MAMBO

Papa loves mambo!
Mama loves mambo!
Havin’ their fling again,
Younger than spring again,
Feel­in’ that zing again, Wow!

Los Ange­les

I didn’t know what he did with his after­noons until I was six months preg­nant and he didn’t show up at home after a week or so. I got a call from his friend in L.A., the one he’d intro­duced me to when we took our first trip down there togeth­er. We’d gone to Dis­ney­land first. I still have this pic­ture. I wore a sky blue dress, belt­ed and long, very roman­tic. He posed us in front of the Jun­gle ride, all the water behind us, his arm around my neck, my hair pret­ty wild and a huge laugh just explod­ing on my face. He wore those over­sized sun­glass­es, said it was because he’d been pep­per-sprayed in the face by the police in Obre­gon and ever since, his eyes had been real­ly sen­si­tive to light.

Cesar was born in Obre­gon, a small town south of Her­mo­sio in Sono­ra, Mex­i­co. His mom worked as a nurse and his dad had moved to the U.S. fif­teen years ear­li­er and start­ed anoth­er fam­i­ly with­out ben­e­fit of a Mex­i­can divorce. I learned that was the way in his fam­i­ly. The men all had two fam­i­lies. One in Mex­i­co, one in the U.S., some­times two in the U.S. depend­ing on how picky or demand­ing the woman. Gra­ciel­la didn’t care if Cesar’s Tito Paulo was around one day out of sev­en so Paulo treat­ed him­self to anoth­er girl­friend on the side who didn’t have any kids to hin­der her abil­i­ty to go out danc­ing on Sat­ur­day nights or wake him up ear­ly on Sun­day mornings.

Cesar let me see all of this, his uncles, the dual fam­i­lies. Maybe he was hop­ing I’d be like Gra­ciel­la and not mind so much. But I thought it would be dif­fer­ent for him and me. I thought, any­body who spends this much time in bed with me wouldn’t have the ener­gy to have anoth­er girl on the side, God knew I couldn’t have imag­ined hav­ing one more man in my life. So, for a long time I didn’t know what Cesar did when he went back to vis­it his mom.

I was a gringa but Cesar called me “Chero,” refus­ing to pro­nounce the “l.” He already had a cousin named “Gringa” because her skin was so light. I’d always been pret­ty pale, espe­cial­ly in the win­ter, out of the sun and since mov­ing to San Fran­cis­co, but after a few months of liv­ing with Cesar I stopped high­light­ing my hair and just poured an entire bot­tle of bleach on my head. My moth­er didn’t rec­og­nize me. Hell, I didn’t rec­og­nize myself any more. I remem­bered who I was before I met Cesar, but since meet­ing him, I didn’t know, I was preg­nant and not get­ting any abor­tion this time, I was blonde and I was dri­ving down to L.A. on a month­ly basis. I hat­ed L.A. I’d always hat­ed L.A.

San Fran­cis­co

When I was three months preg­nant, before I was show­ing at all, Cesar and I entered a dance con­test at this lit­tle club in the Mis­sion, a few blocks south from his aunt’s house. I couldn’t dance Mex­i­can to save my life but they’d switched the music to rock and roll so I’d got­ten up and start­ed mov­ing, sweat­ing, tak­ing Cesar’s hand on the dance floor and laugh­ing with him the entire time. I could dance to rock and roll, I could move.

A tall man with slicked-back hair and a for­mal look­ing, tight black suit moved among the crowd, tap­ping one man’s shoul­der and then anoth­er until there were only three cou­ples on the dance floor. Every song that came on was anoth­er I knew by heart. I knew where all the breaks came and how to move my hands to the beat. I kept my bel­ly sucked in and threw my hair around and Cesar did what he does best in his one-inch heeled, pointy-toed cow­boy boots and we looked good out there.

The tall man tapped anoth­er shoul­der and there were only two cou­ples. It felt like we’d been danc­ing for days, that every song I ever knew had been pulled out and played at top vol­ume and the crowd egged us on and cheered when either of us made a move that coin­cid­ed with the upbeat or down­beat of the music. And then the tall man couldn’t decide and put it to the audi­ence to decide by applause who would win the tro­phy. And I knew it would be just like in 8th grade when I ran for class sec­re­tary and just like in high school when I ran for trea­sur­er and it was, it was the same crowd then that loved me when I gave me speech, but ulti­mate­ly vot­ed for some­body else.

Cesar and I walked off the dance floor to give the first place win­ners their dance alone on the floor. They were a Chi­cano cou­ple and she had jet black hair to her waist and a big ruf­fle at the bot­tom of her red dress. They looked amaz­ing up there. The DJ changed the music to a mam­bo and they knew exact­ly what to do.

Cesar’s friends laughed and slapped him on the back and every­body spoke Span­ish. I sat down and grabbed my glass of water and Cesar went right back up onto the dance floor with one of the oth­er women at our table, one who could dance the way he loved best.

I watched the win­ning cou­ple walk off the dance floor as the crowd surged back up onto it, the tro­phy in their hands, her red lip­stick reflect­ed in the gold of the lov­ing cup, her nails bright­ly hold­ing onto her win­nings and her man. They sat in a qui­et booth in the back, his hand on her leg. That man would nev­er dance with anoth­er woman.

Los Ange­les

When the baby was three months old, when I was still try­ing to hold things togeth­er, I drove us both down to L.A. to pick Cesar up. Only when I got to his friend’s apart­ment he had me dri­ve way out to River­side to Bruno’s house. Cesar told me Bruno was some impor­tant guy. Some guy he’d let down some­how and that it was impor­tant that Bruno see that Cesar had a fam­i­ly and was a reg­u­lar guy.

I didn’t laugh when Cesar sug­gest­ed he was a reg­u­lar guy because I knew even Cesar didn’t think he was a reg­u­lar guy. I believed he want­ed Bruno to think he was a reg­u­lar guy and at this point, I couldn’t not go to Bruno’s house. Of course I thought, what am I get­ting myself and the baby into now, will we be able to get out of it, does Cesar know what he’s doing, do I know what I’m doing, and more and more I real­ized I didn’t.

Bruno’s house was in a qui­et lit­tle neigh­bor­hood, away from the free­way. One of those big pest con­trol trucks in the dri­ve­way. I asked and Cesar said that was his day job. I thought the house was pret­ty low income for what I had been thinking.

Bruno showed us in and apol­o­gized that his wife and moth­er-in-law were not cur­rent­ly home. There was a lot of new-look­ing fur­ni­ture piled up along the walls, glass cab­i­nets with chi­na fig­urines, a pret­ty flo­ral rug in the liv­ing room. I put the baby down on the rug to play and hand­ed her a bot­tle of juice, just in case. Cesar and Bruno sat on the couch, nice chintz mate­r­i­al with com­fy look­ing pil­lows at the ends. They spoke in Spanish.

By this time I knew Cesar enough to know the into­na­tions of his voice and I knew he was try­ing hard to con­vince Bruno of some­thing. Bruno kept watch­ing me and the baby and I tried not to look at him, I tried to laugh and play with the baby, I tried to not know what was going on. It’d been two and a half years and I’d tak­en a begin­ning Span­ish class at Mis­sion High, for adults. It hadn’t helped me much with Cesar since he spoke slang to his friends but his for­mal tone with Bruno was eas­i­er for me to translate.

Cesar was call­ing him “com­pa” a lot and refer­ring to me and the baby as his fam­i­ly. I heard him men­tion his moth­er and his broth­er in Obre­gon. Bruno spoke in low tones and much faster. I could get by the tone of his voice that he was not pleased.

Thir­ty min­utes turned to forty-five and the baby was get­ting cranky. I held her and played with her and tried to keep her away from the side tables with their doilies. Then Bruno stood up and walked into anoth­er room. I’d stopped lis­ten­ing to the con­ver­sa­tion as they had got­ten more relaxed with each oth­er, I thought. I told Cesar I prob­a­bly need­ed to change the baby and he snapped at me to shut up and Bruno walked back in. I turned my back on them and con­cen­trat­ed on the baby but not before I saw Bruno hand Cesar something.

I didn’t breathe reg­u­lar­ly again until we were about thir­ty min­utes away from that house. Cesar was laugh­ing and hap­py and try­ing to explain with­out explain­ing any­thing about what had real­ly hap­pened back at that house. I sang songs to the baby and watched the Cen­tral Val­ley fall away behind us.

Papa loves mambo!
Mama loves mambo!
Havin’ their fling again,
Younger than spring again,
Feel­in’ that zing again, Wow!

###

Cheryl Diane Kidder’s award win­ning work has twice been nom­i­nat­ed for a Push­cart Prize. She was also short-list­ed on sto­rySouth’s Mil­lion Writer’s Award. Her work has appeared in two antholo­gies: Ava Gard­ner: Touch­es of Venus, and Meg Files’ Write From Life. She holds a B.A. in Cre­ative Writ­ing from San Fran­cis­co State Uni­ver­si­ty. Her work has appeared or is forth­com­ing in: The Atti­cus Review, The New Purlieu Review, Plath Pro­files, Sand­script, Eclec­ti­ca, Word Riot, In Posse Review, The Reed, Amelia, Dog Riv­er Review, Alche­my, The Sto­ry Gar­den, The Cal­i­for­nia State Poet­ry Jour­nal, Three Can­dles, the Clacka­mas Lit­er­ary Review and elsewhere.