Ths Dance
The
gymnasium flickers with strobe lights, the DJ plays one rap song
about butts after another, and my twin sister is looking really
weird as she dances. I’ve been sitting here with my back
pressed against the metal planks of the folded-up bleachers for
so long that my bones are starting to hurt and I have to keep
shifting positions, but she’s still bopping back and forth
on the balls of her feet, her body all crooked, totally oblivious.
I can make her out pretty well from here because she’s at
the back of the crowd and there’s an arc of space between
her and the rest of them, an arc like we drew with our protractors
today in math class. She keeps pushing the arc forward as she
dances slowly toward the stage and then gets shoved back again
when some boy or another with a backwards baseball cap trudges
past her, but wherever she goes that radius always follows.
It’s kind of dark, and I’m
too far away to see everyone’s faces, and most of the time
they’re not looking back here anyway. But every now and
then, a head or two along the edge of the arc turns around and
looks at my sister, and I know what to imagine. I know those stupid
faces with their stupid expressions falling all over everyone
else. I know how they’re looking at her and how they’re
laughing. Most of all, I know how much I hate these faces for
her, how much they feel like my own, and how little she seems
to notice or care.
I’m Jessica, and my sister
is Elizabeth. When people hear that, they say, Oh, just like the
Sweet Valley Twins! Except I’m not the popular one, she’s
not the smart one, and neither of us is blonde or pretty. We’re
not even identical. For one thing, Elizabeth is developing faster
than me. Mom always tries to be nice about it, but I wish she’d
pretend not to notice. A few weeks ago, she went shopping with
Elizabeth for a bra and invited me to come along. I said I didn’t
want to go, but she still came back home with some training bras
for me that are just like cut-off undershirts, only with more
lace on them. I told her I didn’t want them, they looked
really lame sitting next to Elizabeth’s Maidenforms in our
drawer, and I put them back in the bag and threw it on her bed,
all ungracious. But maybe it was good that I did that, because
the next day she showed me how to shave my legs, which is something
that Elizabeth doesn’t do because it’s too dangerous.
Elizabeth goes to a different school
than me because she needs special classes. I go to Potomac Middle
School (PMS!), which is in our neighborhood, but she gets bused
out to Woodard Junior High, where they’ve got a learning-assistance
center. Woodard is where we are tonight. It’s only the second
time I’ve been here. The last time I came was on Elizabeth’s
first day of school two months ago, when Mom drove us in an hour
early so I could show her how to use her combination lock and
make sure she knew where homeroom was. There were hardly any students
then, just big echoey halls like I had never seen. Now it doesn’t
look much different than Potomac: girls gossiping, crying, smacking
on more layers of flavored lip-gloss; boys huddling in corners,
headbanging, getting into fistfights. I can even tell the popular
kids from the preppies from the nerds from the goths from the
hippies from the jocks from the skaters and everyone outside and
in between, just by watching.
Elizabeth probably knows most of
the nice community-service types here. This one girl came up to
her when we were buying our tickets and started asking her all
these chirpy questions. She had really big boobs, bigger than
Elizabeth’s and Mom’s put together, and when she realized
that I was Elizabeth’s twin sister, she introduced herself
as Megan Mackelby. Megan said she helped out at Elizabeth’s
lunch table three times a week. I pictured her pushing wheelchairs
around a cafeteria, wiping up drool, making one chirpy conversation
after another, and I was glad that I don’t have to do anything
like that at my school. Last year, when Elizabeth and I were at
Potomac Elementary together, I didn’t even like stopping
by to see her in the special-needs room, and after her teacher
had to keep one of the boys from rubbing up against me for the
third time, no one ever expected me to. Sometimes I wonder how
Elizabeth deals.
* * *
Our favorite things to play used to be library, house, and school,
but I never want to play them anymore. Now, library is where people
pass dirty notes, house is where everyone fights, and school is
just a bunch of bells and lockers. So lately all we do is put
on music. Elizabeth has a silver boom box with a plastic microphone
attached, and sometimes we sing into it, and sometimes we just
swing it around on its cord and dance or laugh. When Elizabeth
really likes a song, her right hand lifts and starts twitching
around about six inches from her nose like it’s possessed.
I jump up and down and do cartwheels. We also do our exercises
to music, lying side by side on the living-room carpet. I have
ten sets of each muscle group every other night for MarVaTeens,
and Elizabeth has calf and hamstring stretches her physical therapist
gives her so she won’t have to be so bent up. I keep telling
Mom that Elizabeth always cheats, but I am just irritating, she
is doing what she can.
Mom thinks I’m the best one to help Elizabeth with lots of things, which is why I’m at this dance. She brought it up real last-minute. We were eating takeout Dungeness crabs for dinner in the kitchen, Dad was away, and the broken carcasses were sprawled all over the newspapered table.
“You two enjoy your music together. I thought this would be a nice sister-sister activity.”
“But Twin Peaks is on TV tonight.”
“And that’s more important than doing something for your sister?”
“What do you mean ‘doing something for your sister’? Elizabeth doesn’t even care. It’s your idea.”
“Jessica, stop. You get to go to your school dances. Don’t you think she should be able to go to hers too?”
“She can go without me.”
“Jessica.”
“What? She can. She’s just as good at it as me.”
Mom put down her wooden mallet, and I could feel her eyes on me. “Listen, do you want to tell me why you have such trouble doing anything nice for anyone lately?”
“It’s not the same, Mom. I like different things now. It isn’t like we used to be.”
“Jessica, you’re her best friend. Elizabeth didn’t choose to be like this.”
“Neither did I!” I stood up as I shouted this, throwing my crumpled napkin onto the pile of fractured shells, tears puddling up in my eyes, and stormed upstairs into my room to change.
* * *
There are eight obvious little cuts on my fingers from the crabs, but I keep inspecting my hands for more, and when it seems like I’ve done that for long enough, I try squeezing and rubbing different sections of my pink Hypercolor T-shirt to see if it’ll change to blue. I’m wearing my coolest outfit because I wanted everyone to think better of Elizabeth, but here in the shadows I guess it’s not making any difference. I was dancing with Elizabeth before, but then a slow song came on and I heard someone mutter lesbian retards, and I decided to go sit down. Maybe no one said it, maybe it’s just what went through my head. Anyhow, Elizabeth kept dancing away, and she hasn’t looked back at me since.
Not until now. The electric slide just came on, and everyone is starting to form themselves into little lines. I hate the song, and I hate the stupid dance everyone’s supposed to do together. But when I see Elizabeth, edged to the far wall by the first wave of side steps, turn toward me in confusion, I’m glad I know how to do it. I push myself up from the waxy floor and join her on the sidelines.
“Ok, here’s how it goes.” I stand facing her and wait for the beat. “Step-slide, step-slide, step, clap.” We start to move to my left, to her right, and she gets everything wrong but the clap. Then her hand starts to twitch like crazy. <
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About the Author
Jennie Berner is pursuing a Ph.D. in creative writing at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her work has recently appeared in Crazyhorse and The Journal.
