Maria La Perdida
This is the second installment of the Writing and Entrepreneurship Workshop series (aka Brujeria Navigation 101) for Latinas in Tech.
In the first chapter last week, “Maria La Nalgona” is going through the motions of dancing at a Harlem speakeasy when a familiar voice heckles our heroine. “Maria La Perdida,” he calls her, and the nickname is already sticking as she exits the stage to the dressing room.
Share a story about how you got lost and how you got found.
To get inspired, watch “The Journey of a Latina in Data” by Gilda Alvarez, entrepreneur and founder of Latinas in Data. If you have time, keep reading below to see how “Maria La Perdida” starts taking baby dancing steps toward getting found.
Chapter 2: The Bar
Gathering up the yellow strappy dancing shoes, Maria dashes backstage into the safety of invisibility.
Behind the dressing room door, she can hear the faint beats of the band, yet that voice is swirling louder through her bloodstream as she shimmies off the ridiculous grass costume. She is not lost. She is on a mission. She squeezes into an artificial silk skirt to the knees, mentally transforming from speakeasy burlesque dancer to respectable employee at the bank. The costume change flips on her photographic memory switch: snap-snap-snap.
One hundred and twenty times the bartender opened and closed his register.
Tucking the cigar back into her garter belt, Maria slips the shoes back on her feet. There is more power on a high heel. A shawl covers her bare arms. It’s the right costume to complete the next task until her reflection in the mirror slams the breaks on Maria's greyhound pace.
Zoom in. Squint. Un-squint. Que es eso? In the dim lights framing the mirrors along the wall, she can barely see it, but it’s certainly there. It’s another line forming around the corner of her left blue eye. She counts the lines, slowly:
Uno for her first life running around el campo on Papi’s sugarcane farm. That was puro pleasure before the pain.
Dos for her second life dancing at Teatro La Perla in Ponce. That was heavy.
Tres for her third life learning math and el cuatro at Tio Tizol’s music conservatory in San Juan for orphans and single mothers…that one was even heavier.
And there it is. Cuatro. The beginnings of a fourth line, already marking this life in Harlem.
How long has she been dancing in Nueva Yol’?
Time is literally ticking on her face. Starting and ending four different lives in four different geographies over the span of twenty-four years is a lot of math, even for a genius with a photographic memory.
Respira. The atmosphere of the dressing room is meditative like the altar of a temple, nothing like a few hours ago, when the younger dancers filled the space with chatter and make-up powders, fresh flowers from admirers, and lacy props that would make their mamas blush. If they even have a mamá.
Respira. Don’t think about mothers and absent mothers right now. All is quiet for now. The girls are out dancing for tips while Maria hides. She closes her eyes and drags deep breaths into her lungs. Recovering from another burlesque performance takes more time than it did in her previous lives. Just when the oxygen is about to relax her tensed throat and belly, she hears that voice again.
“Perdida.”
Ay! It’s so familiar. It must be a ghost from the past haunting her now. She shakes her wild mane of thick, curly locks in an attempt to appear younger before facing the bartender. Youth equals more money as a dancer.
Like an accountant, Maria contemplates her financial future in relation to the number of lives she’s lived. Twelve dollars for three hours of work, plus travel time, to supplement her gig on Broadway. It’s not enough now, and it will only diminish further.
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