No Matter How Much You Promise

by Edgardo Vega

  45. Tumba Santiago

  Vidamía visited her grandmother before Palm Sunday and brought her a beautiful bonnet and matching handbag, “just in case you want to march in the parade next Sunday, güela.” Observing her thin white face and high cheekbones, which her mother said she had inherited, for the first time in her life she mentally classified Ursula as a white Puerto Rican instead of simply her grandmother. The awareness disturbed her. Granted, being with Wyndell had made her even more conscious of African-Americans, but she was certain that she was being negatively affected by her heightened awareness of the black-white issue. Up to now she had barely focused on people’s skin color, but now she was too conscious of the differences and it bothered her. She was also certain, however, that in spite of her mother’s attitudes and fears, it would make no difference to her if she had black relatives. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more she hoped she had dozens. It was confusing because she was certain that her mother had hang-ups about race, and she wanted to confront her with the truth. Nothing would give her greater pleasure than to be able to say to her mother that they were both related to Mr. Haley’s ancestors, and to other great black Americans such as Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King, Jr., Frederick Douglass, and hundreds more. She was aware that she was being idealistic, even romantic, but that is how she felt. She knew that she had to find her own link to Africa, and from all indications, her grandfather, Tumba Santiago, seemed to be it. The stuff with the drums was too much of a coincidence for her to ignore. Last year there was Wyndell with his mother’s friend’s poem, and now this stranger who was related to her and who she suspected was not white and was a drummer, a conguero, a tumbadero or tumbero, this Puerto Rican grandfather who would finally prove whether Mr. Wyndell Ross was right or wrong.

  One would imagine that with not much to go on, frustration would set in and Vidamía’s mind would begin to unravel. But we aren’t talking about your garden-variety señorita full of fuzzy-headed notions regarding the comings and goings of fate and destiny. Instead we are referring to a no-nonsense kind of young gal, full of gumption, get-up-and-go, and many super-accelerating gray cells sprinting back and forth in her brain, all of them energized by hybrid vigor, which is a genuine biological phenomenon that comes about when vastly different gene pools combine to produce an individual of superior capacities, the exact opposite of the theory proposed by Herr Adolf Schickelgruber and other racial extremists. In fact, if one had the guts to examine the scientific documentation, one could propound it freely at cocktail parties and church socials and give neo-Nazi lunatics a few more sleepless nights. Because you may think that Herr Schickelgruber is dead, but he is still around, lurking in the shadows of the heads of addle-brained people who live in fear that the white race is going to be wiped out.

  Vidamía, being inquisitive, began looking for her grandfather in the best way she could. She asked relatives for photographs of him, but none were forthcoming except for an old faded photo her grandmother showed her. The two people in the photo were young. Ursula Santiago looking nothing like she did now, forty years later. The same thing had to hold true for her grandfather. So Vidamía asked her grandmother for a description and was told that he had dark skin and bad hair. She figured if her grandpa, Tumba Santiago, was a conguero, there was no sense looking for him down on Wall Street, or in housewares at Macy’s. She decided that her best bet was to ask around in Loisaida. If she asked enough folks, they would tell her where the Latin clubs were, and then she could find out where Tumba Santiago played, and maybe even where he lived. So she made a deal with Lurleen and Cliff to do double shifts at the store for a week while she and Cookie searched for her grandfather.

  Vidamía concentrated on moving as fast as possible to find Tumba Santiago. The first thing Vidamía and Cookie did was to go over and visit their friends Yvette Contreras and Christina Texidor on Avenue C. Faced with the question of how to find such a person as her grandfather, they replied that the one person who might shed light on the subject was Yvette’s aunt.

  Yvette and Christina took Vidamía to see Yvette’s aunt, Blanca Contreras, who was about Elsa Santiago’s age and checked coats at the Tropicoro. The three of them sat in Blanca’s kitchen while Blanca, high as a kite on reefer, chain-smoked Salems and drank Diet Pepsi and told them she had never heard of Tumba Santiago but that the musicians at the clubs might have. And then Blanca reeled off the names of a bunch of clubs, names like El Tropical, Siboney, and Club 96, which Vidamía dutifully wrote down in a small notebook, in her neat script, the address below the club and below that an annotation for the subway line and the stop nearest the club. “You gotta bring ID, and you can’t go there looking cheap, cause then they figure you be there hustling like some of these homegirls who don’t wanna work for a living and be hanging out at after-hours joints.”

  “Damn, Titi Blanca!” Yvette said. “What chu think she is?”

  “What chu say your name was, honey?” Blanca said, ignoring her niece.

  “Coño, Titi Blanca,” Yvette said. “She tole you already, shit. Her name’s Vidamía.”

  “You don’t gotta get nasty, girl,” Blanca said, her eyes rolling up into her head as she blew a big cloud of smoke from her pursed lips. “You may be my sister’s kid, but that don’t give you no right to be getting nasty. What’s Josie teaching you?”

  “Don’t be talking about mami, okay?” Yvette shot back.

  “Anyways, I was talking to the girl and not to you,” Blanca said.

  “Dig her,” Yvette said, turning to Christina for support. “Just cause Ruben Blades came into the club and kissed her on the cheek one night, she think she a celebrity and whatnot. You must be high,” she added, stating the obvious and reminding her aunt that she was aware of her weakness, because, no matter what anyone on the outside thought, not every Puerto Rican in the neighborhood stayed high like her aunt, who maybe had an excuse because her old man was up in Attica doing a bit for blowing away some dudes up in the Bronx, and her kid Felix had died of spinal meningitis.

  “Anyways, what did you say, honey?” Blanca asked, leaning over the dinette table and staring through hooded eyes at Vidamía.

  “Vidamía Farrell,” she answered.

  “Vidamía?” Blanca said. And then, it was like a flash went off and her eyes opened up. “Oh, shit, you’re Elsa’s kid from Rivington, right? Your father was this American dude who was in Vietnam with Joey. You all moved out and we never saw your mother again. How is she?”

  “She’s fine, thank you,” Vidamía said. “I’ll tell her you said hello.”

  “Yeah, tell her I miss her,” Blanca said, obviously moved. “You’re one gorgeous homegirl. Stand up and let me look at you. Go ahead, don’t be shy.”

  “She ain’t no homegirl, Titi Blanca,” Yvette said, and she and Christina giggled.

  “Go ahead, homegirl,” said Christina to Vidamía, “do your shit and whatnot.”

  Christina and Yvette gave each other high fives and Vidamía stood up, feeling self-conscious because she thought her butt was too big, even though a minute didn’t go by that Wyndell wasn’t talking about how fine she looked from behind.

  “Oh, my God, honey,” Blanca said. “You’re too much, baby. What a body! Un cuerpo divino, mamita. Your waist ain’t no bigger than most women’s thighs. You should think about modeling or something. God bless you. Your mami and me was homegirls together back at Seward Park about fifteen years ago.”

  “Almost twenty,” Yvette said, “cause Vidamía is eighteen, right, Vee?”

  “That’s right,” Vidamía said.

  “Let’s book, Vee,” Yvette said. “C’mon, Christina. Bye, Titi Blanca.”

  “You gotta go?” Blanca said, disappointed.

  “Yeah, I tole mami we was gonna be back before six,” Yvette said. “See you,” she added as she headed out of the kitchen.

  “No kiss for your Titi?” Blanca said, her eyes misting. “I’m still your aunt.”

  “Ri
ght,” Yvette said and went over and painfully kissed her aunt’s cheek and allowed herself to be pecked noisily. “I’m sorry about what I said,” Yvette added, half meaning it.

  “That’s nothing,” Blanca said and reached into her pocketbook and gave Yvette a ten-dollar bill. “Buy yourself some ice cream or something down on Mulberry Street.”

  “Thank you, Titi Blanca,” Yvette said, feeling ashamed about how she’d treated her aunt.

  It was the beginning of the summer, and for the next three days, Vidamía, accompanied by Yvette and Mickey, the three of them dressed for partying in tight, shiny, low-cut, short dresses and spiked heels, made up delicately but expertly by a cousin of Yvette’s who “did hair and paint” for photo shoots, and armed with fake identification and Vidamía’s credit cards, traveled from club to club, dancing and sipping mixed drinks, allowing men to dance with them, and generally enjoying the evenings, though getting back down to Loisaida no later than two a.m., as Lurleen had requested of Vidamía. On Saturday, Cookie insisted on going, dressing up in a red party dress and red high heels and pocketbook, her blond hair done up in cornrows. After applying makeup, she adopted a haughty look, cocked her head to the side as if she couldn’t be bothered, and turned away from the mirror.

  So the four of them went up to Club 96 and walked in and the band almost stopped playing because in walked this tremendous-looking blonde in a red dress and, to a man, they all swore she was some big-time movie star. Being she was only sixteen, and already had a boyfriend, Mario, to whom she was super-loyal, whenever any dude hit on her, the attitude came out and she’d say, “No thank you,” or “Thank you very much,” but if the guy insisted, she’d say things in this perfect Loisaida patois, “Man, whyntcha get outta my face, okay? Like, I done tole you, right? Coño! What is with this dude, homegirl?” she’d say, turning to Vidamía or the other two. “Just book, okay, man?” she’d say, turning back to the guy who was by now totally flustered at having this “American” girl not only dissing him terribly but talking “like she been raised by people from P.R., man—from Cataño or Villa Palmeras, or some fucking place like that, shit!”

  So eventually, going from one club to the next, Vidamía met a young trumpet player by the name of Tony Betancourt. When there was a break she went over to him and asked him where he went to school and he said he’d studied up in Boston.

  “Berklee?” she said, feeling knowledgeable.

  “Right,” Tony said. “How did you know?”

  “Friend of mine,” she replied. “Maybe you know him. Wyndell Ross.”

  “Yeah,” he said, smiling real big. “We took classes together. Tenor sax. From out west.”

  “Denver.”

  “Yeah, right. I met his pop once. Doctor. Played piano. We jammed together.”

  They talked for a while, and Vidamía promised to tell Wyndell that they’d met and Tony gave her his number for Wyndell, and then Yvette came over, and right away it was obvious that she and Tony dug each other, but before anything could happen Vidamía got in between them.

  “Oh, before I forget,” she said, “do you know Tumba Santiago?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “Oh, wait. Milton might know. Is he a conga player?” he added, recognizing that if his name was Tumba, it probably came from tumbadora, the bass conga drum.

  “Yeah,” Vidamía said. “He’s my grandfather.”

  “Yo, Nelson,” Tony said, waving at someone up on the bandstand. “Come here, bro.”

  A light-skinned Latin young man came over and Tony asked him if it hadn’t been a dude named Tumba who had taught him to play. Milton nodded as he eyed the women.

  “Yeah, sure, Tumba Santiago,” he said, bringing his taped fingers to his nose and pushing it from side to side like it itched. “Lives up on Longwood, if he hasn’t moved. Between Fox and Beck. Nine-ninety Longwood, I think. Second floor in front. You know him?”

  “Yeah, he’s my grandfather,” Vidamía said, feeling uncomfortable, as she always did around people who were heavily into drugs. She took out her notebook and wrote the address down.

  “Your grandfather, huh? That’s really cool. He’s a beautiful dude.”

  “What train?” Vidamía said.

  “Take the six to Longwood Avenue and walk up Longwood. But you should get someone to go with you. I can meet you, if you want.”

  “No, that’s all right,” Vidamía said. “I’ll get my boyfriend to go with me. Thanks, man.”

  She went back to working in the store, and the next time she saw Wyndell she told him about finding her grandfather and asked him to go with her to see him. The following Saturday afternoon they headed for the Bronx to find Tumba Santiago. It seemed to Vidamía that Wyndell was more nervous about what awaited them than she was. When she wanted to know why he was bringing his saxophone, he snapped at her before explaining that he’d just come from a recording session for a video and didn’t want to go back downtown. He apologized immediately and said he felt ashamed that he still had to earn his money from doing dumb videos for crappy songs.

  When they got to Longwood Avenue they followed the directions Tony Betancourt’s friend had provided for her. Once they reached the building there was no way of telling where her grandfather lived. Although there were mailboxes in the lobby, none of them had names on them. There were over thirty apartments in the building.

  “What now?” Wyndell said.

  “Let’s ask at the bodega,” she said, bounding off the stoop and heading for a small grocery store on the corner, where she asked if anyone knew Tumba Santiago. One very black man who was just leaving the store came back in and addressed her in Spanish.

  “Who wants to know?” he said, trying his best to act fierce.

  “I do,” Vidamía said, answering in Spanish. “I’m his granddaughter. I gotta find him.”

  “How do I know you’re really his granddaughter? What’s your mother’s name?”

  “Elsa.”

  “And your grandmother?”

  “Doña Ursula.”

  The black man pursed his lips and nodded his head.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, in a thick accent. “I’m Flaco. Tumba’s friend.”

  Vidamía introduced Wyndell, and Flaco extended his hand. She noted that Flaco was blacker than Wyndell, the skin of his face almost blue. Before they got up to the third floor of the apartment building where Tumba Santiago lived, Flaco was calling out his name and announcing that he was bringing him a surprise. When Tumba Santiago opened the door, he was grinning widely, his gold tooth gleaming on his cocoa—colored face. He was wearing bright red polyester pants, white shoes, and a yellow long-sleeved guayabera. He had recently showered and changed and there were several fragrances competing with each other for dominance on his person. Vidamía introduced herself as his granddaughter. The old man nodded approvingly. She then introduced her grandfather to Wyn. Unlike the scene with her father, it almost seemed as if her grandfather had been expecting her. Not once did he question her about her reasons for finding him.

  Tumba Santiago ushered them inside, calling behind him to his lady, Panchita. Vidamía walked down the long hall to the living room with the plastic covers and the plaster figurines on the walls and on shelves cheap knickknacks similar to those she’d seen at her girlfriends’ apartments in the East Village. Panchita came in and was introduced to everyone. She looked to be about thirty-five years of age, some thirty years younger than Tumba Santiago. Panchita was the color of pumpkin pie, her hair blond, peroxided and processed, her face pretty, if chubby. Her body, also tending toward excess, seemed poured into green slacks that ended a few inches above her ankles and only accentuated her chubbiness. She wore a loose blouse and high heels and was made up heavily. From her earlobes hung enormous, elaborate earrings resembling crystal chandeliers. On either wrist she wore brightly colored bracelets. Over this ensemble she wore an apron.

  “You Millie’s daughter?” he asked once Vidamía was sitting in an easy chair.

&nbs
p; “No, Titi Milagros is my aunt. I’m Elsa’s daughter,” she said.

  “La americanita,” Panchita said, wiping her hands on the apron, retrieving a handkerchief and wiping the sweat from her forehead. “The one you told me about, Tumba.”

  “Sí, sí, pero ella habla español,” her grandfather said, explaining proudly that she spoke Spanish, and, looking at Vidamía, hoped she would prove him right. “Verdad que sí?” he said, asking for her assent.

  “Sí, claro que sí. Desde que era chiquita,” Vidamía said, confidently explaining that she’d spoken the language ever since she was a little girl.

  “How’s your mother?” Tumba asked. “Is she still nervous?”

  “Yeah, still nervous, and on top of that, she doesn’t know I’m here. Worst than that, she doesn’t know that I have a moreno boyfriend.”

  “Novio,” her grandfather said, offering up the correct word for

  “boyfriend” in Spanish. He then reassured her that her secret was safe with him.

  Vidamía shook her head and said that novio sounded like they were getting married. Wyn looked a little lost as they spoke Spanish. Her grandfather smiled proudly, and pointed at Vidamía enthusiastically.

  “Soy muy joven pa’ casarme, güelo,” she said, telling him that she was too young to get married. He laughed and nodded and said he didn’t know about that, because she was very guapa, very attractive.

  “Tú, güelo. Tú eres el guapo,” she said, telling him that he was the handsome one.

  “You see, Panchita,” Tumba said proudly, urging his lady to take notice. “She’s not American. She’s Puerto Rican. Listen to her,” he added, directing Panchita back into the kitchen to finish cooking. A few moments later, Tumba Santiago was talking with his friend Flaco, the two of them arguing in Spanish about which was a better team, the Mets or the Yankees, and pretty much ignoring Vidamía and Wyndell, who watched in amazement as the two men argued and laughed. About twenty minutes later, Panchita came back into the room and announced that dinner was served. On the dinette table Panchita had set big plates of rice, beans, tostones, pork chops, lettuce and tomato salad, and plenty of soda and beer. With only four chairs at the kitchen dinette table, Flaco, Wyndell, Vidamía, and Tumba Santiago sat around the table, while Panchita stood eating near the stove. Wyndell got up to give her a seat, but Tumba Santiago ordered him back in his chair.