Praise Dance

after Kaveh Akbar

Joy is always complicated. The dance is not just praise, but release. It is the exorcism of stress. It is our permission to be undone. It is something we are allowed only on Sunday morning. The other days we must keep it together, be steady all week long so that our men and our children don’t lose their place or our progress. We must always hold the stitches tight, we are always the thread. The altar call is for us. For us to mourn together, to celebrate our survival. To shout and shout. To bend our backs only for ourselves. To be held up, finally, by the arms that are supposed to be there to protect us. We know we don’t need them, but it feels nice to be held.

It seems like joy. It sounds like joy. The choir climbing in octave, voices leaping higher than our physical reach. The drums trying to keep up with our quick steps down the aisles, the dat-dat-dat-dat of toe-tapping strut. Tambourine clatter, congregation clap. We could a cappella this joy and still be okay. But the organ wail sways the walls, and our bodies are granted reprieve. Unloosening. Bless all that are here in the name of the Lord, Pastor calls. If you need a blessing today, join us at the front. Let us sing.

Our babies, our men, watch us leave them in this joy. This joy, this sorrow, this pain. Bless us, please Lord, let us get some healing. Let us dance and not be judged for dancing. Let us find our bodies in the movement of hips. Let us hold each other in the sacredness of other women and melt into that love. Let us jump and buck and twist with the possession of the Holy Spirit, slip out of the grasp of the deacons’ hands and make laps around the sanctuary. Let us cry out, holler that joy that sorrow that pain in the same note as the piano. Bury it in the chorus of a praise song. Let them see it as joy, please let them see it as joy.

This is the only break we have that our men do not. Our men who have to pretend to not feel heat or grief. Our men whose joy is contained in that clap. Men get to shout—they don’t get to lose their bodies. It starts with a stretch in our shoulders, a roll back that rocks the top half of our torso. Sometimes a side step, gentle tap at first, until the hip takes over and we stomp with a force that would kill a cockroach in the kitchen. Our usually timid voices catch melody with the choir and then pull back, a tug-of-war between song and shout, and something in our chest opens with each exhale. The Spirit is already in us, we didn’t catch nothing, we just let it out. The echoes of our men’s harsh words and heavy hands on our tongue. The rhythm of tile scrub and dish rinse in our hands. The buckle of our children’s disappointment shaking our knees. The others make room for our movements in each aisle, a gentle push toward center to let us dance.

Every woman has her own patterns, every woman has a joy or sorrow or pain that takes its own shape. Sometimes we recognize a spirit we know in another woman’s body. A week’s worth of anger looked like tense, percussive steps. The joy of rest is arms spread, circular and dizzy. The pain of lost love is curled and fetal, back bent. The sorrow of routine has waves like the sea. We move, we dip, we sing. Pastor stops at each woman, a vial of holy water, a tap to the forehead, and if we need, we can just fall. Sometimes we let all the air out of our bodies and can’t help it. Others, the ones who need this time most, whose burdens feel like more than they can carry, become brazen with touch, taking off up and down the aisles. Our spirits tell us to run. Most of us have forgotten how and can only chase our own tails. But we never forget that instinct to get out.

It doesn’t take long for us to get caught. It is often just the duration of a song. The men are uneasy at our joy sorrow pain and try to fan it out of us. Grab us with hands that have always, always held us down in the name of propriety, in the name of Adam, in the name of woman as only second. Sometimes we last an extra refrain. Pastor eyes the choir lead, who makes a circle with his fingers—again, he signals, the chorus again. He has to keep the music going to make our shouts make sense. He has to contain this joy sorrow pain within reason. It is praise. It is praise. It can only be praise.

One Sunday Miss Vera made it four refrains until they shamed her. Everyone’s fans tilted in her direction, singing the last words of the song in a circle, still alive, still alive, he’s still alive. And then Pastor cut the music and let her call out into silence. She stayed bent at the waist, head to the sky, stomach clutched like something had poisoned her. The rest of us stopped to witness this death. Vera Lee, braver than silence, held her ground. Her purple hat had fallen and now no one stooped to pick it up, just watched the sweat linger at the line where her wig met her hairline. Pastor let her wail alone and stood at the steps of the pulpit, arms folded, waiting for order. Good women, his stance said, behaved women knew when to stop. But Vera, we all knew Vera had been through too much. Vera needed to seem like joy more than any of us. Five men surrounded her, deacons trying to ease her back into the pew. The whispers of praise him becoming worried, please find her, Lord. We knew she held more sorrow than four refrains. We knew she held enough pain for days of praise, but it would not happen here. She would not display it in front of us all. We had to keep it together. They would make us keep it together. They would move in on her. They would hold her down. They would carry her away. The rest of us would cower, afraid of catching that spirit. Her unstoppable spirit. We weren’t sure we’d ever be strong enough.