Dancing on the Edge (20 page)

Aunt Casey waved her hand. “Oh, we never told Miracle. We didn't tell her anything. Did we, Miracle? Tell him. You never knew a thing. It was just a suspicion anyway. We could never know for sure. We made a pact, we'd never tell. Gigi said for us to make her death a good thing and it was, we have Miracle.” Aunt Casey glanced at me. “Gigi chose her name—Miracle. That's why she talked about Miracle's birth so much. She wanted to make it grand, glorious, a miracle. And it was, wasn't it? It wasn't a lie. That wasn't a lie.”

Dr. DeAngelis shook his head. “It's a funny thing about children. The very thing adults try so hard to keep secret is the very thing they'll act out.”

“M
IRACLE
, what do you think? How do you feel about what you're hearing?”

Dr. DeAngelis was watching me, wanting a reaction.

I wouldn't react to made-up stories. They were acting, putting on a show, just like in the TV room. I didn't know this woman they were talking about.

“Miracle, eye contact, please.”

I wouldn't look at lies. I held my head down, tore at a fingernail.

“I'm sorry, Miracle,” Aunt Casey said, sitting on the edge of her seat and leaning forward, trying to place herself in my view. “We didn't want you to get the wrong idea. We . . .”

“Stop talking about it!” I twisted away and covered my ears.

“You don't like what you're hearing,” Dr. DeAngelis said.

“No! It's lies. Gigi could tell you. You're making everything up!”

“All right, Miracle. You may be right, but what if this were a story you read in a book and there was a young lady such as yourself, fourteen years old and . . .”

“I'm thirteen.” I turned around to face him and brought my hands down from my ears.

Aunt Casey said, “You turned fourteen while you were in the hospital, Miracle. It's almost May now.

She was confusing me. They both were. Telling me lies and making up birthdays.

“Let's get back to the story, Miracle. An adolescent girl discovers her mother dashed in front of an ambulance while she was pregnant with her. What do you think that discovery would mean to that girl? What would it say to her? How would she feel?”

“Nothing! It's nothing. I don't have a mother. I'm nobody, who are you?” I stood up and Dr. DeAngelis held up his hands.

“All right, Miracle. It's all right. We'll leave it for now.”

They gave me more pills to take at the nurses' station, to calm me down. They waited, watching me while I took them. They made me open my mouth and show them that they were gone. I didn't want to sleep. I didn't want to go to my room with all its shadows. I wanted to be in the sun, sit in bright light. The lighting was poor in the yellow unit. It was dull lighting, dull and somber. I think they used it to keep us all in a stupor. I sat in group that evening, staring through the gloomy haze, watching Leah sliding her bandage back and forth on her wrist and a boy named Rodger tilting his head from side to side, side to side, and all the voices were so far away. Mike's voice couldn't carry through the gloom. I saw him looking at me. He must have asked me a question. Everyone was looking at me. I couldn't hear them, almost couldn't see them. I needed to get nearer the light. There were too many shadows—too much danger. I stood up on the sofa and tried to climb on its back, but Kyla pulled me down. Then Joe came out of the nurses' station and they took me to my room. They moved strangely, in slow motion, and they opened and closed their mouths but no sound came out. It was like watching Aunt Casey and Uncle Toole through the window, their mouths both going at once and I couldn't hear what they were saying.

Kyla stood watch in the doorway. I sat on my bed, huddled up close to the window, my face pressed into the metal cage they had across it. I searched for the sun. The shadows were behind me. I stayed with my face pressed to the window all during group and during the dinner hour and game time. I stayed there as long as there was light. The light calmed me. I could hear sounds behind me. I heard Kyla leave. I heard Leah arguing with Joe about how many points she had. I heard Rodger teaching Deborah how to play Ping-Pong, and I could tell by the singsong tone of Deborah's voice that she was more interested in Rodger than in Ping-Pong.

Deborah came in at bedtime, five minutes till lights-out. She picked my schoolbooks up off the floor and dumped them on my bed. One of them hit me and I turned around.

“You're losing us points in here. Keep it neat.”

Deborah looked angry. Her pretty blue eyes were dark; they looked almost black, evil.

I grabbed the books up in my arms and left the room. Marla, the night nurse, was on duty. She scooted out from behind her glass windows, pointing her finger at me.

“No you don't. It's time for lights-out.”

“I can't sleep tonight.”

The nurse turned back toward her office. “Let's see what meds you're on.”

“No. No. I won't sleep. I need to be in the light. Please let me stay out here. I'll be good—I'll behave.” I stepped over the red tape into the center of the dayroom. “I won't step over the red tape. I'll, I'll read.” I held up my books. “See, I have this book here, these poems.”

Marla went into her office and picked up the phone. I watched her through the glass, her mouth moving, no sound. I saw her nodding. Then she put down the receiver and came back out to me.

“Okay, fine. Any trouble though . . .”

I sat down in the big cushioned plastic chair that squeaked and groaned every time I moved. The cushion made my legs sweat. There was a lamp glued to the table beside it with a tiny metal cage around the lightbulb. They put cages around and over anything glass on the yellow unit. I switched on the lamp and leaned forward into its light. Marla watched me. She waited until I opened my book and started reading. Then she lifted her bell and shook it, calling “Lights-out!” She went around to all the rooms for the first check of the night, boys to the left of the dayroom and girls to the right, and then returned to her office, setting the bell down with one last clink.

I read my poems. Page after page of beautiful words and thoughts and truths—
the truest, realest things I know
.

I read

 

To die—without the Dying

And live—without the Life

This is the hardest Miracle

Propounded to Belief
.

 

Emily Dickinson was speaking to me, using my name, speaking my life. I felt safe in her words, far from the shadows and the things hidden there. Her words brought me to a memory, Grandaddy Opal's basement. I was dancing to beautiful music. I remembered Miss Emmaline singing. Her beautiful voice singing such words, words I wanted for myself, and so I danced. That was real. I could feel it—inside, and I decided that night, reading poetry beneath a caged lightbulb, that real was when you could feel your whole body light up from within. When it didn't matter about day or night, dark or light, because you could carry the light with you, in the dancing, in the music, in the poetry.

I closed my eyes and the light was still there, the light from Emily Dickinson's words.

I was in my own bed when I opened them again. It was morning and Kyla was slapping her sandaled feet past the doors, ringing the wake-up bell. I lifted my head and squinted at the light shining through the window. I reached down and felt my legs the way I did every morning, reaching under the bandages and feeling the scars. Real scars—hot, swollen scars. Another memory flashed through my mind. I was dancing again. It was wild dancing. I was everywhere, diving for the floor, racing for the walls, spinning, leaping, crashing. And every crash, every dive, left a mark. I could feel it, and the next day, I could see it. They called them black-and-blue, but they were every shade, purple and red and greenish blue and then yellow and brown—all the colors. I rolled over and hung my head over the edge of the bed. My books were stacked on the floor with the poetry book on top. I reached out and placed my hand on the book and thought maybe someday I wouldn't need the bruises or the scars anymore. Maybe someday it would be all right for the scars to go away.

I
DIDN'T SEE
Dr. DeAngelis that day. I went back to the surgery part of the hospital to have my legs examined by my doctor. He told me I was through with the dressings but to continue smearing silver sulfadiazine on them—the goop. I wore shorts for the first time since my stay in the hospital. Everyone crowded around me in group, wanting to see, asking me if my legs hurt. Leah called me lumpy-legs, and I told her to hush her mouth. Everybody except the counselors clapped. Leah was angry because they didn't take away any points from me for speaking out of turn. She said they were playing favorites, and when group was over she whispered to me, “I'll get you. Just don't turn your back.”

Aunt Casey was already in the room when Kyla brought me down the hall to see Dr. DeAngelis the next day. She had a wad of tissues in her hands and was sitting in the chair closest to Dr. DeAngelis's desk.

Dr. DeAngelis stood up when I entered his room and told me to take a seat. He was wearing the same thing he had worn the first time I saw him—shirt, tie, jeans, and running shoes. His sleeves were rolled up this time, though, and he'd already loosened his tie some. I guessed it had something to do with his conversation with Aunt Casey.

I chose a different chair. I chose the plastic cushioned one, like the one in our dayroom only this one was black and looked new, no cracked plastic taking jabs at your sweaty legs.

“Well, Miracle, I hear you're doing better in group.” Dr. DeAngelis sat back in his chair and rolled himself out between Aunt Casey and me, making sure he wasn't blocking our view of each other.

I didn't have anything to say to his comment so I studied his poster again: T
HE
M
IND
S
ET
F
REE
.

Aunt Casey blew her nose and sniffed.

Dr. DeAngelis reached back for a pen and his notepad and then smiled at me. He had big teeth. “I thought today, Miracle, we'd play the game ‘I Recall.' It's quite easy. What I want you to do is think back to a memory you have, any memory, tell us a little bit about it, and then your aunt will bring up a memory of her own, triggered by yours. You understand? Then it will be your turn again, and your response will be based on something your aunt has said.”

He looked at the both of us, first me, then Aunt Casey, then me again. “Any questions?”

“Can I pass?” I asked.

Dr. DeAngelis laughed. “No, I'm afraid not.” He flipped in his notepad to a clean page and said, “Now, why don't we start?”

I tried to think of something that would stump Aunt Casey, block her so she wouldn't bring up anything I didn't want to hear.

“Well—I remember being the love magician in school. I made up love potions and cast spells on the boys. All the girls wanted me to do a spell for them.”

Aunt Casey cocked her head. “Miracle! When?”

Dr. DeAngelis held up his hand. “No. No questions. Not now.”

“Right.” Aunt Casey closed her eyes a second, then opened them and said, “I remember being in love with Toole Dawsey. We had this dream that I was going to be a beautician and get so popular and rich we'd move to Hollywood and I'd be the hairdresser to the stars. He wanted to be an actor, like Sylvester Stallone.” She looked at Dr. DeAngelis. “We were real young then.”

He nodded and turned to me.

“Uh—I remember Uncle Toole hanging me upside down by my ankles every time he came to see me. I didn't like it. He scared me. He's so—so bulky, and he's got this scar.” I reached down and felt my own scars.

Aunt Casey smiled. “Yeah, I remember that.” She caught Dr. DeAngelis's eye. “Oh, my turn. I remember—I remember Toole lighting firecrackers in the back of our house. It wasn't even the Fourth of July, but he loved explosives. Anything with noise. I remember one exploding and almost taking his head off. He's got thirty-two stitches in his forehead.”

They had this game planned. They were trying to lead me to my legs. Dr. DeAngelis wanted me to say what happened, only I didn't know what happened. I tried to steer the game away from scars.

“I remember getting banged up in dance. I love to dance. Dancing is real. When I dance, everything I feel comes out. I used to dance all day long at—at Grandaddy Opal's. I'd dance on the furniture and his
National Geographic
s. I used to imagine—I used to imagine that someday I'd be able to step out of all my purple and dance and everyone would see me, they'd understand. I thought if they could just watch me dance they'd know all my feelings. I wouldn't have to say anything. If they could have just watched me. Nobody ever watched me.”

Aunt Casey and Dr. DeAngelis exchanged a look. I didn't know what it meant. Aunt Casey sat up in her chair and took a deep breath.

I clutched the edge of my chair and wondered how she was going to bring what I said back to scars. If she did, I was going to call cheating.

“I—I remember the first time Sissy, your mama, saw dance. A dance company came to the school, some ballet company. When she got home—she was maybe seven—she couldn't stop talking about it. She said she was going to be a ballerina when she grew up. My parents thought she'd forget about it after a few days, but she didn't. She started dancing all over the house—stupid stuff, you know, little kid stuff. Finally my parents signed her up for lessons and she did it, she became a ballerina.”

I didn't say anything at first. My hands were gripping the sides of my chair so hard they were starting to cramp. Then I spoke, cautiously, as though I were testing the temperature of the bathwater with my toe. “I remember—we had recitals every year when I took dance lessons, but—I was never in them because they were late at night and nobody was supposed to know about the lessons. Anyway—anyway, no one would have come so . . .”