Almost a Woman : A Memoir (9780306821110) (20 page)

The dance at the Armory was the best we'd been to. Three bands played nonstop, and there were more Puerto Ricans than I'd ever seen in one enormous room. After the dance, Mami, Delsa, Norma, and I walked down Park Avenue looking for a place to eat, but there was none. The street, divided by an island of low bushes and scrawny trees, was mostly residential, and its businesses opened only during the day. Hungry as we were, we liked walking
on Park Avenue and, still giddy from the dance, laughed and joked and pretended to be rich ladies out for a stroll in the neighborhood. We left the Armory behind, but still we walked, our coats off our shoulders as if they were furs, our high heels clicking, our hands dangling limply from our wrists, toward an invisible
caballero.

Lights flashed behind us. A police car pulled up ahead, and an officer climbed out and straddled the middle of the sidewalk like the sheriff in cowboy movies about to challenge the bank robber to a shoot-out.

“Good morning, ladies,” he said. “May I direct you where you're going?” His fake-polite voice came out of a smirk, and his eyes, invisible under his cap, were like hands, roaming every inch of our bodies.

Mami placed herself between us and the cop, but she needed one of us to translate. Her face went from joy to panic in seconds, to the hard, serious expression she put on when she was afraid but had to be strong for the sake of the children. “Tell him we're just looking for a place to eat,” she said to me, Delsa, or Norma, whoever spoke up. I jumped in front of her, smiled my most enchanting smile, and became Cleopatra, queen of the Nile.

“We were at a dance at the Armory, officer,” I enunciated clearly. “It's such a nice evening, we decided to walk home.”

“You live around here?” He tried to stare me down, but I held my noble bearing, though my knees shook.

“Yes, that way.” I pointed with my whole arm, my whole body, to a faraway place, my palace, toward Brooklyn. Mami, Delsa, and Norma looked at me as if I had sprung horns and a tail. They pulled up and buttoned their coats, stood humbly before the police, hoping we hadn't done anything illegal and that I wasn't making it worse, while I prayed he wouldn't ask for an address.

“You were making a lot of noise,” His voice lost its edge. “This is a residential neighborhood.” Now he stated the obvious, somewhat sheepishly, I thought.

“What?” Mami yelled in English, as if to speak louder were to be better understood. “What the matter?” She sounded scared, definitely not like someone who lived on Park Avenue.

“We've been denounced for making too much noise,” I said in Spanish, my voice low and even.

“What, you can't talk and laugh on Park Avenue?” Delsa snapped in Spanish, and I shot her a shut-up look. I turned to the officer.

“We'll keep it down.” I, cunning Cleopatra, flapped my eyelids, smiled haughtily. “So sorry we disturbed the neighbors. Come on, girls.” I waved them toward me and started to walk past him. “Thank you,” I said, as the officer backed up to let us pass. Cleopatra, queen of the Nile, and her faithful retainers, who followed, puzzled, not certain we'd been dismissed by the law. I kept walking until I heard the patrol car door shut and saw it pull ahead and past us, down Park Avenue. The minute he was out of sight, we cracked up.

“How did you dare?” Mami laughed.

“I don't know. I didn't think . . . I just did it.” We turned the corner away from Park Avenue, in case the police officer came around to see if we went into a building in the neighborhood.

“Wow, Negi, those acting classes are sure paying off,” Norma said. “You made him believe we live on Park Avenue!”

I was elated. I'd just performed before the most critical and demanding audience I'd ever encounter—to rave reviews.

We went dancing again, not as often as in the summer, twice a month or so. At one of the clubs, Mami met, danced with, and fell in love with Don Carlos. He was gangly, with chocolate skin, a shy smile, a soft voice. He wore a dark suit with a white shirt and thin tie, and horn-rimmed rectangular glasses with green lenses. I thought he was blind. Why else would anyone wear dark glasses in an already dimly lit nightclub?

He danced with me, Delsa, and Norma, kept more than the required distance, stared over our heads the whole time, as if displaying any interest in us beyond the proper courtesy were forbidden. Afterwards, he took us to a diner, asked us about school, what we wanted to be when we grew up, the expected questions adults trying to ingratiate themselves with young people always asked. Delsa, Norma, and I asked him what he did (accounting), where he worked (Xerox), if he was married (divorced), how many children he had (three), and whether he was ever sick (rarely), while Mami kicked us under the table for our impertinence. But this was the only man Mami had shown any interest in since Francisco's death.

Mami must have told him which dances we'd be attending, because after the first meeting, every time we walked into a club, there he was. Delsa, Norma, and I soon figured out what was going on, especially since Mami didn't dance with anyone else. He sat at our table, and even though the music was deafening, he and Mami carried on animated conversations through the whole evening, even when they danced.

Delsa, Norma, and I teased Mami that she had a boyfriend, and she blushed, then asked us not to tell Tata. We liked sharing a secret with her, knowing something about her life that no one else knew. But we didn't like it when Don Carlos sat at our table. Men thought he was our father and didn't ask us to dance.

“He sits there with his dark glasses on, like a gangster or something, and scares the guys away,” we complained to Mami.

The next time, he wore regular lenses on his glasses, thick as windowpane, through which he squinted as if they were the wrong prescription. It didn't help. Men now thought he was scrutinizing every move they made.

After weeks of courtship, Mami invited Don Carlos for Sunday dinner. When Mami told her a man was coming to visit, Tata's eyes narrowed, her lips puckered, and she walked away from Mami without a word.

“Good for you,” Don Julio said. “You're still a young woman. You should have a husband.”

“He's just a friend,” Mami said, but her face turned red.

Sunday came and the house was spotless. The clothes-drying ropes strung across the rooms were down, the diapers folded and put away, the floors scrubbed, every bed made up with chenille bedspreads, the pillows discreet mounds at the heads. Mami was afraid Tata would be in a bad mood and embarrass her in front of Don Carlos, but Tata dressed early, took her place alongside Mami at the stove, and helped cook—at one point telling her she'd take over so that Mami could get ready.

Don Carlos showed up hours after we expected him, carrying a box of Italian cookies for us and a bottle of wine for Tata. He didn't bring anything for Mami, who was cold and polite to him, her face a hard mask. He wore his dark glasses again, didn't take them off the whole time he was with us. He never apologized for being late, made no excuses, sat at the kitchen table talking and drinking with Tata and Don Julio while my sisters and brothers paraded in and out checking him out, then running to the back rooms to compare notes. When he was about to leave, he asked Mami to walk with him to the front door, two floors below. He shook hands with everybody, even the kids, then followed Mami down the stairs. The minute he left, we started talking about him.

“He's an intelligent, well-educated person,” was Don Julio's assessment.

“He makes a lot of money,” Delsa informed every one. “When we go dancing, he pays, and then he takes us to breakfast and pays for that too.”

“He treats Mami with respect,” noted Norma.

“Oh, yeah? He showed up three hours late,” Hector recalled.

“Maybe he had to work,” Alicia defended him.

“On Sunday?” I asked.

“He sure is tall,” observed Raymond.

“But he's so skinny!” added Edna.

“All I can say,” Tata finally spoke up, “is that I don't trust a man who won't look me in the eye.”

Oh-oh, I said to myself.

As with Francisco, Tata and Mami argued over whether it was appropriate for Mami to bring a man into our family. Tata accused Mami of setting a bad example for us, and Mami insisted that at thirty-three she was still a young woman and deserved a life. If Tata didn't like it, she could move out. Don Julio took Mami's side, and Tata, outnumbered, accepted the inevitable. One evening Don Carlos came for dinner, and the next morning he was still there.

My junior year at Performing Arts turned out to be my best. My average was excellent, aided by near perfect grades in geometry, which, after three attempts, I'd mastered. My cunning Cleopatra was a success, and in spring semester, when we did character work, I was cast as one of the evil stepsisters in scenes from
Cinderella.
We were encouraged to use an animal as the physical model for the character, and I chose a camel, for its haughty look and ungainly walk.

I was a hall monitor, charged with checking that students wandering around during classes had a pass signed by a teacher. My favorite hall to monitor was on the dance department floor. I sat where I could watch a ballet class in session, could see the dancers hurl themselves through space, their controlled abandon making my own muscles ache for movement. I was envious of the training that made them so graceful and strong, the intricate steps they performed as the teacher called each movement in French.

The training for actors at Performing Arts was modern dance, its language English, its purpose to keep us from embarrassing ourselves if we had to perform musical theater. But I'd come to love dance class more than acting. While I knew I wasn't a great actress, I could see I was one of the better dancers in the drama
department. I practiced all the time. The semester we'd studied jazz and learned isolations, I'd begun to practice minute movements of my torso, hips, and back while waiting for the train, or while sitting in history class. At home, I couldn't sit still in front of the television while we watched
Candid Camera
or
The Jackie Gleason Show.
One eye on the screen, I stretched, did splits, counted out hundreds of plies in first, second, third, fourth, and fifth positions while my sisters and brothers complained that my movements distracted them. To pick up something from the floor, I bent over from the hips, back straight, to stretch my thigh and calf muscles. I used the kitchen counter for a barre, leaped from one room to the other, held my leg up to my cheeks like the can-can dancers on
The Ed Sullivan Show.