The stage lit up just as the music began. The dancers whirled around, smiles framed with glossy red-orange lips, eyes heavily outlined, hips swaying right-left-right-left for eight counts. They jumped, arms raised above their heads, landed with right knees bent forward, and did the body wave backward—that exact move my Tito Joey did when mimicking macho dancers, which never failed to crack up my dad.
It used to crack me up too, but I'd watched this grainy, scratchy video for at least a thousand times for the most of my sixteen years. By now, I'd gotten used to the weird things. Like the colorful outfits that were so hip back then. If worn separately, a neon-pink off-shoulder top, a short and flouncy purple skirt edged with lace, and a pair of lime green tights would be forgivable. But worn all at the same time? If someone walked down the street today wearing that same outfit, people would think she escaped from the asylum.
I didn't notice right away that I was holding my breath. I exhaled slowly through my nose—a calming technique I learned from my best friend Kim, whose mom was a yoga teacher. The video timeline at the bottom of my phone screen was nearing 2:53. Almost time for the magic to happen.
The camera cut to the only dancer in the group with short hair. I showed the video to Kim once, and she made a sound that was somewhere between a guffaw and a snort. I really couldn't blame her. The dancer had bangs sprayed into stiff spikes at least two inches high. Kim said they looked like detachable deadly weapons that could be aimed at the enemy like poisoned darts. And because I was a good sport, I giggled along with her.
But for me, the porcupine bangs weren't the most significant part of the dancer's hair. When the dancer snapped her head to the side, I'd look at the video more closely, my nose nearly touching the screen. Then I would see her hair halfway down the gentle slope of her nape, the ends curling inward, like bottoms of the letter J. And each time, my heart would do a body wave of its own as if it recognized a long-lost friend.
The camera would cut to a wide angle, and the dancer blended back with the group. But to me, she always stood out. I devoured all her tiny details. The way her body looked extra curvy when she jutted out her hip. The way she did that one-two step, her right heel lingering for a fraction of a second on the floor. The way she always tossed her head before transitioning to another series of steps.
Some people drank their glass of warm milk and others counted sheep; but for me, the thing to get me to sleep was to watch this barely four-minute video of my mother taken years before I was born. And after I had turned off my nightstand, I would always wonder how it was possible to miss someone I had no memory off so, so badly.