Dance on Saturday by Elwin Cotman

Author:Elwin Cotman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Small Beer Press
Published: 2020-07-02T18:41:59+00:00

Sometime in that intermittent hour, Lizzy scored a point and Molly applauded. This got the other eighth graders to applaud rather than chance looking uncool.

Emily had been resting her head in Jessie’s lap while daydreaming the plot for a Dragonlance novel where all the characters who should fall in love finally do so. Snapped to attention, her gaze shot to the scoreboard: 13-12. Lizzy’s team (the one with a Native American brave on their shirts) had the lead. More importantly, whichever set this was had to end soon. The very laws of volleyball called for it. Emily bounded down the bleachers, over thickets of duffle bags and purses, to join Molly. They made up a dance on the spot, and a chant set to the Steelers chant.

“Here we go, Lizzy, here we go.” Clap clap. “Here we go, Lizzy, here we go.” Clap clap.

Then, from her periphery, she noticed another girl had joined them. A teenager with dirty blond hair was copying her moves. Poorly.

She cheered on Emily like they knew each other. “Go girl! Go girl!”

Mortified, Emily stopped dancing. The blunt-featured girl, who wore sweatpants and a baggy shirt, looked dumbstruck. “What?” she said.

Emily shot a smirk at Jessie, said, “Nothing,” and returned to her seat. She clapped her hands as if watching a polo game. “Well done, Lizzy.”

From confusion to anger, the girl took three stomps to the top bleacher, plumped down next to a white boy in an Adidas shirt. “This little girl’s a bitch,” she told her boyfriend.

Emily spun on them. “What did you call me?”

The guy spoke in a black accent. “Man, you gots to chill, little girl.”

She now had no doubt whose breath smelled like weed. Had a cop been around, she’d have reported him for drug use. She knew these wannabes—they milled around Ross Park Mall in imitation rapper clothes, their goal in life to shoplift CDs from Sam Goody. Mediocre white people who want to be mediocre black people, her mom called them. She reacted like Mom would have: looked them up and down like they had a skin disease they weren’t aware of, then aimed her regal Nigerian eyes at the court.

The girl kept talking. “You ain’t shit, bitch. You little nappy-head bitch. And you better stop looking at my man like that.”

Emily had had it. She stood to face them, clothed in her dignity like a velveteen robe. “I don’t talk to people like you. I have class. And stop trying to be black.”

“Oh!” said her boyfriend. “She called you white, son.”

The girl made spastic hand gestures. “Bitch, you don’t even sound black. You talk like cousin Hilary on Fresh Prince.”

“Do you know Dom?” the boyfriend asked her. “You look like you know Dom.”

Jessie threw down her crackers in anger. “Leave her alone!”

It upset Emily to discover, against all probability, she was the one being bullied. To avoid escalation, she hurried Jessie to the other end of the bleacher, where they squeezed between two kids chomping Fruit Roll-Ups, their teeth stained red.

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