This Little Girl Ain't Crazy
She's As Wild As She Is Free
She Can Feel It In Her Fingers
And It Moves On Down Her Spine
And When It Fits Her Hips She Parts Her Lips
And You Know She's Feeling Fine
She Ain't Lookin For No Lover
She Ain't Lookin For Romance
She Just Wants To Dance

                Keb Mo, She Just Wants to Dance

            When at last she got off the stage, Fiona wanted two things: a quick puff of a cigarette and maybe a wee sip of whisky, to get out of that damn tight-fitting costume, and to get as far away from the crowds and the noise and the silly, little girls with their silly, little problems as she could.

            The smoke and the sip were easily first. Off the stage, a quick cheek kiss and feel-up from whatever stage manager in charge that night, and out the side door into the alley, where the stink of the garbage and the wet, humid air was one hell of an improvement over the same stale air in whatever auditorium or concert hall they were in that night.

            Back in what was being called the dressing room, itself having all the charm of the girls jacks at St. Mary’s primary and a bit too much of the smell, the silly, little girls were tittering on about what famous face might have been looking at them from the front rows or what living in whatever city they were in might be like or sniping at one another for the same, old bickerings.

They quieted when she entered and made her way to her seat. The lights around the mirrors of the makeshift dressing tables cast a pale yellow, and Fiona liked the jaundice look and wished for someone to giggle a little about it with her.

            She spun around in her chair and told the girls how fine they’d looked that night and how well they’d danced and how she noticed the way Betty and Moira had stepped in behind Mary-Elizabeth when she’d tipped her ankle. And then complimented Mary-Elizabeth for such a fine recovery.

            She wasn’t unhappy, Fiona wasn’t, and she was proud of herself and the other girls, but it had been a long time for her. The oldest, by far. Almost their mother, now, she was. Traveling America four months of the year, different unseen cities, identical-smelling hotel rooms for five years, it was.

            But her da’s surgery had been paid, and Ma had new teeth, and the twins were headed to university, and the littles were happy at St. Mary’s primary. All she’d wanted to do was dance. And now? Still, all she wanted to do was dance. But free to spin about and raise her arms above her head and gently tap her feet to the hidden rhythms she heard each night but had to ignore.

            Later, in another city, after their last performance of the season, she put on the satin gown she’d bought in another unseen city and slipped out the side door and walked along the steamy sidewalk crowded with late-night people and followed the music and eased her way down the stairs and into the hot and dank bar and walked through the people to the worn wooden dance floor and began to twirl, the odd-looking white girl in the satin gown.