Tumbadora
by Paul Stojsavljevic Flores
All I'm saying is that she better be ready. I don't want to be late because she thinks she’s got the rest of her life to be young and indecisive. It’s just like her to try to imitate me—to think she’ll be young forever. Because, if anything, I’m at least very sure what I want. I’ve known for some time now that youth is a state of mind, like an elastic lycra dress you fight all your life to fit and look good in. I look a lot younger than I am. And I’m not just saying that—the dress still fits, thank you very much. In fact, I have to get it back from my daughter before she stains it—she’s so irresponsible sometimes—and she better not be wearing it tonight, carajo.
Even at work they say we look and act the same. Then again, there aren’t many true redheads who speak Spanish at BART. That’s OK. Ana’s my best friend, too, and so I remind them I never had a sister, and that I was 16 when I had her, which explains why she still competes with me for men at the dances, why she steals my clothes, why we have the same friends—it’s disgusting. Her singing voice is tremendous, but I dance better. When I want to make her mad, I tell her that I may have been the poor soul who married a suizo, but I wasn’t the one born with the rhythm of a club foot, gracias a diós. Not that she can’t dance—she’s half Cuban, after all. It’s being half that she blames all her problems on. That’s how I know she’s jealous of me. Ana complains about having been born in Miami. She feels like she was left out of something. Imagine what I might have become, who I might have been, growing up in Cuba, she says. You would have been broke and tired of wearing the same old raggedy bra, I tell her, trying to bring her back to earth. Those things stink after a while, you know, even if you do wash them every day. But at least if we’d lived in Switzerland I could have visited your family in Havana. Which makes me feel sorry for her, really. Besides her never meeting my parents, descansen en paz, I can’t help but remember how much more beautiful Cuba was than the United States is. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t lose sleep over it—I’m here, aren’t I? Everything has its place, but Miami is the Cuban hell, pobrecita. Everyone and everything so fake, like they’re gonna get everything back just like it was when Fidel dies, like nothing’s changed—Hello? let’s get on with our lives, people.
That’s why I got married. Why I moved, twice. Because you can die of nostalgia—did you know that? I saw it on “Cristina.” These Miami Cubans wouldn’t leave their houses, wouldn’t get out of bed—not even for a party with salseros and arroz con pollo! They were suicidal, in severe culture shock, post-exile depression, etcetera. They brought a babalawo on stage to throw the shells and read their futures to see if they would ever recover. Even he was too ashamed to say what he saw. They were all overweight, though, and probably just bored and needed to join a gym and get some exercise. You get depressed when you’re bored, thinking about the past. You gotta roll with the punches, nena, like they say, until you get a chance to throw some of your own. I would’ve told those sorry cubanos on the show to remember that mental health comes from thinking young. It’s not about politics, it’s about attitude. Believe me: I’ve left plenty of guys on the dance floor who couldn’t lead. Young guys, too. Some of them were even cute. You think I ever looked back? Mama was a rollin stone, I tell Ana. You gotta be flexible, versatile. That’s where the power is. I don’t care if Leo did get me out of Cuba and Miami, he still can’t dance. I’m not staying home every weekend to nurse anybody’s ego. So she just better be ready to go.
“Don’t you ever wonder why Ana doesn’t get married?” he asks me, frowning in the doorway at the bottom of the stairs with my grandaughter hanging on his lean supervisor’s arms, waiting, as usual, to catch me with a guilt trip before I go out. His sandy hair is messed up from playing with Martiqua, and she’s knocked his eyeglasses crooked again. “How would you like to have to compete with you for attention?”
“That’s sweet, honey,” I tell him coming down the stairs. “I’m gonna be late to the show. And they’re good friends, so move, please. Goodnight, Martiquitita.”
“I’m surprised this baby was born,” he says in my ear while I’m kissing Martiqua good-bye. “How did they manage to sneak away from you—or did that happen on a cigarette break during intermission? Didn’t your mother warn you about musicians?”
“Please, Leo. Ana does what she wants. And don’t make racial slurs.”
“Who’s slurring? Don’t forget your sweater.”
He opens the closet door for me, but keeps talking from behind it.
“You probably scared Martiqua’s father off. Have you ever thought about that?” I shut the door and Martiqua starts squirming the more she hears her name. Leo thinks she’s playing, so he squeezes her tighter. “Which is probably why we still haven’t met him in three years.”
“You think I’d let my daughter have a child with a complete stranger, Leo?” “We’ve never had him in our house. That makes him a stranger to me.” I squeeze by him out the door, otherwise he would exhaust me with his little insults, and fight, and keep me from seeing my friends tonight at the show. It wouldn’t make any difference if he met Martiqua’s father. But he always needs something to complain about, and so when I get to the car, he’s coming down the front steps with one hand blocking the steel gray glare of the sun. Which reminds me I should put on my sunglasses.
I’ve tried to teach Leo to dance, but he just gets embarrassed and says he doesn’t have time to learn. He’s not a very social person, anyway, and I don’t have time to coach anyone. Which I could throw back in his face, if I wanted, about how he never paid any attention to Ana until she got pregnant. And he might gripe about me going out like I was single, when everyone knows I’m married, but the truth is I don’t mind him leaving me to my daughter. And he knows it. He’d never find another woman like me—and don’t think he doesn’t take advantage. I do it all in our house. Besides, Ana’s enough to handle. All I want is to get out and dance, but Ana falls for a pathetic line and droopy eyes like a widow at the dog pound, and there I am trying to beat the pack off of her. It was easier when she was a baby and I could just leave her at a table with my friends. They would watch her while I danced. She got to know everybody that way, like she had 20 mothers. That drove Leo crazy when he found out—She’s not a drink, you know. Well, if you’re too busy to fit your children into your life, then you don’t have any right to complain about how they’re raised. Tonight, though, he’s being a parent, a grandparent. He says he’s worried about Martiqua growing up, like Ana did supposedly, with Latin- American playboy musicians as her idea of a “responsible male role model.” Whatever.
I put my sunglasses on and roll down the window, waving to Martiqua in her white dress riding up with Leo’s grip around her waist, showing her cotton panties and her long caramel legs. The soles of her bare feet like milky coconut patties, so cute, but I’m late and have to pick up Ana. And I wouldn’t be able to take Martiqua without a fight. She’s been to many dances, though, and loves them, just like Ana did. She loves being around her gente, and the dances, the rumbas, are the closest to Cuba that I can take her.
I back out and Leo is in front of my door still trying to insult me.
“You don’t let your daughter be a mother, Olivia.”
“On the contrary, querido. She’s learning from the best.”
“Well, can’t you at least please wear nylons?”
“Don’t wait up.”
Halfway through the first set, two rubias are pushing past the long bar, Olivia, the shorter one, leading la mas alta Ana by the hand, treading through everyone who wasn’t dancing around the polished-brass end, the super-suave group of young Panameños with drooling eyes trailing behind for a chance to dig their gold-plated meathooks into Ana’s hips and creamy body. One hand dips out to caress low and around the waist, then a loud cackle like a rooster laughing breaks, even over the music, and there’s Olivia turning back into the bola of fake Italian suits and slick hair, stepping in front of Ana and throwing down a look like an anchor—the Red Sea splits freckles around Olivia’s lips and her chest goes out in full bust like: I had to teach my son not to touch things that weren’t his. He’s about your age now, but don’t think I still wouldn’t throw him over my knee and smack his ass. The guys laugh and back off after learning the lesson, even those who already knew it and just wanted to see Olivia shake.
Ana looks up over at me a second before they sit at the band’s table like it had been reserved for them—the only white table cloth in the hall of brown and burgundy—and then Olivia waves, too. I smile at them and smack the tumba three times quick for Martiqua, who’s not with them. I can see everyone who comes into La Rueda from where I’m standing. Guillermo always puts me in the back, because with my manotas I’m the loudest and also the tallest. I’m a rumbero by training, Elmano grande they called me in Cuba, Big Brother—but it seems you can’t make a decent wage anywhere playing rumba, unless you call it “latin jazz” or something. But it’s O.K. playing salsa with GuajiraSon, most of them cubanos like me, except they’ve been here longer. No problem, it’s the music that matters. I can hang out in the back playing these cueros, and survey the field, like leaning against the wall on the Malecón watching all the muchachas walk by. I’ll whistle, sometimes, si se pone caliente, but never to any girl in particular. I save that line for the drum. I like to see who can dance the best, who looks like they’re listening for me, who’s stepping to my rhythms, who’s talking with me. Muevale, muevale, pero muevale mulata. Así me gusta como mueve la cadera.
GuajiraSon hasn’t played San Francisco in months, even though this is where we’re based, and tonight the house is packed, hay ambiente, like they’ve missed us. So it’s no surprise that Olivia’s dancing already, even if it’s with that faggot, Juan Carlos, who may or may not be a faggot, but who dances like one, especially in those tight polyester slacks. The way he giggles, opens his mouth, and pinches his shoulders like he’s faking pain when he spins her, and then flips the hem of her dress up when she’s turning around. Not that I’m a serious dancer, you know, like those guys who take lessons and learn to throw girls up into the disco ball—que va, most of them are pretty boys, anyway—but I learned everything at the cabildo in Regla and I sure as hell don’t play pato patty-cake when I dance with a woman. Oye, caballero, you’ve got to have some self-respect on the dance floor, like it was your own bed you’re leading her to, como no, slow but determined, hips doing all the talking.
We start our cover of Hache y Machete, and people are jumping on the floor like a rush-hour train because everybody loves Hector Lavoe. Juan Carlos, though, who’s a borracho anyway, flips up the back of Olivia’s dress again, higher. Coño, pero se vío todo, mi socio, and she smacks his chest así bas, wagging her finger at him. But they keep dancing and nobody does anything because Juan Carlos and I aren’t the only ones who know that Olivia doesn’t wear underwear. A habit you pick up in Cuba, I’m afraid.
And then, like mother like daughter, I catch the full swell of Ana’s back, and her head swaying like fire in a cane field. One of the Panameños must have apologized. He’s in a white suit and blue silk shirt sliding her through the crowd of spinning lights and couples, her thick legs sweeping through long pasos like a smooth stroke of oars pulling against the sweaty marea out from the stage. Pero broder, Ana looks like una fresa con chocolate in that short black dress with spaghetti strings hanging over her shoulders. I pick up the beat when I see the Panameño drop his hand on the cusp of her ass and spin her. When she turns, she looks at me, and quickly she’s back in the grip of the Panameño. I haven’t seen Ana in a long time, since before GuajiraSon went on tour to México last summer, and even then we did most of our communicating through the drum, or her mother—except for that one night.
Tum Tum Tum
Tu-tum Tum-tum Tumbao
Tum-bao
I feel the drum start to talk, and even if it may be out of turn, I don’t try to keep it quiet. I let it blow. Tum tum-tum tumbao tum-tum Tum- tumbao tumbao tum-tum-tum Tumbao. Our timbalero, Gabriel, whacks me with the drum stick—Toque, mamahuebo. I can’t tell if he means keep going or hold the beat, cocksucker. I don’t care. My eyes are closed: hay que dar tambor. You have to understand the drum. Hector would.
Tum-tum Tum Tum-bao.
One night. One hijodelagranputa night. Which always reminds me I might have other children scattered out in the world, and to go see the doctor when possible—it’s not like there’s a health plan for playing in GuajiraSon, but I still send my wife, Caridad, what I can. The mail’s so bad, though, for all I know I could be wasting money. (A gringo habit, I’m afraid.) It’s been ten years since I’ve been back, and moving around and all, Caridad may have divorced me by now. No surprise. The drum is the only plan I know how to follow. I followed its voice right out of her house, out of La Habana, on tour and eventually to San Francisco, in and out of different bands. My Babalawo told me when I first learned to play that the drum would possess all of my love, that it was a jealous god, too, and that it would drive women crazy, but they would never be able to compete with it. The drum’s a world, a language all to itself. I’d have to pray, learn how to place myself between the drum and my loved ones.
You’d be surprised how easy that can be, to give everything to something until that something is everything. Improvised as the rules seem, the drum gives its guarantee. And however crazy that type of discipline, once you’re committed, at least you know it commands with love. So you’re never alone; you’re free to come and go; and always inspired because no thing, no time, no place is ever really loved the same as another, nor in the exact same way, but only in relation to the music it makes. Punto.
This is what the drum wants to talk about—itself, mainly; its love affairs, the fights it’s started and settled, the places it’s been, the great toques out in la calle con todo el barrio de fiesta, the people who played and sang with it, the cabildos where the best drum masters and rumberos taught la religión del tambor, Aña, the god in the drum, those who came before it wanting to pray, be cleansed, wanting to hear stories of lost roads, lost children who listen for it when they want to come home—what I’m guessing Ana heard that night a few years ago when we made Martiqua, here at La Rueda, during a rumba back stage after a show.
“I heard la isla in your hands,” she told me with her head bent to the side, the profile of her sharp nose like a full sail, looking very familiar, but not like from home, even though she spoke Cuban Spanish, chopping the s, flirting with silence, her shoulders, or her ass. Her chest was flushed where the open neck of her dress exposed the milky skin. She was young and rubia, but I thought she couldn’t be blushing after coming on with that old line. But when she reached out to hold my hands, lightly, as if she held my soul, I felt a different kind of desire, deeper and more mysterious, this woman who was looking for Cuba in my hands.
“I hope it was saying all the right things,” I told her.
“Do you mean your hands are tricky?” she asked, pressing her warm palms into mine, “even when the show’s over?”
“Pero, mi amor,” I told her, “the show never ends. I’m always ready to perform a masterpiece.”
“I bet that never fails to get a smile.”
“Like I said.”I had already changed my clothes and was wearing my white Kangol cap and a new blue-and-white dashiki. The stage had been closed down, but there was still plenty to drink and a few guys in the band, along with some other musicians, had brought my congas down and were playing around on them.
“Ramiro, remember I was telling you about my daughter. You should play with her—for her, I mean. Ana can really sing.” When I turned, I thought I was in a house of mirrors, because there was a woman who looked just like the one holding my hands, only shorter, whose name I couldn’t remember right away, but who had danced on stage many times with us in the past, inviting herself, usually, which was fine—she was a great dancer. She was always at these after- parties, laughing, joking, and hanging around the musicians. Everybody knew her in some way or another. And I remembered her name was Olivia. We danced together that night during the break and she told me that she had a daughter who was half Cuban and who wanted to sing.
“Que linda your daughter, Olivia. Do you know how to sing rumba, mi amor?” I asked Ana. She nodded.
“Of course,” Olivia piped. “You think I don’t raise my children right? She’s been at the cultural center since she was eleven. She sang with Los Muñequitos once.”
Ana’s long, thin cheeks blushed and started to inflate, her big green eyes smiling. There was a golden shine above her lip that I was tempted to pass my thumb across. I also liked the wide mouth and how her chin dropped down when I looked at her, like I had found out something secret about her, and she was embarrassed, which excited me.
I grabbed the clave sticks and called to the guys playing congas and they started singing—“Rosa que linda eres, Rosa que linda eres tu” until Ana smiled at me, and I nodded for her to take the verse over. “Vaya.” She started improvising lyrics like she had been singing rumba all her life. That takes a lot of courage and her voice was as playful as it was sincere. When she got to a part she liked in the song, she let it out, and echoed. It was a loose and warm voice, like rum; beautiful to hear her fly away—to pick me up and take me with her. De repente, I was lightheaded, the blood in my chest rushed to my face and hips, tingling me everywhere. Olivia must have felt it, too, because she leaned over in front of me, turned her head towards, me and bent her knees. She wiggled her shoulders on her way down and threw her ass out, two half moons in shiny silver grinning at me, saying “Oye, negrito, aquí tiene un cuero pa’ tocar.” I gave the clave away and took a drink, and threw out my hips at Olivia—pow! Vacunao.
We started dancing and the rumba broke out, laughing and cheers from the people who were gathered by Ana’s voice, laughing at her mother and I dancing like an old couple having an argument at the grocery store about her daughter. Everyone picked up the coro “Si cocina como camina quiero ver,” and kept it hot when Ana stepped into the center to kick her mother out and dance with me. The guys played a quicker guaguancó when the young beauty got up close in front of me and grabbed the hem of her dress, gathering it above her porcelain knees. She swung her legs open, then shut when I bent closer to her. She would let me in, and then flap away, until I was chasing her, seduced by the sweet trace of her voice, the spicy scent of her neck, the shine of her thighs. I admit, women are my vice. Me fascina la mujer. We slid and swam between the people circled around singing a new chorus, “Todos quieren saber como vivo yo,” then chased each other out into the crowd, as another couple entered the circle.
I broke a new sweat and was still excited when I followed Ana further backstage into the dressing room where nobody was, since the rumba had called everyone out to the circle, and onto the couch there next to the rack of wrinkled performance clothes, where we fell on one another between damp pant legs and steaming sleeves, underneath plastic jacket covers, my mouth buried in her neck, while she asked if would I take her to Cuba, because her mother couldn’t stand to visit ruins, which made me catch my breath a minute, but she said please, really, and I said I will, just keep singing and she kept singing boleros—tu no debes jugar con mi amor, tu no vez que tu eres muy niña—and I kept kissing her neck, licking and sucking at her throat like a little boy on a piece of caña, tasting the juice of her skin vibrating in my mouth while she sang onto my tongue, her voice pouring sugar into strong bitter café like the ones my wife made for me before I would go to classes in La Habana, the cabildo in Regla where we danced for old gods and asked for new names, Ay Caridad, Ay Caridad que santo me quiere más, Ay Yemaya, Ay Yemaya la santa de caridad, her warmth expanding and sinking into me and then floating, sailing through the thick, sticky heat of the Caribe at night, finding our way, breathing heavy like a breeze through wet palms, sweating in and through each other beneath la tormenta tropical, caught clutching and wringing ourselves in the middle of the street, La Rampa, whistles and cat-calls echoing through the downpour, with the lightning and the streetlights popping out, the prostitutes and hustle boys singing and clapping with the thunder calling us into the safe blackout home.
As childish as it sounds, it was a dream, I guess, in every way still is, to think anything good can come of Ramiro, other than his music—and Martiqua, of course. But that has nothing and everything to do with him, and won’t help me explain who her father is, when the day comes, or how she got to be the way she is. It’s not easy to live between everything and believe you don’t belong anywhere except where you can’t be. That’s been my problem. It’s hard to believe it’ll be better than worse for Martiqua.
My mother always told me I was American, but that I had to learn to live with everyone like me. Cubans, she meant. Strangers, my father says about my mother’s friends. I have no idea who the father of your child is and that counts as having had a child with a stranger, I don’t care what country he’s from. My mother tells me not to be anti-social like my father. But Olivia thinks anti-social is racist, even though all her friends are Cuban—which, ironically, is why we left Miami when I was nine: Olivia says because the Cubans there are fanaticos, lost and crazy, but really my father thought she was having an affair with somebody at one of the clubs, and that was why she had to go out all the time. Which probably isn’t true, either, and that’s why he settled on San Francisco when my mother refused to go to Switzerland, because there were no Cubans in Switzerland.
And it’s because I’m so close to my mother and have her sense of humor and drama, which is easy for me to slide right into when my father starts to interrogate me about Martiqua’s father, that I tell him maybe the Cubans appreciate me more, because they don’t ask so many questions. You need to find somebody like you, but who appreciates your difference, too, my father says. And not between right and left, he adds. Well, that’s exciting and everything, but too difficult to identify with—he could have been saying the same thing to my mother—and nowhere near as wonderful and complete as the music I heard in the drum, which was the safest place I found myself; home, in San Francisco, but alone and claustrophobic even with my mother taking me to salsa clubs every weekend.
I haven’t sung since that night with Ramiro and almost never think about him, until my mother tells me when he’s going to play. And I don’t miss him, not with my mother around, not with the pretty Panameños, either. Anyway, how can you really miss what you never possessed? It’s just when I see him I feel like there should be something. Not like obligation, or anything—I’m already a working mother. But desire. A desire for there to be something that can’t be, but is, for whatever reason, there, painful and light at the same time—if all we did was dance and sing together it would be ridiculous, I guess, to imagine love like that. And I don’t. We did dance and sing together that night; me with the great Cuban drummer Ramiro Valenzuela, who I’d heard of and listened to since I was a child, had dreamed ten years worth of weekend lessons at the cultural center for a destined duet with—but never imagined having a child with, though I might have acted like one that night in the dressing room—and not because he’s my father’s age. There was more than that. No attention my father paid me or didn’t pay could measure up to what I felt with Ramiro. He touched me with as much care and desire as when he played the drums, enough to convince me I was on solid ground, even, for once. It felt natural to be beneath his hands and not walking that tightrope between my mother and father. It wasn’t so ridiculous a dream to want to sing in Cuba when you had the sound of la isla literally feeding off your voice. And when I see him, I still feel this wet scratchiness at my throat. It feels good and reminds me of him, how good I felt that night—and so, unfortunately, it’s only when I see him that I miss him.
Which reminds me of when Ramiro once told me the drum was like magic, he was the magician. If I showed up for some magic reason, I don’t know what’s been proven other than Martiqua being born. It’s not that Ramiro and Martiqua were destined to happen. Being my mother’s daughter, it would be perfectly logical for her to believe that she had a hand in it—except that I chose to keep Martiqua. She was mine. She’s the balance that I realized I needed; the fulfillment of a dream. She could literally have the best of both worlds—all of them that exist between Ramiro and me. But maybe I’m as crazy as my mother to think that everybody wants the best for their children; sometimes I’m afraid that my uncertainties will just be thrown onto Martiqua. Maybe Ramiro’s like my mother and loves in his own way and according to his own rules—take it or leave it. The only hard part is figuring out what to take with you, and what to leave behind.
During the break my mother drags me through the crowd of dripping salseros dabbing their faces and necks with crumbling drink napkins. Everyone’s taking big gulps out of their drinks and talking about how they didn’t leave the dance floor for the whole set, Qué bárbaro, nena, you sweat so much. We weave around and visit people at different tables, saying hi to my mother’s friends, who are my friends, too, but I don’t talk to them on the phone or anything, not even Juan Carlos, who follows us everywhere not home. He likes to pretend he’s our escort, but he gets so drunk we usually end up escorting him to the car to sleep it off. But he’s funny and crazy and keeps my mother and me from getting too bored with one another.
My mother sits down again to blab and leaves me wondering where he might be, until somebody taps me on the shoulder and I turn around and Juan Carlos is clinging to Ramiro’s shoulder like he wants to propel himself in front. Juan Carlos leans over and slurs into my face with marijuana and vodka-tonic breath.
“Ana, this man would like to speak to you, should I have him thrown out?”
“He’s with the band, Juan. They need him to play.”
I wink at Ramiro, who’s trying to be considerate, and smiles, but I can tell he doesn’t like having Juan Carlos hanging on him drunk and in between us. He thinks Juan Carlos is gay, everybody does. But for the most part he stays in the closet around us, extremely drunk and acting perverted to compensate for whatever he feels he has to hold back. I don’t really need to see Juan Carlos, either, but I’m glad that he’s been able to irritate Ramiro so much.
“Him being in the band doesn’t excuse how ugly he is,” Juan Carlos continues to molest. “An ugly man should never speak to a beautiful woman. It’s contagious, ugliness. My mother told me that. It’s an insult to you and my mother—and your mother, too, Ana. You should be offended by his arrogance, not to mention his ugliness. Oiga, negrito, why do you want to scare this lovely woman?”
“Disculpe, señorita,” Ramiro says low and scratchy, playing formal in order to act calm. Tiny beads of sweat glisten at the high-point of his forehead and inside the tight spirals of black hair at the dark base of his neck where his shirt is being pulled open by Juan Carlos. “I found this payaso near the band’s table and he says he came with you.”
“I only come with diós, carajo,” Juan Carlos protests, pushing wet brown curls out of his face and nodding his pug-nose up. He turns dreamy eyed at Ramiro. “Unless you’d be willing to try—”
“Ay, pero, vete pa’carajo, coño, por favór,” Ramiro growls, trying to shrug himself free of Juan Carlos and bumping into the chair of the woman my mother is talking to.
“Ramiro. How nice to see you,” my mother says.
“Señora. I wanted to dance with your daughter, but developed a limp on the way over here.”
“Juan Carlos,” my mother calls. “I think I see somebody interested in you over at the bar.”
“Do you mean the security guard?” he asks.
My mother reaches out to grab Juan Carlos’s arm, but he dodges back. “You remember how he treated me, Ana,” Juan Carlos says, staggering back toward the bar and away from the table. “He’d turn on his own. He’s ugly. Don’t do it. We have to kill the virus at the source.”
When Juan Carlos finally leaves, my mother looks up from the table at me and then Ramiro. The silence is embarrassing around us. Like somebody farted and doesn’t want to speak first for fear of taking the blame. Which makes me laugh at the awkwardness of the moment. My mother must feel her job is done, because she goes back to talking.
“What are you laughing at?” Ramiro asks, his smokey gray eyes shifting, glistening on his black sandpaper face. It’s sexy, that scratchy sensation I remember, like his voice.
But I’m not letting on anything tonight. I asked my father to watch Martiqua because Ramiro expects me to always bring her when he’s playing—it’s the only time he has a chance to see her, he says. He’s too busy, he’s a musician, he travels, and I always bring Martiqua to Ramiro’s shows because I understand that. My mother understands it, too, and she never has a bad word for Ramiro. Which makes me think he’s gotten away with too much. Not that I feel like I’m the one to teach him a lesson, but maybe by leaving Martiqua home once, he’ll think about if she will understand when she starts to ask about her father. “That was some solo,” I end up saying, remembering how the set ended with Ramiro’s five-minute monologue, which he’s notorious for, and so hardly ever lasts with one band for too long, though he’s been with GuajiraSon for a while.
“Sometimes the drum has to speak for itself,” he says with his mystical eyes flashing.
“It sounded like it.”
I decide I’ll dance with him, and we go out to join a few couples and Ramiro’s bandmates, whose only chance to dance with the best ladies is during the intermission. They nod and smile at us. The DJ is blasting Nuyorican salsa by La India, but Ramiro is dancing with very little movement between steps. It’s an old way of dancing, very formal and muy caballero. You dance like that with the woman you love or with a woman you’ve never had sex with, which bothers me a second, but then I decide not to think twice about it anymore. The song wants us to swing fast and loose, and I do, too, but Ramiro is leading, drawing smooth fluid pictures with his shoulders and hips. I fall into his rhythm easily then, like getting used to the movement of the tide. I let him sway me left and right, but we don’t spin, and I feel the wood floor firm under my heels.
“It would be good to hear you sing again,” he says, feeling that I’ve caught his step right, and now I’m his. “Maybe you would like to come up on stage with us tonight?”
“No. Not tonight,” I say.
“Not tonight?”
“No.”
“Maybe next time, then?” he asks.
“Maybe.”
He will just have to live with maybe.
Paul Stojsavljevic Flores is finishing his MFA at San Francisco State. This is his first fiction in print. E-mail: pstoj@sfsu.edu
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