“Marshal, the chef, is a friend of mine from Dalton,” Sabine offered. “It’s the only way I was able to get us a reservation! Even at lunch, it’s just impossible. But I thought this was the perfect place to tell you that you are about to be the biggest thing to happen to Latino people on TV since Ugly Betty!”
“Really? That big?” Olga replied, flatly. “Not to split hairs, Sabine, but I thought this was meant to be more of a city slicker/country mouse thing?”
“It is! It is. It is all of that. It’s also got unique appeal to a growing demographic that we have just not been able to crack. But you know what? I don’t even want to talk. I just want to show you the trailer we cut for the pilot.”
She pulled an iPad from her bag, placed it on the table, offered Olga headphones, and pressed play with a giant smile on her face. Olga heard the sound of a trombone and her stomach dropped. A vibrant salsa began to play as the camera cut to shots of Olga walking around Manhattan in fitted business attire, with close-ups of her red-lipsticked lips, gold bangles, and—in a shot Olga found a bit risqué for a lifestyle show—her butt while she walked. Then, a voice-over Olga could have sworn was the same woman from House Hunters International began as the camera rapidly cut between shots of the Great Plains, a small-town main street, Mount Rushmore, and a seemingly endless array of stock shots of happy white couples.
A Latino invasion is coming to your hometown this fall.…
A quick succession of shots: Olga walking in different primary color outfits.… When did we even film this? she wondered.
A STYLE invasion!
The promo then cut to a series of wedding images of various portly white people getting married in church basements, Knights of Columbus halls, and affordable hotels.
Olga Acevedo is here to take your bland, American wedding …
That seems offensive to those families, Olga thought to herself.
And SPICE IT UP!
As the music swelled to full Willie-Colón-at-the-Palladium levels, there was a quick montage of a Mexican mariachi band, a Salvadoran Pupusa vendor, and the final shot, Olga, dancing her salsa on a seemingly endless loop. A graphic of big, bold, hot pink sans-serif words appeared on the screen, timed exactly to the final beats of the music: Spice
It
Up!
There was a moment of silence while Sabine, grinning ear to ear, waited for Olga to join in her ebullient excitement that they, together, had just set Latinx identity in America back to pre–Ricky Ricardo levels. Again, Olga heard her father’s voice.
Pendeja.
* * *
LUCKILY FOR OLGA, white America was nearly as upset over Spice It Up as she had been, albeit for different reasons. When the network tested the pilot, they discovered that white audiences were, in varying degrees, afraid of Olga. In the heartland, people were not bothered by the fact that Olga was Latina; there had been growing pockets of Latin migrants in these areas for years and their service work and tasty snacks had been generally well received. No, they were bothered that she was going to come in and tell them what to do. The reversal-of-power dynamic was too disconcerting. Focus group participants who reported enjoying the show during the screening were calling back hours, even days later to say that they had been haunted—“haunted” was the word—by the prospect of “someone like Olga” coming in and bossing their family around. In coastal suburban enclaves, the show fared even worse. One focus group participant said Olga represented a new “threat” to “normal women.” “It’s bad enough,” this woman was quoted as saying, “that we need to fear au pairs and yoga instructors. Now we need to worry about ‘spicy’ wedding planners?”
Olga was so relieved when Sabine told her that the network would not be picking the show up that she could barely feign disappointment. She had been quietly calling lawyer friends to review her contract to see if there was any way to block the pilot and, barring that, plotting a public relations offensive to mitigate the humiliation this would inflict on her. Of course, Sabine was clueless and Olga could hear the worry in her voice. The good news, she told Olga, was that it wasn’t completely in vain—the pilot would see the light of day! Contractually they were obliged to air it at least once, so she—Olga—could DVR it, or gather her family for a little viewing party, or whatever else Olga thought would be a “fun way to celebrate this experience!”
The onetime public broadcast of Spice It Up was on a Saturday morning at 5 A.M. Olga spoke of it to no one but set an alarm for herself at 5 A.M. and again at 6 A.M., just so she would know when the horrible humiliation was finally a worry of the past. She had no idea how her mother found out about it, but a few days later she got a note in the mail—her mother’s sole communication method—that simply said, Saw you on TV the other day. You dress nice for a maid. Love, Mami. She’d enclosed a portion of Pedro Pietri’s Puerto Rican Obituary, careful to underline key words and phrases, in case her point wasn’t clear enough: