i made the executive decision not to deal with it until later. i pieced together what was there, the way you do when you are not ready to break your focus and grocery shopping in salvador is never just a quick errand. it requires calculation. which store. which neighborhood. what is actually available. what the card situation is. it is not hard exactly, but it is never nothing either. by the time i got ready to go out in the afternoon, i had already spent more mental energy on groceries than i would have in years of living in brooklyn.
i took an uber to vitória.
vitória is a different kind of neighborhood. older money, tree-lined, the streets have a kind of dignity to them. people were out walking at dusk like they had nowhere urgent to be, which is its own kind of luxury. i stopped at a grocery store there and i noticed — same chain, completely different feeling. calmer. more stocked. different clientele. the same store can hold an entirely different world inside it depending on where you are.
from there i walked to a housewarming.
it was a small gathering, mostly americans, some long-term expats and a few people still deciding whether to make the move. there was a woman staying in my building who is weighing it all out. the conversations in those rooms have a particular rhythm — exchange rate, safety, adjustment, what you miss, what surprised you. i have had versions of this conversation many times now. i do not mind it. there is something useful about being in the room where someone else is at the beginning.
but the moment that settled everything was the food.
ribs. greens. cornbread. macaroni. potato salad. wine.
at some point the room just went quiet. not awkward quiet. the other kind. the kind where everyone has a plate and the only appropriate response to what is happening is to be present with it. american music was playing in the background and something about that combination — the food, the music, the familiar voices — landed somewhere deep. it reminded me of summer nights in brooklyn when everybody is outside, outside. you know the kind. long light, warm air, nowhere you absolutely have to be.
i miss that. i will not pretend otherwise.
i also know what i have here. both things are true and i am learning to hold them at the same time without needing to resolve it.
got home. did a little more work. went to bed later than i should have.
the refrigerator is still empty.
tomorrow is going to require dealing with that.
there is more to say about what it actually means to be a Black American in brazil — not the idea of it, but the lived daily texture of it. that one is going to need its own space.