Dance Lest We All Fall Down - Margaret Willson [107]
“The younger girls in the private school continue to have problems with discrimination,” Rita said. “Other children harass them. A gang broke the glasses of one girl, some children beat up another. The teachers are generally ‘nice’ but often condescending toward the girls. Our girls continually try to copy the middle-class girls and end up feeling that they are inferior. But they did form a very strong bond between them. They always watch over and defend each other.”
“And for the public school girls?” I asked.
“Ah, now that was completely different. These girls were getting a good quality education at Bahia Street, of course, unlike anyone else in their public school. So they rose quickly to the top of their classes. They became leaders—even the very young girls. And the most startling part was that all of these girls passed their end-of-year exams with grades equal to or above those of the private school girls.”
“That’s incredible, Rita.”
“It goes further than that. The Bahia Street girls in the public schools also got stronger, more sure of themselves. They were more excited by what they learned and more political about the relationship of race and class in Brazil. Other students in their classes asked them to help them study; they were actually getting other students to want to study. Teachers told me that the Bahia Street girls are making them want to teach again. Can you believe that? They said that these girls are inspiring their entire class. And I can tell that the public school girls are happier and feel much better about themselves than the private school girls.”
“This is outrageous, Rita. We should stop paying all this money for private schools.”
“I have all this trouble with the girls in the private school,” Rita said. “They think they’re better than the other Bahia Street girls. It creates a division at the Center. But they aren’t getting any better grades.”
“It says a great deal about the quality of the education they’re getting at Bahia Street, Rita.”
“We’re getting through to them on one level at least,” she said. “When I asked Diana, the little ten-year-old, what she’d learned this year, she said, ‘I have learned to study hard and to never have sex without a condom.’”
“What’s this I hear about a condom?” Nelson asked.
“Put it on your nose,” Rita said. “And get us another beer. A final one for going home.”
I went to visit Tatiana in Penambuas while I was in Salvador. It had been years since I had seen her. She looked twenty years younger. I had never thought of her as anything but old and tired before, but now she was beautiful! Lively, full of spark, life, and flirtation. Her husband had died some years before—no great loss to anyone. All the girls were gone to Europe, she told me. Alexandra had moved from Holland to Germany, was studying to be a dental assistant, drumming with a band, and had a boyfriend. Ana had met an older Belgian fellow in Salvador who had two teenage children. She married him and moved to Belgium. She was just finishing a course on chocolate-making and cake decorating. Her plan was to start a business in Belgium. Alexandra had paid for Soraia to come to Europe; now Soraia was taking classes in Dutch and living with a Dutch fellow she had met who worked with computers. And Andrea. She met a Greek fellow in Salvador and went to Greece with him. But after a month, she got bored and left him, joining Alexandra in Germany. Andrea was now dancing with Alexandra’s band and had recently been in a television ad. She wanted to be a model. She had the body for it: very tall and slender with a chiseled, beautiful face. And those bright eyes.