Vanishing Rooms

by Melvin Dixon

  Suddenly the train stalled. The lights went out. Air stopped coming from the vent. All was still. I started to sweat although it wasn’t that hot. I was about to stand up when the train lurched forward and lumbered into the next station. The waiting riders looked angry. Ruella moved in closer to me and took my hand. Crowds squeezed onto the train. The door wouldn’t close. “Get the fuck off the doors,” said a voice over the loudspeaker. The door groaned shut. The train pushed itself out of 42nd Street, accelerating for the nonstop ride to 72nd.

  I kept thinking about the visit to the prison. I’d think about anything just to keep my mind off the train and the other passengers. Ruella’s hand squeezed mine and I smiled at her, but her look said she was clinging to me again, and I didn’t want her to cling. We were already close. We danced. We took the subway. We visited the prison. We saw Phillip. I felt his blood boiling beneath the skin and felt my own blood freeze. He looked at me with the same suspicion my father did when it took me so long to learn how to ride a bike, or when I preferred to shine shoes for a quarter downtown, or fuss about my mother’s hair when she would let out the rollers and toss the newly formed curls carelessly about her head. I wanted to care for those curls. I hated baseball and marbles, and even when I was a paperboy once I learned to ride a bike, I’d fold each paper neatly and place it perfectly in whatever piece of property it belonged. Charlie watched me suspiciously, like my father did. Like Phillip, as if the careful rolls of newspaper could never hide the telltale flutter in my walk. I was a sissy. And they all knew it before I did. And I was trapped longer than I cared to know in my mother’s hamper heap of bras and panties and flowered blouses. Trapped in imitation silk and rosewater, with no exit from the mirror frosted with the breath from my dance. No doubt this was what Phillip saw in his suspicion, and this was probably what Ruella knew and feared, that the confused look of fathers or brothers made you realize you could love them more fiercely and more dangerously than any woman could.

  There was danger in the subway lights, whizzing by. Suddenly the screech of brakes and a long wail echoing through the dark. We must have been around Lincoln Center, the West 60s, judging by the amount of time that had passed. The train stopped dead. People shifted about nervously. I was afraid. The lights went out. Burning metal and the sharp odor of electricity rose through the car. Smoke pricked at my eyes. A gravelly voice came over the loudspeaker saying something no one understood. The doors wouldn’t open. The smoke got thick.

  People coughed. From somewhere came jitters and laughs. A child started to cry. “Goddamn train,’’ someone said. “Must be a fire somewhere.”

  “God, no,” said Ruella, her voice raspy in my ear. She clung to me tighter.

  That started the near panic. No one could move. I tried to stand. Legs jostled, bodies pushed and shoved. We could go nowhere.

  I remembered the signs, “Subway tracks are dangerous … Follow the instructions of trains crews or police.” But there were no police, no crews, no motormen, no instructions. The smoked curled into our clothes and cramped bodies.

  A siren sounded. Lights flickered. The smoke was like a fog. A jolt of cold, crisp air came through the car. People separated, flowed. More smoke came. We had room now to move. I made Ruella get down on her hands and knees with me, and we crawled along the floor, crawled among crumpled papers, brown paper bags, chewing-gum wrappers. We went from one car to the next, crawling, sucking for air, fumbling blindly in a silent mass. We reached the last car and the door was open onto air and darkness. Then the flicker of more lights. People straightened up and moved toward the flickering lights. “Subway tracks are dangerous,” I repeated to myself. Then louder, “Are you with me, Ruella?”

  “Yes, Jesse, I’m all right.”

  From nowhere appeared a motorman with a lantern. He told us to stand up against the wall and follow the line of riders. Farther ahead was another lantern signaling the first. I felt another gust of air. It was an open manhole cover. One by one people inched up the hot metal rungs and went out into the bristling air. I pulled Ruella ahead of me and pushed her up the ladder from behind.

  Outside there were police and fireman everywhere. Several ambulances stood by. I found Ruella’s hand and held her close to me. Her eyes were red. Mine were red. “What happened?” I asked an officer next to me.

  “Just a small electrical fire. Nothing big.”

  “Anybody hurt?” asked Ruella.

  “None too bad.”

  “I’m glad we’re OK” I said, holding Ruella again. She looked at me, and I couldn’t tell whether she was glad to be out of that tunnel and train and turmoil or glad simply to be in my arms.

  “Thanks, Jesse.”

  “For what?”

  “Leading me out.”

  “You found me, remember. In the warehouse. You pulled me from the splinters. And we danced.”

  “You were so calm, Jesse. It’ll be a long time before I can take another train,” she said.

  That’s when I knew I could leave her.

  PART FOUR

  Ruella

  THERE WAS SMOKE EVERYWHERE ON ME. There was smoke all in my clothes and all in my hair, like I had a head full of burning wires. I tasted smoke on my tongue and teeth. My whole body felt smelly and thick.

  We were lucky, though. Some people had to spend the night in the hospital. No one was killed, thank God. Truth is, I felt like it was the end of something I couldn’t quite name. It took me two whole days to get my nerves back. When I had to go out, I took the bus. No subway was going to wreck my nerves. And not my last nerve, for sure.

  Later, Jesse and I practiced without music. Then he bought the Nina Simone album and we practiced again. He kept humming the tune over to himself as we stretched together on the floor. I started to sing. He joined in. We halted at the pronouns. “He doesn’t know his beauty. He thinks his brown body has no glory. If he could dance …”

  “That song’s about me, too,” he said.

  “And me.”

  We laughed.

  The next day everyone was watching us during auditions. The call required two parts. First, an original dance with a partner, something like an improvisation, but which showed how you worked with another dancer. The second part was an individual execution of combinations given by the dance captain. If you passed the first you could present the second. Anna Louise thought we had a good chance with the Simone-Cuney piece.

  “She doesn’t know her beauty,” I remembered. “She thinks her brown body has no glory. If she could dance … If she could dance.” I said this over and over to myself and imagined all the graceful movements that could come to someone like me who had to practice, to work at it, like Mama would say and Aunt Lois, too, before I left home. I was not a pretty woman. I didn’t mind it, not really. You got to work for anything you want in this life. You got to dance.

  Jesse moved with me. His body was leaner, tight. The leotard and tights no longer sagged at the folds of muscles he’d developed. I touched his head. He touched mine. I bent in plié and he lifted me high on relevé. My knees turned out in harsh precision. I was in the air briefly, his arms tight at my waist, his feet firm on the polished floor. The song continued. My whole body was an ear opening up to sound and movement, sweat and space. Simone, Cuney, Jesse, and me. I bent and opened. Jesse bent and opened. We were dancers simply dancing. I wasn’t talking now in borrowed words, but in my own language of arms and hands, of delicate and expressive fingers, of head and waist and twisting torso. I told another story. Jesse answered with his movement connecting to mine as mine connected to his, and we circled through the words of song and light, airy motion. He told me in those arms and contractions of stomach, lifting chest and tight pirouettes, bullet jetés, that he could be a tree or a flower and still be strong, that his brown body had glory in movement, in music, even in the pain from somewhere deep that boys named after their mothers are different. I said I understood. His arabesque and grand plié told me that some boys take glory in their differenc
e, have grace too, and the promise of wings. I extended forty-five degrees, then ninety. Which said, women too could be different and could fly. He angled closer. He called me Rooms for short. Rooms for all the spaces we created where he could dance to several tunes at once, then rest.

  Later, I would let him touch me here and here, holding each breast and pushing tenderly between my thighs, on point. Point of finger, tongue. His wide hands would be copper autumn leaves falling around me and onto me, covering me as if I were the earth. I gathered them in from the cold. Jesse danced in my room. He called me Rooms. Phillip called me Lil’ Sis and Lady, which I liked even more. Everybody called me something other than my real name. What was I going to call myself? How would I move in my own dance? “If she could dance. Naked under palm trees. She would know …” The song continued and I continued bending and opening and bending and opening. One-two-three-four. Two-two-three-four. Step five, bend six, leap seven, down eight. Hold, two-three-four. Hold.

  Anna Louise thanked us again and said the list of accepted dancers would be posted on the First Company bulletin board in two days. I didn’t think I could wait that long. Or sleep. My legs were still shaking long after Jesse and I came off the floor. He was sweating. After resting a moment, we were asked to join the other dancers who were following the dance captain’s combination. I wasn’t with Jesse at all this time. There were so many dancers following the combinations that I wondered who really had been selected. When I looked for Jesse in line he was standing next to another black dancer, a man. Something caught me inside and made my legs go heavy, plodding. The two of them danced in front of me and couldn’t even tell I was watching. I tried following Jesse’s steps and the dance captain’s combinations, but I found myself watching Jesse and the other dancer more than the dance captain. I couldn’t concentrate. Shivers shot through my legs and I thought I had a sudden case of shin splits. But it wasn’t my legs at all. It was the handsome man dancing next to Jesse and pulling Jesse’s gaze away from the dance floor and into his eyes. I was scared. Scared for myself. Scared for Jesse, too, this time. My stomach knotted itself, and each muscle pulled against the upward contraction I needed to lift my right leg high in extension. I fumbled through the steps, all the while watching Jesse smile at the other dancer and the other dancer smile back. They were auditioning all right, but more for each other than for the dance captain. The thought froze me from the inside out and I just couldn’t move right. Truth is, I was jealous.

  Anna Louise called me off the dance floor. ‘‘What’s the matter, Ruella? I called you three times. Are you feeling all right? Maybe you’re too exhausted after the last piece.”

  “Yes, Anna Louise, I guess so.”

  “You even stumbled once. I was afraid you would fall.”

  “I don’t understand it, either. I’m sorry.”

  “Perhaps you’d better rest.”

  “But what about the rest of the audition?”

  “I’ll try to talk to the choreographer. I’ll do what I can.”

  “You think he’ll give me another chance?”

  “I can’t promise anything.”

  “Wait. Let me get back in line. I’m all right now.”

  “Are you sure, Ruella?”

  I found a place in line out of sight from Jesse and the man next to him. I focused on each movement the dance captain showed for the third time. I flung hips and arms wide, turned out knees until they were flat as plates, pointed my toes like the tip of a long brown knife. I leaped wide, moving away from Jesse’s range of vision as quickly as I felt myself leaping into something of my own. I plied and arabesqued grandly until sweat made my feet slippery on the floor. But I kept on dancing and dancing. I knew every step now and could add a little expression of my own. Something with personality in it, something from the inside moving my feet. I flowed into movement, lifted stomach, chest, head, straight and higher than even Jesse could. My hands and feet were feathers. Light as leaves. Then I noticed there were only five dancers left with me on the floor. I danced again and smiled with the movement; everything inside me was light and thin and something new to present. I was the dance and the room itself. There was no more space inside me. Nothing more to hold in guardedly, unsure. No place where anyone could enter so freely and violate with a touch or a broken heart. I had no more room inside myself for that. No more spaces to give. Everything was outside now, and moving through the studio like an express train through a local stop. This time I was full of movement, this time I knew where I was going.

  Anna Louise smiled at me. She said again that names would be posted in two days. Some decisions were already made, others were pending. Some dancers would be seen for call-backs. But two days? Could I even wait that long? I headed for the dressing room but just then Jesse came up to me from behind as if to surprise me with something. He wasn’t alone. I could hear the other man’s voice before Jesse spoke to me. I turned away to ease off my leg warmers, and give the hint I was leaving, and only after a considerable pause did I finally say hello. Jesse introduced me to his new acquaintance: Rodney, Rodney Alexander. He smiled and Jesse smiled, but by then I had figured out that they were really smiling for each other, showing all teeth and lips, just like they were really dancing for each other, showing tight chests and thighs. Auditioning, my foot! I secretly hoped neither would pass into the First Company although they needed more male dancers than female. But just who was this new guy, this Rodney?

  Jesse wouldn’t say anything more about him. And I didn’t ask too many questions. I wasn’t that interested. Not really. But I did see them exchange telephone numbers, and in Jesse’s silence later I could tell he was thinking about him. So I said, “Rodney is nice looking.” And Jesse said, “He’s all right.”

  “As a dancer, I mean. I think he’s pretty good.”

  “Handsome,” Jesse said, “And, yes, a good dancer.”

  “Think we’ll make the company?”

  “We’d better.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I just had an idea for a dance. I’d like to choreograph something.”

  “What kind of dance?”

  “A dance for men. Two men. A male pas de deux.”

  I started to laugh, then caught myself. “It’s been done before,” I said.

  “But it’s always some version of the Icarus-Daedalus story. One dies, the other flies to safety. Or Cain and Abel. Two brothers. But still one of them dies. I want to do something about lovers. How two men can fly together and land safely, feet back on the ground.”

  “Sounds confusing to me.”

  “It’ll be great.”

  “For you and Rodney, perhaps.”

  “Who’s talking about Rodney?”

  “I can read between the steps. Anyway, you two dance well together. Not that I was noticing or anything.”

  “You’re bullshitting.”

  “No, I’m not, Jesse. But what about me? You’ve forgotten about me that quickly? I’m a dancer, too. And Metro, what about him?”

  “He’s dead. The dance is about him. Rather, us. What we could have been.”

  “And now Rodney?”

  “Look, Rooms—”

  “Ruella, Ruella McPhee.”

  “Listen, Ruella. He’s asked me to visit later. For drinks.”

  “Then you won’t be coming by my place tonight?”

  “I hope not.”

  “Shit. You don’t have to say it like that, Jesse.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You better stay there too, Jesse. At his place or yours.” “Huh?”

  “I want to be alone for a while,” I said. My lips felt thick. I bit into them to stop the trembling creeping all into me like the smoke. “I want to be alone,” I said again, my lips almost swollen now, and chewy.

  “Until tomorrow, you mean. Tomorrow, right?”

  “No, Jesse. Longer than that.”

  “I see.”

  “I do too,” I said. “Now.”

  Jesse’s eyes were on my
back, but I turned more fully away from him and walked alone outside the studio. My feet felt funny, lighter, and were leading me in a different direction from Jesse’s. I carried nothing but my dance bag, and my shoulders felt light. I tried to get the first train I heard screeching into the station. Missed it. Another fifteen minutes pacing the platform. What in the world was I doing taking a train? Well, there I was. Then, for no reason at all, I started smiling to myself and smiling at other waiting passengers. I was learning new steps just pacing there and feeling the vibrations underfoot of the coming train. Truth is, I was practicing for the time I’d dance solo or not dance at all. And I had nothing at all to fear from fire.

  For two days I cleaned my apartment myself. And when I returned to the studio, Lord, our names had been posted.

  Lonny

  THREE WEEKS IT TOOK TO GET OUT OF that fucking hospital. Three weeks of laying up looking at the blank pastel-green ceiling and the same four walls. Then another couple of weeks after that before I could take a shit without holding onto a guardrail because of the pain, or stop taking the fucking laxative to soften the shit so it wouldn’t tear the lining of my ass and so the muscles in it could heal. All those weeks of bed and doctors and television. At least I had better food than the other inmates. And I didn’t have to work on some bullshit farm for boys upstate. But they finally had me transferred there when we lost the trial. I guess I was the lucky one: hospital and upstate reform school. The others got sent to different prisons all around the state. The lawyer said the judge was easy on me ’cause I was the youngest and didn’t have a record. And the jury believed me. I was guilty of being an accomplice, they said. But not of murder. So by the time I got to the reform school I had already done time in jail waiting for trial, and time in the hospital waiting for my ass to heal. When I got upstate there wasn’t much to do except read and go to a few classes and do a few chores. I was taking mechanics training for a job when I got out because I knew something about cycles from hanging around the garage in Chelsea.