The Night Singers by Valerie Miner Page A

ladies” at a nearby retirement home, about how she plans to be walking perfectly by September, so she can visit her grandson in San Francisco for her eightieth birthday. Usually, we have a long chat, but right now Mrs Hanson is hurrying off to “take an old dear to the doctor.”
    Today’s class is “Stretch and Strengthen.” Surrounded by the studio mirrors—glass and human—I enjoy the initial deep breathing and arm raising, but soon feel like a cartoon of a decrepit ballerina. Forty years old, what am I doing here? As a child, I thought forty was ancient. I remember telling myself that there would be no point in visiting the library after forty, because I’d be almost dead, anyway. Now, I am head of a branch library and go to the gym every lunch hour.
    At first this class looks easy—swinging pink baby weights back and forth, up and down. I sign up to swell my self-confidence and because I like the Salsa music.
    Within two weeks, I am using the green, three pound weights. Once, on a double espresso day, the macha five pound ones.
    A new instructor stares at me.
    â€œThe lady in the back row,” she calls, “don’t swing your weights. Concentrate on lifting and lowering. To the beat.”
    Today’s music is speedy rap.
    â€œThat’s it,” she says, “you can feel it now. Lift and lower. You’ve almost got it.”
    Almost?
    My arms are sore. Sweat pearls on my forehead. My coif is losing its fure . Smelly, wet hair drips around my headband in humiliating strings.
    â€œJust eight more,” exhorts Brunhilda-the-Brawny.
    Defiantly, I pause to sip water.
    â€œJust seven more,” she cajoles in that cheerful-earful voice, effortlessly pumping her own ten pound weights. “Seven. That’s it. Six. Come on, five …”
    Whenever I skip a work-out, I feel that old childhood remorse about missing Sunday Mass. And when I keep my new exercise schedule, I imagine the Sacrament of Penance erasing sins of sloth and gluttony. Sick, I know this is sick, the transfer of Catholic schoolgirl guilt into menopausal health guilt. But first I’ll deal with the body, then I’ll tackle the bad attitude.
    Marta, the Otter, and her mother Rosa are laughing in the locker-room when I return, exhausted from class. Luckily, it’s never hard to hold up my end of the conversation with Marta, who eagerly keeps me apprised of her progress on the Otter Swim Team.
    This nimble six year old has the taut, androgynous shape of an archer’s bow and—while she casually surveys the older bodies as if she’s shopping for a puberty outfit—Marta tells me that having mastered the crawl, she will learn to dive this week.
    Quiet, self-contained Rosa is her daughter’s mirror image. Lean and dark as Marta, but virtually silent each afternoon as she helps Marta into her striped yellow suit and purple cap. At the moment, Rosa has retreated to the corner studying a computer science text.
    â€œMama is going to be a business executive,” Marta tells me.
    Rosa rolls her wise, twenty-five year old eyes. “Graduation. An office job maybe.”
    Since June, I’ve discovered much about Marta and a little about her mother, such as although Rosa grew up in Cuba, she never learned to swim. Now, every day, she wilts in the chlorinated steam on the bleachers, peering as her daughter bobs in the big pool. I cannot imagine how, as a single mother, Rosa manages to work as a janitor, attend junior college and escort Marta to the gym, but I get the impression that Rosa and Marta believe swimming is as important as eating.
    In early August, I begin a Circuit Class, which my brother warns, is only for serious exercisers. I understand why, within five minutes, when we commence a gruesome rota of one minute ordeals: push-ups, weighted butterfly lifts, star jumps, bicep curls, step straddles, tricep hinges. Our respite after seven of these in-place