The Rigors of Dance Lessons
I see my wife squatting on the ground, looking for something.
“What is it?” I call to her, and she answers me simply: “I have lost you.”
In body, she is not herself but an old man wearing the collar of a priest and a fishing hat. The hat is stuck with metal lures that glint and tinkle. Over the ground, her hands skim quickly. She will not look up at me.
“Well,” I say, “don’t worry, I’ll help,” and drop down beside her. “Where did you last see me?”
She points to a building I had not noticed. I look away from the spiny white whiskers pushing through her chin.
“Why don’t we look in there?”
“There’s more light out here,” she says. I am chastened.
She turns and grabs me by the earlobes, shouting, “Dance lessons! Dance lessons! That’s what we need!” Shaking my finger at her, I say, “You took too long. We’ll miss the lesson.”
“No. You won’t,” she says, and smiles.
We sit against a mirrored wall in a room with wood floors. In a corner I see the flip-flops I bought her ten years ago. In another corner, stacked on a white plate, are the cupcakes she baked for me last week. The room is filled with little girls in patent-leather tap shoes. There is one boy. Dressed in a tuxedo, he sits next to me. “They’re sisters,” he says, pointing at two women, one dark-skinned, one light, looking out a window.
“Are you here for the lesson?” I ask.
“No,” he says. His ruffled shirt is yellowed; his pant legs end just above his ankles. A red bow tie wilts from his thin neck. He resembles the older and darker of the sisters. They share a tautness around the nostrils and upper lip. Both are dark-skinned with crisp, black eyes. The boy’s hair needs to be cut, and the woman’s is wound into a tight bun held in place by two enormous gold sticks stuck in the shape of a cross. A man and guitar wail from a tape player balanced on the windowsill.
“Gypsies,” my wife whispers to me. The metal lures shake from her hat. While I looked at the boy, she aged. Her hair has changed from grey to white, and the whiskers on her chin have grown into a cropped beard. She says, “When I was a boy in Cairo, one stole a fig right out of my mouth.”
“I remember that,” answers the boy in the tuxedo. He leans over me to shake my wife’s hand. “Do you think he’ll like flamenco?” He sounds concerned.
“I hope so,” she says.
The light-skinned sister begins clapping. She wears her blonde hair loose. Beneath her purple dress, ruffled in layers like birthday cake, her body is young, full. Her sister sits behind her in a wooden chair, clapping at the same beat. “Come on, children; join us,” she calls, and we do. Suddenly, the two sisters stamp between their claps, the dark one so quickly, she has stamped three times before her sister’s hands come together once. Eyes closed, the dark woman sways in the chair, a soft “Olé” slipping from her dry lips. The little girls clap earnestly and tap their patent-leather feet.
“Watch,” the boy says to me and stamp-shuffles into the center of the room, clapping with his hands held next to his head and his body twisted to the left. He wears high-heeled shoes, and a tasseled sash around his waist. His two front teeth protrude. The two sisters clap faster, prompting him with olé’s and hearty stomps. I laugh as the boy makes some tentative movements with his hips and a few striking stamps, as if killing spiders. After each strike with his high-heeled shoes, the boy tilts his head and considers, nodding slowly to himself. As he pounds out a rapid staccato and whirls around the light sister, his exposed ankles flash.
The light sister moves to one side of the room, and the boy’s mouth becomes cocky and boastful. I laugh again and clap louder. “That’s right,” the light sister shouts to me, “You’ve got it!” With each stamp, humor slams down the boy’s legs. I notice he keeps his toes on the floor to make the stamps louder. I slam my heels against the floor. “More passion,” the dark sister shouts to me, “Keep your hips under your shoulders.” I am still sitting down; I am sweating. The boy shuffles comically off to the side. He is replaced in the center of the room by the dark sister in a yellow dress.
“You idiot,” she says to the boy. “He hasn’t learned anything.” A cleavage of bones shows in her scooped bodice. When she dances, I cry. The woman stomps with machismo, her chest puffed out, her legs held wide. She seems to oppose the air around her and scowls at herself in the mirrored wall. She moves faster, provoking and challenging with each heave of her arms, shock of her feet whipping against the polished wood floors. I know she is trying to show us, the children—but no, I am not a child—how to dance, but I am afraid of her anger, her certainty. “Do I keep my toes in or out?” I whisper. The dark woman ignores me. Her legs flurry up and down like pistons, and the cross at the back of her bun wiggles as she snaps her head high in a final flourish. I weep and sniffle a little. My wife shoves me and laughs. “That one was not for you,” she says.
And now the macho sister joins the humorous boy and together they lean against a wall. The light woman hesitates in the center of the room, waiting till they work themselves into a clapping, stamping empathy, and then she dances, dances with a light exuberance, her strikes against the floor more like playful taps than the hammering of the other two. Her pleasure in her own legs and arms delights me. “Is this for me?” I whisper to my wife. The boy shouts at me, “You never listen! She wants you to turn your feet out! Not in, never in!”
The light sister keeps her torso still, forcing all the movement and expression into her hips and knees, elbows and wrists. She is content with me, with herself, with this room. She seems to be saying how uncomplicated this dream could be, with the right attitude and a good pair of legs. Her hair flings around her like a cape. When a question creases her forehead, I understand—a concern that she will not always be so free. “Is it my fault?” I wonder out loud. Her joy returns and she rattles her legs, smoothing the worry away. She stops in the center of the room, poised like a ceramic pitcher, one hand on her hip, one arm curved above her head. The boy switches off the tape.
“Your turn,” my wife says. I am nervous. The little girls snicker behind their hands. Standing, I try to dance like the boy, like the macho and light sister. “No,” the boy reprimands, “be like us one at a time.” I can feel my wife watching me. I want to wear her hat; I want to shred her collar into little pieces. I sit down, tired from so much dancing. My wife will not look at me. Leaning over, I bite her cheek. Her head has turned to chocolate. Horrified, I scream. I am not afraid of her chocolate cheek. She is hollow and hollowness scares me. No caramel, no cream, just air.
“What have you done?” I ask her.
“Made room for you,” she says.
“Do you have enough room for yourself?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“I get tired keeping my hips beneath my shoulders.” I say it softly. I do not want to hurt her.
“I get tired watching for your feet.” When my wife says this, she is the boy in the tuxedo.
I am ashamed that I wanted her hat.
“Don’t worry,” she says, and offers me a cupcake.
We are fine; she has had this dream before, too.