Becky was eleven years old. It was a Sunday morning, mid-summer, the warmth of the sun popping over the neighbour’s house across the street. It had been a hard night, after a hard week, in one of the hardest years of her life. She awakened before anyone, snuck down the hallway past her mother’s room, the bathroom, the hall closet, making a left into the kitchen. She slid open the screen door and tiptoed down the stairs off the deck and into the backyard. The grass was fresh with dew.
A new day. At last.
The night before—it must have been 8.30 or 9.00, she and her sister biking and playing hide-and-seek with the neighbour kids on the adjoining street—she had heard him yell. She was used to hearing him bellow about this or that, but it was more frequent these days. That seemed to be the way of things. But last night, she was startled by the anger in her father’s voice, startled by the shame and fear it brought up in her, startled by how small she suddenly felt. How small. How insignificant. How unloved.
Becky and her sister ran for their bikes, pedaling home as fast as they could. When they got to the driveway, Becky made her sister promise not to talk to anyone. Not to stop to find out what was wrong. They ran to Heather's room, locked their door, refusing to come out till morning. This was not a night to talk about whatever it was. They ran hand in hand under the angry gaze, diving under the covers. He paced the hallway in inexplicable rage, pounding the walls, ranting and rambling for what seemed like hours. before finally storming out of the house never to return.
Becky stayed up nearly all night, watching over her sister, dozing off at various points, never feeling free enough, never feeling safe enough to sleep. They hadn’t shared a room for years, but that night wasn’t a night to be alone. She worried for her mother, her sister, herself. And she had no idea what to do. The tension in her chest, the knot in her stomach, shoulders hunched, she curled up in a ball around her sister. They clung to each other through the night. All of it a sign of the building uncertainty of life under the roof of this modest house in this modest suburb.
Now out on the lawn, her sandal feet growing wet from the dewy grass, Becky saw the bottle of bubbles abandoned under the lilac tree at the corner of the house, still full. She picked it up and slipped it into her knapsack along with her walkman. She had no idea where she was going, only that she needed space. Space to be. Space to think. Space. She just needed space. The walls were closing in.
She found her bike where she had left it, riding determinedly towards the centre of town. The park and the pond. As she arrived, others appeared to be gathering on the shore. She couldn’t tell why. It didn’t matter, of course. And yet it seemed they had all been drawn there for some reason. As the sun grew warmer, as the dew began to evaporate, it seemed as though hundreds had been pulled towards the water from their sleepy homes to experience the dawning of something new.
They gathered together on the shoreline, as the shadows stretched and moved over the surface of the water, as the light danced on the waves, mama ducks and their ducklings searching for food in the early morning light. The early morning jitters of a sleepless night still haunted her, feeling alternately hot and cold, muscles aching for freedom. As the sun rose higher over the trees, as her body started to warm, she remembered her walkman and the bubbles in her bag.
Becky slips the soft foam of the headphones over her ears, the metal of the band digging uncomfortably into her scalp. Clipping the tape player onto her jean shorts, she presses play, the familiar synth filling her ears, before the first words are sung:
I know this pain
Why do you lock yourself up in these chains?
Wilson Phillips. A recording she’d made off the radio over Christmas break last year. She turns up the volume, as loud as it will go before the speakers crack with static. As the music takes over, she pulls out the bottle of bubbles and unscrews the top. Swaying to the rhythm of the music, she spins and moves uninhibited in a hypnotic dance. Bit by bit, moment by moment, the sun grazes her skin. As her body warms, as her joints and muscles warm, she moves with greater freedom, taking up more space, moving with a confidence not her own.
She dances to the music in her ears, the music in her heart. All anyone else can see is the girl in cutoff shorts and oversized t-shirt dancing to the rhythms of grace. As she moves, the crowd gathers around, drawn in by the performance, raw, wild, free. They leave her space to move, even as they can't help but lean in. From the centre of the circle, arms out, bubbles flow to every patch of grass, every sidewalk. They drift through the mist covering the sleepy pond and up, up, up, into the cloudless sky. Eyes closed, unaware of the circle forming around her, she continues to dance.
A little girl, three maybe four, looks up at her mother and says, “isn’t she beautiful mommy? I love the way she moves.” The mother, clinging to a cup of coffee, still wiping sleep from her eyes, inhales the scent of the pungent liquid, glancing through the steam from her daughter to Becky and back saying, “yes honey, she moves as if she’s truly free.” A warmth passes over her, as she remembers her own dance of freedom, her own journey to self-discovery, her own journey to adulthood. Her own journey towards accepting herself for who she was. It had taken everything within her to begin to believe—against all the odds—that she was worthy of love. It had all started with the scent of freedom. And yet she wondered now: was she still truly free?
The assembled crowd is young and old and every age in between. A snapshot of the morning’s assembly would reveal looks of awe and wonder, looks of joy alongside looks of skepticism and downright disgust. They had all been drawn from their homes, all been drawn to the pond by God-knows-what, and now they’re here, all trying to process what’s happening in their midst. This girl. This young woman dancing to a song they can’t hear, dancing to a rhythm they can’t quite detect, dancing as if her life depended upon it, dancing as though somehow—somehow the dance would lead her to freedom. As though the dance would lead her home.
For a moment Becky opens her eyes, and notices that she’s become the centre of the circle. As she spins, she glances wrinkled faces and backs stooped over with age. She takes note of weary parents and children bursting with energy. She notices looks of concern, looks of disdain, looks of joy. She closes her eyes again, drawn back in by the rhythm of the music, the rhythm of the dance that’s taken her over. There is a song within her, a dance within her that she had never before known. Not one of these people can stop her now.
The crowd—they can have whatever feelings they have. That’s not up to her. The people in the crowd can think whatever they think, but that’s none of her business. Hers is a dance of freedom. It’s a dance of beauty. It’s a dance of self-discovery. It’s a dance of joy in the midst of pain. A dance to the end of love. And so she spins and twirls, slower now, the bubbles in hand becoming her focus, letting the wind catch them, letting the warming summer air do its job, carrying the dance far beyond her, far beyond the crowd, far beyond the limitations placed upon an eleven year old girl.
Becky’s eyes light on the girl in the front row, that very same one who had made sure her mother knew how much she loved Becky’s dance. Their eyes meet, and Becky gracefully comes closer, holding out the bubbles, holding out the wand.
“Do you want to try,” she asks?
“Mommy can I?”
“Of course, Willow”
“Can mommy do it with me?” Willow asks Becky.
“I think that would be perfect” Becky replies.
Willow pulls her mother into the circle, taking the bubble wand, spinning once or twice, and then handing it to her mother.
“Now you try!”
Willow’s mother, weary from sleep, tentatively places her Extra Large Double Double on the ground, dips the wand in the plastic container, slowly waving it back and forth, watching the bubbles spin outward into the sea of faces. Her daughter looks up, a smile in her eyes, as she says “yes mommy, yes! You can do it too! We can do it together.”
The looks around the crowd, even those of the most hardened observers begin to soften. And then from the back, a few come forward The shy man with thinning hair and a meek demeanor. The woman in her 50s confined to a wheelchair wearing leg warmers in neon pink. The twenty-six-year-old mechanic and his three energetic boys.
A sower went out to sow. It starts with one, it spreads to three, and before you know it, a whole world has joined in.
