The Way It Is by Donelda Reid

Author:Donelda Reid
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, JUV000000
Publisher: Second Story Press
Published: 2010-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

December 1967

The buzz around school was about the Christmas concert and the Christmas dance, both major events in the school year. In the halls Ellen overheard snippets of conversation about who was singing at the concert, who was going to the dance with whom, and who was planning to wear what.

“Student Council members will be selling tickets for the Christmas Dance today at noon by the front office,” a fuzzy voice on the PA announced to a background of jingling bells. “Get them soon. They’re going fast.”

“You going to the dance?” Tony asked Ellen as they walked down the hall.

“Me? No,” Ellen said. She added quietly, “I can’t dance.”

“Why not? Didn’t your parents teach you?” he asked.

Ellen grimaced. “Well, Tony, dancing and me are a bad combination.”

Tony looked at her skeptically.

Ellen rolled her eyes in frustration. “When I was seven, my mother enrolled me in ballet. She thought I’d make friends or something. It was a disaster. I hated being there. I was twice as tall as the other girls. The teacher always put me at the end of the line or in the back row. Everyone stared at me.”

“Maybe you imagined the stares.”

Ellen glared at Tony. “No.”

“OK.” He kept walking. “So what happened?”

“Whenever the teacher spoke to me, it sounded like she was talking from a planet a million miles away. Like I’d gone deaf. I didn’t understand anything she said. I would stretch up when the others bent down or turn the wrong way. I begged Mom to let me quit. After the first recital, she agreed. The end of dancing.”

“That’s too bad,” Tony said. “Dancing’s fun.”

Tony dances? Of course he must. He told me he went to dances with the other kids on the reserve. After a long pause, she hesitantly said, “Do you dance much?”

“Oh, yah, all the time. I told you about the dances at the community hall. When a bunch of us get together on the weekend at somebody’s place, we turn the radio up and dance. Then there are the weddings and other special occasions. Sometimes we go to other reserves when they have dances. It’s fun.”

Ellen imagined Tony at a party. He’d be standing with his arm around some girl, laughing and talking. Her stomach dropped. Tony’s my friend, she thought as she tried to erase the other girl and put herself in the scene.

“So, you’re going to go to the Christmas dance,” Ellen said, surprised at the jealousy she felt imagining Tony dancing with other girls.

“No-o-o.” Tony dragged the word out until it had several syllables. “There wouldn’t be anyone for me to dance with.”

“There’ll be around a hundred girls going to that dance. What’s wrong with them?”

“I’ll stick to dancing with my people.” Ellen’s flash of happiness that he wasn’t going to dance with the girls at school was immediately replaced with despair that he wouldn’t dance with her because she wasn’t Indian.

“Are you prejudiced?”

“Prejudiced? No, I just don’t want to be turned down.” Her heart gave a little lurch.

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