A Lily in the Light(3)
“I don’t have an opinion on everything. Just some stuff, and Amelia doesn’t mind.” She turned away from her mother, wishing Cerise was more like the other moms, who signed their daughters up for more classes and made them practice before school or got passes to meet principal dancers at Lincoln Center so they could ask about career stuff. Those moms wanted their daughters to stand out and sharpened their edges like knives, ready to cut through all the hard parts of life, while her mother told her to be good. Don’t make trouble. Do as you’re told. Be patient.
Wind rustled the trees, which were turning from green to yellow and orange to red. She picked up an acorn and handed it to Lily. The cap was cracked, but Lily didn’t mind. She folded it into her palm and held it there.
“Be careful,” Esme whispered. “If your hand gets too hot, that thing might sprout a branch.”
Lily squeezed tighter, trying to make it sprout. Esme traced the scar on Lily’s hand from the time she’d burned it on the radiator. It was long healed, but it shouldn’t be there. Babies weren’t supposed to get hurt.
In the distance, train lights fell over the tracks like two white eyes staring out from the dark. The air was crisp, and the train was far enough away to be silent, but soon it would roar into the station, and Esme would lean against the wind it made.
Cerise huffed and pulled her coat tighter around her. The sewing basket hung at her side, the wicker faded and out of place on the concrete platform.
“Think Mom has Toto in that basket?” Esme whispered to Lily. Lily’s giggle was lost in the whirl of the train.
“I’ll say one more thing.” Cerise pushed wind-whipped hair away from her face. She sounded annoyed but didn’t seem to want to argue. “She could have picked any of those girls, but she picked you. Try not to push your luck. If you’re too difficult or she thinks you won’t want to do certain things, she’ll ask someone else. That’s not what you want.”
No, it wasn’t. Esme picked at her cuticle and pulled it away in one long line like a thread from a sweater. The skin underneath was a soft pink. She shifted from one foot to the other, easing weight off the new burning blister on her toe. Her finger and toe made her all the more aware that her body was constantly changing, growing and shifting. What worked for her today might not work tomorrow. Her mother was right, but when she thought of girls who’d been dismissed because a toe was too long or an arch was too flat or their boobs were too big, she figured opinions didn’t matter if something unchangeable could knock her out no matter how hard she worked or how much she wanted it. It was probably better not to want things too much just in case her place on Amelia’s wall never came.
But it would, Esme reminded herself, certain that if she pulled back the imaginary curtain between now and the future, she’d see herself on that wall. She felt as sure about it as she did about breathing.
“Will you show me the orange thing now?”
The doors slid open. Esme stepped inside and sat down, hugging her sister closer, thankful for the weight on her hip, a teddy bear she wasn’t embarrassed to carry around.
“Where is it?” Lily bounced in Esme’s lap, pulling herself closer to the window.
Her pink sequined shoes sparkled against the faded navy seat. Cerise was sketching on the back of an envelope, an intricate pattern of beads for a wedding dress. Esme didn’t have the heart to tell Lily they were on the wrong side of the train, that they wouldn’t see the orange thing today. It was only a washed-up construction cone, but it was shockingly orange against the marsh grass and the blue of the Little Neck Bay, making the eleven stops from Woodside to Port Washington just a little more interesting. Lily would like this, Esme had thought, and the mystery of the orange thing had begun.
“I want to see what it did today.” Lily’s foot grazed Esme’s thigh and left a dusty smudge.
“Keep looking,” Esme said, even though they wouldn’t see it.
Cerise looked up briefly from her drawing. “Congratulations, Esme,” she said. “I should have said so earlier, but don’t let it go to your head. You still have a long way to go.”
Esme nodded, watching the back of her sister’s red corduroy coat. She closed her eyes and pulled Lily into her lap, listening to the sound of her mother’s eraser and the conductor announcing Murray Hill, then Flushing, and waiting for the long stretch without stops that would bring them home. Next week, she’d lift onto pointe shoes for the first time. The weight would be crushing, but she imagined there was something weightless about it, too, like floating or flying. If it hurt, she could always invent something specially for her feet to make them hurt less like Anna Pavlova had done.
The Little Neck Bay had passed. It was only houses now, faded bricks with bars across the windows and awnings as colorful as M&M’S dotting empty streets.
“I guess it didn’t want to come out today,” she told Lily. “Maybe next time.”
“Maybe it went to the store,” Lily said, “for Oreo ice cream.”
“I think you’re right,” Esme said, imagining the construction cone walking to the supermarket. “Remind me when we get home that I owe you five cents.”
“OK.” Lily shuffled and settled into place with a heaviness that made Esme feel centered. They spent the rest of the ride in silence, the calm before home, the slow part of a symphony, just strings and maybe little bells, as the train swayed quietly beneath them.