Mambo in Chinatown

I bet they did. I had no right to be jealous, just because she had a feminine name like Fiona and was probably brilliant and beautiful too. And had Ryan for a boyfriend. “Well, today, I’m going to make sure you’re a fit partner for her.”

I turned Ryan around, put him in the lady’s place and then took up dance position with me leading. “Okay, I want you to feel what it’s like to dance with you. Don’t worry about which leg you’re on, just start moving backward when I go.” I went forward the way he always did, taking huge strides and only lightly holding him with my hands. He took one step back, and another, then looked over his shoulder.

I said, “You’re not allowed to do that.”

“But I can’t see where I’m heading. I’m not sure where you want me to go.”

“Welcome to my world.” I kept moving forward, even though he was so heavy to lead; it felt like I was trying to move an elephant. Once in a while, I stopped without warning only to have his momentum jerk us both forward. This was pretty different from the time I’d danced with Julian. I wasn’t tall enough to have a clear view over his shoulder so I had to peer around his side to see where we were going. He stopped turning around, although I could tell it took a real effort of will. A few times we almost crashed into each other when he didn’t know if he was supposed to walk or not. He sensed it when we were getting close to the wall and squeezed his eyes shut, bracing himself. I stopped him a few inches away from it.

“I don’t often have this feeling, but just now I feared for my life,” he said.

“That’s how it feels for the woman when she is dancing with you. So many men dance as if they were playing a video game. It’s like they think that the closer they can get to the wall without crashing, the more points they’ll win.”

He winced. “Did I do that to you?”

“You hold me too loosely when you’re going forward. I have no idea what you want.”

“But I’m trying to be gentle. I don’t want to hurt you by accident.”

“And speaking of being gentle, how does it feel when I turn you like this?” I lifted my arm and stood on tiptoe, then pushed him underneath it with all of my strength. I whipped him around a few more times for good measure. To my surprise, he did the spins flawlessly, even though there must have been three of them.

“I was definitely being manhandled there.” He was gri

“You use so much force when you turn me. I am not a side of beef. I am a woman. All you need to do is to give me the impetus and I can take it from there.” I did the underarm turn again, only giving him a brief push this time. He spun a double, ducking his head to fit underneath my arm.

“That felt great. I could get used to being a lady.”

I considered him. “Those were really good spins. You kept your entire body stable. How did you do that?” I’d never seen a new male student be able to whip them off like that. I loved to turn but needed to practice hard just to be able to complete a double without falling over.

“Like I said, years of boxing and yoga.”

“It must have been hard for you to give it up.”

His face turned serious. “Every change has a hello and a good-bye in it, you know? You always have to leave in order to go on to something new.”

I thought of what Godmother always said. “You must empty the cup before it can be filled again.”

His smile was slow and warm as he met my eyes. “Exactly.”

I liked this guy a bit too much. I remembered Estella and the dance student who had gotten her fired. The way I felt around him was starting to scare me, so it seemed like a good time to change the subject. “Are there any dances that you particularly like so far?”

“I don’t know. Whatever works for Evelyn would be fine, I guess.”

“I didn’t mean for the wedding but for you, personally. Is there anything you’ve maybe wanted to learn?” When he didn’t react, I kept talking. “It’s just that I had this student last week who’s a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and I asked him how he got into paintings. He said he never really cared about art, but as a kid, he liked to whittle. So he used to go to the museum because they have these intricate wooden frames and he enjoyed getting ideas for his whittling. After a number of years, he began to notice that the frames were holding something interesting too.”

Now his gaze was steady. “And your point is?”

“I’m just trying to say that sometimes, if you start with one small thing you like, a whole new world can open up for you.”

“Well, someone may once have told me that white guys were too wimpy to do Latin.”

“So we’d have to prove them wrong, wouldn’t we?”

—

I was glad to have the apartment to myself that Saturday afternoon so I could go over some of the new steps I was learning. I couldn’t do them full out, but at least I could repeat them in my head and mark them on the floor. I was so busy that the time flew by. Suddenly, I realized it was late. I looked at my watch and panicked. I’d completely missed Godmother’s tai chi class.

I flew downstairs, not bothering to wait for our creaky elevator, and ran over to Godmother Yuan’s apartment. I pounded on the door. She opened it immediately, as if she’d been waiting for me.

“I’m so sorry, I forgot.” I was still gasping for breath from my hard dash.

She regarded me. “‘No flower can bloom red for a hundred days,’ Charlie.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It means that I can’t expect a flower to stay beautiful forever. It means you are changing. I can see it.” She looked me up and down. “I don’t know what’s going on but I miss the i

“I’m really sorry, Godmother, but you can teach the class without me with no problem. You do all of your other classes alone.”

“Maybe the class would be fine without you, but I was not. I missed you and I needed you, Charlie.” Then she shut the door again.

I felt terrible and just stood there for a moment, then I knocked on the door again. She didn’t answer. I took a deep breath and turned the knob. I called through the crack, “You’re right. I am not the same anymore, but didn’t you say, ‘The sea accepts a hundred streams and rivers’?” I was reminding her of a saying she was fond of, meaning that a good person was flexible and accepting of things great and small. “I’m twenty-two years old, Godmother Yuan. I need to change and become the person I was meant to be. I made a mistake today but please, can’t you accept that?”

Godmother sighed, then opened the door wider. “You are right, Charlie. I too am sorry. We did not speak of it but I saw you were becoming different. Growing up. And I guess I was scared of losing you. That you’d become like my own grandchildren, who don’t even come to visit me.”

I’d never heard Godmother Yuan admit that about her grandchildren before. “They love you. They’re just busy.”

“Too busy for their own grandmother.” She sniffed. “It’s more than that. When their parents force them to visit me, I do not even recognize them. They are not the sweet children I knew.”

I said carefully, “I heard about Grace.”

She stiffened, then to my surprise, began to smile. “I have an idea. You will come to dim sum with our family. In a few weeks.”

I’d never been asked to join the Yuans before. “Why?”

“You need a reason for an invitation?”

“Godmother. I know you better than this.”

She huffed. “Oh all right. We are having some difficulty convincing Grace to attend. It will help if she has a friend or two there.”

“Grace and I aren’t friends anymore. We haven’t been for many years.”

“Of course you are. And you are such a nice unmarried girl too.”

My lips parted. “It’s a matchmaking session. No way.”

Godmother Yuan furrowed her brow. She didn’t bother with the Buddhist sayings now. “You owe me.”