Tiny Dancer (22 page)

I lowered my voice. “I thought UNC would be my back up college. You know your parents have made plans for you to go to an Ivy League school. I know what your dad said about me going too. But what if I can’t get in? My college fund is, well, gone.” I had never told her why. She assumed it was due to our current state of poverty. When she did not answer, I said, “It’s only a backup, Claudia. Of course I want to room with you.”

She didn’t speak for about
two minutes, a record for Claudia.

“Don’t be mad,
” I pleaded with her. When she didn’t respond, I said, “I’m taking the bus, of all things.”

“Slumming, are we?
” A bit of a smile appeared.

“See. I knew you’d say that.
Now you know why I didn’t ask you.”

“
But slumming . . . can be fun. Dangerous.” She was intrigued.

“Claudia Johnson on a bus. I can’t imagine it.”

“Try me.”

She had me cornered. “What will you tell Irene?”

She mulled my question for a few seconds. “I can’t think of a thing,” she said with a nervous laugh. “But you’re not roving around UNC with some good looking college tour guide without me.”

“What about shopping for your dress? Remember, the dance?”

She let out an exasperated sigh. “Oh, you’re right.”  She threw up her hands. “But what about you? What will you wear?”

“I’ve got a summer dress. It will be fine
for the dance.”

Finally, and probably for the first time in her life, she acquiesced
, although with a tone of gloom. “My mother won’t hear of me visiting the local universities. I’m predestined for Yale. I can’t go.”

I did not let on how relieved I was to hear her say so.

             
                                                        * * * * *

I waited for the right moment to ask Daddy for bus fare. He sat reading the morning paper Thursday and filling out the daily crossword puzzle. The sun was rising and he was surprised to see me. “Good morning, Miss Flannery. You are indeed up early,” he said.

I warmed up his coffee. “
I need to talk to you. I’ve been thinking about how I might go off to school after I graduate.”

“If this is about Vesta, she did have you
r interests in mind when she dipped into the account.” He still had not looked up from the paper.

I
disregarded his suggestion that my stepmother thought only of me. “If I work harder, I can get a scholarship. They have these scholarships for students who make the grades, but need help with money. I know I can make the grades, Daddy.”

“You can do anything you set your mind to.” He filled in another piece of the crossword.

I told him about the campus visit. “I need bus fare, though. It’s tomorrow.”

T
he tour had me so consumed I nearly forgot who I was meeting after my campus visit was finished.  It was a beautiful campus and I did regret Claudia was not along. She would have enjoyed the pass through the journalism department.

I was given a
tote bag and number and then relegated to a group. After a brief wait, our group was called out into the courtyard. It was a blue-sky day and a bit of breeze seemed to blow in from the coast. A parent or two had accompanied most of the high school students. The tour guide was a graduating senior named Craig. He seemed to note I came alone and paid special attention to me. He made a list of the departments that each student wanted to see. A few of the parents answered for their student. I told him, “Political science.” I had imagined myself as a professor after meeting Dottie. Truth be told, I was still forming what I might do with myself for the rest of my life.

Our guide was expert and good to remember the tour was for the students and not the parents. He gave us a rundown of the activities planned for the new students coming onto campus. I took special note of the sororities and the clubs. Most of the student body was gone for the summer.
Craig addressed me specifically when we entered the poli-sci building. The best part was the tour through the legal research library. Next we toured one of the dormitories and then took a pass through the commons and then the bookstore.

I purchased a guide for planning for a scholarship and then met Craig and the group back out in the commons. He led us back inside the Admissions ha
ll where he filled up our totes with brochures and even an application.

I had minutes to spare before leaving the admissions building and meeting Alice out front. Craig walked me to the front door. “Flannery, it’s noon time and I hate to see you go off alone. I’m meeting the other guides in the commons for lunch. Why don’t you join us?”

Claudia would not understand in the least why I turned him down. He was good looking and smart, confident, and well dressed. “I can’t,” I said. “I’m meeting my mo—” I stopped myself.

“Your mother’s here? She should have joined us. Let’s go and meet her,” he said.

“No, not my mother,” I corrected myself. By now, we were out front. Alice was walking down the sidewalk toward us, but seeming to take in the general beauty of the campus. She wore a pair of white oversized sunglasses and was untying her floral headscarf.

“
My mother’s friend,” I said. “She’s here to show me around town, is all.” I waved, saying, “Alice, over here.” I excused myself and sprinted down the sidewalk.

Alice hugged me, greeting me in warm tones.
“Is he cute,” she said, gazing around me at Craig who waved from the landing.

“Ready to go?” I asked, taking her by the hand and leading her away from the steps of the Admissions office.

She had discovered a neighborhood deli not far from campus. She suggested we walk there. We were seated outdoors directly in front of the restaurant’s plate glass window. She carried a tote too, so we both slid our bags under the table.

Students walked past and some
collected out on the sidewalk. The Carolina Blue Tarheels logo decorated every shop window.

Alice lit a cigarette and offered me one.

“Not for me,” I said. I accepted a menu and ordered an iced tea. She ordered a beer and then a sandwich, telling me her favorite lunch. “Club with extra crispy bacon.”

“Make it two,” I told the waitress.

Suddenly Alice wanted to know everything about me. “What grade will you be in this year?” she asked, her gaze intent, her face so much prettier without the heavy stage make-up. She was dressed in a fashionable pair of white pedal pushers and a bright turquoise blouse, no sign of her seedy night job apparent in her demeanor or attire.

“I’ll be in tenth grade, come fall,” I said.

A faint hint of melancholy seeped into her face, but she pulled herself out of it and asked brightly, “Any boyfriends? Do you date yet?”

“I haven’t met anyone yet I would date,” I said, not at all forthcoming about Billy Thornton because he was
too improbable as a suitor. “Quite a few of my friends are guys. Just friends, though.”

“Good for you,”
she said. “I got into boys way too early, the reason I never fully realized my dreams.”

I felt a strange twinge of resentment
, first of all that she wanted to advise me. Secondly, I could not tell whether or not she was referring to her mistake, that of marrying Daddy while pregnant with me.

“You say you don’t drive yet. When I was your age, I couldn’t wait to start driving. I was too independent to want my mama driving me around town.”

I did not know quite how to answer. When I imagined myself behind the wheel of a car, I felt a rush of anxiety. “There’s plenty of time for that,” I said. “Driver’s ed is this fall at my school. I’ve signed up for it.” Claudia had nagged me into it, for she had gotten her permit the year before.

“Good for you. Under the circumstances, though, I can understand why you’d hesitate to drive for a while,”
she said.

“What circumstances?” I asked, confused since she really knew so little about me.

She leaned back, pushing her brew aside. “I know what happened to you and your sister,” she said so quietly that I had to lean forward to hear her. While she looked deeply sympathetic, I was taken aback. “So you knew?” Since a calamity was normally the thing that drew a mother to her daughter’s side, I couldn’t think of what to say next. Nothing was appropriate, but then that had been the way of things between us since our first meeting.

She
looked away.

“It’s just that, if you knew, it seems you would have come to see me, to check in on me.” A voice inside
begged me to hold back from saying all I was thinking, but out it all spilled. “You knew I was in an accident yet you didn’t visit me in the hospital.”

“It was in the papers after you’d already been released. I’l
l admit, I was in agony not sitting at your side in the hospital.”

“You’ve gotten good at exercising restraint then,”
I said, and then thought, after years of practice.

“I did call the hospital as soon as I read what happened. They’d discharged you, the nurse said. What could I do after all this time? Show up at your door, tell your daddy I was in the neighborhood and wanted to drop by?”

I focused on the student seating himself on the sidewalk a few yards from us with a money pail and a guitar.

“My darling daughter,”
she said, tearing up. “I nearly died that night worried about what was going on, were you hurt?  I didn’t know exactly.”

“I heal fast, Daddy says,”
I said. I was stunned when she brought out such an intentionally cold side of me.

“But you’re here and that’s the good news.” She wiped her eyes, smearing mascara down one cheek. “Your stepmother must be destroyed about
losing her youngest girl,” she said. “Just know she’ll never be the same.”

“Yes, I know.”

She joined me in watching the street musician. It was less awkward than our staring comfortably into one another’s face. The equity between us evaporated with talk of the accident.

I
had managed to organize a weak mental list of things I might ask her while riding the bus from Vineland to Raleigh. “You said you might move to California. Can you tell me about it?”

“It’s a fantasy.” She disregarded the idea altogether.

“Nothing wrong with dreaming,” I said. “What’s wrong with planning for what you want?”

“Aren’t you smart?” she said, pride welling
from her blue eyes. They were the bluest eyes. That was the one memory of her that had not changed. The fact I once danced inside the love of those eyes seemed a million miles from us now. She continued, saying, “I have met someone, a customer at the club.” She hesitated, for something she saw in my face, I guessed. I had none of Claudia’s skills with hiding my feelings. “It’s all respectable between us. I’m not, you know, anything but a dancer. I swear that.” Then she resumed her answer. “But I don’t think he’d follow me to California. He’s got a successful business locally. I don’t know for certain if he’s the one for me.”

I
refrained from asking her about her new boyfriend. A shudder as emotional as the one that went through me when I first laid eyes on her nearly made me sick at my stomach. Could she be Dwight’s girlfriend? I checked my watch. Another hour to go, I realized regrettably.

She
stooped under the table and brought out her red shopping bag. “I know your birthday has just passed,” she said, holding out the shopping bag nervously. “You don’t have to accept these things. I’m not about to start buying your affection after all this time. When I saw it, though, I saw you in it.”

I
thanked her politely. I hardly knew how to accept anything from her. It seemed best to end our meeting and never plan another. But the next thing I knew, she was placing the bag in my outstretched hands. “Should I open it later?”

“Now, if you will,” she said eagerly.

I returned her smile, feeling the strangest round of pity for her. All contempt for her drained from me, for not rescuing me, for not taking me away and being the one thing I imagined a mother should be. Maybe it was because the two of us had suffered enough.

She clapped with glee as if she was suddenly present for my fifth birthday and this was the doll I had asked for that year. Daddy had no sense of b
uying dolls for me. He had given me a jump rope and modeling clay.

I p
ulled out the gift carefully wrapped in tissue paper by the shop clerk. I peeled back the paper and held up the sleeveless dress. “It’s the prettiest dress I’ve ever seen,” I said, noticing her exceptional tastes. I pushed back my chair and stood up, holding the dress in front of me. It was black with tiny seed pearls at the bodice. “It’s backless. I’ve never owned anything like this.” It was far more sophisticated than even the things Irene picked out for me. “You didn’t have to do this,” I said, and looked at her directly. “I don’t expect anything from you.”

“I hope it fits.”

“It will. It’s my size. Good guess,” I said.

“I’m more than a good guesser, my darling. I’m your mother.” She pointed out the
patent leather shoes tucked down inside the bag next to a small ebony clutch. “I actually saw the shoes first. You should be wearing pumps by now. You’ve got the ankles for them. You’ve always had good gams. But they were no good without the pocketbook, you know.”