Summary
Moth reflects on how dancing feels too greedy now. While lying on her bed, she practices ballet positions. It doesn’t count as dancing because her feet don’t touch the floor. She knows a therapist would advise her not to be so hard on herself. She normally hates summer, but is excited that Sani has entered her life. He might make summer less bad. Moth reflects on how the black witch moth is seen variously as an omen and a blessing. Though people think of butterflies as prettier, she prefers being a moth, which is “feared and blessed” rather than too perfect. She longs to migrate, like the black witch moth, but finds herself in the same place.
Moth says that her aunt is leaving for the summer—without Moth. She explains how, one evening, Aunt Jack gets drunk and emotionally distraught. Addressing the urns on the mantel, Aunt Jack says that she is leaving for the summer; she whispers that she can’t handle living with the ghosts of her family members. Aunt Jack leaves a note on the fridge asking forgiveness. Moth weeps at the hurt of being abandoned, and she assumes her aunt must hate her. She says she hates herself too. Moth resolves not to forgive Aunt Jack.
However, Moth figures she is seventeen and can take care of herself. She decides to host a party that will trash the house and get the cops called. She posts on Instagram inviting everyone, even the bullies at school, and not a single person likes the post. Moth angrily stomps out of her house and down the block to Sani’s. She sees him at the dinner table arguing with his stepfather, who wants him to attend business school rather than be a “lazy artist,” even if business would make him miserable. When Sani asks his mother to stand up for him, she offers him a small blue and white pill. He takes it, drinking water before slamming his glass on the table. There is a crash in the kitchen when Sani’s mother and stepfather are in there, out of sight. Sani and Moth make eye contact from a distance.
At home, Moth goes into the woods behind the house. It gets cold and she walks aimlessly, feeling sleepy. Before she falls to the ground, Sani arrives and holds her waist. He takes her inside her house and tucks her under a blanket on the couch. He tucks himself in beside her. In the morning they text each other about Moth withdrawing her Juilliard application; she suggests that maybe he could apply. She wants to offer him some of the spark that kept her alive after the car crash.
During a summer thunderstorm, Sani arrives at Moth’s house. He is bleeding from his face. He says his stepfather hit him again and said he’d never get into Juilliard with a sick mind. Sani’s hands shake as he pours too many pills into his hand. Moth knocks them out of his hand. He crumbles against her and says his mother did nothing to stop his stepfather hitting him. She asks him to run away with her.
They plan a trip to New Mexico. Moth brings wormwood to protect the car, and ginger root for adventure and freedom. She wants both this summer. She throws out the spoilable food in the fridge and cleans the house. She doesn’t leave a note for her aunt. She gathers the pills she knocked out of Sani’s hands. In Sani’s Jeep Wrangler, he looks more composed several days after the thunderstorm. He knows what wormwood and ginger are for. There is lipstick on his cheek (from his mother kissing him goodbye). Moth wipes it off and wishes she could wipe the bruise from his cheek too.
They drive, entertaining each other with songs and stories. At a diner in the middle of Virginia, Sani traces his fingers over a map of the US and says it all used to be Native land. He says that, according to him, it is all still Native land, but the government sees it differently. He is happy to eat a stack of pancakes, but Moth refuses to eat. She says her belly cramps on food ever since the car accident. They plan ten more stops on the way across Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, on the way to the Navajo Nation in Four Corners, New Mexico. At the Monticello Plantation, they stomp on the “hateful plantation ground” and Moth buries some pancakes as an offering to her ancestors who may be buried there.
Moth lists things her grandfather taught her about the South, such as how enslaved people once comprised one-third of the population and how Jim Crow laws segregated Black people in the South after slavery was outlawed. During this period, lynchings were common. For Sani, the South was once a green place before “a white-faced virus” (European colonizers) claimed the land and wiped out scores of Native Americans.
Analysis
In “I Used to Dance,” McBride builds on the theme of trauma by establishing Moth’s desire to dance ballet again—a joy she refuses herself because of her emotional pain. In addition to imagining herself dancing through the air, Moth moves her feet above her while lying on her back; she claims neither of these count as dancing because her feet aren’t on the ground. In these lines, Moth speaks as though there is some cosmic law preventing her from dancing. However, in reality she is imposing the limit on herself because it feels inappropriate to feel joy when she is still reeling from the trauma of having lost her family.
The theme of abandonment arises when Aunt Jack suddenly announces that she is leaving for the summer. Clearly having a mental breakdown, Aunt Jack drinks heavily while compulsively making offerings to her ancestors, as if asking to be left alone. Moth doesn’t understand her aunt’s strange behavior, but she interprets it to mean her aunt hates her and needs to get away from her sadness. However, readers with hindsight knowledge of the plot will see the irony in Moth’s assumptions: When Aunt Jack tells the urns on her mantel, “I can’t live with your ghosts,” she is referring to the fact that Moth—who is oblivious to the fact she died with her parents and brother—is unwittingly haunting her.
To lessen the hurt of Aunt Jack’s abandonment, Moth attempts to be rebellious by throwing a party. However, not a single guest arrives. Once again, her inability or refusal to recognize that she is a ghost leads her to assume instead that she is universally disliked. To ease her sense of isolation, Moth seeks out Sani. However, the theme of trauma comes up again as Moth witnesses Sani’s stepfather being verbally abusive and undermining Sani’s sense of self-worth. The theme of mental illness also arises as Sani’s mother offers her son unspecified blue-and-white pills. These pills are depicted as an ineffective solution to cope with the strong emotions flying around Sani’s dysfunctional home environment.
It becomes clear that Sani’s home life is increasingly troubled when he arrives at Moth’s complaining about how his stepfather hit him. Beyond the physical violence, Sani also feels emotionally abandoned by his mother, who did nothing to intervene when her husband was being violent. While Moth and Sani can offer each other some comfort by talking through their issues, the two decide they must get away from Virginia if they wish to heal from the traumas they have experienced in the state.
As Sani and Moth embark on their road trip to the Navajo Nation reservation out west, they plan stops at historically significant places in the Southeast United States. As they get to know each other better, Moth and Sani discuss how their different ancestral backgrounds have shaped the way they view the US. For Moth, much of the territory they cross bears the memory of the mistreatment of her enslaved and racially segregated ancestors. Similarly, Sani acknowledges the memory of the Native American ancestors who were ethnically cleansed and displaced from their traditional homelands by white settlers. For both characters, these historical injustices linger as traumas that impact how they cannot separate from their identities in the modern day. Both characters also can benefit from the healing practices and rituals their ancestors made use of when coping with injustice.
