Chageet's Electric Dance

by Ashir, Rebecca

  “Hmm.” He appeared perplexed. “Explain that. Just because I work in the field of beauty doesn’t mean I know about hair dyes.” He smiled gently at her as he tapped his lips with his finger in interest.

  “Well, to get white hair, we normally add a red or yellow base after bleaching or while dying to give a softer more natural look. Normal vision people can’t see the red or yellow base—it’s just a sort of underlying hue to the white hair. But, when the old ladies look in the mirror, they see their white hair as red or yellow, and they get so hysterical. We have to keep adding blue toners to cancel out the red and by the time they’re satisfied, their hair is actually blue!”

  “And I suppose they don’t mind because all their old folk friends see their hair as white anyway.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So, how are your breasts doing?”

  “Oh, they are wonderful,” she whispered, slightly embarrassed. “The incisions were itching today a little, but that’s normal right?”

  “One hundred percent. That means they are healing. And the swelling has subsided?”

  “Yup—totally. I feel more comfortable with my body now with the buttocks implants as well. You did such an amazing job. Thank you soooo much!”

  “My pleasure. I aim to please. Just give me a call when you’re ready for that Paulina nose you’ve been waiting for. Your insurance will cover it if we submit it as a deviated septum.”

  Barbey’s father, Dr. William Bardot, walked out onto the balcony taking a cigar from his shirt pocket, offering it to his partner. He was a massive man in good physical shape with a subdued inner intensity like a black leopard watching its prey before attacking. His eyes were dark; his brows were thick. Though the plugs weren’t noticeable, he had thick black hair that had been sewed into his forehead to hide his ever-increasing receding hairline.

  In the moonlight, one could see the thoughts in his eyes dueling with each other behind the dark lenses—the duel always ended in a cold vast stare as if he had suddenly stepped off a plank into the abyss of an endless black hole. This irritated Barbey, yet it intrigued her at the same time. On one hand, she found him exotic and mysterious like a coiled black cobra hiding under a magic carpet which her grandfather told her came from the Arab part of his ancestry, yet at the same time she found him to be snobbish and uptight which her grandmother, who had passed away, told her stemmed from his English ancestry and all the tea and milk he drank from fine china as a child.

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Dr. Bradshaw took the cigar and placed it between his lips to the side of his mouth. “I was just talking to your lovely daughter about dating boys,” he mumbled as he tried to balance the cigar in his mouth. “She says she needs to play the field a little before she marries me.” He winked at Barbey.

  Startled, she giggled and covered her mouth in surprise.

  “You have a light?” Dr. Bardot asked his partner. “Hmm…” He leaned heavily with his back against the balcony, staring fixedly into the living room through the sliding glass door. “Is that so?”

  Dr. Bradshaw first lit his partner’s cigar and then his own. “I know it has almost become law these days that young women must play the field before settling down, but I’m an anxious man.”

  Plumes of white smoke rose up and hissed ominously in the night air. “Well then, I suppose it’s up to Barbey who she wants to marry,” he stared straight ahead, chomping ice in his mind.

  Barbey looked at her father with irritation and retorted, “All I know is that this smoke is making me want to puke.”

  Dr. William Bardot ignored her and continued staring straight ahead. “I can’t imagine a man of your caliber having a serious interest in a dumb blonde who works in a beauty parlor.”

  “Hey, Will. I was just playing around.”

  “Well then. That is the kind of man a ditzy ding bat gets—a player.”

  Barbey was furious, but she didn’t know what he meant by a “player”. She had never heard that word used in that context. “You think anyone who doesn’t want to go to college is a loser.”

  “I think…” Dr. Bradshaw interjected, putting his hand on Barbey’s shoulder while looking at his partner, “… that you’ve had a little too much to drink, Will. Lighten up on her a bit.”

  Barbey joined in, reprimanding her father, “Well, you should take a look in the mirror before judging. College is not going to help me become a model or a dancer, so I don’t know what your problem is. Just because I have big dreams and blonde hair doesn’t mean I’m stupid. Like I should just waste my time on math problems and English papers when they have nothing to do with my goals!” She stormed past him, slamming the sliding glass door behind her. The train of her gown caught in the door, causing her to trip and fall on her hands upon the pink marble floor.

  Embarrassed, Mama ran over and pulled her daughter’s gown from the door, ripping the hem. As Barbey got up from the floor, her eyes wide and violent like two silver pin balls ready to pop out and shoot the jackpot, Mama hollered out in exaggerated cheer to cover her embarrassment, “Well, I dee—clare! Although this here floor is sparklin’ clean, you shan’t eat off it! Get yourself in costume, Hon. Everybody’s waiting to see you dance.”

  “I don’t want to dance for your friends,” Barbey retorted in a subdued rage, her head ringing. “I’m not six years old anymore!”

  “You sure are actin’ like it,” Mama clenched her teeth, but held a fake painted smile like a marionette as she whispered to her in that country growl she uses with her dogs to reprimand them, “Now get into costume, or else!”

  “Or else what? You’ll kick me out again?”

  “Barbey Dancer, I am going to count to three and if you don’t get yourself out of this room, I’m going to whip you with a belt bare butted in front of all these people.”

  Barbey noticed her mother’s eyes glazing over and beads of sweat forming on her nose. The image of her mother beating her in front of all the guests seemed somehow oddly humorous, but though it was funny to her, the threat and humiliation provoked her anger to kick and scream internally in circus flips of rage.

  She scanned the room as if searching for some sort of epiphany to calm herself, looking around at all the guests who were pretending not to notice the situation, eating “pigs n’ skirts,” drinking pink champagne and chewing bubble gum in their little social huddles.

  The scene reminded her of the time when she was six looking down from a Ferris wheel at all the smiling people below stuffing their mouths with cotton candy and lollipops and how at the time, she wondered what they were so happy about. The memory coupled with the setting of the party evoked a small sarcastic laugh to shoot out from the back of her throat as she considered the absurdity of Mama’s parties. And without further thought, she blurted out, “I hate ‘pigs n’ skirts,’” and then walked gracefully out of the room.

  5

  One might consider it surprising that a young woman carved in the image of a plastic doll would bear extreme emotions. It would be expected that a doll-like being would be empty and void of anything, but that was not the case with Barbey Bardot. She had sparks so hot inside that she exploded at nearly every opportunity with every sort of intense feeling imaginable.

  Barbey Bardot was extreme.

  She was like all the dramatic theme songs in every movie she had ever seen bellowing out all at once and then solidified into one human emotional form. Just as Christians and Jews believe that man was created in the image of God, she was created, or at least formed after creation, in the image of her god. Who was her god? Mass Media—the conditioner of the masses, the idol of the oblivious sheep, herded into Barbie belief-world. Unconscious to this, yes, she was, just as most girls are.

  When a child is raised by mass media, the result is that she becomes mass media. Barbey was all of her favorite movies, fashion magazines, television shows, books and music video songs. Her beliefs, hopes and dreams were structured by mass media. She was a product of movie, television, music,
fairy tale propaganda and she had no idea because it permeated her senses from every billboard, magazine to the silver screen—it stood up and breathed, “worship me and you will be worshiped.” Idolatry is as much in vogue now as it was in ancient Egypt, only now more cunning.

  Barbey flounced up the stairs to her bedroom, enraged that Mama had banished her from the party. She threw herself onto the bed. After a moment, her eyes deadened from the tears that welled up momentarily and then stagnated like a cold still pond. She lay motionless in the intensity of her thoughts—silent.

  The canopy above her head fluttered in the night breeze. The curtains were drawn from the heart-shaped windows, now two black beating tunnels of wind and darkness.

  It was raining.

  The thud, thud, thud sounds echoed in Barbey’s mind. She hated her father for humiliating her in front of Dr. Bradshaw. She hated her father for not understanding her dreams. She hated her father for not loving her.

  She hated Mama for loving her parties more than her daughter. She hated Mama for pushing her to get so many plastic surgeries. She hated Mama for never being there for her. Oh, she hardly knew what she thought about anything as her thoughts were on a million channels and the reception was dotted with black and white snow static.

  Barbey Bardot was sad.

  And the anguish thickened into a mental warm, sweet blood that soaked into the white sheets as she laid suffering under her canopy. Had anyone been around to see her, she would have pretended to be angry or indignant, strong and full of herself, but now that she was alone and detached from coherent thought, a deep, helpless melancholy settled above her in a web. The web ensnared her as she struggled despondently to free herself, but the sticky cocoon grew tighter and the spider sucked the life blood from her essence.

  At these moments, she wondered if her parents would care if she died. She yearned for them to love her almost as much as she desired to live, which pushed her to fantasize about suicide—anything to make them see what pain they had inflicted upon her in these past fourteen years of her life. Oh they are so unfair! She hated herself for thinking in darkness. She hated them.

  “Brush it off. Brush it off.” She rubbed her hands together like she was brushing off crumbs. A clear mask of escapism drew over her face then as she began searching through the video shelves of her mind for a movie character to emulate, a technique she used often to draw into the screen world of fantasy to avoid pain.

  Tonight when she danced for her parents’ friends, she would become Jennifer Beals’s character, Alex, from her favorite film, Flashdance. A great choice! Perfect!

  She had choreographed many dance routines throughout her childhood. Some of the dances were original, but most were imitations of or variations on her favorite music videos or from dance movies and TV shows such as Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Flashdance, or Fame.

  Now, just thinking about escaping into a character lifted her spirits. She thought about the rush she had felt earlier when she won the dance competition and how she longed to tap into that high feeling again. Maybe she could produce that same rapturous state tonight. Wonderful!

  A rush of hope twitched in her clouded, despairing mind. As she thought about the night ahead, she quickly changed into her costume. Maybe she would enjoy dancing for her parents’ friends after all. Maybe that’s just what she needed. If she didn’t mess up or fall on her face, their friends might lavish her with praise and exaltation. She could get a blissful high just from that alone. The past residues of pain and confusion might dissipate, she mused, into the flash of the song and then fade into white nothing.

  Suddenly the bedroom door flew open. It was Mama. Her eyes widened when she saw Barbey. “You’re gonna wear that?” The question was more of an exclamation as her voice rang of disapproval.

  “Yeah. So?” Barbey tried to keep a blank face to cover up the fact that she had been crying.

  “You look like a boy in that suit.” She straightened the collar and pulled the suit jacket down. “Nobody can even see your body in this. You have such a nice figure; you ought to show it off.”

  “Just leave me alone.” Barbey walked over to the window and looked out.

  Mama shook her head. “Change out of that business suit and put on that rhinestone bodysuit with the feather boa, why donch ya?”

  Barbey turned back to her, “This is a Zoot suit. It’s what Jennifer Beals wore in Flashdance during one of her performances.

  “Oooooh!” She smiled now. “You’re gonna do one of your Flashdance performances.” She brushed her fingers through her striking black hair. “Sexy, sexy. Ok, then. Go set up the ballroom and we’ll all be in soon.” At that, she rushed out of the room.

  Barbey desperately hoped that once she was on that dance floor, fully in character, emulating Alex, her parents would fall like rain from the cold sky of her mind out of her consciousness, as long as she didn’t look at them, that is. The music had the capacity—it did…it had to!—to spin her way, way up into the fluffy clouds and blow her into an electrical lightning storm of bliss and rinse.

  Moments later, Barbey walked into the ballroom crunching her hair in her hands, trying to get a wavy fluff like Alex’s hair. It was dark in the room like her mood, so she felt around for the light switches. Tears came to her eyes as she flipped on the lights to the massive crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling like millions of glimmering stars. She was always impressed with the grandeur of this enormous room, with the creamy marbled floor which made her feel as if she were standing upon the great moon as she gazed out into a galaxy of promise and high ceilings.

  The splendor of the room made her feel magical and optimistic as if she was Cinderella on the night of her ball. At last, she would dance in the arms of her one and only Prince Charming. But tonight she wasn’t going to be Cinderella. She was going to be Alex, Alex, Alex…

  As she searched amongst the boxes in the storage closet, gathering her props, she concentrated on getting into character. Alex was a tough young woman living in a warehouse in Pittsburg who worked by day as a welder and by night as an exotic dancer. While Barbey imagined the arduous life Alex was living and how desperately Alex longed to be a professional ballet dancer, she began to become consumed with her pain and desires deeply until the point at which she became fully immersed into the character.

  Now, as Alex, Barbey arranged the props on the marbled stage, dimming the front lights where she would dance, giving her body a shadowy, dark appearance and lighting the back wall so bright and so white that it looked like a great full moon.

  The door flew open and the party goers entered the room under Mama’s direction with pink martinis and pink mugs of beer in their hands. They sat at the round cocktail tables before the dance floor. Dr. Bradshaw winked at Barbey, but she looked at him coldly because she was already in character. Alex wasn’t the friendly type.

  Mama walked in front of the tables and turned to the audience. “Ok, everybody. My daughter, not sister…” she laughed, “…is going to perform a dance from the movie, Flashdance.” She looked over at Barbey who was off to the side of the stage. “What’s the name of the song, Hon?”

  “‘He’s a Dream,’ by Shandi,” she mumbled.

  “Oh, yes.” Mama smiled and waved her arms to create a dramatic effect. “‘He’s a Dream,’ by Shandi.” In a whisper, she tried to quiet everyone, “Shhh, shhh, shhh,” as she rushed over to one of the tables facing the stage.

  At once, Barbey turned on the high-end Denon surround sound stereo and took her starting pose. Now that she was in character, she felt confident and superior to everyone else in the room. Their eyes were on her and she was everything.

  The music began to the sultry, choppy rhythm of “He’s a Dream.” The sounds engulfed her like a chaotic wind. She danced before a white backdrop with the stage lights lit in a way that cast a shadow on her body. The light and dark contrast created a dramatic effect. In rhythm, she struck various theatrical poses that were reminiscent of a mime—stiff and
animated, yet empty and void of thought or feeling. She was a dark shadow against the white moonlight, battling the universe in her Zoot suit and high heels. The stiffness of her positions contrasted with the white backlight, which gave the illusion that she was only a shadow of reality.