Almost a Woman : A Memoir (9780306821110) (17 page)

She didn't give up. For days Mami badgered Tata until she agreed to watch the kids. Tata lived with us and rarely left the apartment, so it wasn't as if she had any plans on Saturday nights. But Mami didn't assume that Tata was our babysitter just because she was there, and she never left the building without telling Tata where she was going and when she'd be back.

Saturday night as we got ready, my sisters and brothers came in and out of the room as Mami and I dressed, giving unrequested opinions about what to do with our hair, makeup, and clothes. They were as excited as we were, as if seeing Mami so happy, dressed up for the first time in two years, were something to celebrate. When it was time to leave, Don Julio insisted on walking us to the station. He watched us go up the stairs to the train platform and waited until we were out of sight before heading back to Pitkin Avenue.

The club was on the Upper West Side. It looked like our neighborhood, with businesses on the street level and apartments
on the higher floors of four- and five-story buildings, only there were more people on the street. When we climbed up from the subway, we heard the music coming from blacked-out windows above a restaurant. Men loitered in front of the door leading to the club, their clean, pressed shirts tucked into belted pants with stiff seams. They eyed us, mumbled compliments. Mami grabbed my hand, pulled me close, practically dragged me inside, up steep stairs toward the deafening music. Our hands were stamped by a large woman in a tight, short, low-cut dress that displayed more flesh than I had in my entire body. When we entered the club, Mami craned her neck this way and that, a panicked expression on her face, as if, now that we'd come so far, she wasn't sure if this was such a great idea. She held my hand very tight, my fingers cramped, and towed me as she wove in and out of the crowd looking for her friends. When she spotted them, her grip eased, and I jiggled my fingers to get the feeling back.

I'd never been in such a large room with so many people, so many perfumes and after-shave colognes mingling with the pungent odor of cigarette smoke, hair spray, rum, and sweat. The women were dressed in glittery outfits, the men had slick and shiny hair, jewelry sparkled in the dark. The hot, steamy air of too many bodies too close together was dizzying.

The dance floor was in the middle of the room. It was packed with men and women whose hips seemed detached from their torsos, whose arms undulated in, out, around each other like serpents in a pit. Mami introduced me to her friends, but the music was so loud that I couldn't catch anyone's name. It appeared that the woman in the green sequined dress was with the man in the beige
guayabera,
and the woman in the pink taffeta was with the dark man wearing a baby blue suit.

The minute we sat, two men extended their hands in front of us. I looked at Mami to make sure it was okay to accept, and she nodded as she got up with her partner, a short, round man with a horseshoe of hair around a shiny pate. My partner was younger, skinny, smelled of cigarettes and sweet cologne.

I'd never seen Mami dance, had no idea where she learned
to do it, but she was good. Lips parted in a half-smile, eyes ablaze, cheeks flushed, she twirled and whirled as her partner guided her here, then there, pulled her in close and spun her in a tight circle. It was distracting to see her smile at unknown men who held her hand, pressed their fingers against her back, guided her by the elbow to our table.

If seeing Mami dance was new, experiencing strange men so close was newer. Even though I was already sixteen and
casi mujer,
I'd never had a boyfriend, had never been kissed by anyone not related. I didn't think I was ugly, but no one had called me pretty. At home, my sisters Delsa and Norma were frequently told they were lovely, while I was called “intelligent.”

But on the dance floor, every woman who can dance is beautiful, and every man with loose hips and grace is dashing, regardless of facial features or body types. When my partner took me out and led me through the complex paces of a
salsa
number, I felt beautiful for the first time in my life. It was not what I wore, nor how much makeup I'd managed to get away with. The feeling came from the heat generated by the dance itself, had nothing to do with the way I looked but everything to do with the way I moved. I became the complex rhythms, aware only of the joy of moving freely, gracefully, in and out of the arms of a man I'd never seen, to music I'd never heard.

I danced with many men: short, tall, skinny, fat, old, young, dark, light. And so did Mami. Sometimes a man who took me out asked her to dance the next number. Or they danced with her, then asked me, and through hand gestures and exaggerated lip movements reminiscent of La Muda, complimented me on having such a pretty mother and her on having a daughter who danced so well.

The band played long, loud sets. I was surprised that it really was Tito Puente. I'd thought Mami had made that up to impress Tata, who was a fan. When Tito Puente's musicians took a break, another band came on and played slower numbers, as if to give the dancers a rest with a few
boleros
before the salsa started again.

The dance lasted into the small hours, and when we came out, I was practically deaf and so thirsty my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. Mami's friends invited us to an all-night diner down the street, and we took over two booths overlooking Broadway and ate fried eggs, pancakes with syrup, sausages, and many cups of coffee. From time to time Mami watched me to see if I showed any signs of exhaustion, but I was exhilarated, and only worried that we'd look like
jíbaras
on the subway at six in the morning in our party clothes.

We said goodbye to her friends, who informed us there was another dance the following week somewhere else. “We'll see,” Mami said.

We arrived home as everyone was waking up with their questions about whether we'd had a good time and whether I'd found a boyfriend. We drank some coffee with the kids and with Tata, who glowered at our disheveled hair, streaked makeup, sweaty clothes.

“Yes, we had a good time,” Mami allowed. “I think next time Delsa and Norma should come, don't you think?”

I agreed they'd enjoy it but hoped she would take me too, since I was the eldest. She smiled and dragged herself to sleep, while I sat up with Delsa and Norma, giving them minute descriptions of everything I'd seen and done the previous night. We agreed that if Mami was going to take us dancing, we should practice at home, and I promised to teach them the new steps I'd learned from my partners. When I finally got to bed, I lay awake a long time, revisiting every moment of the evening, while my body jerked in uncontrollable spasms of unreleased energy. I fell asleep lulled by the sounds of a remembered
bolero
, certain I'd never been happier than I was that night.

Now we went dancing almost every Saturday. Although Delsa and Norma were only fourteen and thirteen years old, it wasn't unusual
for there to be younger kids at the clubs. People brought their entire families: mothers, fathers, grandparents, children so young they toddled around, shook their diapered bottoms during the
merengues
while everyone clapped and encouraged them along.

Admission was half price for children under eighteen, free for those under twelve, which was how Mami was able to afford to bring us three oldest girls and, sometimes, Hector. Drinks were sold à la carte, or one could buy a
servicio,
which consisted of a bottle of rum, two bottles of Coke, a bucket of ice, plastic cups, and sliced lemons. There were long tables arranged around the dance floor, eight folding chairs per table, a stack of cocktail napkins, and two aluminum ashtrays on each. Some places sold Puerto Rican fried food like
alcapurrías
and
pastelillos,
or bags of potato or corn chips. But most served only drinks. The only way to guarantee we could get a table was to order a
servicio,
so if we came alone, we always bought it, drank the Cokes, and brought the rum home for Tata and Don Julio.

We only went to clubs with live music, usually in the Upper West Side or El Barrio, but we never ventured into the Bronx or Queens, because Mami didn't know her way around those boroughs. At some dances we met people we'd seen at other clubs, and sometimes, if we had a particularly good partner, Delsa, Norma, or I told him where we'd be the next week. We didn't think of them as boyfriends. The only time we saw them was at the clubs, and the relationship was monitored by Mami, who, with a glance or a movement of her lips, made it clear we were getting too chummy with whomever we were dancing with and to ease up or she'd take us home.

Although Tío Chico had touched my breast once, and though I'd seen several penises dangling helplessly from the opened zippers of flashers, or triumphantly erect from a brazen truck driver's lap, I'd never come so close to men as I did on the dance floor. Some danced so close that they got an erection. When faced with this situation, we were to give them the benefit of the doubt. If they pulled away sheepishly, it was an accident.
If they pressed tighter, they were being fresh. We called them
rompemedias,
stocking rippers, because they danced so close, the friction made our nylons run. A man who got fresh risked being abandoned on the dance floor. A man on the dance floor alone was noticed by everyone and was sure to have trouble finding other partners. So most men were polite, maintaining a respectful distance while still managing to dance a
bolero
with enough heat to make a
puta
blush.

There were also the
pulpos,
octopuses, whose hands, instead of guiding us in intricate dance combinations, crawled over our backs, down to the buttocks, up under our arms, near our breasts, while their legs tried to insinuate themselves between ours. These men too were to be avoided.

Every once in a while, I didn't withdraw when a man got excited. We'd be dancing a slow number, and when I felt him growing, I pressed closer, to test his reaction. If he aggressively thrust himself toward me, or if, octopuslike, his hands and legs strayed where they shouldn't, I drew away, because it didn't feel as if I was giving him something, but as if he thought he was entitled to it. I liked the man who gasped in surprise, who tenderly pulled me closer, moved his hips in discreet slow circles around and against mine without missing a beat. I savored the power of being able to excite a man, to feel his hot breath against my ear, slow at first, then sharper, hotter, our bodies pressed into a sinuous whole that moved rhythmically across the crowded, steamy floor. I lost all sense of time, embraced and embracing, beautiful, graceful, trembling with sensations possible only this way, in this place.

When the
bolero
was over, my partner wanted to stay for the next dance. But I insisted he bring me back to my table. I didn't trust the feelings that made me dance that way, was embarrassed I let it go so far. I refused to look him in the eyes, afraid of what I'd see there. If he asked me to dance again, I refused, or told him I'd only dance fast numbers. I never acknowledged any part in what we'd done.

Later, shame was replaced with the thrill of his body against
mine, his face an anonymous blur, until all that was left was the tingle on my skin, the heat between my legs, the slow, billowing rhythm of the
bolero.

Sometimes, in spite of Mami's efforts to keep us safe from a violent world,
algo
happened. We mourned President Kennedy's assassination with the rest of the country and bawled when John-John saluted the coffin as it went past. The radio and television brought us news of how at least thirty neighbors heard Kitty Genovese screaming as she was being stabbed to death and no one came to help. For weeks afterward, Mami was in a state if we so much as went downstairs to the pizza shop. But she wasn't the only one who worried. When she got off the train from work, Don Julio or Hector was waiting at the bottom of the steps to walk her home.