Ole! They say,
accenting the
wrong
syl-LA-able. They
ask for
flamenco,
they say, then
don’t complain
when
they get La
Pulga, a
pesky
dance about a
pesky girl
with
a pesky flea
in her
clothes.
The theater “liberated”
by Nationalists
curdled
from the cigarettes
of troops
wearing
blue for the
Italian Army,
gray-green
for the German.
Behind them
more
soldiers wore red
berets representing
Carlists,
dark blue shirts
with yellow
arrows
symbolizing the Falangists,
and red
fezzes
for Franco’s Moors.
Eh! Different
from
each other yet,
to Clementina,
more
of the same.
Their gaping
mouths
melded into one
voracious maw
poised
to gobble her
down. They
watched
with a hungry
insatiability. But
never
did they clap.
Well, one
man
began clapping on
everyone’s behalf,
not
because her furious
footwork was
better
than it had
ever been
but,
because she raised
her skirt
just
the tiniest bit.
She heard
his
order from offstage
as a
blade
hissing past false
rubies studding
her
ears, “Higher! Show
more! Do
you
eat cockroaches?!” Afterwards,
Senor Vedrine,
owner
of several companies,
touring the
country
in his Espectaculos,
resplendent that
night
in his black
evening cape—
mustache
waxed to fine
points—dropped
a
few centimes into
Clementina’s hand.
Her
hand fisted over
the amount
exact
-ly enough to
stay alive
for
one more day
and arrive
back
at Teatro Olimpia
the next
night
hungry again. Hungry
again despite
lace
hemming a red
velvet skirt.
Hungry
enough to keep
returning to
do
whatever was necessary.
Again. Despite
lace
trimming red velvet.
Again and
again
she is hungry
enough to
repeat
this honing of
furious footwork.
Furious
shoe tips bearing
six extra
nails
drumming into a
floor she
imagined
as the naked
chests of
soldiers
beneath her, looking
up flaring
skirts
while ignorantly dying
as blood
spurted
from the nails
she stamped
into
their flesh with
hungry, furious
footwork.
