“Bones” by Jon Michaud
--page 3
~
Through the spring and into the summer Bones went to class and the class worked its way into him, changing him. It was a doctor who had called him “big-boned” when he was young and inadvertently gave him his Indian name. That summer he seemed to stretch before my eyes. Muscles formed on his legs and arms, like rocks emerging from eroded soil. His shoulders broadened and firmed, his chest and stomach became contoured, sculpted. He stopped cutting class and his grades improved. There was a focus and seriousness about him now, where there had only been foolishness before. Though he didn’t dance himself onto the honor roll, Bones was no longer in danger of failing his grade. He was mediocre and that was a cause for celebration. In Etienne Loup, it seemed, he had finally found the father figure he’d been missing since Papi ran away.
What went on in the studio remained largely a mystery to me. The sessions were closed and Bones never spoke about them. It was as if he were embarrassed by how much he loved it, as if he wanted to keep it private and unspoiled by comments from us. Mami and I were not worthy. There was a rumor that Loup had been signed to perform with his kids at the Grammys that year, a rumor Bones would neither confirm nor deny. “We dance. What do you want me to say?” Sometimes, on days he didn’t have class, I’d catch him practicing moves I didn’t know the names for, bending and swaying, with a confidence and grace I found inexplicable. As soon as he sensed my gaze, he’d stop. “Go on,” I’d say, eager to see more, but he never would.
In the beginning, Bones always slipped back to his day clothes after class, returning his posture to the street-wise slouch that Loup was trying to beat out of him. But as the sessions went by, he became less concerned about being cool. Soon he was walking in that butt-puckered, straight-backed way that all dancers seem to walk. I’d come back from my field trips and see him standing outside the studio in tights, talking to other kids from the class, laughing. Once, I’d even seen Loup himself. He looked like his name: fierce and shaggy, with an old man’s face on a young man’s body. His comportment suggested an indifference to the world’s opinion, the kind of bearing that Bones was now clearly trying to emulate. Riding home with my brother those evenings, it was me who was embarrassed, rushing him along Fort Washington Avenue, hoping not to be recognized.
~
In truth, I didn’t begrudge Bones his secrecy, because I had a secret of my own. On a Tuesday afternoon in July, while I was looking in the window of a shop on Waverly Street, a car horn sounded behind me. It was a black cab. I’d been honked at for years, ever since my breasts first appeared. I turned away. He honked again.
"Que?" I said.
The driver’s window slipped down and revealed my father’s face. He was smiling broadly, showing off his missing incisor.
“Maria,” he said. “Mija.”
“Papi?”
“What are you doing down here?” he said.
“Nothing...”
“Oh, Mija, I miss you.” He said.
I loved hearing it, even if it wasn’t true. It was like he was making a pass at me.
“Come,” he said. “Get in.” He beckoned me. His black Lincoln Town Car was immaculate, as always. It looked like it was made of licorice and mercury.
“That’s O.K.” I said, and for a moment I allowed myself the giddy thought that he had come to kidnap me.
“Can’t I buy my daughter some lunch?” he pleaded. “It has been a long time.”
Too long, I thought. I started walking along the street away from him, mostly to collect my thoughts. He inched the car forward, keeping pace.
“Mija. Por favor.”
“Not today,” I said. I felt overwhelmed.
Traffic was backed up behind him and horns were honking. “Leave her alone you dirty bastard,” someone shouted.
“Thursday at five,” I said over my shoulder and told him the name of a Cuban-Chinese restaurant on Twenty-third Street. Then I ran into the subway entrance on the corner. For the first time, I was early to collect Bones from Loup’s studio.
~
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