The rain hadn’t let up, and come Monday the ground in the schoolyard was nothing but mud puddles and slick grass. So we got permission to practice our dance steps in one of the unused classrooms. Miss De Weese’d said it was fine just so long as we paid extra attention during our lessons.
The days leading up to the spring dance were visited by the best-behaved kids any teacher in Bliss had seen since the founding of the town. At least that was how I imagined it.
We’d pushed the dusty desks and chairs to the edges of the room and swept the floor. Somebody’d even wiped down the windows with an old piece of newsprint so the light would shine through and we could see what we were doing.
It wasn’t so big as the schoolyard, our makeshift dance hall wasn’t, but it was good enough just so long as everybody kept an eye out for their neighbor’s swinging arms and kicking feet.
Bert came too most days that week, even though some of the other boys had made fun of him. He’d pretend not to hear them calling him a sissy or hollering something or another about him tripping on the hem of his dress.
I’d have smacked those boys in the mouth for saying such nasty things, but Ray said it wouldn’t have helped Bert one bit.
“They’d just make fun of him harder,” he told me.
I knew he was right.
The rest of that week, Ray came along with us in the mornings, saying Bert was the smartest boy in town, spending his time where all the girls were. He didn’t dance, he just sat on top of the pushed aside desks with a discarded reader he found in the classroom.
By Thursday he was counting to eight to keep us in rhythm, waving his finger in the air all the while, like a conductor.
We danced right up until Miss De Weese rang the bell, calling for the beginning of the school day.
“Hey, Pearl,” Bert said to me, tapping me on the shoulder before I stepped out of the room.
“Yeah?” When I turned to him I could about see him shaking from head to toe and his eyes were wider than I’d ever seen them before.
“Pearl,” he said, his voice cracking a little. “You promise to save a dance for me tomorrow?”
If he’d asked me something like that just two years before I might’ve pushed him down and told him I’d rather suck an egg. A year before and I probably would have walked away from him without saying so much as a word.
But I’d learned a little something about being a friend. I’d learned that being kind didn’t cost me a single cent. And I’d come to know that it took more strength to be gentle than it did to be hard.
“Sure,” I said, giving him a closed lip smile.
As red as his face turned, I worried he might boil his brains.
“I promise I won’t step on your toes,” he said.
“That’s fine.”
He flashed me a silly smile before taking off to get to his desk.
I wouldn’t have admitted it to anybody, but I felt a blush in my cheeks, too.
Mama hadn’t wanted me to go to the dance. All that week she’d come up with one argument after another, trying to convince Daddy I should stay home. And he had an answer for every single one.
“She’s too young,” she’d said.
“Whole town’s invited,” he’d said back to her. “I hear they’re even letting babies in if they want to come.”
“She’ll wear herself out from all the excitement,” she’d said.
“Nah,” he answered back. “Doc Barnett thinks she’s doing just fine. A little exercise never hurt anybody.”
“I don’t want her getting hurt.”
“Nobody’s gotten hurt at any of the dances,” he said.
“Not yet, anyway.”
“I’ll keep my eye on her the whole time.”
“It’s not a crowd for a young girl to be around.”
“There’s not been one problem since we started those dances.”
By Thursday afternoon she’d given up and resigned herself to the fact that I was going whether she liked it or not. But she sighed whenever we said one word about it, and I knew she hoped I’d give in to her and stay home that Friday night.
But no amount of sighing or slumping of shoulders would make me miss out.
Mama’d had errands to run after I got back from school. She hadn’t told me what kind or how long she’d be gone, but it little mattered. For the first time since she’d come home, I had the house to myself. Daddy was working and Ray was off wandering around with Bert.
It was just me in that big house and I knew just what I wanted to do.
Turning the dial on the radio, I moved it up and down until I found a good song, one with a good deal of what Opal would’ve called swing. I got myself to the middle of the living room and tapped my right toe, counting up to eight over and over until the rhythm set itself in the beating of my heart.
Opal had showed me how to do the Charleston not two weeks before, with all its forward-and-tap-and-back-and-tap mixed with step-and-tapand-step-and-tap and arms going side-to-side-and-side-to-side.
“Now just add a spin here and there and a stomped foot and you’ll have a whole new set of moves,” she’d told me. “And you don’t even need a partner holding you back. This one you can do all on your own.”
I sure had liked the idea of that.
I imagined the music coming out of the radio to be made by a band that’d set up in the corner of the living room which had turned into a dance hall by some great act of magic. In my daydream I did not care one bit if I was all alone. There was just something about dancing that made me feel free. The trumpets and drums and my moving feet were all there was in the whole wide world.
The sides of my hair fell loose of the braids Mama’d crisscrossed on each side of my head earlier in the morning and my dress kicked up. But it just did not matter. Besides, there wasn’t a soul in the house to see me dancing.
I didn’t hear the door open even though it probably made its clunking and rubbing noise against the frame. And I didn’t notice the bags she’d put on the floor by the closet door. It wasn’t until I felt her take my hands in hers and smelled the rose of her powder that I realized Mama’d come home.
I stopped right then, breathing shallow and scared she’d get after me for dancing.
“Don’t stop,” Mama said. “I haven’t done the Charleston in a coon’s age.”
“You know how?” I asked.
“Course I do.” She nodded at me.
“You sure you should?” I looked down at her belly.
“It won’t hurt a thing.” She smiled. “Ready?”
We danced to the end of that song and into another, our swiveling feet moving us all the way up to our hips and our kicking almost knocking us both off balance but for each of us holding on for dear life to each other’s hands.
“Oh,” she said. “I’m feeling a little dizzy.”
Mama stopped, still holding my hands, and smiled right into my face.
“You all right, Mama?” I asked.
“Yes. I’m good, Pearl.” She looked down into my eyes. “Just need to catch my breath.”
“You dance nice.”
“I had a good partner,” she said, winking at me. Then she touched her stomach. “Oh, he must’ve liked that. He’s dancing around in there.”
“It’s a boy?” I asked.
“Well, I’m not sure. I’m just guessing.” She put out her hand to take mine. “You want to feel it?”
“I’ll be able to?”
“Yes.” Her eyes lit up as she put the palm of my hand, spread open, onto her stomach. “Now wait just a half minute.”
I shut my eyes so I could put all my mind toward feeling whatever it was Mama wanted me to. Against my hand was the soft cotton of her dress and the warmth of her body under it. Her breath cooled the back of my knuckles and then I felt her hand moving mine to another spot.
Then a bump, so light I might have missed it. And another. And another. It was nothing more than a moment, nothing more than a gentle touch. But I’d felt it.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so happy.
Opening my eyes, I looked right into Mama’s. Hers were watery and her mouth was spread in a wide smile. The best one I’d seen on her in far too long.
“Did you feel it?” she asked.
I nodded. “Was that the baby?”
“It was, darlin’.”
“Do you think it knows I’m here?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “But wouldn’t that be something?”
She moved my hand again so I could feel more and more. I would have stood there with that baby bumping up against my hand all day if I could have.
And I let my imagination open up. I pictured myself sitting on the davenport, holding the baby wrapped in a yellow and green plaid blanket, singing softly to him until he fell asleep, his tiny fingers wrapped around one of mine. Then holding him once he was stronger, face-to-face with me so I could make him laugh. I imagined his dark eyes squinting up and his gummy smile wide and full of gasping baby laughs.
I’d be the one to get up with him in the night, sometimes at least. I’d soothe him with stories and soft words and gentle kisses.
When he was big enough, I’d kneel on the other side of the living room, hands out and ready to grab him after he tottered across the room. I’d show him how to use a spoon and drink out of a cup and how to say “Pearlie.”
My heart felt fit to bust for how much I loved that baby that I’d not even seen yet, no matter if it was a boy or a girl with dark eyes or light. And I would always love it no matter if it was Abe’s by blood.
I would love that baby all the days of my life.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Mama asked, her voice just a whisper.
I nodded, afraid that if I opened my mouth I’d start crying and never stop. Instead, I smiled up at her and she grinned back at me.
It was her. It truly was. She stood there, the Mama I’d known before. I kept my hand on her stomach even though I couldn’t feel anything anymore. It didn’t matter. I had her and I wasn’t like to let her go.
I was sure she was back to stay.