Still Dancing After All These Years
Chocolatte is leaning over a bucket inspecting her reflection on the surface of the water, “I think the twinkle has gone out of my eyes. In fact, my eyes have changed color,” she announces. “They’re like looking at clouds through smog.”
“Getting old,” I say, rolling my eyes and thinking about cataracts.
She huffs, gets up and totters off to the breakfast table, muttering something about “people who ought to talk.”
“I do know how old you are, dear,” I call after her and crack the breakfast eggs into the pan.
When I first knew her, Chocolatte had a way of looking at you through her bright amber eyes—sort of cocking her chin down and her head to the side ever so slightly, relaxing her velvet lips to a tiny slouch. It made me think she was unhappy and that made me sad.
“I still have all my teeth,” She gloats as I serve breakfast, “and look how my hair shines.”
“You haven’t noticed it’s falling out?” I ask, glancing at the hair drifting across the bare floor. I ponder her once gorgeous spiced-chocolate colored hair, now graying and beginning to curl in some odd spots as I eat.
Ms. Chocolatte is having none of that talk. She begins a wiggle-dance, her toenails click-clicking in a jazzy rhythm on the parquet floor—just to prove that, at one hundred and five years old, she’s as fetching as always. Ignoring her, I gather the plates and push away from the table, stepping over a rather disgusting drool pool on the dance floor.
I think about our life together while I wash up. Chocolatte was born one hot, smoggy September afternoon in a northern suburb of Mexico City. When she was young, she never smiled, but she caused plenty of trouble. Several times I came home to find my favorite t-shirt and half my socks in a muddied heap on the brick patio—chewed.
“I’m trying to be helpful,” she would scowl out of that long, sad face. “I was just hanging out the laundry to dry.”
I won’t even mention my two Nikon cameras—I was certain that she had eaten them, but her expression remained as sorrowful—and innocent— as ever. Grrrrrr.
Several months later, La Destructora (a name given after the camera incident,) got out the gate for a stroll in the neighborhood. I was away in Mexico City helping Barbara Hernandez, my artist friend, hang her show in the fancy Galleria del Lago in Chapultepec Park. When I got home just before dinnertime, my gate stood open and Chocolatte was nowhere to be found. I searched the house and the grounds. I looked in the stables, six horses stomped and shimmied against the flies—but no Chocolatte. I peeked in the chapel, by the pool, in the bodega: calling and calling. I was frantic; Chocolatte was missing!
“Have you seen Chocolatte?” I shouted at Enrique, the yardman, anxiously wringing my hands. He shrugged, he shook, and he snorted like a burro. I half expected him to flick the ever-present stable flies away with a tail.
“No, Señora,” He replied, staring at the ground.
I didn’t believe him. “Then who left the gate open?” I accused, knowing it’s the country folks’ way to act as ignorant as a mule.
Over Enrique’s shoulder in the distance, I spied the neighbors marching along our narrow country lane in Indian file. As they got closer, they appeared grim; they’d never visited me before. I brushed past Enrique and pounded down the plum shaded driveway to the huge, wrought iron gates and pushed them open for the Leon family.
“Hurry, señorita. There has been an accident—you must come.” Doña Leon urged. “We were afraid to move her; she is badly injured.”
Chocolatte! The sharp vinegar of the pericone in bloom seared my lungs as I ran the half mile to where she lay on the Leon’s porch. She’d lost a lot of blood but was holding on like a limpet to the outer hull of life, tenaciously, knowing I’d come. I dropped down to my knees and she lifted that long face and weakly wagged her tail.
The only vet in Tepotztlán was drunk and incompetent. With no anesthetic or pain killers, he sewed up her leg and bandaged it without setting her broken bone or disinfecting the multiple wounds. I listened to my poor girl screaming; each scream tearing deeper into my heart. Three days later her condition had worsened and I had to rush her the sixty miles to Mexico City to Dr. Appendini, who painstakingly undid each stitch and cleaned the gaping wounds. The infection was so advanced that the bone couldn’t be set, nor could she be re-sewn. He didn’t think she would live long. But Chocolatte surprised us all.
I waited on her hand and foot for three months, washing the wound in chamomile tea every two hours and fanning away the filthy flies that swarmed into our casita on the stink of her blood. That was when Chocolatte became Mi Reina, My Queen— imperious, demanding, irritable. And as morose looking as ever.
The day that she got out of bed and walked on her own was some sort of wonder. Chocolatte got up, put away her long face, and began to smile. She’d had the inside of her little leg hacked from the ankle bone to her thigh with a machete. Running away, she’d been hit by a car and run-over on her already wounded leg, both paws, and her tail. She’d had her ankle bone crushed. And she was left for dead.
After her ordeal, Chocolatte’s leg was ruined, scarred and crippled, but she wasn’t going to let a little thing like that slow her down. She galloped through her days as though her rear end was on fire. She took to poking me with her snout to catch my attention when things weren’t moving fast enough. Chocolatte was curious about everything and always smiling.
I smile too, thinking about her as I finish the dishes. I peek into the living room. Mi Reina, lounging in her favorite corner, is huffing and puffing and fluffing her pillows.
“Hey, Reina, you chubbette. Pull yourself out of those cushions and do something” I admonish, “you’re getting too fat.”
“Darling, at my age, a little meat keeps my bones warm. Anyway, I’ve still got it. Did you notice my dance this morning?” she grins.
“Oh, the Slobber Slide, you mean?”
It’s hard to keep up as she dances through her days. Although our outings are just a stroll around the garden, she goes with a wag and a grin. And how she loves her garden! Why, it’s almost dark and she’s out there still, Mi Reina, surveying her realm as she protects the roses from those pesky deer. I better go call her in before she catches a chill. “Chocolatte, come girl. Ven mi Reina.”
Smiling
she comes, tail swinging, happily dancing a little two-step.
Read
more of my work in Vintage Voices, the annual anthology of Redwood
Writers. Order your copies through www.redwoodwriters.org.
Vintage Voices: A Toast to Life Our collection is arranged to reflect the seasons in the vineyards, the same four seasons of our lives. Chardonnay: To the Planting presents the lightest wine and contains pieces about childhood and youth, the light and early years. Rose: To the First Bloom celebrates youthful adventures and love. Zinfandel: To the Harvest tells stories of maturing reflections. Port: To the Bottling blends aged wisdom with the mysteries of life's end.
| Time, like a river, flows past into present, present into future and returns again as rain. The pieces of this book are arranged in a similar manner. We begin in current times, flow  Time,
like a river, flows past into present, present into future and returns
again as rain. The pieces of this book are arranged in a similar
manner. We begin in current times, flow back to the past and rush
forward to the future. We finish up with a history of the Redwood
Branch of the California Writers Club. So kick off your shoes and open
the cover of Centi'Anni: May You Live 100 Years
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 Open Vintages Voices: Four-Part Harmony
to find a choir of voices harmonizing through poems, essays, short
stories and memoir. While each voice is different, each is note-worthy.
Our voices tell of growing up and growing old, our past and our
present, and, most importantly, our connection to each other. Our
voices are celebratory, poignant, humorous, or sad, yet the collective
effect is a symphony in four-part harmony.
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Vintage Voices: A Sonoma County Writers Club Harvest, is an
anthology with works written by members of Redwood Writers, and
includes a diversity of styles and genre. The book itself was crafted,
designed, and published by Redwood Writers, a unique opportunity
offered by Lulu.com.
Its wine-drenched cover with an antique map, laced with grape vines, add to the charm of its content. The pages feature wide margins and double spacing that make each author's piece easy to read and set apart from the others. We are proud to join Lulu.com and the online revolution in
independent book publishing. Lulu.com generously assisted Redwood
Writers in each phase of this production in order to support our
aspiring writers. Vintage Voices will serve as a model for other
writers' groups who wish to publish and promote their members' works.
We plan to publish a members' anthology annually and continue to refine
our editorial process.
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