The Valeditztorian (7 page)

“Oh, Emma!” he
said, nearly jumping out of his seat. “You were reading so quietly I forgot you were there.”

“See, Larry,” said my mother, “you’re setting a bad example for our daughter
. So unless you want me to burn that shirt on a sacrificial altar, I don’t want to hear anything else about curses, okay?”

“Yes
, dear,” he replied.

That evening my father’s softb
all team finally ended their 10-game winning streak, and I never saw the shirt again. I’m still not sure which one of my parents got rid of it.

Arriving
at our destination, a quaint establishment hewn from cotton candy-colored stucco, standing atop a rocky hill overlooking the sea, I’m drawn back into the present. As I exit the car, I notice a group of tiny monkeys scampering about the walkway leading up to the restaurant.

“Ooh,”
I croon. “What are they?”

The monkeys’ quarter-sized, perfect pink faces are so inquisitive they almost look human.

While I’m watching, one frisky rascal leaps onto Paula’s pocketbook, hangs there for a moment, and jumps back to the ground. Though my hands are petite, fitting one of these creatures inside my palm would be easy.

“Looking for food?” Luciano asks the
spunky monkey, chuckling. “They’re marmosets,” he explains, “the squirrels of Brazil…only much cuter.”

Reaching into his backpack, Luciano pulls out several orange slices and tosses them to the ground
. For a few minutes I delight in watching the marmosets nibble this juicy treat.

When we
enter the restaurant and settle into our table, Grace and Luciano help me decipher the menu. Since my gastrointestinal tract is regrettably beginning to suffer from diet-related constipation, I’m hoping to order a salad or main course devoted to vegetables, but the dishes mostly contain meat, fish, rice, and/or beans.

“Do you like seafood?” Grace asks.

“Definitely,” I say.

“You co
uld try the ‘moqueca de camarao.’”

“What’s that?”
I ask.

“Moqueca is a seafood stew, an
d camarao means shrimp,” Grace explains. “The kind they make here is pretty spicy.”

“What’s in it?”

“I think the sauce is made from dende oil and coconut milk,” says Grace.

“Don’t forget the
onions, tomatoes, and cilantro,” says Luciano.

“That s
ounds great!” I say, drooling from the description alone.

Not only do I love the idea of eating vegetables, even if they are pureed, but I’m also a fan of coconut milk, since I eat a lot of Thai food back home
. Shortly after placing the order, a huge portion of the orangey, bubbling stew arrives at our table.

Inhaling the steam rising up from the plate, I exclaim, “This smells amazing!” 

Though my companions haven’t yet received their food, I can’t stop myself from diving into the platter.

“Sorry for not waiting,” I say bet
ween slurps.

“No prob
lem,” says Grace. “You should eat while it’s hot. Here’s the rest of our order, anyway.”

The waiter has just arrived with three more enormous plates of food
. Soon everyone else is eating, though none as quickly as me. Before my companions are even halfway done, every morsel of food on my plate has vanished.

“Still rushing, Emma?” chides Luciano.

“Old habits are hard to break,” I say.

They sure are
. When I reach for my glass of water, a memory of Thomas tracing ice cubes across my abdomen flashes through my mind, but I force myself to ignore it. Once everyone else has finished, and I’ve managed to clear a number of subsequent forbidden images from my thoughts, the four of us continue to chat and laugh our way through a long, relaxing lunch. In contrast to my rushed, solitary lunches back home, this midday social extravagance is a pleasant surprise.

As we talk I learn more about my colleagues
. One year older than me, Paula is a 26-year-old marine biology graduate student at the local university; while Luciano is a 30-year-old molecular biology PhD.

“How long have you and Paula known one another?” I ask.

“Since forever,” says Luciano. “We grew up on the same street in Salvador.”

“And you’re still living there, right?” asks Grace.

“That’s right,” says Luciano. “We’re both still living at home with our parents.”

The comment surprises me
.

“Don’t you want to move out?” I ask.

“Not really,” says Luciano. “The rent is cheap, and the food is good.”

When
Paula says something in Portuguese, Luciano smiles and translates.

“Paula would like us to move into our own apartment,
” he explains, “but I don’t think her father would approve.”

Paula must have understood the English word “father,” because she laughs and tickles Luciano under his ribs, saying something else that I miss.

Luciano plants a quick kiss on her cheek.

“She says her father wouldn’t mind, if only I would give her a ring
.”

“L
ook at you, Luciano,” says Grace. “You’re blushing.”

Ignoring Grac
e, Luciano continues, “At this point, we really can’t afford our own place. Most of our friends are in the same situation, still living with their parents. Some of them are in their mid-thirties, even their early forties.”

Paul
a bites her lower lip in a sexy, pouty way, shooting a disappointed look in Luciano’s direction. Though she doesn’t speak English, she obviously got the message: the lovebirds won't be moving in together anytime soon.

“Even if I wanted to live at home, my mother
would never let me move back in,” I say.

Grace looks at me inqui
sitively, but I don’t elaborate. For a number of personal reasons, I generally avoid discussing the more intimate details of my family situation.

Whic
h is not to say that I’ve always had a bad relationship with my mother. When I was growing up, we actually got along quite well. As a kid, if I needed a straight answer to a tough question, my mother was the first person I’d query.

A few
months before my sixteenth birthday, for example, in the aftermath of a car crash that killed two students from my high school, I asked her whether she believed in God.

“Tell me the truth
, Mom,” I said. “Do you think the Almighty exists?”

“A
re you sure you want to hear this?” she asked.

“Yes,” I replied
. “At least I think so.”

“
Alright then,” said my mother. “In my opinion—which could change tomorrow, since I like to keep an open mind on matters of faith—God is an idea that people constructed a long time ago, in order to make themselves feel better about dying.”

“
Thanks for those uplifting thoughts, Mom,” I said. “I feel so much better now.”

“
Emma, you asked me to answer the question, and I answered it as honestly as I could. If you’d like to hear another opinion on God, you could go and speak to your father.”

“No, I
wanted to hear your opinion. But I’m pretty sure that the last time I asked you this question, you gave me a different answer—one that wasn’t quite so harsh.”

“
That’s entirely possible,” she said. “When was the last time we discussed God?”

“A few years ago
, I think.”

“
That explains it,” she said. “I’m definitely getting more cynical as I age.”

Not to mentio
n more irrational.

When I was growing up
, my mom was always open minded about controversial social issues, such as affirmative action, women’s liberation, and gay marriage, to name a few. Even now, from a political standpoint, she’s still an extreme leftist, a bleeding-heart liberal to the core, just like the daughter she raised.

Oh, yes
. Cecile Silberlight is a tolerant and magnanimous soul—except when it comes to dealing with me, her one and only child.

Nearly 10
years ago, the woman left me with these parting words: “Until you find some way to fix the mess that you’ve gotten yourself into, young lady, don’t even think about coming back home.”

Heading
out the door, I ignored her lecture and never looked back.

“You and Grace are lucky
to have such good housing in New York,” says Luciano wistfully, “so that you’re not dependent on your parents.”

You can s
ay that again, I think to myself. And he’s right. For the city, our school provides particularly affordable accommodations.

“BJ and I might
move in together once I get back home,” says Grace.

“Is BJ your
boyfriend?” I ask.

“
Yeah,” she answers. “We started dating six months before I came to Brazil.”

“You don’t mean BJ Lee
?” I say.

“Yes!” says Grace
. “Do you know him?”

“Yup
. We live on the same floor in Laydon Hall.”

“What a small world,” says Grace.

I smile and try not to grimace. The last time BJ and I ran into one another was several weeks ago at seven a.m., right outside my bathroom door, when we both really needed to pee. Though I don’t know exactly what he’d been doing with my roommate all night, I’m pretty sure they weren’t studying biochemistry. The jerk didn’t even let me use the bathroom first.

By the time we’
re done schmoozing at the restaurant, more than two full hours have passed, and we’re overdue at the lab. After Luciano manages to drive us home without incident, I get back to work with a vengeance. For the rest of the afternoon I immerse myself in the stack of data sheets filling box number one. At some point Peter hands me a Marisa Monte CD, which I peruse while attacking the data. The music is fantastic, boosting my energy level to a near-manic state. As Marisa weaves her melodies through my mind, I punch in hundreds of data points, losing track of time. Eventually, Grace appears and tries to drag me out of the lab.

“But I’m on a roll,” I protest
. “Can’t I stay a bit longer?”

Grace grabs my arm,
physically pulling me away from the computer.

“Don’t be such a workaholic,” she grunts with effort
. “It’s not very Brazilian.”

“But I’m not Brazilian,” I counter, leaning in the opposite direction
. “I’m a New Yorker.”

“When in Rome, then…
.” she says, pointing to the lab behind me.

Sure enough, when I take off my headphones and turn around, I realize that everyone else is gone
. Possibly long gone. Behind the windows the sky is pitch black, and I’m shocked to see that the clock reads 10:30 p.m. After our big lunchtime meal, I failed to get hungry and forgot all about coming home for dinner.

When Grace hooks
her arm through mine, directing me toward the exit, I don’t put up a fight. After switching on a flashlight, she guides me down the dirt path leading back to our building. Making our way through near darkness, I’m thankful for her company. Though I generally feel safe in our neighborhood, I’m pretty certain I wouldn’t want to traverse this isolated road alone.

A
cross the street from our building, Grace and I simultaneously freeze. We’ve both heard the same sound—running footsteps, moving quickly in our direction. Unlike my apartment in New York, there’s no doorman here. Moreover, we’re the only people on the road. As my heart begins pounding against my ribs, three boys materialize out of the night. Despite my usual facial blindness, I have no trouble recognizing these children; they’re the same little boys that we encountered yesterday with the sugar cane man. Quick as a flash, the smallest one grabs Grace’s flashlight. Just as the trio surges back toward the street, the biggest boy trips over the curb, falling onto his face. Momentarily I consider grabbing the kid, but Grace reads my mind and reaches for my arm.

“Don’t do it
, Emma,” she warns, and I listen.

Sec
onds later he’s up, and they all take off toward the favela, shrieking with laughter on their way up the hill. For a few seconds, Grace and I just stand there, shocked.

“They could’ve just asked for the flashlight,” says Grace, staring into the darkness
. “I would’ve given it to them.”

“I know what you mean,” I say, as my heart rate slows to normal.

Though I should be royally
pissed off, I’m surprised to find that I’m not angry at all. Instead, I just wonder whether the boys’ parents know where they are, or give a damn that it’s way past bedtime. Though I’m not their mother, it bothers me immensely that these kids are out on the street alone, with no one watching over them.

When my head finally
hits my pillow, I’m emotionally spent and rapidly fall asleep. Soon I’m driving Luciano’s car along a cliff overlooking the ocean. Then I remember that I can’t drive a stick shift. Repeatedly I slam on the brakes, but instead of slowing down, the car accelerates. When I try changing gears, the stick breaks off in my hand. In the back seat, three little boys are screaming at me to do something, but I’m paralyzed with fear. A moment later I’m standing on the dusty road, watching helplessly as the car spins forward. Still trapped inside, the children are banging on the windows with their little faces pressed against the glass, looking at me. Only these aren’t Brazilian street urchins—they’re my children. As the car and its contents plunge off the cliff toward the dark water below, I silently scream, as though I’m the one who’s about to drown.