Roberts - Wild life: dispatches from a childhood of baboons and button-downs

I sat quietly on the gym floor and wiggled my toes. I wasnt allowed to move, but I was so excited I thought I might explode. I always had trouble sitting still, but today it was much harder than usual. The slippery laminate floor felt smooth under my bright blue sweatpants and I ran my fingers idly along the grooves in the wood, needing something to do with my hands and wishing I was outside instead. My heart pounded and the glare from the overhead lights made my dark hair feel heavy and hot. When was it going to be my turn?

The first pair of girls from my second-grade class were called up to do their dance routine. Their blond hair was tied back with glittery silver ribbons, and under their pink leotards they wore tights with sparkles on them. I looked around the room at the fifty girls from my class all sitting patiently around the blue gym mats waiting for their chance to perform. They all look like Angelina Ballerina, I thought, feeling a small swell of pride in my chest. Not one of them had a green bandanna wrapped around her head. Their outfits hadnt been borrowed from a real-life gorilla researcher.

The glittering dancing girls shimmied across the gym mats, swaying and jumping in time to Kris Krosss Jump and giggling nonstop. They were followed by another pair, who did exactly the same thing to exactly the same song. And another pair. And another.

I elbowed Elizabeth and hissed, This is so boring. Our routine is going to be so much better. I couldnt understand why she looked so pale and unhappy, her brown eyes wide. Dont worry, I whispered. This is going to be so much fun! She smiled thinly and looked down at her red sweatpants. Shed insisted on wearing red rather than blue because she said shed look like a Smurf in blue. I tried to cheer her up by offering to wear the blue, but it hadnt worked. I still thought we should have tried to put together a gorilla costume for her, but I didnt want to make her any unhappier. Id considered bringing her a cookie that morning to make her smile, but I didnt know what kind she liked. I didnt know anything about her, really, except that her name was Elizabeth and she was almost as new to my class as I was. Wed been paired together for the dance routine because neither of us had a best friend to run to squealing when we were told to find a partner for the class. Well, I did have a best friend, but he was a boy and they got to play basketball instead.

The teacher called up the next pair of dancers; there were only a few more kids to go before we were up.

The routine went like this: I was the hero and Elizabeth was the gorilla I was chasing, who (according to the song) had stolen my woman and driven off in a fancy car. The song didnt specify whether the hero ever caught the gorilla, but in order to create a dramatic conclusion, I decided that I would end up catching Elizabeth. We would run around in circles for a few minutes during the chase, and then the routine would end with me theatrically shoving Elizabeth to the floor and standing over her, victorious. We hadnt practiced the whole routine yet since Elizabeth hadnt wanted to, but I wasnt worried about anything except pushing Elizabeth; she was a lot bigger than I was, and didnt seem like the kind of girl that got knocked over very often.

The song itself is called Gorilla Man, which my dad told me was written by a Zulu sangoma (healer) in South Africa named Condry Ziqubu. My parents used to play the song while we made dinner, dancing around the kitchen holding my little sister and pretending to be the gorilla to scare her. When I told Dad I wanted to use Gorilla Man for my dance performance, he smiled and said, Thats an excellent choice. Every good story has a car chase. And then Mom lent me her old green bandanna, the one she had worn to work with Dian Fossey with real-life gorillas in Rwanda.

I knew Gorilla Man by heart and had played it over and over in my head as we practiced our routine. Id instructed Elizabeth on where she should go and what she should do as the drama played out. When the synthesizers began their downbeat, wed square off: me, the desperate protagonist, and Elizabeth, the debonair gorilla whod stolen my lady love.

Look happier, I had to remind her. Youve stolen my woman! Youre in a fancy car! Youre not supposed to look terrified, youre the GORILLA! For the past week of rehearsals, Elizabeth had looked nauseated as I jumped around the blue gym mats, acting out my choreography.

But now the day was here, and I couldnt wait to show everyone how cool I was. My classmates didnt know me very well since Id only been back in the US for a few weeks, and no one really understood where I had come from. No one knew where Kenya was, so I had to just say, Im from Africa, when they asked me where I lived. They didnt know anything about Africa anyway, but just asked whether I had a pet elephant and spoke African. My classmates had been genuinely surprised when I said that yes, I owned shoes but didnt like to wear them unless it was snowing. And no, Id never seen a Koosh. What was it for? This was my chance to show them that the music from where I lived was so much better than their Top 40 hits. I wiggled my toes again and grinned. This was going to be so good.