"The Flamenco Academy" (61 page)

“This.” He stopped and looked around at the
cabin, lantern light flickering across the thick, round logs that
formed the walls. “This was my sanctuary and my salvation. Mine and
Papi’s. Papi, that’s what I called Tío Ernesto when we came here. I
never called him father back in Santa Fe. Never in front of her.
But when we were here together, he was
mi papi
. Papi and I
would come up here without her. Everyone was related to Papi and
that made them all my cousins,
mis primos
. This was Anaya
land. It was just far enough from Santa Fe and from Taos to escape
being developed out of existence. The young people always left La
Viuda. They had to. There was no way to survive up here. But they
always came back at holidays and during the summer. Then we’d have
huge
pachangas
. Lots of beer. Lots of food. The women would
bring pots of posole, green chile stew, chicos,
calabacitas
.
No Paco de Lucía. I got to listen to Duran Duran and Van Halen like
a normal kid.
Mis primos
were my best friends, my only
friends.

“When we left Santa Fe and came up here,
Papi would always pack the guitar just like she ordered. But he’d
leave it in the trunk of the car. No one in La Viuda cared about
flamenco. To them a
compás
was something to help you find
your way out of the forest. No one cared if I was
gitano por
cuatro costaos
, if I had the ‘blood of the pharaohs’ flowing in
my veins. Uncle Ernesto was
mi tío, mi papi
, and that was
all they needed to know. In La Viuda, I was family. They loved my
uncle and they loved me. I was part of a pack here, just one of the
primos
, one of the swarm of boys who would throw Black Cat
firecrackers at the girls we liked, who’d sneak out to the
morada
and spy on the
penitentes’
secret ceremonies,
who’d hike up into the foothills and hunt for musket balls left by
the conquistadors, for arrowheads left by the Indians the Mexican
soldiers had killed.

“When you’re young, you don’t question
anything. You don’t question the world you are born into,
especially when you are allowed to see very little outside that
world. Especially when you are the little prince of that world.
It’s hard to ask questions when you’re a kid and a concert hall
full of adults is standing up to applaud you. I was a tiny
phenomenon in a tiny world. I was the great New World hope. I would
be the one to show Sevilla, Madrid, Jerez that we colonials could
do flamenco as well as anyone back in the Motherland.

“When Tío Ernesto died when I was nine, she
really went crazy. School became a luxury then. I’d play and she’d
dance for hours every day, drilling the
palos
into me until
all she had to do was clap two beats, three, and I could follow
anything she danced. She’d read that Paco de Lucía practiced eight
hours a day so she made me practice nine because he was a
payo
and a ‘real Gypsy boy’ will always be better than a
payo
because flamenco is in our blood. That was my
childhood. They saved me,
mis primos
. They were always there
to take me away when I called. We were badasses together. Me and
the
primos
. Drugs. A lot of drugs. Some of the people I love
best in the world are in prison. Some are dead. They are the true
flamencos. Not these kids at the university smoking imported
cigarettes. Right here in this tiny village, in all the places like
it where the dreams of the Spanish Empire died, here in New Mexico,
this is the only place where the old lady could have made all her
dreams come true. Because there weren’t any Cities of Gold,
right?”

He leaned forward and an excitement I’d
never seen before, not when he’d played, not when we’d made love,
animated his face as he preached a lesson that was more
autobiography than it was history. “They came for the gold, right?
All those Spaniards in their bloomers, up through Mexico they came.
And all they ever found was this amazing land. So they settled it.
They spread across it and made it their own.
Los norteños
,
my people, didn’t slaughter the natives and enslave the survivors.
They married them. They didn’t leave behind silver mines and sugar
plantations. They left children, generations of children who called
themselves Hispano. Children who would make their little corner of
the earth the one place in America where the most Spanish of arts
would be truly embraced.

“Secrets?” Tomás’s laugh was odd, almost
manic. “The old lady thought the Gypsies could keep a secret. Shit.
There are families up here who’ve been lighting candles on Friday
and never eating pork and saying prayers with words no one
understands anymore and burying their dead under Stars of David for
centuries. They’ve been doing it for so long they don’t know why
they do it anymore. They would be baffled if you said the word
crypto-Jew to them. All they understand is that you keep your
secrets in the family. They understood that when the government
came in and tried to set up public schools and they refused. They
understood that when rich Anglos appeared and built vacation homes
that mysteriously burned down. They understood that when
anthropologists and folklorists came to study them and they made up
stories to tell the outsiders and kept the truth for
themselves.

“This was the world
mi papi
came
from, and that and his money made him exactly what the old lady was
looking for, a rich man who believed in keeping secrets. I don’t
know why he fell in love with her. Maybe he had a thing for her
fancy Castilian lisp. Whatever, once they were married, the old
lady made certain that she and her new husband were the highest of
High-spanic. They were married in the Santuario de Guadalupe and
paid for a front-row pew at St. Francis Cathedral so at Sunday
Mass, they could sit next to families who’d lived in Santa Fe for a
dozen generations. She ordered her groceries at Kaune’s on
Washington, bought her shoes at Dendahl’s on the plaza. And just
like that, the flamenco dancer transformed herself into Doña
Carlota Montenegro de Anaya, the perfect Santa Fe doyenne.

“Who knows why she wanted a child?” Tomás
asked. “I grew up with one story. From
mis primos,
I heard
another one. This story was about a girl who was fifteen and
pregnant. The girl’s devoutly Catholic parents were frantic. They
talked to the one member in a family that sprawled across the state
who had done exceedingly well, an elderly relative who was known
for his generosity. They needed money to send the girl away. The
relative and his fancy wife solved their problems by offering to
pay for everything and to adopt the child on one condition:
complete secrecy. The parents agreed and the girl was sent away to
Las Esclavas del Divino Corazón de Jesús, the Slaves of the Divine
Heart of Jesus, a home for unwed mothers in Guadalajara.

“When the time came, according to
mis
primos’
story, my aunt told a few women of her acquaintance,
not quite friends since I never knew her to have any true friends,
that she was going to Spain to adopt the child of a distant
relative. The mother was a heroin addict, disappeared after the
birth, probably dead. Like so many of her people, the Gypsies.
‘Gypsies?’ the women had said. ‘Why, we had no idea you were
Gypsy.’ ‘No, of course not. Where I grew up, it was dangerous to be
Gypsy.’ My aunt swore the women to secrecy. But she was a
connoisseur of secrets. She knew which ones would be kept and which
ones would be spread. Always in confidence so strict the secret was
immediately accepted as absolute truth.

“There was no trip to Spain. Instead, Tío
Ernesto and my aunt went to Guadalajara, to Las Esclavas del Divino
Corazón de Jesús. From there
mi papi
took home a son and my
aunt procured an instant heritage. Funny story, huh?”

“Tomás, I saw your birth certificate. You
were born in Spain. I think your mother is the daughter,
granddaughter, of Doña Carlota’s friend, Rosa.”

Tomás sawed off a bitter rasp of laughter.
“Ah, the birth certificate. Was it on the wall?”

“No, it was locked in a box.”

“Locked in a box. Good. That’s a good
dramatic touch. Heighten the revelation, right? Rae, I grew up with
that birth certificate hanging on the wall above my bed. It wasn’t
until I heard this other story that I had to ask, ‘Who puts a
child’s birth certificate over his bed?’ Someone who gives an
answer so the question won’t be asked, that’s who. With my birth,
she was reborn. As a Gypsy. As the real thing. I became the answer
to the question she couldn’t allow to be asked. And you know what
the hell of it is? She honestly thought she was giving me a
gift.”

Tomás had told me his story. He offered it
to me. If I accepted, I would serve his story, the story that was
also Doña Carlota’s, for the rest of my life. Instead I said, “You
could have gotten a blood test.”

“I was scared of what I’d find out.”

“Scared you’d find out you weren’t Gypsy and
couldn’t be the Great Brown Hope?” It was exhilarating to challenge
him. Exhilarating and terrifying. I was resigning from his
cheerleading squad. There would be no other place on the team for
Cyndi Rae Hrncir.

“No, I was afraid I’d find out I was. One
way I’d lose my professional identity; the other way I’d lose my
soul. I guess I was scared of finding out which one mattered more
to me. Rae, there is darkness in my life, there always will be.
That’s why I have to have you to light it. You’re the only antidote
to the darkness. Rae, I love you.”

It was the truth. I saw it in his face. He
needed me. He loved me. The door was open. All I had to do was walk
through it. A
siguiriyas
began to play. Even coming tinny
and shrill as the ring tone on Tomás’s cell phone, the
palo
was unmistakable. He checked the number. “It’s Alma.”

“Answer.”

Tomás’s eyes held mine as he greeted Alma in
Spanish. He walked to the nearest window, switching to English and
plugging his free ear as he said, “Alma, I can’t hear you. You’re
breaking up. You’re breaking up. I’m only getting every fourth or
fifth word. Alma, who died? Alma, I can’t hear you. Alma!”

He held the phone out as if I might be able
to resolder the lost connection. “Rae, someone died.” For a moment,
his face made me think of the lonely, dutiful boy in the
photographs in his aunt’s living room.

I took the phone from his hand and snapped
it closed. “We’d better go.”

We walked like a dozen brides down the
narrow aisle. I led the procession as it slowly approached the
coffin placed in front of the altar. Ancient planks creaked beneath
our feet. The full skirts of our floor-length black dresses swept
against the sides of the pews filled with mourners. Each of us held
a candle, globes of light in the darkened chapel. A doll-faced
virgin, green-winged angels, and a variety of saints, all
originally carved and painted a quarter of a millennium ago,
measured our progress.

She had always planned every detail of every
performance and, a diva to the end, her final one, this
misa
flamenca
, flamenco Mass, was no exception. The coffin was
plain, lid closed as she’d directed. The altar was blanketed in
roses so red the ones in shadow appeared black. The name of the
variety was Carmen. That had been specified as well.

The scent of roses blended with the incense
curling from the priest’s censer. At the altar, we divided into
two. We placed our candles in standing holders and took seats on
straight-backed chairs facing the congregation, six dancers on each
side of the altar.

Tomás, seated in front of the banks of
roses, looked up from his guitar, nodded to me, and I began
palmas
, clapping out the slow, sonorous beat for the
canto entrada
. He made it a song of mourning, of death. The
other dancers, then most of the congregation, joined in and the
sharp slap of practiced hands rang in flawless cadence through the
chapel. Everyone in the chapel knew the code, the girls I had
danced with for years, the guys who had played for us, those who’d
sung, those who’d listened, those who’d watched. Most of the
Spanish luminaries from the festival were there as well. Everyone
was
enterao
. We had shared the pulse and it had bound
us.

I accelerated the tempo. Blanca, steady,
kind Blanca, picked up the beat and twined a counterrhythm through
it. A volley of finger snaps popped through the new rhythms.
Knuckles rapped on the back of pews. Fingernails clicked. The sound
was the sound of a stream rippling over rocks, of water pattering
from a fountain designed by thirsty people, desert people. By
gitanos
. By Andalusians. By Arabs. By Indians.

Tomás plucked an E chord that announced he
would start on the sorrowing side of a
soleares por bulerías
and we fell silent. His
toque
was terse, elegantly dry, a
hymn to the spaces in between. He played a dirge for what had been
held and was lost, what had been reached for and was never grasped.
Three rolling
rasgueados
, then a simple statement of the
first
compás
, was all he needed to play to state this fact:
he had loved her. In his own way. In spite of everything. He had
loved her.

Guitos, who’d arrived late the night before,
stood and began his
temple
, singing the
“Ay”
that
warmed his voice and opened his soul. He had been scheduled to open
La Convocación in Madrid, an austere gathering of flamenco legends
that was held once a decade. Though it was
el arte’s
highest
honor to perform for the convocation, he had canceled the instant
Tomás called to tell him that she had requested he sing. Guitos’s
voice quavered, freighted with grief more than a thousand years
old. He shed the tears Tomás couldn’t and his
cante
grew
even harsher. A burble of clapping flowed into the
silencio
when he stopped. I picked up the beat, stamping my heels, tilting
my ear upward, allowing the rhythm to fill my head. Tomás followed
my lead and increased the tempo.