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Cousin Consuelo, On Piano

12 Cousin Consuelo, On Piano Por favor Consuelo, play something—for la familia, her mother begged until she stomped to the bench, bored us with some waltz. I asked for Crocodile Rock, but she didn’t know it (or so she said), hammered out a mambo instead, her waist-long hair swaying like a metronome keeping tempo and everyone two-three-fouring around the coffee table. I asked for Muskrat Love, but she kept the frenzy going with a paso doble setting off a chorus of ¡Olé! ¡Olé! ¡Olé! ringside at a bullfight tossing out roses. Margaritaville, I pleaded, but she followed with the sweet and slow honey of a bolero. Okay, one more—that’s it! she warned. I yelled for American Pie, but the crowd demanded !Guantanamera! that damn song about Cuba they all knew by heart. !Guantanamera! My mother slapped my fingers out of my ears, made me sit on my hands. I had to listen to my grandmother caterwaul, dabbing the corners of her eyes, her voice cracking over a country I didn’t know yet had to love like Tía Miri did, singing about el campo I never saw yet had to feel in Brenda’s notes rising into mountains, resting in valleys, the click of her nail-tips on the keys like rain falling in the room, on my father. I had to watch him sink into the sofa, clutch his whiskey, follow her fingers rippling left, right. I had to sing with him like a real Cuban, had to feel displaced, broken, beautiful— and clap for more, had to make Consuelo play Guantanamera twice, three times, until she stuffed the sheet music back into the bench, marched to her room, leaving us and the piano a dumb black box without her. ...