TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 127

[Tobie Shapiro]

January 21, 2000007


Dear Seekers and Finders,

	If you're looking for the Brahms second 
Serenade and you're having trouble finding it, 
look under: Brahms Serenade No.2.  I got word 
from some folks that they couldn't find it when 
they went hunting.  It is a consummate piece, not 
one of Brahms' better known works and I don't 
know why.  It was one of his own personal 
favourites.  The first time I got married 
(doesn't that sound awful) I had an orchestra 
playing the piece as we walked in.  Dweller and I 
got married at the Jewish Museum of the West just 
down the street.  A big old mansion that's been 
converted into the museum.  The grounds are 
beautiful.  There was plenty of room for the 
orchestra (strings and ten winds I think), not a 
full sized orchestra, more like a chamber 
orchestra.  Anyway, do go look for it.  If you 
have any iota of you that appreciates classical 
music, you will like this piece.

	And in other news:  Feyna's friend, Alex, 
the one who was going to have to move to Nevada 
because he couldn't afford to live here.  The one 
who said, "Well, there is a way that I could 
stay.  If you and Natalie moved in with me and 
got jobs and supported me...."  Yes, that Alex. 
Feyna has received sunny news about his financial 
status.  He works part time at San Francisco City 
Hall, filing things and running errands.  And 
guess what!  He got a raise so he can stay, and 
not only that, but today they're all three going 
house hunting with him in the city so he can 
scout out what sort of house he could buy. 
SOMETHING DOESN'T SCAN WELL.  I told Feyna that.

	"You mean, he got a raise from his part 
time, minimum wage job, and that is the 
difference between having to move to Nevada and 
buying a house in the city?  Feyna, there's 
something wrong with this."

	"Not now, Mom.  Please!"  She started to 
cry.  "What do you expect me to do about it? 
Tell him he's lying and dump him?"

	"No.  Feyna I don't expect you to do 
anything about it.  I just want you to have your 
eyes open.  There are obviously things about him 
that you don't know.  And he is not telling you 
the whole truth.  I just want you to know this."

	"All right.  I know."

	"Does he actually think that you're going to fall for this?"

	"I don't know."

	"I guess he does, otherwise he wouldn't keep doing it."

	There ended our conversation.  She was 
off to meet him and Natalie for another 
overnight.  She has school today in San 
Francisco.  I do wish there were some other way 
than having to watch her fall on her face, but 
there  is no substitute for experience.  I 
shudder.  I love Feyna more than I can say, and 
the thought of her having her heart broken 
shatters me.  Nothing I can do.  Just steer the 
ship.  Steer the ship.  And tell her things like 
I told her.




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Ballroom Dancing

	Dart Tinkum had a captive clientele.  She 
gave ballroom dancing classes to the fourth, 
fifth and sixth graders at John Muir Elementary 
School.  She gave these classes after school on 
certain days.  She sent invitations, formal 
invitations, with the extra little leaf of 
translucent paper between the front fold of the 
card and the inside embossed message asking our 
parents  if they would like us, individually, to 
join her very elite ballroom dancing class, which 
will be held such and such a day at such and such 
time and will cost such and so much for the 
semester.  These invitations to the dance were 
passed out in class by the teacher, so it seemed 
as if Dart Tinkum were anointed by the school. 
It was a package deal.  You sit in class all day 
hunched over your own skull, learning what you 
probably would rather not learn and thereafter, 
on such and such day, you wear your frothiest 
clothing and stand there at the Hillcrest Club 
with Dart Tinkum, learning how to fox trot, cha 
cha cha and box step with the other members of 
your class.

	There are a lot of movies out recently 
about ballroom dancing and how the teaching of it 
has lifted poor disadvantaged kids, rich lost 
kids and delinquent kids from their hopeless 
trajectories and taught them self esteem, like 
feeding them crackers, that easy.  Oh at first, 
they laugh at the formalities of ballroom 
dancing, at the ridiculous poses and the 
unnatural postures, but after a while, they are 
all seduced by it, and they take their places on 
the dance floor, new human beings propelled by a 
newfound sense of purpose, their heads held high, 
stepping out into the world under the direction 
of Lawrence Welk and his merry pranksters.  But 
you know, this is a crock.  You can bill it 
however you want to, but the reality for most of 
us with our knobby knees and scabby elbows was 
that Dart Tinkum's class was barely tolerable. 
We were embarrassed to be there, embarrassed to 
touch the bizarre and alien members of the 
opposite sex, and embarrassed to be counting our 
feet as we shuffled across the shiny floor, no 
rose in our teeth.  The apple of no one's eye.

	There was the same social outcasting as 
among the classmates at school.  There were 
popular kids and unpopular kids, and kids that 
didn't even qualify for unpopular they were so 
apart from the rest.  When Dart Tinkum gave the 
starting shot and told us to go fill up our dance 
cards, we girls would stand there at one end of 
the room, twitching in our frocks, hoping no one 
would choose us, or that everyone would choose 
us, and the miserable boys would have to gush 
forward with the rest of the pack like the 
million sperm let loose to court the egg.  They 
would leave their side of the room and swim over 
to our side, their eyes downcast, looking at 
their own wing tips as they had to select a few 
loathsome girls for dance partners and sign in 
her book for the third dance, or the seventh 
dance, or good God I hope I can avoid her for the 
last dance.  We girls were the receptive eggs, 
and they boys were the aggressive sperm.  The 
idea was to do the whole thing without making any 
unnecessary eye contact, and without giving 
anything away.  No one was to discover through 
this execrable process that anyone had a thing 
for anyone else.  That would be death.

	My dance card was never full.  For those 
of us less popular girls, our fate was to dance 
with Dart Tinkum, the final sign of social exile. 
No matter how tall or short we were, we all came 
up to Dart Tinkum's bosom.  And that is where we 
were forced to direct our sight as she led us 
across the dance floor, the best dancer by far, 
and the least popular.  At the end of the 
semester, there would be a gala event, and the 
record player would have its total work out while 
the class of 1959 suffered through the ordeal. 
We did this why?  We did this to please our 
parents who thought this would be good for us. 
How many atrocities have been carried out in the 
name of, "good for you"?  I am a graduate of, 
"good for you".  Sort of in the line of, "What 
doesn't kill you will make you stronger".  That 
is untrue, however.  What doesn't kill you will 
almost damn near kill you, and you will lie there 
gasping for breath, holding on to life because 
that's what we do, not because it is so sweet or 
beloved.

	In the sixth grade, a new student came to 
our class.  Her name was Dianne Dixon, and she 
was a Negro.  In those days, "Negro," was polite 
for, "black".  And when, like every semester, the 
embossed formal invitations were handed out in 
class to join Dart Tinkum's Ballroom Dancing 
Class, everyone got an invitation except Dianne 
Dixon.

	"Why weren't you invited?" I asked, cluelessly.

	"Because I'm coloured," she said, with a 
shrug, as if this were just another in a series 
of like circumstances she was used to on a daily 
basis.  As if.

	Well, I wasn't a slave unto Pharaoh for 
nothing.  And at the first dance class, while I 
was dancing with Dart Tinkum, I asked her why 
Dianne Dixon wasn't invited to the class.

	"Oh dear," she said to the Jewgirl, quite 
openly, "She wouldn't be comfortable here, now 
would she?"

	I stopped dancing and told Ms. Tinkum," 
Then neither am I."  I walked off the dance 
floor, out of the Hillcrest Club, and arrived 
home without telling anybody a thing.  I didn't 
want my liberal parents to make a big deal out of 
it.



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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net