I caught a glance at the muscles in my legs. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t worked for them; I’d done fifty sprints up and down the gymnasium floor each day before dance-team practice. With all our push-ups, sit-ups and crunches, we were in better shape than the boys’ basketball team. Miss Martin insisted that there was more to dancing than just shaking our booties to music. Dancing was a sport, she’d explained, which meant that we had to stay in shape. It required exercise. She even encouraged us to maintain a healthy diet.“Stop eating all those greasy foods, like fried chicken and pork chops. Grab yourselves a turkey sandwich, and ask your mamas to buy you some yogurt to bring for lunch,” she’d smile and say. “And every now and then, you should consider a salad for dinner.”She must’ve forgotten who she was talking to. Fried chicken was a staple in most of our homes, and it was a crime if we didn’t have chocolate cake or sweet-potato pie for dessert. Miss Martin knew that.
