Yet another little one tried to Carolina close it, but the restored barn's old door jammed

again. The seasonal rains or the perennial Lowcountry humidity had wet something somewhere

many times, and this spring wherever all that moisture had piled up in the building's innards, it

finally swelled, wanting to call attention to itself, as if – this time – demanding the spotlight be

all its own. The bell attached to the door rang once more. Another little one struggled with the ill-

fitting joints. The last dancer now rejoined the troupe for the late-afternoon class.

“Child, ya know no lady's ever late for rehearsals at Miss Harry's,” a faceless voice

boomed. “Don't be so bashful. I know ya Mama can't get ya here any earlier. It's OK. It really is.

How many times Miss Harry gotta tell y'all 'til ya believe ol' Miss Harry? Come on in now,

young lady. It's showtime, dancers!”

The girl said nothing. She never did. She had been taught to respect, not to talk. Her mind

was on other things. She put down her knapsack, her empty lunch box, and next to those things

for the first time the mobile phone her grandmother had left in her Easter Bunny basket weeks

ago. She fumbled with the device to double-check its muted volume. Then she switched shoes

and lined up against the wall with the others, all older, all taller than she.

Miss Harry's voice always rattled the barn. The girls liked it. It didn't sound like a mother,

which they liked, but it was of that eternally maternal, reassuring chord, a behaving comfort of

aging woman, one grown wise in her abilities and comfortable within her limits. The instructor

declared her own entrances (even at rehearsals), and up until that particular declaratory moment

each session, she would rest her lithe body across a chaise-longue couch behind a Japanese

screen she'd bought in New York City ages ago. From her hidden spot, the teacher and her

soothing voice commanded the makeshift studio.

“Jenny, you may lead the gurls in today's warm-ups...,” the voice trailing off in that way

the young ladies loved nearly as much as the men still did. The girls began to twirl gently, then

alternated with stretching, on to flexing and pointing, limbering up the ligaments. The group

joked they never actually saw Miss Harry enter the room. They would turn around or lean up

from a downward stretch, and there she'd be!, their magical muse and mystical mother. A student

of life, Miss Harry observed well. She switched on the A/C, without ever taking her eyes off her

pupils. “That's right, long and lean, gurls, stretch the way God made us to--”

Minutes passed, stretches subsided, but not the afternoon heat, despite the cushioning

canopy of oddly hurricane-proof live oaks and Spanish moss still draping over the barn, even

after last year's storms. The A/C conked off. The girls knew to continue. Miss Harry phoned the

neighbor boy and within minutes he appeared, fixed the thing, pocketed a check, and scurried off

like a rat with his cheese, not wanting to get caught by artsy stuff, lady-thangs. Miss Harry had

tried last winter, during the A/C off-season, to enroll the awkward lad in her mixed tap class. “No

biz for show biz,” he joked at the time, to which Miss Harry tapped on the calendar showing

February and replied, “No A/C biz in winter biz.”

The class ended without fanfare, just a regular class with many more to come before

recital time at the county seat's annual Independence Day celebration. A few girls hung around,

waiting for their parents or grandmothers to fetch them, always the same ones running late, but

with an original attempt at excuse each week.

“Light lemonade in the red cooler, gurls!” Miss Harry shouted. “Drink up!”

By then, she had returned to her spot behind the paper screen. Before and after class, she

hummed the same tune, parts of a tune, but without ever revealing its title to class. She stopped

humming whenever grown-ups came round, as if they might shine a mature light upon her secret,

her little hush-hush with her girls.

One of the dancers seated on the old church pew cupped her hands to her ear, mimicking

the two bolder ones now tiptoeing toward Miss Harry's protective wall. They had removed their

slippers, but one of the floorboards squeaked. Miss Harry's humming halted. The two older girls

froze, the motion of the picture robbed of its cranking. The mouth of the still-seated lass gaped.

Her cupped hands jerked away from her ear, hitting her cup of ice, no lemonade left. Miss Harry

materialized, not so magically this time. She smiled but looked down her nose at the girls, kept

rigid in-pose, caught in the act as it were, yet their tired limbs sagging, melting like the ice

strewn across the floor. Miss Harry paused, acting with all the New York training still within

after those many years home back south.

“I did the same thing to my teacher ... every week!” Miss Harry shrieked as if, once

more, restored to the age of her students. No one else in the barn moved, though. Contrary to her

ladylike poise throughout classes, Miss Harry now zigzagged comically across the barn room,

dragging her right leg, then left, throwing her hands in the air, tossing her hair this way and that,

and giggling, giggling, giggling. The reunion of girlhood released the two-student, mid-air

statues, and those girls slammed their bare toes against the floor, giggling uncontrollably.

“I can't hold it no longer,” one shouted through her laughs, running to the rest room at the

back of the barn.

Another yelled, “Clean up ya spilt ice, will ya, young lady!”

“Young laaady, young laaady!” sang out Miss Harry, dancing all the while, and now

humming that unnamed tune. “Is someone imitatin' me? Young laaady, young laaady, yes ma'am,

no ma'am!”

She laughed. The girls laughed. The teacher joined the students in a circle of improv

female revelry, until the door's bell sounded.

“This here what I pay good money for Ve to do here?” the sun-scorched, behatted farmer

raged, his booming voice counter to the room's mood. He stood flat-footed just inside the

doorway and held the door's knob firmly. “Goddamn!” He slammed the damned door with no

sign of weakness, as he been reared the man.

“I see we have a gentleman ... in our presence,” Miss Harry said, motioning for a change

of scenery among the students. “Gather round, young ladies, gather round. Show respect ...

poise ... respect--”

“I'm not payin' for her to learn nothin' 'bout no such thing as re-spect,” the father said.

“She kin't fetch no man if she kin't carry no milk pail without not spillin' it. The girl kin't walk

straight, ain't got no balance, won't git no man. Who gonna take care of me?”

“She did, sir, come to the right place. Ya daughter's Veronica, right?”

He nodded, finally removed his hat, and sheepishly bobbled his head as if to ask for

pained, double forgivenesses. Miss Harry waved all that away, once more with the magic, next

fingered for the girl to approach stage center.

“Show ya Dad what we gurls all learnt today, Veronica. Y'all did so swell today....”

Veronica shied away. Her father grew irritated, shifting in his boots and arching his back,

much like a cat not knowing what else to do. Miss Harry stepped gingerly into the center of the

room, bowed at Veronica, who captivated once more by the spell, by the love of the dance, and

for her teacher, instantly wound her way into the arena, a wind-up toy about to be set aloose.

Miss Harry regained her stance. Veronica then bowed in turn. Her father coughed and

ground his boot heals almost on cue into the floor.

“Frivolous thangs,” the man muttered, “got fields to tend to.”

Miss Harry motioned in her comforting, familiar way. The father sat contrite, like a boy.

“Field,” the man said a second time under his breath. He hung his head and counted bales

in his head.

Veronica knew which field he meant. It was the high corner of the back field, where her

Mama was, where the body had been since last winter, where the girl went nearly every day.

Veronica relaxed, this time unlike anything the class had witnessed before, in this anxious little

girl or any other. She took the stage, but with something strong within. She glided across the

floor. Innocence at play at very serious work. Feminine to the core. Cupcake-like. Covered in all

the pink sprinkles the store had. And twinkling, girly glitter everywhere. All that piled atop iron

will. Budding woman. Future at risk. She danced to a silent room. The worn ribbons in

Veronica's hair flew through the stale air, singing out that song that soothes aches, stills spirits.

Something had asked for a body to inhabit. Steely, a star shone.

Veronica's father sat spellbound on the church pew, his brusqueness arrested, not just his

body bewildered. He put his hand to his head. Miss Harry sat down next to the man. Veronica

kept twirling, bowing, reaching, pulling, stretching, jumping. Neither adult spoke. No girl

student did either. Miss Harry began to tap her foot. She hummed her tune. Veronica's father

roughshodded his right boot to the floor, its size-eleven loudness curtaining Veronica. As she

turned and looked at her father, fearful tears welled up in the child's eyes. Certain of the paternal

tap's meaning, she looked away and hurried to gather her lunch box and knapsack. She reached

for the new mobile phone her grandmother had given her.

“Don't do that, li'l missy!” her father yelled. She had even started to switch out of her

dancer slippers already, so her father stood and ordered her: “Do not, child! Do not! Ya gonna

ruin the--”

Miss Harry, perfumed, reached for the man's calloused hand, uncertain of his words'

actual meaning, saying, “Now, now, now...don't ya go and--”

“It's OK, Miss Harry,” Veronica interrupted them both. She continued to prepare to leave.

“Well then, gather ya things, woman,” her father said. “We gotta git goin', so we can git

ya back here ... for ya schoolin' tomorrow.”

Confused, Veronica ultimately beamed. She smiled at Miss Harry, who winked at the girl.

The teacher clasped her hands in the air, but only after the father had turned his back to open the

barn door. Unlike his entry, the man struggled this time, as if momentarily trapped in that

feminine space which most men fear for long. Miss Harry started to rise, to assist, but thought of

her time decades back in that cold Northern city, when confronted with a bigger manly and even

larger womanly issue, one also concerning a child and children. She had decided the right thing

then, she always knew. She uncrossed and recrossed her legs, remaining seated and ladylike. She

looked at the Japanese screen, gift from that man. They had tried. She had children. She wanted a

career. She loved to move and to love. She knew she had children, a husband if for the asking.

Despite the timeless distance, all the fine years a fine dance. She could call, they might rekindle.

Even all grown. Kids and their father, her would-be family could be, now. Not just in this old

barn of a studio. Regardless of in-laws, different customs, stranger times then of youth, all

patterns might be well in fuller understanding of old age. She tapped her toe sore. In minutes.

“Thank ya, sir, for attendin' our star pupil's first of many performances this season!”

Miss Harry clapped. Stood. Patted Veronica, proud papa on their backs, both well done

jobs. Other girls, speechless, lined up to exit. Behind their newfound prima donna and her father,

so honored. Miss Harry held down the barn, lilting a final good evenin' to 'em all. Door closed,

studio quiet, no music since formal end of class. The teacher in the country danced again,

humming her tune all by herself. She sashayed and twirled in the dim, bounced jumped and

reached, stretched 'til long past proper, sunset far beyond any old river to the west, but not alone

she--. Light coolness settled the night. Live oaks, Spanish moss wrapped arms around a barn,

new mother with plenty mo' to give, forever expectant of family, encore called back her hope.

A native of the southeastern United States, R. P. Singletary is a lifelong writer across fiction, poetry, and hybrid forms and budding playwright with recent fiction, poetry, and drama published or forthcoming in Litro, BULL, Cowboy Jamboree, Rathalla Review, The Rumen, Wasteland Review, The Wave - Kelp Journal, the coalition (Coalition for Digital Narratives), Roi Fainéant Press, en*gendered, Wicked Gay Ways, House of Arcanum, The Collidescope, Ancient Paths Christian Literary, EBB - Ukraine, Pink Disco, and elsewhere. Member, Authors Guild. 

Authors Notes: Come South, where "break" and "stigma" collide this time on the dance floor of a would-be barn of genders and gen(d)erations. Listen for how a lilt of speech may coax all us li'l ones to tap our toes...and heal.