Free Dancing Lessons by Olive Senior

Jheri curls, and Afro-glow, and later still a track suit, trainers, and a blonde wig, for Millie kept up-to-date.
    Millie was a sambo girl, rather plump with squashed features, so she wasn’t really pretty, but she had something that was sweet to men for they were attracted to her like honeybees. Unlike the other girls around who couldn’t wait to get a man, and usually got a baby instead, Millie said she wasn’t ready to settle down and flirted and laughed with them all, showing the gap between her front teeth that was supposed to be the sign of a loose woman. But I don’t think she was; though she had a reputation as a “walk-bout,” Millie didn’t care. Unlike her younger sister Vie, who had to stay home to mind the three children she already had at age twenty, Millie was “free, single, and disengaged,” as she liked to describe herself to any who dared to criticize her.
    â€œWhy me should stay coop up a yard like cunno-munno and me nuh have man or pikni to mind?” was her standard question, hands on hips. She was proud of her independence and, indeed, was the only one of those girls who would eventually settle for nothing less than marriage. Since she and her other sisters all worked out of the house, they left poor Vie not just to mind pikni but do the cooking and the chores for the rest of them. So Millie on her days off was free to walk. And talk. She walked to the shop, she walked to the post office, she walked miles to visit her friends and relatives when her mind took her, in the process harnessing all news and gossip and trailing behind her the ugly chat-chat that followed women who did not stay at their yard and—even worse—had no children of their own. Yet, because Millie had such a pleasant, smiling face, with dimples, and a temper to match, everyone liked her, even the women, so the remarks passed behind her back were nowhere as stinging as they would have been were she less well liked, or less well connected in the marketplace of gossip.
    That afternoon, on her way home from her walkabout, she stopped off to visit me.
    I was actually seated on the back steps beating chaklata in the mortar when she came around the side of the house. “Miss G,” she greeted me, and I could see from the dampness of her clothes and the sweat running down her face that she was coming from far. She stopped by the tank to take up the little tin cup that stood there, dipped up water from the bucket, and drank in deep gulps before she came and seated herself on the bench under the breadfruit tree that faced the steps. Before saying another word, she pulled her cotton hankie from her sleeve to wipe her face and stooped and picked up a dried breadfruit leaf from the ground to fan herself. I continued with my work, scooping up the last of the beaten chocolate and cinnamon from the mortar and shaping it before putting it aside on the tin sheet to dry with the rest of what I had already pounded and formed into balls. Then I started to take up more of the parched beans from the Dutch pot and drop them into the mortar. But I didn’t raise the mortar stick, for though I had a million things to do before the children came home from school, I was eager to hear the latest news and welcomed the break.
    I settled back, for I expected this session to be the usual leisurely affair, but Millie hadn’t even finished wiping her face before she burst out laughing. “Then Miss G, you nuh hear? One autoclaps at Cross Path Friday night!”
    I must have looked blank, for the name meant nothing to me. Then I remembered it was where Sam had gone to live when he left me, a little township down on the plains, near to the estate where he worked. At the mention of Sam I felt a tightness around my heart, but I looked at Millie and said nothing.
    â€œShe throw him out, for it was her house you know? Lock, stock, and barrel. All him tings she tumble out inna yard. Is so him come home and find