by Suzanne Leal
Kurt takes a moment to consider. ‘“Like Toy Soldiers” isn’t bad. But “Just Lose It”, that’s even better.’ He lowers his voice. ‘Except the video’s a bit inappropriate and that.’
She hasn’t seen the video and doesn’t want him to start describing it now. So she gives him a nod to let him know—as one Eminem fan to another—that this is something best kept between the two of them. ‘That’s why I prefer some of his other stuff,’ she tells him, ‘because it’s suitable for a younger audience too.’
That makes him thoughtful. ‘I get your point, miss.’
‘Thanks, Kurt,’ she says solemnly. Inside, she is dancing. Inside, she is doing cartwheels.
And sure enough, once Kurt is with her, there’s no problem selling it to the rest of the class. It’s a simple enough idea: two plays, each of them performed in rap. The first one—The Wolf—is the rap version of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ and the second—The Bears—is the rap version of ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’.
To decide the cast, she takes nominations from the class.
Immediately, Kurt, Cody and Ethan come together in a mini scrum. Ethan flicks his head across to Jade, who smiles and sidles over. Over in the corner, Sebastian is standing alone. Kurt gives Ethan a nudge and lifts his chin up in Sebastian’s direction. Immediately Ethan scowls and shakes his head. But Kurt persists, pulling his head in close and whispering to him, his voice urgent. When, finally, Ethan pulls back, his face resigned, Kurt gives a whistle.
‘Hey, Sebastian,’ he calls. ‘Come here.’
Sebastian looks over but doesn’t move. Kurt doesn’t like being kept waiting, so he gives Sebastian another whistle. ‘Come on,’ he calls out again. Still Sebastian takes his time.
‘Are you a rapper?’ Kurt asks once he has joined them.
When Sebastian looks confused, Kurt tries again.
‘I mean, when you’re at home with your family, do you all do rap together? You know, because you’re all black and that—no offence or anything. We thought you’d be good to have in our group because you probably rap heaps already.’
It’s clear that Sebastian does want to be part of the group; Nina can tell by the way his eyes stay fixed on Kurt, listening hard. And yet seconds pass before he answers.
‘Yes,’ he says finally, ‘that’s true. We do rap a lot at home.’
Kurt, Cody and Ethan move into a huddle for a quick conference. Then Kurt holds out his hand. Sebastian offers his up for a handshake but instead Kurt rotates his hand around, takes hold of Sebastian’s thumb then slides his palm away. ‘Welcome, bro,’ he says.
To the clique, Nina adds Elsie and Bridie. Together, they’ll form the cast of The Wolf. The rest of the class will be in The Bears.
She’ll need some parent volunteers, she tells the class, because there’s a lot to organise. When she mentions this, Kurt’s hand shoots up. ‘Seeing as Sebastian’s dad is a rapper and that, he probably should come in to show us his best moves. Like, so he could teach us and that.’
Nina looks to Sebastian for confirmation. His eyes flicker as he answers. ‘Yes, miss,’ he says, ‘he could definitely do that.’
Rebecca
Fork in hand, Emmanuel looks up from his meal. He seems so shocked, Rebecca is scared he’ll choke.
‘What do you mean my best moves? I’ve never rapped in my life.’
Sebastian keeps his eyes on the floor.
‘And anyway,’ Emmanuel continues, ‘why on earth would anyone think I’m a rapper? Do I look like a rapper to you?’
Rebecca looks at her husband. Tonight he is wearing his brown trousers, a checked shirt fastened up to the neck and a dark blue cardigan. She stifles a smile—rapper is not the first word that comes to mind.
But Emmanuel isn’t stifling a smile; he’s becoming worked up. For him, this is an unusual thing.
‘Well, Sebastian,’ he says, ‘is there anything about me that screams rap artist to you? I’m an engineer, for God’s sake. Why would anyone think I’m a rapper?’
Sebastian’s answer is very low, so low Rebecca can’t hear it and Emmanuel has to ask him to speak up.
Sebastian does raise his voice but he doesn’t look up. ‘It’s because we’re black,’ he says. ‘They think we do rap at home because we’re black.’
Rebecca feels her mouth starting to twitch. She can’t laugh. She can’t let herself laugh, not when Emmanuel is taking it all so seriously.
‘That’s what they think, do they? That we come home, kick off our shoes, start rapping and don’t stop?’ He is both angry and flustered now.
The questions are for Sebastian, but Sebastian still won’t look up.
Rebecca is going to have to step in. She tries to think of something that will calm Emmanuel down, something to make him less upset. Instead, an image comes into her head. It’s an image that is a bit like a Bollywood film, only it’s not Bollywood, it’s rap; it’s rap at home with the Chumas. Non-stop rap with the Chumas. It’s a stupid thought, but it makes her laugh. Just a chuckle at first, but then she finds she can’t stop herself, and soon she’s laughing so hard she’s starting to cry, the tears streaming down her cheeks.
When she looks at Emmanuel and Sebastian, they are both staring at her open-mouthed. This just makes her laugh harder. And God, it feels good. God, it feels good to laugh. It has been a long, long time since she has laughed like this.
‘Can you imagine?’ she asks them, when at last she is able to speak. ‘Just think of the possibilities—there could be the dinner rap, the washing-up rap, the shower rap, the clean-the-house rap.’
That makes Sebastian smile, but not Emmanuel. Emmanuel is still stony-faced.
‘It’s fine for you,’ he tells her. ‘You don’t have to become a rapping guru by next week.’
Well, the thought of it, the thought of her staid, brown-trousered husband as a rapping guru, just sets her off again.
‘We’ll just have to find you something to wear,’ she says, ‘so it looks like you’ve just come from the hood.’
‘And where exactly is the hood, Rebecca?’ Emmanuel asks her. ‘Because strange as it may seem—black as I am—I’ve never actually been there.’
Rebecca tries to stop laughing—she does try, but still she can’t. ‘Looks like you’ll have to pretend.’
Emmanuel stares at her. ‘I can’t rap, Rebecca. I can’t sing, I can’t dance and I certainly can’t rap. How am I supposed to give a masterclass in something I’ve never even done before?’
Rebecca shakes her head. ‘You’ll just have to wing it.’
‘You could do it,’ he says to her, his voice becoming softer. ‘You’re good at all that performance stuff. You could do it instead of me. Couldn’t you?’
‘I’ve never rapped either,’ she says. ‘Not seriously.’
‘But you could work something out, you know you could.’ He is almost pleading with her. ‘Please, Rebecca,’ he says.
The plays are scripted, which means there’ll be no ad-libbing. So the rapping itself isn’t the issue: it’s the dancing that has to go with it. And Rebecca has never been a dancer.
Sitting in front of Emmanuel’s computer, she types in the words rap dance moves. She gets three million hits. She adds the word easy. Then she just clicks on sites at random. Many people like to dance to rap in their own living rooms, she finds. And of the many who do, some choose to dance only in G-strings. These are not the videos she opts to use as a teaching aid.
Instead, she chooses T-Rap Thomas. He is, he claims, choreographer to the world’s greatest rappers. T-Rap Thomas has a great smile but he’s one of life’s fast talkers and, try as she might, she can’t follow him past step two of his Easy Hip-hop Moves.
In the end, it is a home video by an eight-year-old that proves most helpful. Two nights later, she’s ready to showcase what she’s learnt. She pushes the coffee table aside and moves the sofa up against the wall, then invites Emmanuel and Sebastian to witness her performance.
The robot, that’s the danc
e she’s been practising most. Of all the ones she’s watched, it’s the one she finds easiest: stiff legs, elbows bent, head turned to the side. This is how she starts and ends the sequence. In between, she lifts one leg up, and one leg down, she bends at the waist and swivels to the side, she rotates one arm up, then the other. Keeping her face completely expressionless, she moves her head first up then down, to one side, then to the other.
Once she has finished—legs still stiff, elbows still bent, head still to the side—she feels proud of the performance.
Emmanuel claps hard and for a long time. Sebastian is more subdued.
‘What did you think?’ she asks him.
He hesitates. ‘You were a very good robot,’ he tells her. ‘You were just like a robot. But I don’t know how robots would fit in with the plays. I mean, one’s about a wolf and the other’s about bears. I’m not sure how a robot would fit in.’
Rebecca’s face falls. She hadn’t considered that. All she’d thought about was finding something easy.
She thinks quickly. ‘It might work for the bears. At the beginning, perhaps they could robot out of the house?’
For a long time, Sebastian stays silent. ‘I think it would look a bit strange if the bears did the robot dance out of their house. I don’t think it would be very good.’ There is a hint of panic in his voice now.
Rebecca takes a deep breath. ‘Okay,’ she says, ‘I’ll work on something else.’
Her first lesson is with the cast of The Wolf. For Rebecca, who has only ever had to deal with one child, this is a frightening prospect.
She’s remembered their names, so that’s a start, but she’s going to need more than that to keep things under control. She’ll need to assert her authority. And so, from the depths of her diaphragm, she brings out a strong, deep voice: so loud and so low, it shocks even her. For the cast of The Wolf, it is astonishingly effective: immediately they fall silent.
‘Thank you,’ she says. Now she needs to get them into some order. ‘Two rows,’ she tells them. ‘Elsie, Kurt and Cody, you’ll be in the front row—Sebastian, you too. Jade, Bridie and Ethan, you can line up behind them.’
And that’s exactly what they do: without any fuss, they arrange themselves into two lines.
‘As you know,’ she says, ‘Sebastian and I, we’ve got a bit of experience in rapping. In our house, that’s how we like to relax, by rapping as we go about our business.’
There is a lot of nodding as she says this. Only Sebastian looks doubtful.
After a moment, Kurt raises his hand. With some apprehension, Rebecca nods at him.
‘I was just wondering,’ he says, ‘when you’re rapping, are you always freestyling?’
She has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about.
To buy some time, she clears her throat. ‘Good question,’ she tells him, ‘and as a matter of fact, we do spend a lot of time freestyling. So you’re right about that.’
Fearing more questions, she moves on quickly. ‘Today, I’ll be teaching you a couple of basic hip-hop moves to use when you’re rapping. When you’re a bit more experienced—like we are in our family—you’ll be able to work on some more complicated routines. But for today, we’ll be keeping it simple.’
She’s brought along a CD of rap hits and a step-by-step plan of the routine she’s managed to cobble together. She sweeps her eyes over the plan as she gets herself into position: knees bent, shoulders forward, hands by her side.
Then she turns on the music. ‘Okay,’ she says, ‘let’s begin with a warm-up.’
In position already, Kurt starts to bob his head up and down to the music. When Rebecca nods to let him know she’s impressed, he surprises her with a wink. He does it with such confidence and such panache, she finds it hard not to laugh. But she can’t laugh: whatever she does, she can’t laugh. Instead, she turns away and, putting a hand up to her mouth, pretends to cough. Then she turns back to the class and starts to shake her hands. ‘All right,’ she says, ‘I want you to shake your hands. Shake them out, shake them right out.’
So they all start shaking. All except Sebastian, who stands there rigid: knees locked, arms motionless.
‘Do it,’ she mouths at him.
But he doesn’t do it; he just stands there looking mortified.
‘Do it,’ she mouths again. If he doesn’t, she’ll end up looking like a complete fool.
Slowly, he shakes his head then makes a flicking motion with his hand.
‘Don’t watch,’ he mouths back.
A wave of resentment rockets through her. Don’t watch? Don’t watch? How about the room full of children watching her? If she could, she’d grab him by the arm and give him a shake. You’re the reason I’m doing this, she’d hiss at him. You’re the reason I’m up here looking like an idiot. You’re why I’m pretending to be some rap queen, when I’ve got no idea what I’m doing.
But all she can do is glare at him before, with an exaggerated sweep, she tosses her head away from him.
She switches her focus to Elsie, who is not only shaking out her hands, she’s shaking out her whole body: legs, feet, fingers, head.
Cody isn’t; he’s just rocking to the music. She likes the way he moves: likes the way he just does it, as though he’s not even thinking about it, as though he’s just letting his body take the lead. Just shaking and rocking and shaking and rocking. It’s almost mesmerising and for a moment she stops to watch him.
But she’s not supposed to be watching, she’s supposed to be teaching. And the dance she’s supposed to be teaching them today is the Walk it Out dance.
She turns the music off to explain it to them. ‘Okay,’ she says, ‘this is one of your basic hip-hop steps. You can do it while you’re rapping. It’s really just twisting while you walk. Keep your knees bent and, as you step forward, twist to one side, then twist to the other side. So you’re walking out and twisting at the same time.’ She shows them then turns the music back on again. ‘Now you try it.’
They’re nothing if not enthusiasts. In the second row, Jade is tossing her hair around with such vigour it whips across Ethan’s face. Turning to face each other, Kurt and Cody walk it out towards one another until they collide. And although Elsie is still shaking instead of stepping, her face is lit up with pleasure. Beside her, Bridie frowns in concentration as she keeps her eyes fixed on Rebecca.
‘A bit more twisting,’ Rebecca tells her. ‘A bit more twisting while you’re stepping out.’
With grim focus, the girl does just that. Her face set, she twists as she steps, her fists tightly clenched, her teeth biting down on her lip.
‘Good girl,’ Rebecca tells her gently.
When she can, she ventures a look in Sebastian’s direction. To her surprise, he’s dancing now, too. There’s nothing ostentatious about the way he moves—his steps are small and he keeps his head down—but his rhythm is good and his style is fluid. A surge of pride floods through her.
When she turns back to address the class, she has to shout to be heard over the music. ‘Well, you’ve got the legs,’ she tells them. ‘How about the arms?’
And as she talks them through the steps, she keeps on walking it out: to the front, to the side, to the back. She’s really starting to enjoy herself now. ‘I like to start with my arms lifted high,’ she tells them. ‘Arms high, elbows bent, then you just groove them out and groove them back in again. When you’ve got that sorted, you can improvise a little: cross one arm over the other, roll your arm over your head, whatever you like.’
There’s a change of song then, to one that Rebecca has started to enjoy. It’s the refrain she likes best:
Here I am; it’s me in the middle now
Me in the middle now;
Me in the middle
She doesn’t know what it’s supposed to mean but it doesn’t matter; there’s something about the music that makes her want to sing along. Soon, the children are joining in too. For the most part they just hum along, out of tune and out of time,
but Rebecca loves it. When she steals a look over at Sebastian, she sees that he is singing, too. And when he catches her looking at him, this time he smiles.
She smiles then too: a big, broad, beaming smile. And as she smiles, a strong sensation of wellbeing engulfs her, filling her up from the soles of her feet to the top of the head. It is a feeling that makes her light-headed with joy.
It hits her then: this is the first time in many weeks she has felt happy.
More than that, even. This is the first time in many weeks that she has felt something other than trepidation; the first time she has not been consumed with that one question, that one ever-circling, ever-present question. Will they be allowed to stay?
Joan
Joan feels a surge of delight when she hears Nina’s car pull up. She hasn’t checked the letterbox all day. Deliberately. Because this will give her an excuse to be outside when Nina arrives home.
Now she hurries to the front door. Once she’s outside, she forces herself to slow down, to take her time getting to the letterbox. By the time she’s there, Nina is taking Emily out of the car. Only then does Joan check for the mail.
It works like a treat.
‘Jean!’ Nina calls out to her. ‘Jean!’
She forces herself not to look up straightaway. When she does, she tries to look surprised. ‘Nina,’ she says, ‘and Emily, hello.’
Nina smiles but Emily, who is being carried, buries her face in her mother’s shoulder. ‘Sorry,’ Nina says. ‘Long day at childcare. I think she’s tired.’
At that, the little girl’s head pops up. An enormous frown shadows her eyes. ‘I’m not tired,’ she says. ‘I’m just a bit shy.’
This makes Nina laugh, so Joan laughs, too.
‘When I’m at big school,’ Emily tells her, ‘I’m going to be Goldilocks and the Three Bears.’
Nina looks over her daughter’s head. ‘My class is putting on a couple of plays at the end of the year. I was telling Emily about it and now she wants to be Goldilocks.’
‘And I’ll get a Goldilocks dress, too,’ the little girl pipes up.