Jim stops typing
and looks up, startled,
as though he’s wondering
why I’m still standing around.
“Another question I can help with, kiddo?”
“I was trying—wanted to say—I wish—you—I
hope that decision thing doesn’t get you down.”
I flee
as fast as my new leg will let me.
SYMMETRY
“Today, you’ll be moving your hands
instead of keeping them at your waist,” Govinda says.
The class twitters with excitement.
Govinda beckons to me.
“Please come up front?
I need your help.”
He stands so close behind,
I can almost feel his long fingers
touching my back.
“Watch how Veda holds her head and her neck
so it lengthens her spine.
I want you to stand just the way she does.
Imagine a line passing from the center of your head,
through your navel, down to your feet.
Every movement should begin along this line and return to it.
Hold your arms as evenly as Veda.
See the perfect symmetry
with which her right hand mirrors her left?”
The lilting notes of a bamboo flute
play a melody in my mind.
The remaining class time
flies.
A TIME
to
SPEAK
First day of school after the summer holidays,
I pretend Govinda’s standing behind me
speaking about my perfect stance
as Chandra and I walk toward school.
Inside the building, we part ways for the first time.
She hurries off to join
the science-math-computer-engineering classes.
I walk toward the history-literature-language section
that’s dominated by girls and boys who haven’t got good grades
or much ambition.
In my new classroom, I see Mekha and Meghna.
The twins’ long-ago insults ring in my ears.
Should we start calling cricket stumps something else
because she has a stump?
“Look who’s here!” Mekha calls out. “Veda!
Hey, Veda, does my hair look limp today?”
Meghna sniggers.
I think of the little kids in my dance class
who didn’t know any better
laughing the first time they saw me fall.
Mekha and Meghna aren’t innocent.
They’re nasty girls
who should know better.
The rest of the class is quiet—
waiting to see what I’ll do.