Day 13 o el Dia trece

The phone rang. It was Margarita.
"Hey nena, what's up?"
She told me she was going to a dance gig for a cumbia band and they needed another dancer. I was down. When we arrived it was a Salvodorean restaurant. We made our way to the stage with eyes glancing and gazing. It was not what we particularly had in mind. Our black mini skirts swayed as we walked by tables. A hint of shyness was there and a provocative sway was missing. It was a 21 year old's party with family and young kids around. We were being watched with awareness and jealous eyes. We didn't want to seem like divas, so we became sweet and careful. The aroma in the air was familiar. The people were familiar and I was remembering pockets of my past where I hung out with my boricua freinds at the mom and pop shops. At the barber shops, at the dances, at the Spanish clubs. It was all familiar. Four years of living in Los Angeles from the east coast, I felt out of place, I felt lost. My freind Margarita was from Guatemala with a hard knocks attitude that was familiar. She was the closest thing to my freinds from the east coast and she made me feel comfotable and fit in. I missed the east coast, I missed the Puerto Rican culture and I felt myself ask, where are all the boricuas at. I wished I had met a few, I wished there were more out here, but there are, I just haven't looked in the right places.
So Margarita and I started are performance and the singer sang covers as we sasheyd our hips and legs and motioned our arms fluidly. My confidence shined and I felt Puerto Rican again.
"Suavemente, besame.."
by this time my face was covered in sweat like an icy vail and my heart was beating faster than the conga drums in the songs. I used my cintura and muevete'd my hips and shook my body as if I were a maraca. My curly hair tossed as I turned and cumbia'd my way to and from in my tight circle. He sang to me, he sang to her, he invited family members to join on stage to dance. Latinos have this joy when la musica latina of cumbia, salsa, mirengue or tropicala is performed. They always smile as if someone just told a joke and the joy inside of them shows like a happy lantern on a summer night. I was home. At least inside.
Different family members came and went off the stage and when it was intermission, they sang happy birthday.
"Cumpleanos feliz! Cumpleanos feliz!..."
I had learned how easy it was to listen to the song and how easy the words sounded. I could now sing happy birthday. I was listening. I was grasping the words. I thought about it. And before, in the past I would just let the spanish get in my head like a muffled ear piece, ignoring the inclination, pronunciation of each word. It was just clutter when I heard it. And if I had only payed attention to the spanish, I probably would have had a better time with it. Now, since writing my blog, everyday shares a new experience. This blog helps me pay attention. It makes me curious enough to learn, to find out what this meant or what that meant in espanol. To discover something new everyday of being Puerto Rican, finding excitement in a latin culture.
"Buenas noches, gracias por todo, cuidate."
That's about all I could say in espanol as we left the restaurant. I thanked Margarita for the gig and that we should go to more latin places. That she new me as mixed, as half, as white but I shared with her my passion for being Puerto Rican too and that I wanted to role play with her and start gaining the confidence to speak spanish. She is the closest of my homegirls who is latina and has a comfortableness that I could be myself around her and feel accepted as Puerto Rican. Yet inside I know she knows me as half and I understand. It is hard for latinos to accept someone as a whole when they don't even speak spanish or speak some. I was trying and am. I shared my story of my blog of Seeking La Otra Mitad and she smiled and went on talking, going on as if we were on a walk, stepping past something that was left there. But I was serious and we went on talking, I drove and the night was behind us as the conversation was about Seeking La Otra Mitad.