64. Diane

In the late 50s and at the start of the 60s, my mother was helped by a rotation of maids. House cleaning duties became the responsibility of people that were more or less annexed to our family. One of them was barely 16, a bubbly small girl with an elastic body allowing her to stretch, bend, climb, making her quite efficient at her part-time job. Even when she pressed my father’s shirts, she wouldn’t stop moving, gliding on her feet as the steam puffed out of the burning iron.

We had no radio at home. No one ever listened to music. So Diane brought her own transistor that she would carry from room to room as she waltzed with rags meant to dust the furniture.

I had never seen anyone like her. She seemed always happy and so light, her feet hardly resting on the floor, moving and delicate, a weightless grace that kept me mesmerized. She also sang. She had a wealth of knowledge, like the lyrics of the songs playing all day on the radio. She would tell me who that was, Elvis Presley, or a band. She named the styles, that’s a twist. She knew them all. I was 11, realizing there was another world out there, wanting more than anything else to be part of it.

I had never heard rock 'n' roll before she worked for our family. It was instantaneous. The first measures rising out of the portable radio, and I was sold to it. It took me by the stomach, filled my lungs, an instinctive savage urge to join in, overwhelmed by my very own beat climbing along emotions I didn’t know I had until that acoustic moment. The sound loudly ringing in my head even after Diane had left the house to go back to her place.

I couldn’t believe it. Songs one after the other, for hours, day after day. How could there be so many? Where had I been as they had evolved, expanded to saturate the air to such an extent? Where had my parents been when these musical waves had amplified, taking over almost everything on radio? How come we didn’t know about this massive phenomenon? Was quite perplexed, to tell you the truth.

I couldn’t reconcile in my mind the fact that my mother and father spent much time and energy establishing their cultured persona, but had entirely missed not just on current musical trends, but on music as a whole. How could that be? Was it another sign that adults could be wrong as much about themselves than about the world?

Diane, in her elephant-bottom pants or her wide cotton skirt held by a shiny belt, was an angel. Effortlessly, she would stamp the steps of the newest dances, humming the melodies without dropping the laughter or her ingenuous grin.

The most surprising, I thought, was the interest she had in me. I mean, why did she bother explaining who was who, and what was what? Each of her ironing sessions was like a crash course in popular culture. She would share the rumors about flirts and love among stars, also giving me, as if it was contraband, magazines containing romantic stories like a comic book, but made with photographs of lascivious Italian women and their heroic virile boyfriends. Why the generosity? Not once condescending. Treating me as if I was her age, her friend. So unusual.

I had lots of time on my hands. I had been unable to finish primary school due to my "special circumstances" and stayed home all day with nothing to do except cutting catalogs. No care coming to the front. Diane never asked anything about this. She expressed herself as if I was a normal person. Took for granted I got the picture.

One afternoon, a real wonder: The announcement there’s an outdoor dance at her high school over the weekend. Do I want to go? Flabbergasted. Me? You mean, me? But I can’t dance, did I stutter, panic stricken.

Nothing was ever a problem for Diane. One, two, three, here we go. She’s holding my hand, pushing me to help me turn, and I follow, follow, follow. I’m made to dance. I get it. I understand. It's happening.

And on that Friday evening, I rocked 'n' rolled. Guys, their hair greasy cool, the forelock a bit long thrown backward, inviting me on the dance floor, kind enough to say they didn’t believe it was my first time. Was dark. I loved to be out so late. Timid lanterns around the yard. Music that kept coming. Everything was easy. This is how I wanted to live.

Was it a coincidence that soon after my parents took me for a car ride and happened to drive by a shoddy gas station on the other side of the river, mentioning while slowing down that Diane lived there with her large family, in the rundown wooden flat just above it?

Hi, Diane, I just whispered. Lucky you.

Laolao