Jubana! (13 page)

In ballet class I first learned the five basic positions of the feet and how to do
pliés
(
demi-
and
grand
-), where you bend your knees with your legs turned out. This wasn't too hard or bad so far. I wasn't sui-or homi-(cidal)—yet. Maybe Mami was right after all. Ballet class definitely beat watching crazy patients relight extinguished cigarette butts or having them press opened scissors against your thigh. Then I learned to make the sign of the cross
(en croix)
by moving my leg
fluidement
to the front, to the side, to the back, and then to the same side again. I asked, but the teacher said there's no sign of the Star of David. I said why not. She just smiled and shrugged. There were ripples of derisive chortles. I looked around. The girl in front of me at the barre, an olive-skinned blond with kinky hair and no ass whatsoever, had her head bowed and was kind of shaking with giggles. Same thing with the other two
gringas
in front of her.

“Those
glasses,”
snickered No Ass.

Did she mean
me?
Was she talking about
my,
albeit hideous, glasses? Then I realized: I was the only person in there wearing glasses, hideous or otherwise.

“Lisa!” the teacher admonished.
“Silence, s'il vous plaît!”

“Old lady Coke bottles,” No Ass added, as giggles rippled across the room.

“Lisa!” the teacher repeated.
“Silence!”

Lisa.
What a stupid name for a No Ass.
Lisa. Lisa la Bicha.
Lisa the Insect. I tried to contain myself, but Jubanas can't. Let's not forget my little José Martí airport tarmac episode over my ultimately STOLEN little red trike, not that I'm bitter or anything; these puny
Americanas
weren't even armed like that gross-out Cuban guerrilla thug. Sohkehrz. I could take 'em easy, just like when sheer boredom back in Miami Beach Land forced me to pinch my dorky cousin Joelito, even if it meant getting bitten in return. Until La Bicha started up, I thought that only boys were the dumb and vicious people little Jubanas had to stand up to.

“Hey!” I told La Bicha, lightly touching her shoulder. It was surprisingly fragile and bony, just like my public elementary school principal's. Were all these
gringas
so bony like that? “Castro took my Papi's hospital! And my Zeide Leon's Cuban American Textiles! All the Andurskys got the bad eyes. We cry because we're
refugees in exile,
you ignorant
bruta.
That's why I'm blind! Because we cry so much! Because the revolution was BEYOND OUR CONTROL!”

“Mademoiselle Gigi!”
the teacher cried, walking over to me and La Bicha.
“Silence, s'il vous plaît!”

“Comme vous voulez, señora.”

My spontaneous polyglot made the teacher laugh. Mami had prepped her ahead of time about Our Trageec Émigré Seetuation, so my outburst didn't totally throw her. The rest of the class, however, was culturally blindsided, dumbfounded. I stared them down, silently daring them to make a single other remark, about, say, my “primitive barbaric African cannibal” pierced ears, which is what a few of the neighborhood girls called them. I may've been out of breath but I was on a roll. The teacher told the class to take five and came over to me. She embraced me as I gradually paced my breathing to match hers, slow. She
plié'd
real deep and whispered that I'd do fine and I'd be a real good ballerina in time. I could see down the front of her plunging V-neck leotard. There was the tip of Mami's folded yellow check. The teacher told me my hair smelled good and was it a special Cuban shampoo? I rolled my eyes and explained it was the Agua de Violetas Mami'd put in there. She had no idea what I was talking about and asked me to tell her what “Aga di Volettis” was.

“A-GUA DE VI-O-LE-TAS,” I said, correcting her. Jesus, she spoke French, what was her
problema en Español?
“It's violet water. It's not a shampoo. It's a hair perfume by Agustín Reyes of Havana, Cuba. It's a classic, like Anna Pavlov and Russian Mongolian eyes like Zeide's and Atticus Finch and Jackie Kennedy and Caca Chanel.”

“Well!” she replied, just clueless.

She noticed my feet, which were stuck, more or less, in second position. She studied them, then took in the rest of my
placement
and
ligne,
the alignment or line of my body. Her gaze returned to my feet. As usual, my ankles were practically grazing the floor. Apparently, real good ballerinas' ankles weren't supposed to do that. She repositioned my feet as though they had actual arches and pulled my shoulders back, erect.

The native albinos were growing restless, presumably because the teacher was paying too much attention to me.

“Gi-gi's a squee-gee!” a girl trilled.

I didn't know what it was but it had to be bad, based on her tone alone. Did she just call me a refu-Gigi?

“Alb-i-no Esk-i-mo!” I cried. That shut her up. Hahaha.

I may have been the shortest, blindest, curviest, most flat-footed ballerina in the history of ballet, but I'd shown up, dammit. I'd emerged from under the bed and gotten out DER. These
bailarinas americanas
were NOT gonna make me quit.
I shall overcome,
I thought. I'd seen groups of black American people on TV sing that song, but they said “we.” Mami had talked to me about the “ceeveel rights movemen'” and equality for blacks, but I felt I needed some civil rights of my own, even if I was a white Hispanic Jewish child. Didn't
I
have the right to be in the world without being picked on, ridiculed, singled out, put down, and laughed at just because I was different, from a different country and culture? Blanche DuBois said that deliberate cruelty is unforgivable, the one thing she had never been guilty of.

Deep in my heart I do believe I shall overcome. I am not afraid. I am not alone. I shall overcome the whole wide world around—some day.

Audrey Hepburn's Lulamae/Holly could have her Tiffany's. I had my beloved
gindaleja
waiting for me at home. I would suck the mouth
tete
tonight and suck it
hard.
I'd suck myself right into a
dominós, Dominus, dominós, Dominus vobiscum, dominós, domino theory
stupor. That was my plan. Good.

You have to give yourself things to look forward to when you are facing evil.

 

“Dios mio,”
Mami wailed. “Here we go again. De Andursky curse. First de eyes and now de feet.
Coño.
” Dammit.

The ballet teacher had told Mami that my feet were flat as matzos—I guess the Star of David inquiry kind of tipped her off as to my Jewosity—and that that would likely present a problem for the physical demands of ballet, especially if I planned to advance to dancing
sur les pointes,
on my tiptoes. Though that was years off—children don't go
sur les pointes
until they're eleven or twelve, when the bones of the feet are fully developed—Mami was going to see to it that I became a Russian Degas Cubana ballerina, Polish Andursky arches be damned. We went to see a pediatric podiatrist who recommended I be fitted with special shoes containing “cookies,” physical arches to teach my unleavened feet to rise to (presumably Gentile) arch-hood. At the special shoe store, it was like reliving the eyeglasses nightmare; one pair of shoes was uglier than the next. Not a single black leather riding boot in sight. Rats. There were brown lace-up ankle boots that reminded me of the ones Red Skelton wore when he was playing Freddie the Freeloader and Clem Kadiddlehopper on his weekly TV show. There were also some black-and-white saddle shoes, only slightly less heinous. Since Mami and I couldn't decide which we despised more, we bought both pairs.

“Don' worry, Luli,” Mami said, holding back her tears. “We can take off de ugly plasteec glasses an' de ugly ortopehdeec choos BEFORE de ceremony begeens an' den eet won' clash weeth de
tafetán color champán
gown.”

“No glasses?” I said. “What if I trip on my way to the chuppah?”

“Joo won',” Mami said. “Ees not as eef joo have to see to get marri-ed.”

I alternated wearing the two different choos to school, depending on my outfit, praying to God no one would notice.

“Combat boots!” screamed a boy named Shawn the first day I wore the ankle boots. “Haaa. Hey y'all, Gigi's got combat boots! Com-BAT, com-BAT. You a soldier in 'Nam, you tropical termite!”

It was during recess, and I was swinging on the playground swings. When I heard the taunt I dropped my head and turned my feet inward, trying my best to hide them from view as I swung backward into what I hoped would be oblivion. I felt hot and sweaty, and the lenses of my hideous plastic baby-blue cat-eyes got steamy. I could feel blood rising up through my neck to my cheeks, flushing them. Oh, I was on fire, all right. It was bad enough to have been victimized by a fatigue-wearing bearded bully who called me and my family
gusanos,
worms. But now I was stranded in
el exílio,
in exile, and I was a TERMITE? This was way too much entomology for me. I mean, okay, insects are the most successful survivors and the dominant life form on Earth. And I may be a tropical little refugee girl with problems. But I'm not vermin,
coño.

When the bell rang to go back inside, I watched for Shawn and followed him. As we were going down the hall to our classroom, I stopped and let him get a couple of yards ahead of me. Then I made a run for it, tackling the fucker. “I don't know about ‘tropical,'” I yelled, “but how about a nice Hawaiian punch?” I smacked him hard upside the head and kicked him with the indestructibly ugly square
pointes
of my com-BAT termite-
gusano
boots. Maybe this would help my nonexistent arches rise; you know, by flexing them. Everybody gathered around, staring. Shawn knew better than to strike a girl, even in self-defense, so he mostly shielded his face and groin from my 'Nam—whatever
that was—boots, screaming, “Stop, termite! Termite, stop! Go back to the tropical war where you came from!” He even tried to snatch off my glasses. I told him to go ahead and take them, I knew they were hideous, just like his face, and if I couldn't see his face I'd feel a lot better anyways.

The teacher, whom Mami had earlier briefed about my “podeeahtreec catastrophee,” emerged and dragged Shawn away by the ear. He had to sit in the corner for thirty minutes. The teacher took me aside and explained that Shawn's older brother had been sent to fight in a war far away in a place called Viet-NAM. She said maybe that's why Shawn was so sensitive about it. I asked her what tropical was and she said it was where Cuba is. I asked her why he called me a termite and she said that there are a lot of termites in the tropics and also probably Shawn's house had bugs. I told her I was sorry about all that but if Shawn insulted me again he'd get a swift kick in the
huevos
and the
culo
with my ugly revolutionary combat boot. I bounced my index finger on my butt to demonstrate
culo
and I let her fathom the definition of
huevos
on her own.

The teacher made Shawn apologize to me in front of the entire class by repeating after her: “I'm sorry for what I said to you. It was wrong. I am ashamed of myself. You are not a soldier in the war. You are a nice, bright girl. There are no termites in this school. There are no termites in this school. There are no termites in this school.”

Nanette, my friend who sat behind me, tugged my braided ponytail in feminine solidarity. She loved playing with my hair, now halfway down my back. Nanette liked to unbraid my ponytail and marvel at it coming undone and loose, then she'd rebraid it. “Black hair won't do that,” she always said, meaning that if you undid her assorted braids, her hair would just sort of stand there, sticking out and defying gravity. Nanette wasn't the only black
girl who loved playing with my hair; all my black and biracial girlfriends did. Actually, I had only four white friends, Annie, Holly, Rena, and Mara, and they never played with my hair.

There were these two or three older black girls who for three days in a row yanked my pink mother-of-pearl hair band off my head after school just to torment me while I was playing double Dutch. “Playing” may be stretching it; everybody knows that white girls, even hip-swinging Jubanitas like
moi,
do not have what it takes to be a double Dutch diva: an amazingly precise combination of fast feet, strong arms, steady rhythm, and sheer stamina. I wasn't coordinated or quick enough to be a rope turner, much less a jumper. These girls—Rhoda, Fairon, Zena—were SERIOUSLY gifted, no less so than the synchronized Busby Berkeley chorus girls in
Gold Diggers of 1933
or Esther Williams & Co. in
Million Dollar Mermaid,
two old movies Mami and I had watched on
The Late, Late Show.
So I got to recite the jumping rhymes—in iambs and in trochees, Shakespeare would have been proud—while the double Dutchers dazzled me with their progressively tricky flair and dexterity:

 

So, so, suck your toe, all the way to Mexico, once you get there let it go, so, so, suck your toe, spell it out so you can go now M, E, X, I…

 

Don't say ain't or your mother might faint and your father might fall in a bucket of paint, now I'll betcha a hundred dollars that you can't do this, now close your eyes and count to ten, one, two, three…

 

I got ants in my pants and they're making me dance now one, two, three…

 

I loved being included, if only as a sideline barker.
Mis negritas
and their families were as close as I would ever get to living in
a Latino neighborhood, a place where you'd feel at one with the rest because you belong, where you are part of each other and your shared culture. As for those bratty older girls who messed with my hair band, on the third consecutive day I stopped right in the middle of chanting “now close your eyes” and marched straight to the principal's office to report the perps. They never messed with me or my lovely hair accoutrements again.