Dancing Lessons (2 page)

I shook my head then; this was easy: No.

“Ne-ver,” she said, heaving her not very extensive chest and holding her head high in a facsimile of indignation. “Ne-ver has another Re-sident intruded in this manner.”

No, I wanted to say, the other Residents never get up off their bony asses.

I'm not sure Matron has the stomach for fighting really; she gazed at me some more, huffed and puffed, then turned on her heels and took off like a rainbow streak.

As soon as her back was turned, I took up the stick and touched the mango, which fell right into my outstretched hand. I secured it in my pocket and I continued on my walk, practically killing myself with suppressed laughter as I ran my hand over the smooth skin of the fruit and anticipated the forthcoming feast. Ha, I thought, this one will be blamed on Winston for sure. She won't believe I could be so bold. And serve him right, too, for having the cheek to accept bribes and not keep his mouth shut.

Still, a little worm of anxiety is eating at me, for I know I shouldn't be taking chances with Matron, my situation here is still shaky. I will vow to get into no more trouble and do as She commands.

Once a week, when the manicurist and the hairdresser come here to Ellesmere Lodge (not the facety one, this one is much more humble or else she wouldn't be bothering to come and shampoo a bunch of old people, would she), She pays for me to have “treatments,” they call it. Just like the others. Torments, I say, but I go, just as I go to the doctor who is the other person who gives “treatments,” unwillingly, for I know what She is trying to do. The hairdresser—Morveen, if you please—is like a little overdressed schoolgirl in her tiny skirt, chunky-heel sandals, and skinny top, with blonde highlights in her hair and at least six earrings in each ear. As she eases me down in the chair to shampoo my hair while this other little one—Kyisha—is getting ready to mess around with my toes, she, this Morveen, says, “Relax, Mrs. Samphire, you are much too tense, Miss. Relax and enjoy yourself.”

YES, I AM ALWAYS
tempted to say, once over fifty years ago I relaxed and enjoyed myself and look what I brought down on my head. Well, that was before yesterday happened. I frown and become even more tense when I think of this because I'm mad at Her, always at her, for I know she is doing all of this not for me, but for her own self, so she won't be so ashamed of me. Shame, that is all that has ever ruled her life, which is why she is like this dry stick now, all bones and hair. She always had lovely hair, the only nice thing about her, well, nice teeth too and lovely skin, pale as dry bamboo leaves and a manner as brittle as dry bamboo sticks. They love her in here, they love her there, everywhere, for everyone knows her, she is a celebrity, now she even has her own talk show on television. Our Doctor, the guru. Only she isn't that kind of doctor, the one that can provide us with “treatments,” but the know-it-all kind, spending years studying, now doing something up at the university, always off to conferences and things. I don't know how her husband and children put up with it, but then I hardly know them. You'd think she would have taken me home to live with them in that big house, rooms and rooms and swimming pool, but O no, not good enough for them. Her children as distant as she is, on the rare occasions I've been privileged to see them. Unnatural, all of them. Not that I care. Just to spite her, I no longer ask after them. Up to now I don't even know what she's been studying. She's on every committee and board around. Which is why they treat her like a goddess whenever she comes to visit and why they put up with me. Don't think I don't know. You'd expect me to know more about her, wouldn't you? But it's always been like that. The one at a distance. With Shirley and Lise and Junior, now, we had some laughs together, didn't we? Let our hair down. Things we shared. I mean, they were human and though they have turned around and done some things that . well, let's not go into that now, but at least they didn't act as if they were so way above the rest of us. But She always did, didn't she? It was a mistake to let her go and live with those people, that Reverend Doctor Something and his wife, I can see that now, but at the time it seemed such a god-sent opportunity for at least one of them to get a good education and there was never any doubt it would be her. No warmth at all. Never. Her head always buried in a book. At the time I thought it was such a good thing that one of them at least liked reading, for I liked reading and my own life would have been different I know if somebody had bothered to educate me properly.

It is true I was going to St. Catherine's Academy at the time. They did plan to send me to nursing school. I can still hear it, Aunt Zena's cackle: “Ha-ha, you made your own bed, girl, you must lie on it,” as they washed their hands of me. Well, he did have his own bed, I'll say that now, and a lovely horse when I met him, for this was just after the war and there was no gasoline, and he put a roof over my head and food in our bellies, I'll grant him that. So despite everything, I could still hold my head high every time I passed their house, for they refused to have me back in. And when they passed mine on their way to church, sanctimonious old wretches, I peeped through the curtains to watch how they cast their eyes slant wise at all my flowers blooming. Flowers that annoyed them no end, I'm sure, since I planted the loudest and commonest ones I could find: zinnias and marigolds, Joseph Coat and sunflowers. No pale roses and itty-bitty violets for me. They could keep their heads higher than mine because they lived in a much bigger house, on the hill, the biggest around, and they had straighter noses. Come to think of it, She is so like them, with her powdery skin and straight nose. It is that side of the family she takes after, the ones that are so full of you know what. Except she has her father's crinkly nayga hair. And his white people's eyes. Don't worry, I don't swear, or use bad language, never have, I've always been careful of my speech, was forced to be as a child when I lived with them. Some things are just too drilled into me to lose, though I sometimes think some nasty words to myself. Maybe one day I'll shout them out loud. If they bother me enough I will. If they try to send me away from this place I'll grab hold of the veranda posts and hang on for dear life and shout and shout till the petals fall off their bloody roses and shame them all. And She will be standing there, shame tinting her dry bamboo skin. But then I think perhaps I won't, for suppose she really gave up and abandoned me then. Whatever would I do?

ABANDON. ABAN-DON. A WORD
with a nice swing to it. Like a hammock. Well, no. More like something slung out. Thrown up. Thrown away. Dumped. Forlorn, forsaken. Or some-body. Hea-vy. A-ban-don. Did She think I abandoned her when we allowed her to go and live with those people? I hardly ever saw her after that, it's true, but was that my fault? Her father certainly went visiting, got quite chummy if you please, though what the Prince of Darkness had in common with those self-righteous paleface people is beyond me. But he was the one with the car. Did he ever once offer to take me?

Apart from rushing me to the doctor with a sick child, did he ever once take me anywhere? I knew he never wanted to be seen with me, once he and the children turned me into a witch. I saw it in the way he looked at me, or rather, the way he let his eyes slide off me with the smoothness of a green lizard. And whose fault was it? Did he once give me money to straighten my hair? Get a new dress? Buy a box of face powder? Lipstick? Rouge for my cheeks? For that's what he liked. That girl Esmie Roche with her penny hair straightened and wrapped up in a pound worth of bows. Think I didn't know? Think I didn't know of Mrs. Carter's daughter, the mealy-mouthed schoolteacher with the skinny legs and the lisp? Think I didn't know of that girl who worked in the office at the estate? He liked them young and dark-skinned, ripe and bursting like starapples. Pretty faces and hair upswept. Young and easy to break in. Easy to break. Until he met his match with that one there, that hard-back woman who finally lured him away—and broke him. That story was music to my heart. But of course he bounced back. He always did. That's the Samphire men for you. But why am I wasting my time thinking about him?

I can't truthfully say my mother abandoned me. But she upped and died when I was only a few days old, so what would you call that? My father's mother, Miss Celia, and his sister, Aunt Zena, took me in and I grew up in the same house with my father, only I never knew he was my father until I was about eight or nine years old. I never knew I was related to them. Truly. Nobody told me anything. First he was away at the War and then he was there and wasn't there, if you know what I mean. He wasn't like the other men who went to the fields or out to a job. He just wandered around the place not doing very much and sometimes he got boisterous. He disappeared for long periods of time, returning without a word, at least not a word to me. They said it was the War that did it, shell-shocked him, though I didn't know what that meant since at the time we didn't even have electricity. I knew about the War because several of the men around had gone over to England to fight in it and were known as the Old Soldiers, and very proud of it they were too, wearing their old uniforms and hats and medals on Poppy Day. But he did things sometimes that made his mother and sister afraid of him, and even when I was too young to know what was going on, I could sense their relief when he was not around. I was afraid of him too, the only man in the house, but only because in those days I was afraid of everyone and everything. I could never do anything right. When Aunt Zena wanted to be nasty, which was every day, she would say to Miss Celia, “Well, what do you expect? The child of a slug and a madman.”

It took me a long time to figure out that it was me she was talking about, and after I realized it I would cry and cry inside myself for I didn't want to be the daughter of a slug. I didn't understand why Aunt Zena would insult me so, calling my mother the lowest, most hateful thing there is on God's earth. Once I told this to my husband and he nearly fell out of the bed laughing. He leaned over, gave me a hug and kissed me on the forehead, and wow wasn't that a nice surprise and couldn't I have done with more of that, and he said, laughing still, “‘Slut,' ‘slut,' you little idiot. Not slug.” I didn't know what slut meant and he wouldn't tell me, he just kept on laughing, his eyes dancing for me the way they never did at any other time, and it certainly made me feel better. For it is only in other people's gaze that we see ourselves, isn't it?

Already those were the days when I couldn't look into his eyes without feeling pain and humiliation, for I knew now they made four so easily with others, so reluctantly with mine. I didn't know how to make my wishes known, how to please him, how to hold his gaze. And when I did manage to do so, it was like falling into water that was not the river or the sea but a pool with endless depth, like the blue hole at the riverhead where dangerous water spirits lurked. He only gazed at me now with anger or exasperation, or to issue commands. I'd look, and look away, drowning.

I only ever danced this one other time in my life and it turned into the saddest thing that ever happened. It was like this. Once I knew my father was my father, and I can't remember how I knew, I would watch him closely, not that there was anything between us, he never paid any special attention to me. It was always “Girl this” and “Girl that” if he needed anything, I don't think he ever called me by name. But I loved him just the same for he was the only thing that belonged to me or the only person I could say I belonged to, for I never knew my mother's family and Miss Celia and Aunt Zena acted as if they would rather I didn't belong to them. Maybe I was a slug, or some sort of obstacle cast into their world that they were forced to walk around, to their great inconvenience. Maybe it was this thing of my mother being a slug that made them watch me so closely, for I never had space to breathe. If I wasn't at school I was put to work in the house and on Sundays I was straight laced and jacketed and marched off to church with them. Tied up tight as a knot the whole time and never a kind word, a tender smile, from them or anyone else, for all took their cue from the Richards family. I was the one who had brought disgrace on them, though how, I didn't know.

One time I thought it was because of my hair, which Aunt Zena would not even touch; when I was little it was Dulcie's job to comb it. Dulcie, the maid who had been with them forever, long before I was born, so I think she too hated me from the way she pushed my head and pulled that hair. It took me a long time to realize that my hair was more like Dulcie's than Aunt Zena's, so then I thought that was the disgrace. For me. For them. And I didn't have their nose either. Nice and straight. I only realized that much later, as if my body parts were becoming visible to me piece by piece, a jigsaw puzzle fitting into place, revealing a strange hatchling.

To this day I remember looking at myself in the mirror, staring hard as if seeing myself for the very first time, and suddenly having my nose jump out at me, a large and fleshy nose that took up most of my face. Not at all the shape and beauty of theirs. Once I noticed it, I became preoccupied with this nose. It was all I could see when I looked in the mirror. I began to steal glimpses of my reflection everywhere, even in the distorted lenses of the dinner cutlery, the shiny pots in the kitchen. It was all I thought people saw when they looked at me. Nose Girl. Then I must have gotten over that for I became obsessed with other parts of my body. I ran my critical eye over my features, piece by piece, and nothing I saw pleased me; I was not like them at all, those others in the house I occupied. My face was too large, my forehead too broad, my cheekbones too high, my lips too thick, my eyes too muddy, my skin too dark, my hair too coarse. I looked like nobody. I couldn't see below my neck in the bedroom mirror so I would steal into Aunt Zena's room when she was out to stare at multiple reflections of myself in her three-way mirror, gasping anew each time at the big head, the long, coltish limbs, the knobby elbows and knees. I was so shocked to see myself, my ugly self revealed, that I felt true heartbreak, for I had no idea where I, this strange person in the mirror, had come from.