Only in Spain

by Nellie Bennett

  I was hit by a wave of exhaustion and with a pang of regret realized I had made a huge mistake. Sascha had been right all along. I should have bought that Kelly bag. If I’d bought that bag, I wouldn’t be here. Because let’s face it, girls with Kelly bags don’t have to dance for their lives with gypsy patriarchs. Girls with Kelly bags don’t have to run away from donkeys, or hide behind garbage cans, or walk back to town after a date gone wrong. Girls with Birkin bags, perhaps, but not girls with Kellys. And I wondered whether I’d ever set foot in another Hermès boutique again.

  I heard the sound of a car coming. “Thank you!” I said out loud to the universe. I imagined that it was being driven by a nice young couple who had also lost their way; maybe they’d be friendly Brits or Americans. They’d let me hop in, and I’d joke with them about the night I’d had while we drove around until we miraculously found ourselves back in Madrid. I’d show my appreciation by treating them to an early breakfast in an all-night pancake house. Mmm, pancakes with maple syrup…

  As the car came closer, I heard the music coming from the stereo. The beat was unmistakable. After living with the Latinas, I could pick up Puerto Rican hip-hop a mile off. As the car came closer and the music got louder, my fantasies of the charmingly helpful young couple disappeared like smoke rings in a gust of wind.

  I don’t do car models, but I can say that these guys had clearly seen Fast and Furious one too many times. The car was so low that it could clean the gum off the street, and the picture was completed by a glow-in-the-dark dashboard Jesus with outstretched arms.

  As the car approached, it slowed down. I wasn’t sure if this was a good thing or a very, very bad thing. The guys were leaning out the windows, as guys tend to do when the highlight of their night is driving up and down empty streets.

  The driver grinned at me, flashing a set of gold teeth, and said, “Hola, preciosa.” He was wearing a tight white tank top that showed off his multicolored tats. There were four guys in the car, all dressed in shell suits with bandanas and baseball caps pulled on sideways. They hung halfway out of the car, leering at me like ghouls in a ghost train.

  There are some situations in life where whatever decision you make sends shivers down your spine. At this moment I was faced with two choices: hitch a ride in a homeymobile, or keep on walking down a deserted road through the ghetto. Which one of these two options was less likely to result in me being left for dead by the side of the road? That’s really not the kind of question that you ever want to have to put to yourself. I took a deep breath and asked them if they were going to the city.

  “Sí,” the driver said, and one of the guys in the back opened the door and stepped out. He gave me a kiss on each cheek and introduced himself as Julio, then held open the door, gesturing graciously for me to get in.

  I hesitated for a moment, and thought about all those hours I’d spent in the cathedral over the last month. I hoped that some of that Jesus magic had rubbed off on me. Maybe if I just tried to see the happy ending, everything would be okay…

  I climbed into the middle of the backseat, and Julio followed me in, squashing me between himself and a guy called Juanito on the other side. Julio slammed the door, and we drove off.

  The whole car was reverberating with the stereo bass. The driver caught my eye in the rearview mirror and introduced himself as Mauri. He asked me where I was from, and when I said, “Australia,” they all nodded and said, “Sííí?” in that way that people in Spain always do when they have no idea where Australia is.

  Mauri ejected the reggaeton CD and put in a new disc. It was, of course, the patron saint of guys in shell suits: Fifty Cent. He pumped up the volume and the guys sang along with their hands in the air, “Hands up. Put ’em up, put ’em up, put ’em up!” Julio nudged me with his elbow, so I obediently raised my hands and danced along with the boys. Mauri had taken his hands off the wheel and was driving with his knees. He tapped his foot on the clutch, making the car bounce down the street. I felt like I was in a cheap hip-hop video.

  Then we pulled onto a highway on-ramp. As we drove up the ramp I could see the lights of Madrid glimmering in the distance. I almost shrieked with glee.

  “There it is! Madrid!” Julio said. It had been a long day. I settled back into my seat, thankful that soon I would be tucked up in my own bed.

  • • •

  But my night wasn’t over yet. The boys weren’t interested in taking me home. They wanted to go to a bar run by a friend of theirs in the south of Madrid. “Vamos a bailar,” they said. And I didn’t know how to explain to them that for once in my life, dancing was the absolute last thing I felt like doing.

  Mauri pulled up in front of the bar, and we all tumbled out of the car. From the curb I could hear the reggaeton blasting inside. I hate reggaeton, but I’d prefer to listen to it all night than be back in that room with the donkey.

  “Ledis first,” Juanito said, holding the door to the bar open for me. I stepped inside and was surprised to see that it was actually a cool Latino club. Juanito offered me his hand for the next dance, and before I could accept he’d pulled me onto the dance floor. “Sabes bailar merengue?” Of course I knew how to dance merengue. I told him that I lived with Venezuelans.

  When the song ended, we joined Mauri and the boys at a table. The music switched to a hip-hop beat. It was Mauri’s favorite song, Snoop Dogg’s “Drop It Like It’s Hot.” He looked at me and asked me again what the name of my country was.

  “Uh, Australia.”

  He asked if we spoke English in my country, and if so, did I understand the lyrics of the song? I told him I didn’t understand all of it, but I got the main bit.

  “Drop it.” I picked up the ashtray from the table and let it fall from my hand. “This is to drop.”

  The boys nodded. “Ah, caer?”

  “Good, Julio! And hot. Who knows what hot means?”

  “Caliente,” Mauri offered.

  “Good! So the phrase is ‘drop it like it’s hot.’”

  “Drop like hot?” Julio echoed, confused.

  Hmmm…I racked my tired brain for an easy way of explaining it. “Okay, so. You’re baking a potato. You know potato?”

  “Patatas, sí.” They nodded together.

  “So you take the potato,” I continued, miming the action for them. “But it’s hot! So what do you do?”

  “Ah! La dejas caer!”

  I gave Mauri my disappointed teacher look. “Say it in English. You drop it like it’s…”

  “Hot!” the boys answered together.

  “Good! So, Mauri, what’s the line?”

  Mauri said proudly, “Dropping like it’s hot.”

  “Okay, good. But this is a command—so we use the…”

  “Imperativo!” Juanito interjected.

  “Excellent, Juanito! Which is?”

  “Drop.”

  “So the line is?”

  The boys repeated together, “Drop it like it’s hot.”

  It was moments like that I wished I had a pack of chocolate bars.

  The guys wanted to know what a girl like me was doing wandering the streets all by myself in the early hours of the morning, so I told them the story of Diego and the primos, and dancing with the patriarch.

  They listened with horrified expressions, then exchanged glances and said it was time for me to go home to bed. Mauri took off his jacket and draped it over my shoulders as we walked back out to the car. I settled into the backseat and they drove me home. So much for thugs, I thought as I let my head rest against the seat and my eyes close. My mother always said there are angels everywhere. She was right.

  THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL

  Or

  Me, myself, and other reflexive pronouns

  I called the English academy as soon as it opened. “Can you cancel my morning class?” I said to the receptionist. “I was kidnapped b
y gypsies last night and there’s no way I’ll make it.”

  There was a pause on the line before the receptionist said, “Okay…I’ll just tell them you’re sick.”

  After hanging up, I lay back exhausted against the pillows. I was physically, mentally, emotionally, and even spiritually exhausted. What on earth am I doing here? I asked myself. Here, on this bed, in this room overlooking this market, in this city full of gypsies in this country called Spain? I’d tried to dance at the Amor de Dios and I’d failed. I’d tried to dance with the gypsies and failed spectacularly. This whole trip was one big fat failure.

  What had possessed me to come to Spain to be a flamenco dancer? Of all the stupid ideas circulating in the ethers of this great universe, how did I manage to pull down the stupidest? Running away with the gypsies might make a good tagline for a fashion shoot, but it’s a bad lifestyle choice.

  I pulled out a notebook that I’d been using as a kind of diary. It was full of scribbled notes, Spanish words, song lyrics, ideas, CDs to buy. I found the page where, sitting in that abandoned elevator shaft/hostel room, I had written my New Year’s resolutions:

  •DANCE FLAMENCO

  •LEARN BALLET

  •RUN AWAY WITH THE GYPSIES

  •FALL IN LOVE

  •WEAR POLKA DOTS

  •TOMA QUE TOMA

  I stared at that list for a good long while. No wonder I’m in this situation, I thought, with goals like that. It had to be the most nonsensical list of aspirations ever put to paper. It was exactly the kind of list that would lead to having to hide behind garbage bins in a gypsy ghetto in the early hours of a Wednesday morning.

  I closed my eyes and slept again until the midmorning sun fell on my face, then dragged myself off to shower and to try to get the stink of smoke and donkey out of my hair before going to teach at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

  Today I walked quickly through the gypsy-infested streets, never more conscious of the fact that I was on their territory. But I didn’t see any on the quick walk. It was too early for them to be out.

  The class was assembled by the time I got to the office. When I walked in and saw them, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the joy of being alive. “Guys!” I said. “I thought I’d never see you again!” I wanted to hug and kiss each one of them. My beautiful, beautiful students. They sat there staring at me, wondering what on earth was going on. “I think I need to sit down,” I said, collapsing into a chair.

  “Are you okay?” Paloma asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I just haven’t slept.”

  “Why? What happened with you?”

  I thought about explaining to them the night I’d had. I imagined their reaction, how they would cluck and scold and tell me I was an idiot. They had warned me, after all.

  “Teacher? Are you okay?”

  “Yes, I’m fine,” I said, getting up out of the chair. “Let’s have a look at your homework.”

  • • •

  That week I avoided the gypsies as much as I could, but it wasn’t easy when I was still living in their neighborhood. When the boys sang at my window, I ignored them, and even when they sang my favorite songs I didn’t weaken. I was mad. I took Diego’s outrageous behavior as an insult from the whole gypsy race. I considered tipping a bucket of water on them but decided it would be better to let them think I wasn’t home. So I kept the window firmly shut until they gave up and moved on.

  I’ve heard it said that one should never settle for second best, and after trotting over shards of broken glass on unlit streets in the small hours of the morning in “meet the parents” heels, that no longer seemed like an empty platitude. I didn’t have a lot of experience in the relationship sector, but it didn’t take an expert to tell me that Diego had exhibited enough red flag behavior to give a bull a panic attack. But even so, twelve long-stemmed roses delivered to my door might have made me put it all behind me. I am, after all, a hopeless romantic. A nice card with tickets to a flamenco show tucked inside could have made me see the whole episode as a charming, if quirky, anecdote we could tell our bulerías-dancing Gystralian children about in years to come.

  Long-stemmed roses? Theater tickets? A card?

  Go ahead, laugh. I was still that delusional. I hadn’t fully come to the realization of what dating a gypsy from the ghetto truly meant. There would be no apologies. Diego called a few times that week, and after ignoring him a couple of times, I picked up. But instead of the smooth, charming voice that had won me over in Cardamomo, I got an earful of indignant rage. How dare I leave him! Walk out like that, making him the laughing stock of the ghetto.

  And as for the donkey…

  “What donkey?” he snapped back at me.

  Er…the one that tried to eat my skirt?

  “Tu estás loca,” he said. You’re crazy.

  He called a few more times over the next few days, then stopped. I was relieved, and also slightly miffed that he wasn’t prepared to fight for our marriage. I imagined that he’d found another clueless foreign girl who’d fall for the old “take a girl to the ghetto and make her dance with your frock-coat-wearing uncle, then tell her she’s your wife” trick.

  I did wonder briefly whether that marriage was in any way legally binding. For all I knew, traditional gypsy law was recognized by the state. I was beyond the point where anything in Spain could surprise me. The government had just passed a law giving human rights to chimpanzees, so that made me think anything was possible.

  As all these thoughts circulated in my head, I couldn’t get that list of New Year’s resolutions out of my mind. I’d never realized before just how stupid I was capable of being. Toma que toma is not a resolution. It’s not even a sentence. The more I thought about it, the more I came to realize that it was time for me to get my act together. I hadn’t totally thrown my life away yet. I still had a chance to go home and enroll in university. I’d see if I could get a place in law. Perhaps human rights law. Then I could fight for the rights of ethnic minorities… Except that would include gypsies.

  Forget that plan.

  Well, maybe some other kind of law. One that involved wearing skirt suits and defending big business from the people who drink the water they put chemical waste into. Yes, it would mean swallowing my pride and admitting that I’d made a mistake in coming to Spain, but I told myself that would be character building. And anyway, I didn’t need to go home just yet. I could tell the academy I was prepared to take on more English classes. Then I could save up and go home with some money in my pocket. That would make a nice change from being perpetually broke. And with my next paycheck I’d go to Zara and buy myself a suit so that I looked like a real teacher. On top of that, I should probably learn some of what I was teaching.

  So when I got home, I pulled one of the grammar textbooks the academy had given me out from under my bed, blew the dust bunnies off it, and settled in for a night of gerunds and collocations. Anyway, I said to myself, who needs gypsies when you’ve got Saxon genitives?

  I started to read a lesson.

  Prepositional phrases. Hmmm…

  My phone rang. I checked the caller ID—Juan. It was past eleven, so he was either in La Soleá or on his way there. I knew that if I answered the phone Juan would talk me into going out, and that was the last thing I wanted to do. I’d had my Madrid flamenco experience. And what more could I gain from nights out in flamenco bars? Only more trouble. So I let the phone ring out as I read the example in the grammar book.

  Some verbs are commonly followed by dependent prepositions. Really? How interesting…

  My phone rang again. I stared at Juan’s name flashing on the screen, took a deep breath, and pressed Reject.

  These verb + preposition combinations can have specific meanings…

  “Yes, I see,” I said, nodding at the examples in the book. That could make a good class for Andrés. Though each time I’d
brought the grammar book to class, he’d pushed it away and enticed me into a conversation about Basques, gypsies, surfers, or anything else he could come up with to distract me from the task of teaching English. And he’d kept on pushing the textbook aside, gradually nudging it with his elbow until it fell to the floor.

  A message alert flashed on my phone. Where are you hiding, lamparilla?

  Lamparilla was Juan’s nickname for me. It literally meant “little lamp,” but the gypsies used it all the time to mean “thing.” The bill was a lamparilla, a new verse in a bulería was a lamparilla, the waiter in La Soleá was a lamparilla. “Oyé, lamparilla!” the gypsies would call out when they wanted to get his attention.

  I stared at the message and wondered what I should do.

  Prepositional phrases usually begin with a preposition…

  I replied to Juan, telling him that I was tired and having an early night. The phone rang again, and this time I had to pick up or he would know I was deliberately avoiding his calls.

  “Hola?” I said. All I could hear was a flamenco guitar and a singer. Even over the phone the sound of the voice gave me goose bumps.

  Dammit, Juan.

  “Lamparilla!” He told me he’d ordered me a glass of wine and hung up. I put down the phone and looked back at the open grammar book in my lap.

  Examples:

  a) Lucy arrived with impeccable timing.

  “Oh, who cares?” I said, snapping the book shut. Who cares how Lucy arrived? She could arrive with perfect timing, impeccable timing, immaculate timing, or transcendental timing for all I cared. It didn’t change the fact that I had to go out and face the gypsies again.

  I stepped into my boots and pulled on a jacket. “Dammit, Juan,” I repeated as I left the apartment.