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The class schedule read Adult Intermediate Tap. I double-checked it, perched reading glasses on nose and ran my index finger along the paper taped to the wall. Adult. Check. Three other students, all teenagers, stood laughing, talking, warming up snapdragon feet on a scarred wooden floor. Our teacher, no older than nineteen, no taller than my shoulder, fiddled with the dials on a paint-splattered boombox.
I'm twice as old as any person here, I thought. Twice as old, and six times less hip. Twice as big, too.
The students wore low-slung pastel sweats cut off at the knee, boot-like shoes with no socks, tight cotton camisoles. I wore rainbow striped socks, tap heels with wing tips and big black bows, a white ruffled skirt with sensible sport shorts underneath and a pink tank-top. I sucked in my stomach and imitated the leg stretches of the tallest student, a girl with flat-ironed blonde hair and the word "DANCE" sewn in princess script across her butt.
"Excuse me, ma'am? The ballet students leave through the other room. You can pick up your daughter there."
Pixie Teacher pointed to the door across the hall. She wore her dark hair in a messy ballet bun and her baby blue bustier matched cut off sweats. A triangular blue stone adorned her exposed bellybutton.
"Oh, I'm a student. I'm here for the tap dancing. I took beginner lessons, oh, a few years ago."
I lifted my foot to show the shiny metal plates screwed to my toe and heels and then slammed it down with a satisfying clap. I didn't mention that "a few years" meant two-and-a-half decades. She shrugged her shoulders and bent low, clicked a button. The boombox sputtered, and The Pussycat Dolls assaulted my ears.
"Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?
Don't cha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me?"
I almost tapped right out the door while the other students slid, shuffle, toe, toe, heel, toe, slid across the floor like Abercrombie and Fitch marionettes. I pressed my heels into the floorboards, attempted to keep the same time as my classmates, swung my hips fast, high, so that my skirt flared at my waist, revealing my gym shorts. Pixie stifled a giggle and I caught Blondie rolling her eyes. I lifted my arms in a graceful arc and flipped her the bird.
My body searched for sound waves, for muscle memory, for something to grab, to hold, to own. Nothing. The stark track lights tossed my shadow against the floor. My heart couldn't slow, couldn't melt the steps into my blood. I sounded old. My breath filled the room with a phantom echo. Pixie threw me a worried look. She didn't know the essence that orders the universe decided to slice me into one thousand slivers of Birdie and pass around the plate.
Everyone gets a piece. I felt sweat drip between my breasts as I caught my breath. Everyone gets to scarf me down, burp, live on my calories. I'm not making a decent living. I'm not organizing my potential into darts, letting them fly, letting them hit some unknown rings with a big prize in the middle. I'm coasting, and it's all flashy silver streaks beneath my feet, an echo of drum, I can't keep up, can't make feet match arms match anything, anything, anything, just a rim shot echo in my wake. I slipped off my tap shoes and stuffed them in my backpack.
Pixie began the next class by passing out CDs. She handed the Black Eyed Peas to a girl with an eyebrow piercing, Kanye West to a chubby brown-haired girl with a satin belly shirt, Beyonce to Blondie. Pixie explained that in eleven weeks we'd dance for our parents - Oh Sorry, she said, glancing in my direction - each of us, one by one, with our own choreography, our own song.
Oh great, I thought, who am I gonna get? Britney Spears?
"Ms. Jaworski? I picked something old-fashioned for you. I thought you'd be more comfortable with that."
I reached my hand out with a maniacal smile across my face, gimme, gimme, gimme! I'm getting something classic! Maybe the Maple Leaf Rag! Or maybe the Chattanooga Choo Choo! I stared at the splotchy scrawl of marker on the disk in my hand, my smile hardening like plaster. Donna Summer?! Hot Stuff?!
Yikes.
Eleven weeks of Donna Summer, of tap, tap, tap, tap through the kitchen, heel toe, heel toe, shuffle, toe, tap tap tap, change the movie from Star Trek to
