A Dream Called Home

by Reyna Grande

  When the Cinco de Mayo celebrations were over, the kids having put on a great performance, I missed teaching dance. It turned out I wasn’t the only one who missed folklórico. Two weeks after the Cinco de Mayo performance, one of my dance students came into my classroom after school and said, “Ms. Grande, do you think you could start a folklórico group here at school? I mean, a permanent one.”

  His name was Luis Felipe, and he was the kid who had been riding his skateboard in my classroom. When I made the announcement in class that I was looking for dancers for the Cinco de Mayo event, I had been surprised when he raised his hand. I was even more surprised that when the practice started he turned out to be my best dancer.

  Now here he was, a thirteen-year-old boy, telling me he wanted to keep dancing.

  I could see the enthusiasm in his eyes, and looking at him I knew what had happened to him was the same thing that had happened to me at Santa Cruz—he had discovered the exquisite beauty of the Mexican dance tradition, and he was proud.

  Luis Felipe had been brought to the U.S. as a little boy. Like me, he was struggling with his identity as a child immigrant, finding a place to belong in America while at the same time holding on to his Mexican culture. Folklórico was his way to form a connection with Mexico so that he wouldn’t completely lose his right to claim it. Folklórico became the bridge that connected him to his native country. I understood that completely.

  “All right,” I said. “But if I do start the group, will you help me recruit dancers?”

  His face broke into a smile, the sweetest smile I had seen in my time at the middle school. “Yes,” he said. “Leave it to me!” He ran out of my room to follow through on his promise.

  I was left to wonder what I had gotten myself into. I didn’t know enough about dancing to have a real group. At Santa Cruz, I had been a beginner. Who was I trying to fool, thinking I could teach kids to dance? I had made a mistake, I told myself. I needed to tell Luis Felipe that I couldn’t do what he had asked of me.

  During lunch the next day, I mentioned this to one of the teachers, a newbie like me.

  “Don’t give up on this project yet,” he said. “You know, my sister dances in a group in El Sereno. You should check it out. Maybe she can give you suggestions.”

  El Sereno wasn’t far from Boyle Heights. In fact, I wouldn’t even need to get on a freeway to get there, so I decided to follow his advice. On Saturday morning, as I walked through the park looking for the community center where practices were held, I simply followed the pounding of a drum, and even before entering the studio, my body felt the vibrations, my heart began to follow the rhythm of the danza. When I entered the studio, the dancers were sitting on the floor or standing around the room. Only one person was doing the Aztec dance. A man whirled around the room to the beat of the drum. His dark brown skin glistening with sweat looked like melted milk chocolate; his black shoulder-length hair whipped the air as he spun around. His face was that of a fighter who fears nothing, no one. He was a real Aztec warrior come to life. I stood there and couldn’t move. My breath caught in my throat, mesmerized by that man who danced as if we weren’t there; as if he was in a forest with the moon and the gods as his only witnesses. The drumbeats quickened as he spun in place faster, faster, my heartbeats matching the crescendo of the song. With one last bang of the drum he landed on the floor on one knee. The danza ended and the spell was broken. Everyone clapped, and at his command, they took their places on the floor.

  “Let’s do this,” he said, and the danza started again, with everyone following his every step. I wanted to join them, to follow him, the music, the dance, to the divine place of the Aztec gods.

  That was how I began a relationship with a man who was fourteen years my senior. His name was Francisco, and he was the codirector of the group I had come to see. He entered my life when I was at my most vulnerable. Even though I had moved to L.A. to be with my family, we were so busy with our lives that it seemed as if we all lived in different countries and not within driving distance of one another. The truth was that I was lonely and becoming disillusioned with our so-called reunification. The miles that once separated us were gone, but the distance had remained.

  To make matters worse, I was drifting farther and farther away from my writing dream. The only joy I felt at that moment was starting a dance group and helping my students have something to be passionate about. In South Central L.A., a place where kids were tempted by gangs at a young age, I found myself desperate to keep that from happening to Luis Felipe and to all my students. What he had asked of me that day gave me hope that things were turning around for me at the middle school, and it also showed me a way to make a difference in the lives of my students.

  It was with this enthusiasm that I approached Francisco after practice and told him why I was there. When I asked him for advice about how to start a folklórico group at my middle school, he invited me to return to practice as often as I wanted to observe and learn. He shared music and ideas with me and offered to come to my house and show me some dances that I could teach my students. He went as far as letting me use his costumes if I ever needed them. I appreciated his support, though I found him to be intimidating as well. From what I had seen at practice, he was a tough teacher, and he swore at his dancers in a way I found unprofessional and unnecessary.

  When he saw that my passion for folklórico didn’t match my dance skills, he said, “Are you sure you’re capable of taking this on? Having a group is hard work even for the most skilled dancer.”

  His words shook my confidence. It was true that I didn’t have enough dance experience, I told him, but I had nothing but good intentions. That had to count for something, didn’t it?

  “You’ll do more damage teaching those kids to do the steps wrong,” he said. “Then someone is going to have to clean up your mess. It’s hard to unlearn bad technique.”

  “Well, unfortunately I’m all they’ve got for now,” I said.

  A few weeks later, Francisco came over to my house to begin my training. In my driveway, he taught me a few steps, but he lacked patience, and I lacked the confidence to remain under his critical gaze for long. I felt like an insect under a microscope, and he could see every single imperfection and insecurity I tried so hard to hide.

  “Bend your knees more. Your tits are bouncing all over the place,” he said.

  I was glad when we stopped talking about my dance group, and he dropped the pretense of wanting to teach me to dance. One night as we were listening to his folklórico music in my living room, he leaned over and kissed me—hard and rough—his breath smelling of beer, and the next thing I knew we were on my living room floor having sex to “El Son de la Negra.” From that night forward he made it clear that his only intention was to have a good time in bed with me, not to help me master el zapateado or el huachapeado steps, and the private dance lessons came to an end.

  “He’s not good enough for you,” Carlos said the first time he met him. “You can do better.”

  “He’s so old!” Mago said. Francisco was thirty-nine to my almost twenty-five. “I don’t trust him. Nena, after you worked so hard for an education, how can you end up with a truck driver?” she asked with disdain. Every time she referred to him, she would call him “your dad.”

  “How are things with your dad?” she would ask.

  I knew she was right, but the more she insisted that he was too old, the more I wanted to be with him. My father had made little effort to have a relationship with me despite the fact that we both now lived in the same city. So the truth was that I was once again trying to find his replacement, and Francisco—with dark skin the exact shade as my father’s, hands just as rough and calloused, and breath that smelled of beer—was the perfect substitute. Like my father, Francisco spoke broken English. He had been born into a poor family in Mexico and had to toughen up to survive. He immigrated to search for a better life in the U.S. and had found work as a cement truck driver. In my eyes, he wasn’t a truck
driver with a limited education. I saw him as a dancer. He was so passionate about folklórico that every time he talked about it I couldn’t help admiring him. Surely a man who loved and cared about Mexico’s cultural and dancing traditions as much as he did couldn’t be all bad.

  When I met him, he was going through a divorce. I soon discovered he was a typical machista—he was a drunk, a womanizer, and a liar. He already had four children, each from a different woman, and he had little or no contact with them. I knew that I should have run the other way, but I didn’t. My loneliness made me stay.

  When I turned twenty-five in September, and Mago and Carlos asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I said, “The only thing I want is for us to be together.”

  “We’ll take you to dinner,” they said.

  We went to a restaurant in Boyle Heights I had been wanting to try. I had driven past it many times and heard the food was delicious, but I hadn’t heard how expensive it was. As we sat and looked at the menu, I heard my family murmuring under their breaths about the prices. There were eleven of us there, including my siblings’ spouses and children, Francisco, and my mother. My father once again had gifted me with his absence. Not long before, he had given up alcohol and found religion and, to our dismay, his church made it almost impossible to see him. When we invited him over for his grandchildren’s birthday parties or holiday get-togethers, he would never come because he had to go to church, or he had to mow the lawn at church, or do some other repairs his pastor had asked him to do.

  It seemed he had simply replaced one addiction with another, so when I called to invite him to my birthday dinner, his church was the excuse he gave.

  I immediately regretted choosing this restaurant, but it would have been humiliating to get up and leave, so we stayed. My siblings didn’t make much money and they had bills to pay and children to take care of, so I felt guilty for having brought them here. The food was indeed delicious—gourmet Mexican food carefully prepared. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as gourmet Mexican food. But when the check came and the waiter set it down before Carlos, his eyes bulged in shock. He grabbed it and said to Mago, “Here, you pay it,” and tossed it over to her.

  “Goddamn,” Mago said at reading the numbers on the paper. She tossed the check back to Carlos. “You pay it.” They tossed the check back and forth to each other, laughing and criticizing the restaurant for its prices, and I wanted to sink into my chair and disappear. Playing with his mustache, Francisco watched my siblings with amusement but wisely stayed out of the family drama. Still, it was humiliating that he was witnessing this spectacle. My mother looked at me with confusion. Mago and Carlos were bickering in English so she only half understood what was going on, though tossing the check across the table like a football seemed pretty obvious to me. The other diners tried not to look at our table, but they couldn’t help themselves. I wanted them to stop. I looked at Francisco, at Mago’s common-law husband, Victor, at Norma, at my mother, praying with my eyes for them to do something. But no one intervened.

  “Give it to me,” I said. I reached across the table and yanked the check from Mago just as she was going to toss it once again to Carlos. “I’ll pay for it.” I handed my credit card to the waiter. The habanero salsa I had eaten with my camarones a la Veracruzana was burning right through my stomach lining and making its way up my esophagus like a raging fire.

  “We’re just kidding, Nena,” Mago said. “We’ll pay our share.” She opened her purse to grab some money, but I refused. Francisco handed me his share as well, but I wouldn’t accept it. All I wanted was to get out of there and be done with this dinner. I had never felt like such a fool.

  “It’s my treat,” I said, my anger not letting me think clearly. I was angry at my siblings, at their behavior, but mainly I was angry at myself, for not being strong enough to stop being a victim, for not being strong enough to stop wanting my family around me and insisting that they care. By paying for my own birthday dinner, I was paying for my mistake and sparing my siblings the hardship of paying more than they had bargained for.

  “Eso estuvo bien cabrón,” Francisco said afterward with his usual bluntness. And later in my apartment, I clung to him more than ever because he was right. What my siblings had done was totally messed up, and I had never felt so alone as I did that night.

  After that, I spiraled downward. As the months went by, I found myself feeling lonelier and more insecure than ever before. I should have turned to my writing instead of a man, but I didn’t, and that was my worst mistake.

  Even after I discovered that Francisco was lying about being at work and instead was really with other women—including his soon-to-be ex-wife—I didn’t leave him. I held on to my fantasy of him, dancing Azteca, his mind and body perfectly in tune with the beat of the drum, giving himself completely to a rhythm as old as time. I was in love with the dancer—with his connection to folklórico—not the real man who lied to me, manipulated me, and at times made me feel that I didn’t deserve anyone better than him. Being with him left me emotionally and physically exhausted.

  To his credit, he never pretended to be something he was not. I was the one who created the fantasies in my head.

  In my moments of lucidity, I would tell myself to leave him, that he wasn’t the man for me. Then there would be something that would keep me with him, like when he took me to a quinceañera and we danced the night away. He held me in his strong, confident arms, twirled me across the dance floor, and flawlessly led me in cumbias, norteñas, pegaditas, and quebraditas, salsa and merengue. Everyone watching us couldn’t take their eyes off us.

  Once in a while when he had time, he would come to help me after school with my folklórico group. To my surprise, he was patient with my students as he taught them the steps, and not a single bad word came out of his mouth when he was with them.

  I also liked his spontaneity, like the day before Thanksgiving when, out of the blue, he decided to take me to the Grand Canyon because I had never been there. We jumped in the car and drove seven hours straight. We got there late at night, and to our dismay there were no hotel rooms available because of the holiday. We spent the night in the car in twenty-five-degree weather, clinging to each other in the backseat, our breath turning to frost on the windows, and I thought how crazy this man was and yet how exciting it was to find myself freezing my ass off in Arizona simply because he wanted to show me the Grand Canyon.

  It had been every bit as breathtaking as he had promised it would be.

  23

  AS THE MONTHS went by, I couldn’t shake the feeling of loneliness that suffocated me. When I dropped in on my sister-in-law, and she gave me the news that she was pregnant with her second child, a thought planted itself in my mind. What if what I need is a baby?

  I tried to push the crazy thought out of my head, but it took hold the moment it formed, and I couldn’t shake it free. If my own family didn’t want to be around me, couldn’t I create a family that would?

  Norma had become a mother at sixteen when she had Natalia. At nineteen, she was about to become a mother a second time. Yet, as young as she was, she had proven herself to be a better parent than most women I had encountered. If anyone had been born to be a mother, it was Norma. She took parenting classes through Planned Parenthood, watched videos, read parenting books, and asked other women for advice. I had never seen anyone work so hard to be a good mother.

  My niece, Natalia, now three years old, was turning out to be a sweet, well-behaved girl. When she came running into the kitchen, wanting to be picked up, I could see the joy in Norma’s face. Motherhood grounded her and gave meaning to her life. The love she gave her daughter was returned many times over. Natalia was completely devoted to Norma. Nothing was more important to her in the world than the woman who had given her life.

  When Mago went into labor, she had asked me to come to the hospital and witness the birth of her third child, my niece Alexa. I soon forgot about the long hours of pain that my sister endu
red, the fact that I almost fainted at the sight of a tiny human being struggling to emerge from my sister’s womb. The image that stayed with me was that when the baby was put in Mago’s arms, her tiny eyes had opened, and the way she seemed to look at my sister had been absolutely beautiful. The purest form of love.

  To be loved like that, I thought as I sat there in Norma’s kitchen watching her and her little girl embrace. I suddenly envied Norma her daughter, Mago her three children, and Betty her son.

  Motherhood is exactly what you need, the little voice inside me insisted. A baby would love you like no one else has loved you. With a baby, you could make a family and not be alone anymore.

  Then another, even scarier thought came to my mind. Francisco was the perfect candidate for the job. He would never fight me for the child, just like he had never fought for the ones he’d had with other women. I would have a baby who would be all mine and no one else’s.

  The crazy thoughts about wanting a baby scared me, and I knew it wasn’t the answer. It was pure insanity. What I should really do, I thought, was take a trip to get me out of my funk and remind myself that I was young and free. Besides my job, I had no responsibilities, and I should keep it that way so that I could return to my writing and pursue my dream without anything to hinder me.

  I talked to my friend Delia, whom I’d met at PCC when we were both in marching band, and we decided to travel to Europe together. She had also become a teacher at a middle school, not far from mine, but as a band instructor, she was having a better experience than me. I was looking forward to spending time with a friend my age, to getting away from Francisco, to reassessing our relationship and perhaps, once and for all, putting an end to it.