Dance Real Slow by Michael Grant Jaffe

Author:Michael Grant Jaffe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2014-11-23T16:00:00+00:00

Since meeting Zoe, Calvin has been quiet and well behaved. After basketball practice or dinner, he will leave me alone, laying himself stomach-down on the living-room floor and coloring in his books or drawing pictures. It is a horse, he will announce suddenly, holding up a stick figure that more closely resembles a piece of furniture than a four-legged animal. Then he is quiet again. He will usually do this two or three times in an evening and finally, after the last one, he will climb on my lap and make a gift of the pictures. I will act surprised, as if he hasn’t done this before, as if I cannot believe someone with my blood coursing through his meandering veins could possibly draw anything so artistic. He will laugh and then kiss me good night. There are seven horses—three blue, two purple, and two brown—scribbled onto manila paper stacked neatly on the corner of my dresser. Last night, when I was tucking Calvin into bed, he asked me what kind of sounds horses make. First I whinnied into his neck, which made him laugh. Then I made a clucking noise with my tongue against the roof of my mouth while I trotted four fingers across the hump that his knees formed underneath the blanket. Calvin was enthralled, his eyes locked to my hand as I moved it back and forth, until I lifted it into the air and made a whooshing sound, like a plane, which brought him out of his trance, shaking his head.

This I have learned: children, much like adults, will fasten on some event, no matter how small or seemingly meaningless, drifting in their futures, and allow it to carry them through the rigors of daily life. Oftentimes, they have no idea they are even doing this, as with Calvin and the horse ride. Or, if he were older and wiser, he might hypothesize the same of me with Zoe.

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