Dancing Lessons

by Olive Senior

  “Well, he wanted to do this, from the time of the hurricane, but he was having chemo at the time and couldn’t come out then…”

  “He was having what?”

  “Didn’t he tell you?”

  “No.”

  “What?” She seemed taken aback by this. “I thought … I guess I misunderstood.”

  “Celia, it’s been donkey’s years since I’ve heard from Junior and you know that.”

  She frowned a bit then, as if thinking, and then her voice got brisk again. “Well, he probably didn’t want to alarm you. I can tell you because it’s all over now. Prostate cancer. He was diagnosed a while back. But he’s fine. Trying to change his lifestyle, though, after all he’s been through.”

  “Been through?” I was getting a little annoyed.

  “Well, you know. About his daughter. Charlene. Then his marriage breaking up.”

  “What about his daughter?”

  “You know, G,” she said, as if I really knew. When I looked blank, she asked, “You mean you really didn’t know? They didn’t tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “The terrible trouble with Charlene? Years and years of it. Drugs, bad company. On her sixteenth birthday she took off and not a word have they heard from her since. I can’t tell you how much Junior has spent trying to find her, in both time and money. Dolly couldn’t take it. She walked out. Well, I don’t know, perhaps things were rocky with them to begin with …”

  It was hard to take in so much information at once. I remember how much I liked Dolly from her pictures, a big blonde girl always laughing with what I imagined was a happy kind of laughter, head thrown back, silver-blonde hair. I remember now she wrote to me that her parents were Norwegian. I thought of the two children, Mark and Charlene, whom I had only seen in photos that had stopped coming when they were probably just entering their teens. It was hard to envisage them as grown-up people. In the pictures, their bright blonde hair and white skin looked foreign to me. I couldn’t see anything of Junior in them.

  This is making me think of all my grandchildren that I do not know—Celia’s two, Junior’s two, Lise’s how many? Here they are, like a potential but unharvested seed crop now wasted and scattered to the four winds. All the time, all those years, I had done nothing to reach out and capture some of this crop, for I had always found it safest to pretend I didn’t care.

  Celia must have seen the look on my face, but she misinterpreted it, for she said, “Oh, don’t worry about Junior. Right now, he’s happy as Larry, back down there in the country, supervising the contractor, catching up with the fellows from his youth, letting his big businessman trappings fall away. Getting back to his roots, man.”

  “But why didn’t you tell me. About the house?”

  “We wanted it to be a big surprise, that’s all. You make it so hard for anyone to do anything for you.” She smiled when she said it. “So now you will get even more annoyed when I tell you Lise says she wants to buy all new stuff for you. Furniture and whatever you need to replace what you lost. We can go shopping. Isn’t that great! When you feel better. Lise says as soon as the house is ready she’s coming to visit.”

  “Lise?”

  I said it as if I didn’t know who Celia was talking about. Not once in recent years had she mentioned anything about Lise or Junior. Though now that I think of it, I probably never gave her the opportunity. For after so much silence on their part, at some point I just decided never to speak of them, never to ask about them, never to show the slightest interest in their doings. One thing I have learned about Celia over the years is how sensitive she is to other people’s feelings; at least, she has always been sensitive to mine. That’s one of the things I like about her. Unlike her television persona, where she deals with other people’s business, in real life she never seems to press mentally or force anything, she never belabours the point. At the slightest hint of trouble, of nearing deep waters, she will drop the subject. That doesn’t mean she won’t sneak up from another direction to get her own way, as she did in getting me to Ellesmere Lodge.

  Yet, listening to her talk about Junior and Lise in this casual way, as if there isn’t an ocean of bad blood between us, makes me wonder what it is really saying about her. Emotional cowardice? An unwillingness to get involved? Navigational expertise? I’m sure I would have been more interested in my family if she had taken the trouble to persist with me. That was what I needed, wasn’t it? Someone like Ma D to take me firmly in hand and drag me out of my self-absorption, take me away from that house and all its sadness and expose me to another world. And then I thought, in all fairness, isn’t that exactly what she did in bringing me here to Ellesmere Lodge? Yes, the other me answered, and look at what that has brought down on my head.

  All these warring emotions brought out the meanness in me. I wanted to dig at her, break through that facade, shatter her complacency.

  “So since when have you become so friendly with Lise and Junior?” I tried to keep my voice neutral.

  “What do you mean?” She seemed genuinely surprised. “We’ve always been friends.”

  I didn’t respond to that, which was perhaps unwise, as her next remark skewered me. “Mom, just because you gave up on us doesn’t mean we gave up on each other.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I felt I was treading on dangerous ground because I was close to admitting that I had no conception of how she or any of my children lived their lives. I had always thought she was the one who never cared about the rest of us. The one that was distanced. That the attention she paid to me was born of duty and guilt maybe, but not family feeling or love. But now, I thought, what do I know? I didn’t want to think this was saying a lot more about me than it was about her.

  We parted on that note, bristling, though we sensed rather than showed it. I tried to bury myself in the sleep that now constantly eluded me. All this information about my children, the house, instead of making me feel better, as it should have, was merely adding to my feeling of despair. For the knowledge I had gained over the last few weeks—of an entirely different type of human nature, it is true—merely reinforced my growing awareness of my own blind ignorance.

  The Slough of Despond from which Annie dragged me with the news of Cookie’s grandson’s death was not just brought on by physical debility. It is also what others more sophisticated would choose to call Information Overload. Knowledge had entrapped and wrestled me to the ground.

  96

  ONCE ROUSED BY THE news of the killings, I never turned back. I started to watch the news on TV and listen to the radio talk shows. As Annie said, the shootings were all people were talking about. As with everything, there were two versions, that of the police and their supporters and that of everyone else. But none of the talk and the anger was going to bring Cookie’s grandson back.

  Still, she soldiered on. Just a few days after the shootings, and before I had moved back to the dining room for my meals, she sent me a huge slice of lemon meringue pie, something I had taught her to make. I’d had to sneak into the kitchen to do it, on a day when we knew Matron was away, for residents were strictly forbidden to enter into those hallowed grounds. But I couldn’t stand the waste from the lemon tree right outside the kitchen door, the fruit falling and left to rot. This was because everyone swore by limes, and that tree in bearing never lacked for patronage. It was the same where I grew up. Lemons were regarded as a pale cousin of the more powerfully acidic green fruit. It was Sam’s mother, Ma D, who had introduced me to lemons and taught me to make the pie, one of the times I suspect she was trying to take my mind off Sam, though I remember I only mastered the meringue after several tries.

  When I suggested to Cookie that she use up the lemons in this way, she said she always wanted to make that pie, would I show her how to do it. So I did. After that it was her biggest dessert hit with residents, and from the start her pies were infinitely superior to mine. Cookie was truly a natural, masterful baker, though her reperto
ire was fairly limited.

  At the time she asked me to show her how to make the pie, I wondered why she hadn’t simply taken down one of the many cookbooks on a shelf in the alcove off the kitchen and looked up the recipe. I’m glad I didn’t ask out loud, for it was some time before I figured out that Cookie couldn’t read. And yet she really ran the place. She managed the domestic staff, all the cooking with very little assistance, kept the kitchen inventory, and followed the week’s menus, which Matron wrote out, taking into account some of the specialized needs of residents who numbered no fewer than twenty at a time. I think she relied a great deal on Annie, who had had some years of secondary school, and perhaps Maisie and one or two of the others who had some modicum of education. They obviously never questioned her little subterfuge, which always took the form of, “Read this for me nuh? I forgot my glasses.” Though no one had ever seen her with a pair. No wonder, I thought now, she was so proud of Trevor’s achievements, the fact that he had planned to study medicine. But now there would be no one to rescue her from the daily grind in someone else’s kitchen. And grief made no difference to the sweetness of her pies.

  97

  I FORGOT THAT BEFORE I was up and about, Winston had sent me Bombay mangoes, from Matron’s tree no doubt, for Maisie had brought them in a covered shoebox one day, disguised by the clean towels on top, the whole package clutched to her body like some secret ready to explode.

  “Winston send these for you,” she whispered, even though there was no one else within shouting distance. “They green, but they soon ripe. A going to put them here for you.” And she opened my clothes closet and made room for the box on the top shelf.

  I murmured thanks, but, to show how sick I was feeling at the time, the gift did not really register. Until this morning, when I woke up to the distinct smell of mangoes on the air, wafting into my room from outside, I thought. Mango season. Another reason for me to get going, for I had several trees of my own in the country and they would be bearing.

  When Matron came by to check on me I noticed her sniffing too, but she didn’t say anything. It was right in the middle of her visit that I remembered my hidden cache, and I wondered how she hadn’t seen the light bulb going off over my head. As soon as she left, I went and turned the lock in my room door. I carefully lifted down the box. Three Bombays, fully ripe. The smell was divine, it instantly cleared my brain, wiped out all the bad thoughts. I couldn’t wait to bite into the first one as I headed for the bathroom and sat on the side of the bath and leaned over as I ate, greedily, messily. I sat and ate those three mangoes, licked the insides of the skins before discarding them, and sucked the seeds until they were white. And for all the time I did that, I became like that greedy child again, I didn’t think about a single thing but their ambrosial presence. After that, I had a leisurely bath and combed my hair and dressed. For the first time in weeks I began to feel human. I went downstairs, to join the rest of the residents, as if nothing had ever happened.

  98

  THERE IS ONE OTHER thing I forgot to mention earlier. The night after I discovered the letters in Mr. Bridges’ room, I was so angry that at some point I got up and marched back over there and I took up the box with the stereo set and I brought it back to my room, feeling triumphant. The bastard, I thought. Then after a few minutes I started to have second thoughts. I was so bothered by having taken it that I marched back over there and put it back. Then as I read something else in the letters that angered me, or thought some more, I went back and brought it over to my room again. This time, I also looked for and found the jazz and blues CDS, including the one he never played for me as well as the music he had bought that day—Buddy Holly, Ray Charles, the Temptations. Once I had the stuff in my room, I began to feel awkward about it again, though I wondered who it would end up with if I didn’t take it. My feelings went back and forth all night. The stereo and CDS ended up staying with me, for I think I just got too tired of getting out of bed. After that, I forgot about them because someone tidying up my sick room had stuck them in a cupboard. I only came across them again when I started to pack. Which is what I am doing, for I know it is time to go.

  99

  THIS MORNING THERE WAS an unfamiliar knock on my door. I had just come back from breakfast, intending to get on with sorting out my stuff, amazed at how much I had accumulated in the time I had occupied the room. When I opened the door I was surprised to see it was Morveen, the hairdresser, and her sidekick, Kyisha. I’d forgotten about them and their weekly visits. Morveen was looking more than ever like a walking advertisement for everything that was the latest. This time she had shoulder-length straight red hair with bangs across her forehead—she later confessed it was a wig, as if I wouldn’t have known—and long silver nails with a red star painted in the middle of each. How on earth she—or more likely Kyisha—managed that I made a mental note to find out. Kyisha’s nails were bright pink with silver half moons; I guess they had been experimenting as usual.

  Kyisha reminded me of Lise, as she had the same sort of colouring and the pale, weak-seeming eyes that made her look timid. She was never as outrageous in her dress as Morveen and today she was fairly sober-looking in a short black skirt, a simple sleeveless knit top in purple and green stripes, and little black Chinese cloth slippers. She didn’t wear a lot of makeup, just lip gloss, but she made up for the lack in the size and quantity of gold-like jewellery, starting with earrings the size of cartwheels.

  “Miss Sam, how you doing?” Morveen greeted me. Scrutinizing me at the same time, taking in, I’m sure, every inch of my sartorial deterioration. Well yes, for next came the anguished cry, “Miss Sam, look at you! No, man, this won’t do.” Almost a wail, as she touched my hair, my skin, and clicked her tongue over my chipped and broken nails. “Kyisha, look here,” she said, taking possession of my hand as if it was no longer attached to me.

  “Miss Sam, this is bad,” was that child’s contribution.

  Up to then I hadn’t been able to get a word in, and I was trying not to laugh, for although Morveen was a teenager, or so I believed, she was behaving like my grandmother.

  “Come in, girls,” I said.

  “Oh Miss Sam,” said Morveen as she entered and gazed around my room. She had probably never been outside of the room downstairs with the mirror, basin, and professional dryer that served as her parlour. “I know you been sick and all and that nice gentleman your friend die I really sorry to hear and the two of you look so lovely together. You wouldn’t believe I scream with fright when Annie phone to tell me, Miss, and how you take to your bed with a broken heart. But Time Waits for No Man, Miss Sam, you can’t let yourself go like this. Eh, Kyisha?”

  Before I could say anything to this, the open suitcases and general signs of packing must have registered. “Miss Sam, you not going away?” she wailed.

  I told her yes, I was going back to my home in the country.

  “Country?” Kyisha piped up, as if I had said the General Penitentiary. “Country, Miss? But how you can leave Kingston to go a country? You mean to live? Forever?”

  This time I couldn’t control my smile. But, before I could say anything, Morveen jumped right in to chastise her. “What you know about country, Kyisha? It can be nice, you know.” And she sounded almost dreamy. “One time I did go to country to visit my Grannie, somewhere far, I don’t remember where now. I was little and my mother did take me. It was sweet you see! I eat cane the whole time, cane that mi Grannie cut for me. Right from the tree!”

  “Well, I did go country one time,” said Kyisha, not to be outdone. “And my Grannie pick mango for me. And starapple. Right off the tree. But when night come, it was dark, man. I fraid you see. I wanted to go to the toilet bad bad, but you think I was going to go outside in that darkness. So I …”

  “Kyisha,” said Morveen sharply, “Miss Sam don’t want to hear your business.”

  Kyisha looked suitably cowed, as she probably was all the time by Morveen, who then turned her attention back to me, all bu
siness.

  “Now, Miss Sam, we come to take you downstairs. For you must be forget. You need a good haircut and some nice colouring.” She had taken hold of my hair again as if she was sampling the quality before purchase. “Maybe we’ll try a new relaxer this time. And Kyisha, you have to well try with these nails, yu know.” She seized both my hands again and held them out for viewing.

  I untangled myself from Morveen’s probing grasp and decided enough was enough. “Morveen, Kyisha, I’m really glad to see you, but I really don’t have time these days for all that foolishness.”

  “Foolishness, Miss?” They spoke simultaneously, in anguished tones, as if I had shattered the very altar at which they worshipped. “Miss Sam, you can’t mean that.” Now it was Kyisha’s turn to wail. “And yu was loooking so criss and stylish up to the other day. Everybody in the kitchen was talking about it. They even saying …”

  “Miss Sam is when your man gone you must take care of yourself,” Morveen interrupted sharply, giving Kyisha a cut-eye. “For is them time everybody looking at you see how you draw down. Take me now, when my last baby faada did leave, him send the new matey him tek up with come dare walk down my street to check out how me look. But when she come, you know, me was ready for is them time when him leave that me a bus style, you know. A tek up mi celli and call mi auntie a Miami beg her courier down some supplies for me quick. So when the jezebel come, I just flick my hundred-dollar U.S. weave and step out in my new gold lace-up bootie and mek out like a risto. You should see how that skettle turn tail and run.”