Even This Story is Secret, 2020

My grandmother’s feet
the colour of pin cherry bark 

walked through the moonlight
walked through the starlight
feet brown like rust

like a parched creekbed
rivulets of dusky sand

flowing down her instep

bare, brown feet on a perilous campaign

from there to here
following a map from a buried past
to this story 

ochre feet
brown ochre
stained by a ferment of Oklahoma dust
and South Saskatchewan River clay

they were signposts, my grandmother’s feet 

her mother’s
then they were my mother’s 
now they are mine

it is my turn to hear and remember the grace in her steps

the pat pat on the linoleum
the swish of slipper on cracked old hardwood
the soundtrack I get to imagine
a moonlit symphonic ode
for her secret dance

I’m informed she quit cold turkey when came the church
as though to dance was nothing
as though to not dance was easy

the body is a temple (they said)
temples don’t shimmy or shake (she was told)

I never saw her dance.
not one shake
not one shimmy

I like to think she danced in secret though
perhaps not a shimmy
but a cool slide across the linoleum
with a quick hip isolation

a brush
touch
step
in the fuzzy blue slippers with the worn down heels 

a shoulder lift and fall
lift
and fall

a laid-back draw around the front room as she called it

she probably danced like that in secret
as her lemon meringue pie cooled in the other room
on the side table that was taller than me
she danced ‘round and through the fragrance of lemons

on cracked brown feet with their
criss-crossed crooked lines of grey
like dry creekbeds encased in slippers    

I collect the dances she never danced
it’s my turn to own the ochre feet
to dance on her behalf 

watch the rivulets of dusky water
flow down to the parched creekbed
and unparch it
and ripple
and shimmy
and shake

“Seika Boye’s beautiful gift to us, “Dancing Black in Canada” poses the question “Where were you allowed to dance?” When I was young, the divide between The World and The Church was absolute and the answer was “Nowhere.” Dancing was a delicious forbidden act that I undertook in hidden attics, lofts and moments, along with others of my generation who rebelled against the strictures on moving our brown selves to music. But I still grieve for the lost dances of my elders. Seika’s reflections on our bodies and how we have been allowed or not allowed to express ourselves through them baptized me with aching resonance. Did my beloved elders grieve this loss for themselves? Did the holding back hurt like a dam? The immutable divide is still not discussed, so even this story is secret.”

— Cheryl Foggo

Photo: Arrenna (Glover) Smith, grandmother of Cheryl Foggo, c. 1918. Courtesy of Cheryl Foggo.

• Poem

• In-Gallery Installation in Edmonton

Artist: Cheryl Foggo

Cheryl Foggo is a multiple award winning author, playwright and filmmaker, whose work over the last 30 years has focused on the lives of Western Canadians of African descent. Her full length National Film Board documentary John Ware Reclaimed will have its World Premiere at CIFF on September 24th. The 30th anniversary edition of her book Pourin’ Down Rain: A Black Woman Claims Her Place in the Canadian West, has just been released by Brush Education Press. She also recently directed the short film Kicking Up a Fuss: The Charles Daniels Story. Her play, John Ware Reimagined, won the 2015 Writers Guild of Alberta Award for Drama and was produced most recently at Workshop West Theatre Company in November, 2017. Also in 2017 she was recognized by the YWCA as one of 150 outstanding Calgary women. She is a past recipient of the Sondra Kelly Screenplay Award from the Writers Guild of Canada. In 2014 she co-produced Alberta’s first Black Canadian Theatre Series with Ellipsis Tree Collective Theatre Company.