I Wish We Could Dance All the Time

My sister is coming out to the veranda with her record player. That means we’re going to dance. I love to dance. Cindy always puts me up on the table so I can see everyone. I hope she plays “I Saw Her Standing There”. That’s my favorite, even though they never finished it. “I’ll never dance with another…” Another what? Grown-ups are always saying things I don’t understand.

My mother always says that living in Hawaii has turned us kids into savages because our feet are always black from playing outside without shoes. Sometimes she laughs when she says it, but when me and Cindy were going outside one day, my sister said, “We’re going outside to behave like little savages!” my mom didn’t laugh, but some of her bridge friends did.

My sister can’t put me on the table this time because she broke her arm when she fell out of the avocado tree next door. She’s always doing stuff like that. A few months ago, she broke her two front teeth while riding her bike behind the mosquito fogger truck. She said she couldn’t see the curb in the cloud. Cindy is nine years old. I’m four and Dougie is ten. That’s as old as I can count.

My brother lifts me up to the table and my parents come outside, too. Mom is in her white shirt with buttons and the funny black pants that don't go all the way down. Dad is wearing his light brown uniform.

It’s a big veranda. My mom calls our house a cracker box, but it’s much bigger than that. Not as big as the colonel’s house down the street, but dad says that’s okay because colonels are rich.

My sister puts the needle on the record. It’s “Love Me Do”. It’s not my favorite, but it’s better than “Eleanor Rigby” or “Yellow Submarine”. I like “Yellow Submarine”, but you can’t dance to it. “Eleanor Rigby” scares me because she keeps someone’s face in a jar, and her father is always digging graves. That song is like a Frankenstein movie.

When the music starts, I wiggle around and throw my arms up the air like the kids on the Saturday morning TV show. My parents laugh and even my brother smiles. He never smiles. My mom says it’s because he doesn’t like school. Sometimes, Dougie takes the cat to the stairs and does spearmints to see if she will land on her feet when you drop her. He’s gone halfway up the steps so far but she lands on her feet every time. She doesn’t like it, though, and I think he’s mean. Mom says I have to start school next year. I hope it doesn’t make me mean to the cat.

But right now, I’m dancing and my sister is dancing. She’s really good. She almost looks like the TV kids, except for the broken arm. My parents are laughing and I laugh, too because everyone looks so happy. I try to wiggle my butt like my sister, and we all laugh even more. I wish we could dance all the time.