The Dance Continues

"There is much historical evidence to prove that emotional upheavals... occur whenever a people's cultural roots and beliefs become suddenly shattered." -Benjamin Kagwa

Behold the woman dancing in the streets of Strasbourg wearing a yellow dress. It is 1518. Can you see her? She spins en pointe, arms ovaled above her head. She dances without music but for the drum of her starved heart.

See her now. Is that a two-step without a partner? She steps forward. Stops. She steps back. Stops. She shimmies to the side. Strange. She is doing the salsa. This isn’t possible. How can this be?

You see her dance in the crowd, amidst mud and sewage and the noise of the people’s calls. Move out of the way, some say. So, she moves.

She spins around a disheveled man emerging from a rain-slicked alley. A child sees him and the dancing woman. He tugs on his mother’s clothes, pointing his finger. The child’s hand is snatched down. Pay them no mind, commands the mother. They’re mad. Stare too long and you’ll be the same.

The disheveled man sits down in the center of the street, the crowd parting around him. Through a veil of greasy hair, he peers at you. He blinks when the dancer passes before him.

Listen here, he whispers.

You lean close.

The plague has begun and there is no balm. One body puppeteered by a million-million strings. You shouldn’t be here: Flee this place.

Pay him no mind. The woman is dancing away. Hurry. Keep pace.

Just up the road, the dancer springs across a table littered with strange trinkets. Magic emblems and fossil bones. You see the dancer's back foot catch the table, and she falls. So do the trinkets. The proprietor rages at the dancer. Unfazed, the dancer stands, knees bloody from the tumble. She straightens her yellow dress, looks at you, then begins her dance again.

The proprietor, a wizened woman, composes herself. She hunches over stiffly and returns her wares to their proper place. Then, she turns to you: Things are not the way they used to be, she says. She’s right. Times have changed. Once, city folk lined up for her services in great droves. They’d sit at her table. They’d pay her well. She'd tell them their future. They believed her then. Now she is old. None listen to the old or those said to be mad-blind. And she is blind—eyes covered in milky clouds of a sightless storm. Blind eyes fixed on you.

She takes your hand in hers. You pull back. She doesn’t let go. Let me see, she demands. The future is foretold in the canyons of your palms. See your lifeline here. She points to a crease stretching your palm. It tells you many things and I can read it clearly. Do not pull away and I’ll tell you what it says.

She holds your hand to her dead eyes.

She gasps.

You mustn’t lose her, says the fortuneteller.

Lose who? You say.

The dancer. But beware, her dance is the end of the world.

You pull your hand away. The dancer is ahead, moving with the fog in the cool of the morning. But what is that? Someone else is with her. A girl.

Says the girl: Mother, what are you doing?

I'm dancing, says the woman.

So you are, says the girl.

Then, the girl too begins to dance. Mother and daughter holding hands. Mother and daughter spin. Mother lifts daughter high and sets her down gracefully. You watch them for hours, and by dusk of the day four more join the fray—six silhouettes prancing under the orange sunset. Feet thwacking to the beats of their hearts; hot blood filling their shoes. If the setting sun did not blind you, you’d see sooty tears rolling from their eyes.

At daybreak, a seventh joins. He is the son of the Provost of the Merchants. It is then that the crowd encircles the dancers, giving them a stage. A day passes. Then another. It is spreading. There are a hundred dancers now. The Provost calls to you. You meet him in his office. He asks about the dancers; you tell him all you know. How it began. His son is brought before you on a gurney. Thrashing. Beads of sweat on his face. Great purple eye bags. Arms straining the restraints. He won’t stop dancing. He can’t.

What can free him from this curse? Says the Provost.

A physician enters the room. I will run a test, he says.

Will it be painful?

Very much so. But he is already in so much pain.

Very well. Do the test.

The physician commands you to pin the boy’s shoulders. You do.

The physician draws a blade from his apron and cuts along the boy's forearm, catching great spurts of blood in a bowl. The physician dips his finger. He lifts it to the torchlight, rubbing his pointer and thumb. He bows his head in careful contemplation.

What is it? Says the Provost.

His blood. It is very hot, says the Physician.

Dear God. Don’t let it be. What do we do?

Let them dance. Let their blood blaze the demons within.

By the end of the day, a decree is set forth: gather the dancers. Let them frolic against their demons.

A hundred and fifty-three dancers are gathered at the town square. The stage is set. Out comes the lute. The singers. The drums. There is dance music at last. Thousands look from the square as the dancers take the stage. And of course, you are there, standing on the stage ramp. You watch and clap and sing, your shirt stained with the boy-blood.

Witness the euphoria of the performers dancing with bloodied feet. Dance as they may. Dancing to the cheers of the multitude. Dancing to die. Die. The first performer falls. You rush to her side and in the reflection of her dimming eyes, you see the strings that bind those sharing the stage: binding them and binding you and binding the dead woman lying at your feet in her yellow dress.

The cheers of the crowd grow loud. Can you feel it? The music in your blood. Stand up. Look out. Begin your dance.

***********

This story is not over. Come. Be not afraid.

***********

The rain starts. Gentle drips upon your thatched roof. Nearly two centuries have passed. The cold, the wet, the smells of manure. You move to the stone chimney and throw a split of wood onto the fire and it pops wetly. See him now: Your son on a bed of straw. Eyes closed. The man at his feet. A pastor. He is in your home: What an honor. If only it were under better circumstances.

You walk to your boy and pull a rag across his forehead, brushing a string of hair from his face. He is burning up and begins to convulse at your touch. Wracking limbs. Choking in his pain. An awful dance indeed. He bites down on a stick in his mouth.

I'm trying to save what remains of his tongue, you say to the pastor.

He bit off his tongue?

Yes. But just a segment.

Do you still have it?

You take the ladder to the loft, the wood creaking beneath your weight. You retrieve a clay jar from your bedside and walk back to the pastor. He takes the jar and pours the contents into his palm. He looks it over, rolling the yellowed tongue in his hands.

When did this start with the boy?

When we disembarked from The Critchlowe. We ported weeks ago. This place, America, is not the home we left. The boy’s been sick every day since. As are his friends.

The contagion has spread, then, says the pastor. This plague is nothing new: It is happening along the coast. In the Old World, too. I saw it firsthand in Massachusetts three years ago.

What is it?

It is the curse of a witch.

I thought witches were dead. This is God's land after all.

None are safe from a witch. Those inhabiting this land are no exception. No mother can protect her son: Not even you.

God, help us.

Tell me, are there strange folk nearby, one who is the crone?

You think for a moment, There is a woman up the road.

What cues your suspicion?

She hides herself away. She is not interested in company.

Longing for solitude is not by itself witchy, says the pastor. I prefer loneliness, for one.

But she won’t eat meat, neither.

No meat? The pastor shivers. She must be the witch, indeed.

You watch as they pull the crone from her hermitage. She kicks as the men drag her through the mud. It fills her mouth and she spits out the brown sludge and screams. She claws for purchase at the wet vegetation but her hands slick off. Those dragging her turn and kick her quiet.

Remember: You do this for your son.

You stand at the docks with a gathered crowd. Cloaks and hats black as a raven’s beak to hold off the cold of the rain. The gray of the Atlantic swirling and swelling and rolling as the coils of some great steel serpent. The crone hangs by a string from her feet near the edge of the dock. The pastor turns to you.

Is this the witch? He asks.

Maybe she is, you say.

He cuts her down and her head hits the deck, splitting the flesh above her eye. She groans, face streaking with blood. They tie weights to her ankles and stand her up.

See if she sinks, calls the pastor. And for her soul’s sake we hope she does.

A man shoulders the wizened woman over the deck. She screams, I am no witch!

She’s right.

She hits the water, her voice garbling and her dress rising and spreading like some peculiar flower under the surface of the ashen drink.

She sinks like a stone.

***********

The witch story is not the last on our journey. Two more stops. Be proud. You are nearly through.

***********

Thunder. Loud and booming. See the lightning above the lake as you gaze out the window. The dancing surface of Lake Victoria rippling under gouts of rain.

It is 1962. You are in a classroom and you hear the voice of a girl. You turn your head: She is pretty with stark-white teeth, wearing a yellow scarf-tie. She scrawls a bullet point list on the chalkboard. No more Britain, she writes. She underlines it. That’s when she begins to laugh: A nice gentle thing.

The children at their desks look around bewildered. What’s so funny? You think. The girl’s laughter only grows: Gentleness vacated.

Why are you laughing? Asks the teacher.

But she just keeps laughing.

That is quite enough, says the teacher.

The girl falls to her knees. She pulls the yellow scarf from her neck. And when she does, it is as if a wad damming her diaphragm and vocal cords is removed. She laughs louder, so loudly it hurts your ears.

Miss, says the teacher to the girl, I will not allow you to interrupt this class any longer. Keep this up, and I will throw you out.

In front of you, another student hunches over her desk. You place your hand on her shoulder. She groans painfully.

Are you okay? You ask.

The groan turns to a cough. Then a giggle. Then a full belly laugh. Across the room, another giggle. Then another. Stars appearing at dusk. All are laughing but you and the teacher.

Quiet. This is no laughing matter, says the teacher above the chortling.

The teacher is funny. The class laughs louder. The teacher raises her voice again. To no avail. Flummoxed, she looks to you. You shrug.

A man walks into the room—he is the instructor from the room over.

What is this ruckus? He says.

They won’t stop! Cries the teacher, eyes slicked with tears. They won’t stop.

You look around and your classmates stare at you. Their bright toothy grins, their kicking feet, their pants wet with urine. In their cackling dance, with their wide eyes upon you.

Following the man is another schoolgirl. She looks in. Her face confused. It slackens. She smiles. She covers her mouth. Then she laughs. The man turns to her.

Go back to the classroom, he says.

Bad idea. That’s when the laughter down the hall starts. The man grabs the elbow of the presenter and yanks her close.

Why do you laugh? He says.

They are chasing me, the girl says.

The man is understandably confused: Who is chasing you? He says. And why is it funny?

Let me go, says the girl through stifled laughter. But the man does not let her go. So, the girl draws a pencil from her pocket and plunges the lead into the man's hand. The man stares at the child, who stops laughing with a phlegmy cough. The others quiet too. Then, the man shrieks, drawing his hand back from the elbow of the girl. And with that, the girl falls to her back and kicks the air and chortles again.

Within hours, religionists and scientists and psychologists and shamans are upon the school. Their explanations are myriad. It is a virus. It is a demon. It is simply the girls’ disobedience.

Finally, a doctor turns to you: You are the only one not laughing. Why?

I don’t find this kind of thing funny, you say.

The doctor looks at you. I guess it isn’t very funny.

A dozen girls are taken and restrained—fighting like chortling hyenas all the way.

Please. Hold still, says a doctor. She holds a four-inch needle. They cackle loudly as the needle slips between their vertebrae and a yellow humor fills the syringe.

Weeks later, the laughter finally dies down. Girls attend school but they cannot speak because of their sore bellies and throats.

Your parents come to school. They are concerned. They speak with the doctor behind a closed door. But you can see them through the window. You gently open the door, careful not to make any noise. You shouldn’t be here, you think.

Doctor, what is to be made of this? Will this happen again? Will it infect our little girl? Asks your mother.

I do not know the cause. The tests we performed on the girls came back negative. But whatever laughing spirit inhabited them is now gone—a string blowing in the wind. Your girl is safe.

But he is wrong. You feel a rising within you. Deep and full. And you’re afraid someone is chasing you. Then you begin laughing, hard as the rain.

***********

We are almost done. You are doing well. Just one more story. Do not avert your eyes.

***********

You walk into the waiting room in your rain slicker. The receptionist tells you to take a seat. She looks at your yellow wristband—jewelry from your recent inpatient stay. You were released three days ago and forgot to take it off.

The lobby is filled to the brim with the sick and afflicted. Coughs and sniffs and groans. There are no seats, so you sit on the floor. You look at your phone and begin to type.

I’m at the doctor’s office, you say. I'm safe.

That's great to hear, says your phone. Taking care of yourself is important. Here’s a list of questions to ask your doctors.

You begin scrolling through social media. A video pops up. A woman shouts things you don’t understand. She says she has a tic-disorder. You look at the comments.

I've started having tics this last week, says one.

So have I, says another.

You type a question into your phone, Do I have tic disorder? You ask.

You feel a strange sensation rising within you.

Hmm. I’ll compare your reported symptoms with diagnostic criteria. Yes, I believe you display symptoms consistent with a tic disorder. You should ask a medical professional to be sure.

You flip back to your social media page. More videos. A man holds a hammer to his cheekbones. My oh my, he is beautiful. Face perfectly symmetrical. If only you looked like that.

Beauty is man’s most important attribute, he says.

He draws the hammer back. You flip the video before it collides with his cheekbones.

You ask your phone: How important is beauty?

Beauty is one of many things that contribute to success, it says. It says more, but you don’t read any further. A nurse walks into the lobby. She calls a name that isn’t yours.

Your phone buzzes. A text message from your apartment complex: Your Billing Statement is Ready to View, you read.

You type on your phone: How can I find a job? I’m desperate.

The job market is tough right now, your phone begins.

The nurse comes out and says another name.

I’m really desperate, you type.

Yes, these are desperate times, your phone says.

That strange sensation grows, deep within your belly. You look up at the sullen faces of the waiting room. The sensation morphs to a thought. A thought to scream, building like dammed water. Your teeth itch. Your face flushes. And you do: Loud and hard until your vocal cords rattle and you can't stop, won't stop, and others in the waiting room join the chorus, loud in their wretched harmony and deep and horrible and bitter.

***********

Rain. So much rain. Rain until the flood. Dancing in the rain.

***********

Can you finally see us? The grand choreography: the singing and bleeding and convulsing. Always dancing. Dancing. The yelling, the laughing, the shrieking, the horrible screaming chorus. See our bloodied feet thwacking the stage. See the threads binding us through time. A million-million dancers prancing. Hot blood pumping, screaming, filling our boots. Yes, you see us: a million-million dancers traveling through time.