Mambo in Chinatown

by Jean Kwok

  She started to sniffle for real. “No, Charlie, it’ll never be all right again.”

  I pulled away and looked at her. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Nothing.” She avoided my eyes. “I’m just tired and scared and I don’t want to have all these problems. I wish I could go away and everything would be gone.” There was something new in her eyes, a resentment I’d never seen before. “You’re fortunate, Charlie. Lucky you don’t have to be me.”

  I felt a spark of anger. “You’ve always been the pretty one, the smart one, the one who was good at everything, while I was the inept, stupid one. Now it’s my turn.” I was shocked by my own words but somehow also couldn’t stop. “I’m allowed to be decent at something too.”

  “And because you were so bad at everything, you always got out of things. I was the one who was stuck at Uncle’s.”

  “You’re jealous.” It had never occurred to me that Lisa might be resentful of the changes in my life. Were her problems a way of calling attention to herself? “All our lives, you’ve been the one who was praised by Pa, Aunt and Uncle, the teachers, by every single person we knew.”

  Her eyes blazed. “A whole lot of good that did me. You had an easy way out. If you didn’t like something, you just became too clumsy to do it.”

  “That is unfair!” I wanted to smack her. “I was desperate to stay at the dance studio but I still got fired as a receptionist. I was just lucky they saw potential in me as a dancer instead.”

  “Well, maybe you should have tried harder. Goodness knows, what you had to do at all your jobs wasn’t that difficult.”

  I gaped. Lisa had never turned on me like this. Perhaps because of the eleven-year age difference between us, we’d hardly ever squabbled like other siblings. “Who are you? Maybe something truly is wrong with you.” The moment I said it, I saw the hurt cross her face and regretted it. I shut my mouth before more words came out.

  Lisa flung herself onto the sofa so that her back was to me and buried her face against the material. I moved stiffly onto the other chair, looking at anything but her. We stayed that way until the Vision of the Left Eye arrived.

  —

  Pa opened the door for her. Then Lisa and I both stood up and said, “Mrs. Purity.”

  I was surprised she was alone, unaccompanied by Todd. The Vision went with us into the kitchen and lit all of the altars. She’d brought oranges and she set these up by Ma’s altar. She took out the sacred papers we would burn while praying, a red envelope and a piece of rock candy.

  She said to Pa, “Would you make a pot of plain white rice?”

  Then while he was busy, she went back out to the living room and sat next to Lisa. Lisa shrank away from her. Despite our earlier fight, I felt sorry for my sister. The witch took Lisa’s hands in hers. The Vision closed one eye and the other one stayed open, wandering far to the left.

  I hovered over Lisa protectively, close enough that I could smell the witch’s scent of hair wax and sweat. Pa came out of the kitchen and also stood behind Lisa, listening.

  The Vision began to speak. “She is infected by an evil spirit.”

  Lisa gave a little gasp and I felt myself grow pale.

  The witch continued, “The spirit has taken hold and must be removed. Today, we will start the process. This is the reason for the nightmares. It is a hungry ghost, one that can never be satisfied no matter how much it consumes. If you leave it, it will take all of her and leave a shell in its place.”

  I didn’t know what to believe. This was terrifying yet also sounded like something out of a story. Pa had wrapped his arms around himself, as if he were cold. Although the witch’s earlier Release of Life ritual had seemed to help Lisa, I didn’t like her scaring my sister now.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  The witch didn’t bother to answer me, though Lisa gave me a grateful look.

  I pressed on. “How did you know which items to bring before you even had a chance to examine Lisa?”

  “That is standard equipment for those in our trade.” The Vision’s normal eye glowered at me. “At home, I already made contact with the spirit world and I suspected. Now that I have touched her, I am sure. Not that I need to explain myself to a young girl like you. Put a bowl of plain white rice in front of the altar. Place a pair of chopsticks next to it.”

  Pa went into the kitchen to do as she said. The Vision turned to Lisa. “Do you have something you wear regularly?”

  Lisa went and found the worn blue T-shirt she always slept in. The Vision took it and went into the kitchen while we trailed after her. The witch paused in front of the altars with the shirt in her hands and bowed to Ma and our ancestors. She turned and gestured to the three of us so that we all stood behind her and bowed as well. Then she took the long sacred red-and-green papers that we burned for the ancestors and bowed again.

  She brought Lisa forward and held her hand over Lisa’s head. The Vision closed her eyes, then took Lisa by the shoulders and forced her to her knees on the bare vinyl floor. Lisa sneaked a look at me, trembling. I tightened my lips. If the witch hurt my sister, I was going to slug her. But all she did was indicate that Lisa should bow deeply, the way we did at temple to the gods. Lisa did it three times. Then the Vision had Lisa rise and she handed her the pair of chopsticks and the bowl that held the rice.

  “Eat a piece,” the Vision said.

  Lisa did.

  Then the witch emptied the rest of the rice into the trash. She gave Lisa her shirt, the piece of rock candy, the red envelope, the bowl and chopsticks.

  “Keep the bowl and chopsticks safe. Put the red envelope underneath your pillow. Also keep the T-shirt near your bed.”

  “She sleeps in it,” Pa said.

  “That is even better. It will protect her.”

  “Are we allowed to wash it?” I asked.

  Pa pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “What? I know it’s supposed to be a magical item now that you’ve blessed it, but it’ll get dirty if she wears it. Will the magic wash off?”

  “It is not magic,” the witch said, gritting her little square teeth. “It is power, my power. And it will not wash away.” With that, she swept out of the room. We heard the door slam as she left.

  I cast my eyes downward, ashamed. “I didn’t mean to insult her, Pa.”

  “I know, it’s all right.”

  I felt bad that I had upset the Vision when I had an idea of how much she cost Pa per session. I hoped she hadn’t left early because of me. Years ago, when I was still working at Uncle’s office, Aunt Monica had hired the witch to help her get pregnant, and I remembered that to pay for one session with the Vision, my aunt had had me take a hundred dollars out of the cash register. My aunt hadn’t gotten pregnant but no one seemed to think that made the Vision any less effective. This visit was surely even more expensive because the Vision had come to our house.

  Pa was working longer hours at the restaurant now, going in earlier than he used to and leaving later. When I’d asked, he’d just said times were busy. That meant he was probably helping to set up beforehand and cleaning up afterward for a bit more money. I still gave him almost my entire paycheck, just keeping out the bare minimum I needed. He always hesitated before taking it, asked me if I needed to keep anything more for myself. I would have paid anything if it would help. At the end of every month, I always saw Pa put a twenty-dollar bill into an envelope to send back to family in China. No matter how poor we were, he did this. Lisa and I had been telling him he needed a new coat for the winter but there was no purchase.

  “What’s in the red envelope?” I asked.

  Lisa opened it and took out a yellow piece of paper with red writing on it. It had been folded, like origami, into the shape of an octagon.

  “Those are fu,” Pa said. “Words of power. When written by a master, they can contain demons.”


  I hoped he was right.

  Sixteen

  I stood in front of the mirror with Ryan beside me. “Let’s start talking to your Irish hips about some Cuban motion. You need to learn how to move your hips. It’s like you’re waiting for a bus and you’re really bored, so you put all your weight on one leg.” He did it. “Good. Now you’re tired, so you shift your weight to the other leg.” He complied. “That’s it. So let’s do that together.”

  I straightened my right leg and shifted my right hip back. He did the same. Then I straightened my left leg and shifted my left hip. He copied.

  “You’re doing a good job but the problem is, your hips are only moving the tiniest bit. If I blinked, I would miss it.”

  “Years of inhibitions. Hard to get rid of them without alcohol.”

  “I can see that.” I stood behind him and had him do it again, placing my hands above his pelvic bones. As he straightened one leg, I helped him push the hip back. “Great. Now the other way. Shift, and shift. Your body is still resisting me.” He was tall and it was hard to see around him.

  I stood in front of him and placed his hands on my hipbones and my hands over his. Much better. Now we could both watch what we were doing. “I’ll do it with you. Left, and right, and left, and right.” His hips started moving together with mine. I released his hands and held mine up high so he could see my stomach. “Cuban motion happens below the waist. The top stays still. It’s like there’s an ocean in between. Quick quick slow, quick quick slow.” I swung my hips back and forth while hardly moving anything above my waist at all. I repeated what I had learned. “The top is celestial: innocent, floating in air, while the hips are grounded to the earth: sensual and heavy. If we don’t do this, we’ll look like strippers. Without that balance, we don’t have art.”

  “Yin and yang,” he said.

  I was so surprised, I twisted around to look up at him. “Exactly. Okay. Shift your weight again. Left, right, left.” His hands were warm on my hips and his breath was in my hair. The fabric of his pants brushed against that of my skirt.

  “I don’t think I can do this.” His voice was strained.

  I stopped. “What’s the matter? You’re doing fine.”

  “Excuse me,” he said, and practically ran out of the ballroom.

  When I stared after him, Mateo, who was leading a well-dressed Indian couple around the floor, leaned into me and whispered, “I think you made that lesson a bit too ‘hard’ for your friend.” He waggled his eyebrows wickedly and strolled off with his students, chuckling to himself.

  I gasped, understanding what he meant, but sure he was pulling my leg, as always. Ryan returned a few minutes later, with a few droplets clinging to his eyelashes. It looked like he’d splashed water on his face. “Where were we?”

  “Umm, why don’t you go ahead and practice that at home?” I said brightly. “Let’s go learn some steps now.”

  —

  Dominic made the official announcement at the Monday meeting. “You all know about the Paul Rosenthal Dance Scholarship. It will be held as a part of the annual National Avery Competition at the Regal Grand Hotel in Connecticut in late July, where every Avery Studio in the country will be represented. This is one of the biggest purses in ballroom today and will show everyone at nationals which New York studio is producing the best dancing. Of course, we know that studio is us. It has been decided that Simone and Charlie will represent our studio to compete for the scholarship with their students Keith and Ryan.”

  Everyone clapped while Simone gave me a little smirk from her place in the circle.

  Dominic continued, “I will personally give the competitors free extra coachings throughout the coming months. I will also do their choreography if they so wish.”

  I’d seen Dominic’s work and he always made the choreography suit the personality and abilities of the performers. It was hard to dance something that didn’t suit your body, and especially as Ryan and I were both so new, we needed all the help we could get.

  However, even before we got started on the choreography, Dominic needed to evaluate us. Ryan and I stood in the small ballroom as he walked around the two of us, eyeing us both. Then he put on some mambo music and said, “Show me.”

  Ryan and I started to dance. He only knew the moves from the Bronze Syllabus but I thought he led them pretty well. Invariably, we started stepping on the one beat instead of the two despite my firm grip on his arm, what the female professional dancers called the “Five Fingers of Death.”

  “Stop.” Dominic paused the CD. “You’ve made a wise decision in choosing mambo.”

  “What?” I said. Ryan winked at me, which I ignored.

  Dominic said, “Because the technique in mambo remains basically the same from Bronze through Supreme Gold. The steps become more difficult but it’s not like American foxtrot, where you essentially have to learn a whole new dance when you progress to the higher levels.”

  I nodded. I’d just started doing Silver foxtrot in dance session with the professionals. I loved its sweeping, gliding form but it seemed to have no connection to Bronze foxtrot whatsoever.

  He turned to Ryan. “You have a good body but you still have many traces of the athlete in you. Dance is not about ‘what,’ it is about ‘how.’ Not about getting the ball in the goal, any way possible. It’s about doing it with grace, precision, balance, emotion and beauty. Still, I foresee that performing the steps well will not be a permanent problem. Your timing is atrocious but I predict also that that will not remain an issue. You will go home, Ryan, and listen to the mambo CDs I give you and you will count out the beat to them, time and time again. Soon, you will learn to step on the two instead of the one. However.”

  We both waited. “Your hips, they are a problem.”

  Ryan groaned. “Why does everyone say that?”

  Dominic faced me. “Charlie, you have to beat it into him to make sure we have some semblance of Cuban motion before the competition. I’m sure he will improve but you cannot completely rebuild a man in a matter of months. What you need to do is to distract the audience and the judges.”

  “How?” Ryan asked.

  “With this.” Dominic tapped Ryan’s bicep. “You can lift her.”

  “You’re not serious,” I said.

  “That sounds all right to me,” Ryan said. “Better than that hip stuff.”

  “You will still need to do Cuban motion,” Dominic said. “But if we design choreography that has a number of fairly flashy lifts in it, then you will not need to rely so much on your Latin technique.”

  I was terrified. “I don’t want to leave the ground. I’ve always been a very stable kind of person. Dancing is one thing, dangling in the air is another.”

  “What, you don’t trust me?” Ryan said, pretending to look wounded.

  “Well, I am telling you that if you want to look good on the dance floor, someone has to lift someone,” Dominic said. “Would you care to carry him, Charlie?”

  I eyed Ryan’s frame. “No. But I still don’t see why we need them. I’ve never seen a student doing lifts.”

  “That is precisely the point,” said Dominic. “Students don’t tend to do lifts. This will elevate your mambo to a professional level. In regular competition, lifts are not allowed because the floor is too crowded, but for this scholarship, you’ll be on the floor one couple at a time. Anything goes. And he can do it, I know.”

  Ryan looked gratified. “What exactly will we have to do?”

  Dominic walked to the door and called, “Nina, come over here, will you?” After a moment, her head appeared in the doorway. “Sweetheart, will you help me demonstrate a few lifts for our friends here?”

  Nina was chewing on a big wad of gum again. “Sure. Let me spit this out and I’ll be right with you.” She trotted into the teachers’ room and returned wearing a pair of sweatpants instead of the skirt
she’d had.

  “Charlie, are you decent underneath that dress?” Dominic asked.

  Ryan looked at me with sudden interest.

  “I’ll go put on something else,” I said, heading toward the teachers’ room. I was already dreading the whole experience.

  “Take off your shoes too,” Dominic called.

  I glanced back at Nina. “She’s wearing hers.”

  “She is not going to wound anyone with her heels,” said Dominic. “You, on the other hand . . .”

  I sighed, then changed into a tight black tank top and sweatpants. I had to roll up the legs since they’d been Adrienne’s and were too long for me. For good measure, I rolled down the waistband too and pinned it with safety pins. I returned to the small ballroom in my stocking feet. I gritted my teeth. “If lifts aren’t allowed in regular competition, how come Nina knows how to do them?”

  Nina sang, “Because I am a-ma-zing.”

  Dominic said, “They are permitted in theater arts and show dance competition, and our dancers are trained in everything. Lifts aren’t for everyone. People are often too scared, too weak or too heavy. All right, Nina, just come at me, turn around and I’ll take you up.”

  Nina ran at Dominic, turned at the last moment so her back was to him, jumped and he lifted her into the air. She struck an elegant pose as he turned them both, then he suddenly tossed and dropped her, catching her again around her waist and underneath her straight leg, with her other leg bent in a graceful line. They looked incredible together.

  “You didn’t even tell her you’d do the second lift.” I was so impressed. “You know, Nina, I always see you chugging a soda or munching on a hot dog, and I think you’re a regular person. And then you do this. I forget what you’re capable of.”

  Nina beamed. “Don’t worry, it’s easy-peasy.”

  “Okay, now Nina with Ryan. Ryan, catch her around the lower part of her rib cage and take her straight up. Keep your core and back strong. Don’t worry about the fish dive now, just the first part of the lift.”

  Ryan nodded. Nina ran at him, she turned around, he caught her around the rib cage. His fingers fumbled and then he got a better grip. When he picked her up, he turned them both the wrong way. Then he didn’t set her on her feet properly. Still, Ryan was grinning. “I enjoyed that. Better than using weights.”