Back to Bizkaia: A Basque-American Memoir

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90 12 Ana Mari Arbillaga stood with her back to us, arms raised, fingers snapping. During her workday, she cooked at the Nevada Dinner House, one of three Basque restaurants in Elko, and then on weekends she turned into the patron saint of Elko’s Basque heritage—dance instructor, seamstress, Basque-toEnglish translator, and letter writer. If the Basques had a matriarch in Elko, Ana Mari qualified. She talked like Dad, conveying more meaning with inflection , volume, and hand gestures than with words. “Toe-heel-toe-kick. Now de oder foot,” she said. Then we repeated, “Toe-heel-toe-kick.” “Now go side to side,” and we obeyed. Twenty of us little Basque urchins stood in a single row behind her. She had a black, wiry bob-cut hairdo, a Roman nose, droopy eyes, and thin, lanky legs. In imitation, we held our arms over our heads, watched her feet, and parroted her moves. The snapping fingers came later. Our dexterity was limited. Toe-heel-toe-kick. Toe-heel-toe-kick. We started with our right foot, then repeated the same four moves with our left until we twirled with the transition of the music. Following the spin, we did a dreaded side-to-side maneuver. Our sneakers squealed on the lacquered wooden floor. “Lef’ to right first,” Ana Mari said. If she had to say it more than once, her gentleness disappeared and she spit, “Lef’ to right first. Lef’ to right. Stupido.” Not all of us learned the lesson, not even after repeated bumps, collisions, and a few floor flops. Oh, these were happy, clumsy times, a full immersion in Basque culture beyond the mus games and sheepherders of the Blue Jay Bar. “Dis is de jota,” Ana Mari described. So few Basque youngsters had an obvious rhythmical gift for dance that I wondered how it had become a hallmark of our ethnic identity. We danced as we might stomp ants, and though we learned the steps—many steps to many dances—some of us became nothing more than highly adept ant stompers. A few standouts graced the lacquered floor. Ricardo and Stephanie, a brother and sister duo, took on nearly mythical stature. Their feet flashed with not a squeal of rubber sole, only staccato toe taps and flamboyant kicks 91 and artful flowing twirls as Goya might paint them. Their feet flew while their torsos remained still. I thought the two of them to be as well known around the country as in Elko, evidence of the smallness of my world. Every week on Saturday afternoon, Mom dropped me and Jonna at the Girl Scout House, a building with bright green trim that never faded no matter how hot the summer or how cold the winter. Across the street was Ernie Hall Baseball Diamond, named for a local benefactor and longtime resident who loved the game. Behind the Scout House lived my best friend, Mikel, who, like me, struggled to master Ana Mari’s lessons. Inside during practices, Bernardo—Ricardo and Stephanie’s father—played the accordion and Gene joined on the clarinet. Bernardo and Gene did not read music. They played by ear in a type of unified improvisation week after week, as Basque tadpoles like me and Mikel toed and heeled and toed and kicked our way through each painful, inept, inelegant step. Bernardo’s fingers flew over his vertical keyboard, and Gene maneuvered elegantly up and down the treble staff. They knew a hundred songs or more, played nonstop at our practices, during the festival in July, and at public and private parties. No one asked who had taught them or how they’d learned. We only knew that Bernardo and Gene became the bright and buoyant sound of our Basque ancestry. Mikel and I became friends at these practices and, over time, best friends— inseparable. Both of us had timid demeanors and enjoyed quiet. Others preferred loud and boisterous—Jose and Fermin, Ana Mari’s sons; the Samper brothers, Marcus and Jerome; two of the Echeverrias, Tim and Matt; and select others who, in any given week, ran the gamut between sedate and unruly. A week did not pass that a member of the “Big Group,” as they were called, did not tease, torment, trample, or threaten any member of the “Young Group,” as we were called. Mikel and I avoided Big Group encroachments by watching them dance from afar or allowing them to enter or leave the building first. We kept a...