Miss Dee

This, then, is a tribute to you, Miss Dee, wherever you are now. Miss Dee was a Jew, some people around town called her a Kike. Whatever, she was dark haired and beautiful and graceful, and every little girl in her dance classes loved her immensely. We all wanted to be just like her. Wherever she came from, suddenly she was here, in the middle of the Mojave Desert, to teach us how to be beautiful and graceful. We were like a flock of little brown birds in the presence of a Phoenix. Her real name was Mrs. Kahn. What was the "D" for? Delilah? Daphane? Diana? Deborah? I can't remember, but it must have stood for something more radiant and grand than our names: Norma, and Jackie, Virginia and Leonie, and Joyce.

There, in her little studio with its music, and barre, and mirrors, in the middle of all that dry sagebrush and sand, she taught us Acrobatics, Ballet, and Tap dancing. In our spare time after school we all practiced doing splits, and backbends and frontovers and cartwheels. We practiced tapdancing in our bare feet, in the sand. (Here I must tell you that my friend Leonie Kinikin also had a pair of ice skates, and we also used to ice skate in the sand! -- Our regular skating, with the skates clamped onto our shoes and fastened with a skate key was done on a big cement slab by Flossie's Variety Store).

Once or twice a year Miss Dee gave a recital, and our parents were invited to watch us perform. In Wisteria we were supposed to be a kind of lovely lavender flowers I had never seen. We were White Clouds drifting in a blue sky, we tapped out patriotic rhythms in sparkling Red, White, and Blue. Leonie and Norma danced Sunset and Night, where Leonie's beautiful many-colored costume was at the end, covered in Norma's black cloak. Oh, I can't begin to tell you how I envied Leonie's beautiful, filmy, pink and gold and scarlet colored dress, as Joseph's brothers must have envied and coveted his coat of many colors! I would have thrown her into a pit for that dress. I would have sold her into Egypt.

You see, Miss Dee, I remember this, even now! And though I know you will never see this, I want to tell you, Thank you, thank you, thank you, for sharing your grace and your talents with some little girls a long time ago in the middle of a great desert. You were an oasis in a wilderness.