I asked Myrna if I could put a card up on the board. She asked what the card was for. I said I hoped I could find jobs babysitting.
“What times are you available?” she said.
“Anytime, all the time.”
“You mean after school?”
“I mean all the time.”
Myrna looked at me and tilted her head. “My daughter Mary needs someone to tend her youngest. I’ll ask her.”
Mary taught nursing at the school, which Dad said was just about as brainwashed as a person could get, to be working for the Medical Establishment and the Government both. I thought maybe he wouldn’t let me work for her, but he did, and pretty soon I was babysitting Mary’s daughter every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning. Then Mary had a friend, Eve, who needed a babysitter for her three children on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
A mile down the road, a man named Randy ran a business out of his home, selling cashews, almonds and macadamias. He stopped by the post office one afternoon and chatted with Myrna about how tired he was of packing the boxes himself, how he wished he could hire some kids but they were all tied up with football and band.
“There’s at least one kid in this town who isn’t,” Myrna said. “And I think she’d be real eager.” She pointed to my card, and soon I was babysitting from eight until noon Monday to Friday, then going to Randy’s to pack cashews until supper. I wasn’t paid much, but as I’d never been paid anything before, it felt like a lot.
People at church said Mary could play the piano beautifully. They used the word “professional.” I didn’t know what that meant until one Sunday when Mary played a piano solo for the congregation. The music stopped my breath. I’d heard the piano played countless times before, to accompany hymns, but when Mary played it, the sound was nothing like that formless clunking. It was liquid, it was air. It was rock one moment and wind the next.
The next day, when Mary returned from the school, I asked her if instead of money she would give me lessons. We perched on the piano bench and she showed me a few finger exercises. Then she asked what else I was learning besides the piano. Dad had told me what to say when people asked about my schooling. “I do school every day,” I said.
“Do you meet other kids?” she asked. “Do you have friends?”
“Sure,” I said. Mary returned to the lesson. When we’d finished and I was ready to go, she said, “My sister Caroline teaches dance every Wednesday in the back of Papa Jay’s. There are lots of girls your age. You could join.”
That Wednesday, I left Randy’s early and pedaled to the gas station. I wore jeans, a large gray T-shirt, and steel-toed boots; the other girls wore black leotards and sheer, shimmering skirts, white tights and tiny ballet shoes the color of taffy. Caroline was younger than Mary. Her makeup was flawless and gold hoops flashed through chestnut curls.
She arranged us in rows, then showed us a short routine. A song played from a boom box in the corner. I’d never heard it before but the other girls knew it. I looked in the mirror at our reflection, at the twelve girls, sleek and shiny, pirouetting blurs of black, white and pink. Then at myself, large and gray.
When the lesson finished, Caroline told me to buy a leotard and dance shoes.
“I can’t,” I said.
“Oh.” She looked uncomfortable. “Maybe one of the girls can lend you one.”
She’d misunderstood. She thought I didn’t have money. “It isn’t modest,” I said. Her lips parted in surprise. These Californian Moyles, I thought.
“Well, you can’t dance in boots,” she said. “I’ll talk to your mother.”
A few days later, Mother drove me forty miles to a small shop whose shelves were lined with exotic shoes and strange acrylic costumes. Not one was modest. Mother went straight to the counter and told the attendant we needed a black leotard, white tights and jazz shoes.
“Keep those in your room,” Mother said as we left the store. She didn’t need to say anything else. I already understood that I should not show the leotard to Dad.
That Wednesday, I wore the leotard and tights with my gray T-shirt over the top. The T-shirt reached almost to my knees, but even so I was ashamed to see so much of my legs. Dad said a righteous woman never shows anything above her ankle.
The other girls rarely spoke to me, but I loved being there with them. I loved the sensation of conformity. Learning to dance felt like learning to belong. I could memorize the movements and, in doing so, step into their minds, lunging when they lunged, reaching my arms upward in time with theirs. Sometimes, when I glanced at the mirror and saw the tangle of our twirling forms, I couldn’t immediately discern myself in the crowd. It didn’t matter that I was wearing a gray T-shirt—a goose among swans. We moved together, a single flock.