It was the black dress on the mannequin. Well, it was sold as a dress, but it was really just a piece of black, aerodynamic cling wrap. It was Eurotrash perfection, the kind of dress that was guaranteed to get a girl into trouble. And if it didn’t, then the price tag would. I knew as soon as I saw it that I had to have it. I didn’t even need to try it on. But I did take a peek at the price tag. Ouch. It was the same amount that I had saved for dance class. I knew that I shouldn’t even be thinking about buying it. I should put it back and walk right out of the store. But I’d been given an invitation into the underground world of gypsy flamenco, and wasn’t that more important than a few dance classes? If I was ever going to learn to dance authentic flamenco, I had to go to the source. And if there was ever a dress for dancing with gypsies, this was it.
I had to smuggle the dress into the apartment. I knew if Mariela and the girls saw the shopping bag they’d want to see what I’d bought, and how could I explain that the girl who couldn’t afford to buy her own olive oil had just blown half a month’s rent on a dress?
Once I was safely in my room with the door firmly shut, I took out the dress and tried it on. Yes, it was perfect. And with my one pair of battered heels and the gypsy princess earrings I’d bought from Lola, I had the perfect outfit for a date with a gypsy.
• • •
Cardamomo is tucked in among a tangle of streets in the center of Madrid, in an area known as Huertas. If it’s true that Madrid has the highest concentration of bars per capita in all of Europe—and I have absolutely no reason to doubt that claim—most of them are in Huertas.
After dark on any night of the week, Huertas is busier than the busiest shopping strip in Sydney. There are traffic jams all through the night, and the footpaths are so crowded that to get anywhere you have to weave through the cars.
I tottered down the street with my gypsy earrings jangling, dodging the drunks that stumbled out of bars in front of me and the boys who kept trying to push free drink cards into my hands.
“Guapa.”
There was Diego, leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette. I suddenly realized just how handsome he was. In the Amor de Dios he was just another young dancer, but standing under the streetlight, his black hair slicked back and his dark eyes sparkling, he could have been one of the boys from that Harper’s shoot. Yes…I was finally running away with the gypsies.
He pushed open a plain wooden door with no sign. Flamenco music blared out and I got my first glimpse of the infamous Cardamomo. I stepped through the door and into another world. The club was packed with gypsies. Everywhere I looked, long-haired men in black suits were clapping compás with lit cigarettes tucked between their fingers, and gitanas, gypsy girls, waved fans in front of their faces as they danced.
Within moments we were surrounded by a crowd of young gypsies, and Diego started introducing me to the primos, or cousins. “Mi primo José.” I kissed both cheeks of a gypsy boy with playful eyes. “Mi primo Luis.” Luis elbowed his cousin out of the way and leaned in to give me two kisses. “Mi primo José Luis.” Another gypsy boy stepped forward. “Mi primo Antonio…mi primo Luis Antonio…mi primo José…” and on and on it went until I was dizzy from kissing the cheeks of so many dark-eyed boys called either José, Luis, or Antonio.
The primos formed a circle around me, clapping compás and shouting out, “Que toma que toma…” and Diego stepped forward like a bullfighter, clicking his fingers.
One of my favorite songs from the latest Vicente Amigo album came on over the speakers. I’d been listening to this song over and over again on my iPod, trying to figure out the words. I asked Diego, “What is he singing?” He pulled me close and sang in my ear. “Mi primo Antonio qué bien me baila…” My cousin Antonio dances so well… Diego explained that the singer was referring to the legendary flamenco dancer Antonio Canales.
It was the first time I’d had a gypsy boy sing flamenco in my ear, and I melted. I melted like a Popsicle on the backseat of a car on a summer day. When Diego pressed a glass of rum into my hands, I knew I shouldn’t take it. I’m such a cheap drunk I get tipsy off the pop of a champagne cork. But I thought: Why don’t I? It’s not every day that you get the chance to dance till dawn with the gypsies.
THE PRIMOS
Or
In heaven everyone dances sevillanas
“Hola!”
“Guapa!”
“Estás allí?” Are you there?
I opened my eyes and yawned, listening to the boys talking on the street beneath my window. “Está allí?” “No lo sé.” “Canta algo.” Is she there? I don’t know. Sing something.
“Solo por tus besos, solo por tus besos…” Just for your kisses, just for your kisses…
I sat up, leaned over to the window, and pulled back the curtains. The primos stood below, looking like my own little gypsy Rat Pack. They’d come to wake me from my siesta. That’s right—I’d taken the siesta to the limit, sleeping for an hour between eleven p.m. and midnight. It was the only way I was able to go out dancing with the primos, then get up for work in the morning.
“A dónde vamos?” I called down. Where are we going?
“El Carda,” they said, shrugging as if to say, “Where else?”
Where else was there to go? The gypsies weren’t allowed into any other bars in the city, and with a primo behind the bar in Cardamomo, the boys could drink for free.
These were the same boys I used to watch dancing on the street corners of my neighborhood. It was only a week ago that I’d rushed to the window whenever I heard them pass to listen to them sing. Now they came by singing to me every night. They were Diego’s primos. Well, a few of his primos. It seemed like every gypsy under the age of twenty-five was his primo. And the ones over twenty-five were his tíos, or uncles.
Yes, I’d spent both my dance budget and my food budget on the dress, but I didn’t care. These boys danced as well as any teacher at the Amor de Dios, and they hadn’t taken a dance class in their lives. So though I couldn’t go to class, I was learning every day. When I passed the boys on the corner on my way to teach English, they would show me a step. I’d try it a few times on the cobblestones, and when I had it down, I’d hurry off to the metro. I’d practice on the platform and in the reception of the company where I was teaching while I waited for my student to appear. Then on my way home the boys would show me another new step.
I even had my first guitar lesson under the trees in the square where the gypsies all got together in the evenings. I was walking back from work when I saw the primos gathered around a stone bench where one of the boys was sitting with an old guitar. They waved me over and asked if I knew how to play. I shook my head, and they sat me down and arranged my fingers over the fretboard, showing me how to strum the introduction to a soleá.
When I gave the guitar back to the primos, one of the boys played a bulerías as another sang and the rest clapped compás. I shrugged to myself and said, “We’ve come a long way from Level Two.”
Now it was my midnight wake-up call, and boys were calling up impatiently, “Venga, niña! Nos vamos de fiesta!” Come on, girl, we’re going out to party!
I slipped out of bed and back into the black dress—after all, I had to wear it as much as possible to get the price-per-wear ratio down. I grabbed my heels, tossed a pair of earrings in my bag, and skipped out of the apartment. As soon as I’d closed the door quietly behind me, I stepped into my shoes and clacked down the stairs to where the gypsies were waiting.
We walked up the street, the boys clapping their hands to the flamenco music in their heads. Every so often one would break out and sing, as the others murmured, “Así es…”
People we passed on the street stared at the strange sight of a pale-skinned, red-haired girl and a group of dark-eyed gypsy boys. We walked up a lane that was so narrow the moonlight couldn’t even reach us, then turned a corner into a square that was full
of gypsies.
The primos saw Diego’s car parked on the other side of the plaza, so we walked through the throng to where he was standing with a group of long-haired guys singing along to the music playing on his car radio.
I fell for Diego the first time he sang flamenco in my ear in Cardamomo, but each time I heard him sing I fell all over again. I once heard it said of a flamenco singer that he sang “with his heart in his mouth,” and that was how Diego sang. With his brows drawn and his eyes closed, the gold rings on his fingers flashing in the lamplight as he threw up his hands. “Olé…” And when he opened his eyes, that wicked sparkle returned, and I was under the gypsy spell again.
“Anda, niña,” he said, opening the door of his car for me to get in. He climbed into the driver’s seat and called out to the primos to get behind the car and push as he revved the engine. I stuck my head out the window and watched as a crowd of boys in suit jackets and sunglasses pushed Diego’s car up the street until the engine caught.
We drove through the old streets of Madrid with El Cigala playing on the radio. Diego sang along, beating his hands on the steering wheel in time. I leaned back to enjoy my gypsy adventure. It wasn’t exactly a painted caravan, but it wasn’t too far off, either. They say guys buy sports cars to get girls: Porsches and Mercs never did it for me, but I was a sucker for Diego’s gypsy mobile.
The primos went out dancing every night. At Cardamomo, Tuesday was no different than Saturday. And it was in the early hours of the morning, when the dancers and musicians who had been performing in flamenco tablaos and theaters around town started arriving, that the real show began.
When I complained to Diego about missing my dance classes, he told me to look around. “Who do you want to learn from?” he asked. His tío at the bar was Enrique Morente’s cousin. The guy who had just walked in with a guitar played with Tomatito, and if that wasn’t enough, Tío Joaquín Cortés was standing around looking bored.
“Anda, niña,” Diego would say. “You don’t need the Amor de Dios.”
Diego hadn’t taken a class since he was thirteen, and he performed all over town. But that was because he learned all he needed to know from la familia—the family. Of course, gypsies don’t need to go to a dance school because their whole lives are one long dance class. Diego had illustrated this point by showing me videos he’d taken with his phone at his cousin’s wedding.
The first video was of his grandmother, who was sitting on a wooden chair surrounded by a group of black-suited musicians. Her wrinkled brown skin and toothless grin made her look like one of those thousand-year-old tortoises. If you can picture that swathed in polka dots, you’ve got her. She held a walking stick in one hand and pounded it into the floor to mark the compás.
She hoisted herself up out of her chair with the help of her walking stick, and then this woman, who was a hundred years old if she was a day, started dancing the sexiest flamenco I had ever seen. I felt my jaw drop. My grandma wouldn’t dance if you got half a bottle of dry sherry into her, but this granny made Beyoncé look tame. Then two more little old ladies got up to join her. These three old women in their cheap cotton dresses were suddenly Diana Ross and the Supremes, doing a fully choreographed hip-swiveling number. “Wow,” I murmured.
Then he showed me a video of a girl he said was his ex-girlfriend. She was dancing a bulería, and I stared at the tiny screen not really understanding what I was seeing. Yes, she was an incredible dancer, but she was…huge. I mean, really big. She was the kind of girl who, had she dared to come to Level Two looking for new season fashion, would have been met with tight smiles and redirected out of the store to a plus-size boutique. What was skinny-as-a-rake Diego doing with a girl like that?
“You need a good butt to dance flamenco,” he said.
I couldn’t help taking that as a criticism of my skinniness. What is wrong with this country? I wanted to shout. Why is everything upside down? I hadn’t spent my whole life denying myself a second helping of everything to have a guy show off his size fourteen ex. I was so used to being hungry that I couldn’t even imagine how someone could get to that size. I needed an explanation, but I didn’t know how to ask for one.
“In Spain you like women who are more…” I faltered, and he finished the sentence off for me with the word enteras: complete, whole. So Marina had been right when she’d told me to go down to the market and buy myself a culo. She’d known that I was missing something…
Perhaps I’ve been wrong to deny myself all these years, I thought. It wasn’t even a conscious decision that I’d made; it was just that ever since I was fifteen, every time I saw anything that resembled a curve or a bulge on my body, I switched to a diet of carrot sticks until it went back to wherever it came from. But maybe—and I was only prepared to say “maybe”—I could have my cake and eat it, too.
The gypsy girls certainly did, anyway. There were never more than a handful at Cardamomo. The ratio was normally twenty guys to one girl, which suited me just fine, because it made me feel like the star of my very own flamenco extravaganza. As soon as I lifted my arms up to dance, I’d find myself surrounded by dozens of dark eyes and clapping hands.
But Diego would push through them and step forward to dance with me, and I had to admit that no one else danced like he did. There was a style and elegance to his movements that the other boys just didn’t have. He wore a white cotton shirt under his black suit jacket, and it was open to reveal a heavy gold medallion with a picture of Jesus’s face on it. It was quite possibly the ugliest piece of jewelry I’d ever seen.
“Do you believe in God?” I asked him when the song finished.
“Sí,” he said.
“And heaven and hell?”
“Sí.”
“But hell with, like, flames, and devils that poke you with forks?”
He nodded, seriously. I was amazed. I’d never met a person who actually believed in hell before.
“And heaven?” I asked. “What is heaven like?” He told me that in heaven everyone dances sevillanas. “I want to go to your heaven!”
In that case, Diego said, I should start praying to the God of Flamenco.
“I will!” I promised. Next time I went to the cathedral I would ask the God of Flamenco to bless my feet and make them fast and wise, and get me back to dance class, and save a place for me in flamenco heaven so I could toma que toma until the end of time.
THE GHETTO
Or
Let’s see how this kangaroo dances
Having a gypsy boyfriend, I decided, was my ticket to a flamenco lifestyle. It would mean being allowed into their secret world and learning to dance like a real gypsy girl.
I knew that I was getting ahead of myself. I’d only been going out with Diego for a couple of weeks, and I can’t say that we had a deep connection. The only thing we had in common was our need to live and breathe flamenco, but that was enough for me. In fact, it was the most important thing. I couldn’t imagine going out with a guy who wasn’t interested in flamenco. Who didn’t drum his fingers on tabletops in compás, or know how to dance a bulería, or sing flamenco softly in my ear.
I wanted to meet Diego’s family. He’d baited the hook when he’d shown me those videos, so when he suggested we stop by his gypsy home the next day, I could barely control my excitement. It was like the Holy Grail of flamenco was just within my reach. But before long, my joy turned to panic. Would they like me? Would they accept me? Would they think me good enough for their son?
I was so desperate to tell someone my news that on my way home I stopped at the salon where Mariela was doing her apprenticeship. She was wrapping an old lady’s violet hair in rollers when I walked in.
“Hola, mamí,” she said over a haze of hairspray. Seeing the excitement on my face, she asked what was going on. When I told her that the guy I was going out with was taking me home to meet the folks, Mariela shrieked in delight. Her
cousin came out from the back room to see what was going on, and Mariela told her that Nellie had a new boyfriend.
“Ay yi yi!” they both celebrated.
Mariela told me to sit down while she finished her client’s wave, so I riffled through the selection of magazines. I love looking at magazines in foreign countries. There’s nothing like picking up a gossip mag and flicking through the entire thing without recognizing one face. It always reminds me that the world is much bigger than we realize.
Sifting through past issues of Hola!, I uncovered an old fashion mag in English. On the cover was the headline Meeting His Parents: Four Easy Steps to Wow His Folks. The article inside was illustrated with one of those stock photos of an aspirational career woman presenting a bottle of chardonnay to a set of silver-haired yacht club parents. Hmmm, I thought to myself, perhaps I should pick up a nice bottle of red on the way over? Or maybe a gourmet basket?
Step 1: Dress to impress.
“Don’t wear bold, aggressive colors like red, but choose soft pastels that will make you appear more approachable.”
Pastels…I wasn’t sure about that one. From what I’d seen of gypsy girls, leopard-print jumpsuits and thigh-high plastic boots seemed to be more the way to go.
Mariela put the dryer down over her client’s head and asked me if I wanted her to straighten my hair for the big date. “No, gracias,” I said. But I did ask if I could borrow the magazine. And later, back in my room, I tipped out the contents of my suitcase and searched for an outfit that would impress.
I had one gypsyesque skirt, which I’d picked up in a hippie shop for seven euro. I teamed it with a pair of heels and tried the combination on in front of the mirror. Okay, it wasn’t Harper’s Bazaar, but it did have toma que toma.
Step 2: Understand their point of view.
“Often parents may feel concerned if you’re from a different background. They could worry that you’ll be a bad influence on their son.”
Only in Spain Page 18