Swing Time

In 1982, when the narrator is seven years old, she meets Tracey in dance class. She is instantly drawn to Tracey because “Our shade of brown was exactly the same—as if one piece of tan material had been cut to make us both—and our freckles gathered in the same areas, we were of the same height” (9). Tracey’s mother is white and “ugly,” unlike the narrator’s beautiful Black mother. Tracey and the narrator live in project housing, which makes Tracey’s mom ashamed, but the narrator’s mother proud. The narrator’s father is in her life, while Tracey’s father is absent.

Miss Isabel’s dance class is held in St. Christopher’s church, which houses a variety of community classes and activities. The narrator is embarrassed by the second-hand ballet slippers her father buys her and admires Tracey’s new lace-up slippers. She is impressed by Tracey’s beauty and her graceful dancing. There is a clear magnetism between Tracey and the narrator, though they avoid developing a friendship.

The narrator’s mother is an intellectual who spends her days reading sociological, cultural, and political theory. Though the narrator and her father adore her mother, the narrator’s mother doesn’t give her daughter enough attention. The narrator’s mother and father are growing apart because her father can’t keep up with her mother’s radical views, intellectualism, and aspirations. The narrator’s mother is out of touch with her large extended family; the only exception is her brother Lambert, with whom the narrator’s father has an important friendship.

To the narrator, dancers are without race, history, or nationality, but Tracey categorizes music styles as white or Black, confusing the narrator. The narrator doesn’t believe herself to be a good dancer, but “my voice—as long as I did not deliberately sing underneath the volume of the piano—had something charismatic in it, drawing people in. This was not a technical gift: my range was tiny. It had to do with emotion” (25). Still, the narrator wishes she could dance as well as Tracey.

Miss Isabel has the narrator walk through flour to demonstrate her flat feet to her mother via the footprints. Miss Isabel explains that while ballerinas need arches, the narrator’s flat feet are an asset for tap dancing. When the dance class term ends, Tracey and the narrator find other ways to see one another.

When the girls play at Tracey’s apartment, the narrator is stunned by how many toys and nice things Tracey has. All they can do at the narrator’s apartment is write stories—Tracey dictates and the narrator transcribes—because the narrator doesn’t have dolls. The narrator keeps the stories hidden from her mother, who would not approve of Tracey’s white heroines and dangerous Black men.

The school term starts, so Tracey and the narrator are separated during the day because they go to different schools—the narrator to a slightly nicer one than Tracey. The narrator envies Tracey’s fatherlessness as the narrator’s parents continue their arguing. Tracey likes to tell the narrator that her father hasn’t abandoned her; rather, he is an important backup dancer for Michael Jackson, which is why he’s always on tour.

Tracey and the narrator watch the release of Michael Jackson’s music video for “Thriller” on TV and are in awe of the dancing. Tracey declares that her father is in the second row of the background dancers. One day, Tracey and the narrator are cooking with Tracey’s mother when a banging at the door makes Tracey’s mom lock the girls in Tracey’s bedroom. The narrator listens as Louie, Tracey’s father, screams and pushes over furniture while Tracey pretends not to hear anything.

The narrator’s mother attends Parents’ Evening. She is one of the few parents who do so—other parents avoid reminders of their own embarrassing schooldays, where cultural and linguistic assimilation were forced upon them. The narrator’s mother doesn’t feel shame about school, but she does feel a righteous anger about policies for education progress. The narrator “was proud to be her child, the daughter of the only mother in the neighborhood free of shame” (42). There only time the narrator saw her mother vulnerable was when she cried the day the narrator’s father brought two white teenagers to the apartment and introduced them as his children. The narrator is aware that her father had had a rough upbringing and had gotten into trouble, but she had never heard of other children. One of them, Emma, is also a ballerina.

Although the narrator’s mother thinks of people’s behavior as something to study and analyze, there are times she participates in the social behavior she criticizes. When Tracey’s mother brags about Tracey’s dance accomplishments, the narrator’s mother leans into her daughter’s academic achievements. The narrator wonders, “Do others have to lose so we can win?” (50). Despite the low opinion the narrator’s mother has of Tracey’s mother, Tracey’s mother arranges for Tracey to go to the narrator’s better school.

The narrator’s school is economically diverse, which the narrator only realizes when Tracey starts going there. Tracey divides the other kids into Cabbage Patch Kids and Garbage Pail Kids. When Tracey gets angry with their teacher, Mr. Sherman, who yells at them in class one day, she takes her anger out on the narrator; soon, Tracey softens and they play with Barbies.

Tracey tells the narrator that Tracey’s father is now on Michael Jackson’s security detail, along with his job as Jackson’s backup dancer. The narrator wishes she had a glamorous family story to tell Tracey in return.

The narrator’s mother tries to create a garden in the courtyard of the council estate (the British version of housing projects), but the rain makes clay out of the holes she’s dug. The narrator’s mother instead teaches her daughter and Tracey how to make pottery with the clay. Tracey makes fun of the narrator’s mother’s vase, which she says looks like a penis. Tracey is put off by the narrator’s mother’s way of speaking to children as though they were adults.

While Tracey comes home from school to an often-empty apartment, the narrator goes home to conversations with her parents. She does her best to avoid talking about what’s really going on at school—a new game, in which boys chase girls and stick their fingers into their vaginas, both thrills and scares the narrator. Tracey is the most popular girl in this game. The game is less about sex and more about power: “The important thing was that you were seen to be the kind of girl worth chasing” (65). The game moves to the classroom, but the white girls are mysteriously no longer chased. In the music room, two boys grab the narrator and try to remove her clothes, this time without the speed, urgency, or laughter of the game. Tracey walks in and stops this sexual assault.