wearing, she will stay home.”
On the Wednesday after Caroline called Mother, I arrived at Papa
Jay’s a few minutes early. The younger class had just finished, and the
store was flooded with six-year-olds, prancing for their mothers in red
velvet hats and skirts sparkling with sequins of deep scarlet. I watched
them wiggle and leap through the aisles, their thin legs covered only by
sheer tights. I thought they looked like tiny harlots.
The rest of my class arrived. When they saw the outfits, they rushed
into the studio to see what Caroline had for them. Caroline was
standing next to a cardboard box full of large gray sweatshirts. She
began handing them out. “Here are your costumes!” she said. The girls
held up their sweatshirts, eyebrows raised in disbelief. They had
expected chiffon or ribbon, not Fruit of the Loom. Caroline had tried to
make the sweatshirts more appealing by sewing large Santas, bordered
with glitter, on the fronts, but this only made the dingy cotton seem
dingier.
Mother hadn’t told Dad about the recital, and neither had I. I didn’t
ask him to come. There was an instinct at work in me, a learned
intuition. The day of the recital, Mother told Dad I had a “thing” that
night. Dad asked a lot of questions, which surprised Mother, and after
a few minutes she admitted it was a dance recital. Dad grimaced when
Mother told him I’d been taking lessons from Caroline Moyle, and I
thought he was going to start talking about California socialism again,
but he didn’t. Instead he got his coat and the three of us walked to the
car.
The recital was held at the church. Everyone was there, with flashing
cameras and bulky camcorders. I changed into my costume in the
same room where I attended Sunday school. The other girls chatted
cheerfully; I pulled on my sweatshirt, trying to stretch the material a
few more inches. I was still tugging it downward when we lined up on
the stage.
Music played from a stereo on the piano and we began to dance, our
feet tapping in sequence. Next we were supposed to leap, reach upward
and spin. My feet remained planted. Instead of flinging my arms above
my head, I lifted them only to my shoulders. When the other girls
crouched to slap the stage, I tilted; when we were to cartwheel, I
swayed, refusing to allow gravity to do its work, to draw the sweatshirt
any higher up my legs.