Dancing with Butterflies

by Reyna Grande

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

In Dancing with Butterflies, Reyna Grande renders the Mexican immigrant experience in “lyrical and sensual” ( Publishers Weekly, starred review) prose through the poignant stories of four women brought together through folklorico dance. Dancing with Butterflies uses the alternating voices of four very different women whose lives interconnect through a common passion for their Mexican heritage and a dance company called Alegría. Yesenia, who founded Alegría with her husband, Eduardo, sabotages her own efforts to remain a vital, vibrant woman when she travels back and forth across the Mexican border for cheap plastic surgery. Elena, grief-stricken by the death of her only child and the end of her marriage, finds herself falling dangerously in love with one of her underage students. Elena's sister, Adriana, wears the wounds of abandonment by a dysfunctional family and becomes unable to discern love from abuse. Soledad, the sweet-tempered illegal immigrant who designs costumes for Alegría, finds herself stuck back in Mexico, where she returns to see her dying grandmother. Reyna Grande has brought these fictional characters so convincingly to life that readers will imagine they know them.

Release date: October 6, 2009

Publisher: Washington Square Press

Print pages: 416

Sample

Dancing with Butterflies

CHAPTER ONE

A dancer, more than any other human being, dies two deaths: the first, the physical when the powerfully trained body will no longer respond as you would wish.

—MARTHA GRAHAM

THIS is what it comes down to.

The sweat. The blisters on your feet. The aching of your arms from practicing the skirtwork. The hours and hours rehearsing the same song until the music buries itself so deeply in your brain you hear it even in your sleep. The constant need to coax your body to move past the hurt, the frustration, the exhaustion, and convince it that it can do more . . .

All that is worth this moment.

To be up here onstage, bathed in the red, blue, and yellow stage lights. A thousand eyes look at you, admiring your flawless movements. Your feet seem to float over the floor as you twirl and twirl around and around before jumping into the arms of your partner.

Applause erupts out of the darkness, and you close your eyes and listen to it, let it envelop you. It gives you strength. Three seconds to catch your breath before the next polka, “El Circo,” begins, and your heart beats hard against your chest, but you can’t hear it above the sounds of the norteño band playing upstage, the musician’s fingers dance over the keys of his accordion as quickly as your feet stomp on the floor. As you and your partner move together, you feel the heat of his body, the intensity of his dancing. You look in his eyes and don’t let him see that despite the adrenaline rushing through you, you’re becoming more aware of the stabbing pain in your knee. You force yourself to keep smiling. He’ll know for sure you lied—to him, to yourself, thinking that you could perform like this.

The stage is a flurry of dancers whirling and stomping. The audience breaks into a rhythmic clapping as they follow the lively song in 2/4 beat. On the fourth spin your knee buckles from under you and suddenly you’re on the floor, the eleven other couples try not to step on you because after all, the dance must go on.

You try to get up and continue, but your legs no longer obey. You stare at the audience, yet all you see is darkness. The Exit signs like evil red eyes mock you. How is this possible? How did it get to this point? Your partner scoops you up into his arms and whisks you off the stage. Despite the pulsing pain in your knee all you can think about is that you’ve ruined the choreography. There will be a gap where there shouldn’t be.

The dancers waiting in the wings rush over, looking beautiful in their black Chiapas dresses embroidered with big colorful flowers. You want them to go away, to stop looking at you with pity. You’re used to the awe, the admiration, the envy. But not their pity.

“What happened?” they ask.

You take a deep breath, trying to come up with something, anything except the truth. “I’m okay, I’m okay. Don’t worry. I landed on my ankle the wrong way. Now stop fussing over me and go back to your places.”

“Is it your knee?” your partner asks as he helps you to the dressing room.

You shake your head no, glad that your Nuevo León skirt is long enough that he can’t see your right knee has swollen to the size of a grapefruit. You find yourself unable to tell him the truth, even if he’s your husband. Because once you admit it to him, you will have to admit it to yourself as well.

The pain will go away. It has to.

Yesenia

We’ve just finished warm-ups and are now taking a short break before moving on to the Azteca danzas, but I’m at the barre doing tendus. I need to believe warming up longer will help. That and Advil should help me get through practice, but lately that hasn’t been the case. I feel my kneebones grinding against each other, and I’ve started wearing a brace and keep it hidden under my sweatpants—which I’ve been using now instead of my Lycra pants—and although the brace relieves some of the pressure, my right knee still stiffens and swells.

My son, Memo, comes to stand by me and stretches as far as he can, yet his fingertips are two inches shy of his toes. It makes me feel better that at twenty, Memo isn’t that much more flexible than I am.

“I’m making chile verde for dinner,” I say.

“Ah, Mom, I’m going out with my friends tonight.”

“Where are you going on a Sunday night? Don’t you have school tomorrow?”

“To the Arclight. The director is going to be there for a Q and A after the movie. I’ll come straight home afterward. Besides, my first class isn’t until eleven.”

“You can have the leftovers tomorrow, then. That is, if your father and I don’t eat it all.”

Memo laughs and runs his fingers through his long hair. I brush it off his forehead, wishing he would cut it. He won’t, though, no matter how much I complain that it doesn’t look good onstage. The audience could think he’s a girl dressed up in men’s clothes.

“Guess what?” Adriana, one of my dancers, says as she joins us at the barre. “I got a job!”

“Great!” I say, suppressing a sigh of relief. Finally, Adriana will start paying her dues and stop begging her sister for rent money. “How about I take you to La Perla to celebrate?”

My husband, Eduardo, picks up the atecocolli and brings it to his lips. When he blows into the shell the dancers peel themselves off the walls or get on their feet and head to the floor. “Tomorrow after work, okay?” I say to Adriana. As Eduardo pounds on his drum, the studio comes alive with movement. Memo remains by my side, and as we dance I can’t help but remember the child he once was. Three years old, and already he had learned to do a zapateado. And now, he dances flawlessly. Gives in to the music of his ancestors, and when he turns to me and smiles, I feel a rush of pride. This tall young man is my little boy, whom I taught to walk, to dance, to love Folklórico.

I look at the dancers around me. In the row in front of me is Stephanie, who at seventeen is the youngest in the professional group. In the row behind me is Olivia, who at thirty-six is the second-oldest dancer, six years younger than me. The women always leave. Start getting married. Having children. Pursuing a career. Little by little letting go of their passion for Folklórico.

I’ve been the co-director of my own dance group for nine years. Eduardo and I have worked so hard to get it where it is now. There are about a hundred Folklórico groups in Los Angeles, and Grupo Folklórico Alegría is one of the best. We have forty-five dancers, and in every one of our big shows there are always at least twelve couples on the stage.

When we finish practicing the Azteca danzas, I put on my dance shoes and my red practice skirt, which is made of fourteen yards of poplin and falls right below my ankles. Lately, whenever it’s my turn to teach I focus on the skirtwork even more than the footwork because it gives me a chance to rest my knee.

“You hold up your skirt like this,” I say, standing before the female dancers, my back to the mirrors. “Stop holding it as if it were a rag you clean your kitchen counter with! Veracruz is supposed to be danced with grace. You hold up the skirt delicately, as if it were sea foam, light in your hands. But your feet are fast, like the current.”

Even though our next performance isn’t one of our big shows but rather an adult school assembly, I won’t let the dancers go until I’m pleased with what I see. “This isn’t the time to learn but to perfect,” I say. “Last year we gave an excellent show at this school and this year I want it to be even better.”

We do another run-through of the Veracruz Cuadro Eduardo and I choreographed, except I don’t finish the suite. At the beginning of “Coco,” the last song of the cuadro, I step to the side and pretend my skirt has become loose. I wrap one strap around my waist, and then the other, slowly, breathing in and out. Eduardo glances at me, and so does Memo, the same worried look on their faces. I stand on the side and watch the dancers do the complex combination of steps. Sweating bodies flow in graceful rhythms, turning and turning, feet tapping faster and faster. I listen to the joyful music: the harp playing the melody, the jarana marking the rhythm, the requinto providing the counterpoint. To hell with my rebellious knee! I quickly pick up the sides of my skirt and join the dancers again. But by the end of the song, my feet hardly move. I do the skirt movements and hope no one can tell I’m only marking the steps the way some of the lazy dancers do, the way Adriana is doing now. How often have I told her she must dance at practice the way she would dance onstage?

I don’t correct her today. How can I? My feet aren’t as fast as the current anymore.



After practice I go home and head straight to the freezer; I sit on the recliner with an ice pack on my knee. Eduardo comes out of the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist. At forty-two he still has the body of a young dancer, slender and agile, so much like Memo’s. I’ve always been jealous that he can eat anything he wants without gaining weight. Unlike me, who puts on pounds just by looking at food.

“I’m worried about you, Yessy,” he says. He isn’t a tall man; at five feet five he stands two inches shorter than me, and his thin body makes me feel like a beluga whale when standing next to him, but his deep, booming voice makes him seem larger than life. His poise conveys confidence, power. That’s what attracted me to him the first time we met when we were kids. He isn’t a good-looking man, but the way he carries himself always makes women turn to look in admiration.

“I’ll be fine, you’ll see. It’s nothing to worry about,” I say.

“You’ve let it go on for too long now. It could get worse.” He comes to stand behind me and massages my neck. “Dancing isn’t forever. When our time comes, we have to let it go.”

“What are you talking about? I’m not ready to let it go. This will pass. It always does.” I stand up and put the ice pack back in the freezer and begin preparations for a lonely dinner without Memo.



After a shower I tuck myself under the blankets and wrap my arms around Eduardo. “I’m scared,” I confess. “I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

He squeezes my hand and says, “I know, honey. I know. But you have to do something about it, Yessy. If you keep pushing yourself the way you’ve been doing, it could get worse.”

“It can’t be that bad, can it? Maybe if I take it easy these next few days . . .”

“You need to see a doctor. Even though the pain does go away, it always comes back—and it’s worse.”

I turn around to face the wall and sigh.

“No matter what happens, you’ll always have Alegría,” Eduardo says. “The group will always be yours.”

I dreamed of starting my own group for a long time. When Memo was in sixth grade, Eduardo and I finally got serious about it and began to look for a studio to rent. Eduardo had just inherited his father’s electrical business and didn’t have much time for the group. Teaching and choreographing was all he could do, so I devoted myself to recruiting dancers, acquiring the costumes, looking for performance venues, hiring the musicians. I spent day after day writing grant proposals to get funding. Before finally forming a committee and assigning responsibilities to some of the other dancers, I was the one who spent countless hours on the phone trying to book performances, receiving the dancers’ dues, making deposits, paying the rent for the studio, worrying about the constant shortage of money. Grupo Folklórico Alegría is mine as much as it is his.

I sigh in the darkness, trying to fight the nostalgia that lately has been visiting me at night. I get out of bed, careful not to wake him. Eduardo can fall asleep within minutes, whereas I have a hard time getting my mind to stop thinking. As I make my way to the kitchen to get a drink of water I notice the light seeping through the crack under Memo’s door. I wonder if he had a good time tonight, but just as I’m about to knock I hear him talking on the phone, laughing once in a while. He’s graduating from Pasadena City College in a few months, and in August he’s moving to Riverside before the school year starts at UCR. I move away from his bedroom door. As I walk down the dark hallway, I try not to think about life without Memo at home.



Mondays at the AAA office are usually busy. By the time lunchtime comes around I’ve sold three new auto policies and five memberships. As I’m getting ready to finally take my lunch break, a client comes into the office. From the corner of my eye I see him checking in at the front. I want to rush out the door and later claim I didn’t see him. But his name appears on my computer screen, and I have no choice but to get up and call him to my cubicle. He walks toward me with determined steps, and I notice that his right arm ends right above the elbow in a stump.

“Hi, my name is Yesenia.” I awkwardly shake his left hand and offer him a seat. I sit at my computer and say, “How can I help you?”

“I want to get a quote for car insurance.”

I ask him a series of questions that will help me determine his premium. I try not to glance at the stump and hope he can’t see the disgust I feel. He should at least wear long-sleeve shirts to hide it.

“Does it bother you?” he asks.

“No, no, of course not.”

He chuckles. “It’s okay; I’m used to it by now.”

“Were you in a bad accident?” I try to keep my eyes on my computer.

“No, actually, I was bitten by a cat.”

I turn to look at him. “You serious?” I was imagining different scenarios; maybe he lost his arm in the war or performing some heroic deed, like Antonio Banderas trying to save Salma Hayek in that movie about a mariachi.

As I write his policy he tells me what happened—he didn’t pay much attention to the bite, cleaning it with hydrogen peroxide, thinking the infection would go away, but it kept getting worse. Soon, his arm was so swollen he couldn’t put it off any longer and went to see the doctor.

“Why didn’t you go sooner?”

“Because I thought a cat’s bite was no big deal,” he says. He’d been hurt worse before. Stepped on a rusty nail once when he was walking around his yard barefoot, and nothing happened to him then, although his wife kept telling him he might get tetanus. So what was a bite of a stray cat going to do to him?

“The doctor said a cat’s bite is much worse than a dog’s bite,” he says. “Cats have a lot of bacteria in their mouths because they’re constantly licking themselves, even their butts. So the bacteria had spread so much there was nothing he could do but cut off my arm.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You know what the worst part is?” he asks. I shake my head. “Sometimes I wake up and reach for my glasses, thinking my arm is still whole. And I see this instead . . .” He lifts up his arm so that I can see the stump up close.



I pick up Adriana after work and we head to El Mercadito in East L.A.

“How long was it this time?” I ask.

“Three months, two weeks, and three days,” she says as she lowers the window. She’s wearing a hot pink blouse with lace around the collar, purple ribbons on her braids, silver chandelier earrings, and bright red lipstick. Every time I see Adriana outside of practice I think of an overly decorated Christmas tree, like the kind Eduardo and I put up in the living room every year. We never know when to stop with the decorations. Neither does Adriana.

“Let’s hope this one lasts,” I say. She’s had more jobs than anyone I know. This time she’s waitressing. Her last job was cleaning offices at night. The job before that I think she was a cashier or a parking lot attendant, or a pizza delivery person, I’ve lost track.

As we drive to El Mercadito, I tell Adriana about the man with the missing arm. “That’s pretty fucked up,” she says.

The whole day I haven’t been able to put him out of my mind, wondering how one can deal with being incomplete.

Adriana likes the stores on the lower level because they sell typical Mexican clothes—blouses with ruffles and lace, peasant skirts and shawls, her usual attire.

What I like about El Mercadito are all the goodies sold there: corn on the cob lathered with mayonnaise and sprinkled with grated cheese and chili powder, or mango with chili and lemon, tamarind pulp, chicharrones, buñuelos, pumpkin and yam in syrup, and my favorite of all, churros, real churros, not that previously frozen crap sold elsewhere.

After browsing through the stores and sharing a bag of churros, we go up to La Perla restaurant on the third floor and order a bucket of Coronas. I can’t decide what to order; everything looks so good—but I can’t stop thinking about all those calories. I settle for a shrimp cocktail, one of the least fattening things on the menu. My New Year’s resolution is to lose the extra pounds. Even though I’m so active with my dancing, I’m still at least thirty-five pounds over my ideal weight. The huge floor-to-ceiling mirrors at the studio shamelessly remind me of all the tamales I stuffed down my throat on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. Right now my goal is to lose five pounds before our next performance. Five pounds isn’t an impossible goal, but these last few years it’s been getting harder to keep my weight down.

“Your knee still bothering you?” Adriana asks after she takes a big swallow of beer.

“The pain comes and goes.”

“You seen the doctor? I mean, after you fell at the performance—”

“I fell because I hurt my ankle,” I insist. The thing about lies is that once you say them, you have to keep saying them. “Anyway, it’ll pass.” Yes, the pain will pass and I’ll continue to do what I’ve been doing since I was six years old. Folklórico is my life. It’s all I know.

“You haven’t been dancing as much during practice. You stand there with Eduardo and watch us instead. That’s so unlike you.”

“I just thought I’d help him out a bit. The show is coming up and I’ve been noticing some mistakes that he hasn’t. Being a dance instructor isn’t easy, you know?” I don’t hold Adriana’s gaze for long. It bothers me to stand there watching. Every year I teach a few dances and help Eduardo choreograph a cuadro, but my passion is for dancing, not teaching. “Anyway, here’s to your new job. Hope this one lasts.”

“Ha, ha,” Adriana says.

I love the murals that cover the walls of La Perla. One is of a landscape of a beautiful Mexican village. Little houses are scattered alongside a lake, with a fisherman casting a butterfly net in the middle of it. The mural on the other wall is of a beach framed with straw huts on one side and large puffy clouds in the sky above. The multicolored track lights on the ceiling shine on the murals. Every time the color changes from blue, to red, to yellow, the time of day in the paintings changes, too. It goes from being a sunny afternoon to twilight, and the little lights inside the houses turn on, and even fireflies appear among the reeds on the lakeshore. In the other mural, the moon peeks from between the clouds, and the rays of the moon make the ocean water shimmer.

Right now it’s nighttime; the sleepy town seems so peaceful, idyllic. The kind of place one could live in and be happy. A few minutes later, the lighting is red and the dawn comes, then slowly the lights change to blue and it’s daytime and soon the sleepy village is awake again.

I’ve always been curious how the artist did this. What special technique did he use to have his murals change from morning to nighttime? As curious as I am, I’ve never asked because I want to believe it’s magic. I want to believe the little village is real. That it’s another world and if I walk up to it and touch it, I’ll be magically transported to that little village by the lake.

I feel the alcohol warming me. The mariachi come out to the stage and begin to set up. I can’t wait to hear them play those depressing Mexican songs about love gone wrong, betrayal, vengeance, disappointment, solitude, and regret. Because of the cat story, I’m already in the mood.

I check out the guitar player, the one who looks like the Mexican singer Pepe Aguilar. Nice ass. I imagine myself in his arms, or him holding my hand and blowing my worries away as if they were dandelion seeds. He would look at my body, my sagging breasts, the wrinkles on my face, and the magic of his words would make me feel like a girl of sixteen, not a woman in her early forties.

In the murals, time stands still. Morning and night come and go but the town never changes. Nothing changes. I wonder about the artist again. Wouldn’t it be great if he could design some props for one of our shows? Maybe even paint the backdrops for Michoacán or Nayarit . . .

Adriana is looking at me with eyes half closed, leaning back against the chair, every bit of her succumbing to her third beer. As always, it amazes me how much Adriana looks like her mother, Cecilia, their lips forming a half smile that makes you feel as if they’re laughing at you, as if maybe you have a piece of cilantro stuck between your teeth.

“You’ll be an aunt soon,” I say, thinking about Elena and the very big belly she’s now carrying around.

Adriana shrugs. “Yeah. So what?”

“So, Elena is going to need you by her side. You don’t know how hard it is after you have a baby.”

“She has plenty of people to help her out. You, for instance.”

“Elena is your sister. It’s your place to be there for her.”

Adriana drinks her beer in one big swallow and then wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, saying nothing.

“Any luck with your father?” I ask.

“No. He didn’t want to talk to me last time I saw him.”

“You should just forget about him, Adriana. Stop going to his house. A man like that isn’t worth the heartache.”

“He’s my father. I’ll decide if he’s worth it or not.”

Twelve years ago Cecilia died in a car accident, leaving her two daughters alone at the mercy of their father. I open my mouth to say more, to make Adriana realize the man she calls father is an abusive asshole who treated her like an animal. But the mariachi begin their first song. The music enters my body and makes me tremble. I lean back against my chair; there’s nothing like the sound of violins and songs about a lost love to dig into your soul and make you bleed.

We sing along with the mariachi, Adriana and I. She with her perfect voice like that of her favorite Mexican singer, Ana Gabriel, and me with my off-key raspy voice that’s sexy when talking but not when I’m singing. But who cares? I’m here to enjoy myself.

Our food arrives as we finish a song about wanting to go back to the arms of an old lover. One of the men sitting at the tables nearby gets up and walks up to the band. He tells them something I can’t make out. The musicians nod and the man takes the microphone and gets on the stage. He’s so drunk, he can hardly keep from falling.

My God, this guy makes me wish I were deaf! He sings “Mujeres Divinas.” There’s nothing for us to do but sing along with him and hope when the song is over, he’ll go back to his seat. But no. He takes a liking to the mike and follows up with “El Rey.” With money or without money, I do whatever I want, and my word is law. I don’t have a throne or a queen, or anyone who understands me, but I’m still the kiiiiiiing!

When the song is over he takes out a huge wad of money and hands several bills to the guitar player with the cute ass. Satisfied by the generous tip, the musicians pick up their instruments, and to my dismay, the man lifts the mike and sings “Tristes Recuerdos.”

El tiempo pasa. Y no te puedo olvidar.

Te traigo en el pensamiento constante, mi amor.

Y aunque trato de olvidarte, cada día te extraño más.

The customers shake their heads in disapproval. The guy is butchering this song, which happens to be one of Adriana’s favorites.

“This is bullshit!” Adriana says. She looks at the bucket on the table. It’s empty now except for the melting ice. She picks it up and looks back at the guy as if seriously considering throwing the ice water on him. She puts the bucket back down and heads to the stage. I stand up, fearing Adriana will do something rash—like slapping the man or kicking him in the balls. Instead, she grabs the microphone from him and begins to sing.

If only she could dance as beautifully as she sings. Every time I hear Adriana sing I can’t help thinking she’s in the wrong profession. I sit back down, mesmerized by her powerful voice, so strong and yet so tender, so full of something that makes you want to bare your soul to her. Hers is the voice that shakes you, that turns you inside out, that penetrates your most intimate thoughts, that uncovers your innermost fears, so that you admit you’re scared shitless of getting old, of giving up the most important thing in your life. Folklórico.

Adriana

Me and Elena don’t look like sisters. If you saw us walking side by side, you would think we were just friends. No, not even friends, maybe two people who know each other by chance. The woman doesn’t need to put on lipstick; her lips are naturally pink and shiny. Her hair is shoulder-length and it’s the dark brown color of piloncillo. I swear she must be someone else’s kid. My mother was no saint.

As for me, I’m as dark as a Chocolate Abuelita bar (okay, maybe not that dark). And my hair, like my mother’s, is black and straight. When I dance Azteca, and I wear the traditional indigenous costume, the headdress of long colorful feathers like a halo around my face; I’m a real Aztec princess come to life.

I imagine that’s how Mom must have looked to my father when he first saw her dance.

An Aztec princess.

My father’s a pocho. Born of Mexican illegals who came to this country to have a better life. He’s never been to México, unlike Mom, who was born and raised there. I guess he’d figured Mom was as close to México as he’d ever get. Mom’s Aztec princess glamour didn’t last long, I think. Just long enough for Dad to get her pregnant with Elena. Or long enough for Mom to pin the pregnancy on him.

But even if Elena and me are not full-blooded hermanas, there’s one thing that binds us—we were both left motherless the night Mom crashed her car into a fire hydrant and the telephone pole behind it. In my mind I can see the water shooting up like a geyser, while inside the car my mother lay with her head against the shattered windshield.

My mother’s name was Cecilia Adriana Alvarez, and we never knew much about her except that she was from Chiapas, had come to the States at seventeen, worked at a factory sewing bathing suits, and had a passion for Folklórico.