No Matter How Much You Promise

by Edgardo Vega

  After they’d finished their supper, Vidamía asked them if they could have their dessert in the library. This was always a signal that something important was to be discussed. In spite of everything that had happened, their connection as a family was still solid enough to enjoy their private joke about the library: in every other library in the world people had to be silent, but theirs was a place to talk. As wealthy as they were, they sometimes joked that they should get one of those ninety-five-dollar dinette sets with the rubbery seats on the chairs for the library since any discussion of consequence in Rican tenement or project apartments always happened in the kitchen.

  When they were seated Barry asked her how things were going. Vidamía replied that they were going well. She looked at her mother, and Elsa smiled at her. It was a different smile than she’d ever seen on her mother’s face and Vidamía was suddenly reminded of being little again and watching her mother as she got ready to go out into the world—to school, or on a date, or to work—and how she’d always come to kiss her and hug her, trying her best to reassure her that she would return.

  “Mami, do you think you and Barry might like to come and hear Wyndell and Cliff perform?” she said nervously, but getting immediately to the point. “I mean, Grandpa Justino’s going to be playing too, so … I mean … I’ll understand if you …”

  Barry, taken by surprise, began to offer an excuse, but Elsa cut him off.

  “That’d be kind of interesting,” Elsa said. “Do you think it’ll be okay, Barry?”

  “Oh, sure,” Barry said, suddenly relieved.

  “Good,” Vidamía said. “I’ll put you on the guest list.”

  “Oh, no,” Barry said. “We’ll be fine. Save those places for your friends.”

  “Okay,” Vidamía said. “That was easy. Thursday or Friday?”

  “Thursday we’re both in the city,” Barry said.

  “Sure. Thursday’s fine,” Elsa said.

  Vidamía couldn’t believe it. Opening night. She was already anticipating the tension of introducing Wyndell to her mother. Barry excused himself and started to rise. Vidamía thanked him and then went over and kissed him before he left the room. She then kissed Elsa.

  “Thank you, mami,” she said and began leaving the room. “I have to call Cookie to have her phone and make the reservations.”

  She was halfway out the door when she heard Elsa call her.

  “Vidamía.”

  The sound of her mother’s voice saying her name sounded odd. For a moment she felt apprehensive. When she turned, her mother was standing with her arms open. Vidamía ran to her with the same feeling she’d had as a little girl whenever she saw her. She held on to Elsa for a long time, letting her tears overwhelm the two of them.

  “Oh, mami,” Vidamía said, the emotion making her voice sound pure and innocent.

  “Can you sit with me for a moment?” Elsa said.

  “Sure,” Vidamía said.

  “I need to ask you a favor.”

  “Sure. If it’s about Wyn, I understand. We’ll go slowly.”

  “No, I’ll be fine. I’m sure it’ll be okay meeting him. It’s my father I’m worried about. What am I going to say to him?”

  “Grandpa? Oh, he’s no problem. He’ll be glad to see you.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, he’s real cool. He’s into his own world and nothing seems to bother him much. He’s a day-to-day kind of person.”

  “Yeah, he was always like that.”

  “No, it’ll be great, mami.”

  They spoke for the next two hours, at first skirting those subjects which at times had presented problems for them. After a while they ended up laughing at their efforts and relaxed into an openness they had both thought impossible. At one point Vidamía took off her heels and then her earrings. As she did so, for the first time, she thanked Elsa genuinely for the gift. At midnight they got hungry and went to the kitchen and had pie à la mode and continued talking.

  Up on the stage the music was again subdued as the quintet played “Darn That Dream.” The song was so sad that Vidamía almost had to excuse herself to go the powder room. She recalled that one evening during a break in rehearsal Rebecca had been playing the tune and Cookie came over, leaned against the piano and began singing the song in her torchy voice. Wyndell came into the room, picked up his tenor and began playing little riffs behind the singing. Pretty soon the other musicians joined in and Cookie, unfazed, sang on. When they were done, Wyndell suggested that maybe she should sing a few songs with them. Cookie shook her head and declined politely. As the quintet played now, Vidamía saw that her sister was mouthing the words to the song as she swayed to the music.

  Darn that dream

  I dream each night.

  You say you love me

  And you hold me tight,

  But when I awake

  You’re out of sight,

  Oh, darn that dream.

  As the days passed, the memory of the day of Billy and Fawn’s death becoming less immediate, her mind eased into the task of storing away the tragedy, as one does mementos of a time beyond reach. On those occasions when she couldn’t avoid the memories and depression set in, Vidamía would go to the piano. Whether she was at the house in Tarrytown or at the Farrell loft, she sat down and played the blues chords that her father had taught her and which Wyndell had explained to her. There, alone, she let her fingers explore the keys and often found that she could improvise little melodies against the simple chord structure.

  “I usually cry after I finish,” she said to Wyndell when she explained how she played whenever the memories became too unbearable.

  “I understand,” Wyndell said, but he couldn’t imagine her pain. He turned to look away, her sorrow enveloping him. Suddenly he knew no amount of talking about it or playing would cure her pain. It would be there forever, like a dark bird nesting within her heart.

  Three weeks later, she and Lurleen were in the loft alone, Caitlin asleep, and Cookie and Cliff at a party on the Upper West Side that Vidamía hadn’t wanted to attend. They had taken a family vote and decided not to move to Brooklyn but to remain in the loft until things settled down and they could decide more calmly what to do next. Lurleen, embroidering a pattern on a shirt, again expressed regret that she had responded so harshly to the social worker about a religious service for Billy and Fawn the previous month.

  “I was wrong,” Lurleen said. “She was just a young woman trying to do her best. She was trying to help, but I can’t stand people shoving religion down folks’ throats as if that was the answer to everything.”

  And then she was truly angry. Her face became blotchy, the vein on her forehead thicker, as if it was going to burst through her skin at any moment. She turned her face to the wall to hide her sorrow and dug her fingers into the palms of her hands, wanting to hurt herself.

  “Maybe it’d help if I believed in God,” she said, turning back to face Vidamía, genuine doubt surfacing in her voice for the first time.

  “No, it wouldn’t, Mama,” Vidamía said. She stood up, went over to sit next to Lurleen, and smoothed her hair. “You believe in better things. You believe in being honest and good with people, and you believe there’s life up in the stars, and being around you makes people want to hope. If you believed in God then your mind’d be made up and you’d be just like every one of those TV preachers—smug and pontificating and pretty much unbearable.”

  Lurleen nodded and her gaze was once again far away. She missed Billy so much. War did awful things to folks, she thought. Donny Meekins, her own daddy, had been a paratrooper in Korea and had come back with half his leg missing and totally deaf; he couldn’t hear her playing music, but he tapped his one good foot and grinned lovingly at her when she played. She’d gone back last year and watched him die, holding his skeletal hand as he faded, his wonderful smile replaced by a grimace. She had watched Butterworth’s life ebb away in that hospital, and her Bill dying right along with him. She guessed losing
Fawn had been too much for Billy. Where was God in all this?

  “And you?” Lurleen said, looking up at Vidamía. “What do you believe?”

  “Same as you,” Vidamía said. “I’m your daughter, ain’t I?” she added playfully, allowing the language to undulate so that if you closed your eyes she sounded like a southern white person or perhaps an educated, university-trained black person returning home to a working-class family and needing to fit in. Then she became introspective and told Lurleen that it didn’t really matter. “It’s an irrelevancy, a philosophical distraction at best. It certainly hasn’t helped people get along any better, has it?” she added, using the language with the care that her mother had instilled in her, admiring more each day Elsa Santiago’s dogged insistence on certain things. Expressing herself correctly and concisely was one of them.

  “You’re sure right about that,” Lurleen said. “Those boys your daddy shot are dead, and I’m sure their mamas raised them to be God-fearing—just like your daddy was raised. But it had nothing to do with religion. Something else made those boys behave like they did. Something that doesn’t have a name yet, but it’s making everybody hate and be spiteful with each other. And then again, maybe it is religion. It can sure make folks smug and self-righteous.”

  They went on talking like that for nearly two hours, and then Cookie and Cliff came in with their friends. They turned on music and raided the refrigerator, the period of mourning now over and everyone going ahead with their lives as Lurleen had suggested. But Billy Farrell’s absence was palpable and immense and each day Lurleen’s loneliness grew until she began talking about returning to Tennessee and raising Caitlin back home. Vidamía had asked about Cookie and Cliff.

  “What’s gonna happen to them if you go back to Tennessee?” she said.

  Lurleen opened her eyes as if she were returning from sleep, and said, “Oh, yes, I hadn’t thought about that,” and this was the first time Vidamía had observed that sort of carelessness in Lurleen. She always remembered the most minute details concerning other people and made sure, whenever possible, that the other person’s needs were satisfied.

  “You’re right, darling,” Lurleen said, her eyes gaining some of their usual brightness as she fought the desolation of Billy’s loss. “Ole Lynn’s gone out to lunch for a bit, but she’s back. Not to worry about that. School’s started and we’re gonna have to get all the winter clothes aired and everything,” she rattled on, part of her mind in the future and another part in the past, fighting the tragedy that had sabotaged her happiness, but the strongest part of her being struggling to remain pure and not allow hatred to pollute it, believing that this was simply a swing of the pendulum toward evil and that she was undergoing not a trial, as Christians believed, but a part of the natural process that will eventually result in a sane civilization.

  Now, as Vidamía sat watching the stage, her eyes filled with tears that were a mixture of happiness and regret, she wished Lurleen had come to watch Cliff perform. But she hadn’t wanted to. Once Lurleen made up her mind there was no moving her. “He’ll be fine,” Lurleen had said. “He told me I’d make him nervous being there.” Grandma Maud had also decided not to attend the performance, not stating exactly why, but obviously still too shaken by Billy’s death. Grandpa Buck Sanderson, dressed in a suit and a tie and looking healthy and full of life, came with Ruby Broadway. She was in a red evening dress and a gold brocaded stole. They sat at a table near the stage and beamed as they watched Wyn and the quintet.

  68. Don’t Let a Little Black Stop You

  The quintet’s music filled her with indescribable joy. She knew enough about jazz to permit herself the luxury of commenting that Wyndell and the rest were “in the pocket.” She thought about her mother. The night they finally had their heart-to-heart talk which Vidamía had longed for, Elsa told Vidamía everything, unburdening herself of all she’d held in. She told her that when she was fourteen her sisters had taken her to a concert and she’d seen a group called Bobby Rodríguez y La Compañía perform the tune “She’s a Latin from Manhattan.”

  “Back when I was a teenager I thought Bobby Rodríguez had written the tune,” Elsa said. “I assumed that the song was about us. About Puerto Ricans living in New York.”

  “And it wasn’t?” Vidamía said, incredulously.

  “No, it was from some old Al Jolson movie. Do you know who Al Jolson was?”

  Vidamía said she hadn’t heard of him. As she told Vidamía about the movie, Elsa’s mind raced back to those days. She took a deep breath and said that the previous night she had turned on the television. As she flipped through the channels she saw a black-and-white movie and was fascinated by the fast-paced dialogue and the women darting back and forth, emoting in the mechanical way they had in those days. And there was Al Jolson. He was singing and moving around in a tuxedo and top hat, with at least a hundred dancers behind him, dressed exactly like him. All at once the shot faded and they appeared again in blackface, with Al Jolson singing his wretched “Mammy” song.

  “Do you want to hear this?” Elsa asked self-consciously. “Maybe this is too boring?”

  “Oh, no, mami. I really want to hear it. But can we sit outside?”

  “Sure,” Elsa said. They went back to the library, turned on the outdoor lights, and, opening the French doors, stepped out onto the terrace and sat in two of the large redwood chairs. The night was clear and the sky filled with stars. A slight breeze was blowing across the side lawn.

  Al Jolson’s character was called Al Howard, and she watched for a while before realizing that this was the movie that had the song “She’s a Latin from Manhattan.” Of course. What was the movie? She went searching for the TV Guide. It was Go Into Your Dance, made in 1935. Fifty-five years ago. Everyone in the film was dead by now. No, maybe not Ruby Keeler. She had outlived them all. Elsa watched on, wanting to hear Jolson sing the awful “She’s a Latin from Manhattan” song as she had on the tape back then when she had been obsessed with the tune.

  What a disappointment it had been to learn that Bobby Rodríguez hadn’t written “She’s a Latin from Manhattan.” At least someone had arranged the tune well and it had a good salsa beat. But Al Jolson made up like a black man angered her. Why would anyone want to be black even for a second? she thought. What was their need to get painted up like a Negro? But she wanted to hear the song, the awful song, and forced herself to watch the dopiness of the movie with its trite plot. Al Jolson’s character wants to perform on Broadway again. No one wants him. So he gets a gangster to put up the money for the show. The gangster’s wife has eyes for the Al Jolson character. The Ruby Keeler character is also in love with the Al Jolson character. It sounded like a silly soap opera, except everyone talked real fast.

  “It was unbelievable,” Elsa said. “This big Hollywood ‘She’s A Latin From Manhattan’ production with people doing a dopey combination of a tango and a samba, I guess. I couldn’t help myself.”

  Elsa explained how she began laughing hysterically and rolled off the couch. The more they sang the song, the more she laughed. And then, in the next scene, Al Jolson is in his dressing room getting made up in blackface. Soon, there’s Al Jolson in blackface, declaring his love for his white lady love. And then he’s back onstage, still in blackface, singing “Go Into Your Dance.” The song over, he’s back with his beloved.

  “And then,” Elsa said, grabbing Vidamía’s arm, “I almost died. He says, ‘I’m so happy that if I didn’t have this black on I’d kiss you.’ And she says, ‘Well, don’t let a little black stop you.’ As much as I had laughed, I was now totally out of my mind—with anger. I almost threw something at the television. When I woke up this morning I felt great. It was like I had six hundred hours of therapy in watching that movie. I can’t explain it. I was really angry. Angrier than I’ve ever been.”

  “About the guy getting painted up?”

  “Everything. I don’t know. It was very confusing. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah,
it was a racist movie.”

  “Sure, this country has always been clumsy about that kind of stuff,” Elsa said. “To them it’s all one nonwhite group. Blacks and Latinos as one group, so that they don’t have to deal with differences in people.”

  “No, I understand,” Vidamía said, and thought about the arguments she’d had with Wyn. “Americans want us to forget we’re Puerto Rican.”

  “Exactly. I’m the real Latin from Manhattan, a Loisaida homegirl with a Ph.D. in psychology, not that Al Jolson thing, or Chiquita Banana, Carmen Miranda, or Charo with all that cuchi-cuchi booshit, like the homegirls used to say. I’m the real thing. But I was thinking of the thing the actress said at the end when Jolson said he’d kiss her if it wasn’t for the black greasepaint.”

  “What?”

  “‘Don’t let a little black stop you.’ It’s kind of what I’ve done.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “La manchita de plátano,” Elsa said, using the Puerto Rican euphemism for the presence of African blood in one’s background—the “plantain stain”—which all Puerto Ricans supposedly share, no matter how white they may appear. “The little black doesn’t stop you, does it?”

  “You mean because of Grandpa?”

  “Yeah,” Elsa answered uncomfortably.

  “No, I don’t think about it,” Vidamía said. “It’s fine with me. In fact I’m kind of proud of having African blood.”