Rhythms of Grace
RHYTHMS
of
GRACE
RHYTHMS
of
GRACE
Marilynn
Griffith
© 2008 by Marilynn Griffith
Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.revellbooks.com
E-book edition created 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-1271-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Published in association with the Books & Such Literary Agency, Janet Kobobel Grant, 52 Mission Circle, Suite 122, PMB170, Santa Rosa, CA 95409-7953.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
For Dr. Joseph Smith of the Central State University Upward Bound program and Oral History department. Thank you for putting the drumbeat into my spirit. I hear it always.
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me . . . Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.”
Matthew 11:28–30 Message
Contents
Diana
No one would miss me. They never did. And that was okay because I’d made up my mind. I was never coming to ballet class again.
Ever.
And I was also going to tell my mother what size tights I really wore. These things were killing me. Mom believes in squeezing in wherever you can, but not Daddy. He says that life is too short to be uncomfortable. I wonder then why he married my mother. Who knows? People are strange that way, making sense and not making sense all at the same time. Like Mom, thinking that wearing this pink leotard will rid me of that other dancing, the kind I do by myself to the beat always in my head. She saw me once. We didn’t say anything about it but the next week I was here at Fairweather Dance Academy where girls are kept on their toes.
Right.
I didn’t tell Mom then, but there are two kinds of dancing: the kind people teach you and the kind you’re born knowing, like some kind of dream. That’s how I dance when nobody’s looking: pushing it back, throwing it over, paying it forward, dropping it down. None of that pointy floor-pecking that my ballet teacher screams about. I can do that too, the pointy thing, but it’s too polite sometimes, like the way Daddy’s lips brush Mom’s cheek when he pretends to kiss her. No, when I do my dance my feet smack against the floor, kissing it full in the mouth, flat-footed with no apologies. There’s a long smooch when I forget myself and slide across the floor. It drives my ballet teacher crazy. Like now.
“Toes, Diana! Toes, dear.” My teacher sounds calm, but don’t be fooled. She’s crazy.
I smile and assume the correct position, knowing better than to make a scene. There’ll be enough to fight over when Mom finds out I’m not coming back. The teacher could make me assume the correct position on the outside, but in my mind, I was bent low, head down, shimmying across the floor, knocking all the bony ballerinas out of the way, including Miss Fairweather, who, despite her name, was no friend at all.
She started in on me again. “Lift the knee, Diana. The knee!”
Yeah, yeah. I lifted my knee and flapped my arms. It was a silly piece that ended with us flapping our arms. Swan’s wings, the teacher said. I caught a glimpse of my body in the mirror and stumbled, almost laughing. So much for Swan Lake. More like the piggy in the puddle.
“And . . . stop. Very nice.” The teacher’s expression glowed as she looked down the line. Once her eyes rested on me, the flowing stream of “niiice” curdled on the woman’s lips.
I froze, knowing that look meant a speech was coming, one I didn’t want to hear.
Miss Fairweather forced her eyes from me and turned to the other girls, who weren’t really girls any longer, but she kept calling us that anyway. “Thanks, everyone. Don’t forget to stop in the foyer and get fitted for your recital costumes.”
Forget? How could anybody forget the joy of being measured at the end of a line of twiggy white girls and hearing their even skinnier mothers scream, “Turn around, hon. That can’t be right. Your hips are bigger than mine!”? Thank God I didn’t have to do it anymore.
Trying not to think about how I never measured up, I started for the door. There was no rush to get into the hall because if I moved too fast, they’d try to whisk me off to be measured no matter what I said. I always went last anyway, giving myself time to recite “Phenomenal Woman.”
“Hold on, Diana. I need to speak with you,” Miss Fairweather said.
No good could come of this. “Yes?”
The teacher approached, then stopped in the middle of the floor. I didn’t approach. After a few seconds of stalemate, she spoke. “There’s more to ballet than dance, Diana. A ballerina has to be suited for dance. And if she . . . isn’t suited, she must make herself suitable; do you understand what I mean?”
I understood all too well. She’d been talking to my mother, for one thing. I dropped my bag to the floor. Even Maya Angelou wouldn’t get me through this one. This was going to require some Jesus.
The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want . . .
“I mean your behind, dear. The way it pokes out like that. It’s a distraction. We must be uniform, so as not to take attention away from the others . . . Speaking of that, your hair. Your mother is going to straighten it for the recital, right? It must be in a bun like the other girls. Totally flat.”
So much for that memory verse. I did
want
. I wanted her to shut up. The big rock that I get in my throat when Mom talks to me like this started choking me. I fought to swallow it down.
He leadeth me by still waters
.
The teacher gave a tight smile, taking my silence for agreement. “I’ve discussed this with your mother before, but perhaps I didn’t make it clear.”
What was the next line of Psalm 23? Something about a table and some enemies? My friend Zeely and I had won a gold bookmark for memorizing the whole chapter last year when we graduated eighth grade, but now it wouldn’t come to mind. I closed my eyes. It helped sometimes, for remembering poems.
“Look at me, Diana. This is important. Are you listening? I need you to lose twenty pounds by recital. Thirty would be optimal, but twenty is a good start.”
He puts my enemies on the table, roasted with salt and pepper
—
And on she goes. “One thousand calories a day should do it. It’s a bit much still, but I realize this is all new to you. A sensible diet—”
A door slammed at the back of the dance room. “Lady, your brain is on a diet.” A man’s voice.
My head snapped up. My shoulders relaxed. He’d come to save me. Daddy.
My father crossed the room in long, slow strides. When he reached us, he leaned down and took my bag with his left hand and took my hand with his right. “There’s nothing wrong with this girl. There’s something wrong with you.”
Miss Fairweather’s face scrunched up the way Aunt Ina’s cat looked when it was hungry. “This is my school, Mr. Dixon. I like your wife, so I’ve tried to be patient, but you will not talk to me in that tone.”
“I won’t talk to you in any tone, miss,” Daddy said before nodding toward the door. “We won’t be back.”
At first I tried not to smile. I almost made it out the door with a straight face. Almost.
When I was done laughing, I reached my sweaty arms around Daddy and hugged him hard—between coughs from the talcum powder he put on under his shirts. He’d done it, just like in my dreams, the ones only God knew about. Only better.
The pink pig was free.
I saw it first. A billboard at the corner of Kentucky Street and Main. It might have been up there awhile, but it was new to me because Mom never drove this way, not even to church. She preferred the highway to driving through “South Side,” as my mother called the place where she and Daddy grew up. Testimony really wasn’t big enough to have sides, but people need that type of thing to feel good about themselves. Mom especially. (I’d like to call her Mama like everyone else on my block, but she insists on Mom.)
Sunday was the only time Mom came to this side of town since all her efforts to get Daddy to go to one of the fine churches in our mixed neighborhood had failed. No matter where we tried to go, within fifteen minutes Daddy was snoring like some kind of mule. He was a peaceful man most times, but he knew how to win a fight when he wanted to.
Like today. Today brought us to the South Side, where Daddy came all the time. He ate here, worked here, shopped here, laughed here. He was a come-up man, people said, but he never forgot where he came from. Not like that wife of his—who knew she’d go off to college and come back stuck up like that? At least he still brought his girl around sometimes, but wasn’t she a little strange too? All those books. It couldn’t be normal. They said these things right in front of me, the South Side people did, but I didn’t mind. I wasn’t Daddy or Mom, just stuck somewhere in between both of them, with a book in one hand and a drum beating in my head.
