Dancing on the Edge (7 page)

We practiced in the late afternoons, after my dance lessons and before Gigi came home. Learning to ride was hard for me. Old Sam belonged to Grandaddy Opal, and he didn't want anybody but Grandaddy riding him. Even with the seat lowered all the way, I had to pedal with the tips of my toes and Grandaddy Opal had to hold on to the back of the seat to keep me steady. I couldn't wait to get my own bicycle.

We had been living with Grandaddy Opal well over a year—I was almost twelve—when he came into our bedroom one morning and shook me awake. I saw his empty newspaper pouch hanging around his neck like a feed bag.

He put his finger to his lips. “Shh.” Then he told me to hurry up and get dressed. He left and I put on clothes from the day before, not worrying about making too much noise and waking Gigi. Since we'd been living with Grandaddy Opal, nothing woke Gigi before nine or ten in the morning.

I went out to the kitchen, but Grandaddy Opal wasn't there. I went into the great room, and that was empty, too. Then I saw him through the window, wheeling his bicycle out of the garage. I ran outside and called to him.

“Well, what took you so long?”

“I wasn't so long.”

“Sure you were. Now, go on into that garage and see what you see.”

I knew right then what I'd find, and I was right—my bicycle. I could see its dark form leaning against the washing machine, waiting for me. It didn't have the freshly painted shine of a just-fixed-up bicycle because Grandaddy Opal said I would have to do all the fixing and caring for it myself, that way it would become special, and really mine.

“That there is an old English racer,” Grandaddy Opal said, coming into the garage and switching on a light. “And look-a here”—he pointed to a decal on the bar just below the seat. “See what that says? Nottingham, England. And see the picture of Robin Hood? Robin Hood was from Nottingham. You ever read about Robin Hood stealing from the rich to give to the poor?”

I nodded. I had written a book report on it for school and the teacher had read my paper to the class. Everyone said that I had made half of it up because they had seen the movie on TV and it didn't have all the stuff I had put in my report. Even when we all had to read the same book, I never understood it the way the rest of the class did. The teachers often called my responses to the book discussions “most disturbing.”

I rubbed my finger over the decal. “Thank you, Grandaddy Opal,” I said. “It's the most beautiful bicycle in the world.”

“See on the front here it's got this plate nailed in that says made by the Raleigh Company. Yup, an English racer's what you got, girl. Bought it off an English lady, too, from Cambridge originally. So imagine that, this bicycle coming all the way from England when the woman first came over way back in 1964.”

“Wow, it's old,” I said.

“Paint's still good on her, too, just needs a bit of a touch-up and a polish. And I got some new tires so you can learn how to put them on, and I'll show you how to fix the brakes, they don't work at all, and it's got three speeds, but they ain't working neither. But look at her—so simple. She's sleek, that's what she is. Just like you, not an ounce of fat on her.” Grandaddy Opal's face was all lit up with joy, as if it were his first bicycle instead of mine.

I held on to the handlebars with one hand and reached back and patted the cracked saddle with the other. “It's perfect,” I said.

 

I
T WAS HARD
putting in the time to fix up my bicycle because of dancing and helping Gigi and going to school. One time, when it had been almost a week since I had last been able to work on it, Grandaddy Opal woke me at three in the morning and we worked on it then.

I told Grandaddy Opal that I hoped Gigi didn't catch us out in the garage working so early, even though I knew she never would, and Grandaddy Opal said it was all just a lot of fat hooey. “What does she think you live on, air? Why, you got to eat, don't you? Your clothes need cleaning, all them sweated-up leotards and tights, and you're growing, too. You need new clothes. How does she think it's all happening? Magic? She ain't doing it, that's for sure. And I shouldn't be doing it neither 'cause the day will come when she'll take a notion you're going to be the next great something or other and away you'll go from here!”

I looked away, feeling guilty for wishing I'd become a prodigy, but then I figured if Grandaddy Opal understood, if he knew the way I did that it was our only chance of getting Dane back, he'd wish it, too.

I turned back to Grandaddy Opal and watched him fussing with the wrenches. Then he bumped into his toolbox and all his tools crashed to the floor.

“Dang that Gigi!” he said, turning this way and that, looking at his mess.

I knew just thinking about Gigi could get Grandaddy Opal all worked up. It was as if he kept playing some old fight over in his head, trying to wring all the anger out of it one more time, maybe hoping this time would be the last.

“I guess we'll just go on pretending I don't even know you,” he said, bending down to help me pick up his tools, his voice calming down again. “Even though you're living under my roof all the day long. We'll just pretend and say nothing to her. Long as we ain't saying nothing, we ain't bringing it to her mind, and she don't have to do nothing about it.”

I finally finished fixing up my bicycle the night before my twelfth birthday. I wanted to ride it right away, but Grandaddy Opal said it was too dark and too late and I needed to get to bed before Gigi came home and had a fit.

I didn't want to go to bed. I didn't want to go to sleep and wake up to another birthday, to hear the story one more time of my birth, full of portents and omens. It was easier to be with Grandaddy Opal and forget. He always seemed to know when I was thinking too hard on things, when I was scared. He'd come up behind me and say, “Come on, girlie, let's go get us some watermelon,” or “Let's go weed that garden.” He always pulled me away from my thoughts.

Grandaddy Opal bought me a helmet for my birthday. He gave it to me in secret the next morning, waking me early and bringing me out to the dark garage. Then he switched on the overhead light and sang out “Happy birthday!” He set the shiny blue helmet on my head, the same color as my bicycle, and said, “Now then, you and Etain are ready to roll.”

I had named my bicycle Etain after a woman in an old Irish tale I'd just read. She had been turned into a butterfly by another woman jealous of Etain's beauty, and then was blown by a magic storm out of the palace where she lived. After seven years she landed in a fairy palace where she fed on sweet honey flowers and loved a man named Angus. Then the evil woman discovered where Etain lived and she sent another storm that blew Etain out of the palace and into the drinking glass of a woman who swallowed her and later gave birth to her. When Etain grew up, she married the High King of Ireland.

Etain and I were perfect together. I was about to climb onto her when Grandaddy Opal spoke up, not looking at me but just to the side of me.

“Wonder if it would be easier without that old bathrobe you got on? Now that you're twelve and all.”

I looked down at Dane's old black-and-yellow plaid robe. Gigi said they were the worst colors to wear together besides black and red, or just plain black—the evil colors. I think that's why Dane wore it in the first place, to spite Gigi. It had become faded and tom in the past two years and I had spilled all kinds of food on it—grape juice, spaghetti sauce, and chocolate—and it smelled of incense. Even when Grandaddy pulled it fresh out of the dryer, it still had the incense smells, but Grandaddy Opal never mentioned it, maybe never noticed.

In dance class, Susan said she needed to be able to see my body. She said she needed to make sure my knees were in line with my feet in a plié and that I didn't hitch my hips to one side in a
grande battement
. For Susan, I wore just the sash tied around my waist. She said I looked cool. The rest of the class said I still looked dumb.

I looked up at Grandaddy Opal. He was waiting, studying the shelf of paint cans off to his right.

“I'll just wear the sash, okay?”

Grandaddy Opal smiled at me and nodded. “Fine, fine,” he said. “Now let's see you ride the old girl around in the driveway some.”

Without thinking, I took off the robe. I was tying the sash around my waist when Grandaddy Opal grabbed my arm.

“What you got there?”

“What?”

He took my other hand in his and examined my arms and then my legs. I was in shorts and a sleeveless shirt. In dance I always wore long sleeves and tights. They hid the bruises.

“Where'd you get all these here?” He moved closer to me, his voice sounding strange, as if he could hardly get it out of his throat.

“You're all beat up. Look at you, you're all beat up!”

I looked down at myself, at the bruises on my legs. I looked back up at Grandaddy Opal, who had gone as white as his hair. Even his lips had turned pale. I felt my own self turn some kind of unnatural color, my stomach clutching and grabbing at my spleen.

I spoke. I whispered, with my head bent over the handlebars. “I didn't want to say because it's from you know where.”

“What? I don't know where. I don't know nothing about this.”

“Dance,” I said. “My improvisation class. We do all this rolling around on the floor. We make up dances and express ourselves.”

It was my turn to look away, at anything but Grandaddy Opal's face. He always wanted to see my eyes when he asked me a question, but I was afraid he'd know the truth. Susan had said something about it just that week. She didn't know about the bruises, but she saw the way I threw myself around in class, crashing to the floor, banging into the walls when the music was wild. I loved those classes, that wild feeling. I could spin and spin and fly all over the room, and nothing mattered, nothing existed but the sheer swirling ecstasy of the dance and the music. And when the dance was over, I had the bruises to remind me that for a little while, I felt real—I was a real, whole person.

I didn't know I was doing anything wrong until Susan called me out of the room. She placed her arm around my shoulder. She said she admired my expressive dances, but she worried that I might hurt myself.

“Keep away from the walls, will you?” she said. “And don't do so many falls and recoveries. We don't want you breaking a leg, do we?”

“No, ma'am,” I said, but I knew what she really meant. I knew she meant that I was “most disturbing.”

I told her I would be more careful, and she let me go back to the class.

Grandaddy Opal's eyebrows rose clear up to the top of his forehead. “These here are from that dancing school? You can't be all that good if this is what you look like. You look at me, child. Do all them other little girls get banged up like this here?”

I didn't look up. I thought of the other girls in their colorful leotards and fancy leg warmers, the pretty hair ribbons, the dabs of makeup.

“Some are worse and some are better,” I said. “I'm in between, I guess.” I wouldn't look up. I couldn't. I was grabbing onto the handlebars, squeezing, squeezing them so hard I thought they might melt in my hands. My legs were trembling. I wanted to sit down, to breathe. There was no air in the garage.

“You look at
me
!” Grandaddy Opal's voice was sharp.

I lifted my head and caught his eyes, and my whole body started to shake. Grandaddy Opal's hair looked shocked as if an electric current were running through his head. His hands were trembling, and he brought them down on my handlebars, so close to mine I could feel their heat.

“You ain't going to have any more of these bruises, you hear? Whatever you got to do in that dance class to keep from getting them, you do it!”

I nodded my head and it kept on bobbing. My voice rattled in my throat. “Yes. Yes, we're through with that wild music anyway. We're doing something else now.”

“You durn sure are or I don't know what!” he said. Then he blinked at me and I saw his eyes looking so wet, so full of water, and I had this vision of all that water pouring out from his eyes, gushing out like two giant waterfalls, rushing at me and knocking me over, carrying me far away.

I
DIDN'T KNOW
if Grandaddy Opal had told Gigi about my bruises or not, but that night Gigi called me up from Grandaddy's basement where I had been sitting on Dane's bed, drifting in my fairyland, searching for Dane. I jumped up when she called because I didn't want her to come downstairs and see what I had done with all Dane's things.

I rushed up the stairs, and there stood Gigi with a stack of new clothes. She shoved them into my arms and told me I was emanating a green aura and I needed to stop wearing Dane's bathrobe. She waved her hands over my head, as if she could feel it, the halo of green light.

“Green is rarely good, sugar,” she said. “It usually means you are putting yourself in someone else's place, allowing yourself to be taken over by him. Sometimes it even means deceit!” She grabbed both my shoulders. “Now you take off that old stinky robe of Dane's and put on these new spiritual clothes I bought you for your birthday. See if that doesn't help. Our years of mourning are at an end.” She let go of me and lifted her arms above her head, her face turned to the ceiling. She closed her eyes and hummed. She opened her mouth, still humming, and then with a sudden snap of her lips she stopped. I waited several minutes for her to speak. Then, in a loud quivering voice, she said, “The winds of change are blowing.” Her arms swayed above her. “The stars are realigning. You must be ready. Great things are about to happen to us all!” She opened her eyes and clasped my head in her hands. “You've been green way too long. You start wearing your spiritual clothes every day, you hear? You wear nothing but purple, and you meditate on the highest spiritual matters till you have a purple aura, like me. Purple means you possess spiritual and psychic powers. Now, go on and change and bring me that old robe when you're done.” Then she turned and glided away.