Rhythms of Grace Page 2

  “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.”

  2

  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.

  Bus fare.

  “Make sure you have your key and come straight home,” she said before slamming the door.

  Where else would I go after walking home in the dark? The moon? “I-I will.”

  But I didn’t come straight home. I died first, scratching and screaming and trying to fly. I died loud and bloody, but nobody heard me, not even God.

  So I came home and went to bed.

  I had taken the bus.

  Or at least I had tried.

  There was a boy there, his face covered in a ski mask, though it wasn’t quite cold enough. He had sad eyes and an unlit cigarette. I wished I’d wo
rn my tennis shoes instead of trying to show off my new cowboy boots, two-toned black and gray. I don’t know why I said hello—maybe because we were there alone, waiting for the bus, and since it was still in my safe neighborhood, I didn’t have the sense to be scared yet. That was saved for the other end of the line.

  The boy-man just nodded, mumbling to himself. I checked my watch. How often did these buses come again? There was nobody to ask, but I’d figured one would come eventually. Then he threw down that cigarette, the one that had never been lit, and smiled at me. It was a cold smile, the scary kind. I could see that, even through the mouth slit in his ski mask. When he grabbed me, I knew that no bus was coming tonight. That he’d only been waiting for me.

  Mom says I should have run then, that I should have known how to get away. I tried to run, but my new boots were cute and pointy. I never was too good with heels and pointy toes. I ran a little while, but I fell behind the oak tree.

  And he covered me.

  The leaves danced like even they couldn’t see, daring to be beautiful while I was dying. Maybe they were giving me something to look at, something to numb the pain. It didn’t help.

  Nothing did.

  No matter how much I bit and kicked and scratched and yelled, no matter how hard I tried to rise up and fly, he just kept on. Fighting just made it hurt worse and I figured I’d die soon anyway, so I tried to think of heaven and stuff like that.

  Mom said that was stupid too. She said that I’m a woman now, and I should have known what was happening. Evidently, women know these things. Information like that would have been valuable beforehand, but being just a girl who died at the bus stop, I really wouldn’t know.

  It doesn’t matter what Mom thinks anyway. Not now. She didn’t see his eyes. Only Daddy could have stopped him and he was in Cleveland. There’s nothing left but this pain between my legs, between my ears. There’s a buzzing sound that won’t stop. They said at the hospital that’s from him slamming my head on the ground. That was the only time I saw Mom cry. She never apologized for not taking me. She never will. She thinks it’s my own fault.

  Maybe she’s right. I wanted to dance, to fly, so bad. It felt so good. Maybe God didn’t want me to have that. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter now. I’ll never dance again.

  Miss Joyce doesn’t believe that. She said that I should write it all down. The police said so too. They said to try and remember all of it. I’m trying to forget it. Daddy is still in Cleveland. This morning I walked to the bus, holding my stomach, feeling for the line where he broke me in half. Nobody spoke to me. They’d already heard my story, recounted by the mothers over breakfast. I watched as the gate went up for our school bus. It lowered quickly, letting down the little flag I’d read so many times before.

  Safety is our business.

  I would have laughed but it hurt too much. Someone should tell the people who write dumb things like that or show people in bed on TV and make it look like something wonderful. Some other girl, one without bloody boots and a black eye, one who still had stickers on her Rubik’s cube, should tell them. They were grownups. They should know these things.

  3

  Ron

  It always starts fast and horrible like a bug flying up my nose. And usually when I’m sleeping. Brian warns me if he can, but sometimes she comes back walking. Once, after she’d been gone three nights straight, she came back crawling. It’s been six days.

  Sometimes she can’t find me in the dark. Maybe, if I lie real still . . .

  “Run! She’s in the back!” Brian’s voice hissed up through the broken window before the rain drowned him out. I jumped off the bed and was almost under it when a cold hand choked my neck. I vowed not to cry.

  “I missed you, hon. Did you miss me?” my mother said, her warm breath a steam of cheap beer and stale cigarettes. I nodded, swallowed, wondering if she really meant it, if she ever had meant it. Sometimes, at the beginning, it was hard to tell. By the end though, there was never any doubt. She lit up a Marlboro from the smell of it and took a deep drag. I bit my lip, trying to pray to Brian’s God, begging silently for her to put it out. And not on me. After a sweaty kiss on my cheek and an assurance of her love, my mother answered my prayer, tossing her cigarette somewhere on the floor and stomping it out. I grabbed for her hands. Just in time. She was coming at me.

  “Ow! Cut it out, will you, Ma?”

  Her answer was another blow. Despite the dark, she could see my every move. Even if she hadn’t seen, she’d know anyway. I’d learned every bit of my bob-and-weave act from watching her. It’d never worked very well for either of us, but it made the time go faster somehow. As punches rained down on my back, I turned and grabbed her fists. Her hands didn’t hurt so much. Not anymore. It was the other things . . .

  “Stop it, okay? Just stop it!”

  She laughed, sounding eerily like my father used to when he was dealing out the punches to her. Didn’t she remember how it felt to be on the other end?

  “You want to make this hard, do you?” she said, grabbing a fistful of my hair.

  I gritted my teeth and yanked my head away. It felt like I left some hair in her hand. My head ached, but I didn’t care. I was sixteen. Long past begging. It didn’t do any good anyway.

  “You think you’re a man, boy? I’ll make a man outta you. Don’t worry.”

  Teetering on a broken heel, she lit into me again—this time scratching, digging at any flesh she could find. I ran back to the bedroom, hoping Brian was still outside the window in case I needed to jump out of it. He’d catch me, I was sure of that. The problem was, my mother caught me first, just as I was trying to get a running start.

  She tripped me from behind and we flopped onto the bed. The broken springs that I avoided at night jabbed into me now. My mother kept screaming at me, but I tuned it out, listening to the rain pounding against the window and the rattle of Brian’s bike chain instead.

  He’d gone home.

  Sure he’d come back when it was over and sneak me into his room, but it wasn’t the same without him outside, waiting. It meant something to know he was out there, that as soon as she left, he’d come right in and take me home, smothering all my secrets under his mother’s quilts.

  Mama got tired of fighting me and started singing a song I’d never heard. I couldn’t make out the words, but it sounded like the songs from Brian’s church that floated down the hill. I wished there’d been a service tonight.

  Cold, hard rain coming in through the cracks and my mother drunk and crazy on my chest was all the hymn I had. For a little while, it was enough. I put my arms around her and smoothed her hair.

  The street light clicked on, bright and blurry against the window. We both turned away from it, not wanting to see. I think that’s why she always came at night, so that she wouldn’t have to look at me. At herself. Tomorrow, she’d leave money on the table for me.

  I’d take the money and wait a couple hours before Brian came and helped me limp back to his house, where I’d stay until Mama came for me in a few days, sober and pretty in a worn-out sort of way, standing on the sidewalk, thanking Brian’s mother through her teeth. We’d pretend it didn’t happen except for her saying sorry over and over. We’d get pizza and watch stupid movies, cut coupons and do homework. And then some man would call, come by . . . And then she wouldn’t come home. And when she did, it’d be like this. Only tonight, it was raining, so no one would hear me scream.

  So far tonight I wasn’t too bad off, though. Scratches and bruises was all. We’d broken the bed frame and my last clean T-shirt was ruined, but I couldn’t think about that now. The picture frame I’d hidden under my mattress rested on the floor: face up, broken and smiling. I hoped she didn’t see it. I hoped she was drunk enough that she’d be passing out soon.

  One hand on her back, my fingers eased toward the metal frame, one of the last things we still had from before. There were two photos inside—the top one of my parents as newlyweds, the one that I looked at to remi
nd me of who Mama really was, and the one under that, a snapshot of me and Brian smiling on a hot day when everything seemed right. I memorized days like that to save for nights like this. It all evens out somehow.

  She snatched the frame from me as quickly as I reached for it and sat up on the mattress. Like so many times before, I thought about giving her a good shove, running to tell everybody what they already knew. But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I was a man, not a punk. Men didn’t hit women and they never ran away. I looked like my father, but I wanted the resemblance to stop there. He was dead now, but still haunted Mama’s soul. Mine too. I’d never be like him.

  She pricked her finger on the broken glass but managed to get into the frame. I sat up carefully, trying to gauge her reaction. Mama faltered for a minute as she looked at the wedding picture, squinting in the dim light to recognize her own happiness. She steeled her resolve when she saw the second photo. She crumpled them both in her fist.

  “Been hiding this?” She dug up another cigarette and lit it first, then the pictures. Her hand was really bleeding now, but she didn’t seem to feel it. She was too busy trying to be him, even though she’d hated him.

  But she loved him too. So did you. Just like you love her.

  She slapped me out of my reverie. “Best live for today, Ronnie. Now for the last time, are you going to leave them niggers alone?” She reached for the radio and yanked the cord out of it.

  I let out the scream I’d been holding back and rolled off the mattress, trying to avoid the broken glass. I knew what came next. This part hurt worst. How could I have been so stupid as to leave the radio out. It was Brian’s—set to wake me up. I’d been tired. So tired. The first lash sliced the air and landed across my shoulder blades, just under my arms. The cord came down again, this time around my neck. The plug whipped around and hit my temple. At least it wasn’t my eye. I hauled myself up and ran out of the room.