Free Greedy Little Eyes by Billie Livingston Page B

because it’s not about you!”
    His voice was getting closer. I snuck back down the stairs as the door opened, her words suddenly clear and sharp.
    “Hardly! But I sure as hell think it’s boring when it’s about you .”

    After school the next day, I brought home Nancy Donner. She was in my class and wanted in on these tap lessons.
    My mother was tickled to have a second pupil. Not only that but “Donner? Is that your last name? Isn’t that a riot, my last name used to be Donner! Wouldn’t that be funny if we were related!”
    She told Nancy to call her Marion; she’d never liked “Mrs. Adler.” Was never really her. I hadn’t heard her say that before. I knew Donner was her family’s name but it had never occurred to me that she might miss it.
    She had bought two black leotards for me the day before and suddenly she was in my room, rummaging for the second so she could give it to Nancy. “You’ll match,” she said, a thrill on her face. “It’ll be adorable.”
    As we changed into our outfits, Nancy whispered about how pretty my mother was, that she was beautiful like a movie star. I yanked at my underpants, trying to tuck them back under the leotard, and stared at my bedroom door as though I could examine my mother on the other side.
    “How old is Marion anyway? She looks more like your big sister.”
    I could feel my face screwing up at the sound of “Marion.” Seemed like Nancy was just showing off now. Both of them were.
    “Old,” I told her and glared at the door again. “She must be thirty.”
    When we came into the spare room, Marion had set up an old record player from the basement. She had scrubbed the floor and it wasn’t looking too bad, not shiny exactly, but not bad.
    She put us in the centre of the room and stood beforeus, trim in her own woman-size black leotard and tap shoes. Nancy apologized for not having proper taps.
    My mother told her it wasn’t too important right now. Maybe we could get her some later. In the old days, they just slapped some coins on the soles of street shoes anyway, to get the sound.
    “The sound’s what makes it come to life!” She grinned at Nancy and began her instruction with heel-toe heel-toe heel-toe .
    I picked up the move right away, but Nancy’s feet insisted on toe-heel toe-heel.
    My mother came and stood next to her, demonstrating slowly. Once Nancy’d caught on, Marion stepped up the pace with a shuffle demonstration, then a double shuffle, then the grapevine. By now, Nancy was getting it all down fast and she and my mother laughed at their feet as they shuffled and snapped the floor. My feet weren’t in on the joke. Marion went to the record player and set the needle down on a 45 of Sammy Davis Jr. singing “The Candy Man.”
    “Wait, Mom, wait for a sec, I don’t get it.”
    I could swear she sighed when she came over and showed me again, a little more slowly, the shuffle and the grapevine. Meanwhile, Nancy appeared to be ad libbing on her own, new little grooves in the standard steps, and my mother gave her a small ovation. I rolled my eyes.
    “ The Candy Man” played and reset itself over and over, and by what had to be the forty-seventh time that Sammy Davis asked us who could wrap a rainbow in a sigh and make a groovy lemon pie, Nancy and Marionwere side by side, dancing up a storm, my mother interjecting “Good girl” and “Nancy, look at you go!”
    I was beginning to feel like a six-month-old beige carpet.
    I slipped out of the room, telling them I needed a drink of water.
    A few days later, I came home to find my mother in the kitchen, laughing and red-headed. Her hair was still long but it looked thick now, wavy, and Ann-Margret flaming, high at the crown with a few long bangs brushed off to the side.
    Nancy Donner was already there, as if she’d cut class. She and I hadn’t talked much the last few days. I was sick of looking at her; everywhere I turned, there she was.
    They were laughing, as usual, Nancy at the