Reina Cucaracha

Rosa Villarosa dances through the kitchen with her broom. The dishes, floors, stove, counters, walls, sink, table, chairs are all clean. Before moving on to the floors, tables, couches, curtains, windows, shelves, knick-knacks, and mirrors in the other rooms, there’s a little time to dance.

The broom is a dashing salsadero, a pretty merengue man. He twirls Rosa around the floor. Her housedress swirls against her knees like silk, and the balls of her feet click-click in chanclas that, for all their light adeptness, might be the finest Italian leather.

Then—ay—another one runs across the counter. Up comes the broom. Down goes the broom.

Chihuahua, another on the floor. Down, hard down goes the broom.

Chinelas, these roaches! Whack, whack! goes the broom.

“Why must they bother me?” sighs Señora Villarosa. Didn’t she just clean this kitchen? What will Jaime say, if he ever comes home tonight? How clean can a kitchen possibly be and still have roaches running and flying around?

With a spanking white dishtowel to her temple, Rosa Villarosa turns around and— ¡Dios mío!—sees the hugest roach of all. The hugest roach she’s ever seen in her whole entire life, standing right there in her kitchen, looking her right in the face.

“Ay” she says. Her eyes roll up to the Virgin, and she hopes her broom will catch her when she faints.

“No, Señora. Don’t go away from me,” says his voice. It’s big and deep, mellifluous like Ricardo Montalbán yet shining like a chainsaw, this big, big cockroach’s voice. “Señora Villarosa, don’t go away so soon. I have come a long way to see you.”

“Ah,” she suddenly knows, “he is the King of the Roaches.”

Looking again, she sees the extreme brilliance of his wing cloak, the bronze strength in his many appendages, and the royal, authoritative carriage of his—his head, that must be. Are those his eyes? Yes, that part there is moving with the voice—must be his face.

“Señora, put down your weapon. My minions have withdrawn and will bother you no more. Please, Doña Rosa, I ask that you tolerate my unworthy presence and grant me the gift of a few moments of your time.”

With those tones, something awakens within her. This ain’t no damned borracho in a work shirt, standing around kissing six packs with his compadres. This here is a gentleman.

Rosa wipes the fright from her face. With the innate grace native of her foremothers, she inclines her head, giving him permission to plead his case.

“Night after night, I send the subjects of my kingdom to see you—to spy on you, I admit, Señora Villarosa. I reach toward you, through them, so that I may see you dance.”

Rosa nods as if she knew it all along, was used to this sort of thing, and was compassionate enough to give pardon to such impertinence.

The king continued, “Do you think that we come to you in order to steal the crumbs of your tortillas, wholesomely exquisite as they may be? Do we come to sip drops of Kool-Aid stirred so gracefully by your slender hand? No . . . No, Señora. I send my people to your sparkling kitchen so that, through their many eyes, I might see you dance. It is a sight for which I would gladly risk my entire kingdom. Through their antennae, I feel your dance’s rhythm. Yes, I have sent many soldiers as close as I dared to the volcano of your anger. Many suffered the swift punishment of your broom. But I never wanted to frighten you. I never wanted to make you unhappy.”

Rosa doesn’t know what to say. Certainly, far in the back of her mind, she always knew that someone was watching her, appreciating her lonely skill with the wooden partner. (She even let the broom think he was the one in the lead.) Certainly, sometimes in the night, she had fantasized that these faithful rituals might bring her notice. This, however . . . this was far more than she had ever dreamed. Why, she wondered suddenly, had this monarch come to her now? What did he want?

“Señora, I now risk everything. I have revealed myself to you tonight in order to promise that my people will never trouble you again. The only thing I ask, what I humbly beg in return is simply this: one dance.”

Ah, ha, thought Señora Rosa Villarosa. So this was it. And was it not understandable? Was it all for nothing that she had very nearly been chosen Corn Maiden in her youth?

Repressing any triumphant smirks or conceited head tosses, Rosa draws herself up and, with another demure nod, extends her hand.

From behind the walls, the music swells. Trumpets and marimbas sound as the King gallantly skitters forward. Reverently, he enfolds her in four arms and they begin to sway.

“Oh!” she says as he moves her in ways that the broom never could. The many black hairs on his feelers transmit his excited sensitivity to her, and she comes alive, melting into one turn, flashing to the next.

“Ah,” she sighs, closing her eyes to feel it all better.

Roaches skitter in from every corner of the room. In the blinding speed with which she whips around, they look like fairy dust.

There goes the box of Ritz crackers. There goes the toaster and all the bacon fat for the week. If she opened her eyes to see, would she even care? Shining like a comet, she shoots around, sparks around, pouts hair mouth legs flings around.

His chuckle is rough. His enclosing arms push a little sharper now. But he spins, spins, spins her, so it’s all right. She won’t think about what happens when it’s over.

Her heart is fluttering. Her work is undone, but there’s no one to see. No cares as to what the neighbors would say. Her future is forgotten and her back hurts a little, too. But, oh . . . It’s so, so romantic.