My Father, Dancing

Harvest/HBJ Book

Excerpt

From "My Father, Dancing"

My father and I used to dance together in the kitchen before dinner. I grew up withthe kitchen radio always on, tuned to a local R&B station. The habit got started withthe dogs; my mother said the music kept them company when we were all away for theday. When I was small enough still to like being picked up, I shimmied in my father'sarms while he performed an improvised two-step. Later I squirmed out of his grasp andmade up my own steps, ducking out of the way of pots as my mother moved fromrefrigerator to sink to stove.

When I was old enough to be sneaked into bars ? "She's with me," my father wouldtell the bouncer with a sly grin ? we continued dancing to the sounds of stompy livebands. At these bars, dancing was serious business. We sat at a table, each with abottle of beer in one hand, the fingers of the other tapping out a rhythm, the bonycrack of our thumbs on the edge of the table giving an accent sharp as a cymbalcrash. And then we were up, pushing our chairs back, no words exchanged, but bothresponding to some tightening of rhythm or deepening in the bass line. That momentreminded me of the way our dogs on the beach would suddenly begin to run down thesand at a breakneck clip, running toward something that seemed to be attached by aninvisible string to a part of them not yet bred out.

I relied on this silent method we had of communicating, so I didn't know how to talkto my father when he was lying in a hospital bed, slowly dying of cancer. I hung overhim like an insect caught in a spider's web, thrashing uselessly. I watched for thetiniest movement, a gesture, a raising of his eyebrows, anything that would tell meabout what I meant to him.

On those dance floors over the years, we told each other more about ourselves than inany conversation. I mimicked my father's movements, and when I had gotten it right, Ifelt suddenly that I had been dropped into his body for a moment and knew hispleasure at pushing out on the floor a rhythm that brought the music inside of him. Iused these occasions to test him too. As my body grew and pushed out in new places, Iwriggled these parts and tried on different movements, the way I would try on newclothes. He was my first male audience, and I used him as a mirror to understand whatI looked like to the world. His eyes told me what worked and what was too much, untilI settled into a rhythm that suited me. It seemed natural that I should learn theselessons from him. Once my father told me that he wanted to be the first man to breakmy heart, because then he could ensure that at least it would be done gently. Ithought about this during one of the many hours I spent sitting next to his hospitalbed holding his hand. As I waited for some sign that he was aware of me, I thought ithad boiled down to this: all I wanted from him was a simple squeeze of his fingers.As I waited and did not receive any sign, I realized that he was breaking my heartand it wasn't done gently at all.

My mother would watch our dancing at these bars from the table. Usually a womanfriend would have joined her, and they would talk, their mouths lifted to eachother's ears, hands cupped to their faces like they were telling secrets. My motherliked to dance too, and at times, when I was younger, I wondered if she was jealous.But now I could see that she must have liked to watch us, her husband and thedaughter they had made, proving out there on the dance floor the success of theirlives together.

Sometimes in the hospital my father and I talked. Or, rather, he talked. He toldstories about when he was young, women he dated before he met my mother, friends hehad who were, I knew, now dead. As he spoke, he stared slightly below and to the leftof the television set. Once I moved behind him so I could match my line of sight withhis. Maybe, I thought, the sunlight coming in from the large windows was catchingthis patch of white wall and giving it a suggestive sheen. But it just looked blankto me. It seemed he was seeing his life projected onto this wall and was giving itvoice. I listened for my name and, when I didn't hear it, told myself that he justhadn't gotten to me yet. Once in a while he turned toward me and asked if it was timeto go yet. I misunderstood the first time and tried to reassure him with what wouldbecome my mother's and my refrain, "I'm right here. I love you."

"Oh, stop with your bromides!" he answered. "I'm a busy man. Get the car and let'sgo. Let's go! Let's go!"

I quickly learned to lie and say that we were leaving any minute. He would forgetafter a while or go back to telling stories about his life.

One day, while I was riding the bus to the hospital, a blind man sat in the seatacross from me. I noticed him at first because of his sunglasses, which were Frenchand very expensive, and which I had coveted in a shop earlier in the summer. Then Inoticed his stick and wondered if someone had helped him pick out the glasses. As werode, he rubbed his foot up against the pole separating his seat from the seats nextto him and also stroked it furtively with the back of his hand, from knee to shoulderheight. The other riders stared out the window or read or focused blankly on thespace in front of them. It struck me that the blind man was trying to make sense ofthe world around him. As I watched him, I thought about sitting with my father in thehospital, about how I continued to bump up against the fact of him lying there,through my conversations with the nurses about his temperature, his platelet count,and how the night had gone; through the hospital food that we ordered for him, thoughhe couldn't eat it, and which I ate. When his friends came to visit, I waited forthem to turn back from the window as they wiped the tears from their eyes. Istruggled to see the shape of what would happen as it loomed, invisible, in front ofme.

Continues...

Excerpted from My Father, Dancingby Bliss Broyard Copyright © 2000 by Bliss Broyard. Excerpted by permission.
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