16
A Drum of My Own, Then Something Better

“Alex, come over here,” Jou Jou says, his voice rising above the music. Rara Gran Bwa has been going full swing for fifteen minutes. The whole band is a blur of movement. I’ve never seen or heard anything like it. I can’t keep my eyes off the drummers slapping those driving rhythms against the drumheads.

I glance at Bijou, who nods in her brother’s direction, urging me forward. I walk to where Jou Jou is playing a repeating pattern on the rada: bim-bap, bim-bap, bim-bim-bim-bap.

“You try it!” Jou Jou yells.

“Really?” I ask.

“Come on, do it!”

Fabian, the older guy from the park, seems to approve. Jou Jou holds the head of the drum toward me, demonstrating how to strike it with a flat palm. “This, we call a slap,” he says. Then, stopping the sound with his palm fully in the drum’s center, “And this, we call ‘bass.’” And finally, pinging out a higher tone on the drumhead’s edge, “This one here? We say ‘rim.’”

Then he shifts the drum over a little bit and gestures: Your turn.

I hesitate at first, but then I give it a try. Why not? What have I got to lose? I share the drum with him, copying the rhythm he’s playing in its simplest form, trying to make my hands do what his are. After a while, I get it, and Jou Jou starts drumming more playfully, complicated rhythms on top with a stick. I start to bounce along with him in time, letting myself get carried along the pulse of the band. Fabian and other bandmates yell in my direction. But amazingly, they’re not telling me to shut up and get the heck back upstairs. They’re urging me to play louder.

I’ve forgotten about Bijou for a minute or two—although, is it really possible to forget Bijou, for even an instant?—but here she is now, dancing in the center of the musicians, like the spirit has gotten hold of her, too. She holds her arms out to the side, like she’s squeezing a giant rubber ball between her hands. Then she bends her knees just so, and, feet closely rooted to the ground, shakes her hips to the rhythm.

“Ayooo, Bijou!” Fabian yells out to her.

Jou Jou is smiling and laughing at his sister’s awesome dancing, and he can barely play his rada. I can’t help but laugh, too. Bijou catches my eye, then, teasing, shakes her hip in a lazy, slow motion, like sending a wink my way. Is she flirting with me? Regardless, the next thing I know, I lose my rhythm and can’t get it back. She’s distracting me on purpose, and I can see Fabian and Jou Jou laughing at me. Not fair! I have to concentrate to get back into the groove, and, somehow, I manage.

When the music finishes, Fabian bounds over to me and pats me on the back.

“How long you been playin’ rada, young Alex?”

“I’ve … never played before,” I say, of course.

“Noooo,” he says. “Impossible.” I can tell he’s teasing, but not in a mean way.

“Nope. First time.”

The other band members talk among themselves, exchanging high fives (when they do it, they don’t look as cheesy as Rocky and Trevor do) and handshakes.

“You’re good, Alex, really,” Jou Jou says. “You ever play any kind of music before?”

“My sister’s the musical one in our family. She plays cello, really well. But my mom can’t carry a tune, and I think I got her musical genes. I tried to learn guitar last year, and it didn’t go so well.”

“Well, you don’t need to carry a tune to play rada,” Fabian says. “But that doesn’t mean it an easy thing. And you, you pick it up right away.”

“It’s a simple rhythm,” I say. “Isn’t it?”

Fabian calls the band together into a circle, like he did in the park. Only this time, I’m in the circle, too.

“Alex, that was so good,” Bijou says, back in the van. “How did you know how to do that?”

“I … don’t know.” The truth is, nothing like that has ever happened to me in my life. Everything came so naturally, and I’m not the kind of guy who’s a natural at anything. “It was like I didn’t even have to try. I just … let it happen.”

“That’s what I’m telling you,” Jou Jou says, although I think this is actually the first time he’s told me. “Rara’s not about ‘knowing’ or ‘trying’—it’s about letting the music inside you. Right?”

“I couldn’t say. I’m no good at music,” Bijou says. She moves a little closer to me on the backseat. We’re almost touching. I can feel an electric pulse between her legs and mine, and also an aching in my hand bones, where my palms hit the drum’s wooden rim again and again. So my entire body is vibrating with one sensation or another.

“You can dance, though,” I say. “Really well.” I don’t blush. I don’t look down.

“I love to dance. I always have.” She jabs me playfully. “You have talent, Alex. You should do something with it.”

“You think so?” If she’s going to keep moving closer to me like this, I’ll definitely “do something” with music. To be honest, I’d do anything Bijou tells me.

“Alex,” Jou Jou says, holding out his rada to me. “I want you to have this.”

“What? Your drum? For me?” I say. I don’t grab for it. I don’t even touch it, not yet. It doesn’t seem right.

“But what will you play?” I ask.

“You think this the only rada I got, Alex? I have another like it at home. This one, well, it has your name on it.” He pushes the drum toward me again, and this time, I take it.

“Seriously?”

“Think of it like a—how do you call it—a long-term loan.” Jou Jou doesn’t leave me any time to argue. He turns around in his seat, starts the van, and heads up Church Avenue, in the direction of my house.

“Can you show me?” I ask him. “Maybe teach me some things?”

“Yeah, man, I’ll be glad to. Anytime.”

“Is this really okay?” I whisper to Bijou. Then, even quieter, “Does he really have a second one?”

Bijou puts her hand over my ear, and shivers go down my back. My eyes bug out for a sec. She can’t see me, thankfully, but Jou Jou steals a quick glance at us in the rearview mirror and smiles. “You think my brother would be without a drum in his hands for more than fifteen minutes?” Bijou says. “This one’s for you. Take it.”

Jou Jou takes a left from Church Avenue onto Rugby Road. “This way?” he asks. A couple of people try to wave down the dollar van, but Jou Jou ignores them. “Next time,” he chuckles.

“Yep, keep going another four blocks,” I say. Ack, I can’t believe I’m almost home. I don’t want this to end. I wish I could stay in the backseat with Bijou forever.

As we get closer, I start to think about how I’m going to say good-bye to Bijou. When I saw her kiss Monsieur Guillaume in the shop, I had to admit once and for all that Nomura was right. The kiss-on-each-cheek custom is exactly that: a custom. Bijou did it as readily with the old man today as she did with me last week. So, I’m preparing myself for that again, and hopefully I won’t bump heads with her and be all awkward about it.

“Keep going this way?” Jou Jou asks. We are at Rugby Road and Cortelyou, almost on my block. For the first time, I notice how different my neighborhood is from Church and Rogers, where we were ten minutes ago. Here, the houses are bigger and set apart, with front porches and spacious backyards.

Suddenly, I realize that I don’t want them to drop me off right in front of the house. My mom might be home now, and I didn’t exactly tell her where I was going today. “Oh, hey, I need to get something for my mom at the bakery,” I say, nodding toward Steve’s, on the corner. “Would you mind letting me off here?”

“No problem,” Jou Jou says, pulling the van over by a fire hydrant.

Darn, this date is ending even sooner than I’d realized. There’s only so much you can prepare. “Bijou, can we do this again sometime?” I ask. “Sometime soon?”

“Yes, I would like that,” she says. “Very much.”

“Thank you, Bijou.” I suddenly realize how hot I am, maybe flushed still, from the drumming. Or from other things.

“For what?” she asks.

“For today. For … everything.” I pick up the drum and get ready to leave. “Jou Jou, thank you so much for the rada. I’ll take really good care of it.”

“You’re welcome, man. Call me, and I’ll give you some things to work on.”

“Cool, I’ll do that.”

Then I lean in for the kiss on the cheek. Now that I know what I’m doing, it feels a little more natural. We don’t bump heads, anyway. I don’t try to linger or make the moment last any longer than she wants; after all, Jou Jou is right there—he can see everything. But I try to freeze the memory in my brain, so I can hold on to that almond-flower smell of Bijou’s skin as long as possible. It’s got to last me until the next time I see her, after all.