My uncle transforms the basement in his apartment building into a dancehall to celebrate my baby cousin’s first birthday – an all out party with a deejay playing merengue and salsa, some cumbia, a little calypso and reggae thrown in for kicks.

I sit at a small, round table with my mother and father, looking around the large room which is filled with all sorts of people from the neighborhood.  I watch the bodega owner who sits all day outside playing dominos, and the hair stylist who used to be a he and now is a she. She is bouncing her tremendous, brand new hips off our downstairs neighbor’s much slimmer ones. She’s the one who never pays rent, according to my mother, because she is the landlord’s “special friend”. 

Everyone is on the dance floor swinging their hips, matching the rhythm at the heart of every song.  The stereophonic horns play up to the tumbling plah-plah beat that starts slow then moves fast.  The chorus sings a constant refrain of melodic garble.  All the children are at the far end of the room, jumping.  Little girls roll on the floor in their puffy white dresses.  Little boys pull on their clip-on ties.

I can see, from the corner of my eye Mother dancing in her seat.  Father looks at her and smiles.  He gives her a wink and I pretend not to notice.  They get up to dance and leave me alone in my pink dress, the one with little polyester pink flowers glued to the bodice. It is fitted all the way down and then flares out. Mother made me wear it even though I pleaded with her. I hated the dress the minute she held it up in front of my face at the store. “I’ll look like a baby,” I said.

“You’ll like a decent young lady, innocent and pure,” she said.

Still embarrassed by how I look, I pretend I’m a flapper from the twenties, young and sophisticated.  My hair is wound tightly into a bun on top of my head. Mother wanted me to look like a ballerina tonight.

I dance in my seat while looking around the room at the older boys, hoping one will glance my way.  They are huddled together against a wall, gawking at the older girls, who have dark red lips, wear tight dresses, and have their hair pulled up with curls hanging down the sides of their faces.  One brave boy breaks away from the pack and begins to move with a girl to the beat of a slow salsa sung by a sweet-voiced singer from Venezuela. 

I wait.  Dancing in my seat, I do not dare look over, but feel confident that once one of them notices me it will be my turn to move to the beat. 

I wait.  Watch every boy and girl on the dance floor gracefully swing their hips and limbs. 

I wait.  A hand appears in front of my face. 

“Would you like to dance?”

I don’t answer. I just get up from my seat, relieved.   

 

The hand reaches for me again; it is large and rough.  That hand encircles my waist.  I want to escape, but it’s too late because his other hand is in my free hand. 

Swing, turn, twirl, and look up at my partner, with his kinky gray hair, his big, fat, gray moustache, and his slanted, bloodshot eyes.  I smell the Budweiser on his breath, but I ignore it all and pretend to be dancing with a beautiful boy.

I dance to the beat at the heart of the slow salsa. I see the dancing people and the gray cloud of cigarette smoke over their heads.

I see the kids playing tag, using the dancers as their bases. 

I see the young boys, looking straight ahead as if at attention, ignoring the girls in their arms. 

I see the deejay concentrating on the turntable, gyrating in place to the same beat I am following.  It is the heart of the song, the essential movement. 

I smile and let the calloused hand twirl me around until I see them standing in front of me.  Mother and Father are frozen as if time has stopped for them. I ignore them and twirl and twirl and stop.

“It’s time to cut the cake!” I hear my uncle shout over the music.

“Thank you,” the old drunk bows his head in that courteous, old-fashioned way.

I answer politely, as I’ve been taught, “You’re welcome.”

Father pulls me away. Mother throws Father’s jacket over my shoulders.  They both drag me out into the hard air of late night where some of the partygoers are out smoking.  Some of the young boys are talking to the older girls.

Father frowns.  Mother’s cold breath looks like steam coming out of her nose.

“How could you?” she asks.

“With an old man no less,” Father says.

I can’t swallow my own spit.  Looking straight ahead, I do not say a thing.  I want to say it wasn’t me.  It wasn’t my fault.  I just wanted to dance.

“It’s the dress,” I say.

“What?” Father asks. 

“It’s this dress. It’s this stupid dress.”

Mother does not utter a word because she loves the dress. Even though the taffeta-like material is really polyester, she believes it is an enchanted princess dress.

Father looks at Mother because he knows she loves the dress. 

I stare at the gray pavement under my feet and repeat, “It’s the pink dress.”