She was on stage at the age of five dancing on pointe and as cute as a sugar plum fairy there amongst the fire eaters and performing dogs. Her father was Doctor Memory and the audience challenged him to remember names and numbers and poems and speeches and fifteen people would shout their birthdays at him and he would tell them back in any order. Her mother was a contortionist who would arrange her limbs in a most unnerving sequence then stick her pretty head out somewhere quite unexpected. ``How could her head be there?'' the audience would say. ``If that's her bottom there, how could her head be where it is?''
And the girl grew up with some of her mother's flexibility and some of her father's memory and she danced with such grace because her body knew exactly where each piece of her was. Her ears as compared to her collar bones, her big toe to her ankle, her elbow to her hand and the people loved her and cheered her coming and going. She danced until her toes squished in the blood collecting in her shoes and then she kept on dancing.
Until she was twelve.
When she was twelve she still knew exactly where each piece of her was. She still knew exactly what she looked like from every angle. But she no longer liked what she saw. She saw lumps and bumps. She saw little bits of fat on her thighs. It was the twenties and who wanted the inconvenience of breasts? But there they were. She flattened herself with wide ribbons bound around her chest. Now when she danced she imagined the audience seeing her new bumps, her bad skin. There were younger dancers now, charming the pants off everyone. The applause was fading. She did not have her father's memory, her mothers contortionist skills. She could not sing. She just went on dancing.
Learned tap from the Nicholas brothers. Learned Apache dancing. Learned to Tango. Learned to Tango alone, to lean back in the embrace of one unseen. To flaunt and taunt an unseen lover. When she swept the stage in an elegant fox-trot you could almost see her partner there - tell what he was wearing and how much brilliantine was on his hair. She knew what he looked like. Valentino crossed with Astaire. And he loved her, she knew that. And that made the bulges OK. Because he loved her and he was Valentino and Astaire.
The trouble was he wouldn't leave her alone. Came off stage with her and bothered her. Followed her on the street and whined for money. Sometimes she'd scream at him and people would stare and once she got picked up for public drunkenness. ``You wouldn't exist if it wasn't for me,'' she yelled. ``Don't kid yourself,'' the cop said, taking it personally.
She took to fighting with him on stage. Shrugging away from him in the tango. Kicking his butt in the Charleston. Twirling out of his arms in the foxtrot. The audience loved it. They cheered her on.
One evening during the late show he flounced off stage and never returned.
She no longer cared. She loved to dance alone.