The Flamenco Academy

by Sarah Bird

  She doubled the rhythm her feet were creating and we all kept up, stamping and listening twice as hard.

  “Her name, Delicata, fit my mother perfectly. All little girls believe their mothers are pretty, but everyone said my mother was as beautiful as a saint. Even though she was gitana por los cuatro costaos, Gypsy on all four sides, still her skin was not typical calé skin, tough and brown as ox hide. She had the skin of an English lady, pale as milk. My mother stayed away from the sun like an owl. Next to her pale skin, her lips were pomegranates, with the same red in her cheeks. The long ruffled skirt she wore had once been that same pomegranate red, but it faded to an even prettier pink. Over this she wore a white apron that she had embroidered with red poppies. Her black shawl with the long fringe was crossed over her breasts, the ends tucked into her apron. She wore her hair, glossy and black as a leopard, in fat curls in front of her ears called caracoles, snails.

  “Don’t think about what your feet are doing! Just let them follow the rhythm! Óle.” She spoke the word softly, more in resignation than approval, and I allowed not just my feet but my heart to follow her rhythm, her words. I became the Gypsy with milk skin and pomegranate lips, the woman Tomás would fall in love with.

  “Because I saw her with six babies after me, I knew how I had betrayed my mother. How we all had. With each new chaboro, that was our Gypsy word for baby, I saw her joy born again as well. While they were tiny, she loved nothing more than washing the babies’ soft skin, oiling their tender bodies, sniffing the sweet-smelling spaces at the back of their necks. She even pointed out to me how their curdy shit did not stink. But, eventually, like me, all the new babies disappointed her. They refused to stay clean and sweet-smelling. Their downy hair matted and filled with lice. Fleas chewed scabs onto the chubby ankles. Their shit began to stink. Soon, the new babies weren’t new. Soon they became as grimy as everything else in la cueva and it was as if, one day, my mother was no longer able to distinguish her newest child from the hole in the dirt that was our home.”

  Though what Doña Carlota told us seemed fantastic, it also rang truer than any words we’d heard spoken in any classroom we’d ever been in. The experience was embarrassing and mesmerizing. With each word, she drew us into a world we’d never imagined. With each golpe, she cracked away a bit more of the shell of Anglo reserve that kept us and our true stories hidden from one another.

  “My mother was a prisoner in our cave. She had been the most beautiful, the best bailaora, the best dancer in a town of the most beautiful, the best bailaoras in the world, Sevilla. Seh-vee-yah.” Doña Carlota trilled and caressed the syllables.

  “Then my father took her away and forbade her ever to dance again for strangers. She spent hours gazing out the opening of our cave, not speaking, not giving any sign that she knew her children were there. I would cook a pot of stew and bring her a bowl with a crust of bread to use as a cuchara de pan, but she would just let it sit in her lap.

  “Sometimes, when my father was gone, I could creep up to her and, if I was quiet enough and her dreams deep enough, she would begin stroking my hair, easing the tangles out of it with her fingers, splitting the lice between her nails. As she smoothed my hair, braiding order into the wild strands, she would speak. Always about her home, about Sevilla.”

  It would be hard to say exactly how she did it, but with just a few minute adjustments in her carriage, her voice, Doña Carlota transformed herself into Delicata, her beautiful, spoiled mother. When she spoke, she spoke as Delicata.

  “ ‘Granada is a gray town filled with gray people,’ my mother would tell me. ‘Don’t you see how stocky and short and serious they are? The thumb of God has squashed them. In Sevilla, ah, Sevilla, people know how to laugh. They know how to dance. To sing. In my neighborhood, Triana, you can’t turn a corner without hearing cante. Sevillanos have chuso. Chuso y gracia. Granadinos don’t even know what humor and grace and charm are! Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Moors, Christians, they all loved Sevilla. They all tried to conquer her. But she always belonged to us, her people.’

  “ ‘To walk along the Río Guadalquivir where the galleons sailed in bringing the treasures of the New World. To gaze upon the Moors’ shining Golden Tower. To stroll down the Alameda de Hércules and hear singing and laughter pouring out from every café and bar. This is to live. Everywhere there is laughter, gaiety, with enough to eat for everyone and more than enough for those with talent. Sevilla, my Sevilla. I would have been queen of Sevilla. They all said it, “Delicata, you will be queen of the cafés cantantes!” ’

  “At the mention of the singing cafes, I would nestle in more deeply between my mother’s knees. This is what I wanted to hear about, the magic world of the cafés cantantes. But first she would always tell me about my grandmother.

  “ ‘Your grandmother was the true queen. La Leona they called her, the Lioness, because she ruled the world of the cafés cantantes as surely as a lioness rules the jungle. Four performances a day, that is how often my mother and I danced with our cuadro. Cuadro, that is the proper term for a person’s dance group, not this zambra nonsense these Granadino animals in their caves use. These stumpy, dreary—’

  “ ‘Four performances a day?’ I would prompt my mother, not wanting to lose her to the endless litany of grievances she had against Granadans, against Granada.

  “ ‘Yes, and more,’ she would answer. ‘Los adinerados, the rich ones with their cigars and whiskeys and walking sticks, would always select a few of their favorites to continue in los cuartos, the private rooms, after the regular performances. And my mother and I were favorites. Oh yes, they called for us, los adinerados. Many a time, we crossed the bridge to our Gypsy neighborhood, to Triana, with the sun high overhead, but we were back again at eight that evening.

  “ ‘Back at the Café del Burrero, Café de Novedades, Café Filarmónico. Such beauty. You can’t imagine such beauty, here in this miserable hole in the ground. The cafés were heaven. All of us dancers with our hair piled into gleaming caracoles, our waists tucked in by corsets, bustles rustling beneath the yards of fine silk and crinoline. The audience, always men, with their derbies and cigars. Some of the grand señoritos, the true patrons, with capes over their dark suits, white spats, and high-buttoned shoes.

  “My mother fell into a dream so deep as she spoke that I could smell the cigars, the polish on the gentlemen’s shoes, the pomade on the dancers’ hair.

  “ ‘We performed on stages, proper stages raised high above the crowds. At our feet were rows of light, flames of gas, so that every move, every turn of an arm, every twist of a wrist, shone as if we dancers were made of gold. And the floor of the stages? Wood. No Gypsy had ever danced on wood until the cafés opened. For the first time, we could hear the rhythm pulsing through our bodies. That I loved. The sound of my feet stomping, pounding so fast that los tocaores could barely keep up on their guitars. Luckily, I was a young girl, not yet of marriageable age, so they let me get away with my wild zapateado. If one of the older dancers, my mother, any woman, tried to shake the dust from those wooden floors with footwork like mine, oh! Then they would start. ‘Not feminine enough. Destroying el arte. Too masculine.’ And the women would go back to their delicate brazeo, standing rooted on one spot, twining their arms with all the fire of ivy growing. Cows, stupid cows. Los señoritos might say they were true aficionados, that they only liked the old-style dancing. But who did they hire? Who did they want for their private parties? Who was the princess of the cafés cantantes? Yes, that is what they called me, La Princesa, and I would have been the queen, La Leona. I would have ruled over that world if only, if only—’

  “ ‘What about the decorations?’ I cut my mother off. Too many times all the wonderful stories had been derailed by ‘if only.’

  “ ‘Ah, the decorations.’ She would sigh, close her eyes as if she were smelling the most delicious smell, and begin again, calm then as she remembered the cafés cantantes. ‘Always, the cafés were decorated in the most e
legant style. Heavy curtains of ruby velvet hung at the sides of the stage. Giant mirrors in frames of gold made the big halls appear even larger. In front of the stage were rows of chairs. Each chair had a tray fastened to the back so that the customer would have a place for his caña of wine. Some of the cafés had little tables. Above all the spectators on the ground floor were boxes with armchairs, just like a theater. Up there, in the boxes, los adinerados didn’t drink the little caña of wine for thirty-five centimos like the riffraff on the floor. No, they bought wine by the bottle, four and five bottles at a time. On the walls were posters that celebrated all the beautiful places of Sevilla. La Giralda, the golden tower, Sevilla’s cathedral, almost as large as St. Peter’s in Rome. All the beautiful, beautiful places of Sevilla. All the beautiful places I will never see again because—’

  “ ‘What dances did you perform?’ I hurried to ask before my mother’s dreamy mood sank beneath her sadness.

  “ ‘On those wooden floors that were like dancing on a drum? All of them. All the dances that we gitanos de Triana had only danced for ourselves before, they all burst forth in the gaslight. Tangos, tientos, bulerías, alegrías. These were the easy ones, the light, happy ones for weddings and baptisms that the audiences liked right away. But we also brought out the slow, sad ones. Los jondos that we danced at funerals, siguiriyas, soleás, peteneras, these we danced too, but only the truest of the aficionados liked them. Four performances a day and, with each one, the public begins to like el baile a little more until one day the singers are no longer the stars. It is the dancers the public come for.

  “ ‘Even worse, the tocaores, the monkeys plucking away at their guitars, are starting to be noticed. One day, some player in some café plucks out a particularly sweet falseta and what happens? The audience applauds. Applauds a guitar player? That had never happened before and now all the guitarists want their moment in the gaslight. Ramón Montoya, Luis Molina, Habichuela el Viejo, Manolo de Huelva, Javier Molina. They all became soloists, each one trying to outplay the other. But the worst rivalry of all was between Paco Lucena and Paco el Águila. The first Paco played and the audience went wild. To show his disdain for his rival, the second Paco pulled a glove out of his pocket, put that on his hand, and played even better than the first! Well, First Paco can’t let this stand, so he takes the sock off his foot, puts it on his left hand, and plays a solo!’

  “My mother laughed at the memory, but the unusual sound of laughter echoing off the walls of the cave startled her. She remembered where she was and the cave became her prison again. My mother slapped my head and pushed me away, glaring as if I were her jailer, the one who had imprisoned her. I suppose I was, her first child, the one who had cost her her virginity. Because, really, what decent Gypsy man would have had my mother after my father kidnapped and raped her?”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Time to step up the program,” Didi said, stuffing shoes and skirt into the bag she heaved onto her shoulder. Class had just ended and, as usual, we’d all waited until Doña Carlota had left. That day I wanted to stay in the studio for hours, savoring and committing to memory the new chapters of Tomás’s family history. But, almost as if she were deliberately breaking the spell, Didi yanked me out of the classroom and dragged me down the hall toward the faculty lounge with its emphatic sign, NO STUDENTS. ESTUDIANTES PROHIBIDAS. We waited until Señora Martinez, who taught castanets, punched the code into the keypad and entered. A second before the door closed on its automatic lock, Didi sprinted ahead and grabbed it.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I hissed, refusing to enter the teachers’ inner sanctum.

  “I thought the whole idea of this flamingo thing was to get to Mystery Man.”

  “Shut up,” I whispered, prickling with the sensation of being watched, heard not just by the unseen audience of one I had played my life to ever since that night at the Ace High but by the woman I’d made his proxy, Doña Carlota, who was probably still in the faculty lounge.

  “Come on. The very least we can do is find the old lady, maybe tail her back to Santa Fe. View the boyhood home.”

  “No!” The thought, the remotest hint of intruding on Tomás’s world to that extent before I was absolutely ready, appalled me.

  “What?” Didi challenged. “You changed the mission without telling me? You seriously want to be a dancer now or something? Nice of you to let me know. Should I find someone else to do my books?” Didi held the door open for me. Terrified that if I didn’t do something to end this discussion, she would say his name out loud, I stepped through.

  “Girls.” Señora Martinez stopped us. “You know you’re not supposed to be in here.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Didi said as she fished her wallet out of the shoulder bag. “Doña Carlota left this in the studio and we wanted to catch her.”

  “Andale, pues! She just left. Out the back way. Ten prisa, chica!”

  Didi rushed through the dressing room to the back door and pushed it open. I peered around the edge of the door and caught a glimpse of Doña Carlota being helped into the backseat of a meticulously maintained old Buick by an elderly man. As he dipped his head, his silver hair glinted in the sun like a sheet of tinfoil. There was a timeless formality to his every gesture as if he’d been transported, not just from another continent, but from another time entirely. His face was oddly unplaceable. Not quite Hispanic, not quite Native American, not quite Anglo. His profile could have come off an ancient Roman coin. He slid behind the wheel in the front seat and drove away. Didi ordered, “Memorize the digits!”

  We stepped outside and watched the Buick disappear.

  “Whoa! A driver,” Didi said. “Major diva action. Well, at least we know why the old lady ordered us to let her leave first.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She doesn’t especially want anyone seeing that she’s either too feeble or too prissy to drive.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “Hey, don’t get confused. It’s the great-nephew or ward or whatever you’re in love with. Not her. Shit, if we didn’t have to park halfway to Gallup, we could follow her home.” I was deeply grateful that there was no way Didi could engineer such detective work.

  The usual Friday afternoon crowd was gathered on the front lawn outside the academy to listen to the guitarists practice their falsetas—the sweetly lyrical melodies sprinkled atop flamenco’s driving rhythms—and smoke harsh cigarettes imported from Spain. The flamenco program’s inner circle clustered around Liliana, the Christina Aguilera look-alike, whom Didi had correctly identified as the “head flamenco bitch.” I recognized a few other standouts from the program: Liliana’s chief henchbabe, Yolanda Gutierrez, a good but not great dancer; Adriana Ebersol, a ballet swan with a major eating disorder and a reputation for technical perfection served up with a side of soulless güera attitude; Paz Diaz, probably the best dancer but not most-likely-to-succeed because she had a rabbitty overbite and was stocky. Everyone paid a lot of lip service to how shape and size didn’t matter in flamenco, that some of el arte’s greatest performers were old and fat. Yeah, right. No, flamenco wasn’t as body-obsessed as ballet, but still, the stars all had the right look and that look was thin and dark.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Could I bum one of those?” Didi asked a tall guy with broad shoulders and a ring of thorns tattooed around his biceps. His name was Jeff, a rock guy picking up a few flamenco chops. Good-looking in a rock ‘n’ roll way, tall, thin, long blond hair, the top part pulled back into a ponytail, he would have been perfect for Didi except that he was Liliana’s boyfriend.

  Jeff handed her a Ducado and she did that forties movie thing of letting him light it for her leaning in close and looking up into his eyes. Didi and Jeff chatted in Spanish for a few minutes while she smoked. Liliana shot daggers at Didi when she made him laugh.

  “Laters,” he said to Didi, before sauntering over to Liliana.

  “He seemed interested.”

  “Jeff?” She glanc
ed over her shoulder and caught him staring after her. “Yeah, he’ll be useful. He’ll help us a lot more than the pinche compás ever will.” She smoked the rest of the Ducado as if she were furious at the cigarette and wanted only to incinerate it. What she was furious at was (a) not being the center of attention and (b) Jeff walking away from her.

  Will Thomas, the accompanist for our class, had taken up a spot by himself beneath a middling-size spruce off to one side and was playing a beautiful falseta. Some of the girls in our beginner’s class were scattered around the edge of the lawn watching Liliana and her group practice. Blanca, who’d encouraged me in class, sat by herself, reading.

  “Come on,” Didi said, heading toward Will. “Time to start our own cool group.”

  Will barely glanced up as Didi positioned herself in front of him and began working through some of the combinations Doña Carlota had been teaching us. Like most everyone else on the lawn, Will was smoking a Ducado, the official sign that he was applying for membership in the hardcore flamenco club.

  I sat down and watched Will play, watched his hands on the strings. Of course, they made me think of Tomás’s hands flowing like that across silver strands, coaxing beauty and passion from them. I thought of his hands on my face, my back, pulling me to him.

  “You were really good in class today,” Will said, barely looking up at me.

  “Oh.” I was surprised that he knew who I was. “Thanks.”

  “Who else do we need?” Didi whispered to me. “The Great White Hope?” she asked, nodding toward Jeff. “I couldn’t agree more,” she said before I could answer. “Take over here.” Didi was already striding away before I stood and took her place, practicing the bulerías sequence the old lady had shown us last week.

  “That’s an amazing story she’s been telling.”

  “Really.” Will couldn’t talk and play and his compás faltered a bit. Enough to throw me off. I clapped to get him back on the beat.