Taína Page 20
Doña Flores’s chest was a peacock. This was her voice, too. It was Taína offering all the kisses Doña Flores never had a chance to give. Her daughter filled her singing lungs with air like that night years ago at Orchestra Records. This was the bridge that Inelda Flores had started to build, and now her daughter, Taína, was completing it so that we could all walk across it.
In Taína’s voice I did see whom I loved and who loved me back, but it was not Taína. Whom I saw was my mother. I saw her dreams, I saw my father’s dreams, too. They were trampled and unfinished. Their feet and hands were calloused from the stones they had pushed and the cement sidewalks they had walked upon barefoot. Taína’s voice told me that my parents had not given up, that they had passed these dreams down. I was to push the rock farther and my children’s children were to do the same.
And when Taína threw her head back, breathed deeply, closed her eyes, and held on to a single note that seemed it would not end until the Second Coming, everyone gasped for air like when something is so astonishing, so miraculous, it cannot be true. Then slowly her voice rocked itself back and forth, back and forth, back to earth. If a swan could be more than what it already is, Taína had been that.
Then, gradually, the piano went silent. Salvador was spent and drank some water. He hobbled back to a chair, reeling, and rocking, he unsteadily sat down and grabbed his chest. But the old man was smiling as if he knew he was going to die tonight, he was going out with music. Taína drank water, checked on Usmaíl in her stroller. All her rebellious atoms in her infant body were calm and asleep. Dreaming and plotting endless possibilities inside a body with no king or god. The revolution was alive, but right now it had traveled, so it rested. Next to the stroller was Usmaíl’s grandmother, happy and alive, singing again through her daughter.
Soon three congas slowly drummed themselves into the piano’s vacuum. The congeros’ hands started to bang away. Taína kissed her sleeping daughter good night and joined them back onstage. Taína began dancing to jíbaro, Afro-Cuban, plena, bomba, and santero-rooted music. Her hands moved outward and forward in sync with her hips, eyes looking up to the heavens. The rhythm of the congas raced to match the sways, and the people cleared their eyes and began to shake. The people began to clap. The people began to stomp. The people began to quicken their thighs. When two trumpets, one sax, a trombone, bass, timbalero, and two cuatros joined in, it was Taína’s cue for her voice to transform into a le-lo-lai. The blood pressure rose, the heat sailed.
Carlito’s Café shuddered like an entire planet trembling. From outside, some yuppies must have heard Taína’s singing, as the café was soon overflowing with yoga mats galore. The yuppies were quaking, rubbing against one another’s sweaty hipster clothes.
And the walls of Carlito’s Café were about to crash down, as the place was jammed so tight that the doors and windows had to be opened. The cold, air-conditioned air had no business being there that night, and it quickly evaporated into the humid summer that flowed and swirled around hot bodies. A thick wind of kindness spun itself around the people. Some shook so fast that they would not stop until something within them told them to pass out. They fell as others picked them up and gave them water.
Taína’s voice climbed and then seeped down, burying itself inside our cells. Soon, five women dressed in all white with tambourines joined Taína’s side. They sang, but Taína quickly drowned their voices and they knew their rightful place was as a backup chorus of santeras. And then the melody effortlessly picked up speed, as if Taína’s voice held the band’s hand and told them to run with her. Told the people to follow her. Her voice was telling us we were all free and that she needed us to run with her so she could be free, too.
Taína had the band reacting to her improvisations, and then, with eyes closed and body swaying like the Brooklyn Bridge, Taína took the band to a place only she knew. And everyone followed.
I looked out the window.
I saw Peta Ponce. Her feet moved up and down like those of a marionette, as if she had strings tied to her joints and some invisible hand was controlling her from above. The espiritista’s dance held this unbearable awkward grace as Spanish Harlem was drenched with people of every color, gender, sexual orientation, and income bracket. The spine, the backbone of the world, its cordillera, the Latin American continent, was represented in the streets, holding up the bones of every Latina group, offering a healthy skeleton of possibilities. The conquerors were there, too, as I saw Spaniards holding up their flag while they opened wine bottles, cheese, and bread they shared with everyone.
Children took to the sidewalks with chalks and paint. Men danced with men, women danced with one another, and sometimes they switched. A squad car appeared. A young cop stepped out with Ms. Cahill, they swayed, they shook, they shuddered, they shimmied, and the fire hydrants on that block gave out. With smiles on their faces, the people stretched out their arms and took in the drizzle. The sky continued to rain fire as the meteor shower intensified like it wanted to ignite the moon into a new sun. Every tenement fire escape was teeming with white drying laundry and bodies who felt they had wings and could fly above the projects.
That night when Taína sang, no one had credit card debt, no one had rents to pay, no one had ills or imperfections, no one knew the meaning of sad words, no one remembered winter. Everyone got paid, the right way. Everyone was young. Everyone built a ladder to the stars. Everyone did for others what they wanted done for themselves. Everyone was in love. Everyone saw who loved them. Everyone had been forgiven.
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