If she could dance
Naked
Under palm trees
And see her image in the river
She would know.

I looked at Ruella and smiled. My knees were already moving with what I wanted to say. Ruella was tapping her feet. The song spoke to her too.

But there are no palm trees
On the street
And dish water gives back no images.

I thought of our house back in Hartford and my mother Jessica, who named me. She made me and my older brother Charlie wash dishes on alternate nights. We’d still fight over whose turn it was. My father made us shovel snow, take out the garbage in the cold, wash the car, scrub the kitchen floor, rake leaves into a pile, but we’d jump in it and have to rake them up again. I didn’t mind the kitchen work, but I hated the outside chores. “Work builds character,” my father always said. But he stopped preaching that line when he noticed my preference for baking cakes and polishing silverware.

As the song ended plaintively, Simone’s voice lifted high in arabesque, her throaty tones like a bridge to cross.

When our turn came, Ruella and I held each other at arm’s length and circled slowly, measuring our steps and each other. Our heads leaned in and out from the center between us. Our bodies came close. We were drawn into the music and the pain in Simone’s voice. Our bodies were swaying, singing. I broke the circle of our arms, held Ruella in slight elevation, then eased her down. I spun away and halted in demi-plié. She leaped in small quick steps, then faced me. I lifted her straight up, felt myself lifting, too. I brought her down slowly, carefully, my hands broad about her waist. We stood side by side and bent legs, arms, and thighs into a heap upon the floor. Her head eased into my arms; our faces touched, hair caressed. We were almost one head. We broke free and ran from each other like frightened children. I curled into a ball and shot up in arabesque. Ruella leaped high, then stood stock still. Our hands reached out, held on, turned with open palms to the other dancers watching us. Our waists swayed, curled, stretched like whispers. Our bodies had voices of their own, and they hushed into quiet. We sank into a pile, rose up close together. Our tights made our thighs one black pillar, and our Afros became one huge head. We inched into separate positions, our hands and eyes holding onto one another. The song ended with our standing back to back like a Janus mask, facing both sides of the room at once; one looking up and ahead, the other up and behind. Quickly, on the beat, we changed sides for the last wailing chord, then held firm as two sides of one body, one voice, both of us dancing from whatever we made visible on the floor.