How Can I Keep Dancing? [ON HOLD]

How Can I Keep Dancing? ~~~ Chapter 1 ~~~ *Book 1*

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**************BOOK ONE****************

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~CHAPTER ONE~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Philadelphia, June, 1939

 

Summer. Nothing can feel better than walking out of that God forbidden school and into your own brief freedom for twelve weeks of summer holidays. Going for trips to the beach, feeling the warm sand tickle your feet and salty waves push and pull you back in the current. Or for people closer to home prefer to jump from rope-swings into the cool streams and rivers outside of Philadelphia. All to just keep your body heat at bay from the blistering heat.

But me? I don’t get to have a holiday. No picnics on the banks of the river, or celebrating at the town’s carnival, because for me, whom my mother believes she is doing for, I am to grace my own presence at my own personal schooling, where four days a week I attend private ballet classes, two days a week I practice my German and French, and then on Sundays it usually rotates from ballroom dancing to still life painting. Mostly, it is Sundays that I manage to escape for a few hours, without mother’s awareness of course, rather I explain how I wish to go paint down near the river, or pay a visit to my dear friend Gwen.

See, as much as my mother thinks that dancing is the art of the human body, and should be embraced to a personal barrier to which we must grasp the beauty of it; I would rather beat my head against the wall than listen to Miss Dawn’s analysis on how my figure is not slim enough to be a professional dancer, and how she’ll never find someone to fit my curves into a leotard for the end of year production. She always contradicts herself, however. Usually I’m the first to have my costume for the production out of all the girls, and as for my figure; the only time that Miss Dawn agrees that someone is slim enough is when he can wrap her hands around their waist and find that her fingers are touching. Only then does she approve, despite the fact that possibly the girls ribs are the only thing I’m able to perceive.

I’ve been dancing since I could first walk, and started dancing en Pointe when I was nine-years old. Yet, despite my frustration and hatred for it, I hardly believe I could ever quit. I’m merely a size four, possibly smaller at the tiny portions of food Mother gives me. Some day, just so I can see her reaction, I hope to go on an eating spree, and try to put my dress size up to a size fourteen, and then see how Miss Dawn and Mother thinks about my weight.

Most people would think that rich people like us would travel to the beaches of New Jersey like all my friends’ families are heading, or even with the money we’ve got, escape to Florida for the real sunshine. But no, not this year. This year my father’s gone to Europe with his business, and my mother thinks it’s best if we have one year at home. Not like we’ve already seen enough of home already.

Today is the first Sunday of summer vacation. Before Mother bargains me with painting or ballroom practice, I skip out, telling her I’m going to the river with Gwen. Not that she’d know that Gwen has left to travel across the country too. However, it is the only excuse I have for freedom, and Mother hardly notices a thing, warning me to be back at home before dark.

As soon as I’m out of sight of the house, I pull my bicycle off the road, hiding it behind the familiar bushes of the woods. To no one’s knowledge, I’ve escaped to these woods many a time. Though I’ve never gone too far in, fearing I may get lost, but rather I find my familiar sanctuary where no one suspects it.

The recognizable crunch of dead leaves and twigs beneath my shoes bring me further calmness, and I watch carelessly as the bees and insects flutter unknowingly around me. A soft breeze rolls through the trees, sending strands of my light hair in a flurry. I comb my hair behind my ears and I continue to stroll along the familiar unnoticeable trail further and further into the thin woods.