THE DEATH OF CHIQUITA BANANA
The jeweler’s daughter had a white fairy costume. I was envious, though I didn’t know that word in first grade. I was a latch key kid, so I went home at lunch time to the empty apartment, removed the blanket from my doll crib, wrapped it around my butt, pinned it with a safety pin, and returned to Miss Chase’s classroom. I got up in front of everyone and sang the entire Chiquita Banana commercial. Blonde hair and blue eyes were a lot to overcome in achieving the desired Latina effect, but I was gloriously unaware of that. It was a moment of joyful, un-self-conscious exuberance.
For the millions who might be unfamiliar with the lyric:
“I’m Chiquita Banana and I’ve come to say Bananas have to ripen in a certain way. When they are flecked with brown and have a golden hue Bananas are the best and they’re the best for you.
You can put them in a salad You can put them in a pie-eye Any way you like to eat them, It’s impossible to beat them.
But bananas like the climate of the very, very tropical equator So you should never put bananas In the refrigerator! No, no, no, no!” Cha cha cha. This graced the airwaves for many years.
Thank you for your patience while I digressed to inform the culturally deprived. Not everyone is aware of this musical warning, one which undoubtedly sold more bananas. As it turns out, they CAN be stored in the refrigerator when ripe…only the skin will discolor, but the fruit will be fine. Anyway, that was one of the first Madison Avenue lies I absorbed and later unwittingly promoted. Think Wheaties. Breakfast of Champions? I think not.
Back to my tale. I am not sure whether I told my mother what I had done or whether my teacher informed her, but Chiquita Banana became an affectionate nickname.
I already had a fondness for performing. Since we had no money for baby sitters, if my very young parents had an evening out, I was included. They kept an eye on me from their barstools and tipsy grownups gave me money for the juke box. I danced for this appreciative audience. I loved it. My fondness for Latin music was further enhanced by seeing the famous Xavier Cugat band at the Roxy. When I saw the musicians wearing shirts with ruffled sleeves and a woman dancer with ruffled peek-a-boo skirt, I was enthralled.
Compounding my preference for this musical flavor, my grandfather, a captain in the merchant marine, brought an album of Machito y sus Afro Cubans back from Cuba. Now I had a steady supply of my favorite rhythms at home. My father taught me how to follow basic rhumba when I was about eight. Dances in the living room with parents in a mellow mood were the happiest times in a not-so-happy childhood.
By the time I was a teen, mambo and cha-cha had taken over New York, and I was prepared. There were plenty of ballrooms and some of the most famous Latin bands were competing for Numero Uno. I went with my girlfriends and met the dance-obsessed men. I was much more interested in whether a man could dance than whether he was capable of reciting Shakespeare. I could do that. My obsession was: Could he LEAD?
At painful times during a dangerous early marriage, I would sometimes put a stack of 45 rpm discs on the turntable and dance by myself in the living room while the kids watched television. Partnered dancing was not a part of my marriage and motherhood years. I returned to the dance floor with a vengeance at forty-two and the background of my social life was nightclubs and ballrooms for the next forty years.
I had several long-term boyfriends, all dancers, of course, during the Chiquita years when I was at the top of my game. I was not oblivious to what I observed of ballroom life. I knew that the day would come when there would be no partners. It is the plight of the old woman dancer: if a man has a choice between an accomplished dancer of eighty, as opposed to one of forty, guess what? I knew this. I dreaded it. Now I am facing it. Some of my friends rent dance escorts who are good at what they do, but ‘Ten Cents a Dance’ comes to mind. Not for me.
For eighteen years I shared life with my last partner. We were both products of the NYC dance world, me from Brooklyn and he from the barrio. We met in a ballroom in Florida After his memorial, which included salsa, I came home to the silence. That was okay. It was even healing after months of drama. And so, while I mourn my partner, I mourn the death of Chiquita Banana, the joyful part of me, the spark. . At five I solved the problem after the feelings died down.
I have left instructions that I be cremated with dance sandals on my feet. You never know. Cha, cha, cha….