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My Mother’s Last Dance

When my mother is a gypsy she is a dancer, but when she is my mother, she cannot be a dancer although every cell of her body longs to move in unison to a sultry pulse of music. She has been my mother during the time in her life when she should have been the dancing gypsy and the tears in her eyes at the sight of dancers fills my soul with grief, knowing too much of her life has passed, and her dreams of dancing are only dreams. Fortunately her son is a writer who has connections with the deities that breathe the life into the city of Xanthos. And in this city, on this night, a theater is being filled in honor of my mother who will perform at last, the dance of the shape shifter.

Empty stage. No light. Deep piano. Only a note, maybe a dark chord. From high above center stage, a tiny drop of music drips in slow motion, gathering fairy dust and absorbing all that glistens and is full of light. Inside my chest, there is a pit. The darkness. The music. They bring to mind an image of my mother, the housewife dreaming of dance, but chained by children and chores. The pit fills. Painful sorrow. Scooping a great steam shovel scoop I extract from the pit, compress this grief into a fist-sized ball, and hurling it into the air, the painful sorrow transforms into a thousand stars that wisp about the concert hall like a phantom- -dashing and startling—-sparkling and delighting—-swirling into a grand crescendo spiral around this tiny droplet of music that begins to glow and shimmer. I smile a tender smile. Ting… sings the triangle, and the tiny droplet touches the stage.

Strings and smoke! The droplet explodes with a blinding white light! The timpani roars with thunder! The crowd covers its eyes. Not a hair is left in place from the rushing winds and I laugh to myself like a madman. Silence. The piano tinkles with tiny notes and the faint crackling of fireworks fades away. What is shining on the stage with the brilliance of an angel? It is my mother. This is her dance.

The theater is packed with women and children, flowers and men, trolls and goblins, angels and saints, snakes and scorpions, nymphs and sorcerers, gods and demons, dolphins and whales, newts and lizards, lions and minks, skeletons and wraiths, sharks and octopi, griffins and dragons, kings and jesters, chipmunks and squirrels, vampires and werewolves, invisible men, and of course, the beast with a million eyes. I have gathered the world, both those who are benevolent, and those full of malevolence towards her so they can watch her dance either rejoicing in victory, or squirming in defeat. I have gathered them all to observe her now as she stands decorated as a blue-skinned Hindu goddess with all ten arms behind her back.

A fox in a sultan’s garb enters stage right and plucks his sitar. Harmoniously, she unravels all ten arms from her side and stretches out her hands. On each blue palm, a clear glass cup appears, cueing the ferret gypsies to beat a mystical rhythm on their tambourines and drums. Sultry like a snake the arms and body move to the music. Candles ignite inside the cups. The flames leave tracers of light in patterns like the swirling particles of an atom. The music plays on and she sways and smiles to herself. Spinning slithering leaping twisting crouching sliding, the music builds up, faster and faster. Arms writhing like snakes behind her back, about her face, above her head, faster and faster, spinning and gyrating, faster and faster, she dances with the flames that are flaring and changing all colors of passion as though they are her lovers. The music reaches an exhausting pace. The timpani joins in, twirling her into a spin with the speed and grace of a figure skater. Raising her arms up and down, the streaking candlelight weaves a veil around her until only a silhouette she becomes. In the oscillating blur of light, the illusion of a bee hive fades in and out. The sudden sound of violins summons a multitude of bird-sized bees—-wearing yellow jackets and yellow goggles—-to emerge from this hive and buzz over the heads of the spectators stringing honey from row to row. Again I laugh to myself like a madman as the bees fly all about. The music continues at its exhausting pace, yet my mother keeps spinning faster and faster. Beneath the chaotic sitar jubilee a dark cello groans a dark note of horse-hair sliding across catgut. The note drones, deeply, bottomless, as if hanging upside-down from the bottom of an elevator atop a great skyscraper looking into the shaft where the darkness seems to go on forever even after the four walls of black converge into a tiny lightless dot. A powerful note it is that she rides. So powerful, it lifts her from the stage floor, spinning still in her colorful flaming filigree. From where her feet were, a phosphorus vine of green spreads across the stage. The plant life flourishes, burying the gypsy musicians, climbing the walls. Its tendrils creep into the crowd and encompass every man, beast, and apparition attending the performance so that none can escape. Only the faces remain free of plant life. I can tell the fish sitting next to me wearing overalls is astonished. He hasn’t blinked his bulging eyes yet! Not to mention that he keeps making oohh expressions with his lips. So I lean over and say, “Dude that’s my mom dancing up there.” He turns towards me and gives me an astonished look. I smile humbly and turn my attention back to the stage where the vine is growing like reaching hands towards my mother’s feet. When the green grasps her, the music stops abruptly. To the sound of the buzzing of the bees, my mother unravels and transforms. The legs turn stem-like while each arm becomes a petal of a flower, and each petal glows like the ever-changing colored light of its candle. In the center, her head becomes a yellow stamen in a tunnel of radiating blues and reds. Above the head of each entity in the audience, a flower blooms. The bees, delighted, go straight to work collecting pollen, humming like the sitar sound of a feel-good vibe.

Hummmmm… the bees are busy. Taking taking taking powdered affection from flower after flower while she awaits for their return. One by one, trailing flower dust, they fly into the center of her flower, descending into the pistil. She moves like a plant under water. At last, the last bee returns home. But what is this? A cymbal swishes and a breeze of ice blows over the crowd. The tendrils constrict, the flowers wilt above our heads. Her petals grow instantly fragile and crumble away within the sound of the wind chimes. Her leaves droop. Her mighty blossom bows in slow motion. The flower dies from the music of the North Wind, but our great green blanket keeps us warm as winter visits the theater. My nose is nipped, but beneath my heart, a fire is kindled as I helplessly watch her die on the stage.

The snow comes, there is no music, only the cold wind and the snow falling peacefully on the fallen flower. Do I hear a phantom? No, it is an icy piano echoing from a far away woods playing snowflake notes. Please don’t let the snow come, please… but the piano must play, there must come a winter, and it buries the blossom under its tiny little notes. Icicle tears roll from my eyes in deep chorded sounds and my heart burns inside my warm cocoon. What dance is this? What dance is this that my mother must die? I sob the words, but I cry because I am the choreographer controlled by the puppeteer strings of things to come. She is covered in white now, half sticking out from the snow. Behind her, the fields are white, and the woods are far, far away. Eventually, the piano fades to silence and the snow falls naturally. I can weep no more.

A rustling in the white catches my eye. Then another. Then another and another, until the whole stage seems to be vibrating. Like little helicopters, the bees emerge wearing little hats and little scarves, shaking away the cold from their bodies. In their arms are little glass bells that make little glass sounds like a cascade of icicles while they fly and hover about the stage, arranging themselves into an arch formation over the entire scene. When all are in place, the bells fall silent. From the right, a young girl enters wearing black fur and a veil of mourning. Her head is bowed, her face is dark, and her hands are clasped before her around a single rose. Delicately, she kneels before the whitened flower and offers the rose solemnly. She steps back. Closing her eyes, she offers a silent prayer.

When the prayer has flown from her heart, she opens her eyes and lifts her arms. More bees emerge from the snow. Removing the coat and veil, they fly away off stage. Elegant and delicate, behold, the beautiful ballerina!

And with a nod from her head and a pirouette, the bees with the bells play a sugar plum song and she begins her dance with graceful, perfect elegance. We watch her hypnotically, but never see the curtain call for we have drifted into a deep winter sleep with the dance of my mother playing on and on in our minds until the warm sunshine of spring arouses us to when flowers shall bloom again.

END
© 2005 Christian Cloud Abraham

Posted on August 19, 2005 in
Emotion: Tender, Type: Fiction