How to Be Brave(29)

The mask on her face.

The steady, careful pulse of machines, monitors,

mechanical boxes that lived for her, that sustained whatever was left.


Her body was broken.

She was a butchered animal

with her arms limp

and her chest heaving with the push of the machine, her eyelids shifting,

her feet trembling.

Automatic responses, they’re called.


I wonder what was there,

inside,

the moments before her heart stopped.


I wonder if she could hear what I said how sorry I was,

just so deeply sorry.





8

Saturday morning, 8:15 A.M. It’s early, and I was up late writing and painting and watching old reruns of Phineas and Ferb. I just want to stay here, under my warm blanket. It’s snowing outside. Through my bedroom window, I can see fluffy globs of snow falling onto tree branches. I could stay here for hours watching it. I could drift back into dreamland. It would be so easy.

I’m in no mood to go anywhere or do anything, particularly not anything involving any level of physical activity, but I promised Liss and Evelyn that we’ll do another item on the list.

Which means I have to get out of bed.

Ugh. Whose big idea was this?

Oh right. Mine.

Item #10: Tribal dancing.

The class starts at nine A.M. sharp.

I gotta get out of bed.

Lord knows how I came to find out about this in the first place. We can thank the Internet gods, I suppose. Them and my mom’s cardiologist.

It was a year ago, maybe, the day before my mom’s last stent procedure. I was standing in the hallway playing with my phone while Dr. Mehlman, who took care of my mom for more than ten years, talked to her and my dad inside the room. When he came out, he saw me and got quiet. At first he just said, “You can go in now,” and I was about to head inside, except that he took my elbow to hold me back. He was tall and lean and had the face of a bird, and he peered at me through his wire glasses and said, “Don’t let this happen to you.”

I never told my mom or dad, but that night I made a promise with myself and my future children and grandchildren to lose weight and start taking care of myself. Of course, I decided to start counting calories, and I went online to find some form of physical exercise that seemed like it might even be a little fun. I bookmarked links to Zumba, cardio ballet, kickboxing, TRX suspension, plyometrics. They all sounded great, but most of them were either really expensive or met only at five in the morning (WTF?), or they looked like they required a level of coordination that I simply did not possess. But along the way, as I clicked from studio to studio on Yelp, I came across this one particular studio (SOUL POWER YOGA, all caps) that caught my interest. It was brand-new, less than a mile from my house, and relatively cheap, especially since they offered student discounts with an ID. They had a bunch of different classes, yoga, qigong, et cetera, but the one that stood out to me was the one called “tribal yoga dance.” One class was only $12 and, better yet, only $9 with a student ID.

The Soul Power Yoga Web site linked to some videos that previewed what a typical tribal yoga dance class was like. It was insane. I recognized some elements from our yoga unit in PE—Downward-Facing Dog and Tree Pose and the like—but then there was this whole other element that was totally raunchy. Their hips were writhing and their hair was spiraling. It was like belly dancing gone wild.

I sent the link to Liss, and she wrote back immediately, Let’s do that.

And we were going to—I mean, I had this whole plan to lose weight—but then after my mom’s last stent, things got worse really quickly, and if I wasn’t at school, I was at the hospital and then at rehab and then back at the ICU. I didn’t do any of it, and I didn’t keep my promise to Dr. Mehlman or to my future progeny or to myself.

I peel myself out of bed and get dressed. My head is throbbing. I pour some lukewarm coffee, snarf down a cold bagel, and head out the door.

I arrive at the building to find that I have to climb two flights of stairs to get to the studio. Liss texts that she and Evelyn are on their way (Missed the train! Sorry!), so I head upstairs. By the time I get to the top floor, I’m winded. Isn’t that enough of a workout? Now I have to exercise, too?

I walk down the cramped hallway to door #9. I knock first, and no one answers, so I push open the door to a small area stuffed with a couch, a desk, and a coffee table that’s serving as the front lobby and three sweaty women who are laughing and chatting it up.

The one sitting at the desk looks up at me. She’s young and petite and bright and what my mom would call bushy-tailed.

“I’m here for the nine A.M. class?”

“Hi! Come in! Have a seat,” she says. “I’ll be with you in a sec.”

I file past the two Amazon women in their skintight workout gear and now feel totally schlumpy in mine (gray sweatpants and one of my dad’s old undershirts).

Desk Girl hands printouts of the class schedule to the Amazon ladies, who seem to have just finished their class. (7:30 A.M. on a Saturday? They’re crazy.) “We have classes for all levels: gentle, basics, power, and tribal.”

“What’s the tribal class like?” one of the two women ask.

“Oh, that’s the most ridiculously intense one we’ve got.” Desk Girl laughs. “It’s totally liberating, but it’s a workout for sure.”