The Flamenco Academy

by Sarah Bird

  “Didi? Montenegro?” How could she have forgotten? “That’s his last name.”

  “Oh, right,” Didi muttered, distracted by her intense study of a regal beauty at the center of the group of smokers, a slender Latina dancer. We overheard the guitarist call out her name: “Liliana.”

  “Didi? Did you hear what I said?”

  “Montenegro. Mystery Man’s name. The old lady and Mystery Man, probably related. Not surprising, really. I mean, there can’t be many flamenco professionals in the state.” Didi didn’t take her eyes off Liliana, who had started slowly twining her arms up, fanning out her fingers, in time with the music. Holding her thumbs and forefinger up to make a square, Didi held it over her eye like a director framing. “Liliana is the head flamenco bitch,” she announced and made a sound like a camera clicking a photo.

  Her intense interest worried me. “Uh, Deeds, you seem pretty into this whole big pink bird thing.”

  “Rae-rae, I’m only trying to help you. What am I good at? Costuming, right? I have to know how you’re supposed to look. If you don’t look the part, you don’t hook the part, right?”

  Hearing Didi talk in her usual way about fame and how to achieve it comforted me.

  She concluded her study of Liliana, clapped her hands, and announced, “Let’s go shopping.”

  In a small shopping center near campus, we found the shop Doña Carlota had told us to visit, La Rosa y la Espina.

  “The Rose and the Thorn,” Didi translated.

  A bell above the door tinkled as we entered. The shop smelled of sandalwood and oranges and was filled with all things flamenco and Spanish—fringed shawls, long skirts, ivory combs, intricately painted fans, mantillas, rosaries carved from jade, pottery decorated with Moorish designs, silverwork filigreed like lace.

  Didi beelined immediately to a rack of skirts and riffled through them.

  A black skirt with several rows of ruffles and an inset of black polka dots swirling around it caught my eye. I plucked it off the rack. “What about this one?”

  Didi removed the two-toned skirt from my hand, tilted her head to the side, and appraised it. “Uh-uh, I don’t think so.”

  “I just thought—”

  “What?”

  “I would, you know, stand out. That he’d notice me in that skirt.”

  “Sweetie, we don’t want him to notice you because you look like a barber pole. Here.” She handed me a heavy black skirt with no ruffles, no polka dots, just a series of gores inset. It was the exact skirt Liliana had been wearing. “Buy that one,” Didi ordered.

  “May I hang that in the dressing room for you?” a friendly middle-aged Latina with a bad perm asked, taking the skirt from my hands. I figured she must be Teresa.

  “And this,” Didi said, finding the same skirt in her size and passing that to Teresa. To me she explained, “Just to keep you company.” She zeroed in on a slinky wine-colored top, then added a stretchy black lace number and a couple of fringed shawls to the pile.

  “And shoes?” Teresa asked, taking the clothes from us to hang in the dressing room.

  “Shoes!” Didi answered. “Yes, of course, shoes! We’re both eight and a half B.” As Teresa left, Didi called out after her, “Bring lots.”

  Teresa returned with a stack of boxes that she separated into two piles: semipro and pro. Of course, the pros were a lot more expensive, but those were the ones I wanted. I couldn’t appear in front of Tomás in anything less. When she removed the lids and folded back the crinkly tissue paper, the pricey smell of high-quality leather wafted out.

  “This style is the Fandango,” Teresa said, taking from its box a pair with a clever cutout at the base of the strap. She showed us other shoes, other styles, but before they were even in my hand or on my foot, I fell in love with the Fandangos—velvety black leather with a double strap across the front of the arch, medium heel. If I had never met Tomás, if I had never taken Doña Carlota’s class, I would have laughed at the idea of paying more than two hundred of the dollars I’d earned sweating at Puppy Taco for a pair of shoes. But I had, I had met Tomás and he made the shoes sexy, exotic, and unbearably necessary. I turned the shoe over. On the bottom were dozens of tiny nails.

  “Claves,” Teresa explained as I rubbed my thumb over the silver dots sprinkling the toes and heels like glitter. “Means nails. They make the sound,” she added.

  Didi and I wore the same shoe size, which had made borrowing easy over the years. Now she slid her feet into a pair of Gallardos and began tapping them on the tile floor. She caught my eye, winked at me, and asked Teresa casually, “Doña Carlota—she’s not by any chance related to—”

  There was no need to pump any further. Teresa was already primed. Shaking the fingers of her right hand beside her head as if she’d just burned them, she gushed forth. “Tomás? The tocaor? Dios mío, qué hunk.” Her gesture gave me a strange, dislocated feeling as if she could see the film that had been playing in my head nonstop since the night I walked through the gold curtains.

  Needing no further prompting, Teresa continued, “The old lady? Doña Carlota, she adopted him from some distant relative back in España, no? Practically bred him from birth to inherit the crown or something.” She leaned forward and added conspiratorially, “Just that I don’t think her boy wants to be the little prince.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Who knows? One of his primos, his cousin or something—you know how they are up north, everyone is everyone’s primo—anyway, one of his primos told my aunt that he went to this wild party in Albuquerque and never came back. Just took off with some güera. Oops, no offense. Some Anglo chick he met at the party and went off hitchhiking. He was supposed to be going home to Doña Carlota in Santa Fe, but he never showed up. No money. No car. Just gone. Been some stories about him playing at biker bars. The old lady’s furious. She raised him to be the next Paco de Lucía, not play in biker bars. You’ve got to wonder what the primo told Boy Wonder. See how those fit.”

  As I stood, Didi asked me, “Didn’t you say Mystery Man told you that that night was the worst night of his life?”

  I shot Didi a look that said Shut up. I couldn’t believe she would talk about Tomás in public like that. I wished I had never told her anything. I wished I were alone so I could pore over this new treasure, this revelation that he had been adopted into flamenco. This was what Tomás had been talking about. This was the blood problem.

  But Teresa was already asking, “You know Tomás? Shit! Please, don’t tell the old lady I’ve been running my mouth. The shop would close if she stopped sending her students. Please.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I don’t know him. She was kidding.”

  Teresa looked dubiously at me. The doorbell tinkled. “I’m sorry,” Teresa said, standing. “I’m the only one here today.” She left to wait on the new customer, calling back to us, “Your things are all in the dressing room. Wear the shoes when you try the skirts so you get the length right. Just let me know if you need any more help.”

  “Oh my God,” Didi hissed. “Mystery Man is a badass. I am definitely starting to see the appeal. So he dropped off the face of the earth after he met you? What is that all about?”

  I shrugged, not wanting to talk anymore. Not in a public place where anyone could hear. But I couldn’t silence the fear that rose up. “What if he never comes back?”

  “That kind? The bad boy? They always come back.”

  I trusted Didi’s wisdom about bad boys. More than that, I trusted a certainty I’d never had about anything before in my life that Tomás and I were destined to be together. It was my sino, my fate.

  “Besides, he’s in love with you and just doesn’t know it yet.”

  “Didi! Don’t jinx me.” More than ever I wanted to be left all alone with this new cache of information we’d stumbled upon. I wanted to extract every fleck of golden knowledge. But Didi was enraptured with the flamenco shoes.

  She pirouetted on her heel. “Aren’t these a
mazing?”

  She was right. The shoes had an amazing effect on me as well. They didn’t just make me taller by a couple of inches, they forced my shoulders to fall back so that my head floated up higher. And, instead of making me wobbly the way heels usually did, those shoes utterly rooted me to the earth as if the tiny silver claves had nailed me there.

  In the large fitting room, Didi announced, “Try-on party,” like when we were at Le DAV, then tossed the wine-colored leotard my way. “That will be amazing with your coloring.” She plucked out the skimpy black top for herself and we both slipped skirts on. They were heavy and slid into place with an authority all their own.

  “God, you’ve wasted away,” Didi said, watching the skirt settle onto my hipbones. “I’ve got to try the Mystery Man diet.” It was true; Didi and I wore the same size now.

  I went back out and found the skirt in a smaller size. When I returned, Didi was completely dressed with a silvery, fringed shawl thrown over her shoulders. Transfixed, she watched herself in the mirror as she twined her hands up, winding them through sinuous arabesques just as Liliana had, all to one of Doña Carlota’s beats, which she rapped out with her feet.

  “Didi? Deeds? What are you doing? You’re not into this, are you? This ‘flamingo’?”

  She froze with her arms curved above her head, the fringe of the shawl trembling between us. “Why not?”

  “Deeds, this is like a mission. My mission. You know? All the times I’ve helped you do the groundwork? Moral support? I helped you get in the door, then I disappeared, right? Because that was your thing. Deeds, this is my thing.”

  “But, Rae, can’t you see how amazing this is for me?”

  “For you? Why for you? You think it’s a joke.”

  “Not really.” She clapped her hands, almost duplicating a compás. “This is what has been missing in my work. These rhythms. Did you hear that shit? It is irresistible. I could read the damn phone book and it would be astonishing. I’ve discovered the missing ingredient. And the look.” She held her arms out. “This is a gift from God. This”—she waved her hands at the skirt, the shawl—“this is a total persona. Flamenco is in my blood.”

  “Your blood? Didi, you’re Filipino and Jewish.”

  “My mom is mostly Spanish. Her name is Ofelia, for God’s sake.” She pronounced it Oh-fay-lee-yuh, indisputably Spanish. “And, for all I know, Mort might have been Sephardic.”

  Doubt crinkled my face as I recalled the pale hipster Mr. Steinberg. Didi launched in. “Don’t you see how perfectly it all fits? What a great persona this is?” She swooped her arms up and swung them around her head, making the fringe loft and soar, then hula wildly.

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have to. As always, Didi read my mind. “Rae, flamenco is still your thing. You’re going to actually do it, actually learn to dance. I’m just going to skim the surface. Lift the look and the beats. Why aren’t you happy for me? You should be happy. You’re one step closer to Mystery Man and I’m one step closer to immortality.”

  I shook my head. “God, you’re such a bitch.”

  She threw the silver shawl around both our shoulders and dragged me close. “Yes, but I’m your bitch.” Didi’s laugh enclosed us in a conspiracy against the world. It was impossible not to laugh with her. She pirouetted, making us both spin around until the silver fringe danced and the silver nails tinkled like coins falling on the floor.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Y! Warm up!” Doña Carlota clapped out a tempo for the guitarist to pick up as she marched to the center of the class and took command. Knowing that the old lady had raised Tomás, that they were distantly related, I studied her, searching to find him in her fierce profile, the determined set of her shoulders, the brisk cadence of her speech.

  “Roll down!” she ordered, pressing a student’s back forward until her body folded in half.

  “Let the head relax! Relax the jaw! Let the weight of the head pull the spine down!”

  Clapping all the while, she strode over to the student guitarist assigned to play for our class. Plump, pale, and uncertain, Will was the exact opposite of Tomás. Doña pronounced his name “Weel.”

  “Por tangos, Will!” Doña ordered the style she wanted. “Dios mío, Will, por tangos!” She clapped right next to his ear, louder and louder until the discombobulated player picked up the exact tempo she was dictating.

  “Plié! Keep the quads released! And roll up! Ocho! Siete! Seis! Cinco! Cuatro! Tres! Dos! Uno! Cross the arms and let the weight of your torso pull you down! For flamenco, you have to be tight and loose. Cold and hot if you want to be able to do this.”

  I lifted my head from where it was hanging down between my legs and saw Doña Carlota do something out of the The Exorcist, pivoting her head until her chin swiveled behind her shoulder. I glanced over at Didi who bounced her eyebrows up to show that she was impressed as well.

  “You must be loose, loose, loose! Keep stretching. Today you begin to learn what flamenco is. Loosen up those shoulders! Spread the scapula!

  “Do you think flamenco is a dance? Is it polka dots and a rose between the teeth? Is it fans and mantillas? And roll up! Ocho! Siete! Seis! Cinco! Cuatro! Tres! Dos! Uno! No! That is not what flamenco is. It is a way of life. Until you understand that life none of you will be able to dance flamenco. Spread the scapula!”

  Doña Carlota patrolled the rows of dancers and stopped behind me. Her twisted fingers were hot on my back as they pushed my shoulder blades apart, then tugged my shoulders down, making my chest expand and rise. I breathed and my lungs inflated with the deepest breath I’d ever taken.

  She caught my eye and asked, “See? Better?”

  I nodded idiotically, boinging my head up and down, a hula doll on a car dashboard. The corners of her lips lifted the tiniest bit before she moved on, speaking as she went, “And down! Ocho! Siete! Seis! Cinco! Cuatro! Tres! Dos! Uno! Will!”

  The guitarist looked up at her, terrified.

  “Más lente, hombre!”

  He slowed down.

  “Y los brazos!” She stiffened her arms into a taut circle, ordering, “Fuerte! Fuerte! Strong!” She patrolled the class, stiffening limbs as she went.

  “No bellyache arms!” she barked at Blanca, correcting the sweet-faced Latina’s tentative, retracted posture, arms held in as if she had a stomachache. I put extra starch into my posture and the old lady gave me an approving nod as she passed.

  Doña Carlota strode to the front of the class. “You came here to learn flamenco. You are lucky. You will learn from the only teacher in this country who is gitana por las cuatro costaos, Gypsy on all four sides. Now stretch the whole body!” She reached up, then paused and pointed to baby-faced Blanca, whose leotard hugged the tender rolls of baby fat around her middle. “You, Chubby, reach those stumpy arms up!”

  As one, the entire class sucked in an outraged breath, Blanca’s pink face flamed crimson and her lower lip trembled.

  Doña Carlota made a peeved face and waved her hand, swatting away the tears gathering in the girl’s eyes. “Don’t cry, Chubby, you just got your first, most important lesson in flamenco: tell the truth. If you can’t hear the truth, you can’t tell the truth. You Americans, you gabachos, you payos, you say this is cruel. You believe that the truth goes away just because you are too polite to speak it. That it is an insult to ever mention that someone is black or fat or crippled.”

  “So? What?” Didi spoke out, loud the way she always talked to teachers, like they were anyone on the street.

  Doña Carlota stopped dead, her arms frozen in a stretch that made her look as if she were climbing an invisible ladder.

  “You just insult them to their faces? That’s not cruel?”

  Doña Carlota shot Didi a glance that would have withered a redwood. “American girls.” Everyone in the class tensed at the dismissive, acid tone of Doña Carlota’s voice. “You know what makes you so strong, so sure?”

  Didi gave a little half-shrug.

&nbs
p; “You don’t know how much you don’t know. That is how you go through the world and never see what is in front of your face. And now you come in here and dare to tell me that my way, the Gypsy way, is wrong?”

  “I wasn’t exactly saying that,” Didi said, not the least bit intimidated, though the rest of us were holding our breath, astonished to see such open conflict in a classroom.

  “I am sick of it! All you American girls traipse through here and think that you can become flamencas by taking classes at a university! You think you can learn flamenco like history or geometry. You can’t ‘learn’ flamenco. You must live flamenco.”

  “So why are you here if it can’t be taught?” Didi asked. I felt as if the studio had become a plane flying through a storm that had belly flopped through the worst turbulence any of us had ever experienced.

  Doña Carlota drew herself up until she was nothing but a steely armature. “What is your name?”

  Didi looked around, the calm attendant on this very bumpy flight, and answered, “Ofelia.” She rolled out the Spanish syllables of her mother’s name.

  “All right then, Oh-fay-lee-yuh, though you, especially you, don’t deserve it, I will tell you a story. A story from the world you’ve never seen. The world where flamenco was born. You, all of you, keep stretching! I will give you the beginning of the story, but you will only hear more of the story when you have earned it.”

  We mimicked the ladder-climbing stretch, lifting our arms as high as they would go, miming Doña Carlota’s movements perfectly. We did everything we could not to interrupt the strange spell that had fallen on the studio.

  “When my oldest brother was a little boy, he fell and landed on his nose and squashed it flat. So we called him Mono, Monkey, because of his squashed-flat nose. Is this cruel, to call a little boy whose face has been smashed Monkey? If your spine is a little crooked, where I grew up you were called Joroba, Hunchback. If your face was a little round, your cheeks a little puffy, your lips a little small, you were El Guarrito, Piglet. If your voice was high and squeaky, you were El Capón. If you liked sex in the wrong place, you were called La Peste, the Stink. The name my mother gave me was Juana María, but no one ever called me by that name so she gave it to one of my five little sisters who came after me. Everyone called me Miracielos, Looks at the Sky. Most Miracielos are crazy or retarded.”