The Flamenco Academy

by Sarah Bird

  “ ‘You know what los castellanos like to say,’ Little Burro announced to the group in her foghorn voice. ‘Everyone knows how to dance. Only we gitanas know how to walk.’

  “Even the little girls imitated their mothers’ special Gypsy way of walking, hips swaying like a baby rocking in a cradle. I cocked out my own little-girl hips, put the stack of baskets I was carrying onto one, and followed the women. I tried to make the hem of my dress twitch back and forth, the way theirs did, swishing figure eights around their knees. But I only succeeded in getting a stitch in my side.

  “In Granada, we were a cloud of gaudy butterflies descending upon a hill of black ants. The town women all wore black. I saw how they shrank from us as we approached, stepping aside, pulling their children to them, staring. I saw how our women pretended not to notice. How their voices grew louder, the sway of their hips looser. How they spread out to take over even more of the narrow street. Little Burro’s harsh laughter bounced off the tall buildings and echoed back down to slap the women in black who walked carefully, side by side, whispering to one another about us behind their black shawls.

  “Then we entered my favorite street, Calle de los Geranios, Geranium Street. On every balcony, the owners set out pots of red, pink, and white geraniums. I lingered, staying behind while the women’s party moved away and their blaring voices and rasping laughter came back to me in echoes that grew fainter and fainter, until the quiet of the street returned. Water dripped from the terra-cotta pots above my head, turning the cobbles under my feet into river rocks. Two canaries in a cage nailed to the wall outside a second-story window began to sing. The sun shone on their yellow feathers, but their eyes, like tiny, shriveled currants, reflected nothing. These people believed that canaries sang better if they couldn’t see the world beyond their tiny cages, so they put the birds’ eyes out. They must have been right, because nowhere on earth do canaries sing as beautifully as they do in Granada.

  “Their song and the smell of that street were like a taste I hungered for but could never satisfy. All around me, the fragrance of geraniums scrubbed the air of the narrow street with a scent so pure I felt purified, as if all the dirt, the lice, the scabs had been washed away. I breathed in the clean, geranium air and the canaries’ songs poured down on me from the balconies overhead like miniature waterfalls. I listened until all the other sounds in my head stopped and it was filled only with birdsong and geranium purity.

  “In the next moment, I realized I could no longer hear even the echoes of the women. Panic overtook me as if the beating of my own heart had stopped. I ran after the others, unable to imagine that life could continue without my family, mi tribu.

  “I caught up with them as they rounded the corner, then slowed down because they were approaching a certain tienda de tabaco run by a woman who hated us more than all the women of the town put together. She was there that day waiting, a big woman, gray hair yanked back in a bun, white apron tied over gray cardigan sweater, sweeping the street in front of her tobacco shop. As we drew closer, she held her arms out and blocked the area she had just cleaned.

  “ ‘Don’t walk here! Don’t bring your Gypsy dirt, the shit from the animals you sleep with, here!’

  “We all sneered at her but moved away. All except Little Deaf One, who walked right up to the stout woman.

  “ ‘What do you think you are doing!’ the woman screamed at her.

  “Of course, Little Deaf One couldn’t hear and kept trying to pass.

  “The shop owner waved her hands furiously. You didn’t need ears to understand what she meant. We all stopped and watched. Everyone on the street watched. People awakened in the apartments upstairs, opened their shutters, and screamed down, ‘Go around, you stinking Gypsy bitch!’

  “These are the words we had been waiting for. We lunged at the shopkeeper, screaming in our language, ‘Achanta la mui! Achanta la mui!’

  “ ‘You shut your mouths, you Gypsy whores!’ someone who understood Caló shouted back at us.

  “My mother pushed everyone aside and stood with her face so close to the shop owner’s that her spittle sprayed the woman as she hissed at her, ‘Whores? You call us whores? You, woman who stands in the doorway to make love!’

  “The shop owner gasped and tried to slap my mother, but her hand caught only the wind. Ducking back, my mother hurled the worst Gypsy insult of all: ‘Anda ya! Que te gusta beber mente para que se te ponga gorda la pepitilla!’

  “This time the gasp came from everyone on the street for, in perfect Spanish, my mother had accused the woman of drinking mint tea to fatten her clitoris. The woman swung her broom at my mother’s head. Burriquita stepped forward, grabbed the broom handle, and twisted it out of the woman’s hand with a flick of her thick wrist. Then Dried Wood, La Sordita, and my mother swarmed over the shopkeeper like a flock of blue jays pecking and screeching at the poor woman. In the uproar, only I noticed my mother slip into the store, take a sack of Silver Horse tobacco, and slide it beneath her skirt.

  “Seeing that the townswomen were getting the worst of things, a cry went up: ‘Call la guardia!’

  “At this, we withdrew. The guardia civil were the worst torturers of Gypsies. Only last week Little Burro’s husband had been arrested for hunting snails on the estate of a rich absentee landowner who lived in Madrid and both his thumbs had been broken. We backed down the street shouting curses and fixing mal de ojo on the shopkeeper until we turned the corner.

  “Several blocks later my mother called a stop and pulled out the bag of Silver Horse. The women, who weren’t allowed to smoke in front of their men, eagerly rolled up the tobacco in whatever scraps of newspaper they could find. By the time we were finished smoking our cigarettes, the story had changed: we weren’t chased away, we’d left in triumph after we’d beaten los payos again with our quick wits and even quicker fingers. The proof was the cigarettes we smoked.

  “This is the way Gypsies see the world. Always, always, always, we must be the ones who outsmart the payo. To celebrate, my mother started las palmas. Just a little sordas, a muffled handclap with the palm cupped, not the loud secas, dry, clacking on the flat palm.

  “My mother clapped...” Doña Carlota waved at the class and they clapped with her.

  “I clapped contratiempo.” She slapped out a counterrhythm and pointed at me to pick it up.

  “Then we started los pitos. Dried Wood was as good as her name, her fingers sounding like old sticks cracking as they clicked together.”

  Doña Carlota’s twisted fingers snapping together rang out. She pointed at Didi, who was good at imitating the rifle crack of La Doña’s pitos.

  “Little Burro started the jaleo. Vamos ya!”

  La Doña didn’t have to repeat the exclamation a third time—the class immediately echoed Little Burro’s jaleo.

  “Little Deaf One, who could feel rhythm, was the first to raise the ruffles of her skirt and tap out an answering rhythm with her heels as she danced down the street.

  “All the rest of us shouted encouragement at La Sordita. ‘Vamos ya!’

  “La Burriquita was next to take her turn dancing. Then Palo Seco. Me. Then my mother. She went last because everyone knew she was the best. We were all en compás with her. The rhythm held us together so tightly that we became one person. One person with five pairs of dancing legs and five pairs of clapping, snapping hands.”

  In the mirror of Doña Carlota’s studio I saw that my classmates and I, so mesmerized by the story that we were following Doña Carlota without thinking, had all become sassy Gypsy women. We swung our hips, happy to be ostracized by the straitlaced townswomen who were threatened by our wild ways. We were rebels. We were bad. Didi caught my eye, grinned, and shook her raised skirt at me playfully.

  The class made a wild jaleo, yelling back every new cheer Doña Carlota taught us: “Arza! Así se baila!” When we were really moving, Doña Carlota pretended to fan her face as she called out, “Agua! Agua!”

  We didn’t need a tra
nslation to know that our teacher was calling for water because we were so hot. Doña Carlota calmed the pandemonium with little more than one circle of her arm. We clapped quiet palmas sordas as our feet automatically stayed en compás while we waited, expectant as good children in pajamas, teeth brushed, for the story to continue. La Doña did not disappoint.

  “The sun and the peasants from the sierra were thronging in as we reached the center of the city. The air echoed with the clang of cattle bells, the braying of mules and donkeys loaded with casks of wine and oil, baskets of fruit and vegetables from the country. A customs official in his belted uniform stopped everyone who passed, poking their bundles, searching for contraband. We strode like queens through the Bibarrambla, where the last Moorish king had watched bullfights and jousts.

  “From Bibarrambla, we wound our way to the cathedral, where the herb sellers hawked their wares: flor de azafrán for headaches and sadness; manzanilla for stomachaches and childbirth pains; genciana for men’s disease; azahar de naranjo for bad temper; alenjo for lunacy; siete azahares for boils and earache.

  “We passed the grand cathedral that the Catholic kings had built to try to outshine the Moorish rulers’ Alhambra. I shivered from more than the cold as I ran past the gray, forbidding church. It looked too much like the tomb it was with Fernando and Isabel lying side by side inside, the queen’s icy smile frozen for all eternity.

  “All the women crossed themselves and touched their hair in honor of the sad story of Isabel’s daughter, Juana la Loca. We gitanas loved Isabel’s daughter, Juana the Crazy. Juana had been married to Philip the Fair, the most handsome man in the kingdom. Poor Juana had fallen madly in love with her prince. And how did he repay her passionate love? By betraying her with every woman who crossed his path. Worse, he mocked her in front of the whole court. He beat her. He made her cut off her beautiful hair. Yet in spite of his cruelty, when he died Juana went mad with grief. She rode through Spain in a gloomy carriage pulled by eight horses carrying his coffin, refusing in her insanity to bury him, hoping until her dying day that her faithless husband would come back to life. Come back to her.

  “Is it any wonder that Gypsy women love Juana la Loca?” Doña Carlota stared right at me as if she knew that I was as crazed by love and beauty as poor, mad Juana had ever been.

  “At the market we sat in the dust beside our baskets and our piles of nails for so long that we looked like beautiful flowers wilted in the sun that nobody wanted. We pretended we didn’t notice the maids and the housewives passing us by, kicking more dust into our faces. When Mateo cried, my mother hiked up her blouse to nurse my new brother. As she stroked his clean, chubby cheek, the hairs on my cheek quivered, my body remembering when I was clean and sweet-smelling and she was gentle and affectionate to me too.

  “After another hour of the Granadina housewives passing us by with their noses in the air, my mother swatted at me as if this was all my fault.

  “ ‘Do you piss horchata?’ she asked me. ‘Do you shit bolichones?’ I knew what that meant. I had to begin begging. I put my head down and wished I was back in la Calle de los Geranios. ‘Then where is your food coming from today? Go, you lazy Gypsy bitch! Earn your keep!’

  “She shoved me toward a woman in a tight brown skirt carrying a string basket filled with onions and peppers. I stuck my hand out, but the woman never even looked at me. Neither did the next shopper, a buxom maid with a metal scapular bouncing on her breasts. A grandmother with a black scarf tied tightly around her head also ignored my outstretched hand and the piteous look on my face. In fact, all the Granadans were so convincing in their pretense that they didn’t see me that I had to touch myself to believe that I was really there.

  “My mother waved for me to come to her. Her green eyes had turned pale as olives, a sure sign that she was furious. I had never seen her so angry, and in my fear, my ears stopped working. All the noise of the market stopped. Gone were the voices of our men trading horses and mules. Gone were the cries of the cheese vendor yelling about the creaminess of his manchego. Gone were the tinkling bells of the churro cart. I went to my mother. As soon as I was near enough, she grabbed the soft flesh on the inside of my arm and twisted until tears sprang into my eyes. I wiped them away. I had learned long ago that crying only made her pinch harder.

  “She yanked me to her so that my ear was next to her beautiful mouth and hissed into it, ‘If you can’t earn your keep, we’ll have to sell you to the payos, like Mariluna.’

  “All us children lived in terror of the fate of Mariluna. She was the last of nine children born to a family on Sacromonte even poorer than my own. Her parents had sold her to the owner of the brick factory. We saw Mariluna at the market, trailing behind the family cook, her thin shoulders slumped under the weight of the baskets she carried in either hand, her head bent, her Gypsy defiance beaten out of her. We had heard that she slept on the floor of the kitchen and was fed scraps from the family’s table. It was probably a better life than the one she had had with her family. But, in her family, everyone slept on the floor and shared scraps. With los payos, only Mariluna and the dogs slept on the floor and ate scraps.

  “With the threat of Mariluna’s fate ringing in my ears, my mother shoved me away. In panic, I ran up to the first person who crossed my path and jabbed my palm at a señora wearing a fancy navy blue drop-waist dress with stockings of finely spun white lisle cotton. A cloche hat shaded her ivory skin. Her maid, a stout, red-faced woman with stumpy bow legs, pushed me away.

  “ ‘Para la niña,’ I whimpered, gesturing pathetically toward my baby brother. My mother had slumped into an equally pathetic lump in the dust. Even chubby-cheeked little Mateo managed to appear near death.

  “ ‘Don’t bother la señora tan linda, tan bonita,’ my mother yelled in Spanish, smiling wanly at the grand lady. In our own language, she hissed to me, ‘Either you get money from this bitch or I will when I sell you to her.’

  “I ran after the woman, harrying her like a dog nipping at the heels of a bull. My eyes were a baby fawn’s, so sweet, so sad as I begged, ‘My little brother, the baby, he’s sick. My mother has no milk for him. We have not eaten in three days. Un duro para la niña, señora. It will bring you good luck. You and your children.’ I sharpened my voice and hardened my eyes as I said ‘your children.’ These words reached behind the wall the woman put between herself and the dirty beggar.

  “The grand lady’s eyes flickered to my mother and I knew she was thinking of her own children and the curse I might place upon them. Her pace slowed. I put back on my pitiful beggar-girl smile, so that she would forget I had frightened her and would remember only that she was a kind and generous woman whom everyone admired for her saintly ways. I knew I had her, but then the maid pushed her lady forward and swatted hard at me.

  “The maid was doing her job to swat at me, but she hit me harder than she needed to. Hard enough to freeze my eyes into beams of pure Gypsy menace as I snarled, ‘Good luck to give. Very bad luck not to give. Who knows what might happen?’

  “La señora dipped into her purse then and put three centimos on my palm. These coins were so light they could blow away like dried leaves and were worth barely more. This time I was not the fawn, sweet and sad; this time in my eyes la señora saw the color of her children’s flesh, dead and cold. I spit on her money. The bitch crossed herself and hurried away.

  “I gave my mother the coins and she cursed me for letting the lady go with such a pittance. I believe that my mother might have found a buyer for me that day if a great clanking had not caught her attention. Everyone turned toward it. We had seen motorcars before, but only from a distance and certainly never in the market. The traders’ horses, already on edge from having Mentholatum smeared on their rectums and fed coffee beans to give them a bolt of temporary spirit, reared and snorted and fought the traders, trying to run in terror from the clattering machine. A coop of clucking chickens burst free and the birds escaped, wings flapping wildly as windmills, straight into t
he path of what had scared them. Turnips, beets, heads of cabbage rolled out of the baskets shoppers dropped in their panic.

  “In all the chaos, only one person remained calm: my mother. Anyone looking at her as she wedged her thumb into her baby’s mouth to break his suction on her nipple would have thought she didn’t have a care in the world. Only I noticed the centimos she’d taken from me roll down her faded pink skirt as she stood. This told me how scared my mother really was, for money meant more to her than air. Seeing how well she could hide her true feelings gave me the stupid hope that Delicata was hiding her true feelings of love for me. That when she slapped and cursed me, she was doing it out of love, to toughen me up for a world that hated my kind.

  “I, on the other hand, could not hide my fear of this automóvil. Only the week before a little boy had been crushed with the touch of a tire. I’d seen the spot on Calle Ángel smeared with bits of his heart and guts. So, like the brainless chickens, in my fright I ran straight into the middle of the road.

  “The machine stopped. It did not have a top. The driver stood up and pushed the goggles he wore back over his head. Two white circles stood out from the dirt on his face. His hair was the color of cinnamon. Underneath the dirt were freckles of the same color. He was un sueco, a Swede. This is what we called any of the tourists from the north who grew so heated that they turned the color of boiled tomatoes in weather we found chilly.

  “Perdóneme, señorita.’ The sueco held out a hand covered by a glove of yellow leather and indicated the road. ‘Con su permiso.’

  “Even for a sueco it was strange to speak so politely to a Gypsy. I looked around and saw the faces of the maids and their mistresses who had, only seconds before, pretended I did not exist. I saw the face of the elegant lady who had dismissed me with her dead leaf money. I knew they all expected me to ask him for money, so I stuck my hand out and asked: