African Voices Summer 2017 AV Summer 2017 Digital Issue | Page 10

FICTION
The Dragon Can’t Dance
by Sheree Renée Thomas
The first time I danced, I hated it. Six years old,
skinny as a string bean, shy, observant, the last thing
I wanted was to be pulled into my nana’s long, strong
arms, and swept onto the makeshift dance floor at
her birthday party. My hair was tightly braided, laced
with the new gold and white beads Mama bought just
for the occasion. My freshly oiled temples smelled
like heaven, hurt like hell. Coconut and mango braids
throbbed with the beat that thumped from wood veneer
speakers sprawled across two wobbly card tables in
a corner of the garden. Nana threw back her head and
pranced, that’s right, pranced past my two uncles, my
sisters, Papa and Mama, past all her old neighbors and
church friends, and rolled her ample hips like a much
younger woman. I was scandalized! Everyone clap
clapped and howled at the vision, bellies full of roti
and spicy jerk chicken. Nana wore red. And she looked
amazing, a juicy hibiscus blossom in her hair.
“Four score! Four score!” she cried, channeling
Lincoln or the Bible. The sparkly eight and zero
bobbed and weaved on her rainbow crown. In her
birthday hat, she looked like a goddess or a ten year old. I could not tell which, before she reached for me, and I was swept
into the swirl of sweat and laughter, the deep pulsing music, the mass of warm brown arms and legs, fiercely dancing in
her herb garden behind her brownstone in Brooklyn. As she tugged and jerked my freshly cocoa-buttered arms back and
forth, a wicked puppeteer, I was mortified. Not like the time I spilled soda on my white skirt at school, and the big girls
pointed and teased me, shouting, “Sanaa started her period! Sanaa started her peer-ree-odd!” It seemed as if everyone in
Crown Heights had gathered to see my humiliation. They say the dragon can’t dance. At six, neither could I.
But that was then.
Thinking about it now, I cannot believe how much love I took for granted. I’m talking about real love, the kind you can
touch with your own hands and feel its arms around you and breathe in. When nana made me dance at her eightieth
birthday party, I was so embarrassed, so afraid I’d make a fool of myself, that her joyful, public love of me felt more
like a slap than a celebration. While other kids tap danced and moonwalked over the old children should be seen and
not heard thing, bucked and clamored for adult attention, any attention, I preferred back then to recede into darkness, to
be the silent night that cloaked the bright lone star. Nana wasn’t having none of that. When she pulled me into her arms
that smelled like cinnamon, sweet milk and lime, I was angry. I felt exposed, naked. Dancing exposes you. In dancing,
your body, traitor flesh that it is, reveals all the things your spirit tries to hide. Drawn from the margins into the center of
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african Voices