By Corinne O’Shaughnessy

Okay, I know I am not JLo or Queen Bey, but right now, I am one of their backup dancers. I am booty rolling and fist pumping and single, single, doubling it, and flipping one hip-hop knee toward the other to the beats of Britney and Pitbull and Enrique. 

And I am crushing it. 

I am cumbia-ing and chacha-ing and I could definitely, no doubt about it, be their backup dancer. Who cares if I’m a decade older than JLo? It’s the moves that make the dancer, not the sagging armpits, for god sake. Why wasn’t I warned that the armpits go? And the crooks of the elbows? The boobs heading south, sure, I’d gotten that memo, but why had no one mentioned the parts of your body you never contemplated before?

Never mind, it’s doesn’t matter, because I have the moves and for one entire hour I follow Adelaide, our eccentric, was almost a Fly Girl, Zumba instructor. She’s up on the community center stage and we are on the floor below sweating and puffing and, for that whole entire hour, I do what she does, or try to, and completely forget everything else. 

I am light and bouncy and I laugh when Adelaide shows us a complicated pattern and her body is gorgeous and I am a straight woman thinking, god she’s sexy, and then it’s time for the cool down…and as we do the last roll up to standing position, the forgetting drips down my core and the weight of remembering trudges up from my feet to my chest and shoulders, where it will stay until next Monday night at 7 p.m. 

Next Monday, for one hour, I will once again be able to forget that I am breaking up my family, the only thing I’ve ever positively known I wanted. 

I need a divorce, I have finally said. 

Need, not want. Fear had led him to perform a Three Card Monte maneuver with every sobriety avenue he appeared to be pursuing for the 21 years of our marriage until he finally said, “I’m never going to stop doing this,” one 5 a.m. work/school morning, when I walked in on him in the bathroom smoking a joint. He may have already popped a hydrocodone, or a Percocet, or an Oxycodone, the ones he kept in the amber pill bottles shoved into a sock in his top drawer. I knew his disease was incurable, but I also knew there were treatment plans. Divorce became the last option for my own. I needed healthy, for myself, but more so for our boys.

“Okay,” I said.

We faced off for a second or two, then I turned around and walked into the kitchen. When I heard him lock the front door on his way to work, I collapsed on the floor and sobbed. Snot poured into the grout between the tiles sprinkled with spilled coffee grounds and toast crumbs. Worried I’d wake our sleeping boys, I forced myself to stand up. Remaining upright took all my strength after I’d literally felt hope leave my body. 

So from 8 p.m. Monday, until 7 p.m. the next Monday, I walk around looking like I am functioning, and I sort of am, but I am also weeping uncontrollably in front of boxes of De Cecco spaghetti in Aisle 8 at Stop and Shop or waiting for the Tip Top salesman to return with a pair of size 40 (European) clogs, and I often don’t answer friends calls because that is the complete opposite of Zumba. Every night, I go to bed praying I’ll awaken from this continuous loop nightmare. Each new morning brings fresh heartbreak and an added layer of scar tissue when my wishes and reality collide.

One Monday evening, I arrive at the subway station to find it closed for repairs. I have to take the bus. When I realize I am on the wrong one, I get off nearly a mile away. I run the 10 blocks to the step street, up the nine flights of stairs, then the last three uphill blocks, and burst through the door having missed the warm up, but in time to start a side salsa triple tap, gasping, but there. 

I am not a runner, not even in good shape. I am just desperate. 

One friend whose call I do answer, because her last voice mail began and ended with please, suggests I join her gym. There’s a rock-climbing wall and they have Zumba classes, in addition to everything else. Ok, I’ll check it out, I tell her. The gym is beautiful and the converted industrial space, all light and air, helps me leave my head.

When I walk into the gym’s dance studio with mirrors lining the walls to take a Zumba class, I meet Gabriel, the adorable instructor who probably dances on Broadway. The music starts. I have never taken a Zumba class before where I can see myself. The warm up goes okay, but then we start dancing and it turns out, I am not JLo’s or Queen Bey’s backup dancer. 

I am Olive Oyl on crack--all knees and elbows moving at odd angles a quarter beat behind the music, or one beat ahead, or sometimes spot on, but it’s out of my control. I look away, keep my eyes on Gabriel, which I should do anyway to learn the new steps. But I also look away because reality is not always kind.  

I watch Gabriel’s fluid, graceful movements but I also can’t help seeing my flailing arms and awkwardly swaying hips as I turn on the wrong foot and lose the pattern all together. Scrambling to get my feet to re-find it, a determination to not look away suddenly wells up from deep within. I stare directly into the mirror and gradually settle in.

 Watching myself. There. Trying. 

Corinne is a retired New York City public school literacy teacher. Her essays have been published in CatbirdLit.com, Reideasjournal.com, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and HerStry.com.