A Gitana Inside
The streets are wide in the Colónía Álamo Indústrial, the last stand of suburbs ringing Guadalajara. It’s a modest set of middle-class houses. The single-story concrete squares stand one right against the other. Each is painted in a bright candy color — berry blue, coconut white, lemon yellow, strawberry pink.
Mine was the only empty house when I moved in. It, alone, retained its natural stone fronting and its native color of earthy mud. The neighbor ladies were quick to welcome me — “Oh,
how nice to have someone living here now.” And they were quick to ask: “What color are you going to paint it? Have you considered turquoise?”
The señoras rule the streets of Álamo Indústrial. Husbands leave the colónia before dawn, cramming onto micro buses in the dark to make the one- or two-hour ride to their work sites in the city. After cleaning up breakfast, each señora opens her front door armed with a giant broom crafted from sticks and grass. Each sweeps her front porch, then the driveway, then the sidewalk in front of her home. Finally, each brushes the debris to the center of the street, where one meets her neighbor to exchange news, to contemplate theories, and to suggest secrets.
The fact I worked in the city and started my shift at 7 a.m. was no good excuse for letting leaves sit on my sidewalk. So it was quite a scandal that I didn’t sweep up until I came home for siesta.
“That’s a gringa living in la Doña Chela’s house,” they’d say.
It was true. I’d fooled them at first because I looked just like any other one. I could blend right in, as long as I didn’t speak.
And I tried not to upset the señoras. I stopped wearing cut-off shorts for the day’s sweep. I tied my hair back. I put on a bra. I greeted the señoras when they passed by my sidewalk and they’d comment on my plants or my cat.
It was a bit late by the time I got out to sweep one morning, and I was way behind everyone else. I got as far as the sidewalk when two señoras appeared from the other side of my tree.
“Buenos días, señoras,” I said.
“Ah, buenos días,” they said.
They were not like the others. The tall one looked me hard in the eyes. “Oh, you’re not Mexicana?” she said, and where was I from? Where was my husband? Why was I here?
I stumbled through my answers, wobbling across politeness. Then I noticed the oddness.
Her bold posture and look of veiled energy. Her eyes of lion skin. Her insistence. “Perhaps we could come in?”
From the side, I saw my neighbor señora out front sweeping her sidewalk, though it was already clean, and keeping her face turned low, though she looked up at me. I took the signal.
“Oh, I’m very sorry, but I must get back to work,” I told them. Then more questions about my job before I finally got away.
My neighbor called me, “Ssst, Señora. You mustn’t talk to those women. They are gitanas.”
I looked back. Of course they were. The long skirts, the jewelry, the unstyled hair. It was the first time I’d ever crossed paths with a true gypsy.
“Don’t tell them anything about you,” she told me. “They’ll take your money. They’ll take your soul.”
I had seen the gitanos — or romani — elsewhere in Mexico. One year in Mazatlan, they came into town during Carnival. I’d lived there long enough to notice they stood out. The women wore their hair long and loose. Their colorful, flowing skirts were unlike either the modern, understated clothes worn by local women, or the tank tops and beachwear preferred by sun-seeking foreigners. I remember seeing a group of gitana women standing on a corner. As I drove by, I couldn’t help but wonder about them and, as I did, the oldest of the group turned and locked eyes with me.
I knew little about them. But, I do know now that the last person I’d want to have angry at me is a gitana. I’d never want to bump into one in a dark alley. You’ll know what I mean, if you’ve ever seen them dance.
It’s not the moves in flamenco that are so difficult. Hand claps and foot stomps. Simple turns and arms up. But the true gitana exists only inside. That’s where the voice comes from when they shout. That’s where the power comes from when they whip their heads around. That’s what sparks the flare in their eyes.
One night in a gitana cabarét, my friend and I were heading to the ladies room when — while passing down a tight hallway — she made the mistake of brushing up too closely against one of the dancers. The gitana, a solid middle-aged woman, stopped and glared at her — freezing time for a moment that she fully owned.
My friend, a dancer herself, threw her arms out to her side like a matador, and smoothly replied, “Olé.” The gitana passed.
I asked my friend, “What is it that makes them able to strike that look?”
“Well,” she asked me, “what is it that you see?”
I tried to conjure the look and feel it. “It’s passion,” I said. “But more than that, it’s anger.”
Anger. That’s not an easy emotion for me. Some say that’s a bad sign. But it’s just, well, I find it too exhausting. And that’s why I know that, if I were to ever get into a fight with a gitana, I would get my ass kicked.
Fortunately, the streets are wide in the Colónia Álamo Indústrial, so it’s unlikely I’d ever have to walk through a tight passage and risk having to face one down.
One morning, it was still dark in the colónía when I was walking up the broad road toward the bus stop, past the chain link fence of the lumber yard. The guard dogs were barking as I approached.
Then from nowhere, a sting of fear raced through my body when I felt a hard hand grab onto my ass. I lashed around shouting “Asshole!” Then I saw him, a thin, smiling jerk in a soiled
baseball cap circling around me on a bicycle. “Fucking asshole!”
But being cursed at in a foreign language means nothing.
I looked around for a stick to stab through his spokes, but found nothing. The man stared at me, laughing. I did the only thing I could. I stopped.
I struck a gitana stance and summoned up my anger. I wailed. “¡Pendejo! ¡Chinga tu madre, pinche pendejo!”
The laughter stopped and a shimmer of surprise crossed his face. He rode away. I tasted my anger and smiled.
I turned and continued walking up the street. I thought I heard the señoras whisper “Olé.”