Woman on the Edge of Time

“Different strengths we respect. Not weakness. What is the use in not actively engaging life? It passes anyhow.”

She thought of the asylum. “Sometimes you have no choice.”

Outside in the soft night music ticked the air. In the square outside the meetinghouse six musicians were playing. People were beginning to dance alone, in couples, in small and large circles. Bee and Erzulia were leaning together arm in arm on the far side, talking with their heads bent close. The music was subtle over a strong beat and a counterbeat: rhythm crossing rhythm but entering the feet, the legs, the hips, the ass, the shoulders. Dawn was dancing with the two children she had chased outside, turning round and round, pulling hard on each other’s taut link of arms.

“The children are still up. It must be ten-thirty, eleven.”

“They work hard. They get up early every day except after festivals. Shouldn’t they have holidays? When they can’t stay awake, they fall asleep. If they doze off in the grass, someone will carry them home.”

“You have wonderful faith in other people!”

“Without that social faith, what a burden it would be to have children! The children are everyone’s heirs, everyone’s business, everyone’s future.”

A flash of dog food supper. She worried, never being able to afford to serve meat after Claud was imprisoned. The food prices higher each week. She wanted to commit murder in the supermarket and she could not afford a shoplifting charge, being on suspended sentence. The only meat she could buy was in dog food cans. Should have fed Angie from a bowl on the floor. Who knew what they put in those cans? Man’s best friend was a big police dog, not a little brown child like Angie. Dogs to defend against poor people like her. “Eat it, Angie, please! It’s good stew.” She had added chili powder, herbs.

“Why?” Angie pointed to the picture of the dog. “Why they got a picture of a dog?”

“That’s just the picture on it. Like Bugs Bunny on the cereal.”

It turned out Angie feared it was a dog they were eating. She did not want to eat a puppy dog, she explained. Ay de mi! “It’s beef! Like hamburger. I wouldn’t feed you a dog!” But wouldn’t she, if she found one for sale cheap? She had to feed Angie anything she could find to fill their bellies. What choice had she?

Luciente was holding her by the shoulders. “You’re fading out! Come. Stay. Dance with me.” Tugging her out onto the square.

“I don’t know how you dance!”

“Any way you feel like. It’s for pleasure.”

She let her eyes half close and her body began to sense the music. Still, it alarmed her, how when she moved her hips the flimsy with all its little bubbles took off and flew away from her body, naked underneath. But nobody was wearing much in the way of clothes. She had not danced since … the first time in the bughouse, a sad Christmas party, parody of cheer in old-fashioned polite ballroom dancing, waltzing and fox-trotting and an occasional meek rumba round and round under the watchful eyes of staff and the hungry gazes of the majority not dancing. Luciente was a better partner than any she had enjoyed that evening of excuse me’s and wistfulness and an occasional fumbled clutch. Ah, nothing was so sad as looking around at all the black and Latin patients and watching each other trying to boogaloo so zonked with Thorazine they could hardly do the zombie shuffle.

She opened her eyes as the band went into a faster number and saw Bolivar and Jackrabbit dancing. Jackrabbit moved wild and loose and explosive. Bolivar was a little too controlled. He did what he did well, but he was not inventive. He moved with a measured elegance. But Jackrabbit exploded around him. Luciente was dancing to/for Jackrabbit, without ever looking at him. She was performing and Jackrabbit was aware of her too, and so, with resentment, was Bolivar.

She encouraged Luciente, she egged her on. Bee stood now with White Oak, chatting and watching. Erzulia was dancing alone, gone into an absorbed passionate trance state where nothing lived but her and the music centered around the throbbing drums. Someone else watched too, a tall woman standing with two others on the steps that led to the meetinghouse. Her hair was in a white turban and one breast was bare, as were her feet. Around her neck a crescent moon was hung, against the white of her dress. She left the women on the steps and stalaed among the dancers toward them, approaching Luciente from behind. Bee moved onto the square and began to dance beside them. He smiled at Connie with an amusement she did not understand.

The tall woman paused behind Luciente, her hazel eyes crinkled with mischief. Unwinding her turban so that her auburn hair fell out loose onto her shoulders, she swung the long white scarf around and then cast it over Luciente, catching her by the waist and pulling her backward.

Off balance, Luciente stumbled back against her and remained pinned there, her face silly with surprise. “What happens?”