Little Altars Everywhere Read Online Free PDF Page A

dancer’s ponytail and she has thick eyelashes and her body is perfect. No bumps on it or hair in weird places or anything. The way she moves, it’s like her legs are hooked on different at the hip than other ladies’ legs are.
    Charlene’s Central Louisiana School of the Dance is in a big old cave-like dance studio at the Garnet Parish Community Center. I take tap lessons from her twice a week and I adore it. Only I get to take tap. Not Lulu, not Little Shep, not Baylor. Just me.
    That dance studio is hot as hell in the summer, even though two huge industrial-sized fans blow like crazy all the time. Mirrors line the walls and ballet barres run the length of the room. The floor is smooth and there’s a table at one end with Charlene’s record player and piles and piles of popular records and show tunes. At the start of each class, Charlene performs a dazzling show-stopper while we sit on the floor with our mouths hanging open, pulling at our leotards, which are always crawling up our crotches. (What I wish I knew is how real dancers on stage keep from having to pull at their crotches all the time.) As hot and sweaty as it gets in there, Charlene always looks fresh.
    She dances in high-heeled tap shoes , and I think they are the jazziest things in the world. I would give anything for a pair of my own, but we only get to wear low heels. Charlene uses a lot of George M. Cohan music because it’s easy for us to count out. But we also learn numbers to “High Hopes,” and “Itsy Bitsy Teeny-Weeny Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini”—a song that my Grandmother Buggy turns off whenever it comes on the radio, because she says it’s a sin for such impurity to be on the airwaves.
    Charlene’s record player has a little knob on the side of it so she can slow the music down to a crawl for us to get the rhythm, while she calls out, Hop-shuffle-slap, hop-shuffle-slap! or whatever the step is. Once we start to catch on, she brings the music real slow-like back up to speed, and we try to actually put the stepsto time. That always throws me. Just when I think I have the steps down, the music speeds up, and I forget everything I’ve learned. I try and try, but I never can dance fast enough and still get it right. But Charlene never fusses, she never pushes. She gives a lot of praise, and I work hard so I can be exactly like her. My riffs and toe-tips and touches are always a little off, though. I just cannot seem to make my left foot cooperate with my right one. It’s like there are two separate people on the different sides of my body.
    I’ve worshipped Charlene for months and I have prayed to God for her to notice me. And finally I get to be her pet, which is the best thing I could hope for in this whole town!
    This is how lucky I am: Charlene lets me visit her at her mother’s house on St. Gerard Street. They live in a big pink stucco Spanish house, the only one like it in the city of Thornton. Charlene’s room is the closest you can get to Hollywood without leaving Louisiana. It has a round bed that her mother ordered from Dallas. It’s covered with a pink satin comforter, and dozens of little pink and green satin pillows are thrown all over the place. These heavy pink and green flowered curtains hang over all the windows so they can block out the morning sun. Even so, Charlene sleeps with a sleep mask on to block out whatever sunlight peeks through.
    On the days when I get to visit Charlene’s, I wake up at six A.M .! But Mama won’t take me over there untilafter nine. And then Charlene is still asleep! I can’t believe she sleeps so long . I have to sit in the kitchen with their maid, Jewel, and wait and wait and wait. Then, when Jewel says it’s time, she lets me trail along while she brings Charlene her café au lait in bed. When we get to the edge of the bed, Jewel lets me hold the coffee tray. Charlene turns over and I’m standing there looking at her, making sure I don’t spill a drop.
    I say, Rise and shine, Miss