by Nancy Osa
“Look, Violet,” Janell said. She had taken off her mask. “What happened to you today in my Verse round?”
I thought back to this afternoon and writhed. “Er, it was—that poem.”
“The Maya Angelou?”
“Yeah, the woman thing.”
Janell waited, but an answer was not forthcoming.
“And your problem would be . . .”
“It was too racy,” I blurted out.
“Racy?”
“Well, there were, like, body parts discussed.” I suddenly knew how Mark felt on the subject.
“She means sex was implied,” translated Leda.
“Well, for God’s sake, Violet!” Janell tossed up her hands, exasperated. “Doesn’t that go with the whole ‘woman’ thing?”
I couldn’t deny that.
“Yeah, Paz, maybe it’s your outlook that needs some work,” Leda added.
“Hey, it’s my outlook and I’ll stick with it. It’s just—I can’t help it, I’m embarrassed talking about that stuff. Or possibly standing onstage while someone else talks about it.”
“Maybe you just need to understand the poem better,” Janell suggested. “You didn’t even hear the whole thing.”
She was right. I could at least be fair.
“Okay,” I said. “Do it.”
Janell was right. The poem was perfect. Even though it was a little . . . candid.
The part at the beginning, where the poet says she’s not a fashion model; that’s true of most women. And later on, she tells about these men who go nuts over her “mystical” charms—they’re really going nuts over her, as a woman, just as she is. No mystery.
Janell reached the last stanza. “ ‘Now you understand / Just why my head’s not bowed. / I don’t shout or jump about / Or have to talk real loud. / When you see me passing, / It ought to make you proud.’ ”
I smiled, flashing on Dad.
“ ‘I say, / It’s in the click of my heels, / The bend of my hair, / The palm of my hand, / The need for my care. / ’Cause I’m a woman / Phenomenally.’ ”
“ ‘Phenomenal woman, / That’s me,’ ” we finished together.
“Awesome,” said Leda. “A feminist slant is exactly what this ritual needs.”
“It already has one,” I pointed out. “Remember? We threw tradition in the toilet and flushed hard.”
Janell hung an arm around me. “It’s going to be a great party,” she said, so sincerely that it brought a guilty taste to my mouth; I had been intent on replacing her as dama only a short while ago.
“There’s still one thing I’ve got to tell you, Abominable Woman,” I said, addressing Leda.
She took her cigar out of the breast pocket of her jacket and wiggled it at me, Groucho Marx–style. “Say the secret woid.”
“Stop messing with my man,” I said, snatching Leda’s cigar and thrusting the thing into my trash can.
“Hey!”
“Thank God,” Janell said. “That cigar has seen better days.”
“Aw, come on,” Leda protested. “All right, I’m sorry. I got a little carried away at the party, but I was not making a move of any sort on your man. I didn’t even know Clarence was your man.”
“Neither does he,” I confessed. “But tonight was supposed to be the night.”
“Then how come you weren’t over there, camping out on his lap?”
“I didn’t know who he was until he took off that mask!”
“What a messed-up night,” Janell said, finishing her hot chocolate.
Leda nodded. “I second the motion.”
We sat there for a minute.
“I don’t know,” I said, offering an apologetic smile. “It didn’t end up so bad.”
26
The next day, I phoned my aunt Luz in Portland.
“Hi, Tía? It’s me.”
“Hey, Violet, ¿qué te pasa? I haven’t heard from you in ages. I was just getting ready to call you.”
Tía Luci always makes me feel that way—like she’s just been thinking about me and I’ve read her mind. It occurred to me that Señora Flora had given me that same impression.
“How’re you doing, Tía? I miss you.”
“Good, kiddo. What’s up?”
“Oh, brother. You won’t believe the Halloween I had.”
“No me digas.”
I did say. I told her all of it, and how I’d almost lost both my damas de honor in one night.
“Oh, that’s bad,” Tía commiserated. “I knew a girl when I was growing up who lost her entire court to the German measles.”
“Well, I do have one problem. That’s why I’m calling.”
“Aha.”
“Señora Flora is having trouble finding a band that can play both ‘Guantanamera’ and ‘Sweet Home Chicago.’ ”
Tía Luci chuckled. “No blues salseros in your neighborhood?”
“Huh-uh. Do you have any ideas?”
“Sure. I’ll do the music.”
“You’re in a band?”
“No, I’ll DJ it. I used to have a radio show in college. I’ve got some smokin’ tapes.”
“Hey, that sounds great, Tía. Really?”
“It’ll be my gift to you,” she said. “I’ll start working on some new mixes right away.”
“Cool. And . . . another thing.”
“Shoot.”
“I’ve got this semester project coming up for Spanish, and Leda and me are doing it on Cuban music. But Dad gave us these really old-fashioned tapes that don’t have anything to do with today. We were wondering if maybe you know of some newer music? Something we can relate to?” Leda had begged me to ask. We’d checked the Web, but there were so many sites, we didn’t know where to start. And we were still waiting for books from the library.
“¿Qué? Chica, you mean you haven’t heard of ¡Cubanismo!? Muñecas de Matanzas? Los Van Van?”
I had to say no.
“Ay, ay, ay,” she said, sorry for me. “I’ll FedEx you some tapes tomorrow.”
“Plus we need some info. And maybe the lyrics. We have to be able to write a report on this.”
A silence as she realized Dad was of no help. “I can jot down some notes, give you some references. So, you asked Alberto?”
“Dad said he only listened to rock and roll growing up. Didn’t you like the same stuff?”
“Oh, believe me, I did. But I grew up with Papi’s old records from the Golden Age too.”
“Dad said he was embarrassed by them.”
Luz sighed. “I guess I was lucky; I was still a little girl when we moved to Chicago from Miami. I was just one of the muchachas . Alberto was in junior high, though, and it wasn’t easy being the boy from Little Havana. The way some of the kids treated him, like he just got off the banana boat . . . I saw what that did to him. It was like he wanted to prove he was all apple pie.”
“So? What’s to stop him from listening to the new stuff now?”
She clucked her tongue. “You couldn’t even buy Cuban pop music in this country until a couple of years ago, thanks to the embargo. I found that out when I started going to Cuba rallies and listening to the Latino hour on public radio. . . . I felt like I’d been missing something. That music was in me. I just had to catch up.” She puffed a laugh. “So maybe Alberto will too, someday!”
“Maybe. I think what Dad needs is to make his quince,” I joked.
“Claro que sí,” said Tía.
Monday morning I found a note taped to my locker: HERE’S MY NUMBER.. CALL ME. CLARENCE
Why didn’t he just call me?
Probably because I was so gracious and witty the last time. I always kept them coming back for more. Still, he gave me his number.
Hoo boy. Now I had to call him. I carried the note around all day, arguing with myself that maybe a correspondence relationship might be enough.
Leda caught me rereading the note for the trillionth time on the bus home.
“What’s that?”
I refo
lded the tired creases. “Oh, nothing, really. Just a guy’s phone number . . .”
She snatched it away from me with an animal squeal. “You’re gonna call him.” She said this like it was a true fact already.
“Well, I don’t know, I—maybe I should wait for him to call me?”
She thrust Clarence’s note back in my face. “You are going to call him.” She said this like a threat.
“Okay, okay. I’ll call him when I get home.”
I scouted the house: Mom was still at the thrift store, Dad would be home pretty soon. Mark had let himself in after school and was in the backyard doing something absorbing with a shovel. I didn’t want to know.
I found Chucho asleep under the piano bench and brought him to the kitchen phone with me for moral support.
“Clarence?” I said when a male voice answered.
“Wait, I’ll get him.”
How many brothers did he have?
He answered. “Hello?”
“Hi, Clarence, it’s Violet.” I petted Chucho to stay calm; petting dogs is supposed to lower your blood pressure.
“God, Violet, hi! I wasn’t sure you’d call.”
That made two of us. “Well, you know, I might have won that publishers sweepstakes, or something.”
He laughed. “You could be a winner! No, sorry, not today. I just wanted to say I missed you the other night at the party.”
How could anyone have missed me? “You didn’t recognize me either?”
“I did, I was just waiting till the costume judging for the unmasking. Didn’t want to spoil the surprise.”
I recalled the identical Bullsmen. “Your brothers! How many brothers do you have, anyway?”
“There are seven of us. Thomas is married, Jasper’s in med school, Silas is stationed in Saudi, Dale works at O’Hare, Herbert and Richard are in community college, and I’m the youngest. Or shall we say, the freshest?”
“Well, I met one of your brothers at the party. Who won the costume contest, anyway?”
“Slade and Trish for Bonnie and Clyde.”
“Lame.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Well, look, Violet, I hope you’re not mad or anything.”
“Hey, it was a masquerade party,” I said, shrugging off the incident. He hadn’t given Leda his phone number.
“Good. I was hoping you might want to go out sometime?”
I realized I was petting Chucho with a vengeance; he squirmed and jumped off my lap.
“Sure,” I said.
“Great, I’ll let you know.”
I hung up, wondering, Did he just ask me on a date? But he hadn’t invited me anywhere; he’d asked for a rain check.
Great, I’ll let you know. They were the most romantic words anyone had ever said to me.
So I forgot all about Tía Luci’s package, and sure enough, on Wednesday, right after my piano lesson, here came the deliverywoman. Funny, you always hope it’s for you when you see the truck parked on your street, but it never is. Now the one time I was actually expecting a special delivery, it slipped my mind, and I wasted all that good anticipation.
I accepted the envelope and opened it: two tapes and a bunch of photocopied notes and newspaper articles. And instructions from Tía:
I showed Dad, who had just walked in the kitchen door wearing his white pharmacist’s uniform over a pair of plaid slacks, with brown rubber-soled work shoes. Weariness tinted his usually animated face. The schedule had been getting the best of him lately. But he brightened a little on reading Tía’s note.
“Veo la luz,” he said, as he does when his sister, Luz, impresses him. I see the light. “She’s laid out the whole music history here,” he marveled, leafing through the assembled literature. “Can I have a look at it when you’re through?”
I nodded. “It’s fantastic. The project’ll practically write itself. So we won’t be needing your help after all, Dad.” I expected to see his eyes shine with relief, but disappointment filled them instead. “Until the end,” I added. “Would you read the final draft of our report?”
This mollified him, and he even whistled “Cielito Lindo” on his way upstairs.
I called Leda to come over, and we took turns reading to each other in my room. We followed Tía Luci’s directions explicitly, even the dancing. After all, no one was around. And what if Luz could read my mind?
“This stuff rocks,” Leda summed up when we got to the new music. “But they couldn’t have done it without the old rhythms.”
“What’s weird is how they banned Cuban music here along with everything else under the embargo. Tía told me you couldn’t buy these tapes until recently.” I pointed to one of the photocopies. “Because of this ‘trading with the enemy’ law.”
“Hey, that would be a great title for the project: ‘Jamming with the Enemy.’ ”
“Very creativo,” I said, nodding. “Let’s get started.”
“Are you kidding?” Leda said, pushing aside Tía’s notes. “That’s enough to show Señora Doble-U. We’ve got a whole month to go, dude. Let’s wait till the last minute.”
27
The month slipped away, as holiday months do. Bam, it was Thanksgiving weekend. Bam, we were back in school. Triple bam: Señora Wong’s semester projects were due. And Clarence hadn’t asked me out yet. I could’ve asked him, but then I still would never have been invited on a date. I just wanted that experience; then, I swore to myself, I’d ask guys out whenever I felt like it.
Leda and I turned in our paper and were assigned a presentation slot toward the end of the pack. Our audience would be good and bored by that time. Perfect.
Even the vigilant señora was having trouble staying awake by the time our turn came. It had been a week filled with piñatas, tacos, and castanets. We were all about fiestaed out. But the party was just getting started.
Señora Wong called our names, and Leda and I waited a rehearsed beat. And another, until our profesora started to glower. Then, as one, we rose.
“What you just heard,” I said, “was not the sound of silence.”
“What you just heard,” Leda picked up, “was the sound of contemporary Cuban music being imported into the United States. Because until recently, recordings by Cuban artists were banned in this country, causing a cultural divide.”
“Our presentation will help bridge that divide,” I said, with a wave of feeling as I realized this was true.
“Welcome to the world of Cuban music,” said Leda.
I popped a tape into the machine and faded in on a searing rhumba. A smile played over Señora Wong’s lips.
Let’s just say, if there had been a final round, we would’ve been in it. Leda punched me several times afterward, her equivalent of muy bien, and suggested I try out for Oratory next speech season.
But it was this season that was giving me trouble. Over the next few tournaments, my O.C. rounds improved, but not consistently. I would beat “Mary Ann Pimpleberry,” even Vera in one round, only to collapse in the next. Mr. Soloman promised my ranks would even out. “Practice like crazy,” he said. So I did, in my mirror at home, on the bus to tourneys, even on Wednesdays after piano.
With one tournament left before the next onrushing holiday, I thought I was making progress toward nailing the speech every time. I vowed to put everything else aside and concentrate solely on speech. Vera and I had just arranged for an extra afternoon of work when Mom dropped her bombshell.
We were eating dinner, Mom, Mark, and me—Dad was on swing shift. Mom had made lasagna and garlic bread, and I had fixed the salad.
“So I’ll be staying after school on Thursdays, too,” I said. Seeing Mom’s eyes widen, I added, “Just until speech season ends.”
“Well, I have a new schedule to announce, myself.”
Mark and I both looked at her.
“I have decided to start school in January. I told your father this morning.”
Even if our mouths hadn’t been full, we wouldn’t have been able to speak.
<
br /> “I’ve decided to take some business classes, and you two are going to have some new responsibilities.”
That last familiar reference was eclipsed by the mention of business classes. Mom’s dream, dead? She must have woken up and smelled the café, realized she would never get rich in the restaurant world, even with a whole chain of drive-thru Cuban-Polish bakeries. She would now opt for a prestigious and lucrative, but uninspiring, CEO position over her passion for cooking and organizing. I nearly wept, but I had garlic bread in my mouth.
I swallowed. “Mom,” I whimpered, “what about your restaurant plans? The menus, the funny names, the grand openings?”
Mom narrowed her eyes. “Gone.”
Gone?
She smiled. “This will be even better. Drumroll, please.”
Mark obliged with palms on the table until she had to tell him to quit.
“Catering,” she said finally. “Then I can roll all my ideas into one cookie crust. I was thinking, maybe I could start out catering quince parties.”
“Catering? But what about the business classes?”
“There’s a lot more to catering than just cooking. I’ll need to know how to run a business. And I can take some other courses I’m interested in too. So I’m quitting the Rise & Walk and enrolling in community college midterm. I’ve got to start sometime.”
I goggled at her. Mark asked if this meant he’d have to quit PONY league baseball. (It was December, for God’s sake.) Mom said, “We’ll see.”
I’d have to keep a tighter schedule as well, meeting Mark after school on certain days. I knew this smacked of the dreaded R word that Abuela had predicted would be a part of my quince year. But priorities had suddenly changed, and I’d have to do my part. My mother had learned a new word. Fruition.
The Tuesday before our tourney at Forestfield—Evian High—I showed only a little surprise when Mr. Soloman called me into the speech office and told me I’d be working with the head coach that day.
I dropped my books on the floor in disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding!”
“I’m serious as a heart attack, Ms. Paz.” The Ax had come up behind me. “Now, shall we begin?”