had become Skyler’s mantra.
    This was not what parents who had just moved to a foreign country for a year of cultural immersion wanted to hear. There we were, six thousand miles away from home, on a different continent, in an upriver town in rural Brazil. Peter and I were not thrilled aboutbagging it all just because the place wasn’t to Skyler’s taste. On the other hand . . .
    â€œWhy do you hate it?” I asked, trying not to sound frustrated. The kids and I were crossing the praça in front of our house on our way to a sorveteria , an ice cream shop. A tinny, cavernous bus rattled over the cobblestones in front of us as we were about to step off the curb. It passed, and the little sorveteria reappeared across the street, bright blue with white art deco trim.
    â€œThey’re mean. Brazilians are mean. They tease you, they say mean things, they taunt.” Skyler’s voice was rising in pitch.
    â€œI know what you’re saying, Skyler,” Molly chimed in. We’d entered the small shop, with its cluster of ironwork café tables. Molly was balancing a self-serve scoop in her right hand as she surveyed the bins of ice cream. “But I think it’s just their culture. They do it to everybody.”
    â€œHow do they taunt?” I pursued as I scanned the names, wondering what they were— graviola , maracujá . I hadn’t experienced anything like taunting. I’d received nothing from the people of this small town but “ Qualquér precisa ”—Whatever you need. Was this just the difference between adult and kid lives anywhere?
    Skyler had become more tongue-tied, whether because of incipient adolescent hormones or the effort to straddle two languages, Portuguese and English, I didn’t know.
    Molly shrugged. “They’re just really direct. Like, they just say it, if they think someone is feio ”—ugly—“or fat. They say it right in front of them. Like the other day, when I was walking with Ryan,”— Heon —“and Helene, she just said, ‘Molly, don’t you think Ryan is fat?’ What was I supposed to say?” She offered her bowl of ice cream to the woman at the counter to be weighed.
    â€œThey just laugh at you if something bad happens, like if you fall down.” Skyler was warming up. “When you do something wrong in futsal ”—Brazilian small-court soccer—“everybody yells at you. Everybody! I hate Brazilians.”
    Peter and I had carefully chosen Penedo because the kids—note, the kids —had requested immersion in a small town. Now, for better or worse, we were immersed. No international schools, no foreigners, no English.
    We finished our ice cream and headed back out into the eye-squinting sun. In August in Penedo, daily torrential rains alternated with cerulean skies. Given the humidity, one could see why plaster mildewed so fast and plants grew straight out of the walls.
    â€œWell, we don’t have to stay, you know. We can see how it goes,” I offered, wondering how readily we would really pull up stakes. “I think it’ll be easier when we can speak a little more.”
    â€œI doubt it,” Skyler mumbled, eyes