Captivity Narrative

Paula Sergi, BSN, MA
E-mail: psergi@charter.net

Halfway through the program
our legs are stiff as timber. 
The “Almost Spring” concert,
like winter itself, has gone on too long.
We’ve suffered through sixth grade’s salute to jazz,
fifth grade’s adaptation of Annie. 
A shuffling of sorts accompanies each song,
because Ms. Zibolski insists on
the required element of dance,
the sort of thing that makes her
the least liked teacher at Lincoln.
We in Wisconsin don’t like dance. 
Movement in the Midwest means bowel.

None of the audience moves
except to shift our weight
from one frozen buttock to the other
as the fourth grade files onto stage.
One chubby boy wipes the back of his hand
across his nose, stares into the forest
of faces, spots her near the middle,
right side; then his smile spreads like sunrise,
when he finds her in the crowd
by the shine of her paisley turquoise blouse.

He doesn’t see the spots of coffee
drizzled down the front, doesn’t see
she is six sizes bigger than Ms. Zibolski,
or any other mother in the room.
Their gaze locks. They exchange looks
like secret signals above the sullen crowd.
The tom-tom beat of his Native dance
pulses in her swollen feet.

Great mother rises from the trap
of her folding chair like a waking bear,
joins the Indian dancers snaking past us,
turning right, then left.  Her heft triggers
something wild in the braves who twist
and hoot, ruffle paper feathers
to the ground, stomp out an unplanned
drum beat finale.

In a room stunned silent as a Midwestern Sunday,
Ms. Zibolski begins the applause.

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