Authors: Padma Venkatraman
A Time to Dance (6 page)
Chandra visits wearing a wobbly smile,
with her wet-cheeked ma
and her pa, who clutches her ma's shoulder
for support.
I watch Chandra walk across the green tile floor,
her strong, muscular cricket-captain legs gliding toward my bed.
She takes no notice of where slopes and cracks
hinder a wheelchair ride.
Chandra says,
“Can't wait for you to get on the cricket field.”
I don't care about cricket.
All I want is to dance again.
She should know.
She tries, “The whole team's waiting for you to get back.”
âA polite lie I never expected
to hear from my best friend.
I hardly ever spoke to anyone on the team except Chandra.
She says, “I miss you in class, too.”
I say thanks.
Our conversation totters
close to the cliff of silence.
Keels over.
Chandra says, “See you
later.”
Not see you
soon.
I try to lift my eyes to meet hers.
But my gaze stays low
and follows her quick, sure steps
across the uneven floor.
After she leaves, though I shut my eyes,
I can't stop picturing
the ease
of her walk.
Uday anna
doesn't visit.
He's fine, Pa says, when I ask.
No one else was badly hurt.
Except the driver, who died.
After ten years of seeing Uday anna
every day after school,
I can't believe he doesn't miss me
enough to visit
once.
Tomorrow he'll come, I keep thinking.
Tomorrows come and go.
He sends a card:
“With wishes for a complete recovery.”
As if I could ever be
complete
with one leg half gone.
His absence shows
he thinks I'm too crippled to dance again.
I tear up his card.
I'll show Uday anna.
Sooner than he thinks,
I'll be back in his classroom,
back in competition,
back on my own feet.
Or rather,
back on my own
one
foot.
SHORTEN
I avoid looking at my chopped-off lump of leg uncovered.
When nurses change my dressing
I stare at the banyan tree outside.
But when I navigate in “my own special wheelchair”
ârigged with a pad to keep my leg elevatedâ
I can't not see
this broken bit of my body that I hate.
Chandra hates her flat chest.
Chandra's eldest sister hates her fat thighs.
I never found myself beautiful
until the day I won the dance competition
but I loved my strong body anyway.
Stuck in a wheelchair,
I'm waist-high to everyone else.
Or worse,
lower than even that.
Pa, Ma, and Paati are in the hospital room
when Jim strides in with a pair of crutches.
Jim says, “Got a feeling you weren't too keen
on wheelchairs. Or walkers.
Thought you might prefer to leave the hospital on these.”
“Yes!” I can't wait to stand dancer tall.
Move without rolling on wheels.
Jim's eyes sparkle at me. “We'll need to practice.
Especially going down stairs. Come.”
Pa says, “Won't crutches hurt her ribs?”
Jim reassures him it's okay.
Ma touches my shoulder, then draws back quickly,
as if she's scared I'll bite her hand off.
I don't like Ma acting so unsure of herself.
I almost prefer the old Ma, who'd argue with me.
Paati pats my cheek, like she used to when I was little
and I fell down and hurt myself.
Her firm touch tells me she expects
I'll get up without a fuss.
She leaves me no choice
except to get off the bed,
lean on my crutches, and try.
Bowing low as though I'm a princess,
although I must look as ungainly as a clown on stilts,
Jim says, ceremoniously, “I'll hold the door, ma'am,
while you walk through.”
My ribs jolt with pain and my shoulders feel raw
but I return his grin.
And
I go
forward.
My crutches carve wide circles in the air.
“Veda, can you lift and plant your crutch tips?
Please don't swing them.”
I plant crutch tips ahead, pull forward
with my body and
what remains of my legs.
As Jim guides me
on my new mode of travel, I get him to tell me
how he first came to India.
“On a trip to see the desert in Rajasthan, in the north,
with an ex-girlfriend.”
I'm glad to hear
the girlfriend is past tense.
He continues,
“Fell out of love with her
but stayed in love with this country.”
I wonder how many girlfriends he's had.
Don't ask.
“Beautiful place, Rajasthan,” he says.
“Pink palaces, hundreds of years old,
women wearing skirts with bits of mirrors sewn on,
camels burping in the middle of city traffic.”
He wrinkles his nose up as though he can smell them.
I smile.
He says he went to an Indian hospital
where they gave amputees free prostheses,
and that got him interested in making artificial limbs.
This project was a way for him
to travel to India again and use his expertise to help people.
He tells me he loves travel, loves new challenges,
loves people.
I've never met another older person
as friendly, as open, as carefree.
I refuse to rest until he forces me to turn back, saying,
“Let's not overdo it, kiddo.”
“I'm not a kid,” I rasp.
“Aye, aye, ma'am.” Jim salutes with one hand in his pocket.
I start to laugh
but my ribs remind me I still have healing to do.
Grinning despite my pain, I say, “That's better.”
After that, Jim mostly calls me ma'am.
And even when he says kiddo, I stop minding.
Because whether he says kiddo or ma'am in his teasing tone,
the corners of his eyes crinkle,
and I feel singled out and special.
Two of Pa's cousins
whom we rarely see
come all the way from Bangalore city, a half-day train ride away.
They say they're sorry about my accident,
then talk politely with Pa and Paati about other relatives.
Ma's family probably doesn't even know I'm hurt.
Paati told me they disowned Ma when she married Pa,
even though he was Brahmin
and they were a lower caste,
because he was a poor librarian
with no prospects of getting rich,
and they were wealthy.
Ma never
speaks about them.
Her diamond earrings are all we have to remind us
of them
and their riches.
Last
VISITOR
After Pa's cousins leave,
someone I expect even less appears:
my former rival, Kamini.
Holding a big bunch of red zinnias.
Why is she here?
To gloat over my crutches?
Hands shaking, she thrusts the zinnias in my face.
“For you,” she says, pointing out the obvious.
I'm so shocked I open and shut my mouth twice, fish-like,
then manage to mumble, “Thanks.”
“So- so- sorr-rry,” Kamini stammers.
What's Kamini scared of? She's the one with a sharp tongue.
My tongue's never been quick enough to answer back.
My foot won't outpace her feet anytime soon.
“Sorry,” she repeats, looking so uncomfortable
I start feeling more sorry for her than irritated.
“Kamini? Not your fault.”
Her face contorts as though she's being tortured.
She stumbles on her way out of the room,
leaving me wondering why she came.
“Your friend?” my roommate asks.
“Nice red zinnias she brought.”
“Not my friend.” I consider
tossing the flowers into the wastebasket
where I threw our dance teacher's torn-up card.
But Kamini actually visited,
which is more than Uday anna did.
As we're not exactly friends,
and seeing how she was shaking the entire time,
it must have been hard for her to come.
Kamini's flowers deserve better treatment
than our dance teacher's worthless card.
I put the red zinnias on the side table
between my roommate's bed and mine
so she can enjoy them.