Free Step-Ball-Change by Jeanne Ray Page A

about the whole thing.
    “God,” Taffy whispered. “You forget how cute they are. And how little. Was Holden ever that size?”
    “Probably so.”
    “I never wanted more than one child. I think that’s because I always wanted to be an only child.” She said it without any consideration of what that might have meant for me. “Now I think I should have had ten. Except not with Neddy. I should have had ten children born from illicit affairs.”
    I clapped my hands and the room went silent, all the mothers and daughters waiting and watching. It was better than being a lawyer. I was jury and judge, it was all my show. I put a record on and we started. “Has everyone been practicing?”
    “Yes, Mrs. McSwan.”
    Taffy found an inconspicuous spot on the side of the room away from the mirror. She reminded me of that first mother who came to tap-dance. She was respectful but unself-conscious. Twelve little girls put their right foot out and tapped. Twelve mothers put their right foot out and tapped. Taffy put her right foot out and showed them all how it was done. They did a brush right forward, striking the pads of their big toes, and then a brush right back, brush right forward, brush right back. I called out the time but it looked for all the world like Taffy was leading them. They raised their rounded arms into third position a half beat behind her. Her steps were fluid, her tapping was impeccable.
    Taffy could dance.
    Had I known this before? She followed every step. She turned in the right direction every time we turned. She did not watch her feet. Not that it was hard, it was a kids’ class, but it could be hardto do anything for the first time. This class had been going on for a while, and even the most uncoordinated children had memorized the routines. Taffy got them instantly. Her ankles were loose, her feet were quick. She knew how to work the top and bottom halves of her body together at the same time, a concept that some people are never able to grasp at all. It made me want to send the rest of the class home and throw routines at her all afternoon, real dance routines. I had a suspicion that she would be able to keep up.
    “Let’s do it slow the first time,” I said to the class. “Shuffle ball change, shuffle ball change, then step ball change, step ball change. Good, perfect. Now speed it up, double time.”
    Taffy blinked her eyes and her feet started to fly. I could separate out her taps from all the other tap sounds because they were balanced, perfectly timed. Some of the children and mothers who had noticed a woman coming to class without a six-year-old were staring at her now, but they never would have put it together that we were sisters, Taffy with her chic blond hair in a swept-back cut, me with my brown hair gone impossibly gray and pinned to the back of my head like every other aging dance teacher I knew. Taffy in her careful makeup and me with a little Vaseline smeared over my lips. I was taller than my sister. She had a straighter nose, though that hadn’t always been the case. I had taken good care of myself all my life, but I looked like what I was: a very fit sixty-two-year-old. Taffy, on the other hand, would soon be sixty and looked more like she would soon be fifty. It could be said that the only way anyone would have known we were related is that we were the two best dancers in the room.
    “When did you learn how to dance?” I asked her as I waved good-bye at the window. The last of the little girls had come overto hug me, the last of the mothers had dropped off their checks for next month, we had the place to ourselves.
    Taffy shrugged. “I always danced, I guess. Neddy was a terrible dancer. You couldn’t get him out on the floor. I was always dancing with somebody else’s husband at weddings.”
    “I’m not talking about that kind of dancing. I’m talking about this kind of dancing.” I picked a little pink pullover up off the floor. There was always one left behind, no