I was scared. I took my old place at the far end of the second row. Just then my mother walked in, took one look at me, and didn’t say a word. She stared at me the whole time. Elizabeth started: “Shuffle-step, shuffle-step, toe-heel, toe-heel, bend down, shuffle-step.” Her pace got faster and the directions she called out made us tap all off the beat. I had to stop cold when the girls in front backed up and those at the side headed right at me on the kick-two-three, turn-two-three. And if that wasn’t bad enough, poor Elizabeth did the final lunge before the music had finished. Her mother stood up, mouth wide open, steely eyes ready to time-step Elizabeth’s face all knotted up to cry. Everybody looked at them. Me, too. “Well,” she said, turning from the mothers to us and back to the mothers again. “How was my Elizabeth to know? The goddamn record was slow. It wasn’t her fault. Was it, Elizabeth? Stop that crying, Elizabeth, I’m taking you home. These people don’t know anything about dance. Come on.”

Then it was my turn. I was even more afraid. They all watched me, counted on me, and here I was trying to remember the right count. Well, the dance wasn’t perfect, but we stayed in line. Our final lunge-two-three finished with the music. I didn’t take a full breath until the mothers clapped and grinned their approval. My mother smiled that “silent victory” smile of hers and put her arms around my shoulders. The girls giggled and pinched me for luck, and we ran to change into our street clothes. I never heard my mother say a thing to the others. On the day of the recital, Elizabeth took sick. She never came back to our Tuesday-Thursday 3:30 class at Miss Beverly Goldberg’s Contemporary Dance Emporium.

I blinked my head clear and moved on to a yoga headstand. Arms bent in a triangle on the floor, elbows pointed away, legs bent and moving up and up and over the neck. Headstand. Deep breathing. Relief, like salve on feverish skin. And I remembered how my skin cracked and bled. Mama had to coax me to sit in a basin of warm water. I screamed. Phillip rushed in and saw me crying through the hurt of the skin knitting itself back and my legs twitching. Phillip saw me naked and didn’t turn away in disgust at my blistered skin. He loved me like I was and made me feel pretty. Why couldn’t other men be like him?