An unusual assortment of odd women sheds and dons garments at the back wall of the large, mirrored space. They remove shoes and coats and shirts; they put on ballet slippers and flexible sandals, tie noisy scarves around their waists, slip on sheer skirts. They are tall women, fat women; they are Asian and black and WASP and Jewish; they are young women the shape of toothpicks, disguised with tattoos; they are gray-haired ladies and middle-aged vegetarians. A fifty-something woman with mismatched earrings enters. When she passes, Sylvia and Kathy can't help but notice her backpack. It is oblong and pink, has a zipper up the middle, and is surrounded by black fur; it cannot be mistaken for anything but what it is: a vagina backpack. Kathy pokes Sylvia, and they turn away before they are caught staring.

The regulars know each other but are friendly to the newcomers. Many have been taking this beginning belly dancing class for more than a year. "It's hard," they say; "You could be a beginner forever," "Good for your hips; the tissues knit together when you get old," they say. "It's not about entertaining men," says the one with the vagina backpack. "It's about empowering yourself as a woman."

Sylvia can already see that. What else would make a 200-pound woman want to shimmy and shake in front of mirrors, much less other people? Kathy is excited, can't wait to get started. The room is full of women who have suddenly become exotic, despite a half-assed wardrobe and folds of flesh and bony elbows visible from all angles. The music begins—just a tonal drum, rhythm instruments. It's loud, though, too loud for the room, and the instructor is a wisp of a thing until she speaks, in a booming voice, like a drill sergeant. "Up on your toes. Flex that arch." The women are fluid. "Straighten your ankle," she barks at someone. "You, straighten your ankle." Sylvia looks down; Jasmine, the instructor, is speaking to her. After an audible gasp of recognition, she straightens her ankle. Jasmine corrects another dancer. It takes Sylvia a few minutes to warm up to the warm-up, to isolate this part and that, to feel a little less like the mechanical arm of an arcade game. After about thirty minutes of bending knees and jerking hips, pointing toes, shimmying torsos, of moving up and down while keeping the head perfectly level, the women are sent to retrieve their tambourines. Tambourines? Those who are new or who don't yet have one are sent to the front of the room to choose among the stack of wicker paper-plate holders, many of which have unraveled from a succession of aggressive hips and forearms and elbows. The lady with the vagina backpack singles Sylvia out. "Here. I have an extra," she says, extending a tambourine tied with pink and purple leather streamers.

"Oh, that's OK," Sylvia says. "I'm new."

"It's much more fun when you can make noise," the woman insists, smiling, her arm still extended.

Sylvia looks at Kathy, who is eyeing the instrument jealously. She'd have gladly taken the tambourine, and Sylvia feels a little guilty; after all, she wouldn't have come if her best friend hadn't twisted her arm. Of course, she can't trade for Kathy's wilted wicker now. It would be a slap in the face to Vagina Backpack. She supposes after class she will get the woman's name, even if she has no intention of returning. Vagina Backpack is not an attractive moniker; it's more like a feminist nom de guerre.

Jasmine claps to get everyone's attention and then apologizes. She has left the choreography on her copy machine; consequently, she has forgotten the beginning moves. "I've got two versions here, and I'll let you choose which one we'll use in the performance in two weeks." She moves through both of them quickly, but gracefully; Sylvia's and Kathy's mouths fall open. Performance? They can barely keep up with the isolation exercises.

The class votes for the first version, and Jasmine puts on a different piece of music. The dancers follow her through the beginning of the routine, the only ripple in this unison movement coming from Sylvia and Kathy. They try to follow along, but they stick out like an ugly bini. "Who's new?" Jasmine asks. "Both of you, right?" They nod. "OK," she says, visibly relieved. "You can follow along and learn, but you probably won't be able to do the show."

All the women in the room relax, especially Sylvia. She can't talk to a group of people without a pill; it's not likely that she'll be dancing half-naked for them. It's a frustrating 45 minutes, but they plod through it. Sylvia picks up far more than she expects. The dancer on her left, a blonde about her age with a nice figure, raises her eyebrows in surprised approval of Sylvia's moves. When at last it's over, the women drink water and return the plates or set their tambourines down. Well below the din of chatting, Sylvia tells Kathy she is dying to know what's in the backpack.

"I'll bet there's a stuffed clitoris inside," Kathy says, "Right when you unzip it, it jumps out like, like a Jack in the Box."

Sylvia thinks it's a bunch of penises from the men she's emasculated in her lifetime. Kathy suggests tampons, but the woman is surely postmenopausal. What if there's a tuna sandwich in there, Sylvia wonders? Kathy likes the clit best. They walk back to return the tambourine, and they are in luck; Vagina Backpack takes the thing off the wall hook and opens it right in front of them. They try not to gape but can't help their eagerness.

"Thank you so much," Sylvia says.

"Was I right?"

"About the fun? Oh, it was great fun to make noise."

"No, I meant about the empowerment. Did you feel it? It's very sexy. You know, belly dancing is by women for women."

Sylvia and Kathy look at each other. "I didn't know that," said Sylvia. "But thank you again."

"You're welcome. I'll see you next time," she said, confident they'd return after the holidays. "Oh, I'm Margaret," she says, extending her hand. She is a three-syllable Margaret.

Kathy and Sylvia shake her hand, return the firm grip. "You look like a Sylvia," she says.

Kathy holds the door and opens her mouth to speak.

"Don't say it."

"You know it's true," Kathy says. "She's hot for you. I think she wanted to put you in that vagina backpack."

"You're just jealous," Sylvia replied. "I got a tambourine."

As the two drive home, Sylvia thinks about her new friend. "Mar-gar-et," she says to herself. "Mar-gar-et are you grieving," she thinks, "over Goldengrove unleaving."

A week later, Sylvia has her teeth cleaned. While she is in the chair, she thinks about what she'd like to eat but is torn between the desire to keep her teeth as fresh and clean as they feel and tearing into a hunk of New York Strip. The steak wins out, and so she finds herself at the Giant, the grocery store that anchors the medical office building; she's scrutinizing the meat, when she hears her name. It's not a voice she recognizes, nor does the voice quite recognize Sylvia.

"I thought that was you! How have you been?'

Sylvia squints in the direction of the voice until she realizes it is Margaret. "Oh, hi! I didn't recognize you with—"

"I know—with all my clothes on," she says, winking. "I get that all the time. I sometimes do nude modeling at the Institute before the holidays for extra cash."

Margaret is not a bad looking woman for fifty-something. Her long grey hair is wild, her green eyes round and bright. Beneath loose, flowing clothing-costume, she wants to call the patchwork of colors and patterns-she has an attractive, fit figure. Still, Sylvia has no desire to see her nude. It's hard to look at Margaret without thinking of the vagina backpack.

Margaret wants to know whether she will be returning to belly dancing, and Sylvia, who admits she had joined the class at an odd time, says she plans to return after the new year, after the performance, though she's not sure belly dancing is for her.

Margaret apologizes. The group had been practicing its choreographed tambourine routine for several weeks. "It would be terribly hard for a newbie to catch up, so don't let it scare you away!" she says. "January tenth is the start of the next beginner's class, so come back. You're a natural!"

"You'll still be in beginners?"

"I've been in that group for two years." Belly dancing is hard to master, she explains. Three others have been in that group for even longer, though many go on to the intermediate classes. "At my age," she says, "I'm not concerned with becoming a professional. I just want to have fun!"

Margaret's hand basket is full of the usual suspects: tofu, yogurt, Kashi, soymilk, and Entenmann's chocolate-covered donuts. The handles of a green mesh market bag poke out from her armpit.

"Don't you just love these?" she says of the donuts. "I sit them on the counter with the box open so they get a little stale; the chocolate gets a crunch that is to die for."

Sylvia agrees. She and Kathy used to buy them during their college years, let them get hard, and top them with ice cream. Her mouth is watering, and if she doesn't get out of this store soon, she'll wind up with a box of those evil donuts herself.

She puts two T-bone steaks in the basket with broccoli and a bag of salad and follows her new friend to the checkout. Three aisles over, Margaret pays for her health food and waves goodbye. "See you at belly dancing," she shouts, loud enough for everyone in the five lanes to turn and look at Sylvia. She can feel her face reddening.

She picks up a peanut butter cup from the candy display and tosses it on the conveyor belt. Never mind her clean teeth. She needs chocolate.

Once her face cools, and she takes her turn in line, Sylvia wonders about her new friend—if she's married, whether she has children, whether she's gay. "Mar-gar-et, are you grieving?" she thinks. She remembers little of this Hopkins poem she was once forced to memorize. "It is the blight man was born for," she recalls. "It is Mar-gar-et you mourn for." This poem has new meaning for her these days, what with forty around the corner, two kids who seem to loathe each other, and a husband who doesn't surprise—and isn't surprised by—her. And now Margaret.

In the parking lot waits the answer to at least one of Sylvia's questions. Margaret passes in her Jetta, a rainbow window decal just above her Maryland Institute of Art parking sticker. The car stops and backs up. The passenger window comes down to reveal a twenty-something girl in the front seat. "This is my daughter, Portia," Margaret yells across the seat. "Do you want to join us for some coffee? Or do you have to be somewhere?"

Sylvia holds up her bag. "I've got to get home and start dinner—for the family," she adds, lest there be any confusion. The instant she says no, she is sorry. Margaret is still smiling. "Another time, then!"

Ten years ago she'd have gone. She'd have relished the thought of making a new friend, especially one so seemingly delighted with life, whose baggage is, if nothing else, an interesting conversation piece.

Sylvia starts her car and heads home in the direction of the Evergreen Coffee House. If she spots a rainbow-stickered Jetta, she bargains with herself, she'll stop. It's still early, after all.