In no time I reached the studio. At my locker, I changed into yesterday’s tights, which had aired out but should have been cleaned. Splinters fell out of my clothes, from the armpits of my shirt and the seat of my pants. I must have smelled of wood and low tide. Other dancers were warming up with stretches on the floor. I wasn’t too late after all. Maybe I could sweat off the stink of the warehouse, dance with my feet on firm ground, not on creaking floorboards or with anonymous shadows lurking behind crumbling walls. Maybe the aftertaste of sweat, splinters, and Metro’s tangled brown hair would go away. The other dancers wouldn’t suspect a thing, I hoped, prayed. No one would know where I had been.

I stretched onto the floor for a few warm-ups, then stood with my stomach held in tight. My thighs eased open in demi-plié. Next, grand plié. I breathed deeply, calmly, and pulled myself up. On relevé I felt as tall as Metro, my hands as broad as his.

Anna Louise, the dance captain, called us into formation for single-file walks with our knees turned out, chests high. Next we lined up two by two. I found myself opposite another man, and we had to hold hands while doing triplet steps across the floor. For the next round I was with a girl I hadn’t seen before in class, and another black dancer at that. She was shorter than I by a good foot, dark-complexioned with broad hips and close-cropped, boyish hair. But her legs were long, and she was some match for me in the quick, crisp steps we had to execute:

One-two-three  One-two-three
Up-two-three  Down-two-three

Before I had a chance to say hello we were across the floor again with a leap-two-three, leap-two-three. Waltz step, then turns. Between breaths I asked her name. “Ruella,” she said heavily. “Ruella McPhee.”

I reached for her hand and caught her wrist. “I’m Jesse Durand.”

And we were back across the floor. Turns, leaps, waltz steps, and more stretches from head to toe.

Improvisation came next. “Just listen to this song for now, then let the music move you,” said Anna Louise, her hands circling in the air. She held her hips and added, “At first I thought this song was so simple, but then the words and music started to make such terrible sense that I was taken with it completely. Now you try.” She gave each pair of dancers a number.

We were number three.

The song played a second time. It was then that I recognized Nina Simone’s voice crooning from the single phonograph speaker as if it needed more room, was aching for it. Her voice bounced upon the empty walls of the studio. The words were those of Waring Cuney, I later found out, from a poem that still plays in my mind:

She does not know
Her beauty
She thinks her brown body
Has no glory.