Taiye Selasi - Ghana Must Go

Case in point, a small troupe of girls dressed in indigo batik lines up neatly in the space between the houses and the benches. Three teenage boys with large drums, dressed in tunics take up position to the side of these girls in the shade. Naa takes a plastic chair, sipping a Malta. Shormeh remains standing, a hand on Naa’s chair. The girls — there are six of them, ranging in age from the smallest, maybe eight, to the oldest, chubby, twelve — look dutifully at Shormeh, who nods to them curtly. With no introduction, the drumming begins.

Ling finds her phone in her purse, takes a picture. Sadie sits up straight, rather bracing herself. But the sound of the drums is unexpectedly calming, as relaxed and at ease in this space as she isn’t. She’s never been particularly drawn to this music, to African drumming, though she wonders why not: the reaction is visceral, she feels her heart slow, or succumb to this new form of beating, more ordered. Only now does it occur to her that her heart has been pounding, quite literally throbbing, since they left Fola’s house, such that now she is sore, bodily sore, physically exhausted, as if she’s been exercising, running for miles. This pounding becomes harder but also calmer with the drumming, her breath breaking off from the pace of her thoughts, following instead the mounting rhythm as it builds in its complexities. A surrogate heartbeat. Harder, calmer, and surer. Why don’t I listen to this music? she thinks. Or enjoy it? It is wonderful. It drowns out all thoughts. As lulling as that sitar and flute they’re always playing where she goes to do yoga with Philae. Transporting. She closes her eyes for a moment, feels dizzy. When she opens them the girls have come closer, gained speed.

They are moving in a circle, in perfect precision. Feet out, feet in. Hips out, hips in. The drummers change pace, and the girls change formation, from a line to a half-circle. The youngest comes forward. She dances a little solo, then returns to the circle. The next one comes forward. And on down the line. Others from the village have trickled into the compound to watch the performance; they clap for each girl. The last of the dancers, the eldest, short, chubby, shimmies forward, beaming brightly, to the delight of the crowd. She doesn’t have the look of a dancer , thinks Sadie. She rather has the appearance of Sadie herself, or of Naa: of a substance, a thick sort of substance, less long dancer limbs, liquid-fluid, than land mass: thick arms, thighs, high buttocks, broad shoulders, small bosom, the same solid body that she has. And hates. It startles her to think this so clearly of another, so cruelly, of this dancer, but the thought comes again. I hate this body , she thinks as she stares at the girl, I hate this body, it is ugly, I hate how it looks .

There.

Very simply.

This body is ugly.

Never mind the more gentle “unpretty,” the face; it’s the body she hates, if she thinks of it, really. The body is the difference between her and the rest. How much easier to see it of this young chubby dancer, or to say it, thinks Sadie, than to say of herself what she saw in that mirror, sees here with her siblings. The body is the reason she cannot be seen. She considers the dancer with something like sadness, for both of them, a sadness made soft by acceptance. Preparing to watch this girl’s solo, sympathetic, she crosses her arms with a pitying smile.

Funny how it happens.

How the girl begins moving. Almost awkward at first, sort of jerky. Stiff movements. The crowd begins clapping and Sadie laughs softly, suspicions confirmed. An ugly body can’t dance . The girl is still beaming, her narrow eyes twinkling, maybe laughing at the joke of genetics as well. She rolls her hips once to the right, then the left. Looks directly at Sadie, waves a hand, and begins.

Incomprehensible, indescribable how this girl moves her body. Virtuosic, without effort, without edges, without angles: an infinity of tiny movements made with thighs, feet, and torso, and in time to syncopation that only she hears, and the drummers: a current, round body electric, the crowd cheering wildly as the hips whirl around, until the one drum goes crack! and she stops before Sadie, her right hand extended, one foot off the ground.

Sadie, who is staring, mouth open, breath suspended, doesn’t at first process what the gesture implies. The drummers resume drumming, the girl resumes whirling, the crowd resumes clapping, then crack! She stops again. A hand out to Sadie.

Sadie turns to Fola. “I-i-is she asking for money?”

“She’s asking you to dance.”

“ Bra, bra, bra ,” says the girl, palms turned upward. “Please sees-tah, come. Come and dance, please, I beg.” She takes Sadie’s hand, takes a little step back, making Sadie lean forward, then rise off the bench. The assembled crowd claps with delight at this progress. Sadie flushes red, shakes her head, “No, I can’t.” She is seconds from weeping; she feels the thing building, the knot in her stomach, the accumulating bile. She takes a step back, but the girl pulls her forward, and she hasn’t the heart to use force to break free. Her siblings are watching with what looks like a mixture of worry and encouragement, their eyes and smiles wide, as if watching a baby trying to learn how to walk, ready to spring to their feet when she falls.

She doesn’t fall.

When they speak of it later they’ll say that a girl came to Sadie and pulled her up off of their bench, gave a little demonstration of the base two-step footwork, which Sadie repeated a few times herself, that the drummers, encouraged, started drumming a little faster, that Sadie kept pace, to the delight of the crowd, and that before they all knew it, she was dancing in the clearing as if she’d been born doing traditional Ga dance. No one will know what it is in this moment that overwhelms Sadie, not even Sadie herself, as the insistent lead dancer catches hold of her elbow and repeats, tugging gently, “Please sees -tah, please come.” She pulls Sadie forward, away from the benches. “Like so,” she says, demonstrating the footwork: one, two. There are tears in Sadie’s eyes that will fall if she doesn’t, so she stares at the ground, at the girl’s small bare feet. One two, one two, one two, one two. A surrogate heartbeat. Calmer and surer. She takes a few steps. Hears the onlookers cheering. Goes red with embarrassment. Too late to sit down. She stares at the ground, at her feet, willing movement. The feet obey, shockingly, and move, left to right. The girl cries, “ Ehn-hehn! ” with great pride in her pupil. Sadie glances up as she moves. “Yeah? Like this?” More movement. More cheering. Transporting, the drumbeat. Tension in the stomach. Which moves to the thighs. Then the knees, then the calves, then the shins, then the feet. Too embarrassed to stop, she keeps moving. Starts dancing. Slowly at first, with her eyes on the ground, on the feet of the girl, which she follows with ease — then a spark, something clicking, a logic inside her, a stranger inside her that knows what to do, knows this music, these movements, this footwork, this rhythm, the body relaxing, eyes trained on the feet, she is moving, not looking, afraid to stop moving, afraid to look up at the small cheering crowd, she is moving, she is sweating, she is crying ( I am dancing , she thinks, disbelieving, unable to stop), stomach taut, thighs on fire, lids slack, hips in circles, shoulder up shoulder down, around, foot out foot in, she is outside her body or in it, inside it, unaware of the exterior, unaware of the skin, unaware of the eyes, unaware of the onlookers, aware of the pounding, aware of the drum.

Crack!