Dancing Girls

We did that sort of thing: costumed for art shows, smoked cigarillos at weddings, and summered poolside naked. So it wasn’t unusual for me to ride shotgun in an 18-wheeler headed to Florida on a starless night in October, 1996, shortly after the Summer Olympics in Atlanta. The destination was Apalachicola and a second home for me and my friend, Phyllis, a place where our not-yet-born grandchildren could visit and where we’d while away our hours painting large canvases as Delta Blues bawled from the public radio station. Our other friends, collectively called “The Dancing Girls,” had open invitations to visit. Bring pillows, blankets, maybe a blow-up bed; stay as long as you want. Phyllis and I expected to fill the house on Fourth Street with kindred spirits, a respectful nod to the ghost who still lived there. Phyllis—an artist, adventurer, and activist—was our glue. After she died, everything changed.

I knew of Phyllis before we actually met at the Whitney Museum in New York City, in 1980, the year the Democrats affirmed Jimmy Carter as their presidential nominee in Madison Square Garden. Her first husband, a journalist, was covering the proceedings and Phyllis could never resist a tag-along trip to the Big Apple.

At the time, I was a novice art teacher, pushing an “art cart” (a classroom of supplies on wheels) along the covered walkways of one-story elementary schools – rooms lined-up in rows like shoe boxes. My new job was a surprise to me, because when Grandma decreed teaching to be the perfect profession, I held firm against that traditional female role. I’m not going to be a teacher, or secretary, or nurse, period. So, I wandered from one major to another, quit college twice, wandered some more from one apartment and roommate to another, married, had children, and ended up in the college town of Tallahassee.  

I had flipped through catalogues and poured over maps, selecting Florida State University as the place for my husband to get the degree I thought would give our young family—a toddler and an infant—more options. Then we could escape central Florida, a terrain too flat and hot for this New Englander, and a lifestyle too rural for me. I valued art museums over fish hatcheries, preferred tree-lined boulevards to john boats on lakes. I longed for like-minded, artistic, and forward-thinking friends. He was accepted, and we moved into Alumni Village, family student housing, but to my chagrin, my husband rarely attended class. Instead, he jammed with the local musicians. For the first time, I realized what should have been obvious – I was the one who loved school, the buzz of a college campus, and the preparation involved with establishing a career. So I enrolled in the College of Education. Ten years after Grandma’s proclamation about teaching, I discovered her wisdom.

Tallahassee felt like a nest for me to grow and develop my talents. The metaphor was reinforced when I saw the city from an airplane. The view at 10,000 feet showed Tallahassee encircled by a protective forest, fingers of green spreading out in all directions, and touched on one side by the silvery-shimmer of the Gulf of Mexico. Insulated by its geography, but expansive in its outlook, Tallahassee, the state capital, proved to be a bright blue political dot, home to two universities, grounds for a land co-op, and an overnight-stop for music greats traveling between larger cities.

After receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree, I interviewed for a job at a local elementary school in a large multi-purpose classroom. Principals without assigned art teachers sat in a semi-circle while newly-degreed applicants sat along one side of the room. A lone chair for the spot-lighted job-seeker faced the potential employers. Of course, nerves knotted my gut. A decade prior, I would have responded to the questions with jumbled words punctuated with um’s and pauses, but motherhood had matured me and I had a mission. Our family required two incomes just to get by.

A week later, I drove my light blue, rust-spotted Chevy—trunk crammed with paint, markers, and blunt-edged scissors—to Bond Elementary school on Mondays and Tuesdays, and to Woodville Elementary School on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Four classes each of K-5 at two schools, 40 minutes per classroom, 600-800 children total, in four days. On Fridays, I created games and lessons while my own children played outside in the greenspace next to our apartment.

I wanted to widen the worldview of my students who lived in isolated neighborhoods, so we looked at slides and talked about African masks, Impressionist paintings, Picasso’s collages, and the work of local artists such as Phyllis Bosco. Her mixed-media pieces always boogie-woogied while paintings displayed next to hers simply waltzed. Splashes of turquoise. Splotches of flamingo pink. Sashes of aqua sewn directly into the canvas. She was a true Florida artist by upbringing and context. Her art danced to her magical mixtures of surf, sky, and sandbars.

“I have a Phyllis Bosco,” a friend said to me during a phone conversation. Jealousy hovered over my congratulatory words and questions. “Where did you get it? How much?” Shortly thereafter, I set aside money meant for groceries and purchased my own Phyllis Bosco at the LeMoyne Art Foundation – a 5x7 abstract pastel that reminded me of a beach with a large sun or moon, wood-framed. (I have it to this day.)

All the art teachers talked about Phyllis—we wanted to be like her—and gossiped about her legendary past. She crossed the Mexican border crammed into a VW bug with three others plus luggage. She protested with the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) on the campus green. She left a salaried position to travel through Europe without income or a promise of a job when she returned.

At last, serendipity brought us together, not in Tallahassee, a small college town where bumping into each other would have been natural, but on one of my trips to New York to visit my mom. At the Whitney Museum on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, Phyllis and I were both flipping through postcards and prints at the gift shop next to “Calder’s Circus,” a world of wire-limbed clowns and yarn-maned lions. Engrossed in our own discoveries and oblivious to those around us, she and I collided.

“Hi,” Phyllis said with a smile that stretched across her angular face. Her eyes sparkled. “Aren’t you from Tallahassee?” I nodded and returned the smile, grinning with astonishment and delight.

She leaned toward me from her shoulders, edging her face toward mine. Olive-toned skin and a strong nose, long-limbed, the movement of an exotic bird. A small braid sectioned into her long dark hair fell across her face.

“Your red hair stands out,” she said, laughing into her words. That’s when I really noticed her voice: high-pitched but soft, full of breath, giggly but not silly, a whisper and a hum as if she were imparting—just to you—the most delicious secret.

“You look so familiar,” she continued. “Have we met, maybe at an art show?”

“Yes, I am from Tallahassee, an art teacher, but I don’t believe we’ve met. You’re Phyllis, aren’t you, the artist? I have one of your pieces, a small one, but, oh I love your work, and I…”

Phyllis commented on the Democratic Convention and her husband’s assignment, our country’s general state of affairs, and the exhibits at the museum. I nodded, added a word here and there, but barely listened because of my fascination with her appearance. A flower-child, for sure, long hair and dangling peace-symbol earrings, fringed camel-colored boots. Layered vests – a tight one, like a man’s, under her sweater, and a tasseled loose one on top. When the strap of her hobo tote slipped from her shoulder, she scooted it back up with a twirl. Her hair, the beads, and all the fringe rustled as if a spring breeze had magically whistled through the museum’s lobby.

“Let’s get together,” she was saying, “when we get back.”

“Sure, sure, yes.” I beamed, feeling a bit giddy inside and sensing that somehow, I had crossed a threshold from my ordinary life into something spectacular.

From then on—it was that easy— my world expanded beyond the day-to-day of teaching and homemaking. I became part of Phyllis’ family: her sphere of artists, art teachers, musicians, people who knew artists and musicians, as well as pets, children, students, and older folk from the Senior Center. Over time, a core group of six women, including Phyllis and me, emerged from this colorful patchwork community: Joan and Annie, long-time friends of Phyllis who worked for state government; teachers Carole and Kiki, from the school where Phyllis ended up teaching “K-5 Art.”

When summer heat took hold of Tallahassee, we’d migrate to Kiki’s pool, an oasis amid banana palms, myrtles, oaks, and outdoor sculptures. We’d languish on popsicle-colored rafts and breathe in tranquility—a strange mixture of chlorine and ripe vegetation.  Before the sun could broil our skin, we’d abandon our floats for the shallow end, tossing our bathing suits to the grass and submerging ourselves in the lukewarm water; only our heads, wet hair plastered along the sides, would show. Our laughter was interspersed with serious whispered conversations about dreams, aspirations, and ideas for projects – a mural needing a wall, a book demanding an audience, or an art curriculum as the hub of a child’s education. But mostly, nonsense and gossip eclipsed substantial philosophies. After all, it was summer in a Southern college town, a time to move slowly.

When I view photographs of that time, so many photographs (color, black and white, hand-colored), I see myself looking like a teenager, a bit stiff and awkward, certainly not a mom with pre-teens at home. I’m fresh-faced and long-limbed, without an inch of extra fat. For those few hours, the responsibility I typically felt took a backseat: no arguments, worries, alarm clocks, and schedules. I could enjoy the carefreeness of a childhood I had missed. At Kiki’s pool, the sky was always cerulean blue and dotted with cotton candy clouds. Life was bliss.

On most days, Kiki held court from her floating chair equipped with a beer can holder –never empty. “I had a lot to do with Phyllis’ hiring at my school,” she’d boast (whether or not this was true), and with a laugh touching on sinister she’d add, “We make a great team.” The underlying message: Lookout! We’re infiltrating art everywhere. You won’t be able to stop us, but you’ll be pleased in the long run.

Kiki sported spiked hair before it was fashionable and stood solid in her opinions. She bet five dollars that she and I were the same height. An easy back-to-back assessment showed the top of her head at my eye-level. With a pout, a shake of her head, and hands firmly on her hips, she retorted, “Well I feel like five-foot-seven.”

On one particular day in early June, 1981, Kiki stood in the corner of the pool and shouted to us, “I have an announcement.” She paused for emphasis, and said it again.

Carole, with her large-brimmed floppy hat and pasty-white sun-block on her nose plopped off her raft and splashed toward Kiki in the shallow end. The rest of us joined them there, treading water and then stretching out our legs. What could really be all that important?

With a flourish of her hand, Kiki pronounced, “We have a wedding date – August 3rd in Charleston.”

Phyllis and Joan jumped to standing. “No!” they cried in unison. “Absolutely not.”

Kiki glared. In the silence, a few birds flittered in the nearby magnolia; a carpenter bee zoomed by.

“Absolutely not,” Joan said again.

“Absolutely not!” chimed in Phyllis.

The rest of us froze in place, chest-high in the water like ducklings.

Kiki furrowed her brow, which made her eyes squint, and pressed her hands hard against her hips.

 “Bad luck,” said Joan and Phyllis in unison, boring their collective gaze at Kiki.

“That date’s bad luck,” said Phyllis, and then her voice softened. “Joan and I were both, do you believe—both—married on August 3rd, and now we’re divorced. Both—really, both—our husbands left us. For other women they met at work. Both of us. Same situation, same wedding date. Don’t do it. It’s bad luck.”

Joan vehemently nodded.

 Kiki looked away and then back at the two women, her hands were no longer on her hips, her voice sounded humbled. “Well that’s just silly, and anyhow it’s too late. We have the church, the banquet hall, eight antique cars for the wedding party, and a band that’s so popular you have to book them a year in advance.”

        Weeks later, I accepted Kiki’s invitation to be a bridesmaid, and Joan and Phyllis stayed home, not wanting to contribute to the bad karma. Eleven months after the wedding, Kiki’s husband packed his clothes and books into his van, and left his keys and a note on the dining table, “Sorry. You can keep the house.” He moved in with his mistress, a co-worker.

A month later on August 3rd, we rallied to make sure Kiki’s “anniversary” was unforgettable in the most positive way. The five of us, arriving one-by-one around noon, lugged tote bags bulging with presents, champagne, chocolate, music tapes, cameras, camcorders, salads in Tupperware, jars of bubble soap, cigars, and a little pot. White lights dangled invisible in the bright sun and seventeen plastic pink flamingos surrounded the pool. Music from stereo towers, turned toward the backyard, filled all remaining space.

For the next six hours, we floated on our rafts and took breaks at the pool’s edge, gorging ourselves with strawberries, squirting them first and then ourselves with Reddi Whip. We laughed, sang, and mugged for Phyllis’ always-ready camera.

Once twilight crept through the Florida pines that outlined the property, we moved to the deck for dinner, champagne, and of course, wedding cake. For the past year, the top tier had waited patiently in the freezer for the newly-married couple to once again place a morsel of cake into each other’s mouth. Instead, the sugared trophy sat on a silver plate in the middle of sunburned, red-eyed friends who playfully leaned against each other, mostly to keep from falling off the deck’s narrow benches. Kiki ceremoniously cut the cake as we toasted her resilience and our steadfast loyalty.

Then someone noticed we didn’t have forks. Without missing a beat, Kiki scooped up a large piece of the cake with her hand. Icing squished through her fingers and smeared on her arm. We all followed suit, ending up with white goo-painted mouths and cake crumbs spewing like confetti.

Before long, night relegated the pink flamingos to the shadows. The strings of white lights twinkled like falling stars. We turned up the volume and danced until midnight, an appropriate finale to our 12-hour celebration.

***

That may have been the start of the dancing, which became part of all our gatherings; yet, the “Dancing Girls” moniker would come later, after the party Phyllis had arranged for the man we called, “The Deacon.” At first, I only knew him as Phyllis’s longtime friend. I’d find her in the kitchen trailing the longest phone cord ever as she paced the room tidying and talking to him. “It’s The Deacon,” she’d say, her hand momentarily covering the mouthpiece. When they hung up, her eyes would twinkle, evidence I thought, of their mutual admiration for Democratic politics and each other’s proclivities. Later, I discovered his distinction of being the first reporter on the scene at the Birmingham church bombing, and learned about his work ministering to those suffering with HIV/AIDS. After Phyllis died, The Deacon and I kept in touch. His letters mixed scripture, fond memories, and daily routines with happy-faces, hearts, and teddy-bear stickers. He wrote, “Peace, Love, Beautiful Barbara” with neon-colored gel pens in the margins, just like Phyllis had decorated the postcards she sent.

Perhaps Phyllis wanted to keep their relationship in the friendship-zone when she arranged for six women, rather than just the two of them, to celebrate The Deacon’s 60th birthday. When he walked through Phyllis’s carport door—a slightly-built man, with a gentle countenance, dressed in khakis and a plaid shirt—he encountered five women (Phyllis made six) wearing tux jackets, no blouses, and stilettos click, click, clicking across the linoleum floor. The Deacon gaped, then laughed, then turned to Phyllis as if to say, “What in the…”

Phyllis interrupted, “We are your escorts for your birthday celebration. Happy Birthday.” She doubled over with soundless laughter, a long hum dissolving into Ssssssssss.

We made the rounds of Tallahassee college bars, two or three in all. When The Deacon drank a beer, six women lifted their mugs. Six women scrambled to light his cigar while puffing their own. When The Deacon decided to dance, six women banked him through the crowd as other patrons cleared the dance floor and waved.

After the celebration, when the phone calls resumed, The Deacon, tired of asking “How’s Kiki, and how’s Barbara, and how’s…?” simply said, “How are the Dancing Girls?” And it stuck.

***

We didn’t know then that I’d trade pool lounging for studying instructional systems in grad school, and that Kiki wouldn’t speak to me for a year because she thought I had abandoned her and art education. We didn’t realize I’d divorce, and that Phyllis and I would hold a “Divorced Carport Sale,” even though her divorce to the journalist was several years ago.

“Well, people have moving sales and just married sales, why not a divorced sale,” exclaimed Phyllis, so we placed an ad in the Tallahassee Democrat.

On a sunny Saturday morning, we hung our wedding dresses—my mini and Phyllis’ long satin one—from the trees bordering her driveway. Old mugs, dishware, clothes, and knick-knacks covered three folding card tables. We had a few customers and sold items for the amount they offered us; some items we gave away. Mostly, we reminisced and drank Phyllis’ strong Italian coffee, and didn’t mention what we both knew: I would eventually leave Tallahassee, the place we both called, “home.”