Crossing the River by Amy Ragsdale Read Free Book Online Page A

taken a step, it didn’t even occur to me.

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    We Make a Friend: Zeca We Make a Friend: Zeca
 
    S WEET SIXTEEN . In Brazil, the significant birthday for girls is fifteen, perhaps because some start getting pregnant then. But Molly was about to turn sixteen, and it seemed especially significant to me, in part because I’d been preparing myself for months for the sexual onslaught from macho Brazilian men that Molly might attract, as a young, beautiful blond—at least from the “Brazilian Man” I’d imagined: charming, handsome, and thinking about nothing but SEX. I’d been wondering whether a girl from small-town Montana was going to be equipped to handle it.
    Molly’s birthday has always been a production, starting with the three-day event (the family party, the friend party, and the slumber party) through her elementary school years and gradually tapering to the family dinner and a night out with friends by the time she was in high school. Even so, there we were in a town where she knew no one, and I knew that for her, her birthday mattered. I wanted it to feel special. We were still living at the pousada . That morning, Antonio, the pousada ’s cook, secretively called me into the kitchen. He wanted to show off the sausage and massive slab of beef that he’d bought for Molly’s birthday feijoada , the traditional celebratory Brazilian bean stew. Katia, who worked the desk and would turn out to be our rock—providing us with a seemingly infinite supply of family members to help us over the course of the year—had ordered an incredibly gooey chocolate cake. She was small and neat in her uniform of brown pants, yellow blouse, and wedge heels on tiny feet. She exuded efficiency.
    â€œ Dona Amy, não se preocupe ”—don’t worry—she would say, listening intently. I will handle everything was the subtext. And she did. Periodically, she would roll her doe-brown eyes and sigh, “Oh my gawd,” her one phrase in English. But she’d just laugh and shrug at the latest mishap.
    Elizia, the firecracker of an office manager from the school the kidswould be attending, had sent Molly a huge bouquet of roses, though school wouldn’t start until the next day and they’d never met. (How did she even know it was Molly’s birthday?)
    Amazingly, considering we’d only been in Penedo for a bit over a week, Molly’s birthday had attracted a crowd. Victor and Breno were hanging with Skyler—who was wearing his newly purchased “Brasil” baseball cap to hide his Frankensteinian arc of stitches. Karol (which they pronounced Karau ), Victor’s older sister, who would become one of Molly’s best friends; Katia and her Aunt Laura (Aunt Lowra ); Antonio’s daughters Amanda and Ananda; and a handful of others I didn’t recognize were there as well, including Zeca.
    A week earlier, the day before Skyler split his scalp open and took the harrowing ride to the trauma center, we’d been invited by a new acquaintance to the Penedo Clube de Ténis. I’d been asking if there was a pool anywhere in town, and Dr. Fernando, a family friend of the owners of the pousada , came to our rescue. He invited us to the tennis club. Dr. Fernando was one of the few people who spoke Portuguese slowly enough that I could actually follow it. I liked him immediately.
    The next morning, Peter, Skyler, Molly, and I left the Pousada Colonial, trooped up the ridge, and found the club, with its bright white walls and turquoise blue trim. We opened the iron gate and wandered in. It had a commanding view of the lagoa, a “lake” that no longer existed but had left a huge grass-and-sand basin in the valley below.
    A door popped open in a building on the left.
    â€œ Ahhh —blankety, blankety, blank— Americanos! —blankety, blankety, blank— música .” A jovial man in heavy rectangular glasses above bulldog jowls