I’m trying to find the groove.
It’s another Saturday night and I’m shuffling around the bedroom I share with my twin sister, trying to swing my hips just right to catch the beat and ride the rhythm. But that’s the easy part if I’m honest. I might still be trying to get ahold of my hips, but by and large, they do what needs to be done.
It’s my feet I can’t get to act right.
I’ve been trying to get the timing right all day. I wanna get a full rotation in so then I’m back on two feet when the beat drops. I saw the move on the latest episode of Soul Train and knew immediately that that was the one; this is the move I need for tonight.
If I ever wanna get on that tv set someday I need to get my whole body on beat. I gotta feel that soul running through me from my head down to my toes.
I need to get this damn spin right.
I push off on my left foot but know immediately I’m in for another failure. It’s the goddamn carpet.
I need the freedom of a dance floor. I need to feel that polished wood under my soles.
I dream about the dance floor. Every day. Every night.
If there’s a heaven on earth, it’s gotta be on a dance floor. If there’s a heaven at all, it’s in the rhythm and the blues.
I make it back around just in time to miss my beat but find my sister Tia staring at me through a crack in our bedroom door. I put my hands on my hips and scowl at her. “What you lookin’ at?” I sound braver than I feel and of all the people who would know the difference, it’s Tia.
She rolls her eyes and pushes into the room. “Not you,” she says with a roll of her eyes as she crossed her arms over her chest.
I roll my eyes right on back. This is easier than talking about my failure; anything is easier than that. “Mama still up?” I whisper, my gaze darting to the right as if mama’s bedroom is on the other side of the wall from my twin bed. It’s not, but sometimes I feel as if these walls might as well be made of rice paper the way mama can hear everything we try and keep from her, day or night, sleep or awake.
Tia lifts a finger to her lips and stares at me with wide, worried eyes as she nods her head quickly.
“Get ready,” I whisper as the blood starts to pound in my veins.
“I am ready,” Tia says, throwing her arms out.
“You can’t wear that, T,” I say before I can stop myself. Before I can think. Before my twin sister’s face falls at the words I coulda kept to my damn self.
Mama always says I need to think before I speak, but I don’t. “Y-you can wear something from my closet,” I offer in a kinder tone, but the damage is done.
Our older sister Lisa is always telling me I can’t bruise a fruit and wish it away and I know she’s right. One day I’ma learn that lesson, but I guess today ain’t that day. “I’m sorry Tia.”
She rolls her eyes and walks across the room to grab her fanny pack, pretending to check that everything she needs is inside the same way I pretend to focus on shutting off my record player.
When I flip the switch on the side of the machine, I notice the absence of the hum in a way I never notice its presence. All of a sudden the room is quieter than ever. All of a sudden I can hear the sound of the silence between me and my sister in a way I don’t like but haven’t been able to shake.
Tia and I are nineteen. Grown. The world just beyond the tips of our fingertips. There’s life to live and so much to see, but some days I think I’m the only one who wants to see it.
I look over my right shoulder to get a glimpse at Tia’s outfit one more time. I wish I could say that on second thought, she looks good, but I can’t. Sure, she looks fine, she is my twin sister after all, and if we were heading to the skating rink or the rec center to watch a basketball game, her dark blue corduroy bell bottoms and t-shirt would be fine. Perfect even. But that’s not where we’re going tonight and I want Tia to look like we’re going somewhere special; somewhere worth a little more effort.
Somewhere that could change our lives.
Tia and are almost identical, but for the past few years whenever I looked at her, I swear all I could see was all the tiny ways we were different. The constellation of moles on my right cheek that mama calls a beauty mark, Tia’s hazel eyes, the way my right pinky juts out to the side instead of the left, like Tia’s. Sometimes, it’s like the older we get the more all those tiny, subtle ways we’re our own people become big and blatant.
The possibility of difference is thrilling and terrifying all at the same time.
I turn away to look at myself in the secondhand mirror our daddy pulled out of an alley two weeks before he left. The first time I looked at it, Tia and I could see our full selves in the mirror fixed onto the back of our bedroom door, but now I fill it up all by myself. Daddy probably wouldn’t even recognize me now if he saw me, but I’d recognize him and I don’t wanna even think that let alone admit it, so I focus on my threads.
I’ve been planning my outfit for tonight for close to three weeks. I had to swap my favorite pair of jeans with my best friend Natalie to get her ruby miniskirt, and spend all the money I’d been saving to move to LA to buy these white, patent leather platform boots. These boots are gonna set my escape plan back four months, but I try to remind myself that they’re an investment in my future.
But if mama sees ‘em I won’t live to see tomorrow and that’s why me and Tia are sneaking out past curfew. ‘Cause according to mama we grown, but not that grown.
“Let’s go,” Tia whispers, just her face appearing over my right shoulder.
I nod and smile at her reflection. It takes a second, but she nods back. And that’s the thing about me and Tia, no matter how bumpy the ride, it’ll always be me and her, her and me.
We tiptoe down the hallway – my eyes locked on mama’s bedroom door – and through the living room. We unlock the front door just enough to slip through and then I pull it closed slowly. I search the darkness for any movement from the hallway. I make sure to close the door softly and turn the deadbolt as gently as I can. It would be just my luck that mama might wake up out of a dead sleep at the sound of that lock slamming home.
Once the door is locked I stand up straight and turn to look out at the dark sky. The second-floor landing of our apartment complex is empty and for a second I just enjoy the cool night air – a gentle breeze off the bay – and the sounds of life. grown or not, we live under mama’s roof, and if we aren’t at work or in church after the streetlights come on, according to mama we need to be inside. Maybe it’s ‘cause daddy was always running around at night and she don’t wanna lose us the way she lost him, but once I’m in LA ain’t nothin’ gon’ keep me inside after dark. Ain’t nothin’ gonna stop me from living.
“The bus gon’ be here soon,” Tia says. “Come on.”
We rush down to the street and then run – or try to run in these boots – to the bus stop on the corner. We make it there just in time to crowd on the bus heading to the marina and snag two seats, our sides pressed close together.
I lose myself in the darkness of the sky. I don’t even notice the finger smudges on the window. The present is just an illusion. It’s the future that matters to me.
And as the bus trudges down East 14th Street, I can feel the future calling to me, telling me that this night is gonna change my life.
Just wait and see.