Dancing Girls

by Margaret Atwood

  Jordan River is chilly and cold,

  Hallelujah,

  Chills the body but not the soul,

  Hallelujah.

  “Your name is the name of a famous river,” he told her. He hoped she would be pleased by that. He wondered if her parents had known about her, about what she was going to be like, when they named her, and whether they’d felt later that the expensive-sounding name was wasted because she would never match it, never sip cocktails on a terrace or smile like Grace Kelly in cool lipstick. But they must have known; it said in her file that it was a birth defect. She had one brother and one sister, both normal, and her father was something in a bank.

  Sometimes, thinking of the catastrophe ahead of him, his failure and his flight, he thought about taking her with him. That was her clinging to his neck as he scrambled up the boxcar (but she couldn’t cling!), she was with him in the hotel room when he woke up, sitting in her chair (how had he got her there?), looking into his eyes with her icy blue ones, her face miraculously still. Then she would open her mouth and words would come out, she would stand up, he would somehow have cured her.… Sometimes, very quickly (and he would repress it immediately) he would see both of them hurtling from the top of a building. An accident, an accident, he would tell himself. I don’t mean that.

  Jordan River is chilly and wide,

  Hallelujah,

  Rob crooned. He was heading for a bench, there was one up ahead, where he could sit and they could have their game of checkers.

  “Hey, look at this.” It was Bert’s glass case. “Shelf fungus,” he read from the typed card. “There are several species of shelf fungus. The shelf fungus is a saprophyte which feeds on decaying vegetable matter and can often be found growing on dead trees. You can write your name on the bottom with a stick,” he said. He used to do that at the cottage, without removing the fungus from the tree, and it gave him pleasure to think of his name growing in secret, getting a little bigger every year. It was hard to tell whether or not she was interested.

  He found the bench, turned Jordan to face it and unfolded the board. “I was red last time,” he said, “so you get it this time, okay?” There was one checker missing, on her side. “We’ll use something else,” he said. He looked around for a flat stone, but there wasn’t one. Finally he pulled a button off his shirtsleeve. “That okay?” he said.

  Jordan’s hand moved yes. He began the laborious trial-and-error process of determining how she wanted to move. He would point at each checker in turn until she signalled. Then he would point to each possible square. They could get through a game a lot faster now that he was used to playing this way. Her face would fold and unfold, screw itself up, twitch, movements he found distressing in the other CP children still, but not in her. Concentrating made her worse.

  They had hardly gone through the opening moves when the bell sounded from the main building. That meant the Play Period was over and it was time for the afternoon group activities. Jordan, he knew, had swimming with the rest of her cabin. She couldn’t swim, but someone held her in the water, where her movements, they said, were more controlled than on land. He himself was supposed to help with Occupational Therapy. “Mud pies,” the boys in his cabin called it. They liked making obscene statues out of clay in order to shock Wilda, the OT instructor, who wanted so much to be able to tell them they were being creative.

  Rob put his shirt button into his pocket. He took out the notebook they used and marked down their respective positions. “We’ll finish it tomorrow,” he told Jordan. He wheeled her along the path in the same direction they’d been going, which would get them back sooner, since they were three-quarters of the way around the oval already.

  To the north side of the cement path there was a clearing, a stretch of grass and across it the silver of water: the stream that was always there, usually a sluggish trickle but swollen now by last night’s rain. Rob thought, She’s probably never felt grass before, she’s probably never had her hand in a real stream. He suddenly wanted to give her something that no one else ever had, that no one else would ever think of.

  “I’m going to take you out,” he told her. “I’m going to put you down on the grass, so you can feel it. Okay?”

  There was a hesitation before she signalled yes. She was looking into his face; perhaps she didn’t understand. “It’s fun,” he told her, “it feels nice,” thinking of the many times he had sprawled on the lawn of the back garden, eight or ten years ago, chewing on the white soft ends of grass blades and reading the almost-forbidden Captain Marvel comic books.

  He unbuckled the straps that held her in and lifted her thin body. She was so light, lighter even than she looked, a creature of balsa wood and paper. But tough, he told himself. She could take it, you could see it in her eyes. He put her down on the grass, on her side, where she could see the flowing stream.

  “There,” he said. He knelt beside her, took her left hand and put it into the cold stream. “That’s real water, not like a swimming pool.” He smiled, feeling magnanimous, a giver, a healer; but she had closed her eyes, and from somewhere a curious sound, a whine, a growl … Her body was limp, her arm jerking; suddenly her leg shot out and her foot in its steel-crusted boot kicked him in the shin.

  “Jordan,” he said. “Are you all right?” More growling: was it joy or terror? He couldn’t tell, and he was frightened. Maybe this was too much for her, too exciting. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her up to put her back into the chair. The grass had been damper than he’d thought, and the right side of her face was streaked with mud.

  “What the hell are you doing with that child?” Pam’s voice behind him. Rob turned, still holding Jordan, who was thrashing her arms like a propeller gone crazy. Pam was standing on the cement walk, hands on her hips, the posture of an accusing mother coming upon the children playing Doctor in the bushes. Her face was red, her hair mussed, as if she’d been running. There was a twig dangling above her ear.

  “Nothing,” Rob said, “I was just.…” She thinks I’m some kind of a pervert, he saw, and felt himself blushing. “I thought she would like to see what the grass felt like,” he said.

  “You know that’s dangerous,” Pam said. “You know she isn’t supposed to be taken out. She could hit her head, injure herself …”

  “I was watching her the whole time,” Rob said. Who was she to be bossing him around like this?

  “I think you spend far too much time with that child,” Pam said, less angry now but definitely not convinced by his explanation. “You should spend more time with some of the others. It’s not good for them, you know, forming … attachments … that can’t possibly be kept up after camp.” Jordan’s eyes were open now; she was looking at Rob.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Rob said, almost shouted. “How do you know, you don’t know …” She was accusing him, in advance, of betraying Jordan, abandoning her.

  “Don’t get your girdle in a knot about it,” Pam said. “But I think you should have a word with Bert, after Staff Lounge tonight. I’ve discussed this problem with him already.”

  She turned away from him and walked quickly off towards the main house. On the back of her Bermuda shorts there was a small patch of wet mud.

  Rob buckled Jordan back into the chair. This problem. Why was it a problem? There wasn’t much time, he would be assigned to other children, discouraged from seeing her, and she would think.… What could he say to her, how convince her? He knelt in front of her, resting his arms on the chair tray, and took hold of her left hand.

  “I’m sorry if it frightened you, being on the ground,” he said. “Did it?” Her hand did not move. “Don’t pay any attention to what Pam just said. I’m going to write you letters after camp, lots of letters.” Would he? “And someone at your house can read them to you.” But of course they might forget, or lose the letters. In PreMeds, dissecting corpses, would he have time to remember her? Her eyes watched his face. She could see through him.

  “I’m
going to give you something special,” he told her, casting around desperately for something to give. He searched his pocket with his free hand. “This is my button, and it’s magic. I wore it on my shirt cuff like that just to keep it disguised.” He placed it in her hand, folded the fingers around it. “I’m giving it to you, and whenever you see it.…” No, that wouldn’t do; someone was bound to find it in her pocket and throw it out, and she would have no way of explaining. “You don’t even have to see it, because it’s invisible sometimes. All you have to do is think about it. And every time you think about it, you’ll know I’m thinking specially about you. Okay?” He’d tried to make it as convincing as possible, but she was probably too old and too bright, she probably knew he was just trying to reassure her. In any case, she moved her hand yes. Whether it was real belief or embarrassed kindness he could never know.

  After OT Rob went back to his own cabin, to help with the predinner change into clean clothes that Bert felt was good for morale. The boys were unusually boisterous, but it was probably only his own anxiety and need for peace that made them seem that way. Or it might have been the show that was being put on that evening, by a number of the seniors. All of these boys were in it, even Pete, who was going to be the MC, with a mike strapped to his shoulder near his mouth. None of the ordinary counsellors were involved; they and the younger children were to be the audience, while Scott and Martina, Drama and Dance respectively, ran the show. Rob knew the boys had been practising for two weeks at least, but he had not been interested enough to ask them what the show was about.

  “Lemme borrow your zit cream.”

  “Wouldn’t do you any good, pusface.”

  “Yeah, he’s got pimples on his pimples.”

  “You spaz!” A scuffle.

  “Cut that out, prickhead!”

  Rob wondered if he could be transferred to another cabin. He was helping Dave Snider into his clean shirt, a pink one with charcoal stripes (“Cheap,” his mother’s voice said), when Gordon strolled into the cabin, late. Rob suspected him of thumbing into town for a quick drink in the beer-parlour, which wasn’t choosy about your age. He had been late a number of times recently, leaving Rob to attempt control of the cabin single-handed. He looked very smug; he didn’t reply to the admiring mock cheers that always accompanied his entrances, but dug into his pocket and, very casual, very cool, draped something over his bedpost. A pair of black panties, with red lace edges.

  “Hey! Wow! Hey, Gord, whose are they?”

  Out with the comb, patting the blond pompadour into place. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

  “Hey, come on, Gord, eh Gord?”

  “Hey, no fair, Gord! Bet you stole ’em from the laundry!”

  “Take a look, smart boy. They’re not from any laundry.”

  Dave wheeled over and grabbed the panties. He stuck them on his head and circled the cabin floor. “Mickey Mouse, Mickey Mouse,” he sang. “Forever let us hold our whammers high.… Hey Groaner, you wanna try em on? Bet they’d fit, you got a big head.”

  Other hands snatched at the panties. Rob left the room, went down the hall into the washroom. They must have been in the woods, near him, near Jordan. Her outrage, lecturing him like that with the twigs still in her hair, what gave her the right? Mud on her rump.

  His face, his nice face, bland and freckled, framed in neatly trimmed sandy hair, watched him from the mirror. He would have preferred a scar, a patch over one eye, sunburned wrinkles, a fang. How untouched he looked, like the fat on uncooked bacon: nobody’s fingerprints on him, no dirt, and he despised this purity. At the same time he could never be like the others, gloat over some woman’s musky underpants. Maybe I’m not normal, he thought with gloomy pride.

  After the chaos and mess of dinner had been endured, Rob went to the auditorium with the others. The stage, which was like a school stage except for the ramps at either side, had its red curtains closed. There were no chairs. Those in wheelchairs didn’t need them, and the others sat on the floor, wherever they liked. Rob sought out Jordan and moved closer to her. He prepared to applaud, dutifully, whatever was set before him.

  The lights in the room dimmed, there was some fumbling behind the curtains, and Pete in his chair was pushed out by several pairs of hands. The audience clapped, some cheered. Pete was quite popular.

  “Don’t push me off the edge, you spaz,” he said into the mike, which got a laugh from some of the older boys. He was wearing a vaudeville straw hat with a red crêpe-paper band, and someone had glued a false moustache unevenly to his upper lip.

  “Ladies and gents,” he said. He made his moustache wiggle at one side, then at the other, and the younger children giggled. At that moment Rob almost liked him. “This here is the Fair-Eden Follies, and you better believe it, anyways, we all did a lot of falling down practising it.” His voice went serious. “We’ve all worked hard to make this a good show, and I want you to give a big hand to the first number, which is – a square dance, by the Fair-Eden Wheeler Dealers. Thank you.”

  Pete was jerked backwards, became briefly entangled, and disappeared. After a pause the curtains parted haltingly. In front of a brown-paper backdrop with a poster-painted apple tree and a cow, four boys and four girls faced each other in standard-square dance formation. They were all in wheelchairs, without the trays.

  The girls were two polio cases and two paraplegic CPs. They were wearing lipstick and had red paper bows at the necks of their white blouses; their emaciated legs and braces were hidden by long printed cotton skirts, and one of them, the one without the glasses, was astonishingly pretty. Dave Snider was the front corner boy. Like the others, he had on a Western string tie and a cardboard cowboy hat. The dancers looked self-conscious, but proud. None of them was smiling.

  Martina was off to the side, with the primitive record player. “Now,” she prompted, and the scratchy fiddle music started up. She clapped her hands in time. “Honour your partners,” she called, and the two lines bowed to each other from the waist. “Honour your corners!” Then the two opposite corners shot forward, met each other in the centre of the square, passed, and by quick hand-turnings of their wheels executed a perfect do-si-do.

  Jesus, Rob thought. They must have practised for hours. He saw the concentration in Dave Snider’s face and thought for a brief second, He cares about it, and, triumphantly, Now I’ve got something on him. Immediately he was ashamed of himself. The dancers whizzed out again, locked wheels and arms, and swung, careening dangerously. They seemed to have forgotten about the audience: their attention was held entirely by the rhythm and by the intricate manipulations of the wheels needed at such close quarters.

  Rob looked over at Jordan. She was sitting almost still, her arms moving slightly, aimlessly, under the leather straps. He wanted her to turn her eyes so he could smile at her, but she was gazing straight at the dancers, her eyes shining with what he saw, with a quick jolt of his heart, were tears. She had never cried before: he hadn’t known she could, he’d thought of her as a little changeling, not quite human. What was wrong? He tried to see as she was seeing, and, of course, it wasn’t anything he could give her that she wanted. She wanted something she could imagine, something almost possible for her, she wanted to do this! A square dance in a wheelchair. She longed to be able to do just this much, this particular dance, that would be wonderful. And it was wonderful. He had wasted himself, his body, why couldn’t he have moved with such abandon, such joy in precision, during those interminable formal dances when his legs went stiff as wood, his feet compressed themselves to clumsy blocks inside his polished shoes.…

  But it was grotesque, he saw also, he couldn’t help seeing. It was a mockery, of themselves and of the dance; who had ever allowed them to do it? All their effort, their perfection even, amounted to this: they were ludicrous in their cumbersome machines. They danced like comic robots. They danced like him.

  Rob felt something inside him, coming up, bursting out. He doubled over, his hands clenched t
o his mouth. He was laughing. He tried to hold the laughter back, stifle it, turn it to coughing, but it was no use. He was red with shame and shaking all over; he couldn’t stop. He crouched towards the door, hands across his face, stumbled through it, and collapsed onto the grass of the baseball field. He hoped they would think he was being sick to his stomach. That’s what he would tell them afterwards. How could he, how could he have been so incredibly callous and rude? But he was still laughing so hard his stomach hurt. And she had seen him, she had turned her wet eyes and seen him just as it happened, she would think he had betrayed her.

  Rob took off his glasses and wiped his eyes. Then he pressed his forehead into the grass, which was damp and cool with dew. From the open windows of the auditorium the tinny music ground on, to the rumble of wheels. I’ll have to leave, I can’t explain, I’ll never be able to face them. But then he realized that nobody had really seen but her, and she couldn’t tell. He was safe. And who was that, in the bright room at the back of his room, that man in the green gown and the mask, under the glass bubble, raising the knife?

  Lives of the Poets

  Lying on the bathroom floor of this anonymous hotel room, my feet up on the edge of the bathtub and a cold wet washcloth balled at the back of my neck. Bloody nosebleed. A good adjective, it works, as the students say in those creative writing classes that are sometimes part of the package. So colourful. Never had a nosebleed before, what are you supposed to do? An ice-cube would be nice. Image of the Coke-and-ice machine at the end of the hall, me streaking toward it, a white towel over my head, the bloodstain spreading through it. A hotel guest opens his room door. Horrors, an accident. Stabbed in the nose. Doesn’t want to get involved, the room door shuts, my quarter jams the machine. I’ll stick with the washcloth.