The Brazilian Girls
Edu’s bike bounced and swerved as he navigated the cobblestone streets through Porto de Galinhas with a surfboard gripped under his left arm allowing him only one hand for steering. The first five kilometers had been easy, riding along the bike path that lined the beach. He stopped at a cabana stand for freshly ripened passion fruit and guava and grabbed a couple extra pieces and tucked them into his backpack. Local vendors in small store fronts waved and smiled as he passed, and he would briefly remove his steering hand from the handlebar and shout, “Oi!” to them, showing off more than anything. He was used to the bumpy road, the bike, and had carried surfboards to the beach for most of his thirty-five years, navigating between dune buggies, and in his younger days balancing friends on the handlebars as well. He had grown up in the port of chickens, or the port of whores, or Porto de Galinhas, depending on how you read it—the place where, years before, slave ships had ported and locals had run to the boats screaming, “Galinhas!” referring to the women on them. As he neared the restaurant where he worked, he noticed tourists, already posed amongst the chicken monuments, too naïve to know their symbolic meaning. One man stood within a chicken telephone booth as if he were making a call while a woman snapped a photo. Another woman in a string bikini stood between two statues, one knee bent and her heel raised, her hips slightly tilted, probably hoping the camera would catch her best angle, and her arms were wrapped around each plastic chicken as if they were good friends. Her probable lover photographed her—his galinha.
The board was for Edu’s new friend, a tourist named Beth, and Edu had practiced saying her name over and over, placing his tongue on the bottom of his top teeth so that it wouldn’t sound like Bet. The “th” sound was difficult for him, non-existent in his native Portuguese, but he had watched her and listened closely over the last few weeks as her tongue graced her teeth when she introduced herself to his friends. His English wasn’t very good, but her Portuguese was much worse. “Bet,” he said. “No. Beta. No. Beth.” He wanted to say it right this time, though he liked it when she laughed when he was tongue-tied.
Edu was late, but he didn’t think it would matter; Beth knew he had been working on her board. She had come from Boa Viagem, about an hour away, and he thought she might be late too, depending on how many hotel stops her tour bus had to make. And, even if she had been waiting, he knew the board would make up for it. He had been removing old caked on wax, resurfacing the dents to create a smooth surface, and painting the used board for several days after work; the fresh paint had taken several days to dry, the humidity causing slight smears as he would touch it, but they were few and hardly noticeable on the bottom of the board.
Edu saw Beth in the distance as he walked from the cobblestone street down the dirt crusted alley that led to the beach. A man was swearing at the showers, not wanting to pay for more water. Beth’s back was to Edu, but he could see her profile. She was leaning forward, and it looked as if she was watching children playing. Edu noticed she looked youthful as she watched them. Ela e ecantador, he thought as he neared. He saw that she was grinning, and it didn’t look like she was blinking, as if she were capturing something unspoken or hidden between the children and her.
Beth was sitting in a blue and white striped chair with the initials BKG marked in thick black ink across the back, the legs digging into the sand and far enough away from the water that the high tide at three o’clock wouldn’t send her scurrying for dry land. Each chair had its own initials and own color, distinguishing each cabana’s beach territory. Beth’s chair was in front of Edu’s cabana, where he served food and drinks, mostly overpriced, to wealthy Brazilian natives, mostly from the South and a few Europeans. Beth was the first American he had met. Her looks had surprised him; he had guessed she was from Argentina. He had found her English different, difficult, her words slower and harder to understand. He had studied the Queen’s English in school. Edu hoped the oysters would be fresh; they usually were, and the two would share them, Edu cracking the shells and squirting lime on them for a mid-day snack.
#
Beth was lost in thought as she waited for Edu. Her new surfboard would be arriving, and she couldn’t wait for him to take her out into the still water for her first lesson. Edu had been nice to her, and her suspicions that he was only trying to con her out of money or kidnap her for a kidney were dissipating as she learned his culture and spent more time with him. It had been three weeks since she had arrived, had been laid off from her teaching job, and had decided to use some of her inheritance money for a cheap vacation before finding work again. “There is not much crime here,” Edu had told her. “Criminals are thrown to sharks.” And, back at her hotel in Boa Viagem, she had seen warning signs of sharks. The signs were white and the lettering red: “Perigo. AREA SUJEITA A ATAQUE DE TUBARAO.” A picture of a black shark was painted below the warning, yet Beth had seen the locals swimming in the water on the beach side of the reef. From the shore, she had watched them swim and surf well past dark as she sipped Caipirinhas in the cool breeze. She knew the area well already, had learned not to sit too close to the rocks behind her, which held rats and roaches and spiders. She had watched them scurry back and forth in search of food, and she wondered what they did when the tide came in. She had walked the beach at Boa Viagem as well; it was littered with beer cans, hundreds of pairs of shoes, fruit carcasses, plastic cups, and cigarette butts. She had told Edu about her beach and he had said, “In America, natural disasters destroy the beaches. In Brazil, the people destroy the beaches.”
Beth was focused on three young Brazilian girls that were squatting, drawing in the sand with sticks. Their buttocks were round like the coconut corpses on the sand, and when they weren’t whispering into each other’s ears, they called out to one another in Portuguese. She remembered her own youth, so different, having played in a yard without sand, but brown fall leaves structured into forts around the magnolia tree in her own suburban yard. She pictured herself with Heather and Melissa, sharing their own secrets that would never travel beyond the leaves, and wondering if they were the same secrets of the young Brazilian girls—secrets that would remain trapped within the circle they had drawn in the sand. She thought of Edu’s voice. “Hi Bet,” he would say as he approached, and it made her laugh remembering as she tried to teach him the “th” sound. As his Portuguese words filled her ears and filtered into her mind, Beth thought she felt herself losing not only her conversational Spanish but her English, too. To her, it sounded as if the Brazilians were speaking Spanish with a mouthful of oatmeal. She tried to speak in short sentences to help them understand, but she wanted to start learning their words too. She had been practicing Bom Dia, thinking it sounded French, but realizing that the letter D was odd and sounded more like a J. And the letter J was different, too. The name Joe sounded more like “show” in their dialect. When she stuttered around the words, she got tongue-tied each time she tried to enunciate the two letters that sounded much the same. Beth was the foreigner, embarrassed that with an expensive American education and opportunities, she’d only recently begun an attempt to learn a few simple phrases, like hello or thank you, or please, yet Edu was able to communicate with her. She was excited to see him, and she loved Recife. Edu had told her that he had never left his country, and hadn’t ever left Recife. “I don’t want to leave my country,” Edu had told her. She didn’t blame him; she didn’t want to leave his country either.
The Brazilian girls were wearing tiny bikinis, much unlike those worn by six-year-olds in America. As the tide came in, it filled their bottoms with sand, and Beth watched as they scooped it out with their hands, revealing only slight tan lines. She sat, covered in oil, trying to match their skin color, to blend in, to become Brazilian. Their sandcastle, decorated on its top with old and browning cigarette butts washed away, but they didn’t seem to care; they began drawing new pictures with the poles the cabana boys brought to help set up the umbrellas needed to block the piercing sun. The girls were drawing houses, and Beth imagined what the girls’ houses looked like. She watched as one flipped her hair. Soft dark hair with sun-made highlights shined against the girl’s skin and fell just below her bikini back. Beth ran her fingers through her own dull, fake-colored, and tangled mess, the salt having dried it into a texture not unlike the seaweed that washed ashore.
The “Jesus Loves Me” beer cart rolled by followed by a t-shirt rack, handmade tablecloths, and music blasted from a wheel cart carrying the local artist’s CDs. Beth put her book face down and closed her eyes trying to imagine, trying to go deep within that part of her who was once that small girl playing with Melissa and Heather, before she became an adult, before she suffered a heartbreak, the deaths of her parents, and the loss of her job. She opened her eyes again because she didn’t want to miss anything. The girls were running toward the water. One pulled her swimsuit bottom down and the other two followed her lead. They ran into the ocean, holding hands linked by their culture, their friendship, and their glee, splashing each other in their own language.
“Camaraos?” a local asked, breaking Beth’s stare. A basket of shrimp was balanced on top of his head. He was sweaty and had a deformed foot that forced him to walk on the top, like it was upside down. He dipped the basket down to show her, and the shrimp had bulging black eyes that seemed to stare at her, their heads and tails still attached, almost as if they were still alive.
“Nao,” she said as she shook her hand back and forth as if he couldn’t understand the word no, universal in all language, though the gesture wasn’t considered rude in Brazil. “Obrigada,” she added. She wasn’t repulsed; it was too much work to dismember the head and the tail and peel the thin layer of shell and she knew she and Edu would have oysters soon. She was used to the frozen seafood at the markets in America where all the work had been done for her. Even the taste had been removed. “Obrigada,” she said again when he didn’t walk away. Her first Portuguese word. Well, it was that or Caipirinha. He turned away, and Beth wondered how he balanced the bowl on his head while walking along with the limp in the dry sand.
At forty, Beth realized she knew far more than the young girls, yet far less. She wondered if it was they or she who was fortunate. She wondered what would become of them as adults, if they would be pushing beer carts along the beach, driving tourists in dune buggies through Porto de Galinhas, leading scuba diving tours, working in the hooker bars, or if they would ever leave their country for dreams of America. Edu was late, but she didn’t mind. She thought of the surfboard as she watched the girls return and run back into the water with their boogie boards. She would be more like them when she got her surfboard, young and light and the current would sweep her along.
“Cashews?” another vendor asked, and again, Beth declined. She would be more apt to pay to observe their culture, to have a bottom shaped like coconuts. She wanted to be one the little girls. She thought of the concrete in the city of Atlanta, the slabs that burned her feet and blackened them, leaving them brown and dirty and callused, and Beth imagined the girls’ feet were soft, had been exfoliated by the sand and the sea.
#
Beth turned toward Edu when he was about ten yards away. Umbrellas marked with Visa and MasterCard logos dotted the landscape. He was maneuvering between them carrying the large board in its protective case and his backpack. He was wearing a white t-shirt with a black Capricorn symbol across the front, his zodiac sign, the meaning in Portuguese written below, black surfer shorts and his Havaiana flip-flops, with the lighted sides that glowed on the beach at night making them easy to find. Beth couldn’t see his eyes through his Costa del Mar sunglasses but she could see his mouth was open, revealing a huge and genuine smile.
“Hello, Beth,” Edu said. He was holding the silver case. She knew the inside held her next adventure.
“Bom Dia,” she responded, showing off her new phrase, and they both laughed. “You said my name right!”
“I brought you surfboard,” he said. “It is pretty.” He kicked his flip-flops under the table.
Beth jumped up and grabbed the silver case, but she didn’t know how to open it. Edu showed her a zipper along the side as he slid it open and pulled out the board. It was bright yellow. It was a foot or so taller than Beth and it had large red daisies surrounded by grass-green leaves dotting the front, a perfect triangle shaped the top, and as he handed it to her, she found it to be remarkably light. She held it under her arm, as she had watched surfers do before and as the little girls had carried their boogie boards.
“You like?” Edu asked.
“I love it!” she said, setting the board down to give him a hug. She wondered why he wasn’t sweaty, the sun beating down on his back, his bare feet on the hot sand, the humidity visible off the water almost like smoke. “Obrigada! Wait, let me get my camera!”
Edu took a picture of Beth holding the board while giving a “hang-ten” symbol with her other hand. He then asked a woman, one of the Brazilian girl’s mother’s, to take a photo of the two of them with the surfboard.
“Obrigado,” Edu said as the woman returned the camera.
“Obrigada,” Beth said, enunciating the “a” and looking to Edu to show that she knew the difference.
“Tropical drink?” Edu said as he pointed toward the cabana.
“No alcohol. Just a coconut water now,” she said. She didn’t want to surf after drinking alcohol.
Edu started running; he always did that, and she always watched. He ran back and forth to the cabana all day long, selling food and drink, and scuba diving tours, and now, surfboards. He disappeared behind the cabana for a few minutes, and Beth turned back toward the water. She saw a local going out into the surf with a bright green surfboard. Beth had seen him before, and she thought he worked at the cabana beside Edu’s and maybe she had even met him. He passed the three girls, and they were catching the small surf close to the shore. Beth studied his paddle, his strong arms swimming freestyle easily through the water, his feet close together at the bottom of the board. She noticed his big toes were nearly touching. His hair had streaks of blond in it, and his skin was a shade lighter than Edu’s. She wondered if she would have the strength to paddle and balance like him. The surfer turned and looked at Beth, and she felt the look was an invitation to come out and learn.
Edu returned with a large knife and a fresh coconut. He stabbed the top hard, cutting into it as he had many times before. Beth flinched, wondering how many had cut their hand off in the learning process. A triangle opening was left at the top, and Edu placed two straws in the top of it and handed it to her. The sweet water went down quickly; it was partly frozen and Beth stabbed at the ice and the sides with her straws, drinking it in, the fruit so large she had to hold it with both hands.
“Are you going to surf?” Edu said.
“Si,” Beth said, looking back at her board resting on the sand. She looked out again, and the surfer was still paddling, now sideways in the direction of an approaching wave. She saw him look at her and Edu again.
“How long before bus?” Edu asked.
“Joe will be here at four.”
“I finish at two. Want to have lunch at the churrascaria?” Edu said.
“Yes. No tongue this time.” She laughed, remembering being tricked into eating cow tongue at the Brazilian BBQ a few days before.
“No tongue,” he said.
Beth stood from her chair and set her empty coconut on the plastic table. Edu began cutting it up for her to have as a snack.
“Oysters?” he said.
“Si. When I get back from surfing!”
Beth picked up her board and walked to the water. She was scared, yet had a rush like never before. No one in the states aside from the Delta ticket personnel even knew she was in Brazil; she had told her friends that she was going to visit family in Chicago, not wanting to discuss the never-ending case of the young girl lost in Aruba while on vacation. To her friends, everyone in South America was considered a criminal. It wasn’t worth her time to defend her adventures. She considered inner-city Atlanta far more dangerous than any spot in Brazil.
Edu covered her coconut slices with a napkin to keep the flies away, and as she entered the water, she saw him run and heard his voice as he spoke Portuguese to a group of people hiding from the sun under a blue umbrella with the name “Melissa” written across it. She was reminded again of her best friend since she was four, and she passed the three young girls in the water.
#
Balancing was difficult on the board, but it didn’t take Beth long. Her body was small and lean, her shoulders strong and broad, and the board floated on top of the water, revealing her entire self as if she was floating on a lily pad of bright yellow topping the clear blue water. Beth had been a swimmer in her youth, and held state records in backstroke and freestyle. She felt like a natural, as if she were in lane three again, the strongest swimmer’s lane, eyeing a lanky girl on her left whose goggles appeared fogged and her own teammate to her right, the weakest swimmer’s lane.
The surfer was about fifty yards ahead of Beth, looking back and watching as she paddled. She mimicked him, placing her feet together, only that seemed to make the board unsteady and difficult to stay on direction, but she centered herself again and floated, tried to get used to not kicking with her legs as she had long before while her dad had watched her win swim races through the iron fence blocking the third hole of the golf course from the pool, hopping back into his golf cart just after their eyes met when she surfaced a body length ahead of any competitor. She remembered those days, when a bee sting was the most stressful part of her life.
The surfer paddled to Beth and placed his hands in the middle of the board on each side and pushed himself up into a sitting position. He pointed to her to do the same. She swam a few strokes until her arms grew tired, and then she tried to sit up, but the board flipped over her head, and as she splashed backwards, she still clutched it as if it the surf might take it as time had taken her youth. By the third try, she was able to sit, properly centered, and this allowed her to rest as the low waves rolled beneath. She could see the bottom of the ocean, small schools of fish that reminded her of tiger barbs in the fish tank she had as a child. When the surf went out, they would become trapped in the natural pools of the ocean, a lighter blue, hundreds of them swimming in circles, waiting for the tide to return. The surfer pointed past the reef, not too far, but a steep climb up rocks. Beth didn’t know what was beyond the reef; she had never crossed it, only stood on it to take pictures. She had fallen as she climbed it before, nearly destroying her camera and she couldn’t imagine trying to climb it barefoot while carrying the board.
Beth turned toward the shore and saw Edu at an oyster cart. The vendor was stabbing them into halves and she turned from the surfer, waving and pointing to Edu on the shore. She rode the tide in, actually surfed in, able to get up onto her knees for the first time. She came from the water out of breath and hunched over. She delicately placed the wet board on the sand, making sure the daisies remained up, another reminder of her youth. She remembered the flowers her father planted each spring beneath her bedroom window, surrounding a pink azalea bush he had planted when she was six-years-old. The azalea bloomed larger each year. That had been almost thirty-five years ago. She wondered if the new owners had dug it up.
Beth returned to her chair, and Edu followed, carrying a dozen oysters and lime cut into wedges. The three Brazilian girls were beside her, in smaller chairs, also striped blue and white. The girls were eating mandioca and corn, and their moms were sharing freshly caught snapper with the head still attached. They dug the white meat from under the silver skin of the large fish, sometimes pulling scales straight from their mouths. The little girls were laughing as corn straight from the cob wedged in their teeth. Edu squirted lime into the shell and handed Beth an oyster, and she remembered her one and only true love, Geoff, peeling boiled crawfish for her, remembered using his weed-eater to mow the grass while he was at his first job, and remembered the heart break that though was not visible, always remained, even after fifteen years. The oyster was sticky, and Beth had to use her teeth to pull it from the shell, getting a bit of gristle, which she chewed quietly rather than let Edu see her pull it from her mouth. The taste of salt water filled her mouth, and the oyster slid down. She tried to remember if it was safe to eat them in the months that ended in “r” or didn’t. It was April, and she wondered if that was an American myth or an urban legend.
“Wait,” Edu said. “Let me take photograph.”
Beth pulled her camera from her bag and handed it to him. “Will you get it with the little girls with me?”
“Yes.” Their chairs were almost touching, and Edu turned the camera from side to side, stepping closer, and stepping back. Beth wanted the photos to soak up everything there, in Porto de Galinhas, at this beach, where time had brought her youth. “Smile,” he said, in Portuguese and English. All four looked at the camera and grinned, and he snapped several pictures. He showed Beth the photos that revealed the four girls in the chairs, his cabana in the background, and her surfboard on the sand set next to their boogie boards. Her coconut and plate with several oysters were on the plastic table and their flip-flops, together, underneath.
“I’m going back to surf,” Beth said to Edu while grabbing her board again.
“Be carefully,” he said. “I come out and show you how in un hour.”
“Okay,” Beth said. “I will practice.”
“Put on ankle leash,” Edu said.
“I’m scared,” Beth said. “Will the board hit me?”
“Put arms above head. Is safe.”
It was the adrenaline that took Beth back, and seeing the surfer easily maneuver up and over the rocks; he was further than the sailboats, loaded with people jumping into the natural pools and keeping their arms up in the waist-high water, jumping as schools of fish swam toward them. Their water was clear, and when Beth finally passed them and began climbing the rocks, she saw a much darker tint of ocean, one where she couldn’t see the bottom. Much larger waves crashed into the reef. She realized she had much further to go, and the effort it had taken her to get this far had been exhausting. The surfer was barely visible, the green from his board entirely hidden. His arms were pushing faster, harder as he swam. He was no longer watching for her. He was watching for the next large wave.
Standing on the reef, Beth looked back toward the shore. She could no longer see Edu, her safety net; she could no longer see the girls. Although she couldn’t see the name “Melissa,” any longer, she could still see the blue umbrella, surrounded by chairs and beach bags. The silver surfboard case seemed to ricochet the sun into the air, like a boomerang in continuous motion. She saw the sun behind her, and, over the reef in the distance the moon was clear and almost full. The music was no longer audible though she could make out the cart and local music similar to reggae filled her mind. She only heard the waves crashing against the rocks. She wondered how she would power herself through them without being immediately slammed into the rocks. She wondered if the undertow was strong, and she wondered if she was stronger. She would need to swim parallel to the shore if it began to pull.
Beth looked just as the surfer caught a wave. The front of his green board went up slightly and he moved from stomach to feet, and it appeared as if it had been easy—a simple push from his hands to his feet, all in one motion, and Beth didn’t think that his knees had ever hit the board as hers had. He looked graceful, almost like he was skiing, his body twisting and turning the board to catch the precise angle that the wave respected. His eyes were focused on the wave, and his back was to the beach. His left foot was forward, and he road inside of the crescent, which seemed to welcome him into its inner soul. Beth thought she could do the same. She jumped from the rocks, the yellow never leaving her hands. As the waves receded, she hit still water noticing it was much colder than the water on the other side. Beth could no longer see what was behind her. She only saw growing waves in front. She didn’t look back, her arms pulling her away from the rocks, the shore, the girls, Edu, and her memories. Her thoughts were one with the ocean. Since she couldn’t see the bottom, she only looked for the surfer. She couldn’t see him. The first wave that hit, knocked her under and she lost grip of the board. When she surfaced, she was hit with another. The undertow was fierce, and the rip tide gripped her. As the waves ascended and retreated back, she felt the pull, stronger this time. She tried to swim parallel to the shore, but she was losing her perception of where the shore was. When Beth surfaced, she could see the board’s movement, going back and forth, hitting the rocks and drifting back out to sea, like her mind, from youth to now—from safety to fear—from Edu to Geoff. As the waves continued, she tried to duck beneath them, but was hit over and over, the salt water filling her mouth, and she tasted oysters again on the shore. I have to get to my board, and the ankle leash, she thought. It was still floating, and she thought she could use it as a life preserver, but each time she surfaced, the bright yellow was further away.
Beth could no longer see the rocks. It was high tide, and the waves had covered them. She pictured the beach, and tried to think of funny things—the tourists scrambling to move their chairs toward the cabanas, the wet clothing, drenched cameras with vacation photos, soggy pages of books, and her book, The Undertaking. How appropriate, she thought. She felt something graze her foot and thought she had found the reef. All she had to do was get across it. The surfer was gone; Edu was gone.
It wasn’t long before the board was no longer in her sight. And as Beth fought the waves, it became more difficult to distinguish water from air. She worried more that she had lost her new board than the predicament she had before her. She had found her youth, and she had lost it, becoming weak and frail long before her time. Something hit her knee, harder this time, between gulps of water that she spat.
#
In America, it was Easter Sunday. In Brazil, it was Pascua. Johnny lived with his mother and his younger brother in a three-room apartment on the second floor near the beach. It was difficult to tell the outside walls had once been painted white. They were speckled with brown and gray from the saltwater. He did his surfboard work on the patio after his mom left because she always complained of the smell of the paint. She had already taken her items for sale down to the beach: cover-ups, t-shirts, coral jewelry, and coconut purses for the early tourists who wanted to see the natural pools before the tide covered them.
Johnny pulled a knife from his pocket and began scraping the wax from the yellow board. When that didn’t work, he tried a razor. This one will be red, he thought to himself as he bore down with the razor. This time he would charge a tourist four hundred reais instead of the three hundred he had charged before. The board was taking longer to clean than he thought it would. The girl had put much more of the bubble-gum scented wax on it than she needed to, but her ankle strap was still like new. He would keep that for himself. He removed the daisies, and painted the board a fresh and bright red. He painted white and blue butterflies on it. Johnny sat on the patio, and watched as Edu pedaled down the street; He’s early, Johnny thought, and he ducked quietly placing the board down in case Edu looked up. Johnny felt hung over from the Skol beers he had on the beach while waiting for everyone to leave before he retrieved the surfboard from the rocks. As he painted, his young brother watched.
“Can I go to the beach with you today?” He was lying sideways in the hammock that Edu had roped together for them, twisting knots in the ends until his hands had grown callused and bled. Edu had traded the hammock for the surfboard, telling Johnny that he wanted to repair it and paint it himself—that it was for someone special.
“Yeah, but you’re on your own. And you have to keep your feet up this time.”
“Okay. Can I take my boogie board?”
“Sure, but I’m carrying it on the bike.”
#
Edu arrived at the cabana. He was holding Beth’s surfboard case and her beach bag. It held a book, her surf wax, a hotel towel with the logo “Atlante,” across it, her new brown Havaiana flip-flops, camera, sunglasses, and a book titled The Undertaking, which he feared was a symbol meant for him as to what had happened to her. He wondered why she hadn’t said goodbye before the tour bus left and why she had left all of her items, but he thought that’s what surfing did to you—it made you lose track of time–reality. He walked the beach looking for any trace of her. He had waited for Beth for two hours the evening before, pacing along the beach, knowing the yellow would be easily seen if she were in the water.
Edu walked through the sand toward the water where he had last seen Beth. It was still early, and he was able to walk most of the way to the reef. He climbed the rocks and looked; there was no sign of her or her surfboard. That was what gave him hope. He imagined the surfboard might be floating near the rocks, but it wasn’t.
Edu returned to the shore and cut up the passion fruit left in his backpack. He brought out one of the cabana’s blue and white chairs and sat where Beth and the girls had been the day before. He remembered the photographs, and he pulled her camera from her bag. The sun was coming up hot and strong, and he scrolled through the pictures. He found the shots all taken the day before—the two of them, Beth with her new board, and Beth with the Brazilian girls. The four little Brazilian girls, he thought. Beth looked so happy when the photo was taken. And, he came across a picture of a blue umbrella with the word “Melissa,” on it. He knew what he would have to do. He didn’t know how he would get to Boa Viagem, but he would. He would find out if Beth had returned to the Atlante.
The three little Brazilian girls arrived late that morning, and Edu was the one who watched them this time. He didn’t run as usual. He only put a few chairs out in front of his cabana, discouraging guests from his business. The girls were drawing in the sand again, and he stopped to see what they were drawing. It was a picture of four stick-figure girls holding hands. The girls had drawn boogie boards in front of each one.