Swing Time

The narrative flashes back to Tracey and the narrator as preteens. Tracey goes through puberty earlier than the other girls. She starts dressing provocatively; her mother finally has a job and doesn’t notice. The other girls shun Tracey, and even the narrator is only friendly with her when Tracey is nice to her. Tracey encourages the attention from boys at school and lets them pay her to touch her breasts. The narrator’s mother predicts that Tracey will get pregnant soon and continue the cycle of poverty and single motherhood.

The narrative flashes forward to the Kankurang, which makes the narrator miss the ferry that will bring her to the airport to pick up Aimee. The narrator proposes taking one of the villagers’ boats, but Lamin insists that for her such transportation is not suitable. They finally take one of these boats, only to find out that Aimee has decided to come to the village the next day. Back in the village, Lamin has to explain Aimee’s unexpected absence to Al Kalo, the village chief. When the narrator discovers that Aimee plans to rest on the beach for a couple of days, the narrator makes plans with Lamin. She wants to see:

[T]he shore from which the ships had left, carrying their cargo of humans, destined for my mother’s island, and then on to the Americas and Britain, bearing the sugar and the cotton, before turning back again, a triangle that had produced—among its numberless consequences—my own existence (177).

The villagers, including Lamin, are protective of the narrator and do not allow her to do anything on her own, worried about her fragility and her lack of knowledge of how difficult things are in the village. One morning, she walks to Lamin’s compound, where she takes in the poverty he lives in and makes Lamin feel ashamed.

The narrative flashes back to when the narrator is 12 years old. Tracey’s father Louie has been released from prison, and the narrator officially meets him for the first time. He takes the girls to the racetrack, where the narrator’s horse wins money. He takes them shopping with the earnings, and the narrator picks out four movie musicals on sale. Louie tells them about prison and encourages them to pursue their passions. Tracey is allowed to audition for stage school, but the narrator is not. Louie was a dancer; he strikes a move for the girls, and the narrator sees that Tracey’s fantasies of her father on tour with Michael Jackson were not totally off base. When the narrator’s mother finds out that the narrator was with Louie, the narrator and her mother get into an argument. The narrator makes her mother cry when she tells her she’s nothing.

The narrator has a difficult time getting in touch with Tracey while Tracey rehearses for her audition. The narrator wonders if “my body was to blame. I was still a lanky, flat-chested child, lurking in the doorway, while Tracey, dancing in the light, was already a little woman. How could she have any interest in the things that still interested me?” (189). The narrator finally tracks Tracey down, eager to show her a scene from the movie musical Ali Baba Goes to Town, in which the main character Cantor approaches a group of Africans and speaks gibberish to them. They understand him, and as they dance together, Cantor puts on blackface. Then, a Black girl comes on the screen to dance with the African men, which is what the narrator wants Tracey to see: The girl looks just like Tracey.

The narrative flashes forward to the narrator in Africa. The narrator is finally reunited with Aimee, who travels with a large entourage. This entourage includes a project manager named Fernando Carrapichano, whose extensive experience working in various African countries: “[T]he way he understood the world was so genuinely alien to me that it felt as if he occupied a parallel reality, which I didn’t doubt was the real one, but which I couldn’t ‘speak to’” (195). Fernando has a difficult time working with Aimee, whose lack of real-world experience and knowledge is confusing to him.

The narrative flashes back to the narrator at age 12. The girls discover that the dancer’s name is Jeni LeGon, and as the narrator finds her in other films, she uses Jeni LeGon to bring Tracey back into her life. Meanwhile, the narrator’s parents have broken up, but continue to live together. Though the situation is odd, there are no other options. Divorce is financially unfeasible, and because the narrator’s father takes primary care of the narrator while her mother studies, it is decided that they are best living all together. The narrator’s father demotes himself from Post Office Manager to delivery man.

The narration flashes forward to the narrator and Aimee in Africa. Aimee uses her days in Africa as a press tour of her goodwill for the poor. Aimee is annoyed by how many people make speeches around her and her photographer.

The narration flashes back to the narrator as a kid. Her mother brings her to political protest marches, but the narrator still only wants to dance. A teacher tells the narrator’s mother about a test the narrator should take to be classified as gifted. The teacher insists that there’s a possibility the narrator can get a scholarship to an independent school. The narrator’s mother pulls her out of dance class so she can prepare for the exams. The narrator purposely fails the exam, angry that her future is being decided for her.

Tracey gets into the stage school; in her audition, she copied Jeni LeGon’s choreography, and the evaluators, never having seen the film, believe her to be a genius dancer. The narrator’s adolescent years are difficult and lonely. She and Tracey drift apart. The narrator imagines that Tracey’s new life is glamorous, though the narrator’s mother reports that Tracey has been getting into trouble. The narrator’s father moves out of their apartment. Desperate to fit in somewhere, the narrator becomes a goth and makes a few superficial friendships.

The narrative flashes forward. Four months after the first visit to Africa, the narrator returns to Gambia with Fernando while Aimee stays in New York recording new music. The narrator stays with Hawa, a middle-class woman with whom she stayed with during her first visit, and treats her with kindness. Hawa lives with her large extended family and is popular among the villagers. She avoids any serious political or cultural conversation with the narrator. Hawa works with Lamin at Aimee’s new school. One day, the narrator points out that Hawa’s students repeat English sentences verbatim, rather than learning the language, in front of Hawa’s students. Fernando yells at the narrator for humiliating Hawa and not understanding the reality of the students in the school.

As a teenager, the narrator stops by her father’s apartment unannounced and is greeted by a young Black woman with a thick accent. The woman hides in her father’s bedroom while he explains to the narrator that the young woman is a Senegalese woman named Mercy he found shoeless in the train station. The narrator doesn’t tell her mother about Mercy, but longs to tell Tracey, whom she hasn’t seen in months.

The narrator wants to be rebellious like other teenagers, but in reality, she appreciates her mother’s strict rules and parenting. One night, while out in Camden, the narrator finds an empty room away from a concert to get drunk alone. A goth boy enters, clearly high. They quickly have sex; it is the narrator’s first time. Afterward, out in the street, the narrator sees a group of onlookers watching as a man either helps or hurts a woman he holds up against the wall—the woman is so intoxicated that it’s unclear. The woman is actually 15-year-old Tracey. The narrator’s mother pulls up to pick up the narrator; they take Tracey to the hospital to get her stomach pumped. The narrator decides to let go of her fabricated goth identity.