The Crippled Dance

Many years ago, traveling alone through the west of Ireland, I found myself in a small village called Dungloe. It was Sunday. Though most of the town was closed, everyone I saw was headed to the local community hall. As it turned out, that day was the finals of the Claddagh dancing competition for the girls of Dungloe. In Ireland most girls learn to step dance from the time they can walk. This contest, held once a year for 13-year-olds, is more than just a dance competition. It is a kind of rite of passage, the first tentative steps toward womanhood and all it carries. I had a couple hours before the bus to Dublin, so I followed the crowd to the hall, then up two long stairways to the second floor. The town crowded around a dance floor watching each girl in Gaelic costume carefully tap out the ancient morse code of Ireland. For about an hour I watched the frenetic precision of the dancers. As I started down, I saw a young girl, dressed to dance, on the first landing, clutching the rail. I wondered why she wasn't already in the hall competing. But as I grew nearer I could see that one of her legs was bent at a terrible angle. Deformed from birth I supposed. Half crippled. She saw me glance at her. Ashamed, she pretended she was just resting before going up the second flight. Then, seeing my concern, she tried to step up. It was a terrible struggle for her, a limp. A hobble, really. Each step unbalanced and awkward. Her face filled with shame. I was just a stranger waiting for a bus. I hesitated, then, unsure, passed. Touched and uncertain what to do, I continued down the steps, then stopped and looked back. She was paralyzed with fear, looking up at the insurmountable stairs before her. Worried, I suppose, that she would never be able to climb them. Never dance like the other girls. Never step beyond her wound. Never step away from childhood. Embarrassed that anyone would hear, she was crying softly to herself when a man burst through the door. He stumbled by me, smelling of cigarettes and whiskey. Seeing her, he began calling out, apologizing for being late. Slurring about how he lost track of time. As he started up toward her, he staggered and nearly fell. At first she hid her face from him. But as he reached her, he swept her into his arms and she buried her face into his shoulder and let go. Not like a child cries. Not the tender cry of small unfairnesses. More like a woman cries. From the way the world and everything in it, even love, can seem flawed at its heart. And to feel it, the truth of it, means only to endure it. He gathered her, whispered to her and carried her up. I stood alone for a moment, felt something pull at me, then followed them back into the great room. The competition was nearly over. A girl with flying feet was just finishing her dance to polite applause. But as the father and his daughter stepped out onto the floor, the crowd, uncertain and embarrassed, even a little afraid of the heartache they were sure would follow, was drowned in silence. He carried her to the center of the room and set her down. Then turning toward the silent musicians, he took a few steps and stumbled. He righted himself and called out, “You played for them! You can play for my little girl.” The girl, ashamed but proud, called out, "Da . . . please." “No,” he cried out. Pointing a finger, he said, “You played for them!" The musicians, uncertain what to do, sat silent as stone, until a young man of about twenty, with a fiddle, stood. He seemed brave to me. Not valiant in some grand gesture. More, simply unwilling to be indecent, which is itself a kind of bravery. Unwilling to be part of the silent assent to minor cruelty. Alone, he stepped past the girl’s father, and began to play an Irish air. The greatest Irish airs are touched, like all great works of art, with equal parts trouble and beauty. They require each other. Like they were chained together at the beginning of time, and only those who have lived both halves into their hearts can understand. The price of living and the glory of it, the terror and the wonder, come welded together. As the girl listened, she seemed to change. As if the pull of the strings raised something hidden in her. She struck a pose. Then she began to dance. It seemed impossible at first. Like one hand clapping. But as the fiddle player descended past the sorrow of the air, something of rare beauty filled the sound. And the girl feeling some wounded grace in herself responded. The broken part of her reached down below all she had endured until it gripped something holy and allowed it to rise. Something far beyond the perfect and studied steps of the others. Something endowed to her, beneath the unfairness of her birth. The fiddle player finished and the sound crept back under the silence from where it came. And the wounded dancer, who transformed the heartache of living into the beauty of living, disappeared once more into the stillness of a crippled girl. For a long moment the townspeople were quiet. Touched by a kind of awe and a reverance for something undeniable, something each felt but could not comprehend. And the awe seemed to swell until the quiet could no longer contain it. Then, like thunder, the quiet moaned, broke open, and rolled away. And something else like lightning shook free. The townspeople, moments before so timid and afraid, burst into cheering and clapping and crying. The girl limped away to the arms of her father’s imperfect love. And I left. I caught the bus to Dublin. But I had the feeling I sometimes get that I was being shown something. Something hidden. Something veiled that burst into plain sight for just a moment. Whispering to me that I should remember. Remember about unfairnesses and the grace they disguise. Remember that even the stagger of crippled love still dances. WLM