A Kind of Grace (7 page)

Ms. Dunham was my first truly accessible role model—a woman I was able to admire up close and in person. She still lives in East St. Louis, and over the years she and I have become close friends. She writes to me from time to time when she's traveling, and I visit her when I'm at home.

The Dunham method influenced not just how I danced, but how I carried myself. Mr. Wilson said that Dunham dancers had a distinctive elegance. “They don't walk, they glide,” he explained. “To be a true Dunham dancer, you must point your toes, hold your heads up and your stomachs in.”

I took him seriously. At home in the mirror, I practiced walking just as Mr. Wilson had shown us. He was challenging me to learn something that would help me improve myself. I wanted to meet that challenge.

Unlike the bus stop, the hustle and the other dances we did to the music on the radio, the more classical dance movements Mr. Wilson taught us came easily to me. “You have talent,” he told me after class one day. “Your legs are long and powerful. That's what a good dancer needs.” His words made my heart leap.

“Could I be a Broadway dancer?” I asked.

“Yes, if you keep practicing and taking classes,” he said.

No one had ever complimented me for having long legs. With Daddy and Al constantly teasing me about being tall and skinny, I had become self-conscious about my height. But Mr. Wilson made me proud of my body. I now thought of my long legs as an asset. A powerful asset.

Because of Mr. Wilson's encouraging words, I began fantasizing about being a performer on Broadway or an actress. I liked glamour as much as any other little girl. And I thought entertainers were the most glamorous people of all. I started imagining myself dancing on stage in a glittery costume under bright lights. For a while, I believed I might be discovered, too. As silly as it sounds, I had this idea that someone from Hollywood puts hidden cameras in houses and that's how stars are discovered. And so I stood in front of the big mirror in my parents' room for hours at a stretch, putting on a show—mimicking scenes from TV shows, doing voice imitations and rehearsing my dance routines—just in case the talent scouts were watching.

Although dancing was just a hobby to me, I probably would have continued taking lessons if Mr. Wilson hadn't died. He was shot to death, allegedly during an argument over drugs. After the incident, the classes stopped and so did my interest in dance.

Losing Mr. Wilson as a mentor shattered me. I admired him a lot. He was the first adult, other than my parents, who took an interest in me and tried to help me develop my talents. The news about his murder and the fact that drugs might have been involved devastated me. I didn't know what to believe in after his death. He and other adults who gave speeches at the Community Center talked to us about doing the right things, not taking drugs and staying out of trouble. To find out that this man—whom I associated so strongly with dancing—might have been involved in drugs, soured me on dance as an ambition.

5

Seeking an Identity

W
ithout dancing, I was adrift. I wandered around the Community Center for weeks, looking for something that sparked my interest, something in which I could excel.

While I searched, I diverted a portion of my considerable energy to cheerleading for the boys' basketball and football teams. I was captain of the squad, which also included my sisters, Debra and Angie; my neighbor Kim Cole and a few other girls. I was pretty bossy, expecting the others to perform to perfection the routines I made up. Everyone obeyed me except Debra. She either ignored my orders or talked back. I expelled her from the squad several times.

My two sisters are a study in contrasts. Debra has always been strong-willed and outspoken, very much like my father. She must do things her way. In school, Debra was the eye of the hurricane. A social butterfly with tons of friends and charm, she loved going to dances and being the life of the party. But there was also a mischievous, troublemaking streak to her personality. If she were a soap opera character, Susan Lucci would play the part.

I remember the day she single-handedly started a major ruckus at school. She went to the boyfriend of one of her girlfriends and told him the girl was messing around with another guy behind his back. She did this to her own girlfriend! The two boys fought about it and the girl wanted to kill Debra. I asked her how she could do something like that. She just thought it was great fun.

Angie, on the other hand, was shy and introverted. Growing up, she had a habit of gnawing the skin on the side of her hand when she was nervous. At parties, while Debra and Al held center stage, Angie hid on the sidelines, a real wallflower. She was so cooperative, acquiescing to anything anyone suggested. Left to her own devices, Angie probably wouldn't have spent much time at the Community Center. She would have been content to stay at home. Angie wasn't the baby of the family, yet she held tightest to my mother's apron strings.

Both of my sisters were good athletes. Each were standouts on their respective junior high basketball teams. But only Debra continued playing sports in high school. She was on the Lincoln basketball team when we won the state girls' championship. She also ran track and played volleyball. She eventually attended Arkansas State on a volleyball scholarship. Angie was a late bloomer who made the dean's list at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville before dropping out to start working. Debra has two children, Antoinette and Anthony. Angie has a daughter, Sherrell.

As a cheerleader, I was a real “jumping Jackie,” if you'll pardon the pun. The dance exercises—knee bends, squats and stretches—made my legs stronger. When the others were breathing heavily and slowing down, I was still jumping and kicking. My favorite stunt was to jump up in the air into a spread eagle, touch my toes, and land on the ground in a split, while the others did a less daring jump and slid into a split. The people in the bleachers cheered and applauded every time we did it.

Our sponsor, Mrs. Johnson, disapproved of it, though. She thought it was vulgar and dangerous. “You girls are going to hurt something doing that routine,” she said, frowning and shaking her head every time I went up in the air. She didn't like our dances, either. I overheard her tell another woman that she knew I was going to get pregnant before I finished high school because I was so “fast.” “Fast” was to girls what “mannish” was to boys. It was a derogatory term, used to describe girls who liked to show off and flirt and who often did end up pregnant before graduating.

“The nerve of her!” I told my mother after repeating what I'd heard. I wasn't showing off or flirting or doing anything bad. Of course, I was happy that the crowd enjoyed my performance. But I danced and cheered because I enjoyed it and felt I was good at it. I didn't understand why an adult would criticize me for that.

“Don't pay any attention to it. That's just the way some people are,” my mother comforted. But I've never had an easy time ignoring negative comments—particularly unjustified ones. I've always been sensitive to them, allowing them to upset me more than they should.

Looking back on it, all the time I was cheerleading, I never considered it a marketable skill. Cheerleaders were just cheerleaders. Cheerleading scholarships, which many colleges now offer, were unheard of then. And we didn't have a Paula Abdul, the L.A. Lakers' cheerleader who became a dancer, choreographer and singing star, to emulate. It just goes to show how much times and attitudes have changed. And it illustrates the power of role models. Had I known I could possibly parlay cheerleading into a career in entertainment, my occupational arena might have been a theater stage rather than a track oval.

One day, in 1972, when I was ten, a sign-up sheet for girls' track appeared on the bulletin board at the Community Center. “If my legs are strong enough for dancing and jumping, maybe I can run fast, too,” I thought to myself. I printed my name on the first line.

A bunch of girls, including Debra, Angie and me, showed up for the track team on a sunny afternoon in late May. We were dressed in T-shirts and shorts and we squinted and cupped our hands over our eyes to shield them from the sun as we looked up at our coach, Percy Harris. He explained that practice would be held every afternoon and that we had to run around the cinder track behind the Center to prepare for our races. He pointed to the area.

“All the way around there?” one girl said after she turned around to see where his finger was pointing. She turned back to Percy wearing a frown. “It's hot out here!”

“That's far!” another complained.

It did look like an awfully big circle, which grew wider as we got closer to it. But I kept my thoughts to myself. Momma and Daddy told us never to talk while adults were speaking. Besides, I wanted to see if I could make it all the way around. I was ready to run.

That circular track, which still exists at the back of Lincoln Park and became a fixture of my teenage years, is unconventional. It measures about 550 yards around, roughly a third of a mile. A standard track is oval-shaped and measures 400 meters, a quarter-mile. Those of us who completed the lap were panting hard by the time we reached the end. We bent over and put our hands on our knees when we finished. The other girls had stopped running and were walking. Percy said we had to run around two more times without stopping to get in a mile workout. Some of the girls mumbled and rolled their eyes. I took off around the track.

Each day, fewer and fewer girls showed up until finally the track team consisted of the three Joyner girls, two of whom were there under protest. At that point, Percy gave up the idea of forming a team. But I wanted to continue running, so he introduced me to George Ward, who coached a half-dozen girls at Franklin Elementary and brought them to Lincoln Park in the summer to practice.

“I don't know if I'm good,” I said shyly when Mr. Ward said I could join his team.

“Don't worry about that. We're just having fun. If you win a ribbon, good. If not, that's okay, too,” he said. I breathed a sigh of relief.

The practice sessions with Mr. Ward's group were a lot of fun. Suddenly I had six new friends. I didn't know Gwen Brown or any of the others from Franklin Elementary because I attended John Robinson Elementary and the schools were in different parts of town. Most of the others had been training with Mr. Ward for over a year and, as I would soon discover, were already very strong, fast runners.

The first race I ran for Mr. Ward was the 440-yard dash, now called the 400 meters. He lined us up opposite two bent steel poles. Then, stopwatch in hand, he walked around to the other side of the circle and stood on the board 440 yards away. From there, he yelled, “On your mark, get set, go!”

The rest of the girls charged ahead. I ran as hard as I could, but I couldn't catch them. I finished last. Once I caught my breath, I was disappointed. I couldn't believe how fast the others were!

“What can I do to get faster?” I asked Mr. Ward.

“Just keep coming to practice, you'll get better,” he assured me.

I finished last or nearly last in every race that summer. But Mr. Ward stuck with me. When school resumed, he picked me up every afternoon at home in the spring and drove me to track practice at his school. I looked forward to it all day. I was eleven. I would rush home after school, cram down a few oatmeal cookies or a bag of potato chips, quickly do my geography, math, spelling and science homework and then do my chores—or pay Debra to do them—so that I was ready when his car pulled up. I waved good-bye to Momma, who was getting home about the time I left, and hopped in Mr. Ward's car.

The practices were pressure-free, but there were rules. We weren't supposed to talk while running. But I chatted away with my new friends. Every time Mr. Ward caught me, he stopped us, pulled me out of the group and scolded me. As punishment, he made me run in the opposite direction from the others. I didn't mind. I was so happy to be out there with the others. With a smile on my face, I ran clockwise while the others ran counterclockwise.

One day I got sick and started throwing up while running. Mr. Ward asked me what I'd eaten. When I told him about the oatmeal cookies, he shook his head. Junk food was a no-no, he said. My punishment that time was three extra laps, all in the opposite direction. He said he wanted me to feel how eating junk food would affect my endurance. But it didn't bother me. I felt as if I could run forever. I just wasn't very fast yet.

After several more races and no ribbons, however, I became discouraged. “Am I ever going to win anything?” I asked.

He gave me a consoling pat on the back as we walked to his car. “You will if you keep working hard.”

I wasn't crazy about running the 440-yard dash. But it was a challenge. I wanted to catch those other girls. My real love was jumping. But I was too shy to tell Mr. Ward. At the time I didn't know anything about the intricacies of the long jump. I just knew my legs were strong and I was a good jumper, based on my cheerleading and dancing performances.

For weeks, I watched Gwen Brown run down the long-jump track and leap into the air, like a plane taking off. I bit my lower lip as she practiced, yearning for just one chance to run down the dirt path and jump into the shallow sand. When I returned home that afternoon, I got a brainstorm. I found potato chip bags and convinced my sisters to go over to the sandbox in the park, fill the bags and help me bring the sand back to our house. Over the next several afternoons we secretly ferried sand from the park to the front yard, where I made a small sand pit. On the days when I didn't go to practice, I hopped onto our porch railing, which was about three feet high, crouched down with my back arched and leaped into the sand. The feeling was so satisfying and so much fun, I did it over and over again for about an hour.

One afternoon after all the other girls had left practice, while I waited for Mr. Ward to drive me home, I walked over to the runway. It was nothing more than a long strip of grass, marked off with a strip of tape at one end and a shallow hole with a thin layer of sand at the other end. The sun was ready to set, but the air remained hot and thick. I was tired after running sprints and conditioning drills in the oppressive heat. But standing there, looking down the long-jump lane for the first time, I was energized. I mimicked what I had seen Gwen doing. I charged down the lane as fast as I could, planted my right foot and jumped up as high as I could. I kicked my legs out in front of me and pushed myself forward.