Rhythms of Grace (2 page)
And now, here I was with Daddy, who never skipped the rough parts in books or told you to cover your eyes when people acted crazy in the movies. He’d shake his head and tell you plain how things were and what God said about it. Sometimes, if you asked, he’d tell you what he had to say about it too. But most times not.
Instead, he’d hide behind the newspaper making that laugh-coughing sound (probably from his talcum powder) or disappear under the hood of his truck and let Mom do the explaining. I couldn’t blame him either. There was no stopping Mom when she got started. She could talk faster than most people could think. Even me.
But Mom wasn’t here now. Daddy was here, driving past Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church, around Heavenly Pastures Cemetery, and right up to the rec center where a tall, brown girl with big hips and wide, oval eyes danced in the sky on the billboard above it. She was leaping, but not like in ballet class. It was a backyard-basement-secret-dance sort of leap. And that girl was no pink pig. She was a tree, uprooted and set to music. Music like the beat in my head. It had to be. Nothing else could explain her dancing like that up in the sky for everyone to see, even with her “behind poking out that way.” Was her teacher ashamed of her too? It didn’t look like it.
I turned around backwards in the front seat of Daddy’s truck so I could read it better.
Ngozi Dance troupe. African dancing for
girls 12 through 18, 4:30 PM. 374-5343.
I said the numbers over and over, three seven four, five three, four three. Three seven four . . . Those numbers were tumbling in my head so hard that I didn’t notice Daddy had turned his truck around and come to a stop right in front of the Charles Chesnutt Recreational Center. Right in front of that dancing girl.
Being at the Charles C—I’d only been there once, before we moved across town—would have been enough to knock me off my feet, but now there was that girl in the air on top of the building. Zeely, our preacher’s daughter, was always telling me about the Charles C and how I needed to pray that my mother would let me go some time. “Prayer changes things,” she’d said, sounding like the old ladies in the choir that she spent so much time with. I didn’t doubt her words or God’s power, just my mother’s stubbornness. Besides, until now it really hadn’t been worth fighting over.
“Parks and Recreation facilities are for common people,” my mother said every time I asked, while Daddy whispered into his coffee that we
were
common people. At that point, I usually thought to myself that my mother was uncommonly stupid, but since hearing that sermon about the ravens plucking out the eyes of disobedient children, I’d blocked out thoughts like that. Without my eyes, I couldn’t read and that’d be worse than not being able to dance.
Almost.
I followed Daddy toward the infamous Charles C, named by the town founders for Charles Chesnutt, the wonderful writer of “Dave’s Neckliss,” my favorite short story. Well, not exactly. James Joyce’s “Araby” was my all-time favorite, not only for the writing but for the sheer curiousness of the words. I wrung my hands, realizing how nervous I was. I was rambling, even in my head. I paused to touch the dedication plaque on the wall as we passed, remembering the story behind it that my father recounted every Sunday when we drove by.
The town founder, so moved by one of Chesnutt’s “funny Negro stories,” had named the original recreation center after him, only to be horrified later to learn that he had shaken the hand of a very light-skinned Negro, not a white man, and even named a building for him. The first rec burned down soon after, but the name stuck and in the end they named the new one the same thing. Charles C it began, Charles C it would always be. And I, Diana Dixon, was going in.
I squeezed Daddy’s palm as he opened the door. Nobody truly understood me, but at least Daddy tried. He worried I’d go blind reading so much, but he never made me turn off the lights. I’d hear his slippers on the carpet in front of my door and I’d click the light off, waiting for his calloused fingers on my face, his prayer so faint I held my breath to hear it. In the morning, when my mother rushed into the room and found the light out and my glasses in the case on the stand, she would smack her lips and say, “I know you were up reading. I just know it. I’ll catch you one day.” But she wouldn’t. Not as long as Daddy was around. And he’d always be around. Well, maybe not always, since Mom swore pork chops would be the death of him, but he was here today. Here at the Charles C.
Either I let go of Daddy’s hand or he let go of mine, but next I marched up the steps, wondering if the dance class was held today. No days had been mentioned on the sign. Was Zeely here somewhere? I hoped so. If I tried to tell Zeely I’d been to rec, she never would believe it. I hardly believed it myself.
“Hold up, girl.” Daddy ran behind me and I saw how far ahead of him I’d gotten. I also realized that I’d run up into the rec in a pink leotard and tights so tight that my thighs were rubbed raw in the middle. So much for looking cool. Not that I could anyway. The glasses and the braces sort of killed any chances of that. Daddy holding my hand was total overkill. I didn’t care though. This was it. Whatever I was going to do, I had to do it. And fast. Daddy was going to pay big-time as it was.
I stood in the main hall, taking in the big brown front desk, the flyer-pasted bulletin board shouting DANCING, COOKING, and MEETING, PRINCE HALL LODGE #409. Basketballs bounced in time with the squeaks of shoes beyond the gymnasium door. There was another sound too, a thump down the hall. I moved closer, trying not to run when the thump became a beat and the beat became music. My music, the kind that pumped in my fingertips and strummed through my veins. Butt-naked music with no fluff on top. Music that made me move toward it, like so many times before.
Daddy, who was still doing some kind of cowboy gallop to keep up, ran into my back when I pulled up short in the doorway of the classroom. The dance classroom. We’d found it. I stood there with both dread and happiness sloshing in my belly, feeling like I did when we ate real mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving, knowing that the goodness would soon be over. The dancers weren’t bothered by our stares, they went right on, leaving me with nothing to do but watch them. Feel them.
There were twelve girls in all. Zeely was there, right in the front, but she didn’t smile at me. She didn’t even act like she saw me. She was too busy being the blackest, prettiest tree in the foot-forest. They were all different, some with thick trunks and others willowy and long-limbed, but they moved the same, growing roots inside the song. My song.
If there’d been time, I would have changed out of the leotard, ripped off my tights, or asked Daddy if he had some talcum powder in the truck to soothe the rash between my thighs. There wasn’t time for that. There was only now. And now was time for dancing.
“Princess, wait. Let me—” Daddy’s fingers slid down my arm like ice on a hot pole. I’d apologize later.
A lady, who had to be the teacher, parted the dancers. She wasn’t what I expected. At first, she reminded me of Miss Fairweather, my ballet teacher. Then I looked into her eyes, heard her voice. On the inside, she was deep-down brown. On the outside, she was delicate, but strong—a sonnet, covered in white chocolate. Sweet like a good poem on a bad day.
She stood tallest of all of them, this teacher, letting go of her body, calling the others to follow her movement and add something of their own. She did the dance first, then they followed in four lines of three. The motions came to me quickly, like the verses in my notebook. Like wings. I wanted to soar over their singing feet, preaching arms, fingers reaching for the right movement, the right body-word. On the sideline, I mimicked every movement, flinging my arms and almost knocking Daddy down. He didn’t say a word.
A boy in the corner beat the drum that made the wild, strong music. The beat shook through my chest, went through my heart. I turned back to the dancers, to the teacher whose eyes were on me, as she moved past me. The dancers looked straight ahead, trying to follow each new part of the dance, trying to find what they lacked. When the last dance came, none of them could find the punctuation to end it, the amen to finish their prayer. I alone held that, but not for long.
“Come.” With a slight lift in her wrist and that one word, the teacher called me forward as they lined up to put the whole dance together.
She didn’t have to tell me twice. My ballet shoes hit the wall behind me as I flung them off and ran to squeeze in next to Zeely, who looked straight ahead, but giggled under her breath at the sight of me. The teacher shook her head at my place in the lineup, motioning to the empty space beside her. When I hesitated, looking at the other dancers instead, the teacher turned and stared at me, talking with her eyes.
This is your place
.
I have the water, but you
have the seed. The wild seed. Come and fertilize us.
The skin on my arms itched as I heeded her eyes and her movements, sowing myself among them, planting the white-hot something that always got me in trouble. In the cradle of their arms, on the boughs of the beat, a new me was born, harvested for the first time in a dance.
The
dance.
I went for it like it was my last dance too, knowing that it probably was. This moment might have to last me for the rest of my life. Everything that I’d been biting back in ballet class, choking down behind my bedroom door, I let it go all at once, let it birth, bloody and wonderful in a room full of strangers. It came out strong, this secret self, previously bared only in basements and backyards, scribbled in journals and scraps of paper. Strong and beautiful.
My feet slapped first, then slid and kissed the floor before I leapt, flying like the girl on the billboard, only higher. Wider. I left the spot I’d been given, weaving between the other dancers’ pumping arms, open hands, and swaying hips. I twirled on, until I came face-to-face with the drummer, a boy with the crazy brown afro. I was close enough to see him now, to know who he was. Maybe even too close. His eyes were closed, but I knew what they looked like when they were open—gold-green.
Like Daddy’s.
I dropped to the floor from mid-air, leaves shriveling, withering away. When I hit the ground, it was over. I was nothing. Nowhere. Just a pink pig in Charles C with a big butt and buck teeth. A fool who’d just danced in front of that boy from Mount Olive who could skate backwards. He could even break-dance. What had I been thinking?
Thank God he wasn’t looking
.
The other dancers struggled to keep what we’d had alive, trying to coax me with their halfhearted lunges. I looked up to find the teacher standing over me. I tipped my head down, wondering if I’d misread those eyes, wondering if there would be more angry words today for a girl such as me, one “unsuited” for the dance.
There wasn’t. “Welcome to Ngozi, I’m Joyce Rogers, your new dance teacher,” the woman said in a voice as clear as the sky. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
We locked eyes again and I knew it must be true. The woman in my dreams. My Glinda on the road to Oz. This was her. She got it. She got me. Finally, somebody understood.
Our eyes met and I knew it must be true. “I’m Diana. Diana Dixon. I’ve been waiting for you too.”
Daddy wasn’t home. I tried not to panic. Today was dress rehearsal for our first performance with Ngozi. My parents had the worst fight I can remember over it, but Daddy put his foot—both his feet actually—down on the subject.
“You weren’t there. You didn’t see it. She has to go. Joyce will take good care of her,” he’d said.
Mom still stood there with her mouth poked out every time Daddy took me to practice. I was never late or missed even though Daddy had to leave the plant early sometimes to do it. Mom vowed never to take me. And now Daddy wasn’t home.
I pressed my face to the stained-glass room divider behind my father’s recliner. Everything looked yellow now and I could almost imagine him sitting there, half-asleep with his keys on his lap. Or worse, awake but playing sleep so he wouldn’t have to argue with my mother, who was perched on the edge of the couch, glasses sliding down her nose.
“Don’t come in here looking all sorry like that. He’s gone to Cleveland, don’t you remember?” She looked sad and happy at the same time.
Cleveland. For his job. Yes, I remembered now. Oh well. I kicked the couch. Miss Joyce had given me the lead this time. A solo. If I didn’t show, Zeely would tear it up as my understudy, but I wanted to do it. This was all I had left. Mom had already made me quit the Buds of Promise choir. She said I had to choose. Now it seemed I was getting nothing for nothing. I took a deep breath and said the unthinkable.
“I need a ride.”
“Pardon me?” My mother’s glasses slid off her nose, but didn’t fall. Too stubborn. Just like their owner.
Well, today was my turn to be stubborn. This was ridiculous. “I need an r-i-d-e. Please, Mom. It’s dress rehearsal.” I looked up at the clock and thought about telling her that we needed to go right now, or going to her room and bringing her her shoes and purse, but I thought better of it. Best not to look too desperate. “Please.”
The glasses hit the floor then. No longer Mom, Emily Dixon, the hardest math teacher in the county, stood and crossed her arms. “If you think I’m driving over there tonight for you to hop around with those little jungle bunnies, you’re mistaken. Sadly so.” She picked up her glasses. “Besides, I’m heading out anyway. I have a meeting.”
My throat tightened. “But your school is—”
“I said I’m not going that far, Diana!” Her eyebrows stood at attention for emphasis.
I tried to raise my eyebrows too but it just made my head hurt. This whole thing was making my head hurt. Why did everything have to be a fight? All the other girls’ parents would be there cheering them on. Then I saw something in her eyes. Guilt.
“Daddy asked you, didn’t he? He asked you to take me and you said you would. And now you’re going to go against your word?”
My mother didn’t answer. She got up, walked to the closet and slipped on her shoes, one at a time, then she smoothed her skirt and headed for the door. On her way out, she opened her purse and flipped three coins onto the table by the door. Two quarters and a dime.