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thekingjadechronicles · 2 years

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Puro Teatro

The story of my parents and how I came to be on this earth, but it's also a story about courage and the strength of the matriarch. I take great courage from my mother and I hope you can too.

Bless up ✨️

Guadalupe had always felt nostalgic when Puro Teatro played. Nights catching fireflies in the backyard with the smell of black and milds on blacker thick stained fingers, the family swaying on the wooden porch with the white paint chipping. Kitchen glasses of strong smelling alcohol with coconut and lime lined the railings, the aunties fighting with abuelita over the sound of the radio. Something about the seventies was magical. The souls of the colors never lived again and the once juicy memories were replaced with dry bitterness in the twelve years Guadalupe wasted with the man known by her family as “that fool” Reggie.

In 1986, gogo was the wave in all the parties in DC, replacing the salsa albums that colored her childhood with Chuck Brown, Rare Essence, Trouble Funk, and the Junkyard Band. The feet hardwired for bachata rewired to fit the new footwork creating a unique twist on a growing culture of conga and rototom beats.

Lupe became addicted to the bounce and step–and the first time she noticed Reggie it was for his dancing. He’d been with another woman all night all throughout the club and on the dancefloor as she’d observed, but Lupe was confident in the fact she was beautiful and freshly 21 with a strong and lean body honed to dance and bred to do other things as well. She kept her eye on him gauging his interest while they were all getting down singing about Sardines and Pork and Beans. It took no time for him to approach and ask for a dance, which she accepted thinking nothing of his previous partner who could not again be found in the crowd. That was the start of their decade-long ride and within three years Lupe was pregnant.

Their first year together was a year of mutual discovery. Outside of the gogos, Lupe loved to go to the water and watch the boats float while sitting at picnic tables under trees and on the grass. Reggie liked sports. Any kind of sport. To combine their interests, Lupe would rally up a group to Hayne’s Point to play softball in the wide field across from the water.

Reggie was a part of making these days some of the best of summer. Toned and shirtless, he would sweat and glisten driving Lupe and the girls insane. He had a mean hit with the bat and was quick to round the bases, sliding in the dirt if it meant a win. Still, no matter how hard he ran, his body was never fast enough to beat Lupe’s hands. Years of softball and soccer had turned her into a competitive, high-powered machine. “Out,” her grin spread slowly as his head dropped to the dust he laid in. “You’re foul, I made that base,” he reasoned to no avail. “Just foul,” he repeated, walking off with a toss of his cap. He was a sore loser, but it made for entertaining memories that she recounted with coworkers and lunch buddies.

Year two went by much like year one, lots of dancing but even more sex. Raw sex wet with passion in the club bathroom as they richoqueted from dirty dingy wall to door with the vigor of their combined lust and youthful power. Rocking the car in the parking lot while panting in the backseat, windows clouded behind her legs which locked around the one and only Reggie Michael Dixon. Trails of getting-to-know-you kisses latched to skin in chains that dragged over Lupe’s body weighting her to the mattress, the floor and by year three, she was pregnant.

“Whose is it?”

Even gravity faltered, unexpecting of the line of questioning. The only possible answer other than miraculous conception was staring back at her with an indignant anger she’d never before witnessed in its eyes. He was the only stranger she’d been sleeping with and suddenly her mistake was so unfortunately clear, she could walk through it. So she did. She left his one-bedroom and returned home where her mother now lived alone without the presence of her mother Alma. Alma still lived in the walls and floorboards. Her spirit could be felt in every comforting tamale and croqueta–every plate of picadillo. Cooking in Alma’s kitchen felt like taking a sledgehammer to the wall that divided the present from the past and when Lupe’s mother wordlessly joined beside her, the walls began to share their secrets.

Abuelo was no pure man, he died the way he lived and Abuelita had come from Cuba to begin her life and mold it into something of pride. Years later, to a ghost the aunties were born and then mama who was assimilated to think and exist as a natural American. With her hands, Mama used her amazing talent and extroverted gifts of gab to build the foundation of a bustling business that could sustain her family including abuelita and she bought the family house outright while raising her daughter Lupe without a man. That was Lupe’s legacy.

But Mama knew Lupe would rise to the occasion when that occasion arose, so Lupe was free to be Lupe. She drank mugwort and chamomile tea, fasting until the problem was gone and like a dog sniffing out a bone Reggie came calling with apologies. Lupe was in his bed within a week and within two weeks they were together again. The relationship continued as a neverending roller coaster with missing gears and bars, yet no year following could produce the love she felt within the first year. She was drowning in her loneliness on a bed with him in it crying for him to care, getting more and more drunk–deeper into belligerence. His first child came from a woman with fine curly hair and skin like the inner peel of a peach. He named him Junior.

Lupe screamed and cussed and threw the chicken she’d prepared on the floor shattering the glass dish and glass cups while Reggie left to be a father to a child without question or doubt. He was back within the week as if nothing had occurred, and to their mutual friends who he brought with him to see her drunk at the kitchen table she looked insane. Her stoic retreat into the bedroom and the slam of the door that nearly took it off of its hinges told them she was the problem.

On November 7th of 1991, motherhood became Lupe’s purpose and forever future. Her daughter laid peacefully in her arms after hours of labor with her Mama by her side. By the time Reggie found his way to the hospital, the baby had been cleaned and the cord cut. He reached for the baby and against her better judgment, Lupe handed her to him. He held the newborn close and spoke as a father should to a person new to this world. “Let’s call her Charlie,” he suggested, enamored with his second born child. Lupe looked to her Mama who looked perturbed but stayed quiet. Not once during the pregnancy had Reggie been interested in her child until now. “Why Charlie,” Lupe asked, fighting the softening her traitorous heart was consistent with. “After my father. I already have one junior, she’s mine as well.” Just like that Lupe was broken. Having lived without a father she refused to pass it on. Her child had a father who wasn’t a ghost. Thus, her name became Charlie Jade because to Lupe she was just as precious.

But having a child didn’t fix the relationship. It became more strained with more responsibility. Lupe had to leave Charlie with Mama until things got better. Though Reggie never hit Lupe, he hurt her in many other ways that left her feeling alone in their small home. The lying, the disappearing, the cheating, the accusations, the humiliation and degradation in front of others who stood by and watched with high noses in judgment of her. Every day, she felt alone. In the night, she’d have sex and still feel like she’d lost the vibrant parts of herself. She felt unattractive. She was starting to feel like a terrible mother.

“Did I ever tell you how you got your name,” Mama spoke when Lupe came by to retrieve Charlie after another week of depression. “Come cook with me.” Unwillingly Lupe went into the kitchen where she was surrounded by the love of the matriarchs past and present. Like a lightbulb sparking into light, the music that played unlocked ancient colors she hadn’t seen in years. Like her hands remembered how to wrap tamales, her feet remembered how to dance. Salsa lived in her body like Alma lived in the walls. “La Lupe,” Mama smiled. “Abuelita named you La Lupe when she felt you kick in my stomach. You were dancing to Puro Teatro.”

“Now look at me,” Lupe spoke in disappointment and shame, “Living it.”

The embrace Lupe received felt so foreign that she cried on her Mama’s shoulder as the song continued into another.

Anything from you is pure theater.

Well rehearsed falsity,

A well studied simulation

It's been your best act,

To tear apart my heart.

And today that you truly cry for me

I remember your simulation.

Pardon that I don't believe you,

to me it just seems like theater.

When Mama died in 1993 of cancer, Lupe gathered with the aunties to mourn and bury her. The house was Lupe’s as was the money. Lupe moved her family from the one-bedroom apartment into the three-bedroom home that now hosted the spirits of Alma and Mama. Every time Reggie threw something in the house, it was for control. Even in her childhood home she was isolated. He’d break things and she pictured her Mama in pain for her which hurt more than Reggie’s constant rejection. He hadn’t even held her or offered any comforting words in the loss of her mother. The sex continued. He was heartless and uncaring, leaving her neglected and emotionally starved, but she swallowed her emotions to keep herself from sinking. Mama was no more and Charlie deserved to still have her father in her life.

Things changed when Charlie began to grow. Lupe couldn’t protect her from the disappointment and constant pain from the man who cared only about himself. It was no longer just Lupe being lied to. Charlie’s tears over broken promises and being the target of undeserved anger cut Lupe deep enough for her to wake up. No more would she or her daughter walk on eggshells. Lupe had truly had enough. Then she saw firsthand what it looked like from the outside.

In the tumultuous relationship of a couple of strangers, Lupe was able to pick up the identical dynamic and observe a man she could only think to describe as beneath her and beneath the young woman with him. He was bucking and making smart comments, raising his voice as she remained calm and then he triggered her with an accusation that made her respond in a way he’d been digging for. He called her crazy and then she likely felt crazy for dealing with him. Their public spat went on with his attempts to degrade and embarrass her into being controlled.

It was too familiar. It was a Sunday, Tuesday, and Friday. It was holidays and weekends. It was entirely too much to bear.

In 1999, Lupe sought professional help through therapy where she realized she’d been with a narcissist for 12 years. She hadn’t known she was a victim until she was on the outside. In the words of her therapist, “It’s difficult to recognize yourself as a victim when you’re used to being strong. Not all abuse victims walk around bruised and battered.” She needed to commence self-healing through discussing the events and her feelings with someone who wasn’t going to gaslight her. She needed to be validated. She needed to stop trying to mend the relationship. Stop trying to fix him. Stop thinking of herself as a bad mother. A bad mother wouldn’t seek help. Most of all, she had to stop believing it to be a loss if she left and he did right by the next woman. He hadn’t and refused to do right by her so why would he change for someone else? No. They’d get she same Reggie she got after a year of love bombing. She needed to be okay with the idea of losing him and of him trading her in for someone prettier out of spite. She had to value herself as a woman and mother. She had to rediscover Guadalupe.

Within the year, she acquired resources that led her to an attorney well versed in narcissism and the family court system. She wanted Charlie and her therapist wisely advised her to go about it quietly so as not to rouse Reggie’s vindictive nature. The attorney warned her of all the familiar tricks.

“When you leave he’ll try to suck you back in saying anything you want to hear. He’ll apologize, beg, and compliment. He’ll make you promises he can’t keep. Be strategic with your communication. If you so much as engage you’ll either fall back into the cycle or it will be used against you. When you say no, he will replace you and smear your name to mobilize your friends and family against you. He’ll say he’s done everything for you. He’ll call you names. Worst of all, he’ll want custody of your child to stick it to you. He’ll find every loophole to manipulate the parenting plan. So don’t give him an inch. He’ll take 30 miles.”

The attorney knew Reggie better than he knew himself. Everything she said came to pass and at the end stood Lupe, a free woman with a restraining order against her baby’s daddy and full custody of her kid. They remained in her Mama’s house with the help of the aunties who babysat of their own free will because Charlie was so cute.

Guadelupe restarted her life that year in the home that her abuelita found and her Mama bought. She brought back the salsa and the bachata. She danced to the gogo and cooked the beans and rice exposing Charlie to the richness of two cultures that had been passed down.

The colors began to brighten and as the memories returned like tsunami tides ready to crash upon the beach that was a young and curious Charlie, she let herself inflate and overflow with the abounding love that had carried Ama and Mama to this point and place–the stories that fostered the laughter–the relentless perseverance and magic of the matriarchs.

#thekingjadechronicles #the kompound multiverse #thekompoundreboot #charlie jade

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