Finding courage
Probably the next-to-last installment of "Boardinghouse Reach".... and a poem for those of us who frequently find The Great Unknown to be daunting!
While Adriane and I made salads together during her days at the boardinghouse, she’d tell me with what I now know the word for—saudade—about her grandfather’s farm in Minas Gerais. How I had to visit her there someday. The maids would make us fresh bread and squeeze orange juice for us in the mornings. There were horses on the farm, and we could ride all day, if we wanted to, and never leave her grandfather’s land.
Saudade (pronounced “sow” [as in female pig] “dodge-ee,” with the emphasis on “dodge”) is a word that has no synonym in English, but occurs in almost every Brazilian song. It refers to the yearning, missing, desire, longing and intense love one can feel for another person or even a place.
Right before she left, Adriane asked me if I’d come to her wedding in São Paulo.
“That would certainly be fun,” I said.
“You’ll come then?” she asked with her usual bossy but charming inflexion.
I shrugged. “I’ll try.”
Adriane was only twenty-two, and her interactions with her equally young fiancé—by e-mail and once, in person, when he came to visit—had all been pretty stormy. She was very beautiful and he was very jealous. Based on my own romantic adventures, I didn’t think this wedding was going to be happening, if it happened at all, anytime soon.
“Promise me, Jasmine!”
The airport shuttle-bus driver was honking his horn. “I promise,” I said, simply wanting to make her happy.
***
There were long periods of time when Adriane and I didn’t communicate at all. In one of her e-mails, she mentioned an actual wedding date that she’d set for the following year. This was vaguely in my mind when I called, about a year later, to congratulate her, after I’d bought my house.
“Did you forget your promise to me, fofa?”
“I’m so sorry I missed it, Adriane!”
“You didn’t miss it. But I didn’t know where to send the invitation. My wedding is next month.”
There was no graceful way to back out of it, at that point. I said I’d do my best to come—and got off the phone thinking I must have gone just a little bit off the deep end.
I was involved then in a long-distance flirtation with a struggling Hollywood producer. The week before Adriane’s wedding coincided with the drop-dead date for a project he was desperately trying to get off the ground. If it fell through—as it seemed likely to—a vacation in Brazil would be just the thing to cheer him up, to say nothing of finally giving us the leisure to see whether there was going to be more to our friendship than mere flirting.
I booked my ticket through a Brazilian travel agent who is also an old friend. My producer waffled back and forth until the very last hour. By the time I had to pay for my ticket or lose my reservation, Hollywood was still dangling its golden carrot before his glittering eyes. I read out my credit card account number and expiration date over the phone, only to wake up the next morning with an agonizing case of buyer’s remorse.
I e-mailed Jose, my travel agent and occasional confidant. “I can’t go to a wedding by myself—not now. I feel too disappointed that my friend can’t come with me. And I don’t want to go by myself to a third-world country where I don’t speak the language!” I begged him to find out whether I could get a refund or even a credit for my ticket.
Jose shot back at me, “Brazilians take their weddings very seriously. Adriane will be so hurt and disappointed.” He told me that I should go on this trip by myself—that going on a trip is the best thing to do when a romance has not worked out the way you hoped it would.
I didn’t want to hurt Adriane. But, mostly, I was hoping Jose was right about healing my romantic disappointment.
Brazil’s famously high rate of crime was on my mind when I bought a miniature flashlight attached to a whistle that advertised itself in the sporting goods store as the loudest whistle on the market. I found a convincingly elegant-looking dress off the clearance rack at Ross. I bought a Portuguese dictionary and packed my bags.
***
It was to be a ten-day trip. I stayed with Adriane and her family. I spent time with dear Daniela at her apartment in Saõ Paulo. And, all by myself, I flew up to Salvador, Bahia, where I acted like a crazy woman. I danced late into the night in clubs where people bought me caipariña after caipariña, amazed at seeing a North American woman who could samba. I recklessly rode on a motorcycle with a boy in his twenties I’d met on the beach. Not wanting to be a target for thieves, I went out every morning in nothing but my string bikini and swam from beach to beach all day.
Sitting at a sidewalk table with a view of the bay, garlanded by the lights twinkling between the dark clouds and the darkening waters, with soulful Bossa Nova coming from an open window across the cobbled alleyway, I sipped a glass of wine, ate grilled calamari and thought, how far I’ve come! Not just in terms of thousands of miles, but also in terms of freedom—in terms of seeing myself as someone who was capable of doing this, traveling thousands of miles to a beautiful new place, all by myself. Going without feeling afraid of getting lost. Really living on my own. I swam in the turquoise waters of Bahia and felt that I had been reborn.
The farm in Minas Gerais was just as wonderful as Adriane had promised it would be. I woke to the sounds of birds singing a kind of samba beat. Sleepily, I thought to myself, So that’s where it came from! The music is in the birds, in the trees, in the land. The plants grow, the trees sway to the sounds of samba.
The farmhouse maids served us breakfast in the dining room at a long wooden table: rich coffee grown on the farm, hot milk, home-baked cheese rolls (pao de caixe) and a soft white mild cheese made from the milk of the farm’s dairy cows. Then Adriane, her mom and I set off on what turned out to be a six-mile walk and run along the farm road between the coffee trees and borders of red, apricot and lavender-colored bougainvillea in the hot sun.
We stopped at a spigot during our walk back to the house, and drank and wet our skin—but I was still enormously thirsty, and downed three glasses of the juice the maids had squeezed for us from tiny green-skinned oranges. Isabel disappeared to her room. Adriane and I stripped down to our swimsuits and made our way in flip-flops up to the pool, which was set at the top of the garden. The water was cold. The sun was hot. Adriane dozed in the sun while I did a lazy backstroke up and down the length of the pool. A flock of parrots streaked by, bright green with yellow patches under their wings.
***
After lunch and a rest, we walked up to the farm stables, where three beautiful chestnut horses were saddled and waiting for us. Given the choice of two, I chose the one whose name I understood, “Special” (pronounced, in Portuguese, “Speci-ow”).
Adriane and Isabel are both expert horsewomen. Isabel was clad in jodhpurs; both women wore beautiful black riding boots, although Adriane was dressed casually in a Minnie Mouse tee-shirt and jeans.
My main experience in riding horses before this had involved animals attached to merry-go-rounds. Usually these have been equipped with seatbelts. I hadn’t ridden a real horse in about twenty years. One of the last times I’d ridden, I’d been hit in the face by the horse’s head when it jumped—quite independently of any intention on my part—across a dry creek-bed. I remember slipping slowly, with an equal measure of pain and humiliation, down the animal’s sweaty side.
I needed a few words of encouragement and wisdom from Adriane and Isabel after I’d been given a boost up onto the saddle by one of the farm’s brown-skinned vaqueiros, who was clad in a straw hat and a black-and-white broad-striped shirt a bit like those worn by Venetian gondoliers. “Just squeeze the horse as hard as you can with your thighs,” Adriane told me, “especially if the horse starts to run.”
As the horses began trotting smartly down the unpaved farm road, I remembered what it was that I particularly don’t like about horseback riding: trotting. I don’t know how to do it properly. With each surge forward, my butt landed with a painful thump on the saddle. I was squeezing with all my might, determined not to fall off the horse in the up part of its up-and-down motion. I squeezed so hard that I could feel my shins—unprotected by my old short black boots—beginning to chafe against the hard leather where the stirrups hung down. My pain must have been showing in my expression.
“Are you all right?” Adriane asked me as my horse came to a stop with the others at the top of a hill between stands of coffee trees that looked like nothing so much as ladies in ball-gowns.
I rolled up my pants-leg to show her the bruises that were already starting to form on the inner edge of my shin.
“Here, trade boots with me,” said Adriane, who remembered from her days at the boardinghouse that we wear the same size. We made the exchange without getting off our horses—she because she was so comfortable there, and I out of fear that once I got down I wouldn’t know how to get up again.
With a bit of experimentation, I found that Special, true to his name, was fluent in English. As I duly squeezed, he responded to every one of my verbal requests, slowing down when trotting became too much of a trial for my bottom, or else changing to a faster, smoother gait. We rode up and down the rocky trails where the dirt had the same reddish hue as the dirt of cowboy movies. Here and there I’d see glints of turquoise on the trail. The North American cowboy illusion was shattered when a toucan flew over our heads.
The farm went on for as far as the eyes could see. I grew confident enough—and felt a deep enough trust of Special at this point—to ask him to stop every once in a while so that I could snap pictures with the digital camera I’d fixed to my belt. I photographed Adriane and Isabel, then passed the camera to them so they could photograph me and Special. I took pictures of the many-hued bougainvilleas we passed along the way, of the little groups of colts who gazed up with curiosity from their youthful ruminations. I photographed the mango trees and the cacti and several kinds of pine tree I’d never seen before.
I was really beginning to like horseback riding, and had already promised myself that I’d take advantage of the exchange rate to get myself a really smart pair of riding boots when I was back in São Paulo. Adriane and I exchanged a smile.
“So you’re happy, fofa?” Fofa (for women) and fofo (for men or mixed groups) is one of the signature endearments used by Paulistas talking among themselves. Adriane always referred to me as fofa in her e-mails, signing them as fofa2.
“Very happy,” I told her.
We were two women bonding on horseback.
“The horses will start running when we get closer to the stables,” she tossed over her shoulder as all three of our horses picked their way delicately down a particularly steep and rocky part of the trail.
What I didn’t fully grasp from her comment was how very fast the horses would start running. Neither had I perceived up till now the competitive side of Special’s personality. When the other two horses, a few lengths ahead of us, started to gallop, Special took off like a long-shot at the Kentucky Derby. Could he feel that I was about to fall off? He was too bent on coming in first to care. I squeezed my legs together with all the determination of a girl bent on preserving her virginity. I prayed to every god and goddess I’d ever heard of. I saw the other two, in a fleeting glimpse as I passed them, each with one hand gracefully holding the reins in the air, and the other resting on their pretty thigh. I was gripping the horn of the saddle like a first-time skydiver hanging on to the ripcord.
Isabel told me that she will never forget my face as Special and I flew past her.
When I’d recovered my breath, I felt a surge of pride that I’d managed to stay, more or less, in, or at least above, the saddle.
“How do you manage it,” I asked them as our horses all walked, for a stretch, placidly side by side, “without holding on?”
“You mustn’t hold on, darling,” Isabel told me, “not with your hands. Just squeeze,” she said, demonstrating with her right hand in the air and her left hand on her thigh.
“And pray,” I added.
As if at a signal, the horses burst into a gallop again.
There wasn’t any time to really think about it. I squeezed harder than I’d squeezed since my OB/GYN found that I was ten centimeters dilated and told me to try not to have the baby till she got into her scrubs. I forced myself to keep my left hand glued to my thigh. My right hand, holding the reins in a death grip, hovered over the horn of the saddle, dying to grasp it; but I mostly succeeded in fending off the desire.
And then suddenly I understood why people love horseback riding. Special and I were flying through the air with all the verve and gusto of Peter Pan speeding off to Neverland. I was, I think, whooping with joy.
Skinny-Dipping in Vathy Above the azure inlet of the sea, the path was steep, carved out between the thistles, thorns and wind-blown rock. He left her at the top to find a sheltered place they wouldn’t be seen descending to the shore. She waited, fully clothed there, till, looking down, she saw his gleaming skin and upturned face above the churning deep, as if he’d changed from man to seal and loved this transformation. She shed her clothes and picked her way as far down as she could on tender feet— then took a leap of faith, exchanging rock for empty air, a rush of cold and bubbles in her hair. Her toes touched seaweed as she swam toward her selkie mate. Two naked, slippery people, seventy and sixty-five, feeling so alive and filled with joy, treading water side by side in the extra-salty, turquoise blue Aegean Sea, rich in iodine, with the power to heal all kinds of wounds. They tasted salt and kissed, two shipwrecked sailors who’d managed to survive. Copyright © 2021 by Barbara Quick from The Light on Sifnos, winner of the 2020 Blue Light Press Poetry Prize
You can listen to Garrison Keillor’s marvelous recording of “Skinning-dipping on Vathy” here.
Just beautiful! What an exhilarating ride!!!