Wait Till You See Me Dance

by Deb Olin Unferth

  Me? If I had been her, I would have agreed to anything. I would have let her assist in whatever she wanted if she had assisted me just then. And assuming she did lift me out, there was no way I would have still gone to the dance with a nut like that, but she was. The fact that she was capable of that, of refusing me and now of brushing off the dirt, hopping into the car, slamming the door, and saying, “We’re almost there!” made me a little afraid of her.

  We arrived. It was a regular grade school and the dance was held in the gym. And, yes, she had been telling the truth. Regular Native Americans were coming in and going out. And, yes, they had on their regular traditional outfits, just like she had said they would, and some of them had on a piece of a different outfit—from when the British came galloping across the land and the Native Americans knocked them over with a spear and took their jackets and then passed them from hand to hand until today, when one showed up wearing a Benjamin Franklin jacket and another showed up in a white wig, and isn’t that interesting? Yes, it is.

  Everyone started dancing. There were a couple of men on the side with some drums.

  “Now, look,” I told the office assistant, “you don’t have to stick to the story. Everybody here knows that we’re not Native Americans and that they all are, and what do you think they’re thinking about us?”

  “But I have our costumes.” She patted her box.

  “All right, let’s see them,” I said. “Let’s have a look, but even in traditional Native American outfits we are not going to look like Native Americans. Nobody’s going to believe it.”

  “But wait till they see me dance,” she said.

  She opened the box. Inside were two giant pom-poms, that’s what they looked like. Each costume was made out of bright orange yarn, long strings of it, and it covered your whole body and even had a flap for the head. She put it on me. I stood there and let her. Then she put on her own costume. The other dancers had on animal hides, beaded dresses, but no one tried to keep her from dancing. They just stopped and stared as the assistant, in her orange outfit, walked out onto the dance floor. No one seemed able to believe what they saw. Of course, I did not dance. Then she came back and got me.

  They’d had meetings about me, my name was on the table. There was no way she could have assigned me to do it. So that part I understand. But this is what I wonder: Why had she asked me to drive her to the dance? Was she that nervy? Or was it possible that she meant to warn me, give me advice?

  So she got me into the costume, she had me beat on that, but the fact was: she was still going to die. Pulling her out had done nothing. I’d win in the end—not a race I was particularly excited about, a pain-in-the-ass race, one I hadn’t asked to be in, one that was far lonelier than I’d expected. But she would be gone and I’d be going on. So we each had something on the other, the office assistant and I, when we went out onto that dance floor.

  The kid would not die young. He would live on and on, much longer than the office assistant, much longer than I. He’d live almost forever. I know that because the next semester I had to find out if he’d passed the class and made a life in these United States, or if he’d failed, returned to his war-torn land, fought, and died. I snuck into the school several times after I’d been let go, skulked around the cafeteria looking for him. Finally one day I saw him coming out of the elevator, saw his face, and I hurried back outside.

  The office assistant must have slid his paper into the “pass” pile a week before she died. She’d seen me with his file. It wouldn’t have taken a genius to put it together.

  Two weeks after the dance she leaped off the building, made the papers.

  Okay, so what, so we look crazy in these pom-poms. Leave the poor assistant alone. Imagine what she must have been through to wind up looking like that. Imagine what her life must have been like, having a mother who would make something like these. Imagine what suffering she has had that I will never know. Just clear the floor for her. Everybody get out of the way—can’t you see the office assistant wants to dance? Would you give her a little space? Give her a little music too? A little bang on the drum for her to stomp a foot to? Well, the Native Americans were ready to see something like that, so they took seats in the bleachers to watch. And as for me, I may be an old maid, and I may spend my life loving people who never loved me, and loving them in ways that aren’t good for me, but I stepped around with her. I danced.

  Stay Where You Are

  A man in fatigues stepped out of the brush and onto the gravel. He must have come off a small path of some sort because no branches snapped when he came out. He turned and pointed a machine gun at them—maybe more like toward them. He called out something neither of them understood.

  “Now what,” said Jane. “What’s this soldier want?”

  Max lifted a hand in greeting. “Hullo, we’re waiting for the bus,” he called.

  The man in fatigues walked over and said some sentences in Spanish. He kept the gun casually pointed their way. He was young. One of his boots scraped a bit on the ground.

  “Maybe it’s about the chairs,” Jane suggested. Max had borrowed the chairs from the coffee farm off the road. She had told him not to, because there might not be time to run them back when the bus came, but Max had done it anyway.

  “You can take the chairs back,” Jane said to the gunman now. She stood and pointed at her chair.

  The gunman didn’t seem interested in the chairs. He moved the gun from side to side, explaining. He wore an army cap pulled low over his eyes.

  “We’re waiting for the bus,” Max said. “The Tuesday bus?” He sighed. “They give these kids these weapons to go out and wave around like hands.” He slapped his thighs and got to his feet. He was at least a full head taller than the gunman.

  The gunman waited, listening. He spoke again, louder this time, and gestured with the gun toward the place in the trees he’d exited from.

  “You want us to go with you? Take us to the station, is that it?” Max turned to Jane. “Could be there’s a hurricane coming through. An evacuation?”

  “Hummm,” said Jane. She studied the sky for a storm. “Too bad he doesn’t speak English.”

  Max frowned.

  They’d argued the night before because she wanted to stop in the next country and take a language. Six weeks. Spanish school. Learn something. Hordes of people were doing it and it looked like fun. But Max detested school—being rooted to the ground, potted. He’d been to fifty-eight countries and never learned a language other than his own. He was no good at language. He never had a problem making himself understood. He could pantomime. “Besides, everybody speaks English these days,” he’d said.

  So they would accompany the gunman. But now what were they supposed to do with their packs? Max and Jane stood over the packs, deciding. The gunman waited. If they weren’t going to be long, they could just leave the packs here. No one came down this road. Max and Jane had been walking up and down it for days and had seen hardly a soul. Even if someone did come along, Max didn’t think they’d make off with the packs. On the other hand, Jane said, the two of them might be kept awhile at the station.

  What damn luck.

  The gunman interrupted them irritably.

  Max and Jane looked up. “We’ll probably miss the bus, you understand,” Max said. “The Tuesday bus?”

  They got their packs on.

  The three of them entered the rain forest in the same spot the gunman had come out. Indeed it was a very small footpath, so small it could overgrow itself in days. It must have been well used despite its thinness. Max, then Jane, stepped through the trees, the gunman behind. Max and Jane walked easily, without the usual timidity of the tourist. Wet leaves hit their faces and arms. The rain forest hung in loops around them.

  In fact they’d been stopped by the authorities before, many times—mostly in order to be herded back onto the tourist tracks or pumped clean of any cash they were carrying, and once in Morocco to make Jane put on more clothes (she’d be
en wearing a [really rather modest] bathing suit). Never been delayed more than a few hours but it would be unfortunate to miss the bus, Max thought. On the other hand, these military men might arrange a ride back to town for them, might even bring them themselves in a jeep. You never knew. Might as well make the best of it. Was Jane listening to all these species of bird?

  “How close are we to the river?” Max called back to the gunman, who didn’t respond. “We saw a waterfall yesterday that couldn’t be beat. I say, my dear, was that a waterfall?”

  “All right,” she said. “Okay.”

  “Would you believe,” Max called back to the gunman, “I have a wife who complains about being taken on a tropical vacation? Other women say, ‘You never take me anywhere.”’

  “Vacation?” said Jane. “Who takes a vacation for eighteen years?”

  She’d been sixteen when they met, an English schoolgirl. He liked to say he stole her from her father, and it wasn’t a big stretch. He’d been working on an oil rig twenty miles out on the ocean. Three-month shifts. All men. The boss, her father, had brought her on board. What sort of a dull-headed move was that, to bring your sixteen-year-old daughter out to a place like that?

  Oil rig: square island, salt and steel, concrete, fish, everything the color of water.

  Max had been thirty-four at the time, married, with a daughter in Sussex. He was thirty-six and divorced when he took Jane away. The first place they’d gone was Africa, where they’d stayed for years, far from anything she’d ever known, Max the only familiar object for thousands of miles, anyone else days away. It was like being the last two people on earth. It was like you yourself had sent everyone off, except for the man with you—the only man left on earth. It was like being in one of those movies about that, about you being the only ones who had ever done this, your great idea, and his. At first.

  But then the movie keeps going, five years, eight years, twelve. Eventually you want a movie like that to be over, you want to see a different movie, change the channel, but it keeps going. Then one day fifteen, sixteen years in, you’re suddenly sick of it—not horrified, not scared—just annoyed and sick to death of it, sick of yourself, sick of him. It’s like waking up in someone else’s bed and knowing just how you’d gotten there.

  They’d been going like this for eighteen years, half her life, never stopping.

  The gunman prodded Jane with the gun when she stopped behind Max. “Ow,” she said. “Max, he just stabbed me with that monstrous weapon!”

  The gunman said something angrily in Spanish.

  “Hey, watch where you direct that thing, kiddo,” Max said, and moved Jane, rubbing her elbow, around him. “You go ahead or me.”

  They all continued walking.

  Of course they stop, Max would counter. They ran out of money every few years. Remember she’d been a postal lady in New Zealand? Carried sacks of mail. And she’d swabbed decks on a ship like a man, all the way across the Indian Ocean. Hardy girl, always had been. One of the first things he’d liked about her.

  And how about the time they became citizens of New Zealand? he’d say. You have to hold still for an honor like that. Nobody just throws citizenship papers into the airplane after you. Remember they got to meet the president on New Year’s Day? They got to shake hands with the president.

  His favorite defense. How about the time in New Zealand?

  Yes, but they left the next day! The very day after they received their citizenship, they left, Jane would say. And now they didn’t own anything other than the belongings in their packs and it might be nice to.

  Didn’t own! Max would say. They still had some carpets in New Zealand, remember? They’d gotten them in India and brought them along, left them with the neighbors in Wellington. They could go back and get those carpets anytime they liked. Is that what she wanted? Carpets?

  She didn’t want carpets.

  Citizens of New Zealand, he’d say. Hands in pants. Looking around. As a matter of fact, this is a nice spot. Maybe they could be citizens here too.

  They were deep in the rain forest now, dense damp foliage, vines like arms crossing in front of them, sun blocked by a canopy of leaf-knotted trees meters overhead. Bugs whipped past them, loud as motors, biting their hands and getting caught in their sweaty hair, sticking to an eye. Jane brushed them aside.

  God, she hated this now. She could almost imagine another story for herself but she had no faith in it. No faith in herself. She couldn’t really imagine what that other story might be. It had been seven years since she’d seen her father. Nine since she’d seen her sister. Imagine going nine years without seeing your sister.

  Max thought she didn’t even like her family. He certainly didn’t. But why not invite them out if she missed them so much? Meet up in Peru for some hiking. Like his daughter had done that one time. That had been good fun.

  Was he referring to the time his daughter met them in Africa and got so sick she nearly died, and so afraid she flew home halfway through the trip? The time his own daughter had to fly six thousand miles and risk death to see her dad?

  She used to not like her family.

  Yes, well, she used to be a teenager.

  The three of them rounded a corner, stepped into a clearing, a gathering of huts. “Ah, here we are,” said Max. He stopped and surveyed the patch of border trees, the tents propped between the clotheslines, the overturned crates. “Not much of a station. What is this, an outpost camp?”

  The three walkers rounded the corner, stepped into the clearing. The gunman looked around and stopped.

  He was thinking (in Spanish): Where the fuck did they go? Fuck.

  He kept his gun trained on the Americans.

  The bus comes on Tuesday, Max thought. All the people at the coffee farm had told them that. Mimed it. Mimed Tuesday.

  Jane was thinking: Shit.

  The gunman was thinking: Shit. They’d gone off without him, the bastards. What, they’d woken up, seen he was gone, and left? Or, worse, had they not even noticed he was gone and just marched off without him? And here he’d been so crafty, bringing back two Americans, surprise, surprise! Now who’s the champion? But no one was here.

  He took out his cell phone.

  He told the Americans to shut up.

  And another thing was America. The argument always went like this: Max despised first-world countries, but Jane wanted to go. Might be fun to ride a tandem bike across America. Picnic basket on the back.

  Oh no, Max always said. They’d been to America once already and they weren’t going back. America had been exactly as they’d expected, exactly as they’d always heard. First thing that happens, they buy a cup of tea and the lady says, “Have a nice day!” Just like an American on the television. He and Jane got on a bus and a fight broke out between a young man and the driver. The two of them screaming at each other until the man got off the bus, cursing. Violent country. He’s surprised they didn’t get killed.

  Jane: They spent one day in America on their way to Mexico. Nineteen hours.

  Max: And it was just as they thought it’d be. No reason to go back.

  Jane: Besides, this was America. They were in America now. America was this whole thing, up and down.

  Jane thought, Shit. That is, she was thinking about shit. She couldn’t see a camp like this one—strung canvas, fire pit, encroaching foliage—without the image coming into her mind of a camp they’d stayed in at the edge of the Sahara. The latrine had filled to the top and then run over. People had to stand on the seat to shit into the pile. Soon the latrine was so full of shit, you just shat near it. It became a sort of “latrine area,” and you tried to get your shit in the vicinity of it on the ground there without getting too close yourself and stepping in it and tracking it back into the camp. Then, of course, the rains came and drained all that shit right into the camp. It all came floating in, getting into everything. The tents, the mosquito nets, the clotheslines. It got onto hands and smeared into hair.

  The gunman
now very decidedly had the gun pointed at them, which was unfriendly, for one, and dangerous, but Max and Jane were both determined not to make a thing of it. It wasn’t as though they’d never had a gun pointed at them before, and to complain like an American usually made things worse.

  “He’s asking to see our passports,” Max said. “Here you go, then.”

  The gunman took the passports. He noted they were not blue and didn’t want to think about that. He put them in his pocket and paced. His boot scraped. Too big. He almost tripped. He’d been given a fucking mismatched set of shoes. He told the Americans to stop looking at him and go sit by the pit. He had to make some calls.

  The gunman said something in Spanish. Max and Jane didn’t understand, but they understood the waving gun and went where the gunman said.

  Yes, they’d been captured before. In the late nineties, by a tribe. In order to pass through certain territories you had to ask permission of the head of the tribe. Usually it was no trouble. But one time a tribe took the opportunity to lock them up. Jane had been certain it was the end. But Max had charmed them all, chattered away in English—which none of them understood. The tribe leader had offered Max a dark mixture, the kind of thing that could kill a man not used to it, but Max had drunk it down and asked for more, and by the end of the night they were all singing songs.

  They squatted in the dirt with their packs on. A line of ants was re-forming itself around them. The gunman poked at the tents with the gun, making agitated sounds into his cell phone.

  Jane slapped the bugs. The ground was burned moss and forest and soot. The sun was coming on full by now, breaking into the clearing. Sweat was coming down their faces and arms. They took off their packs.

  The gunman came back over to them with something else in his hand.

  The gunman was thinking they had to be at the main camp by now. Were they not answering on purpose? He didn’t have a second piece of rope, but in his experience, Americans were an obedient bunch, as long as you had a gun. They’d just stare, or weep—though they always talked, you couldn’t shut them up. He couldn’t herd two Americans fourteen kilometers, he knew. When were those assholes coming back?