The Valeditztorian (4 page)

“Have you got a can opener?” I ask hopefully.

“Nope,” sighs Grace. “I’ve been trying to find one since I got here. Sorry, Emma. I should’ve told you to bring one.”

“
That’s okay. I’ll be sure to mail you one once I go home.”

Then i
t occurs to me that Grace isn’t malnourished, and for a moment I study her physique. With her full face and derriere, Grace seems a bit heavier than your average Korean American woman. Intrigued, I ask her what she’s been living on this whole time.

“You mean o
ther than chocolate mouse?” she replies, smiling.

“Yuck
,” I say, making a face.

“Seriously,” she says, “i
t’s been tough. For lunch, the lab used to have a great salad bar, but they lost power a month ago, and they’ve been closed ever since.”

“So things get fixed quickly around here
?”

Grace rolls her eyes
.

“Luckily, Paula’s been coming by with feijoada
(pronounced ‘fay-jhoo-ah-duh’) every few nights,” she says.

“
Feijoada? What’s that?”

“
It’s a Brazilian stew, made with rice, beans, and different types of salty meat, like beef or bacon.”

Feijoada sounds like a great dish to sustain a person during times of famine
. In Grace’s case, it appears to be doing a more than adequate job. Hopefully, Paula will forgive me for attracting Luciano’s attention and continue supplying us with this calorie-rich concoction. Having another female friend around, especially one who likes to share food, would be fabulous, and perhaps essential. I’m not sure whether it’s the jet lag or my recent hospitalization, but as I perseverate on our limited food supply, my anxiety level starts to rise.

Just as I begin
losing feeling in my fingertips, Grace makes one additional stop, at an ice cream shop on the next corner.

Entering the store, a blast of frigid air hits my face
like a bucket of ice water, reviving my failing neurons and narrowly averting my second panic attack in the span of two days. Hallelujah. With working freezers and an air conditioner, the shop is the most high-tech facility I’ve encountered thus far in Brotas. Standing at the counter, grinning beatifically, I gaze in wonder at the colorful buckets of ice cream arrayed before me.

“I had a feeling you’d like this place,” says Grace
, watching my goofy face. “The stuff they serve here is closer to gelato than regular ice cream, but it’s still really good.”

Digging into a small cup of dulce de leche, I’m in heaven
.

W
orking on our Dixie cups, we cross over the busiest road in town, which is paved and heavily trafficked with cars and buses. Grace explains that most Salvadorans get around via the municipal bus system. Unlike the United States, where a person can simply walk onto a lot and buy an automobile, cars in Bahia are apparently sold by lottery system.

“Even if you’re middle class, buying a car here can be
really difficult,” says Grace. “After trying for a few years, Luciano finally got his first one a few months ago.”

“So what do you think of Luciano?” I ask.

“I love that he’s been driving me all over Salvador,” says Grace.

“What about Paula
? Does she get jealous?”

Grace gives me a funny look
.

“Not at a
ll. Most of the time she comes too. Why do you ask?”

“Paula seemed a little
insecure around Luciano when I met them yesterday.”

“The two of them started d
ating when I got here in August,” says Grace. “For the past month they’ve been joined at the hip. I haven’t noticed any problems.”

Considering Grace’s perspective, I wonder whether I wrongly envisioned the tension between Luciano and Paula
. Perhaps I judged him too harshly. After all, it’s possible that Luciano is just a harmless flirt. Moreover, as Grace pointed out, the man owns a car, which is reason enough to cultivate a friendship with him. Alternatively, since she’s totally flat chested, Grace might’ve missed the fact that Luciano is a lecherous jerk because his eyes never bothered roaming in her direction.

Maybe I’m not being fair,
but I can already sense that keeping an open mind about my new boss is going to be challenging, especially considering my upbringing.

“
Never trust a man farther than you can throw him,” Grandma Sally always said.

Even before she raised my mischievous
father, Grandma Sally was one tough woman.

On
the next street corner, Grace points out a man chopping sugar cane. Similar to Lucineige, his skin is dark, leathery, and wrinkled like a prune. I can’t begin to guess his age. Smiling broadly, his mouth is a rotten cave, nearly devoid of teeth, excluding a handful of withered stumps. Cracking a stalk of sugar cane in half, the sun-dried man begins sucking on one end. Though his remaining teeth are clearly in jeopardy, he seems untroubled. When he offers me the other half, I respectfully decline.

Hanging out
on the curb near the sugar cane cart are three skinny, school-aged boys.

Grace waves to the children, saying, “Ola!” 

When the boys flash huge smiles in return, their remarkably white teeth contrast sharply with their pitch black skin. All are barefoot, wearing ragged clothes caked in dirt. I wonder whether they live in the favela behind our building.

Just watching the
boys makes me uneasy. Though it’s the weekend, I imagine they’re not returning to school on Monday, and I can’t help worrying about them. Are their teeth destined to rot like those of the sugar cane man? As teenagers, will they succumb to drugs and crime? Will terrible infectious diseases strike them down, before they even have a chance to grow up? If I was their mother, and I lived in the favela, would I do a decent job raising them? Considering that I can barely take care of myself, I doubt it.

“Are y
ou okay?” Grace asks. “You’re looking a little pale.”

My pulse rate is
indeed accelerating, but I’m trying to remain calm. Little kids always make me nervous. The smaller they are, the more fragile they seem. I never hold babies, for instance, because I’m terrified of accidentally dropping them. Still, I’m surprised by my strong reaction to the street urchins, who aren’t exactly babies.

Perhaps my problem is that I view childre
n—particularly
needy
children—as a direct threat to my own livelihood. Since I receive very little financial assistance from my family, I’m responsible for devising my own means of support. Undoubtedly, caring for a child would be the quickest way to end my career. Speaking of which, I’d damn well better get a fabulous job when I’m done with all of this training. How else am I going to pay off the enormous student loans that I’ve been accumulating since college?

“I’m okay,” I answer
. “Just tired.”

“Then let’s head home,” Grace offers.

On the return loop, we make one final stop at the key maker’s shop, another street-side cart, where we obtain an extra set of keys for our apartment and the lab.

“Wow
! I can’t believe this key works,” I say, after successfully turning the lock in our apartment door.

Grace smiles
.

“Occasionally tec
hnical things work around here,” she says.

“So what should we do next
?” I ask.

“
You’re already looking for something else to do?” she says. “Don’t you ever relax?”

“Only when I’m sleeping
.”

“You’re not manic-depressive
, are you?”

“No
. I just get bored easily when I’m not busy.”

I’ve never been good at twiddling my thumbs
. As a kid I couldn’t sit still for more than five minutes, which used to worry my mother, who assumed I’d eventually end up on Ritalin. Though it’s hard to believe, so far I’m still drug free.

“
Have you finished unpacking yet?” Grace asks.

“Actually, no,” I say.

“Off you go, then.”

At Grace’s suggestion I put away the rest of my clothes and
belongings. Lying at the bottom of my suitcase is the only picture I’ve brought, a four-by-six photograph taken by my mother on a family trip to Vermont nearly 10 years ago. Our final vacation together, the trip occurred just weeks before my mother and I had our falling out. In the picture, I’m sitting in a canoe with my dad, who’s proudly displaying the enormous trout he’s just hooked. Clutching my dog-eared copy of
The Cider House Rules
, I appear to be smiling, but in reality I’m trying not to grimace at the unfortunate fish. While I’ve never understood his love of fishing—particularly catch and release, which is nothing short of animal abuse—my dad and I have always been close. For the sake of full disclosure, I should admit that the fresh trout tasted great after my dad grilled it over our campfire.

“Where do you think I sho
uld put my picture?” I ask Grace.

“How about in the living room
, on the table next to the couch?”

“Sounds good.”

Holding it in my palm, the image of my father is a comfort. After carefully leaning the snapshot against a lamp on the small glass table, I blow my dad a kiss and plop down onto the couch.

“Hey, th
is is different,” I say.

“What is?”

“The couch is black,” I say.

“What’s
so different about a black couch?” Grace asks.

“Have you noticed that e
verything else in here is white? Whoever decorated this place had no imagination for color schemes.”

“
Maybe not, but at least it’s easy to keep the couch clean,” says Grace.

“
Good point,” I admit.

As
the sun begins to descend, Grace runs downstairs to get more abara, which luckily still tastes great. However, I nearly gag when I try vatapá, a slimy, pureed topping resembling infant stool in both color and consistency.

“Oh, yuc
k,” I shout, dashing toward the kitchen sink.

“You don’t like it?” Grace calls after me
.

“No!” I say, spitting into the drain
. “That stuff is disgusting. What’s in it, anyway?”

“
Okra, I think, or possibly eggplant. Actually, I’m not sure which one it is.”

“I’ll
bet you anything it’s eggplant—my least favorite vegetable,” I say.

“You don’t
like eggplant?” asks Grace.

“
No. I hate the bitter taste.”

“
Oh, I don’t think it’s that bad,” she says.

“
I totally disagree. Growing up, my mom forced me to eat this horrible eggplant parmesan dish. Whenever she wasn’t looking, I’d scrape off the cheese and pass the rest to Inky…under the table.”

“Who’s Inky?”
Grace asks.

“Sh
e was our family dog—a big, black Labrador retriever—but she died a few years ago.”

“I
nky must’ve been one gassy dog,” says Grace.

“Now that you mention it,
she was. That dog was always belching and farting up a storm.”

“I didn’
t know dogs could belch.”

“Inky definitely did
. Do you think the problem was all the eggplant?” I ask.

“It could’ve been,” says Grace
. “Eggplant always gives me gas. So did all the canine flatulence drive your family crazy?”

“A
ctually, I think my father appreciated it.”

“
Really? How come?”

“My d
ad is lactose intolerant,” I say, “but he loves dairy, especially ice cream. He’s never been able to give it up. When I was a kid, he was constantly breaking wind.”

“Oh,” says Grace, “l
et me guess. Did he blame it on the dog?”

“You got it
. Whenever my dad passed gas, he’d wave his hand around, saying stuff like, ‘Pee-yoo! The paint is peelin’ off the walls. Somebody really oughta take that dog for a walk.’”

“Poor Inky,” says Grace, “having to take all the blame
like that.”

"
Want to know what was really remarkable about Inky?” I say.

“
What?”

“In all the years
we had her, Inky never once complained about being my father’s scapegoat.”

“
She must’ve been very loyal,” says Grace.

“Sh
e was. I’ll bet you anything she’s up there in dog heaven right now, still farting away, trying to cover up for my dad.”

Grace and I
then laugh ourselves into a fit of hysterics.