by Sarah Bird
Just last week, I read about Didi’s latest triumph. Like all flamencos, my knees and spine are starting to require attention and I have been seeing a chiropractor. With the aromatherapy machine wafting a soothing blend of lavender and bergamot around the reception area, I leafed through a pile of magazines, passing up Runner’s World and Yoga Journal in favor of the current issue of Frisson, The Magazine of Cultural Exploration.
It was a shock to find her staring at me from a full page photo. Didi didn’t seem as if she had aged so much, as she’d finally grown into the world-weariness she’d been born with. In the accompanying review, her latest production, Ofelia Unbound, was called “a one-woman show that channeled Federico García Lorca, Carmen Amaya, and Judy Garland.” The review went on to say that “in a vertiginous performance, La O teeters perilously close to the very edge of self-immolation.”
La O. It must be a promotion to move from being a one-name celebrity to a one-letter celebrity.
The evidence of Didi and Tomás’s fame calms me. The world sees what I had always seen. Others are as captivated as I had been from the very first moment. I wasn’t crazy. I was never crazy.
In a few minutes, at our regular time just after sunrise, Collin will join me. We’ll walk along English Bay and throw sticks for the two big dogs we adopted from the pound. I’ll see in his kind attention to them, in his joy in their progress from malnourished discards to sleek beauties, the good father he will be to the children he wants to have with me. The air will be cool and moist. We’ll nod at other couples passing in the opposite direction. Collin and I will find a private piece of driftwood to sit on and watch the sun, a courteous and remote sun, rise unobtrusively. In the soft, morning light, Collin will gaze at me and I’ll see the same grateful astonishment on his face that I used to beam onto Didi.
For Collin, I am as exotic and wild and free as Didi was for me. I’ve pulled him through more doors and out of more of the studio rooms where he made an early fortune with computers than he’d ever dreamed of. Collin will be wearing something fleecy, a vest, a jacket the color of moss, of a fawn. He never wears black. He will make his body into a cradle to hold me while we watch the end of the soft pink sunrise reflect off orange hulls of tankers from China, from Liberia, from the Netherlands. He will kiss my neck. He will say he wants our children to have my lips. I will say his eyes. He will lock his arms around me and ask where I want to go for coffee. Because Collin reminds me of all the good things about my father, I will suggest a bakery in a neighborhood off West Broadway where a lot of new immigrants from the Czech Republic have settled. I will buy kolaches filled with blueberries that are better than any I ever ate in Houdek and Collin will tease me about “my people, the pink people.”
The waves roll in all the way from Asia and pound the shore just beyond my safe square of blanket. My mug of tea has gone cold. The glitter of phosphorescence fades as the sky lightens with a murky, opalescent glow announced by the barest tinge of rose at the edges. The soft pastel awakening suits me. This isn’t the diamond-sharp morning of New Mexico, colors so bright they pierce your eyes. The sun, even fully risen on this misty day, is a whisper compared to that full-throated shout. Here, beside the ocean, in the milky light, a person is not forced to examine every detail. I can stop for a while, puzzling out whose story it was and what my part in it had been. For a moment, I can simply watch the gulls gliding above the sea, knifing in, then soaring back up.
In the light, there are other distractions to take my attention from the pounding of the waves. Bulbous-headed tubes of seaweed coil along the beach like dozing anacondas. Crabs skitter past, scratching wavering lines in the packed sand. An astounding bouquet of pulpy starfish in violet, mauve, ultramarine, coral, blossoms in a tidal pool. Starfish arms entwine comically like rubber-legged drunks holding each other up.
The pounding recedes. The waves slosh in.
I toss out the last of my cold tea. Memory is a luxury I only allow myself once a week. Twice at the most. I limit the time I spend asking why. I have already lost so many years, I can’t afford to waste another moment looking back. All I care about now is what is ahead.
Some would say I settled, but they are wrong. I like my new life. I like the soft air, the pink sun. I like performing with my troupe. I like throwing sticks for the dogs and deciding where to have coffee. I like being the one sought after; the exotic, wild, free one. The one who loves a little less. Perhaps those who would say I’ve settled have never known the shadows. For me, being, not the tallest, but a tree tall enough to feel the sun on my leaves, has been worth everything.
Still, sometimes in my dreams, once again I follow Tomás through the night and he leads me into a hidden park where he plays falsetas so beautiful that the leaves on the trees turn into hearts and the stars are silver smears across the sky. And all the vowels sing their names. They sing the A. The E. The I. The O. The U. And sometimes they sing the Y.
Cancioncilla del Primer Desco
En la mañana verde,
quería ser corazón,
Corazón.
Y en la tarde madura
quería ser ruiseñor,
Ruiseñor.
(Alma,
ponte color de naranja.
Alma,
ponte color de naranja.)
En la mañana viva
yo quería ser yo.
Corazón.
Y en la tarde caída
quería ser mi voz.
Ruiseñor.
¡Alma,
ponte color de naranja!
¡Alma,
ponte color de naranja!
—Federico García Lorca (1898-1936)
Titles
Coming soon in eBooks:
Sarah Bird's Texas Quartet
Alamo House
Boyfriend School
Mommy Club
Virgin of the Rodeo
as well as her one mystery,
Do Evil Cheerfully
Sarah's Books available in print:
Yokota Officers Club
How Perfect Is That
The Gap Year
Acknowledgments
Juanito Truitt believes that his influence was “no more than a flea fart in the Grand Canyon.” In fact, Juanito, extraordinary musician, teacher, and most humane of flamencos, was my guide deep into the Grand Canyon of flamenco in general and New Mexico flamenco in particular.
Eva Encinias-Sandoval, who gave flamenco its academic home in the New World, deserves an entire novel all to herself.
Because she is as generous as she is smart, Carol Dawson maintains that she didn’t save this book. I know that she did.
My gratitude goes to all the dancers who patiently explained their art and to the incandescent teachers who allowed me to join or observe their classes: Carmen “La Chiqui” Linares, Leah Powell, Ramona Garduno, Joaquin Encinias, Marisol Encinias, Farruquito, Fenny Kuo, Sue Drean, Karen Richmond, Helena Melone, Lili del Castillo, Celeste Serna, and to the tireless staff of Festival Flamenco Internacional de Albuquerque.
I thank the astonishing guitarists who elucidated and inspired me: John Truitt, Calvin Hazen, Ellen Baca, Lorenzo and Gustavo Pimentel of Pimentel & Sons Guitars, Marija Temo, and Gabriel Bird-Jones.
Gianna LaMorte, Sophie Echeverria, Rubina Carmona, Kay Bird, Hannah Neal, Carmella Padilla, Emily Tracy-Haas, Yvonne Tocquiny, Kathleen Orillion, Judith Walker, Ixchel Rosal, Inez Russell, Rose Reyes, Jim Magnuson, and Steve Harrigan generously shared formative insights about flamenco, obsessive love, the soul of New Mexico, friendship, and how to write a novel.
I thank Bill and the rest of the extraordinary Bridgers family for helping me survive an Albuquerque adolescence.
My thanks to Hannah Neal for sharing the writing of her mother, dancer and dance critic Josie Neal.
I am indebted to the gifted writers who have captured flamenco on the page and recommend to readers who would like to explore el arte further Donn Pohren, Paul Hecht, Walter Starkie, Jason Webster, Timothy
Mitchell, Paco Sevilla, Gwynne Edwards, Ninotchka Bennahum, William Washabaugh, Barbara Thiel-Cramer, Dorien Ross, Will Kirkland, James Woodall, Robin Totton, Merrill F. McLane, Felix Grande, and dancer and dance critic Josie Neal.
Jocelyn Ajami’s documentary about Carmen Amaya, Queen of the Gypsies, is a revelation. The films of Carlos Saura are indispensable.
Thank you, Kristine Dahl; no writer ever had better representation or a truer friend.
Publishing with Knopf is a novelist’s dream and here is why: Gabriele Wilson designed, in the original print version, a stunning jacket to wrap around Robert Oisson’s handsome text package. Kathleen Fridella marshaled the long march toward literacy. Kathryn Zuckerman and Nina Bourne made book promotion an act of love. Millicent Bennett’s enthusiasm and kindness were essential. Ann Close looked at a few patchy fragments, saw a novel, and kept seeing it even when I couldn’t. This book is hers.
This book and all the best parts of my life wouldn’t exist without George Jones and Gabriel Bird-Jones.
Sarah Bird
Sarah Bird is the author of eight novels. Sarah’s work has been selected for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great Writers series; a Dobie-Paisano Fellowship; the Texas Literary Hall of Fame; New York Public Library’s 25 Books to Remember list; an Elle Magazine Reader’s Prize; a People Magazine’s Page Turners; Library Journal’s Best Novels; and a National Magazine Award for her columns in Texas Monthly. Sarah was recently voted Best Austin Author for the fourth time by the readers of the Austin Chronicle.
She has written screenplays for Paramount, CBS, Warner Bros, National Geographic, ABC, TNT, Hemdale Studio, and several independent producers. Sarah’s screen adaptation of her sixth novel, The Flamenco Academy, is currently being developed by Texas Avenue Films.
Sarah’s articles and essays have appeared in Oprah’s Magazine, NY Times Sunday Magazine, Real Simple, Mademoiselle, Glamour, Salon, Daily Beast, Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, MS, and Texas Observer.
Sarah earned a BA from the University of New Mexico in 1973 and received a fellowship to pursue an MA in journalism at University of Texas at Austin that same year. She is married to George Jones, and has one son, Gabriel Bird-Jones. Sarah makes her empty nest in Austin, Texas.
Connect with Sarah and all her news and events at:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sarahbirdauthor
Twitter: http://bit.ly/K4YEJX
Website: http://sarahbirdbooks.com/
Her latest, The Gap Year, a Library Journal Best of 2011, will be available in paperback July 17 at bookstores and online:
