Dancing Lessons

by Olive Senior

  “Mom?”

  I was standing in the middle of the room holding an empty hanger in my hand. I realized I hadn’t spoken aloud, for which I was truly thankful. The rage was all in my head. A good sign, I thought wryly, because it used to be all in my heart. But it was the same rage I knew, for as usual it was succeeded by sadness. I don’t know if I showed any of this, for when I looked at Celia she only smiled a rueful little smile and shook her head as if she had nothing further to say. Finally she said, “I would like to understand, you know. But you give me so little to go on. By the time I was grown up enough to be conscious, I saw a lot of my father but never anything of you.” She paused, not looking at me but somewhere far in the distance. Then she said softly, “You have no idea how hard it was, do you?”

  “What was?”

  “Doing everything right. Being perfect. That’s what you all wanted, isn’t it?”

  You all? I said nothing, feeling she had more to say. But she kept quiet. Sitting curled up in the chair like that, twisting a lock of hair around her finger, she looked so small and lonely I lost my fear of her.

  I could see her, neat in the pretty new clothes, out in the yard with the other children, my own and the neighbours’, directing their play, teaching them things, but never herself fully involved in the action, never getting dirty, always seeming somehow apart. My heart ached for her then, though I didn’t know why, as it ached for her now. Always there was this barrier between us. I did not touch her, for I thought she didn’t want to be touched. Hugged or held. She was always such a world unto herself.

  “You don’t know, do you, how hard it is to live up to someone else’s ideals,” she said, very softly. “They did not let me breathe. All along I kept looking down that road, for I expected you to come for me. To take me home. But you never came.”

  Now, I thought, as if preparing myself for a race. Now is the time to do it. Go on, tell her. Tell her you do know. It was like that for you, too. Tell her about your feelings. About going to fetch her back and not having the courage. Tell her what it was like, what living with Sam was like. About your own childhood. Spill everything. Spare nothing. Pour out your guts. Don’t let them keep walking around with this distorted image of you. But I couldn’t do it. I stayed silent.

  So we didn’t have it out, Celia and I. But at least she didn’t leave angry with me. I could feel her frustration.

  The problem is that I can talk to Celia, really talk, inside my head only, when she isn’t there, the way as a child I talked to my imaginary mother, my absent father. That’s how I am talking to her now.

  Why did I let you go? Because I thought you deserved better. No, that is such a lie. The awful truth is that I thought I deserved better. I wanted for you what I thought I should have had for myself, the good life, with tablecloths and napkins in rings and polished mahogany floors. A life where people spoke properly and read books. This is the life I had lived for my first fifteen years, the life I threw over. And how I resented and disdained that other. The one I fell into, poverty and humiliation, my books, my reading, the only bulwark against the encroachment of squalor. Poor as we were, I did join a subscription library that had started, for there was no public library in our parish as yet. I earmarked the sale of the eggs of one hen as stamp money to pay for the books and magazines I shipped back as soon as I read them, eagerly awaiting the next batch. I called that hen Mrs. Rochester, and she brought me comfort for many years. I told myself I was not entirely selfish, as I got books for the children too.

  The most precious moment of my existence became the evening, when the dinner things were washed and put away and you were all in bed, your uniforms ready for the next day, the ironing and other chores done, for I was careful not to be a slug. I got into bed then, and read, by lamplight, until I fell asleep, the book clutched in my hand.

  When I was first married it was hard to concentrate, for I spent so many nights waiting for his footsteps crunching on the gravel path leading to the veranda. At the sound I would whip the book under the bed, jump up, and rush with the lamp to greet him at the door. But those moments became fewer and fewer as he came home later and later, long after I had fallen asleep.

  I have to plead that I had no defences against these people when they came, wanting you. You have to understand this. I was ashamed for them to see me the way I was, the squalor of my surroundings. I could find no way to tell them, then or later, that I was used to better. It wasn’t that I wanted to be grand. Just a cut above my neighbours, so they wouldn’t look down on me, for they all knew where I was coming from and how far I had fallen. It was this that made me so ungracious to those people, the first time I met them, an ungraciousness that continued over the years, because I could never reverse the way I felt they perceived me, our status unequal at that meeting.

  They were not to know that it was my own ignorance and folly that had reduced me. It was a way to avoid such ignorance and folly that I sought for you. No, I am lying. I didn’t seek anything, for that implies thinking and I didn’t think. My days were already passing in a blur of unhappiness and resentment. Sometimes I could remember nothing that had happened only a moment before. I was frightened of another baby on the way. How would I manage? Already I knew that in the world I was entirely on my own.

  107

  I AM LOOKING FORWARD to going home, yet there’s a part of me that is decidedly uneasy. The more I think about Junior and the house the more I feel my heart hardening against him. I don’t feel that I can just go back there and greet Junior as if nothing has happened. I can’t do it. I need to know the truth once and for all of what happened to Shirley and why he had to run away. Everything. I need him to face me squarely and tell me the truth. But first, I want Celia to tell me what she knows. It is time she came clean.

  I was trying to find a way of broaching the subject when she invited me to come and spend the long weekend with them. In my new frame of mind, I accepted. I thought it would be a good occasion to bring up the subject, since Herman’s calm presence might keep Celia and me from bristling at each other. They lived up in the hills above the city, and this time as we turned into the driveway I didn’t see the house as the pretentious monstrosity I had in the past but as a rather charming, restful, tasteful modern house set on a hillside with a spectacular view. Celia said it would be a good time for me to visit because she and Herman planned to stay home and relax for the weekend. Their helper, Mae, had gone home to the country. I was surprised to see how Herman pitched in. In fact he was the cook that night, a barbecue on the terrace. Ashley assisted him and did the cleanup afterwards. They refused any offer of help from me or Celia, so we sat there in a rather companionable silence, listening to the tree frogs and enjoying the view and the luxury of sitting outdoors at night, something I hadn’t done since I left home. Later, Ashley went out with her friends we three watched a movie. Celia and Herman slept through most of it. Once in bed, I read for some hours before I fell asleep. I felt very relaxed in a way I had never felt in Celia’s house before. But I vowed that no matter what, I would bring up the subject of Shirley the very next day.

  It was Herman himself who unwittingly introduced the subject that Sunday morning. We had eaten breakfast out on the terrace and were sitting idly around the table having more coffee, reading the Sunday papers, when Herman started to comment on an article he was reading. It was about the connection between Jamaican drug posses in Kingston and New York. At first I didn’t pay much attention, but my ears perked up as he read a bit about how easy it was for innocent bystanders to get shot since the drug enforcers had no qualms about spraying bullets at their target on a busy street. Without thinking, I blurted out, “So that is what happened to Shirley then?”

  This was greeted with dead silence. I could see Celia and Herman exchanging glances and then looking away as if something appalling had just occurred. I didn’t care. This time I wanted answers.

  “Look,” I said, addressing each in turn. “Don’t you think I deserve the tr
uth?” And when there was still no response, I said, “I can’t live with this any longer.” I could hear my voice breaking. It was over twenty years since Shirley’s death, but I was surprised at the pain I was still feeling.

  It was Celia who spoke first. “We thought we were protecting you. Well, it was my idea. I didn’t want you to know the truth. I think I was hoping you’d hear it from someone else. Oh God! I was such a coward, and then time passed—”

  “That’s okay,” I mumbled. I picked up the spoon and started stirring my coffee.

  “It’s not,” Celia said, shaking her head.

  Herman cleared his throat and said in a very gentle voice, “G, you did know Shirley was a heavy user. A drug addict. Right?”

  “Shirley?” That shocked me, as I truly had no idea. I said so.

  “But you must have suspected something,” Celia said. “Even before Shirley left home. Didn’t you notice how she’d changed? From the time she took up with that Pinto fellow she was a different person.”

  “Who? Pinto? You mean Junior’s friend?”

  “The same one. Shirley was madly in love from the moment she clapped eyes on him. When they were still at school. I mean the kind of blind, foolish love that would have made her do anything for him. Everybody warned her. Even Papa. He was the one who was busily encouraging her to go to New York, hoping that would get her away from him. Little did he know!”

  “But isn’t he the one they busted for drugs in Miami or somewhere?”

  “Yes.”

  “Murder, extortion, and racketeering. Among a few other things,” Herman broke in, and they both laughed, though I couldn’t see the humour.

  “But … what would Shirley be doing with someone like that?”

  “Oh G!” Celia’s tone was exasperated, as if one could question the ways of love. Or maybe it was because she thought I was being deliberately obtuse. I thought of the Pinto boy and the times he had been to the house. He was a year older than Junior, so he would have been Shirley’s age. I recall now he was a rather tall, good-looking boy with just the self-confidence and the cheek that an innocent girl would fall for. I had in fact liked him at first, before he started leading Junior astray, as I saw it, and I don’t think I was far wrong with that. Even then he struck me as being far more mature and knowing than the other boys. I had no idea he had anything to do with Shirley.

  Apparently he had Shirley on a string, on and off, while she was crazy about him, and the drugs were just part of his lifestyle. First ganja, then cocaine. By the time Shirley got to New York, she had started using crack. All the stories she told me about going to university were just that, lies. She was simply following this man to New York, where he was setting up his operation. God! No wonder she never wrote. Now her anger the last time we met was becoming clear.

  “Remember how I wanted her to be my maid of honour?”

  I nodded and started moving the sugar bowl around. I had to focus on something. I didn’t want to look at Celia.

  “By then, of course, I had some idea what was happening. Before she left I tried to talk to her, many times, but I never dreamed how far gone she was. Well, you don’t really want to know, do you, if it’s happening to someone you love. When she first went to New York I saw her once or twice, but after a time it was clear she didn’t want to see me. We’d talk on the phone and arrange to meet if I happened to be passing through, but she’d never turn up and she would never give me an address. She was always very secretive—well, paranoid—though looking back perhaps they were really under all kinds of surveillance since Pinto by then was some sort of go-between for the Colombian cartel and the Jamaican posses. It made me laugh, but Junior said Pinto’s one qualification was that he was fluent in Spanish, English, and Patwa. I think his mother was from Venezuela or the Dom Rep or somewhere. Spanish is the only subject he ever managed to pass.”

  Celia chuckled and then was quiet for a while. I could see that she too was seeking distraction, for she was using her finger to trace the flower pattern on the placemat. Herman sat there, both hands on the table, his eyes behind his glasses steady like a wise owl. And though Ashley, who was sitting beside me, never said a word, I could tell she was mesmerized. She was waiting for her friend to collect her for tennis, and under the glass top of the table I could see her twisting her sneakers together this way and that, like a little girl.

  “I couldn’t imagine getting married without Shirley there,” Celia continued. “Junior told me I was a fool to think she would come. He was the one who was in touch with her. I guess I was fooling myself. When he saw how determined I was, he took me to New York to see her. He wouldn’t let me go alone. By this time Pinto was out of the picture, or so it seemed; I think he was on the run then, and Shirley was living in a nasty smelly squat in Brooklyn Heights with a bunch of people like herself. Dedicated addicts. G, you would not have believed the place. Dirty, smelly, no running water, no electricity, and they all slept around wherever, on these old mattresses and broken-down furniture. It was unbelievable. Weirdos wandering in and out, muttering to themselves. I take a much more charitable view of things now, but at the time I was amazed that my own sister could be part of this filth and squalor. Shirley had given up on everything. She was living for the drugs.”

  Celia stopped and shook her head, and then she looked straight at me.

  “You know what, G? I’m glad I went. She was so happy to see me. Really, really happy. So was I. When she saw me she screamed for joy and the two of us grabbed each other and started hugging and dancing around and yelling and crying. Poor Junior! I’m sure he was embarrassed, but of course no one else was paying us the slightest attention.

  “Once I got a good look at her, though, I was hoping my face didn’t show how shocked I was. She just wasn’t bothering anymore to take care of herself. She was thin and dirty, full of old scabs, and her hair was out to here, like a wild woman. It was the middle of summer, a real New York scorcher, and she was wearing these big boots and combat pants—you know the real army ones with these huge pockets everywhere, sort of barely hanging on her hips even with a belt, and a skimpy little T-shirt and an old leather waistcoat which she wore open, like some Western marshal. Pockets, pockets everywhere, and all seemed full of stuff.”

  Celia paused then. None of us said a word. I was suddenly feeling so breathless I wondered if I was having a heart attack.

  Celia gave a half-smile and shook her head. “Junior told me afterwards she also carried a Glock 9-mil stuffed down her boots, but I never believed him.”

  “A Glock?”

  It was Herman who replied. “A handgun, G. The fave accessory of the posses.”

  I opened my mouth but no words came out.

  “You know what?” Celia smiled again, but this time as if recalling something pleasant. “The one thing that remained of the old Shirley was her big laugh and kind of energy. While we were there, she was behaving like the mama of that squat, calling out and joking with everyone, bussing that huge laugh. The laugh is what made me fool myself into thinking hey, it’s still there. We just need to get her away from here, get her cleaned up, get her to a doctor, get her dried out. Get the old Shirley back.

  “Of course Junior had warned me from the start not to bother; he had been down that road many times. ‘She has to want it, Sis,’ he kept saying. ‘She has to decide she wants help. Don’t even bother to take this on your head, please. You are just setting up yourself to get run over.’

  “But of course I thought I knew better. When Shirley took us down the street to a West Indian club to eat, I thought we were halfway there. It was a grotty little place with a memorable name—Sunshine Stables—isn’t that great? Well, inside was kind of scary for it was dark and smoky with a funky smell and full of rough-looking guys playing dominoes and pool. Everybody called out to Shirley as she came in and she was calling greetings right back—she seemed to know all their names. We sat in a little room at the back and Sugar Baby—this little man-woman who ran it, a forme
r jockey wouldn’t you know, and who obviously adored Shirley, brought us curry goat and rice and peas. We ate and drank Red Stripe and chatted and laughed and believe me, it was almost like old times. But by the end of the meal I could see Shirley getting anxious and then frantic and her eyes suddenly sort of retreated in her head, as if we were no longer there. She was scratching away at her skin and patting her pockets in a crazy kind of way and then she turned to Junior as if to a stranger and said, ‘You have change for a phone call?’

  “Junior just rolled his eyes and fished out some dollars from his wallet and gave it to her. She grabbed it like it was a lifeline. I was such a fool that by this time I had my wallet out too. Shirley didn’t say anything, she just stuck out her hand, and I opened the wallet and handed her a wad of notes, I don’t even know how much it was. I remembered noticing the dry, ashy skin on the back of her hand and her broken fingernails. By the time I looked up she was gone. Not a word of thanks or anything. Junior just looked at me and shook his head and smiled and he stood up and said, ‘All right, we can go now.’

  “‘What? Aren’t we waiting for Shirley?’ I asked. You know, I was that foolish. Junior said in his deadpan voice—you know Junior and his cool—‘Yeah, you can stay here if you want to wait forever, Sis. You’ve just given Shirley enough for a few big hits.’ I felt so awful then. We left, Junior and I, and we never talked about it again. I hadn’t even got around to mentioning the wedding to her. Junior had made me take off my engagement ring and all my jewellery before we set out. That was the last time I saw Shirley.”

  Herman got up from the table while she was speaking, and as he came back and handed her a tissue I realized Celia was crying. No expression on her face, just the tears streaming down. Herman stood behind her and she leaned against him, and he had both arms around her in a loose hug as she wiped her eyes and blew her nose. Across from them, I was blinking, trying hard to keep my own tears in. Ashley, who was sitting beside me, had her elbow on the table and was leaning her cheek on her arm, looking from her parents to me, her eyes wide. She seemed terribly young and vulnerable, not the bold high-heel-wearer I’d gotten used to.