Dancing Lessons Read Online Free Page A

so happy to be there, alone with him, feeding on his energy, as if he were an incandescent spark. But this went on for so long, this talk about things I knew nothing about, it drained me until my chest tightened so much I could hardly breathe. I wanted desperately to go back to my room, but having put myself into the picture, I didn’t know how to pull away. I didn’t want to go without getting what I’d come for. I so desperately wanted him to talk about me, us, my mother, him, that I exerted all my mental faculties. Please, please, I remember saying silently to him, please, please talk to me.
    I don’t know what I actually conveyed, but as if he sensed my mood, he took a record from a different album when the music stopped and said as he wound up the gramophone, “Listen to this!” As soon as the needle touched the record, I was lost in the most joyous, raucous sounds I had ever heard. This one had a beat I could understand and a woman’s voice like a razor blade. My father sang along with the chorus:
    That’s YOUR RED WAGON
just keep dragging YOUR RED WAGON along .
    I had no idea what the words meant, but the beat, the mood, transported me out of that room in that country house to another world and my head was still spinning when the record finished.
    â€œLike it?”
    I nodded, and he played the record again.
    â€œCome, Girl, sing with me,” he said. At first I felt small and my throat dry as I tried to follow the words.
    If you’re gonna play horses and blow your dough
Don’t you run to me if they don’t show
That’s YOUR RED WAGON …
    He kept putting on the same record, and repeating the words, and soon I could belt them out as good as him and we were singing along at the tops of our voices:
    â€¦ just keep dragging YOUR RED WAGON along .
    So when he said, “Let’s dance” and took hold of my hands, “Like this,” I didn’t feel awkward and clumsy as he showed me what to do. I felt careless and free. How easy I found it to follow him. He nodded in approval as I caught the beat and soon we were dancing to that music as if there were devils after us, inside his room and into the hallway, where we galloped up and down, into the dining and living room and back down again. Each time the record stopped he would go and put it on again and we would resume our dance through the house, singing at the tops of our voices, stomping for emphasis, getting wilder and wilder:
    So you fell for somebody who pinned your ears
Baby don’t be bringing me your tears
That’s YOUR RED WAGON —
    Badoom! The loudness of the mahogany front door crashing against the wall as it swung open with force stopped us in our tracks, at the far end of the hallway. We froze together, my father and me, hands clasped, each with a foot in the air ready for another round, the words dying on our lips:
    So just keep dragging …
    Miss Celia stood in the doorway, Aunt Zena behind her, and the maid Dulcie: I remember still the quivering of their churchgoing hats like the tips of windswept palm trees. They were deadly silent, the entire world had hushed, but for the scratchy music that played on: we were caught red-handed with the evidence hot as the devil. I could feel my father’s hand tighten, grow cold. Suddenly his body slumped, like a child’s. Aunt Zena brushed past Miss Celia into the hallway. That terrible tightness in my chest came back for I knew exactly what she was going to do. My father knew it too. He didn’t move. The words “No. Don’t.” broke away from him. But it wasn’t from the smiling man of a moment ago. It came out high-pitched and anguished, like a child’s. His hand still held mine, but it was as if he had suddenly become the child and he was holding on to me, not the other way round. I could feel his hand, then his whole body shaking. I felt as if I wanted to faint. My head started to grow big, for I knew