Children’s Song (not in a group)

“I can do the stick dance,

stick dance,

stick dance,

I can do the stick dance,

can you?

I can do the stick dance,

stick dance,

stick dance,

I can do the stick dance,

can you?”

(didn’t feel like a song, a song;

it felt like day after day of choking.)

She smiled at the end of her song and got up from her chair at our table. While singing her song she had quickly cut out a little paper stick figure from construction paper. She held up her stick figure to show it to me and sang her song a second time while making the doll’s legs kick high and out like a Rockette.

All I saw and heard was the story of her reliving her accursed traumatization.

What was question?

Can I do the stick dance?

Still smiling she said, “My brother did the stick dance. He was a little older than me.”

“How old was he?” I asked.

“Twelve or thirteen,” she said.

“What was he like?” I asked.

“His name was Nathaniel but everybody called him ‘Baseline.’”

“Like in basketball?” I asked.

“No!” she screamed. “Like in hoops!” she declared and she glared at me.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that,” I said, knowing too late that I had misunderstood what she said.

“That’s okay, he’s dead.”

I have worked in a world of thyroid storm. Children fall through me. What they leave behind, their sensations, are like seeds dropped in the desert: They all eventually grow.

I saw her about 10 years later. I was in my car, stuck behind a line of cars waiting for the light to change on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue. On my periphery I noticed a somewhat familiar smile. I was certain it was her when I felt her imprint kicking up in my gut.

She looked happy.She bounced as she pranced along.

She actually jaywalked right in front of my car. She wore a tight fitting blue t-shirt emblazoned in the front with red letters: “The Voices In My Head Can Beat Up The Voices In Your Head.”

Whatever happens to her, or to her children, or to their children, or to any children, I’ll always, always remember her song.