Barbara Joan Schaffer

Barbara Joan Schaffer

DOMINOES

The car door swung open under the eaves of the palapa, and thus protected from the incipient rain, Francine waved to the heavy-set woman and emaciated man playing dominoes.

“What, you play with other people?” she asks Yolanda, the proprietor of the bar.

“No, only when you're not here.”

“Oh. Then you were just getting warmed up.”

Filiberto gives up his seat and the two women begin to play. Their moves are fast but not sloppy. Their strategies are the same: psych your opponent out by seeming to reveal your pieces, but not; force the other to draw more pieces, trust in luck, count the tiles. They don't tally the loser's points, but count games. Each plays for the buzz you get when you win. Each loses gracefully, approving the other's skill and luck.

Francine orders tequila, then changes her mind and asks for a mezcal. “It's more organic, more authentically Oaxacan,” she says. Yolanda has one too. She only drinks tequila and mezcal. Then Francine has a beer chaser and Yolanda another mezcal. Beer, tequila, mezcal, rum, Coke and Coke lite are what the bar stocks. Armando drank Cuba libres and Francine did too, until he left town owing her over a thousand dollars. Armando was the man who had taught her how to defend herself at dominoes.

Dominoes, like poker, is a man's game and the game of women who like to play with men. Armando and Yolanda had played together for years, becoming experts at each other's game.

Francine takes her measure on the wheel of fortune. She has been on ascent this week - her much younger lover is coming soon, she has new translations. Now she is winning at dominoes. The score is 9 to 5 in her favor.

Customers have arrived. Yolanda tells Filiberto to take her place, and she goes to the stage at the back of the palapa.

Filiberto seems to have fallen from a higher branch of the societal tree than the other lost souls who drift in and out of Yolanda's entourage. Fiftyish, living on beer, dreaming of coke, he is a relentless moocher. Word is that he owns valuable land near the beach that he isn't ready to sell. Maybe he's holding out for when he's too old to beg. Francine offers a cigarette; he points proudly to the pack in his shirt pocket. Five minutes later he asks her for a smoke.

“You have cigarettes,” she says.

“Yes, but they're cheap; yours are better.”

They play one game; Filiberto wins. He refuses to play another. “I'm a professional,” he says, “buy me a beer.” She puts a coin on the table. “Fine,” she says, “here's 10 pesos. If you win again you can buy yourself a beer.” “No, I won. Buy me a beer.” “Go to the store and buy yourself one.” A light goes on in his head, he goes to the bar and Yolanda's daughter sells him a beer for 10 pesos. Still he will not play dominoes unless she accepts his condition -- if she loses she must spend a night with him. Francine laughs, “So you think I'm a whore. Really, I am offended.” She gets up and goes to a table near the stage.

Yolanda, accompanied by Norberto on drums, is playing the guitar and singing sentimental, romantic songs from the 50's by Alvaro Carrillo. They aren't a standard part of her repertoire of cumbias and rancheros; she is in a mellow mood.

Yolanda usually plays to the audience, but she's not getting a lot to work with tonight. There are two women and a man at one table, two men at another. The three-some look like husband and wife and wife's sister, all around 30. Quiet, conservatively dressed, not a party crowd. They each nurse a single beer. The two men are a little older, one roly poly, the other thin but muscular like a professional bicycle racer, neither are good looking.

Plain, ordinary looking people stand out or are invisible in this town where every other night spot is full of surfers and surfer chicks, beautiful people with style. Yolanda might not like it, but Francine knows that as a gringa she brings local color to her club. Even in her 50s she has the sensual aura of the exotic. Men want to dance with her. Later, when Yolanda puts on a salsa c.d., the athlete asks her to dance, but he dances much better than she does and so she stops after a while.

The rain comes down hard but silently on the soaked leaves of the palapa. It feels cozy. After an hour the show is over and the couple plus one leave.

Yolanda sits down with the two men and calls for Francine to join them. They play dominoes. Francine wins the first four rounds. The men are accountants, married with children. They are gallant and fun and drink a lot of beer. Yolanda drinks mescal and Francine drink mescal and beer. By 3:30 the score is Francine 8, Yolanda 7, the men 5 and 4.

The two accountants are studying English. Javier, the athletic one, who is originally from Mexico City, says he doesn't understand why Mexicans should learn English. It is the Americans living here who should learn Spanish. Santino, a native of the region, says it's just good for business. It is an old argument between them. Francine agrees with them both.

“It's a crying shame that Americans refuse to learn Spanish, but it is no disgrace to learn English in order to make more money,” she opines.

“Mexicans have a lot more sex than Americans,” Javier continues.

“Yes,” Francine agrees again, “it's because they have other ways to express their manhood. They like to compete amongst themselves for money, position, and possessions. It's another kind of pleasure.”

“Which is more important, size or technique?” Apparently Javier is not interested in sociology.

“Technique, of course,” Francine answers, much to everyone's relief, “unless it is very small.”

“It's always the woman who decides,” Javier goes on, and Santino nods his head.

They ask the women how old they are and aren't surprised when they tell them their age.

“It's better to unwrinkle than to break,” Javier says.

“An old chicken makes good soup,” Yolanda responds. The Mexican maxims have to be explained to Francine who didn't know that chicken soup could have a libidinous connotation. Yolanda gets up to leave. “Stay a while. Keep talking about sex.”

Francine wants to go too, but the men insist on buying her another drink. She stays; it would be rude to refuse.

With Yolanda gone, the talk turns to politics. The man from the capital feels his rights are being infringed by the striking teachers and their leftwing allies who have taken over the historic center of Oaxaca and stopped tourism. Francine defends the protesters. Tourism is only the economic engine of the few people who profit from it, she argues. The money doesn't reach most of the 3 million people who live in the state. “Listen to her. She's right.” Santino says to his friend.

The rain has stopped. It's 4 a.m. when Francine gets into her car. Despite the mezcal, she feels safe. At this hour she has the road to herself.

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Barbara Joan Schaffer 

DANCING WITH TEACHERS

Now she gets to play the role of after-school-English-teacher to a brother, twelve, and sister, sixteen. It's not unlike the progress from Juliet to Juliet's nurse, or from Ophelia to Gertrude.

The first class is always a lie: the jugglers, the sweet music of the guy on the lute. The students are disarmed by the game of Binglés (pronunciation practice) and then Simon says (vocabulary). Finally, they open the books for reading and grammar. It's a lot of work for her, a lot of preparation. She thinks she can make more money with a larger group - two students is her maximum now - but then she reflects on group dynamics, the acting out, the daydreaming, the teacher's pets, her memories of dance lessons and Hebrew school. That she didn't learn the fox trot or more Hebrew than the alphabet does not mean she regrets the time spent developing her imagination in the company of her peers, but it must have been rather sad for her teachers.

PLAYA PRINCIPAL, PUERTO ESCONDIDO

The problem with developing a mind of one's own, which she spent most of her childhood hours doing when she could have learned to play the piano, figure skate, or hit a tennis ball, (her mother drove her to all those classes she never asked to take and never resisted) is that it leads to an intellectual confidence that only gets you so far and then no further. A radio discussion on string theory: a physicist suggests it might be a fixture in the mountain range without leading directly to the summit of knowledge. She has just finished reading “The Leopard” and is in a pessimistic mood.

DANZON, VERACRUZ

The day's trajectory has to be more than the struggle with the heat and the welcome lethargy of long siestas. To have a passionate nature means to endure a constant background hum of frustration. The day's trajectory should reach its arc in the embrace of the beloved, but her passion has no object, no goal. When we say we were deceived we mean we were lead into the wilderness and abandoned there. It means finding the way back to where you started with blisters on your metaphoric feet. The blisters heal, you remember the path, and it's the only one you know.

DANZON, VERACRUZ 2005

She danced a slow dance close to a man at a party, and she felt her skin fall from her, and the man whom she knew only slightly and who must have been at least 15 years younger murmured, “You are a wonderful girl.” Her skin fell from her, like a snakeskin, and she was soft, gelatinous, yielding. Now they have this secret, she and the man whom she sometimes runs into on the street. But it's not a secret, it's been commented on since by people who watched them.

Years ago in a small Mexican club in San Francisco famous for its dancing, she had observed the woman at the next table: maybe 40, a little plump, a little over made-up, a little depressed or desperate, accompanied by her sister or friend and her companion's husband. Sometimes men would ask her to dance and then return her to her seat. One man danced with her for a long time. He held her close, his eyes were shut, their hips moved perfectly in synch. This was not erotic dancing, but more like a love call. There was a man in need and a woman willing to satisfy him. It seemed terribly romantic. Then he brought her back to her table and went out the door. The humiliation; how easily she had been swept away and discarded. Their group left soon after. It must have been July; she was with two men and a woman, all summer school teachers, all looking for a good time, with no cover charge. Of course, they didn't find it.

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