Dance Hall Road By Marion Douglas
Dance Hall Road 
Every student was required to bring an egg to school and keep it warm and safe for three long days. The purpose being to warn against the consuming burden of parenthood, expose them all to constant vigilance. Babies are small, breakable, and full of slime: you’ll wish you hadn’t. Follow-up discussions were mandatory, segregated by sex and led by a nervous and tongue-tied gym teacher gripping a piece of sport equipment—a tennis racquet, a volleyball—for reassurance. No one had questions, not even comments. The end result was a jumble of impressions having to do with white knuckles, egg cartons, shame, school spirit, and fear.
“That was more or less the opposite of a valedictorian’s speech, wouldn’t you say?” Rose asked Anastasia, exiting the girls’ talk.
“Ha!” Anastasia said. “That’s funny. Can you picture Eleanor Gee getting up there on stage and saying, ‘Uh, well, once the egg is fertilized that’s it and uh, well, your life will never be the same again? In fact it will be over. Any questions? No? Good. Let’s play ball.’ ” Her own little scenarios filled Anastasia with glee, practically made the circuitry of her brain visible, oscillating strings of light behind that pale forehead. “Listen to me, Rose Drury. Eleanor Gee will be the valedictorian. Mark my words. I’ve heard she’s already got the dress. I’m just saying this so you don’t get your hopes too high up there. Like hopefully not as high as the hem of that skirt you’re wearing, if you know what I mean. I’m being Miss Clevitt now, just so you know.”
“Yeah, I know you’re being Miss Clevitt. I’ve heard you be Miss Clevitt enough times to know the signs. And I don’t really care that much about the valedictorian thing. I don’t know what I can say to convince you of that.”
“Nothing. You can’t say anything because I’d know you’re lying. It’s a problem when I know you better than you know you.”
No chance of losing Anastasia in the hall because they were both headed to their lockers, their adjacent lockers, Rose thought, the adjective suddenly unpleasant to her, in the same etymological grouping as serrated and entrails and most detestable of all words, vivisection. “But after listening to Miss Clevitt,” Rose said, “the real Miss Clevitt, it’s no wonder so many people missed the whole point. Half the people I know were getting all sentimental about their eggs by day two. And there were those guys Adrian told me who were playing firing squad against the back school wall. They say, ready, aim, fire and they throw their eggs at some victim but the point is to miss. Come close but miss. So there's all this yellow yolk and gooey protein drying out there in the sun. They’re calling it the abortion wall.”
“Ha,” Anastasia said again, for probably the tenth time in this school day. “I wish I’d thought of that.” Dialling combinations now, racing as usual. Summer air filled the hall from doors propped open and people were happy. How could they not be? Somehow, school had mistakenly wandered into this too-hot September and now was the time to escort it out. In similar weather last spring, Rose and Anastasia would have driven off in Mrs. Van Epp’s beautiful Mercury Meteor, going nowhere, up and down the highway, the two of them and the car, kindred spirits. But this year was different. There was a strain, caused by Maddy, a strain of virus, Anastasia would have said.
“Beat you,” said Anastasia, jerking open her lock and dumping her books onto the floor of her locker with a great clatter. “ I call that avant disregard.”
“Why avant?”
“Because I did it before you did, Drury.”
“Yeah, well, I have homework so these guys are coming home with me,” said Rose, grimacing at her textbooks. “But you know… you know you could think about the egg thing in another way, too,” she went on, prepared for Anastasia’s snort or Anastasia’s laugh or her other favourite: Frankly, Rose, I’m nonplussed by your attitude. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be about sex and birth control.”
“What? Of course it has to be about sex and birth control.” Anastasia was putting on her jacket. “It’s about don’t have sex if you don’t want to have some little white thing made out of half-baked calcium you might squash.”
“Yeah. But it could also be about something larger.”
“Anything could be about something larger. Except for maybe Maddy Farrell.” Slam. Her locker door was shut.
How could she be so quick? How could she predict the direction of every conversation? “Well, “ Rose began, “you could think about it as we’re all one another’s eggs,” then paused to wonder, for one dizzy moment, if Anastasia might punch her in the teeth for that comment. Fist fights, Adrian had told her, usually erupted at one of the opponent’s lockers.
Instead, a parody of sagacity, chin propped between thumb and fingers, Anastasia nodded and said, “Ah. Really? Maybe you should bring that up with Eleanor Gee. We are all one another’s eggs. No matter what size, no matter what height. Even the six-foot variety. Even those in an orange hat. I’m serious. You should mention it to her. She’s likely looking for an idea.”
This was Anastasia at her worst, dis-disingenuous. Or something. “I’m going,” she said and was gone.
Well, so? It was true. We are one another’s eggs. And Maddy, specifically, was hers. Anastasia would just have to adapt. Maddy needed protection and care. The egg was Rose’s own personal metaphor, one that had grown a soft, impermeable membrane around the two of them. Made of them a zygote, Rose thought, or one of those double-yolked eggs. How could she expect her old friends to understand? They were from a previous era, a time remembered for its improbability: polio, iceboxes, a killing influenza. Sometimes now when Rose saw Anastasia in the hall or across the parking lot, she thought she might be watching a grainy documentary from the CBC.
Almost every day now, Rose drove Maddy home from school, even when there was basketball practice, like today. Maddy’s dad would pick her up, no problem, easy enough to make one more stop in his custodial rounds but if Maddy had a chum—that was the word he used, chum—willing to give her a ride, so much the better. Meaning Tuesdays and Wednesdays, Rose waited in the parking lot with the moms and the boyfriends for Maddy to appear. Sometimes she read or studied, other times she listened to the radio, aware that people knew she was waiting for Maddy and could make no sense of it. Tutoring, Rose said, again and again. So you have to wait for her? Yeah, she comes to my house and gets picked up there. These questions were the reason she kept the egg wrapped in tissue in the glove box of the Vega. Sometimes she’d take it out, hold it up to the setting sun, put it back, as if she thought there might be a chick inside.
Rose couldn’t explain to people, especially Anastasia, that the situation with Maddy was simply a good arrangement. Along with the tutoring, Maddy had someone to talk to and—a little known fact—she liked to talk, and Rose wanted to help. And the wanting to help was a kind of pregnancy, Rose realized, building in her belly like a baby with more and more parts until one day, there it was, not actually born but too big to conceal. Hence, the waiting in the parking lot, the driving here and there, the dentistry.
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