My Dancing Girl Father



by Robert Sward




My father holds a razor. He's completely naked except for boxer shorts and a brassiere and he's shaving the hairs off his shoulders and chest around the brassiere. There are black and white whiskers and streaks of red in the bathtub and long black hairs in the sink and whiskers on the new white washcloths and towels and clumps of moustache on the floor.
"Murder," I scream. I picture myself snatching up the razor and slicing his bare throat and chest.
"Stop, you little goof. Don't you knock anymore?" he yells.
I can tell he's not real happy to see me.
His entire body is covered with Gillette shaving cream and blood. Gertrude, my mother, is on her knees behind him laughing. I've never seen her--or my father--so happy. She's got a razor in her right hand and she's shaving the backs of his legs and then reaching up sometimes to shave the long black hairs off his back. Not very organized, but they're having a good time.
"Look at what this place looks like, Dad. She's killing you. You're bleeding. You look like a woman, too. I'm going to be the only kid in Chicago with two mothers. Now you'll just spend your time shopping with Gertrude. Is that what you want? All I want to do is go to a Cubs' game!"
"Is that all you think women do together, Bobby, is shop?"
"They drink coffee. They play mah jong. And they eat fudge."
My mother pokes me in the ribs with her knuckles.
"Hey, Mom, I'm only kidding. All I mean is we never do things... you never take me places I want to go to."
Picking up a pair of scissors, pretending I'm a barber, I reach into the tub and clip strands of my father's fallen hair.
"Bobby, stop that," says my mother.
"The world is made of hair," I say. "Hair, hair, hair, hair."
"You're flushed, Bobby," she says. "Are you ill?"
I shake my head.
My mother puts her cool, wet hand on my forehead.
"If you're not ill, then you're blushing," she says. My cheeks blaze.
"A man with no hair on his body is no man at all. He's a turnip, he's a cantaloupe."
"Alright, Bobby, that's enough now," says my father. He raises his hand with the razor.
"Shhh, Irving, for God sake!" says my mother. Then, turning to me, she frowns. "Bobby, leave your father shave in peace."
"You're really going to do it, Dad? Put on a wig, make-up, and go out and dance in front of a thousand people?"
"And don't forget the highheeled shoes. See Irving?" My mother holds up some highheeled shoes with sequins in them and laughs.
"Mom, you're Dad's wardrobe mistress," I say.
"There's a saying. 'Two's company, three's a crowd,'" says my father. "Do you know that saying?"
I look around to see who else is in the bathroom.
"Irving, dear, it's alright. He's only teasing."
"What's wrong with you, dad? I mean, all I want to do is wash my hands." He's looking at me in the mirror while he goes on shaving under his arms.
"Bobby, don't bother us! I've laid out that blue suit for you. You can borrow one of Dad's neckties."
"Which one? Not the one with the stripes," says my father. "And not the new one."
"My husband, the prima donna," she says. "Bobby will check with you first, okay?"
"No, I won't check with him because I'm not going," I say. "You never said anything about it. You never asked me. Besides, the Cubs are playing a doubleheader with the Phillies and I need to hear the games."
What I don't say is I'm scared my buddies Eddie Greenberg and Junior Pucklewartz are going to see him like this.
"You may not think you're coming, young man." She goes on shaving the backs of my father's legs. He goes on shaving under his arms.
"You never asked me," I repeat. "What am I, a little dachshund you can toss into the backseat and take out when you feel like it?"
"Ask you? What are you talking about? Strangers you ask. Friends you ask. Tell me, why should a mother have to ask her son to see his own father dance on stage? You want your mother should send you an engraved invitation? My God, Bobby, we've been talking about it for a month. And guess what? Now you've given me a headache. Don't come. I don't care."
"You didn't tell me I was going to have to come. How do you know I want to come? You guys talk to each other, but nobody checks things with me."
"Don't argue so much, smart aleck. You don't have to know everything. Just do what I'm telling you."
"I have to come just because you say so. Don't I have any choice? How come in our family we don't talk things over?"
"Another prima donna, like your father," she says. "Listen, I'm not talking to you now, either. I'm telling you. Enough is enough, Bobby. So shut up already. You hear me? You're coming."
"And no back talk," says my father.
"Listen to your father," she says.
"It's a fund raiser," says my father. "Do you understand? To put a second story on the temple. So I'm performing."
"I don't get it. A second story? God needs a second story? How many floors do you need to be Jewish? Why don't you perform for six months and they can build a skyscraper?"
"That's your son, Irving. What a mouth on that kid."
"Aw, come on, Dad. Why'ya doing this? What's the sudden interest? Is it because Doctor Sam and Uncle Abe are doing it? You know you hate going to temple as much as I do. It's boring. It only deserves one story."
"Start getting ready," my mother says, spinning me around.
"Your Tuesday night poker club and playing dress-up games, that's what you're interested in, not the temple. Well, I don't like going either. And I'm not going tonight."
"Then don't go, you little ingrate," says my father.
"What's ingrate?" I ask.
"A noisy, unappreciative teenager," he says, "a smart ass."
"It's me you're talking about, isn't it?"
"If the shoe fits, wear it."
"I'm not a teenager. I'm only twelve, Dad."
"You should become a lawyer. Big Mouth, Big Mouth, Smart Guy and Bobby. You have an answer for everything," says my mother, with a toss of her shoulder-length black hair. She stares me down with her big green eyes. Suddenly she looks like those pictures of her on their bedroom dresser, the old newspaper photos showing her in a black bathing suit winning beauty contests.
"Gee, Mom," I say, "I never noticed, but you were pretty the whole time I was growing up, weren't you? You know, all those years I thought you were just my Mom."
She goes right on shaving my father's legs.
Frank Sinatra's singing I've Got A Crush On You on the kitchen radio. My mother hums along with it:

Mmm, crush, crush;
Mmm, crush, crush;
I've got a crush on you.

So I pretend I'm mushy Frank Sinatra and mock him for my mother:

Sweetie pie mush, mush,
could ya, would ya, mush mush
Baby baby baby, I've got a crush on you.

Tonight she's a former beauty contest winner, the cheerful old veteran helping the new contestant get ready for the Big Show--a good sport! It doesn't make any sense to me. He stands in front of the mirror with his padded brassiere putting on lipstick and rouge. Now he's smiling at himself. People are really crazy. Instead of a normal mother and father, what I have is these two beauty queens.
"You know, Mom, you're like Cinderella's fairy godmother. You're helping Cinderella get ready for the ball. Only Dad is Cinderella."
"Well, not really. Think of it this way, Bobby. Your father's going to be a gorgeous Ziegfield Follies girl."
There are red blotches and band-aids and mercurochrome on my father's back. My mother's like a Red Cross nurse tending a wounded soldier while now on the radio Benny Goodman and his orchestra play Bugle Call Rag.
"Yeah, Mom. Dad, what do you think it feels like to get shot? On the radio I heard a soldier say all he felt at first was numb. He says it doesn't hurt until afterwards."
"Jesus Christ, watch it, Gertrude."
"You're not listening," I say.
"Ouch," he cries.
"Shut up, darling. You know you can trust me," she says grinning up at him. She's on her hands and knees. She's got a funny look in her eyes.
"I'm only trying to help, Irving. Bobby, hand me that box of Kleenex."
"Kleenex? What Kleenex. I don't see any Kleenex."
"Bobby. By the sink."
"Dad, the war's over. But you go right on bleeding. I'm going to be sick," I say.
"Then get sick. But get sick somewhere else," he says.
"I'm gonna die."
"Then die."
I sit down on the edge of the tub.
"Are you really my father?" I ask.
"What's that?"
"Ever since the Cubs won the pennant you've been promising you'll take me to a game. That was two years ago and you still haven't found the time."
"Bobby, not now," says my mother.
His moustache is gone. The hairs in his ears are gone. The little hairs that used to curl around his gold ring on the left hand are gone.
"You're going to have to remove your wedding band," my mother reminds him. My father takes it off and gives it to her. "Hand me my glasses, dear." My mother hands him the glasses with the gold frames.
"Honey, I know it's going to go fine," she says.
"I never asked to do this," he says. "Not in front of all those people. And I bet Sam and Charlie don't bother to shave their bodies."
"You can always phone in and say you changed your mind," she laughs.
"I'm scratching just thinking what it'll feel like when it grows back in. Never again," he says.





As I walk into the auditorium at Lane Tech High School, I see Eddie Greenberg and Junior Pucklewartz with their families. I clench my fists and avoid their eyes.
Mom and I get to sit in row one next to Mrs. Goffen, the dentist's wife, and Rabbi Gefferbaum and all the other big shots. Mom has a big bouquet of roses which she sticks under her seat.
Dressed in a suit and tie, sitting in the big rented auditorium, I'm prepared at any moment to slide out of my seat and hide in the aisle. Finally, at eight o'clock, a half hour late, the curtain goes up.
I keep my eyes shut as long as I can. Twenty seconds, thirty seconds go by. Then, aware of lights flashing, I open my eyes.
My quick-stepping chorus girl father is the first one to make a move. Before he dances, he raises his smooth, hairless arm and waves to us, to a full house--1200 people--standing room only. My mother looks enthralled. Tears come to her eyes. My stomach is in knots. I see people smiling and looking at one another.
My mother: "Look, Bobby, look. There's your father. Wave back to him." My father's wave is practised, assured, confident, a theatrical wave intended for the entire audience. I slump down in my seat and pretend not to be there.
My mother turns away disapprovingly. Then she rotates in her seat and grabs my arm. "Bobby, pay attention to me. My God, why can't you behave like Ritchie Goffen?"
To please her, I put up my hand and wave. Then I scrunch back down in my seat and cover my eyes with my hands. Squinting between my fingers, I see where she's stashed the flowers. There it's dark and cool. Struggling for breath, I begin coughing and giggling uncontrollably.
Again, the auditorium grows dark.
Music.
Stage lights. I see a spotlight like a beam of sunlight on my buxom, show girl father. He's wearing a two-piece, pink polka dot sun-suit, and he's dancing arm-in-arm with Dr. Sam Goffen the dentist, Charlie Silver the butcher, and Sonny Berkowitz the poolroom proprietor. I stop laughing. Even the dentist is good. They dance like high-kicking angels, and they look like real, honest-to-God women.
Everyone in the theater is clapping and cheering. I turn to my mother to see a look of triumph on her face. And all the other women, too, all the chorus girls' wives, Mrs. Goffen, Mrs. Silver, and Mrs. Berkowitz, are clapping and cheering. My pals Eddie Greenberg and Junior Pucklewartz are sitting there bug-eyed.
An hour later the show ends. The dancers waltz to the footlights and take a bow. Dad winks and shimmies as the audience, 1200 strong, rises to chant and cheer. He is radiant. "You're beautiful," I yell. "Let's go see the Cubs play." I mouth the words at him, but he's looking past me. "I want a date!" My eyes burn with tears. "What do I have to do to win you anyway?
"I want a real Dad!" I shout at the top of my voice.
People begin hauling out bouquets of flowers. I stand with both arms in the air reaching out to him and, my heart swelling, I hear yelling and screaming. The sound of my own voice and my mother's voice shouting together, "Encore. Encore." I reach under Mom's seat for the flowers. Yes, even as the light moves away from him, I applaud and throw flowers at my dancing girl father!



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