Fiction Short Story

The Writer's E-Zine Home

Writers' Village University - F2K: Free Fiction Writing Course - ePress-online
Writers' Village University Membership Information

Fiction Short Story

by Frances Fanning

Dance of the Heart

I paused at the entrance to the performing arts studio. As I pulled a strand of hair out from under the strap of my shoulder bag, the heel from one of the heavy cleated shoes shifted inside the bag and hit me in the hip. I raised my hand to my ear to feel for the hammered silver hoops I bought so many years ago after watching my first flamenco dance performance. My body still ached to be one of those powerful dancers, stomping out their wild passions to the strum of guitars and the audience shouts of “Ole!”

Confounded by my inhibitions, I felt like a captive in my own body. My desire to learn new things is forever careening off track and hitting the wall of my fears. I dismissed all those regrets that seemed to pile on in mid-life quicker than calories from an ice cream sundae, and entered the building. Searching for the room, I heard a thunderous roar like horses in full gallop. Walking toward the clamor, I opened the door and heard a booming voice call out, “Hello there, I am Lisa. Who are you?”

I peered into the small, steamy room and saw a diminutive woman with hawk eyes that studied my frame. She had raven-colored hair that was piled loosely on top of her head and held fast with a large tortoise-shell comb. She wore a tightly fitted bodice, and her voluminous skirt, the color of Mexican pottery, seemed to swallow up her tiny frame as she spoke.

Paying no attention to my apparent muteness at ignoring her question, Lisa told me that while the class was advertised as being for beginners, they had been meeting for over a year and earlier in the morning than announced, but I was welcome to join them. “We were all beginners once,” she announced, sweeping her arm in the direction of the students whose icy stares and buzz of disapproval for interrupting the class were a dubious welcome.

I rocked on my toes, propelled back to the safety of an easy retreat, then forward to this bird woman who would teach me the ways of the Gitana. Gulping back my fear, I decided to stay. A stocky woman, whose blond hair was streaked with gray, pointed to a corner of the room and whispered to me in a thick Spanish accent that I should get changed. I slipped into the long black ruffled skirt that was required for the elegant fandangos and flirtatious bulerias and shimmied out of my jeans. Strapping on my shoes with the nail inserts in the toes and heels, I was mesmerized by the melodic sound of my own feet as I walked to where the blond had made room for me in the front of the class. On the other side of her stood a much younger woman who chewed gum and yawned when I walked by her, lazily shifting her weight from one hip to the other. Unlike most of the other students, she was wearing a tight fitting skirt that was slit up the side and fell just below her knees. Her stomach bobbed out from her elastic waistline like a fish wriggling out of a bucket. “Irma, what did I tell you about chewing gum in class, and stand up straight,” Lisa snarled as the young woman pulled up her skirt. “The hands are as important as the feet when dancing flamenco.”

Lisa began, standing with her back to us while dramatically lifting her arms over her head and rotating her hands, first with an outward motion, leading with the index finger, then inward, leading with the pinkie. I gazed intently into the floor-to-ceiling mirrors in front of me. My fingers flowed sensuously as waves of tension streamed out of my body, like a silk rebozo slipping from my shoulders. I grinned. Lisa, who had been watching me in the mirror, grinned also.

“Now we will practice some basic steps. There are only three. Watch my feet.” She scooped up her skirt and wrapped it around her like frozen custard swirling into a cone. Then she secured the end of the skirt behind her, tucking it into her waistband. She nodded to one of the students who hit a button on the wheezy tape player that sat on a rickety table next to where she stood. Lisa shouted, “Aye!” and her tiny feet hammered into the wooden floor like a jackhammer on a concrete sidewalk. A blinding panic overtook me, and I looked into the mirror to assure myself that I had not fainted.

As Lisa broke down the steps for my benefit, I wrenched my fears inside out until they turned to determination. I blinked back tears and saw my mother and myself dancing to a Patsy Cline song and singing “Sweet Dreams of You” at full throttle, her sense of rhythm being one of the few life skills that dementia had not yet taken from her. Fear seems meaningless to me now, as senseless as the reasons we allow to grow along the path of our lives that obscure the vision of our dreams. My mother has lost all memory of her fears. She lives completely in the moment. Maintaining her dignity is all that sustains her now.

“Plante, tacon, golpe. Toe, heel, stomp,” Lisa is calling now. “Again, toe, heel, and stomp. Harder! Toe, heel, stomp! Muy bien, muy bien!” Lisa shouted to me triumphantly.

My stomps had the ferocity of a two-year-old taking a temper tantrum. I arched my back and jutted out my chin in the posture of la Gitana. As the rumba grew in intensity, so did my resolve to continue. My life, like an ephemeral soap bubble, could only contract or expand with the challenges with which I fill it.

The class ended and the women shimmied out of their skirts and packed away their dance shoes. A few with names like Giselle and Clarita stopped to introduce themselves. Others smiled their encouragement to me as they left. Lisa approached me. “You have nothing to worry about. Do you know why? You dance with your body and with Corazon,” she said thumping her heart. “Don’t think about it,” she reiterated, poking at her forehead with her index finger. “Your mind only gets in the way.”

Lisa’s astute advice has stayed with me since that first class. I have learned what Lorca called Duende, the soul force of flamenco. I replaced self-consciousness and regret with a life force of unhampered emotion and instinct in everything I do. I live in the moment now, just like Mom.

Copyright © 2004 Frances Fanning

About the Author
Knowing in my heart that I was always a writer, I took the circuitous path of the insecure artist through many other professions. Not pursuing one's dream is akin to receiving a beautifully wrapped present, but never opening it. Having opened my writing talents to the universe, I have been rewarded with a career that I thoroughly enjoy and made new friends who have been touched and inspired by my work.