Ralph’s cramped eyebrows and skimpy whiskers gave him the look of a jackal who could barely cover his fangs as he skulked out of the way for Sulaiman and Pat. Even so, he was drooling to play in her company. Lamban wondered if he’d also heard that Pat was looking to have women compose her drum orchestra.
“Hi, everyone,” Pat addressed the gathered community of dancers and drummers. “Today we’re going to work on saa.”
Lamban wanted to hoot for joy as she thought, I am in heaven. The very idea of saa sends my heart soaring. Thank God, I came back to class.
“Saa is from the bush of Guinea,” Pat explained. “It used to be a women’s secret society dance. The women played drums in the bush. Saa was the strength dance for the females to keep themselves together. The sisters marched saa from Guinea to Mali and back again, protesting what we nowadays can talk about as macho madness.” The room quieted with attention, some faces incredulous, some as if remembering forgotten knowledge.
“The women danced saa to show they were just as strong—if not stronger—than the men. And like I said, the women played the rhythms,” Pat said with a chastising look at those drummers who made faces of disbelief.
Lamban nodded her head almost imperceptibly. She noticed how, several feet away, Lenjen’s face brightened with interest in Pat’s preface. Lenjen took on the look of someone who’d been adrift and now steered with a new rudder toward purpose. Lamban could understand how a teenager like Lenjen might yearn to hear the greater truth behind what Pat was saying: that there is a wider realm for African women than the small plots where men wanted to kennel and keep them.
“Some brothers say it’s taboo for women to play the drum, but you have to ignore them. Have you ever heard of Makeda?” People nodded, some women smiling as if anticipating praise for themselves. “She’s one of the best drummers—man or woman. A lot of brothers don’t like her ’cause she’s so good, but that’s just their jealousy.”
“And that little ego thing,” Cayenne called out. Several women raised a chorus of “Um hm”s that broke into tolerant laughter. Lamban’s enthusiasm kept her chin nodding. She ached to connect with the smile widening Lenjen’s face, the skin smooth as an apple.
Pat changed direction slightly. “Saa steps are strenuous, ladies. It’s a military dance—I’m talking serious war. Don’t cheat on the steps. You have to smile when you march it.” She flashed a challenging brightness of teeth, as if opening her mouth set free a flock of white birds to burst into the room of respectful listeners. The teacher adjusted her lapa around her hips for a looser fit and Lenjen could tell Pat was readying to show the steps.
“Like I said, saa was a women’s secret society dance, but like a lot of things, the brothers peeped it and now it’s everybody’s dance.” Then, as if this were a discovery, she added, “Women’s secret societies prove that it’s important for us to get together as females to share what we are strong with. I’m ready. I hope you are.”
The dancers lined up in rows of three to practice each step as they went across the floor. Lamban let two women move ahead of her and quickly stepped in place to stand in Lenjen’s line. She smiled at the girl openly. “Come on, puppy. This is the women’s dance of strength.” Before Lamban could continue or Lenjen could answer with anything more than her own smile of delight, Pat was demonstrating the steps to saa and both dancers set to work.
At first Lenjen was annoyed that she wasn’t picking up the movements with her usual ease. Distress changed to horror as the rows of dancers sailed across the floor stitching the step securely to the music, but she just wasn’t grasping the needle of movements Pat had shown. Lenjen had to work hard just to do it all wrong. And when she did get a slight grip on the footwork, she had a difficult time holding on to its thread. Her mind kept repeating the enthusiastic words, “Come on, puppy. Saa is the women’s dance of strength.” Lenjen felt near panic; she had to get this. The sisters had marched saa from Guinea to Mali then back again to make a point to brothers whose egos had taken them unnaturally out of line.
Halfway through the class, Lamban took Lenjen’s hand and drew her to the side of the room. Lamban exaggerated and carved her anatomy like an ancestor figure to show Lenjen the transition which made the saa step so troublesome.
“It’s a rhythm thing,” Lamban said. “Count it: one and uh-two. Hold three.” Lenjen felt grateful for this instruction, even as she felt
shamed that this reserved woman touched Lenjen’s leg, elbow, hand, like a puppet master guiding movement to her limbs.
Lenjen badly wanted to look good, was flustered by her mistakes, and hated each and every false move. She kept a thin grip on her belief that she was learning something important. She paid heed to what Lamban pointed out and let herself be a child who had something to inherit from a woman she favored.
Still, she rallied herself like a warrior readying for battle. Every class humbles me, she thought. Every class brings out my weakness, shows me my power, tells me my name. It’s the same for anyone else here. I’m not going through anything different than the rest of the folks trying to learn this stuff. But damn, I wish I didn’t have to sweat for it today.
Pat rode herd on the dancers to guard them from slacking off. “Keep the steps clean. Tighter,” she urged. Finally she motioned the drummers to go into a new rhythm for the next dance. The drum call tickled Lenjen just short of recognition. Her body could practically taste which dance would come next, but her mouth couldn’t call it by name. Pat motioned like a choir director to the alert faces that seemed eager for her every word. “Let’s slow it down some. We’ll do a lamban next. What I teach is from Guinea. This lamban is for the rite of passage from girlhood into womanhood.”
Pat narrowed her eyes into the group of dancers, and when her funnel of vision caught Lamban, she signaled the woman to come to the front line.
Lamban felt her blood course both humble and proud. She put more than her body into the steps that Pat laid out, aware that people watched her so they could learn. She danced full-out and amplified each part of the movement. People needed clear demonstrations, especially in African dance where every movement would not be counted and broken down. She consciously offered herself as the strong pattern for anyone who looked to pick up the impression of her footfalls.
The music of the drums drove line after line of dancers, and Pat nipped at their heels to keep the movement strong. After what seemed a flicker of time, the hurricane of dance let up from a storm to a shower of raining arms and legs. Lamban looked forward to the ending circle where they’d probably do the social dance, mandgiani, but instead Pat signaled the drummers to play yet another rhythm. After a false start with the music and a moment of confusion, Pat sang out a rhythm that the lead drummer tried to catch, while Ralph scowled bewilderment. Finally, Pat called out, “I want you to play lenjen.” The lead djimbe player smiled in quick recognition and apology.
Pat skipped through the semicircle she had directed the dancers to form around the drummers, then paired people off. Lamban caught the moment when Pat’s face startled in a look of uncertainty, then sureness, recognizing a resemblance in two people. She’d just put together the two dance-named women, and her smile flared with bright teeth at how she’d paired Lamban with Lenjen.
Pat then went center-circle to say, “Here’s what I want: Come out with your partner in an opening step. Each of you will do a solo. Then leave together doing the same step. Take a minute to work it out, OK?”
Lamban, her flesh heated, body confident, and sense of herself strengthened from dancing, felt giddy as a lottery winner to partner with this teenager. She said yes to all of Lenjen’s suggestions for the steps they would do. Lamban went gladly into a listening stance, knowing that she could channel greater good from that position. She would take in more and connect with greater ease as she deferred to someone’s greater skill.
The woman and teenager worked out and rehearsed their duet and solo steps. When Pat called the dance circle to order and it
came their turn to ride out on the lenjen rhythm, Lamban felt herself barely more than a shadow. Lenjen danced as if she had no bones in her body to hamper its fluidity and, indeed, sported wings instead of arms. Her steps took her high into the air, as close to flight as humanly possible.
Lamban sensed everyone else in class look with wonder at Lenjen’s solo, which soared the group to a climax. On Lenjen’s last go-around at jumping into the circle of paired dancers, she pulled Lamban in with her and danced elaborate patterns around her partner. In finale, she angled her body into a sequence of steps in which everyone could join, then broke off with a gambol like a kaleidoscope discovering it could also be a rainbow.
At the end of class faces glistened with the sweaty joy fashioned from something cleansed and set free. Lenjen and Lamban smiled at, looked away from and back to one another. Lamban pulled the girl to her and held her in a long, strong hug. She felt people smiling their way. And why not smile upon them? The community had just witnessed a mighty rite of passage. Two queer birds had stretched their wings, each finding a new level of flight in the dance of the cranes.
STEVEN CORBIN
[1953–1994]
NEW JERSEY–BORN NOVELIST STEVEN CORBIN WAS CONTROVERSIAL for his depiction of homophobia in black families, interracial tension in gay relationships, and the gritty realities of AIDS.
His best-known works are Fragments That Remain (1993), a novel concerning a black gay actor and his troubled family, and A Hundred Days from Now (1994), a bleakly interpreted love story about an HIV-positive African American writer whose Latino lover is unexpectedly diagnosed with AIDS. His short fiction appears in Terry McMillan’s Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African American Fiction. He was teaching creative writing at UCLA at the time of his death from AIDS in 1994.
In A Hundred Days from Now, Dexter, an African American screenwriter, has just met and fallen in love with Sergio, a closeted Mexican American businessman whose self-denial about his homosexuality is further complicated by the news that he has AIDS. In spite of the interracial differences and difficulties in caring for a partner who will not speak the truth of his own sexual identity, Dexter lovingly assumes the role of primary caregiver. However, when Sergio comes down with AIDS-induced Kaposi’s sarcoma, and an experimental bone-marrow transplant seems the only hope for survival, the relationship takes on deeper issues of mortality that cut to the core of their lives. In the end, Corbin, a former ACT UP member, presents one of the most heartrending depictions of AIDS/HIV in black gay fiction ever published.
from A Hundred Days from Now
[1994]
“I have bad news,” Sergio announced to Dexter over the telephone, a week after they’d returned from Hawaii.
I Dexter swallowed, held his breath, sat down on the kitchen stool, his pulse racing.
“What is it?” he managed to say without stuttering.
“Remember that spot on my back?”
Oh, my God! Dexter thought. No. It can’t be. No, God, don’t let it be… “Well,” Sergio continued, sighing, defeated. “It’s KS all right.”
Dexter tried, with everything he had, to subdue the wave of grief rising from his stomach, weaving throughout his rib cage, sliding up his throat, gagging him with tears he didn’t want Sergio to hear. He was trying to be strong for Sergio. But how could he? This second symptom declared it official that Sergio had AIDS.
“I’m so sorry,” Dexter said, his voice cracking.
Seven weeks. That’s all it had been. Forty-nine days. He’d barely known Sergio seven weeks and he couldn’t—simply refused to imagine his life without him.
After they hung up, Dexter took a long, aimless walk through the neighborhood, barely aware of which streets he turned into, or of the automobiles that were stopping for him to cross the street. No, God, he thought. I’m sorry, you can’t have this one. You’ve taken too many from me already. Go pick on somebody else. Dexter had fallen in love, virtually against his will. He’d never met anyone like Sergio, who encompassed nearly all the qualities Dexter sought in a man—and then some.
Of all the men Dexter had dated, Sergio was the near-perfect find, the divine one. He’d already resolved to spend the remainder of his life with Sergio. But he’d never considered how much life Sergio had left. So preoccupied with every other facet of Sergio—his good looks, his Harvard education, his intellect, his charm, his extraordinary achievements— Dexter never once—not once!—considered Sergio’s health, his longevity. Talk about priorities being out of whack.
What would Dexter do? How would he handle this? He wasn’t going to abandon Sergio, that much he knew. He meant what he’d said in Honolulu. The growing proportions of the pandemic being what they were, Dexter felt his contribution to the fight, as care-giver, would make him feel more involved, no longer simply watching from the sidelines. But how does one go about day-to-day existence when it entails living with a loved one’s terminal illness?
And yet, AIDS, not unlike diabetes and cancer, wasn’t necessarily terminal anymore. It was evolving into a survivable disease. He knew several men—not many, an incredibly small percentage actually—who, despite the disease, were living relatively healthy, productive lives. Of course, Sergio would be one of them, one of the more fortunate statistics. But of course! Just the thought of it gave Dexter a second wind. He and Sergio would fight the virus and beat it. Dexter likened Sergio to the allegorical protagonist in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal who plays chess with Death. Sergio would take on this faceless, hooded opponent and checkmate him. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind.
Returning home, Dexter made a few phone calls to friends for support, hoping they would tell him what he wanted—what he needed—so desperately to hear. An hour later, he jumped in his car and drove to Sergio’s, unannounced.
Sergio was surprised but ecstatic to see him. Dexter grabbed him and embraced him longer and tighter than he ever had, caressing his back, reassuring Sergio that everything would be all right. When Dexter released him, neither of them knew what to say, each of them trying to be brave for the other.
Sergio explained to Dexter that his treating physician, Dr. Marc Lieberman, had prescribed a medication for the KS. Alpha interferon. Sergio had been instructed by the doctor to inject himself with this cancer-battling fluid each night to suppress the one lesion on his back and to prevent the appearance of others. Sergio had been given an instructional videocassette to learn how to properly administer it. He and Dexter stripped down to their undies and lay in bed together watching the tape, which encouraged the user to teach the method to at least one other person. Dexter was eager to learn. When the tape finished, they lay in each other’s arms, Dexter’s ear pressed against Sergio’s chest, listening to his heart beat, his tainted blood pump and circulate, imagining the virus ticking inside his body on a search-and-destroy mission to conquer Sergio’s T-cells.
“Dex?”
“What, Serge?” Dexter said, emphatically abridging Sergio’s name in an effort to humor him.
“This is so weird, you know. I never thought I’d ever be stricken with a terminal illness. I guess it’s the ‘it-happens-to-the-other-guy’ syndrome. And yet, I think I know when I got the virus.”
“You do?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“It’s kind of like, when a woman knows the moment she’s been impregnated, the precise moment of conception. It was kind of like that. It happened on Fire Island, I’m sure of it.”
“I was absolutely shocked to learn I was HIV-positive,” Dexter said. “I’d never been terribly promiscuous. Well, maybe sometimes. But I almost never had intercourse that wasn’t ‘safe sex,’ even though there wasn’t a term for it at the time. I just think full intercourse is such an intimate act, I couldn’t do it with just anybody. I never went to the baths and stuff like that. So when the volunteer at the health center told me, I was shocked. I thought they’d given me the wrong results.”
“I’m the first person I kn
ow to get AIDS,” Sergio admitted, following a long, piercing silence, as he stared blankly, fixedly at the ceiling. “You’re kidding?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Aren’t any of your friends even HIV-positive?”
“I don’t have any…any gay friends.”
“You don’t? Not even one?”
“Only you and Dante, my ex-lover.”
“Why’s that?” Dexter said, shocked, not knowing what to make of this. “It’s a long story,” Sergio sighed. “I’ll tell you all about it someday.” Dexter tried to imagine what it would be like to be gay and not have any gay friends outside former and present lovers. And he attempted to fathom what it was like not to know anyone who’d contracted the plague and died from it. Younger gay men, twenty-something, he could understand. But Sergio was forty-three. An anomaly. He couldn’t wait to hear Sergio’s “long story.” Dexter was thirty-five and he’d known plenty who’d perished. In some twisted way, he envied Sergio.
“You know what, Dex?”
“What, Serge?”
“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Am I?”
“Yes, you are. You don’t know what it means to me to have you here at this moment.”
Dexter mentally prepped himself for the days, weeks, months ahead. He thrived on challenge; ate it for breakfast. And Sergio was nothing if he wasn’t a challenge. Dexter watched as Sergio eased out of bed, grabbed his Sony Walkman, and popped an audio-cassette into it. Untangling the earphones, he plugged one into his ear, one into Dexter’s, pushed the play button, scooped Dexter up in his arms, and closed his eyes. Dexter’s ears filled with the backdrop of ocean waves breaking and crashing on the shore, punctuated by a soothing, hypnotic voice-over.
“For the next sixty minutes,” the voice-over said, “we’re going to learn how to love ourselves. The most important thing in your life beginning now and forever is to love yourself, to embrace your alternative lifestyle, to love and embrace your homosexuality…”
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