Drenched in Light (10 page)

If one more person asked me that one more time, I was going to explode. Everyone acted like I was made of glass lately. “Everything’s fine. Bett, I’m so sorry I forgot to call you. I tried earlier this morning and got your voice mail. I meant to call again, but it’s been crazy at work today.”

“Really? What happened?” As usual, Bethany was happy to let the conversation focus on me. If there was a selfish, jealous, or unkind bone in Bett’s body, I hadn’t found it yet. She was going to be a terrific mother. Jason was getting a wonderful wife.

“Long story. I’ll tell you all about it this weekend.” Buckling my seat belt, I coasted out of the parking lot. “So, let’s talk about you, and the wedding, and the baby. How in the world can you get married, move away, have a baby, and leave me here with Mom and Dad? I’m sorry, but you’re not allowed. You’ll have to tell Jason no.”

Bett sniffed. “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. . . .”

“Bethany”—I chuckled—“I was just kidding. I’m happy for you. I really am.”

She choked and coughed on the other end of the phone, then sobbed out, “I know.” The word ended in a trembling gurgle. “But it wasn’t supposed to happen this way. We were going to have a big wedding next summer, and . . .” She sniffed and coughed again. “But the baby, and Jason’s job transfer . . . with the economy the way it is, he doesn’t dare say no, and th-then . . .” The torrent of words faded into tears.

“Beth-a-
nee
,” I scolded. “I know this isn’t what you planned, but it’s OK. You and Jason are going to be fantastic parents. Did Mom say something that upset you?”

“N-no-oh-oh,” she sobbed out. “I can tell she and Dad are disappointed in us, but she just . . . she just . . . said it’s not such a big deal like it used to be . . . the baby, I mean . . . that it’s different.”

Different from when she was pregnant with me.
The thought stabbed unexpectedly. I pictured my mother in Bethany’s position. Did she cry when she learned that I was coming?

Weaving through the downtown streets, I pushed the images from my mind. “Bett, it’s all right,” I soothed. “This is a good thing. Jason is a great guy. You two are wonderful together. He lights up whenever you come into a room. You both knew you wanted kids—maybe not right now, but you knew you wanted them. You two are going to have a perfect life.” Doubtless, no such promises were made to my mother when she was pregnant with me. Whoever my real father was, he was gone by the time I came into the world—Grandma Rice had let that slip, as well. My mother was living with her and Grandpa when I was born. Theirs was the house she brought me home to. In the photos, she was neither smiling nor frowning. She just looked worried.

Within a year, she had met and married my dad, and his name officially became mine.

Bett’s voice snapped me back to the present. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I think I’m just hormonal.”

“Well, OK, you’re allowed to be hormonal.” I won a stuffy-nosed laugh from my sister as I pulled into the parking lot of Simmons-Haley Elementary. “And, if it’s absolutely necessary, you’re even allowed to get married and move hundreds of miles away. I’ll forgive you, I promise.”

Bett forced another strangled chuckle, then fell silent, drawing a long, shuddering breath. “I just wanted to be here for you, you know? Sisters are supposed to be there.”

Tears prickled in my nose, and my insides twisted as if someone were wringing me out like an old rag.
Sisters are supposed to be there. . . .
How was I ever
there
for Bett when I was sneaking around, purging food, letting her think that I could magically stay wafer-thin while binging with her on Girl Scout Cookies, Häagen-Dazs, movie-theater popcorn, and deep-fried restaurant appetizers? All her life, Bett had worried about her weight, and the comparison to me didn’t help. If I were her, I would have felt betrayed and angry when the truth came out. Instead, Bett felt guilty for having a life of her own.

Swallowing hard, I drained the tears from my throat. “Now, you listen here, Bethany Costell, you are not allowed to waste one minute worrying, do you hear me? We’re always going to be there for each other.”
But you’ll be hundreds of miles away.
“We’ll call; we’ll instant message. You’ll e-mail me sonograms. We’ll trade pictures from decorating magazines, and I’ll send you articles about how to have the perfect baby, the perfect marriage—” Pressing the tremors from my lips, I swallowed another rush of painful emotions, and added, “But don’t count on me for recipes, because you know I can’t cook.”

The irony of that statement was clear as soon as I said it. Bethany didn’t answer at first, and when she did, her voice was low and serious. “I just want you to be OK. I need you to be OK.”

“I am.” No matter what it took, I was going to be the sister Bett deserved—this time. “Really.” Dabbing my eyes, I looked toward the school door, where a Jumpkids banner was waving in the wind. “Listen, Bett, I’d better go. I promised one of my students I’d stop by this after-school arts program on my way home. I already told Dad I couldn’t do dinner tonight, but we’ll get together this weekend, all right? Dad wasn’t happy that I won’t be reporting home immediately after work today, and Mom will probably hit the roof, so I’m going to leave the cell phone in the car. Call me in the morning if you want to canvass the bridal shops and stuff, OK?” The invitation came out sounding genuine enough, but the thought made me feel like I couldn’t breathe. How was I going to put on a happy face while my sister moved on in life and left me behind?

“I’ll take care of Mom and Dad.” As usual, Bethany was resigned to acting as the family peacemaker. “Don’t worry about it; just enjoy your evening. We’ll see about the bridal shopping. Mom wants this big to-do at the country club, and, really, if it were up to me, we’d just go to the courthouse and get it over with.”

“Bethany,” I snapped, because I knew better. My little sister had been dreaming of herself as a bride for as long as I could remember. “You’re not getting married at the courthouse. You deserve the whole fairy tale—like one of those Malibu Barbie weddings you used to stage in the dollhouse, remember? It’s not like Mom and Dad can’t afford it. Mom’s been waiting for years to plan a wedding.”

“I guess,” she acquiesced reluctantly. “There’s just so much going on right now. . . .” The sentence trailed off in a way that was filled with issues unspoken. The
“
so much going on” was about me—my problems, my eating disorder, my brush with death last October. Bethany didn’t want to have a wedding because she was afraid I couldn’t handle it—that her joy would somehow cast a deeper shadow over my pathetic life.

“Not for the next few weeks, there’s not. There’s nothing else going on. It’s the Bethany-Jason wedding month, and that’s it.” My level of enthusiasm was almost convincing, but undoubtedly Bett knew I was putting on a show for her benefit. “Gotta go now, sis. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“All right.” She hung on the line for a moment. “Hey, call me tonight and tell me how the after-school arts thing was. Sounds intriguing.”

“I’ll see what time I get done.” Bett wasn’t the least bit interested in after school arts. She was just worried, like everyone else, that I couldn’t be trusted to spend an evening on my own, unsupervised. “Talk to you later. Love you.”

“You too. Night, Ju-ju.”

I groaned. “Ackh. Don’t call me that anymore. That’s the dog’s name now.”

“Night, Ju-lia,” she rephrased, and we hung up the phone laughing at our own private joke. Mom had named her precious Pekingese in honor of Bethany’s childhood pet name for me.

“Night,” I said, then set the phone down and got out of the car. The cool air was bracing, and I drew it in, clearing my mind as I entered the school through a door where the Jumpkids banner was posted. The hum of children’s voices drifted from somewhere near the center of the building, guiding me down a long corridor of classrooms framed with plain cement-block walls and low ceilings. Paint was chipping on the walls, and the overhead tiles were bowed and stained with odd-shaped patterns of dirt and mildew. On a rainy day, water probably dripped through in places.

The classrooms were equally spartan—rows of desks with sagging tabletops and graffiti scratched into the wood. No cheerful bulletin boards, just a few posters here and there. In one room, a collage of children’s pictures provided a splash of color beneath a hand-lettered banner that said,
In My World . . .
With crayon on manila paper, the kids had drawn places that were bright and beautiful, people who were happy, smiling, holding hands.

I stood in the doorway until I’d read them all—dozens of visions of a perfect Crayola world. When I was finished, I couldn’t wait to meet the children who had created the images.

I found the Jumpkids in the cafeteria finishing up a snack of cheese crackers and juice, then heading across the hall to the gymnasium, where what sounded like yoga music was playing. Standing in the hallway, I looked into one room and then the other, finally choosing the cafeteria, where an attractive forty-something woman with shoulder-length brown hair was directing kids as they cleaned up paper plates and cups. She didn’t notice me by the door, but continued helping youngsters pack their leftovers into brown paper bags with names on them. As the kids passed by the door, they set their bags on a table. Studying me inquisitively, a few of them placed their bags on the corner farthest from me, like they thought I might eat their leftover crackers. A Hispanic girl with bouncing pigtails, perhaps six or seven years old, deposited her sack next to me, smiled with eight teeth missing in front, and gave me a bear hug. I supposed I looked like I needed it.

“Ooof,” I grunted as the air rushed from my lungs. “Thanks.”

Still smiling, she let go and skipped out the door, motioning for me to follow. Since the woman in the cafeteria was busy, I crossed the hall to the gymnasium. Inside, the gym floor was covered with kids sitting on old towels, carefully imitating the yoga movements of a middle-aged African-American woman with her hair pulled back in a headband of folk-art tapestry. Her eyes were closed as she slid through the yoga positions with catlike grace, seeming oblivious to the sea of small bodies around her and the rustle of new kids coming in. The latecomers entered with amazing reverence, quietly slipping off their shoes at the door, picking up their towels with determined, sober faces, and moving to empty places. There was no jostling, no giggling, no talking, just the quiet whisper of breath and motion.

My mind raced back to the rehearsal room, in the moments before a performance, when everyone was silent, stretching, each of us in our own quiet sanctuary, already living the magic of stepping onstage to dance. My lungs constricted with the yearning I had struggled so hard to banish. In spite of everything that had happened to make it come crashing down, I missed my old life in a way that ached in every fiber of my body.

You should go,
I thought,
before anyone sees you here.
There was a reason I avoided the Harrington dance classes, the performance hall, the practice studios each day as I went about my job. They were too stark a reminder of the past. Even the innocuous sounds of
Giselle
or
Scheherazade
in the hallways, or a dance teacher counting meter—
“and one, and two, and three, and four”
—was more than I could bear. The swish of pointe shoes, the rustle of costumes, the elastic snap of a dancer adjusting a leotard, filled me with remembered sensations.

I turned toward the door, but Dell was there. I realized I was standing in first position with my arms in rounded
devant
—a function of old habits and muscle memory.
“Once a dancer, always a dancer,”
my childhood madame used to say.

“Hey,” Dell whispered, smiling and waving as she grabbed a towel and jogged toward me.

“Hey,” I replied softly, sensing that she had been wondering if I would come. By making an appearance here, I had passed some sort of reliability test. “This is really something.” I waved toward the children, perhaps fifty or sixty in all. “I can’t believe the kids are so quiet.”

“Mrs. Mindia
makes
everyone be quiet.” Holding her towel beside her mouth as a shield, Dell motioned to the front of the room, and I noticed that the yoga instructor was watching us through one disapproving eye. “If you’re not quiet, you don’t get to dance.”

Oh,
I mouthed.

Dell shrugged toward the door. “Come meet Karen.” Turning, she started toward the hallway, crossing the floor in her soft, pink ballet shoes. She moved like a dancer—confident, graceful, in command. She didn’t look like the same kid I’d seen slinking down the hallways at Harrington, trying to achieve invisibility. This girl, with her dark hair twisted neatly back in a clip, her chin up and her shoulders square, her eyes bright and lively, was a different person entirely.

I was interested in getting to know her.