My favorite thing about landing in a city is that first smell you catch once you step outside the airport.
Each city has its own scent: Fort Lauderdale's humid brew of salty ocean air and Band-Aids, JFK's acrid funk of auto oil and tire rubber, LAX's sauna whiff of desert cedar.
Guarulhos International is well outside the mega-city of São Paulo. Stepping through the double doors into the fresh air, you can't help but take a deep inhale of that lush forest scent of the Mata Atlântica before you cough out diesel fumes.
++++
We'd just landed in São Paulo on an open-ended ticket, not for a visit but for our foreseeable future. Lil, our cat Wedge and I had blown out of New York City dramatically in search of a more meaningful life. Brazil was our first stop, where we'd visit Lil's Okinawan-Brazilian family and figure out our next steps. They'd provided us with an apartment for as long as we were here (which they hoped would be forever).
Exiting the plane, heading to baggage claim, we collected all our earthly belongings and dragged them through customs on a caravan of four smart carts. Holding his bladder the entire journey from Miami, Wedge waited until we passed through immigration before soaking his carrier with urine, just in time for us to be greeted by Lil's parents, Otossan and Okassan [Dad and Mom in Japanese].
++++
We crammed our luggage into Otossan’s car. Leaning against the window, I cradled my pissy, unhappy cat to my chest and together we watched the airport recede behind us. From the front seat Okassan handed us tetrapacks of coconut water to rehydrate. We drove past miles of billboards advertising Samsung smartphones, new constrction mortagage rates, predatory credit cards and cellular data plans until the advertising dollars disappeared, revealing the red-brick rooftops of humble Guarulhos.
These were squat homes built by whoever lived in them with whatever they could find: spare construction materials cobbled together into clusters of bespoke apartments that sometimes kept out the rain and sometimes were washed away by it. Most homes had plastic tubs tied down to their rooftops to collect rainwater for drinking and bathing, an easy enough hack for a homemade village without plumbing. Laundry-sagged clotheslines crisscrossed these homes like spiderwebs.
As we got closer to central São Paulo, Lil’s dad turned down the volume on the Radio Nissei traffic report – delivered in a mix of Portuguese and Japanese – low enough that I could finally understand the conversation inside the car. It’s hard enough to parse words in a language you barely speak, but with the radio blaring in two languages at once, everything becomes syllable soup and my brain falls backwards into a helpless abyss. Lil squeezed my hand:
LIL [in English]: Babe, my dad is asking how the flight was.
I smiled and fumbled my way through an answer in portuñol (mixing together Spanish and Portuguese, which had a 50/50 chance of being understood by Brazilians). Okassan began talking excitedly to me too, cracking a joke to me from the rear view mirror laughing like a little girl, unaware how little of what she was saying I was grasping.
So Lil translated it for me: they were so thrilled to have "both their children back home." That made me feel good; so different from my family. Her mom asked if we were here to stay, and added that she would tie Lil up in chains to make sure she didn’t leave again. So that girlish laugh had a dash of crazy-mom too. Regardless, we could give no definitive answer right then, from the backseat.
The darkening sky rumbled above us like a bowling alley and it started to rain, massive sheets of water suddenly slaking almost horizontally across the highway. Visibility dropped to near zero, the windshield wipers only able to slap that much water around as our Honda wavered in its lane. Streams of motorcycles ripped past us, knifing in and around the cars in their own unofficial lanes.
Otossan explained that it was too late to move into our apartament tonight; this temporary home was a kitenete (a tiny studio), one of a few he’d bought and rented out to students over the years. This one had miraculously become available the same day we called to tell them we were leaving New York and planned to visit. It was in the neighborhood of Liberdade, historically São Paulo's "Little Japan", though these days residents were predominantly Chinese.
OTOSSAN [in Portuguese, translated for me by Lil]: To move in at night is dangerous. Better to spend the night at our place and we’ll move you in tomorrow.
When Okassan had first offered us this apartment, I'd asked Lil how much the rent would be, but we never got a direct answer. Now, face to face, I asked again. It was one of a few dozen Portuguese words I knew:
ME [so wrong but trying]: Otossan, ah... quanto é o... alguel? [Dad, how much is the rent?]
He just shook his head, waved away that possibility with his hand:
OTOSSAN: Não. [sounding out English with a smile] Fam-eh-ree.
I sat quiet with that kindness as São Paulo turned into a blur of lights smearing across the car windows on all sides, and then we were in a garage, and then an elevator, and then my in-laws’ beautiful apartment high above the city. After a full day of economy airplane seats and luggage stress, it was an oasis, cozy and warm and woody, a lived-in home of Okinawan hobbits.
Once we dropped the bags, I smelled my piss-soaked shirt, our piss-soaked cat. The cat bath and hot shower that followed was too beautiful to put into words and the three of us fell asleep together in Lil's childhood bedroom.
++++
When we awoke and came out to the kitchen, Otossan and Okassan were already parked in the front of the TV news, waiting to make the coffee. Together we had Brazilian café da manhã [breakfast], which included one boiled egg per person, five types of fresh fruits – laranja pera [green-peeled orange], carambola [starfruit], mamão [papaya] and abacaxi [pineapple] – with slices of white cheese, pão na chapa [grilled toast] and cups of strong black coffee.
Taking my third coffee over to the open living room window, I looked out across this new city, a sprawling chaos in every direction like someone kicked over a bucket of grey legos. From their view, you could see Avenida Paulista, the green lake of Parque Aclimação, everywhere you looked was city-city-city sprawling out in every direction literally far as the eye can see... all the way to the forested mountains of the Serra do Mar to the east, Serra Cantareira to the north. I didn’t know the names of these places yet, but I was awake again, myself again.
I drained my coffee, itchy to see our new apartment, to plug my art-making studio back together down here and see what comes out of me.
But Otossan and Okassan were getting ready for work; they’d assumed we were coming downtown to Centro with them, that we'd hang all day at the office, go for a family dinner at a restaurant, and then move into Liberdade. My New York brain punched through a window but I reminded myself to slow down, let go, adjust to this place. Things are slower here, looser.
++++
I would describe Otossan's office in Centro but I’m not allowed to. Specifically, insistently, I promised I would not write about it. I can’t even mention the industry they're in for fear that someone will find this story and target them for a robbery or worse, a kidnapping. There’ve been kidnappings in the family before, traumatizing robberies at the office by men who screamed as they pointed machine guns at Otossan while he tried calmly to remember the combination to his own safe.
Since then, he’s formed a neighborhood watch with other local business owners. They check in with each other using code words at designated times every day, going to/at/from work. Missing a check-in means something is wrong and gets an immediate call to the police. Business owners live in fear of thieves in São Paulo because they’re better organized than the police or the government.
Aside from the secrecy, inside the office was a sleepy place to spend our first day in country, so we went out and walked around Centro. A charming old downtown, like Manhattan's financial district but three hundred years older with far more elegant architecture. Also more beggars and sex workers and military police.
Lil and I stopped at a fruit stand she'd been going to her entire life. They recognized her and smiled; the son who was around her age was now running the business. We drank fresh watermelon juice with lemongrass to cool down and rehydrate, then walked on along cobblestone streets to the old viaduct at Anhangabaú. We stopped outside the stunning Teâtro Municipal's exterior but weren't allowed to enter; it was still under renovation, but I needed to take photos, it was that gorgeous. Fumbling in my bag for my camera, Lil clicked her teeth:
LIL: This isn't New York, babe. If you need your camera to do your work, you should leave it at home. Somebody’s going to snatch it right from your hands out here.
I took pictures with my mind instead.
++++
Walking back through the Praça da Sé, past the iconic Gothic church, past the angry preacher thumping a ratty bible, the trabalhadores [laborers] with placards protesting some new conflict with the government, the little street children begging (or just pickpocketing) for drug money. Suddenly there was another rattle of thunder overhead and the Praça emptied of its crowd.
It had come on so fast. A few drops at first, but then the sky just opened, truly, biblically. Lightning flashed off the tops of cathedrals like a Batman comic. The funky mildew coating the old buildings' foundations made sense now; the uneven, winding valleys of Centro's cobblestone mosaic streets were clearly designed to funnel storm surges away from the the business district... probably sending towards the poor and their cobbled-together brick houses.
Pick any country anywhere in the world; no one gives a shit about the poor.
Ducked under wet Communist newspapers, we ran back to Otossan's office to wait out the rest of the day. Still damp, we drank café pingado [drip coffee] from tiny plastic cups and watched TV: news of crimes, car commercials, game shows where the host is surrounded by women in bikinis. It was still raining when Otossan closed up for the day.
++++
Standing outside the building, waiting for the family regroup, the socks inside my shoes were rain-swollen as the river flowed through them, candy bar wrappers and plastic bags and wet receipts piling up against the sides of my feet.
It was still raining when the rest of Lil's family – her brothers, their wives, aunts and uncles – came to a Japanese restaurant to welcome us home with sushi.
It was still raining when we left to fetch our cat and things from Otossan’s home.
It was still raining as we drove back through Liberdade again towards our new place.
ME: Wait, I thought it was too dangerous here to move in at night?
I only got a response from the windshield wipers voob-voobing rubber across glass. Swirly shadows of rain on my face reflected in the rear view mirror. My internal compass spun wildly in circles, lost and confused. I just wanted to sit stillv and breathe, check my email, lay on a couch in my underwear, pet my cat.
We turned past an ancient banyan tree in a roundabout island the roads wrapped around. A group of homeless folks hung a blue plastic tarp from its branches to keep the rain off their tiny grill sitting in the dirt; they were druknely singing and passing around a bottle of cachaça [sugar cane rum]. And then:
OTOSSAN: Hai. Chegamos. [OK. We’re here.]
The orange streetlights sputtered, their reach swallowed by the rain. Two apartment buildings hid behind a security gate, one of them housing our new Brazilian fantasy apartment.
The complex faced a garage across the street with a gaping hole in the road; locals had piled planks of wood and a broken chair into the sinkhole so cars were forced around it and avoided damaging their axles. Inside my skull, my gringo-brain asked: but what if somebody hit the chair instead?
We entered the complex's garage and unloaded everything we owned into two supermarket shopping carts, rolled those into the elevator. It only took one trip. Otossan made us stop in the lobby on the way up; through the windows, he pointed out the pool deck, the social hall, the bank of mailboxes I would never open.
The building was spacious and clean, recently renovated. There was a laundry room there too, getting a major quality-of-life upgrade from Brooklyn, where we took an 8-block hike to the nearest coin laundromat.
Otossan pressed "18" on the elevator and Lil and I held our breath. The tiny slice of Jew left inside me smiled: 18 means chai [life], so that’s a good sign. The doors opened into total darkness before the motion-sensors flicked on the fluorescent lights.
++++
I’m not sure what I was expecting from a free kitenete, certainly not luxury, but this was almost a closet: a narrow space with floor-to-ceiling closets on both sides, far more storage than living space. It was definitely smaller than the smallest place I’d ever lived in New York.
As I stepped inside to unload our grocery cart, I forced a gracious smile for my father-in-law, but the fantasy was got suddenly very real. This was never intended to be a permanent thing. Clearly a space for students of the nearby school, there was a twin bed with another pull-out mattress beneath it. The kichenete was full of furniture already, but in a space so narrow, we had to step high-and-over everything just to cross from one side to the other.
Hugging thanks to Otossan and Okassan, they took their leave to give us a chance to settle in. We unpacked a bit, stowed our suitcases in the plentitude of closets, got Wedge situated with food and a litter box, and walked out to the standing-room-for-one balcony the overlooked the pool deck. It was still raining, the drops electric orange as they fuzzed around the streetlights. I took Lil’s hand in mine, both of us finally taking deep breaths. It was as quiet a moment as we’d had for what feels like weeks.
I thought aloud about going for a quick celebratory drink and remembered we couldn't wander the streets at nighttime here. Maybe we can get a couple of beers delivered...? I turn to the envelope of delivery menus left by the previous tenant and the sky outside exploded white-blue in a crash of ozone and lightning and thunder that left our pupils dilated, ours ears ringing. After that, everything was black. Totally pitch black.
And not just inside our apartment, not just inside the building or even the next tower. I tripped over coffee table as I headed back out to the balcony: Liberdade was blacked out for about five blocks in every direction, most of the neighborhood. Dark silhouettes of apartment buildings against rainy night sky. Slowly, candles were lit in tiny windows all around us, like a church service or a séance. People start screaming from their balconies; I couldn't tell if they were happy or frightened or bored but in the candle-lit dark in a strange new land, my stomach just churned, queasy.
LIL: It’s the rain. Fucking Brazil.
ME: Do we have a flashlight? Or candles? Or... food?
Of course we didn't. I suggested maybe we can go down to the lobby, we could sit under the overhang and watch the rain. But we were 18 floors up and no power meant no elevator service.
Eventually I found my backpack. Somebody at a party in New York had given this stupid electronic keychain: a blue plastic monkey with a protruding penis. When you press down on his penis, bright blue LEDs beam from his eyeholes and he makes this electronic screech – like KEEE KEEEE KEEE KEEE, it’s actually even scarier than it is annoying — but it was enough to save our shins from the unfamiliar furniture in the dark, to let us use the toilet, set up the beds.
As we lay there in the dark with the sliding glass door open, listening to the rain and thunder, Lil on the top twin mattress and me on the lower pull-out one, she started to sing. She told me later it was an old song by Jorge Bem:
LIL: Chove, chuva [Rain, rain] / Chove sem parar [Rain without end]
The adrenaline of it all crashed headlong into our unrealistic expectiations and the release exited our bodies as laughter. There was no other sane response.
LIL: Bem-vindo a Brasil. [Welcome to Brazil]
It was still raining in the morning.
+++++
BONUS: Here's the song Lil was singing in the dark:
