The Dancer (children’s story)

The Dancer

I was only six years old when my grandmother went to heaven. I remember climbing up such little stairs to see her inside the white pillowed box. She looked like she was sleeping. I touched her shoulder wishing to wake her so she could watch me dance again. She didn’t open her blue eyes.
I think I had danced before I could walk. Every day, just before dinner when the kitchen smelled of simmering cabbage and the air filled with the steam from “klatskis” boiling on a huge old cast iron stove, I skipped and pirouetted across a white and black speckled linoleum floor. Sometimes I would play a game, avoid stepping on spidery cracks that stretched across the floor.
“Babutje” or grandmother in Lithuanian liked to sit on a bench behind her table with Mudeza, a fat tabby sprawled out in front of her. Mudeza’s tail swished back and forth impatiently waiting for the herring as a reward for watching quietly.
Babutje would hum or sing folk songs from Lithuania and clap while I danced for her. I never tired of dancing and she never tired of watching me. After she went away, Mom sent me away to dancing school. Mom said that Babutje would have wanted me to continue dancing.
All through school I went to dance classes and when I graduated, the New York City Ballet asked me to dance with them. I felt sure that Babutje would have been very proud of me. I wondered if she and God were watching me from heaven.
One chilly October evening, our troupe was rehearsing for a performance. Afterwards, several of my friends and I decided to go to dinner to celebrate my fifth year with the ballet. We were stopped at a light, when someone hit us from behind pushing the car into the traffic. Another car hit my side. I woke up in the hospital with a broken arm, three broken ribs, many bruises and a crushed ankle. I would never be able to dance again. My friend and dance partner, Michael Dukov, came to visit me several times; but, then we lost touch.
I worked at many kinds of jobs in New York over the next year and none of them could replace my love for dancing. One day, while I was searching the newspaper for another job, my mom phoned. She wanted me to pick up my niece from school in West Caldwell, New Jersey. When I arrived, I saw a large green sign atop a melon colored building that read “Kazimira’s School of Dance.” Kazimira was my grandmother’s name.
As I entered the school, I noticed a picture of Babutje hanging on a nearby wall. I was surprised and speechless. Then I saw Michael Dukov.
“Your mother bought this place with the money your grandmother left her. She hired me as the instructor and I need your help,” Michael said, “There are so many children who want to learn.”
Why did he and Mom wait to tell me about the school? Perhaps I needed time to realize that I had to be involved with dancing. Today, I teach children to dance. As I clap and hum, I can hear Babutje singing in my heart.

copyright by Leann DeHart August 1999