Bruised Feet

Centuries ago, in northern Africa the natives held moonlight dances. These dances went late into the night until the stars faded and sunlight spilled over the village. It was well known that on a rare occasion a performer would become transcendent. One of the dancers would become more then a dancer. Time would sort of slip away and the dancer would be illuminated from above and bellow. Their movements, the rhythm of their body illuminated with divinity. The people, the villagers would see this and they would clap their hands together and shout, Allah! Allah!

They’re faces would light up and they would point and shout, God! God! The people would gaze at a glimpse of something indescribable. Some fragment of divinity escaping into their world.

But the question isn’t how this happened, for the dancer was never moving any differently or dancing better or stronger than anyone else. The question is how the dancer coped with the rest of their life. How they lived into the next day and onto the next week, knowing that they had, for an instance, been a brush stroke of God. Knowing they had been the breathe of the Allah. Knowing that their best work was behind them. Haunted by the idea that their dancing would forever be compared to one transcendent moment. One moment where hands clapped and voices shouted under the stars and in the darkness, Allah! Allah! God! God! 

The room shook as she danced. The movements of her body were soft, unspoken yet their importance tested the foundation of the building. The hardwood planks rattling as her toes pressed and leapt off of their surface. Toes worn by years and years of calluses on top of calluses. Feet blistered from dancing barefoot. Because beauty comes from pain. Because creativity and suffering are directly correlated. 

            Her foot arches, balancing her body weight as she rises, lifting her arms above her head and tilting her chin back. Never opening her eyes. Never experiencing reality, instead, existing in the darkness of her minds eye where she imagines an empty room. A floor, a ceiling and four walls that stir with her every stride and leap. A dark, quiet place that shudders under her Richter Scale steps. Where small cracks run through the cement under her bruised feet, threading up the dry wall and into the ceiling until bits of molding and paint shower into her thick hair. Until the chandelier crashes onto the floor, sending shards of glass into every corner of the empty room.

            In the darkness of her minds eye she dances until the roof caves in and the walls crumble under the weight of the collapsing debris. The floorboards splinter as she spins and spins. Her body language, the words that pour from her legs and torso aren’t harsh or damaging. The room isn’t falling apart under her force or fury; it’s falling apart under her elegance. Under her artistry.

            For the four walls, floor and ceiling aren’t victims of her craft; they are bowing in its presence. She dances until the room is ruble. Until the frame and insulation are stomped to dust under the balls of her feet. Until all she sees in her mind’s eye is darkness. Then that world fades. She sense that the music has stopped and when she opens her eyes, the crowd that fills the grand hall is standing and applauding. The rows of people dressed in suits and gowns are drowning out the empty darkness with their approval. A standing ovation. Roaring praise.

            “Bravo!” they shout, “Bravo!”

            “I can’t seem to get it right,” Selita says into the phone receiver that’s pressed between her ear and shoulder as she folds a pile of clothes into a duffle bag, “I still owe shit on my school loans and I can barley pay for this condo…”

            Her hands crease the fabric of a sequin Moschino blazer slowly as she listens to the voice on the other line. She’s sitting on her bed, lying against the headboard and nodding to the voice, saying, “no- no- I get that”, and her eyes, they’re moving over the details of her closet. Her Moncler fur tipped down coat. Her Marc Jacobs knit cardigan. The Elie Tahari belted dress she got for her best friend’s engagement dinner. The Pink Tartan ruffle sleeve dress she got for her other best friend’s baby shower.     

            “No I know. Dad, I get that, I am just…” she pauses to stand and flip through the hangers. Her fingers moving over the designer threads, “…I am just frustrated. I don’t feel like a grown up. I don’t feel like an adult. It’s insulting- I just saw things going differently.”  

            She listens half attentively to her father’s voice telling her everything is going to be okay. Saying, “You just have to keep working” Saying, “It takes time” Saying, “We love you” 

You know that conversation. The one where you dialog a problem again and again, praying that in the unraveling of every piece some answer will surface. The conversation of self-doubt. Self pity. Selita was making this conversation a regular habit. She couldn’t pretend like she wasn’t fishing for compliments. Fishing for attention. Whatever number she dialed, the voice on the other line used adjectives like “gifted” or “inspirational” or “angelic” to describe her.

“I am not talking about me as a dancer.” She would snap, “I am talking about me as a person- as a women. A modern women.”

            It was a conversation she was having more and more often. At least once a day. Voices on the other line saying she has no reason to be unhappy. Saying, “You’re like a local celebrity” Saying that she just needs to stay focused. Saying, “Just be patient”

            Selita knew her lines. Memorized her replies. Her defense. “I am not going to be young forever.” She’d argue, “I am wasting time when I could be having a real career.” “Making real money”

            This back and forth could go on forever. Like talking down a jumper from a balcony, her friends would plead Selita to back away from the edge. Begging her to back away from a fall into self-regret and missed opportunity. 

            “Sometimes I think about going back to school,” she says into the phone to her father, tucking a rolled up pair of black, ruffled Betsey Johnson leggings into the duffle bag, “maybe getting a law degree.”

            Selita’s father, a Black American history professor had published dozens of essays and articles dedicated to the empowerment of Black culture. Most recently he spent a year away from the family working as a guest curator at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and had in turn been drafting an article for The Washington Post detailing the exhibit. Selita’s ambition had strewn from his DNA.

            “You’re Mother and I,” the voice says on the other line, “we think that maybe you should move back here. Back home. Maybe figure out whatever this is that’s stopping you from being happy.”

            She hears her father’s voice but his words, they slip from her grasp. They float off, penetrating no place in her mind. Taking no foothold in the conversation.

            “I could see why you’d say that and I appreciate it.” She mutters, tucking a pair of YSL slingback heels into the duffle bag, “but I think I just need some time to myself.”

             Her words, they drift away with no emotional barring. She has been putting on this production for weeks now and the script no longer holds any weight.

            “I am lost.” She says, “I am lost and dancing is getting further and further away. It’s not going to support a family. Dancing isn’t going to win me a Pulitzer or a Nobel Peace Prize. It’s selfish. To waste all that time. How do you dance knowing you’re only going down hill? You’re only getting older? My dancing just feels like some ghost that keeps evading me. Something from my past I want to bring to life. How do you dance when all of your friends have kids and houses and husbands and jobs? How do you dance in the real world?”

            “But that’s not true,” her father argues, “You know that’s not true. Think about you’re life, how many people you’ve genuinely impacted with that kind of art. I’ve seen grown men in tears. I’ve heard people say that they have never seen anything so beautiful. I remember when you were a little girl, six, maybe seven, you said that you wanted to help people and I asked you how you were going to do that and you said with movement. At six years old you said that. Doesn’t that mean anything? How can you give up on being that kind of inspiration to people? How is that not selfish?”

                His words float out of the receiver and off into nowhere. Her hands clutch her Nanette Lepore lace dress. The duffle bag is almost full. Her eyes move over a closet of empty hangers. A numbness spills over her body, beginning in her neck and moving in waves down her forearms and fingers, over her breasts and down through her thighs and feet. Bruised feet. Because creativity and suffering are directly linked.

            “Maybe all I can do,” she says softly, “maybe all anyone can do is accept their moment of glory and move on. Maybe knowing that you’re best is behind you isn’t a curse. Maybe it’s freedom.”

            And maybe it was luck or fate or something else entirely but, sitting against her headboard, staring into her empty closet Selita knew this was the last time she would have to have this conversation. She had reached the end. She zipped up her duffle bag, said goodbye to her father, hung up the phone and left her condo.