by Sue Watson
Carole and I had wandered out of the canteen and were now grabbing the very precious last few seconds of our twenty-minute break standing by the vending machine. As we chatted, our eyes were drawn to the chunky chocolate bars, the decking of crisps and the fountain of fizzy drinks.
‘So, Zumba... tomorrow night...?’ she said, licking her lips and gazing longingly at the stack of Snickers. ‘Mmmmm chocolate soldiers standing to attention,’ she sighed.
I was trying not to be seduced by the soldiers or the salt and vinegar crisps lined up next to them. Apart from the taste and the crunch, the obsessive in me was really getting off on the way they hung neatly behind each other, like a row of designer suits.
‘Yes, Zumba here we come,’ I said, determined to ignore the delicious temptations and focus on shedding pounds – not adding more.
‘What time?’
I was keen to try something new but quite self-conscious about throwing myself around in front of other people. I’d sometimes hear La Bamba on the radio and jerk around the living room floor pretending to be a professional Latin dancer but that was in the privacy of my own home. Vigorous Zumba in front of other, thinner, fitter humans was quite different!
Just thinking about dance steps reminded me of my parents and I wondered again what sad secret they shared. Perhaps ‘he’ whoever he was, was the reason Dad’s dreams and plans never materialised? Looking back, I could see that Dad and Mum had always put things off. ‘When we’ve got enough money’, ‘next year’, ‘tomorrow’, they had money worries, which surely played a part – but I was beginning to wonder if they both made excuses for staying here in the same life? What had they been scared of?
‘All for one and one for all,’ my Dad would say as we set off for another dance competition. I’d be in the back of the car, safe and warm the sandwiches in Tupperware containers, a flask and blankets in the back because you never knew what time you’d be home with the traffic. ‘This is going to be the one,’ he’d say. ‘With these winnings we’ll buy that villa in Spain, senorita,’ he’d nod to Mum. ‘And I will teach the dancing alfresco,’ Mum would say in a funny Spanish accent while clicking her fingers in the air flamenco-style, which always made me giggle.
Our lives and dreams were planned in that little Ford Cortina with the twisted front bumper (Dad had been overexcited one year on arrival at The Winter Gardens in Blackpool and banged it into a wall in his anticipation to get on that shiny floor). I was as excited as they were about competing, and I can see them now, laughing, the glitter ball twinkling in their eyes, numbers on their backs and hope in their hearts.
They usually won their competitions, but after a posh meal, a new dress for Mum and another doll for me, there was little left of the winnings to save up for that Spanish dance school. I remember once Mr Robinson, Dad’s boss at the shop went on holiday to Spain and he and his wife sent us a postcard while they were there, it was a photo of a woman in frills dancing. Her dress was scarlet with polka dots and I would look at it for hours. I kept the postcard under my pillow and would take it out at night just imagining the music and the heat of the dancing.
When Mr Robinson came back from his holidays, he and his wife had bought me a flamenco dancer doll in a see-through plastic box. I was speechless with joy, and I remember holding the box carefully and just gazing at her like she was behind a window. I thought she was a beautiful Spanish princess and christened her Senorita because I thought that was a Spanish name. I played with her for hours, twirling and dancing her on the furniture, the sideboard was the shiny ballroom floor and Senorita would do everything from the waltz to the Charleston. I’d never seen the flamenco danced, so Dad tried to show me; ‘It can take years to learn to dance the flamenco – one day we’ll go to Spain and learn it properly and you can teach Senorita.’
The problem was my parents were both dreamers and now I realise they were never organised or disciplined enough to save up to buy a dance school in Spain. They could barely keep their lives afloat here because of their inability to deal with money. Consequently life was a struggle and the only time we all felt relaxed and happy was when they were dancing.
And always my thoughts returned there. Blackpool – The 1980 International Ballroom Championships. Mum sweeping past in satin and tulle covered in two thousand hand-sewn sequins, bouffant hair and a toothy smile. Dad, handsome, straight and proud, his steps light, his arms strong. The perfect couple dancing through dry ice and glittering lights. I was so proud to be their little girl, breathless with awe watching them silently from the side of the dance floor. And as they disappeared into a tide of sequins and hairspray no one could have predicted how horribly the night would end.
4
SLUT DROPPING ZUMBA QUEENS AND SOMEONE ELSE’S LEGGINGS
Standing at the checkout, the following day I was so bored I kept checking the time and couldn’t believe how early it still was. I was just wondering if my watch had stopped when a disembodied voice hissed, ‘Don’t forget tonight.’
I felt a slight chill go through me. Was someone playing games with my head?
‘...Zumba tonight?’ the voice hissed again from behind a pyramid of tinned beans. I knew I wasn’t having hallucinations when I saw Carole’s mop of blonde curls behind the tins, which meant Julie the Supervisor was about so Carole was being careful. At Bilton’s no one was allowed to do any of what Julie referred to dismissively as ‘chit-chatting’ on the shop floor. In her first address she informed us through bright pink lips that none of us were allowed to ‘chew, call, text, sext or chat’, when we were on the floor. I should be so lucky, I didn’t have anyone to sext to anyway, even if I knew how to.
‘That’s the rest of my working life wrecked,’ Carole had whispered in my ear.
‘Mmmm I wonder if we’re allowed to breathe?’ I sighed, my heart sinking at this twenty-something aggressive blonde who’d been appointed, she informed us ‘to keep you lot in check’.
Julie treated us like five-year-olds and it was all the more galling that she continued throughout her employ to speak to us like she was our nursery nurse. You can probably imagine the level of humiliation involved when someone almost young enough to be your daughter asks you nicely to stop ‘chit chatting – or god forbid, sexting.’ As I pointed out to Carole after the event, I was expecting her to put us on the naughty step or suggest we develop a ‘news circle’ to share ‘our news at the appropriate time’, like Sophie did at school… when she was five.
Working for Bilton’s was a soul-sucking, lonely existence stranded on a checkout all day making small talk with strangers. So when she was on shelf-stacking duties, Carole would stack tins and packets near my checkout so we could ‘chit chat’ undercover. And bossy Julie had not even sussed our ingenious plan.
‘So... Zumba, tonight?’ came the disembodied voice again from behind the beans.
‘Oh sorry, yes... I was daydreaming. Can’t wait,’ I said, and to prove to Carole (and myself) how ready I was for this body punishment I made my hips do what I hoped was a Zumba-like move.
‘Are you all right dear?’ a nice old lady said as she was checking through her single potato and packet of tea.
‘Fine... thank you,’ I smiled. ‘Just limbering up for tonight’s Zumba class,’ I said, making like I had a life.
‘Oh thank goodness for that – I thought you were in pain.’
I’d been so excited to get to Zumba and embrace the new, lithe and flexible ‘me’, I’d pushed shoppers through my till at top speed in the last half hour of the day so I could get away quickly.
‘I think my dancing genes will come alive tonight,’ I hissed to Carole as I put up my ‘Till Closed’ sign.
‘Ew that sounds messy,’ she laughed.
I laughed along, happy that I had made a decision to do something instead of saying no like I always did. Just the act of saying ‘yes’ had made me feel ten years younger... why couldn’t I do Zumba? I’d checked on YouTube, and though it looked very ‘physical’, there were wo
men older and fatter than me throwing those shapes. It might take a couple of weeks to get the hang of it, but as dancing was clearly in my blood I was bound to pick it up quickly. I just hoped Carole wouldn’t feel too bad if she couldn’t keep up when I was leaping around, and picking it up quickly and zumbaing like a pro.
Earlier, during our afternoon break, Carole and I wandered (waddled?) over to ‘Baked Goods’, and she bought a big pie and I treated myself to cake, telling myself there was nothing wrong in a little reward after a hard night zumbaing. I looked along the line of different flavoured sponges under the glass and selected a vanilla one filled with fresh cream and thick, red raspberry jam. I’d never baked a cake, it must be genetic, Mum never baked a cake either – she said she didn’t have time with all the competitions. I suspect her real reason was she didn’t want to eat cake and put on weight or break a nail, which in the words of Craig Revel Horwood would have been a ‘disarrrster.’ Instead, Dad sometimes bought a sponge cake for us on Fridays on his way home from work. Funny how as adults we still take comfort in the rituals of our parents and to this day I crave cake on a Friday night... well, I crave cake every night, but especially Fridays. Mum would play around with a little portion on her plate – but Dad and I would have a large slice each celebrating the end of another week and the start of the weekend. Leaving Baked Goods with my little box of heaven I knew the comfort of soft, dense sponge, sweet, fruity jam and cold fresh cream would eradicate anything – even Julie the supervisor.
As excited as I was about doing something new, arriving at the Dance Centre in a pair of Carole’s leggings was probably one of the low points in my life. Because I’d been late cashing up my till I hadn’t had chance to go home and change, but Carole had thought of everything and had brought a spare pair of leggings, a T shirt and a headband with her to work. We’d changed at work and the crotch on the leggings was round my knees (to Carole’s surprise they’d shrunk in the wash). The T-shirt was fluorescent orange and tight, and along with the bloody headbands she insisted we wore, we looked like Edina and Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous.
‘Please Carole,’ I tried, standing outside the big wooden doors. ‘Let’s come back next week.’
‘I’m sorry, hon, but you can’t stand there in that too tight T-shirt telling me you’re coming back next week. Your body is in the same state of emergency mine is – and we can’t waste another day.’
She was right.
‘Bitch,’ I muttered as her bum went in front of me through the door, and I could see in tight leggings it had a life of its own. Walking into The Dance Centre, I realised I hadn’t walked into a new place where there might be people I didn’t know for years. And I was scared. I thought calming thoughts of the cream sponge in the boot of my car waiting just for me and followed Carole across the room. I didn’t think I could feel any worse in Carole’s version of the zumba outfit than I already did – but looking round I could see we were the only ones in headbands. I never was one for being different – I always followed the flock – and ripped my fluorescent pink towelling headband off.
‘You’ll regret that, when the sweat’s pouring off your forehead,’ Carole sniffed.
All around me women were arriving, huge and padded in their October layers, giving me false hope that I wasn’t the fattest there, only to cast them off – from caterpillars to butterflies within seconds. Sadly my layers weren’t detachable... well, not without surgical intervention and believe me – I’d considered it. The only layer I took off were my glasses, which made everything slightly blurry and didn’t make me feel like a butterfly at all. I felt like a big caterpillar and wondering if I really should have said a big fat ‘yes’ to this – I moved with everyone else to the middle of the floor.
‘Laydeez, laydeez,’ came a loud and rather aggressive voice from the corner, as a warrior-like woman emerged, clapping loudly with a very serious look on her face. It was the teacher, who introduced herself as Martha, and after announcing that our vaginas were the home to ‘deep shaman magic,’ she asked us all to ‘roar from our core.’ I don’t know what shocked me most, that my vagina was magic or I was expected to roar (I doubted I even had a core). My prevailing thought was that I couldn’t possibly roar without laughing, so while everyone made like lions I pretended to tie my trainers. Once the roaring stopped, Martha went off on one about ‘goddesses’ and ‘she-wolves’. She lifted her arms up and urged everyone to ‘feel your femaleness’, which I initially refused to do, shaking my head vigorously, until I realised it wasn’t literal, just another way of saying ‘be aware of your body.’ I was only too aware of my body so didn’t want to dwell too long on that one. So after she’d stopped roaring and bestowing super hero status on our vaginas, she went on to declare war on fat and pelvic floors throughout the region. This woman meant business, and this class wasn’t the light-hearted Olivia Newton-John in spandex style leg-kicking low-impact jiggle I’d imagined it was. And we hadn’t even begun yet. She told us to brace ourselves and be ready to Zumba in five... or else? It felt like a threat.
‘Christ she will kill me,’ I hissed to Carole who was waving to a couple of younger girls who had wandered over with Natalie from ‘World Cuisines’. They were all in very tight spandex shorts and tops with leg warmers, their pelvic floors were probably perky and I doubt they’d ever even seen fat. They looked like something from the 70s, but they hadn’t even been born then, I smiled at them while contemplating my escape from the zumba hell-hole. This wasn’t for me – I wanted to be home on the sofa with my lovely cream sponge.
‘This is Mandy and Toyah,’ Natalie said, introducing me to them. ‘You know Mandy don’t you – she’s the beauty therapist at Curl Up and Dye.’
I recalled a brutal waxing incident and smiled nervously. Sophie had insisted I have my legs waxed for the wedding, and what was optimistically labelled a ‘pampering session for the mother of the bride’, turned into something tortuous as Mandy ripped the wax strips from my flesh while giving a detailed rundown of her last holiday (drinking, sex, followed by more drinking... then more sex). I’d never been to a beauty salon in my life until then – and probably wouldn’t again.
‘Is this your first time at one of Martha’s Zumbas?’ Mandy asked, one of her perfectly-arched, but heavy eyebrows raised.
‘Yes, I don’t know what to expect really... but I’m worried it’s going to be agony,’ a bit like one of your treatments, I thought.
Her face opened up in delight and she leaned towards me to impart some pearls of Zumba wisdom.
‘You don’t know what to expect? Well...’ she grabbed my left buttock, which surprised me. A lot. ‘Expect your arse to feel like it’s exploded!’ she announced. ‘Your legs will feel like you left ’em in a car park somewhere after a hard night dogging,’ she added, nodding in all seriousness. I found it hard to imagine that particular scene – but she’d now left me in no doubt as to how I would feel in the morning. I really should have gone home with my sponge cake, because it didn’t matter how much I ate it never made me feel like I’d been through ‘a hard night dogging’.
Carole saw my face and looked worried.
‘I might make a run for it. Well, a waddle for it at least,’ I hissed.
‘Ha ha, you should,’ Mandy said. ‘If you stay, I’m telling you, all that slut dropping will make you feel like crap tomorrow.’ And she set off again. ‘I drank a bottle of vodka and three Porn Star Martinis after an all-nighter with Kyle Thomas last Friday and next day I still felt better than I do the day after Zumba,’ she roared laughing. Now I was really scared and just looking at Martha’s abs in her midriff-baring outfit was making me feel tired and sore in the way a bag of chips and Silent Witness never had. And what the hell was ‘slut dropping’?
Before I had a chance to escape, Martha was yelling something guttural about ‘the power of the vagina’ and the music started up. It was one of Rihanna’s slower songs which was promising and hopefully meant the moves wouldn’t be quite so aerobic. I’d in
sisted we stay at the back which meant I could hide and I didn’t have to look at Martha with her flexible limbs. But being behind a blur of fluorescent tops and pert bums wasn’t much better – everyone seemed to be moving like they’d been Zumbaing since birth and I was worried I may get left behind. I was able to rationalise my feelings with Rihanna gently singing in the background and reminded myself I was a woman of forty four and not a bloody teenager. I told myself not to be so stupid and self-conscious. So I might not know all the moves – no one did the first time. I straightened up and began copying what the woman in front of me was doing. You could tell she knew her stuff because she had a tiny bum and a swinging pony tail, which in my book said Zumba Queen. Everyone was slowly wiggling their hips, it was just like belly dancing, nice undulating movements that wouldn’t put anyone’s back out. I took it slow, as my belly often danced without any help from me and if I gave it too much wiggle it could gather speed and behave like a large pink blancmange. I glanced at Carole who gave me a reassuring wink and through the still slightly blurry rainbow of fluorescence I caught Mandy’s eye. Perhaps it was my eyesight, but I’m sure she made an obscene (but friendly) gesture.
‘Yeah,’ I thought, moving my body with everyone else, ‘this is going to be okay.’ I was almost (and I stress ‘almost’) beginning to enjoy myself when suddenly a high-pitched wail emanated from the front. This was quickly followed by a heavy bass beat that filled the hall and my head (probably filled the town it was so bloody loud). Without warning, everyone put their arms in the air and started whooping – I felt like I was on a rollercoaster – going down, fast!
I clenched my buttocks in fear as everyone else began leaping to the music. They were all in unison, all seemed to know exactly what to do like they were tuned in to radio waves I wasn’t privy to, even Carole was holding her own despite a difficult pelvic floor. There was much yelling coming from Martha’s side of the room – what I could only presume were instructions but meant nothing to me. Then I heard, ‘Drop it low,’ over the music and everyone dipped. ‘Way down low,’ the words boomed out as bottoms almost touched the floor. This must be the slut dropping Mandy scared me with, and I panicked – since hitting 40 I’d found it hard to pick something up of the floor and get back up without calling for an ambulance. There was no way I was ‘dipping’ anything that low without medical assistance – my bum just wouldn’t go all the way down there. I made a fist at it but opening my legs wasn’t easy in tight leggings and a crotch somewhere around my knees. I tried hard, but no, the ‘dipping low’ just wasn’t happening. Carole’s tight leggings were acting like a lower body hammock and I just hung there mid ‘drop’ completely trussed up and unable to move. It was less ‘slut’ drop, and more ‘OAP’ collapse - just not pretty. I looked around from my prone position to see all the others back up, raising their arms and swaying their hips and pert breasts while I remained suspended mid-descent. Why did I ever think I could do this?
