Smack That

A small, dented radio sits on the counter in the kitchen where I work. I would enjoy the radio if it would be tuned to a Brazilian Lounge station or some Portuguese Live Jazz shindig, but alas: loud, static-interrupted American Pop music is what we hear – repeated over and over and over. I have found this sort of thing in many of the countries I have been – an absolute adoration for our top twenty “hits.” I’ve never been a huge fan of Britney Spears or James Blunt, but somehow, after three months in Brazil, I am able to sing along to their “Do You Want a Piece of Me?”s and “Same Mistake”s (respectively) with perfect intonation and timing. Most of the cooks and chefs walk around singing in time with the music but completely butchering the actual lyrics. It’s like they’re singing with an enormous amount of anesthetic in their tongues.
Some of my favorite moments in Graciliano’s dirty little kitchen have been when I am asked to translate lines from some of these ballads from English into Portuguese. The other day, a short, cute, innocent older woman who is in charge of meats asked me what “smack that” means, referring to the song by Akon featuring Eminem. Not knowing the Portuguese translation, I simply smacked her bottom. The entire kitchen (who had been wondering the same thing as she had I’m sure) roared with laughter. A while back, Zak, the middle-aged balding purchaser for Graciliano’s (who is known to walk around constantly whistling or singing either Tracy Chapman or Bob Marley in very poor English) asked me what Chapman’s lyric “baby can I hold you tonight?” means. I didn’t want to demonstrate on Zak, figuring it would be awkward and inappropriate, so I simply put it in my finest Portuguese: “Bed, you, me, tonight.” Since then, I have rarely looked Zak in the eye.
One of the waitresses is heartbroken that her boyfriend moved to Portugal to live with his parents. He sends her American pop songs over email and she becomes immediately obsessed with them. Last week she printed out the lyrics to Justin Timberlake’s “What Goes Around Comes Around” and asked if I could take them home and translate them so she could understand what her loverboy was trying to say to her from across the Atlantic. I did, but found it quite difficult to figure out a way to explain to her that “oooooh”s and “uhhhh huhhh”s aren’t really words.
While Peter was gutting tomatoes with one of the cooks, he noticed that she was hum-mumbling a song that he recognized. He started laughing, she asked why, and he told her the song was called “Short Dick Man.” His demonstration of it needs no further explaination.
The rickety radio in the kitchen has rekindled my fire for Snoop Dogg though, which is a plus.

Bliss in Ouro Preto

Thickmetal church bells clanging. Redbougainvilla hanging. Curlyhaired babies tottering. Wrinklecheeked women smiling. RustyVolkswagens climbing. Cobbledavenues descending, rising, descending. Warmcool breezes combing. Tallcraggy mountains watching. Smokingstoneworkers selling. Chattingcraftswomen selling. BraziliansFrenchItalians inspecting, buying. Lazydogs lying. Redbluegreen windowsills bowing. Chocolatemilkshakes slurping. Sweetpopcorn popping. And I, sunglasswearing, reading, enjoying.

$2.50 per day

The bus is one of my most and least favorite parts of our tiny little world here in Belo. It gives me a chance to breathe, read, and prepare for a day – as well as unwind, sit quietly, and look forward to a solemn evening of literature, spaghetti, and film. But it also makes me anxious, annoyed, and amazed at the filth of the bus-riding public. I turned to page 237 of Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children,” and I was entranced. Even the crashing bumps couldn’t take my eyes from the rhythm of the left to right. Until a sneeze came upon the man sitting beside me. Rather than raising a hand to cover the exiting liquid, the nice man turned his face toward me and my midnight children, spraying the slime onto my forearm and page 237. I sat in the back seat one afternoon, squashed between two squishy women who must have forgotten to shower for the past fortnight. One of them, nearest the open window, was chewing on individually wrapped candies. The fruity smell coming from her pack would have made the situation a bit more pleasant had she not been throwing each wrapper out into the wind, out onto the already-litter-ridden passing streets. [At this point, I asked myself why there are so many Environmental Ministries in the world, why there are thousands of books and articles and documentaries out there warning about what is happening to our poor planet, why I spend so much time scrubbing out peanut butter jars, reusing shampoo bottles, warding off Styrofoam if there are people like this woman all over the world.] She seems to be enjoying her candy, though, which is wonderful. And, today, I sat three rows from a man who seemed to be texting a friend. Suddenly a noise came from his phone – extremely loud music. I figured it was just his obnoxious ringtone, but apparently he must have left his headphones at home, because he had decided to grace this Monday afternoon’s passangers with the high-pitched thumping sounds - not unlike that of two individuals having intercourse - of a Brazilian banda he fancies. No matter how many surprised looks I shot at Peter, or how many sharp glares I directed straight at the DJ, the “music” carried us all the way to our stop.

Conversations with Gizelle

This is a to-be-continued series of short, broken Portuguese conversations (translated into what they would sound like in English) I have had with my co-worker, Gizelle. Gizelle speaks absolutely no English; she has yet to even master “thank you.” Thus, we speak in her native tongue – or what we both know that I know of it. Gizelle and I work with vegetables, fruits, and greens. She has a photo album of the day she gave birth to her now 18-month-old daughter, Christiana, which she showed me not long ago. Quite graphic. To me, she looks like a stout, light-brown pear. She is exactly my age.

“You look like you’re in a good mood,” Gizelle says accusingly.
“I am,” I smile. She looks me up and down, slowly raising her eyebrows.

“What you do at night?” I ask Gizelle.
“Play games of video.”
“Oh! Video games!” I consider telling her my true thoughts on video games, but I don’t know the words in her language for waste of time or rot your brain. “What does your daughter do while you play?”
“I give her other controller, and turn the power off. She think she play.”

“How are you go to Argentina?” Gizelle wonders.
“Bus, then airplane.”
“Did you go on a bus to Brazil from your house in America?” I take a moment to catch myself. I wonder how long that would take. Three weeks?
“No, I fly in airplane.”

“What you do on your day off tomorrow?” Gizelle asks.
“Sleep, read, walk in park, call to my sister.”
“You talk to your family a lot. Dad Monday, sister Saturday. You are close. When talk to mom?” I consider lying. Telling her that I talk to her just as often, or that she’s always busy. But I sift through the words I know in Portuguese and realize I can probably get the truth across.
“When I had 11 years, mom : cancer.”
Gizelle looks confused.
“Mom of me,” I point to myself, “Is not here.”
Gizelle looks perplexed.
“Mom of me,” I point to my belly, “cancer.”
Gizelle starts to nod.
“Mom of me,” I point upwards, “does not have life. She is there.”
“Ah, yes. Sad,” she considers me for a moment. “The mom of my husband, does not have life also.”

“You like broccoli?” Gizelle asks, seeing me pop a stem into my mouth.
“Yes. Much.”
“I no like broccoli.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s a vegetable. I no eat vegetables.”

“How long on bus from house Lisa to Graciliano in morning?” Gizelle inquires.
“15 minutes,” I answer. “How long on bus from house Gizelle?”
“One hour and half.”