Little Dancer

While the afternoon sunshine flooded through the big picture window in the living room, my mother wanted an answer to a question that was too painfully embarrassing for me to answer.

            “Tell me why you don’t want to go to Miss Pollock anymore.  You always loved dancing school.”

The oil paintings hanging there were colorfully rich and vivid ballet scenes.  They were graceful and fluid.  They moved to the music in my head.

“Nothing happened Mom.  I just don’t want to go.  Besides I’d rather play outside and ride my bike.”

 “Darling are you sure?  You are such a good dancer.”

Classical music played on the radio from early morning to early evening.  It was even the background for the cartoons I used to watch.  I can still hear the famous Blue Danube waltz as the ducks swim merrily along the banks of Vienna’s famous river. 

“No I’m not.  You just think that because you’re my mother.  I stink.”

She was preparing my favorite meal:  Wild rice, lamb chops and broccoli. 

“Not true at all.  Let’s see how you feel next week.”

I never would be able to tell her why I no longer wanted to take dance lessons.  I wanted to forget the whole thing, bury it someplace deep and stuff a boulder on top so it could never come out.  So many years after the incident, I rolled the stone away and unearthed it.  It still evokes some sadness in me but more ire than melancholy with each retelling. 

When I was just six or seven years old my mother invited my best friend and her mother to my dance recital.  Our relationship had quite a bit of sibling rivalry. In the days that followed we were in her backyard pool.  Her mother, now sitting in an Adirondack chair in front of me, was reading a newspaper. 

We were having one of our usual childish disagreements when my little friend shared with me her mother’s opinion of my performance in the recital.  She reported with delight how her mother had said I was as graceful as an elephant. 

Stunned from that blow, I looked to her mother hoping she would deny it.  Tragically for me at that moment, she said nothing.  Instead she looked at me guiltily, as if caught in the act.

I have no idea what happened next.  I can only recall the emotion and the stinging in the corner of my left eye because I wouldn’t let them see me shed a tear.  They knew their words had pierced me.

Yvonne A.

July 2019