At ten years old, it felt as though I spent my whole summer dancing in Sonya’s living room, trying to memorize the strength of her fingers and the flatness of her palms. They were different when we danced, not the tight, clenched hands on a pencil during math tests, or the careless fingertips twirling through her shiny black hair, but sharp and precise, twisting and flashing tanned wrists and slender fingers. I held my arms still, flexing tiny muscles so that my forearms might appear sleek and electric. I concentrated on the blue veins running up the underside of my forearm, waiting for the music to begin. The Indian songs were a rush, a sweeping wave, a swirl of high-pitched words in Gujarati, Sonya’s other language. We shook our hips for eight counts, then stepped rapidly on the balls of our feet, criss-crossing each other, socks gripping into the shaggy brown carpet.
“I wish we had a mirror here,” Sonya complained, out of breath. “It’s hard to do this dance without practicing in front of one.” I shook my head at her gyrating back and watched her arms swirl in tight circles above her head. I had vowed, ever since we’d started these dancing lessons, never to watch myself dance next to Sonya. The reality of it—my awkward rhythms, her graceful steps—would ruin the picture I had created: my feeble, wobbly hands cupped as if balancing a precious pearl in each, my feet tan and bare, stepping in and out of pure white sand. When I danced with Sonya I was in India, among the gods and goddesses, smiling near beautiful children just like my friend. When I followed her lead it was as if she was taking me through her country: we stopped in cities with fantastic names, like Jaipur, Bhopal and Lucknow. In my dreams, I wore a plain, long skirt and Sonya was wrapped in a brilliant red sari; we danced in the street, and people came out of their homes to clap and marvel at me, a white girl, dancing just like Sonya.
When the music stopped, we sat on the floor, legs sprawled under the coffee table we had pushed aside. Sonya translated some of the lyrics, but I didn’t listen. Connecting words like beauty and desire and love to those in the song only made the rhythms sound ordinary and stagnant. Those English words took me nowhere. I listened to the language of an unknown land, supple and pristine. I listened to the words of Sonya’s parents and grandparents, of gold elephant statues and goddesses on the mantle. I listened to the words of Gujarat, a place in India that my best friend sometimes called home. Sonya took my hand in hers and we practiced my favorite dance without music. We rose and fell like dolphins in and out of the sea. I was brought there.
§
We started fifth grade at our Catholic school in the fall. As gold and red leaves kicked and swirled in the wind, Indian songs rolled through my head, joyous beats that matched the summer sun and hues, not this sudden stinging cold. The high-pitched voices of Gujarati singers stayed with me through religion class, as we learned about the Holy Trinity: three Gods meshed into one. Our teacher told us this was a difficult concept, so she repeated it over and over. I pictured three heads in one body, but shook off the image, knowing, somehow, that this monster was not what Mrs. Gataroska had meant. So I tried to imagine face upon face upon face: three layers making up one belief. As I puzzled over this, folding and tracing ghoulish features over and into each other, I looked at Sonya, two rows over. Her head was in her hands, eyes wide with curiosity, listening with the luxury of believing this education was a myth, while the rest of us must absorb it as true and unbending. I imagined Sonya’s religion—gods and goddesses roaming the golden land, as bright as the sari I had only seen Sonya wear once on Halloween. These powerful, playful figures made her curve and twist her hands, jiggling golden bracelets. To me, all Sonya had to do was lift her leg and clap her hands over her head, as if she were a sorceress luring a snake from a basket, to be favored and loved by her many higher beings.
That weekend I couldn’t sleep over at Sonya’s house because she had a dance competition in the morning. I wanted to watch her dance with the other girls, with bright costumes and big smiles, but the competition was too far away, her parents told mine. My mom drove me to the dress rehearsal the night before. In the practice room, the whirls of yellow and orange costumes stirred the air around me. The room smelled fresh and wooden, not like curry and warm spices, as it did at Sonya’s house. The mirror worried me at first (would I have to look at myself, in jeans and a T-shirt, next to these girls?). But no, I sat against the mirror and watched. Sonya and her friends smiled coyly, carving circles with their wrists, inviting their reflections to come a little closer. I had assumed Sonya would be the best dancer, but each girl had her own charm, some with soft, wistful movements, others with more force, thrusting and stomping. During the break, the girls gossiped about the boys in the next room. I heard their feet stamping as if they were warriors beating drums, preparing for battle.
In church that Sunday, my family and I sat in the pews on the side of the altar with the other families and couples that felt out of place and snuck out after Communion. I tried to listen to Father Anderson’s homily, but really I was wondering if Sonya would have sat in the side pews with my family, or in the front rows, close to the altar. Would she rather associate with the mothers and fathers who gave donations in the form of special checks already made out to the church when the collection baskets came around, as my mother scrambled for change? But these thoughts were fruitless. Sonya would never need to be here at all. I was worried that she would rather spend time with her Indian friends, that they somehow knew a special part of her that I could never reach.
§
That fall, it seemed as though I spent every afternoon at Sonya’s house or listening to her voice over the phone, gossiping about the popular boys in our class, boys she was friends with and I was not. They fascinated me, though. I saw these scrawny, pale boys everyday and couldn’t believe their hands had reached under the shirts of Angela Pagano and Shea Roth, that they had slipped away during an intramural basketball game and kissed. Sloppy and wet, was John’s report. The phone cord tangled and twirled from the kitchen to the family room, looping around wooden chairs and a love seat to me, curled up with my shirt over my knees, cackling at the goings on of my classmates.
There were sleepovers—dramatic affairs filled with streaming tears and red, blotchy eyes. Sonya mediated between Shea and Angela, Danielle and Marlena, while I just watched, not knowing what to say to these shattered girls, their emotions mangled and exposed next to our New Kids on the Block sleeping bags. These girls trusted Sonya to solve their disagreements—words behind another’s back, stealing the affection of a sixth grade boy. Perhaps we listened to Sonya because she had older friends and so had experience with this kind of drama. Perhaps she just exuded maturity. But I think we truly saw her as removed from the concerns of the sixteen white girls in our class. She was just like us but more, with an extra layer that allowed her into our circle and caused her to stand above us, too. She learned about our religion everyday, but also had her own. She ate pizza and cookies like us, but her mom cooked tangy, spicy Indian foods with strange colors and textures every night. She was our friend, but she had Indian friends, too: older boys and girls who did more than reach under shirts and kiss. Sonya had two worlds. We just had one.
Eventually, Linda or Stacy would call for peace, asking that we all forgive each other and go to sleep. But I never went to sleep. Sonya and I stayed up and watched the sunrise, then looked at the dreaming faces of our once desperately wronged girlfriends. All would be well in the morning.
§
In the spring, Mrs. Gataroska announced that there would be a carnival at our school in July to raise money for improvements to the church. In the middle of the carnival, surrounded by rides like the Tilt-A-Whirl and the Ring of Fire, by games of chance and fried dough stands, would be a stage. They needed student performers. Sonya and I and two friends signed up. That summer, we danced, practicing on the deck in my backyard or in Sonya’s living room. We incorporated Sonya’s Indian dancing along with the moves on MTV videos and anything else we could come up with. As a break, we played songs we had taped from the radio: Criss-Cross, Robin S., Snow. We sang along, choreographing in our heads, sprawling on the grass, our bodies lean and tan. Finally, on stage, we rolled our wrists to the rhythms of Paula Abdul and Janet Jackson and slid our legs forward then back, causing the panel floorboards to creak beneath us. We blended two worlds to perform in front of audiences holding giant teddy bears like trophies, dizzy from the Gravitron. I was dizzy with dancing. I didn’t want it to end.
Sonya spent the whole month of August in India with her parents, visiting family. I missed her large brown eyes when she was gone. I missed imagining India in the movement of my wrist, the sliding of my feet. I wouldn’t dance alone, in my hot living room, without Sonya to follow and dance next to. I needed that energy, that other rhythm, to be brought there. In Church, my mind drifted during the homily, as usual. But during this month without Sonya I tried to imagine her in Gujarat, the real place and not the one of my dreams—poverty, dirt, noxious smells. But I couldn’t get a clear picture. I drifted back to the fantasy, the toes resting on sand, the music of Sonya’s living room playing throughout the country. It was a picture that made me smile and feel juvenile. Perhaps Sonya would return changed, matured. I would have to give up these dreams of India.
When Sonya finally came back, she was darker than I had ever seen her. The whites of her eyes bulged against her brown eyes and face, her cheekbones prominent and deeply red. She said she learned a lot in India, like not to take things for granted, simple things, like running water and the foods we loved to eat together: Domino’s pizza and Entenmann’s chocolate chip cookies. I took those things for granted, but looked at them differently now, as a part of something that was mine, and perhaps, did not belong to her.
§
In September, Sonya’s sister got married to a white Jewish man from Massachusetts. My family and I were invited to the reception and a dancing ceremony a week prior. I learned the dance quickly: tap sticks lightly with the person across from you, spin around and do it again. The room was filled with circles of dancers. Older women wore saris; girls and boys wore jeans and polo shirts. Young and old mixed in these circles of dancing sticks. The music was only a rhythm underneath our clanking and banging; the one initial beat from which we all began. My parents smiled at me from the sideline, talking to Sonya’s parents. I was videotaped twirling and banging, laughing and spinning. For a moment, I felt a part of Sonya’s world.
At the wedding reception, Sonya told me that during the ceremony, her sister had rode in on an elephant, like she would have done in India. For the first time I doubted her. I couldn’t picture an elephant walking into the Sheridan Hotel. I tried to forget about it and met more of her friends. They wore slinky black dresses and smiled at me. They smiled at everyone, especially the boys in suits. The boys didn’t see me; I was invisible in my white Confirmation dress, shiny and pristine, so unlike the slender brown skin covered in tight black. Sonya and her friends danced to Indian songs. Even though I knew the moves, I didn’t join in. The boys whistled, their faces rapt in attention, knees jerking to the beat. I imagined an elephant leading all of these dancing girls to the man of their choice, traveling through white sand covered in plush red carpet.
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In seventh grade, I heard Sonya’s tales from Indian get-togethers at recess. We walked around the perimeter of the school grounds, passing boys playing wall ball and girls practicing their cheerleading moves. Our pea coats flapped in the wind, our faces stern as Sonya relayed the stories of her weekend at this or that ceremony, dance performance, banquet dinner, with all of her friends and their families. Two boys, Tuppan and Nevish, fought over Sonya. They were older boys, fifteen.
I marveled at her stories from this other world. It was like a soap opera, or a musical, since there was always dancing. There was always drama, too, but not the petty kind from our sleepovers. This drama spoke of a world to come, a world I was not yet welcome in: the world of flirtation and femininity, lust and desire. I knew nothing of this personally, could only try to feel it through the songs we listened and danced to, could only try to show it through the movement of my body. But I wasn’t there yet.
I felt a flutter deep inside my chest when Sonya mentioned these parties, these boys, her pressure to choose between them. When she described Tuppan’s jealousy or Nevish’s charm, I tried not to express this quiet tinge. I wasn’t jealous. I thought she deserved this attention; she was more mature and beautiful than the boys in our class, anyway. So it wasn’t that. Sonya’s outer layer, that covering that gave her people to dance with and for, was slowly breaking us apart.
Soon, when Sonya chose Tuppan, we ended our dancing. We were getting too old for it, anyway. She still told me stories about her new boyfriend at recess, along with the other girls who eventually broke away from cheerleading practice and joined our walks along the playground. We swooned at her stories, imagining this dark, beautiful couple on the brink of something grand. I would lose her to this other world, I knew. I also knew I should end my dreams of India, those childish fantasies of magic and gold, but they crept back once in a while, when I watched Sonya during religion class, or noted the way basketballs clung to her long, slender fingers like magnets. When we talked about the latest hits on the radio, I remembered our dancing days, the way I suddenly became a part of her world, and then, when the music stopped, just as suddenly returned to the brown couches and carpet of Sonya’s living room. I had felt changed, satisfied, ready for the next song to begin.
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Jillian Schedneck recently graduated with an MFA in creative writing. In the fall, she’s moving to the United Arab Emirates to teach for Abu Dhabi University. Her other essays have appeared in The Common Review, Brevity and Alligator Juniper.
