The Flamenco Academy

by Sarah Bird

  “What did interest Clementina was forgetting. Unfortunately amnesia was expensive. Amnesia required dresses of silk, shoes of kid leather, sheets from Portugal. It required the finery of her girlhood. But mostly it required an absence of scent. Only when her body and hair had been scrubbed with the plainest of soaps to remove any possible fragrance, only when her tiny apartment was cleaned of every particle of matter that might rot, only when nothing remained to remind her of a bombed perfume factory, of corpses bloating in a bullring, of the things hunger could force a woman to do, only then could she forget who she’d had to become. Forgetting was essential. Forgetting took all her money so she had none left to send Rosa. Memories of her old friend, of all Clementina owed her, proved impossible to forget. Rosa came in her dreams, as sad and bedraggled as Delicata, to remind Clementina that she owed her her life.

  “The years slid past, then the decades. In the beginning, when she was pretty and talented enough to have moved up from the back of the chorus line, she hadn’t wanted to for fear of calling attention to herself. When, at last, in a foreign country far from her father, from El Bala, from the passions of the Civil War, she felt it was safe to step into the spotlight, it was too late. She had already ruined her feet. It was a point of honor with Clementina that, though she might be in the last row, there would always be puffs of dust rising from her spot and no one else’s because she would be the one pounding dust a century old from the boards of the stage. Three decades of such stomping had taken their toll. When the pain became too great to ignore, she went to the best podiatrist in all of Buenos Aires. He gasped at her mangled toes and pronounced surgery the only answer.

  “Clementina hobbled out on her battered feet. She had seen the results of foot surgery, big toes that stuck out at ninety-degree angles, feet that curled up like sultan’s shoes. No, she would not allow anyone to cut her feet. Instead, she did what most of the dancers did: she found ways to deal with the pain. Some drank, some smoked herbs. Clementina did both, along with taking any of the medications that floated through the dressing rooms. Paregoric, opium tincture, beneficial for everything from teething babies to chronic diarrhea, became a favorite.

  “The orange syrup did relieve Clementina of her pain. Unfortunately, it also relieved her of her timing and the iron discipline that had kept her alive when so many others had perished. The orange syrup unlocked doors that had been closed thirty years before and Clementina wept for all she had lost. When her tears dried, she took stock. It was 1966. She was almost fifty, though she could pass for ten, fifteen, twenty years younger. Her body was firm, slender. Her feet would last another year doing three shows a day. Longer if she only had to teach. She had no savings since she’d spent every peso she’d earned pampering the horror of her life into submission. Clementina had to find a husband. A rich one. Preferably one very close to dying.

  “She joined the first troupe heading north. They danced up the continent to Mexico City. From there, they followed the Camino Real, the same route Clementina’s distant ancestors had taken in their conquest of the New World. It led her to the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, a once-majestic vaudeville palace, now, like her, on its last legs. Still, with the right lighting, she and the old place could be magnificent. The lighting was right the night that Ernesto Anaya sat in the audience. A lawyer who had grown wealthy accepting land as payment for his services, a widower whose wife had died before they could have children, he was the answer to her prayer. Ernesto. Ernesto Anaya.”

  Doña Carlota repeated her dead husband’s name as if it were the chant that broke a spell. Her voice grew weaker and weaker until it was the barest of whispers. Then she fell silent.

  “Doña Carlota?” The sun long set, the last of the piñon logs burned down to smoldering embers, a gloomy chill had entered the room. “Doña Carlota?”

  The old woman shivered and tugged the shawl more tightly around her shoulders. She nodded toward the fireplace and I placed another log on the hearth. Next she nodded toward the bottle of pain pills. I shook a couple out and handed them to her with a glass of water. She winced when she swallowed as if even that effort hurt. The new log caught fire with a crackling that was overly loud in the silent room.

  “Should I leave?”

  She held up one finger and I sat back down. As she waited for the pills to take effect, I studied the filigreed crucifixes, portraits of suffering saints, and beatific madonnas hanging on the wall. It took me a moment to realize that the dry scratching I heard was not leaves scraping against a window in a far corner of the big house; it was the old lady whispering.

  “Please,” she said again, waving a skeletal finger toward the massive armoire. It took a few more languid waves before I understood that she wanted me to retrieve something from the ornate antique cabinet. She shook her head no until I retrieved a box carved of rosewood and inlaid with lapis lazuli. She beckoned for me to bring the box to her. With some effort, she removed a thin gold chain from around her neck and handed it to me. A small key was threaded onto the chain. She gestured and I used the key to open the box. All it held was a Certificado de Nacimiento, a birth certificate, from El Hospital Virgen de las Nieves in Granada dated twenty-nine years ago.

  “Is this Tomás’s?”

  She nodded.

  The Nombre del Padre, father’s name, was left blank. In the space for Nombre del Madre a long name was carefully printed. Amid the ys and des was the name ROSA.

  Doña Carlota’s eyes had drifted shut. I raised my voice to ask her, “Was your friend Rosa Tomás’s grandmother? Great-grandmother?” When she didn’t answer, I raised my voice higher and asked the only important question, “Is Tomás gitano?”

  She screwed her eyes shut more tightly like a dreamer clinging to a dream, resisting being awakened. Though her eyes didn’t open, they relaxed. Doña Carlota sighed, nodded yes, then fell into a sleep heavy as death.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  I never had any choice about what to do with the truth Doña Carlota gave me. Tomás was an addiction. I craved him at a cellular level. I was a junkie who’d been clean for months only because I didn’t have money. The instant I had the means to procure my drug, I set about trying to make a connection. Doña Carlota’s truth was my means. I now had what Tomás desired most: proof of his authenticity.

  But I wanted more. I wanted Tomás’s entire story. Names, dates, places. I called the old lady repeatedly. Each time Teófilo answered and said he would ask La Doña if she felt up to speaking on the phone. Sometimes he would return to inform me that she was under the weather and would return my call when she felt better. Other times, he would not come back at all. I drove up to Santa Fe twice and knocked on the door guarded by Santiago but no one answered. I wanted more, but I had enough, enough of the story to accomplish what needed accomplishing.

  Up until the moment when Doña Carlota told me her secret, I had been dreading the high point of the New Mexico flamenco calendar, the Flamenco Festival Internacional. Instead of a celebration the festival that year would present only limitless humiliation. Everyone would know that I was the pathetic third leg of a triangle, the one who’d been abandoned by her lover, betrayed by her best friend. Armed with Doña Carlota’s secret, I had reason to endure the festival. She had given me another chance with Tomás. But only if I learned enough to be able to make full use of what information I did have, and the festival was nothing if not a place to learn. I was bolstered further when Alma informed me that I had been selected as one of the few locals to teach at that year’s festival. That honor would deflect some of the pity certain to rain down on me.

  In the weeks leading up to the festival, I prepared myself as best I could. Once again I told Leslie that I would be too busy to keep our regular therapy appointment. She answered that with the festival coming up I needed to see her more, not less, or all the work we had done would be lost. I told her I would think about it. Instead, I stopped taking the pills she’d prescribed, stopped returning her calls, and threw myself i
nto preparing for the classes I would be teaching.

  A week before the festival started, the fires that had been raging out of control in southern Colorado started creeping farther south. The smell of scorched newspaper hung in the air. Four firefighters had already been killed and still the fires moved down. On the morning of the opening, the Archbishop of Santa Fe announced that he would say a novena to lead all the citizens of New Mexico in prayers for the rain needed to save our state. I prayed for the strength to face the flamenco community. Then, that night, armed with the power of my secret, the history that only I knew, I marched across campus toward Rodey Theater, where the Carmen Amaya documentary was to be shown. As I neared the theater, I slowed my pace. I dawdled in the shadows until everyone had entered and the lights dimmed. After the film started, I slipped in unnoticed and found a seat near the back.

  Carmen Amaya in motion was the revelation and exultation I had expected. Then came the revelation I had not expected, the bomb that blew me out of the theater and into the grip of memory: Didi was coming home. I fled the theater and spent the rest of the night driving Route 66. I hurtled west to east. From the future to the past. From the moment that would define my future—when I learned Didi was returning—all the way back to the moment that had defined my past—that day in the oncologist’s office when I’d first met her.

  The new day was leaching the brilliance from the neon lights along Albuquerque’s stretch of Route 66 when I realized I had figured nothing out. It was only a few hours until I taught my first class and I was already exhausted.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Before I even reached the Flamenco Academy a river of sound cascaded out, surging against my body. Classes were in full swing. A banner above the academy announced: 16TH FLAMENCO FESTIVAL INTERNACIONAL BIENVENIDO! TONIGHT! OFELIA AT THE KIMO! My eyes stung from lack of sleep and forest fire smoke. Fortunately, I didn’t run into anyone I knew.

  The entire gym had been taken over for the festival. Every room held a class already in session. Each one presented not just a different turn of the flamenco kaleidoscope but twists on my own personal history with el arte as well. The first open doorway framed a famous Gypsy guitarist playing a bulerías for an advanced class. He filled the hall with crystalline falsetas, melodies, that floated above a raw, driving rhythm. He finished and a student asked, “Did you start with a D minor chord?”

  The guitarist shrugged and answered in Spanish, “If you say so.”

  The class laughed. Reading music, rehearsing, even knowing the names of the chords was antithetical to the renegade Gypsy spirit. I wanted to warn the laughing students that beneath that spontaneous, untutored surface lurked a Titanic-crushing iceberg of hard work.

  A rain of silver notes poured from the next classroom, where a teacher demonstrated the maligned art of castanets. Clacking two pieces of wood together, she rained intricate rhythms down on her students that dissolved the snags of their stuttering mistakes.

  The main studio, once a gym where past generations of Lobos shot basketballs and did jumping jacks, had been taken over by los pequeñitos, kids, being taught by sweet Blanca. A couple dozen little girls in puffy pastel dresses stamped their black patent leather Mary Janes on the academy’s wooden floor. The loudest stompers, though, were the three little boys in the class.

  Blanca caught sight of me and came over to the door, circling her hands and yelling behind her as she walked, “Bueno, niños! Let’s practice our hands. Come on, let me see those snakes twining around.”

  “Rae, how are you doing?”

  “Fine.” Leslie had told me some old hippie saying about how nine times out of ten when someone says they’re fine, it stands for Fucked-up, Insecure, Neurotic, and I can’t remember what the e was supposed to mean. I was not the one in ten who actually was fine.

  “Really?” She rubbed the side of my arm in a warm, comforting way that made tears come to my eyes. “I can’t believe Alma did that. You know, invited... her.”

  She didn’t say Didi’s name. She didn’t have to. It was all there in her face, all that I dreaded: sympathy, concern, pity. Of everything Didi had done, this might be the worst, making me an object of pity.

  I stepped away and, struggling to inject a note of peppiness into my voice, said, “Hey, your class is starting to revolt.”

  The boys had turned their twining snakes into rattlers bent on striking the shrieking girls.

  “Ay! Muchachos!” Bianca rushed to stop the boys’ rattler attacks. She pressed the boys’ fingers together so that they wouldn’t fan out in a way that flamenco purists considered lethally feminine. She pushed their little chests out and instructed, “Muy macho.”

  The little boys hardened their tender mouths, thrust out puny chests. I imagined Doña Carlota instructing Tomás, pushing his spindly chest out, resetting his heart so that it beat only to flamenco’s pulse and, for just a second, flamenco did seem like something carried in the blood, a disease that no one can be responsible for. I wondered if it was irresponsible for me to step into a classroom and pass the infection on to another group of innocents.

  I left and headed for the new addition, the Flamenco Academy itself. I shoved the doors open and there was Doña Carlota, staring down at me from the portrait that would be hanging at the entrance to the academy she had started long after I was gone and forgotten. So what if I knew her secrets? Some version of the truth? Queens always shared secrets with handmaidens because no one ever remembered the handmaidens, I lowered my eyes and I hurried on.

  I was late. I entered the studio with the high ceilings and honey-dipped floors where my engagement with flamenco had started. I felt nearly as fraudulent as I had that very first day. The class was big: several dozen students. I heard accents from all over the country as well as one that sounded Germanic, maybe Swedish. All my students were female, teens to late fifties, a comfortable mix of young and old, slender and plump, hip and dowdy. I was grateful that Alma had given me a beginner class. I wasn’t up to proving myself to a bunch of flamenco hotshots. In fact, I no longer felt up to flamenco at all.

  I went around the room. The students introduced themselves and told why they were there taking their first flamenco class. They had the usual assortment of reasons: exercise, love the flamenco beat, want to try something different. I would never have admitted in my first class why I was there, that I was sick with love and thought flamenco held the cure.

  I stamped my feet, warmed up with a few quick combinations. In the mirror I watched mouths fall open and friends turn to each other, to exchange expressions of amazement. I remembered then how astounding the rhythms that had become as automatic as breathing to me had been the first time I’d seen them demonstrated by Doña Carlota.

  “I’m sure we’ll be doing that by the end of the festival,” a girl with multiple piercings said sarcastically, her tongue stud flashing as she opened her mouth to laugh.

  “That and so much more,” I joked back. I stopped and drew myself up into the tall, proud flamenco postura. “Let’s warm up those feet.” I demonstrated a basic heel-toe stamp. The class imitated it with a few tentative taps.

  “No, no, no!” I silenced the weak stamping with a wave. “Not this.” I mocked the puny taps with a few inaudible heel pats. “This!” I hammered the floor. Everything I had learned at the Flamenco Academy poured back into my head. I opened my mouth and knowledge ran out. “Aim for a place one inch beneath the floor. If you’re going to make a mistake in flamenco, make a loud mistake! Make your mistake! Y otra vez! Try it again! Tacón! Tacón!” I pounded my heel, showing both the dance and the language it had to be taught in. “Y punta! I shifted between the heel and toe. “Louder! Okay, twice with each foot! Louder!”

  A clattering chaos echoed back to me.

  “Now this!” I demonstrated the basic heel-toe combination. “Start with a golpe! Golpe! Stamp! Tap! Tap! Stamp! Y UNO! Dos. Tres. UNO! Dos. Tres. UNO!”

  Behind me, the class stamped their feet. They felt the first inti
mations of what it was to turn your body into a machine that produced rhythm. All the students were staring at their feet as if their toes were on fire. I passed among them, tapping each woman under her chin, forcing her head up.

  “Cabeza! Arriba! Keep those heads up! Cuerpo! Bodies up!”

  The heads went up and we began again. Then, without their eyes telling their feet what to do, flamenco went where it was supposed to go, straight into the heart. The smiles of apology for all the mistakes their feet were making disappeared as the class tried to echo the beat I clapped out.

  “Y los brazos!” I held my arms in a circle in front of me.

  “Fuerte! Fuerte! Strong!” I patrolled the class, stiffening arms, making them stake out claims to the space around them. “No bellyache arms!” I ordered a student with the profile of an Aztec princess, just as Doña Carlota had when she’d corrected my own tentative, retracted arms. The student’s arms rose, making perfect, sweet dimples appear at the back of her shoulders.

  The class concentrated on their arms and the foot stamping became feeble and unfocused. I waved my arms. “Stop! Stop! I can’t stand the sound of those sick kitten paws! Now, let me hear those feet!”

  They picked up the volume and I spoke louder in order to be heard above the fumble-footed noise. “Flamenco is not the fox-trot! There is no box step in flamenco!” When all my students were gazing ahead, pounding out whatever beat they could manage, I announced, “Al frente!” pointed forward, and started walking, all the while keeping the beat with raised arms. The addition of bipedal locomotion threw the students into rictuses of concentration. They all looked as if they were adding long columns of numbers in their heads. It was exactly how I had looked my first class.

  Wanting to keep this momentum going, I barked at them like a drill instructor. “Flamenco is all about showing what’s inside of you! Telling the truth! The First Commandment of flamenco is, Dame la verdad! Who can tell us what that means?”