Soap, shadows: certain things one cannot ask.
I danced with a girl who might have been pregnant today.
Her name was Melissa, she said, so quietly and with such an unfamiliar accent and looking so little the part that I thought I had misheard; she was a grade lower than me and a year older than me and her stomach curved grotesquely under her stained white shirt. She was Hispanic, I think. Cute eyes, pretty eyes: dark brown, round, with long curling eyelashes. A face that was maybe pretty too but wan, irregular; the nose witchy, knobbly, the mouth ill-formed, the lips too plump and shapeless and glistening and loose. Something strange about her jaw: almost a double chin, though she was not what you could call fat, despite the moon-full stomach. She sucked continually on a finger and wiped the saliva off on her thigh when she saw me looking. Her spit left a dark mark on the grey sweats she was wearing, per regulation.
I don't hate public school, in fact I rather love it, but sometimes I have to wonder why. It's like a sin in my mouth.
We were neither of us good at the dance; salsa, and I expected her to be good at it and was embarrassed when I realized why. She stood listlessly, rocking back and forth when the teacher counted off, while I muddled the steps and almost trod on her toes twice. When the music came on she offered her hands; smaller than mine, swollen maybe, bulbous. Warm and dry, the pressure in its way pleasant. We didn't follow the choreography; she led, and we moved in the general direction of our classmates, nothing more, nothing less. There was a kind of rhythm achieved, now and then; open rock step open rock step said the teacher, and we did.
I stared at her all dance long and I couldn't see anyone staring back. She said nothing, her expression didn't change, she stared back at me like a dog regarding a stranger (or maybe a stranger regarding a dog).
When the music finished and we sat down to watch the teacher demonstrate a second set, she reclined on her elbows, splay-legged, while I looked away, not having any idea what to say. Someone shouted: "You're hella pregnant, girl," and it didn't sound like English, and she laughed, and I closed my eyes.
(I feel like a horrible person now. It's rather a relief: all that unnecessary tact was making me tired.)
Her name was Melissa, she said, so quietly and with such an unfamiliar accent and looking so little the part that I thought I had misheard; she was a grade lower than me and a year older than me and her stomach curved grotesquely under her stained white shirt. She was Hispanic, I think. Cute eyes, pretty eyes: dark brown, round, with long curling eyelashes. A face that was maybe pretty too but wan, irregular; the nose witchy, knobbly, the mouth ill-formed, the lips too plump and shapeless and glistening and loose. Something strange about her jaw: almost a double chin, though she was not what you could call fat, despite the moon-full stomach. She sucked continually on a finger and wiped the saliva off on her thigh when she saw me looking. Her spit left a dark mark on the grey sweats she was wearing, per regulation.
I don't hate public school, in fact I rather love it, but sometimes I have to wonder why. It's like a sin in my mouth.
We were neither of us good at the dance; salsa, and I expected her to be good at it and was embarrassed when I realized why. She stood listlessly, rocking back and forth when the teacher counted off, while I muddled the steps and almost trod on her toes twice. When the music came on she offered her hands; smaller than mine, swollen maybe, bulbous. Warm and dry, the pressure in its way pleasant. We didn't follow the choreography; she led, and we moved in the general direction of our classmates, nothing more, nothing less. There was a kind of rhythm achieved, now and then; open rock step open rock step said the teacher, and we did.
I stared at her all dance long and I couldn't see anyone staring back. She said nothing, her expression didn't change, she stared back at me like a dog regarding a stranger (or maybe a stranger regarding a dog).
When the music finished and we sat down to watch the teacher demonstrate a second set, she reclined on her elbows, splay-legged, while I looked away, not having any idea what to say. Someone shouted: "You're hella pregnant, girl," and it didn't sound like English, and she laughed, and I closed my eyes.
(I feel like a horrible person now. It's rather a relief: all that unnecessary tact was making me tired.)