Read Online Crossing the River by Amy Ragsdale - Free Book Online Page B

jungle without food or shelter. I’ll show you , I’d thought. It had been five years, and while the company was surviving, it had begun to suck the air out of my lungs. I loved my volunteer board, but despite their enthusiasm and generosity, in the end, I was the grant writer, fundraiser, marketer, company manager, choreographer, and rehearsal director—and, don’t forget, someone had to launder the costumes and paint the sets. And through it all, we weren’t making enough for me to really get paid. Something needed to change. My intention was to use this year of hiatus to shore up the company’s finances by continuing to write grants and send out fundraising appeals, things I could do long distance, over the Internet. Perhaps I could build up a cushion, reduce some of the stress of gambling every year that I’d be able to pull off another season. I admit on that day in August in Penedo, fundraising was the last thing I wanted to think about. I really just wanted a total break.
    I was pulled out of my reverie when Skyler slammed open our metal front door, slumped in, and silently disappeared into the bedroom he and Molly shared. Molly dragged through the same door a half hour later, looking hot and exhausted. One more day of school down. School that Skyler hated, with its interminable hours of sitting andunderstanding nothing. Of greater concern, he seemed to be developing an alarming self-loathing.
    â€œI can’t do anything I used to. I can’t run fast anymore. I suck at math.” Each time he made a misstep on the futsal court, he was convinced anew that “they hate me now.” This was not shaping up to be the confidence-building, look-how-I-can-cope-with-challenges experience that Peter and I had hoped for. We tried to reassure him that it would surely get better, as soon as he could speak a little more Portuguese.
    â€œWell, since I have no friends, I might as well find a hobby,” Molly announced as she rounded the corner and collapsed into the orange-and-green hammock hitched to the wall behind my desk. The circle of girls that had picked her up in class were great while at school, but Molly’s lack of language made it hard to include her in their after-school social life. “I’ve always wanted to bake. I like to paint. I’m not very good at it, but I like it.”
    I dug some money out of my bedside table, and we promptly crossed the praça and spent sixty dollars for art supplies at the papelaria . At least she had a plan.
    Peter’s agent had just emailed to say that a book proposal of Peter’s, which had been making the rounds of New York publishing houses when we left, had been roundly rejected. It was the project he’d planned to work on while we were in Brazil. He began to wonder what he was doing there, began to have a hard time getting up in the morning. He was losing weight.
    Though I was struggling with my career, I seemed to be the only one in our family who wasn’t struggling with Brazil, and watching the rest of them was shaking my convictions.

6 6
    â€œI Hate Brazil” “I Hate Brazil”
 
    W E WERE AN ANOMALY in this town and, as such, became instant celebrities, Os Americanos. No one, on meeting us, guessed we were American. Maybe Argentinean? French? Italian? Southern Brazilian? Anything that would explain our white skin in this largely darker-skinned place. Right away, people we barely knew told us they’d seen us: “in the morning in the market,” or “in the praça with your daughter,” or “you traveled to Carrapichu yesterday” (the town across the river). They frequently warned us about ladrão —robbers. “You shouldn’t carry that bag, there are ladrão .”
    â€œ Por quê Penedo? ” everyone wanted to know.
    Clearly, people found it curious that we would choose this town, but they were pleased, too. They liked their home and were