When Johnny lived in São Paulo in the early 1950’s, he couldn’t speak Portuguese, so he didn’t talk very much. He had come from somewhere else, far away; he was very white, with long, blond curly hair. His folks had fled the European War, and here they were.
Once, coming back from the ice cream store on the corner, wearing his sea captain’s hat, he stopped to watch some older boys playing a soccer game on the street in the middle of the block. They were kicking around a ball made out of a sock, and stuffed with rags. Everybody who noticed him pointed and laughed. He was just different. So they invented a little poem for him, which they would sing to him from the road whenever they saw him passing by.
Alemão batata, come queijo com barata
He heard it enough times that he learned to sing it back at them. And they would laugh again. They were teaching him Portuguese.
Except for the little girl about his age who was also watching the game, and saw him from across the street. She was very brown, with short, black curly hair, shiny. As they looked at each other across the street, she waved and Johnny waved back. But since he couldn’t speak Portuguese, they couldn’t talk, even though he wanted so much to talk to her. But she didn’t know this; she wanted to talk to him too.
He turned and ran home, happy and excited because she was the girl who lived directly across the street, on the same floor of their facing apartment buildings; their terraces were directly across one another. And he had been so lonely, with no one to talk to. She too was curious about him, because he was so different.
Back home, he wanted to get in touch with her somehow. Since it was getting dark, he got his new flashlight, and started flashing furiously at the terrace across the way. But just as she came out to see, some people started shouting about the flashlight. She waved her hands, urging him to stop. He quickly turned it off, and hid inside the door.
The next day, he took some sheets of paper and again, just as it was getting dark, he went out to his terrace, wrote the four letters of his name on the first sheet, and folded it into a paper airplane. He tossed it over at her terrace and missed it totally. So he made sleeker and faster ones and threw them higher. That was better, but they still didn’t make it to her balcony. By then she had come out to watch, and kept urging him with both hands to stop; her parents might come out.
The next morning, the street was littered with his paper airplanes, and his parents complained about those messy Brazilians. But during the day, he figured out his next move. He would get a string across to her balcony, and they would use it to pass messages to each other. That evening, he tied a fishing weight to a long string, and threw it across as far as he could. He missed each time he tried, and each time the weight would fall in an arc back toward his building, and hit it with a plop. And once he almost fell over the low railing. Finally, until the last time, when the weight smashed a window far below. They both ran into their apartments, and turned off the lights.
The next morning she was on her terrace, waiting for him. She put her hands up and waved them as though to say STOP. When she had his attention, she calmly pointed a finger at her chest, put her two hands across her heart, and then slowly pointed a finger at him. He just stood and stared, and threw his hands up in the air, he was so happy. She showed him how simple it could be to talk to one another.
Alternate ending:
He just stood and stared, and threw his hands up in the air, he was so happy. He ran some laps around the balcony, finally tripping on his mom’s flower pot, his momentum carrying him right over the railing and onto the pavement far below.
