Barefoot Dancing
Thunder cracked, waking me from my deep sleep under my mamma’s bed. Everything was blurry as I opened my eyes to let everything sink in. The blanket under me was soaked from sweat and my gown might as well of been a swimming suit. Summers in the south were unforgiving, especially when the power was out from a last minute thunderstorm.
Laying on my stomach, I folded my arms under my pillow and propped up my chin to let the blood circulate through my body again.
On stormy nights, I liked to crawl under my mamma’s bed and hide. Partly from the storm, and partly because I wanted to be closer to her. My brothers were like stones in the night. Nothing could wake them up. So, I was left to my own devices, and my imagination presented fantastical things, both exciting and scary.
Thunderstorms in particular were scary. The loud booms and flashes of lightening on top of a dark night allowed my brain to create dangers both inside and out.
I used my skinny pale legs to push the blanket out from under me and laid stomach down on the bare hardwood floor. It was my imagination that was now beginning to go to work. If not for knowing my mamma was laying in the bed above me, I might be seeing monsters by now in the shifting shadows from the trees on the wall.
I heard a creak. Then I saw my mother’s small feet timidly hang over the bed. She used her big toe to test the floor as if it was a hot bath steaming in anticipation for her to step in. The humidity made the floor feel sticky, so she lifted her foot back up and put both of her feet in her blue silk slippers. She walked around the bed towards the balcony doors.
I don’t think she knew I was under her bed. She knew I hid there during storms and often coaxed me into bed with her, but tonight I watched her move in the dark with shadows, like one of the ghost from my imagination. Completely unaware of me watching under the bed.
She opened the balcony doors, and the sound of the rain swept through the room as if it was claiming our home as part of the outside. It was hot inside and the sound of rain was accompanied with the sweet smell and cool touch of every drop that touched the ground. But the rain was so hard it was splashing onto the mahogany floors. Mamma didn’t seem to mind. Her slippers soaked now, she kicked them off and stood silently as the warm humid air surrounded her body.
Mamma was not one for words. Even in the middle of the day. Daddy was her voice. He seemed to always know what she needed to say. He was gone now. I was her new voice, but I didn’t always know, like daddy did.
I watched as her feet began to move. Barefoot, she stepped left, then back, then right and forward. She repeated her steps and got more creative in her movements, drawing swirls in the rain on the floor with her toes as she danced. She didn’t make a sound. The rain was her melody and the thunder her rhythm.
I fell asleep again to the music she made with her feet. I never understood what drove her to dance those rainy nights alone, but she said more in those moments than she ever said at any other time.
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