Dancing on the Edge

by Han Nolan

  Chapter 24

  DR. DEANGELIS had on running shorts and a Vulcan Marathon tee shirt when we saw him that afternoon. He smelled like his soap, or aftershave, so I guessed he hadn’t gone running yet. He apologized for his casual appearance and then added that he thought it was good for the patients to see that life does go on beyond the locked doors of The Cedars.

  He told us to sit anywhere and called Aunt Casey, Casey, instead of Mrs. Dawsey. Aunt Casey chose the sofa and I chose my usual chair.

  Aunt Casey said, “I wouldn’t mind it, Miracle, if you came and sat by me.”

  An “I” message. I was afraid to sit on a sofa when I couldn’t even tell what color it was—too dangerous.

  I stayed in my seat and Aunt Casey’s face turned pink. I looked down at my legs.

  “Miracle”—Dr. DeAngelis sat in his chair and rolled it to the center of the room—“your aunt spoke to you. She deserves a response. In here we respect one another, do you understand?”

  I made eye contact. “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  I glanced at Aunt Casey. “It’s not you,” I said, then looked down at my legs again.

  “Huh? I mean, excuse me, Miracle, I didn’t hear you right—ah, correctly—I don’t think.”

  “It’s not you,” I repeated. “I just don’t want to sit on the couch,” I said to the windows just beyond her head. Dr. DeAngelis couldn’t see where my eyes were.

  “You don’t like the couch,” he said.

  “No.”

  “Why is that?”

  “What color is it?”

  Dr. DeAngelis studied the sofa. “It’s a very dark green, almost black.”

  Aunt Casey examined the armrest. “No, I don’t think so, I think it’s a deep navy.”

  Dr. DeAngelis returned to me. “What color do you want it to be?”

  “A color I know.”

  “What does that mean? You don’t want fuchsia or magenta, you want blue or brown?”

  “I want one I know the meaning of, so I know what I’m sitting on.”

  “I don’t understand,” Dr. DeAngelis said.

  Aunt Casey leaned forward toward me.

  I said, “Red for fire or rage, purple for the highest spiritual contemplation, green for deceit and envy, yellow for the intellect.”

  “You’re sitting on a black chair. What’s black?”

  “Evil, darkness, death.”

  Dr. DeAngelis straightened in his seat and rotated his shoulders as if he were warming up for his run.

  “Where did you learn this—about colors?”

  “Gigi,” Aunt Casey and I said at the same time.

  “Yes, that’s right.” He nodded, remembering. “The purple. You’re wearing purple because . . . ?”

  “It’s the spiritual color.”

  “And you want spirituality? What does that mean? You want to be in touch with God or . . .”

  Aunt Casey laughed. “Gigi wouldn’t teach her that.”

  “Why do you wear purple? For Gigi?”

  I shifted my gaze to his poster—THE MIND SET FREE. I tried to think. There was a reason—beyond Gigi. There was something I wanted, something important. I couldn’t remember. My hands felt cold. I rubbed them. My feet were cold—my chest. I started to shiver. I held onto my chair, keeping my arms stiff to control it.

  “Miracle? Are you all right? Do you know why you wear purple?”

  I shook my head.

  “I tried to get her to change, wear pink or plaid. Remember, Miracle? Remember that first month you were with us, I told you you didn’t have to wear purple anymore?”

  “Yes, I remember.” The cold started slipping away, like the mercury in a thermometer—sliding off my arms and hands, down my chest, out my feet. I let go of my chair.

  “Let’s talk about that,” Dr. DeAngelis said, pushing his heels into the carpet so his chair rolled forward closer to me.

  “Let’s talk about your move to your aunt’s house. What was your life like living with your aunt and uncle? What do you remember most?”

  Aunt Casey flopped back in her seat and folded her arms in front of her chest, waiting.

  “I remember the wig heads.”

  “The wig heads?” Aunt Casey sat up, unfolding her arms. She looked at Dr. DeAngelis. “I fit wigs for cancer patients. I store them on plastic heads. I keep them on the shelves in her bedroom.”

  Dr. DeAngelis spoke to me. “What do you remember about the wig heads?”

  “They watched me. They wouldn’t leave me alone.”

  Aunt Casey and Dr. DeAngelis exchanged glances.

  “They bothered you?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Did they speak to you?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe, I don’t remember. They didn’t have any faces.”

  “And you wanted them to have faces?”

  “Everyone should have a face, shouldn’t they?”

  “Do you have a face, Miracle?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You feel maybe you don’t?”

  “Maybe.” I looked down at his feet—so huge.

  Dr. DeAngelis cleared his throat, and I lifted my head back up.

  “If you don’t have a face, then you’re like those wig heads, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. Yes!”

  “Is that what you’re afraid of, that you’re just like those wig heads?”

  “I am. Yes, just like those wig heads.”

  “And that frightens you?”

  Aunt Casey leaned forward in her seat.

  “Yes. They sat on that shelf waiting.”

  Dr. DeAngelis rolled forward a little, and I pushed my back against my seat.

  “And you were waiting, too, just like them. What were you waiting for? Do you know, Miracle?”

  I tried to remember. I was waiting for something. I wore purple. I had a plan. What was my plan? I couldn’t remember.

  “I don’t know,” I said, and my own voice sounded far away.

  “But you were waiting?”

  “Yes. Yes, I know I was—maybe.” Both our voices sounded so far away. I watched Dr. DeAngelis’s face. Had he noticed?

  “How else were you like those heads? Any other way?”

  “They were dead.”

  “Do you feel dead?”

  “Dead hair, dead heads.”

  “Miracle, look at me. Do you feel dead?”

  Why did he keep trying to get me to remember? I didn’t know. Something was dead. Something about me was dead, but I couldn’t remember. I closed my eyes. My hands were cold again, my feet, my chest—cold spots.

  A sentence came to me, popped into my head. “If your mama was dead when you were born, then you was never born.”

  Aunt Casey jumped up. “Miracle! Where on earth?” She stood facing me, blocking my view of Dr. DeAngelis. I hadn’t realized I had spoken out loud, but I knew by Aunt Casey’s reaction that I had. I blinked at her, wondering what I had said.

  I tried to think. What was it? Then I remembered and said it again. “If your mama was dead when you were born, then you was never born.”

  “Casey, I need to ask you to sit down,” Dr. DeAngelis said. He turned his chair so it faced her way a little bit more. I rubbed my arms. They were so cold.

  “Do you understand what she’s saying?”

  Aunt Casey nodded and tears were in her eyes ready to spill out. I wondered what I had said. What did it mean?

  “Her mother was—was killed. She was hit by an ambulance when she was crossing the street.”

  Dr. DeAngelis nodded. “Yes, you mentioned that to me but . . .”

  “I didn’t tell you that she was pregnant with Miracle at the time.”

  I leaned forward, trying to hear better. Aunt Casey’s voice sounded as if I were listening to it at the end of a long tunnel. I closed my eyes again and I saw a woman, in my mind, delicate looking, with freckles, standing on an iron gate.

  “Miracle? Did you know this? Miracle?”

&
nbsp; I wanted to respond, but there was that woman, I didn’t want to lose her. I needed to keep my eyes closed and see her.

  “Sure she knew it. Gigi must have mentioned it a hundred times a day. Thing was, I don’t think Miracle liked hearing about it so much after a while. I think it made her feel like she was weird, not like the other kids. She told me once the kids teased her at school. She said she was glad to be moving to Atlanta with Opal because they teased her.”

  Aunt Casey’s voice was breaking in, getting louder again, disturbing my picture.

  “Struck by an ambulance? Did they have the siren going?” Dr. DeAngelis asked.

  I opened my eyes, let go of the woman at the gate.

  “Oh, sure.” Aunt Casey crossed her legs and started swinging the top one. Then she saw what she was doing and stopped. “It wasn’t the ambulance’s fault or anything. No, we never thought that. I mean they did everything right, the siren and all, and the road was clear, no traffic or anything. Just Sissy crossing the street.”

  Dr. DeAngelis nodded. “An accident.”

  “Of course it was an accident, what do you think?” Aunt Casey flailed her arms. “Of course it was. Of course.”

  “You think she didn’t hear the siren, or see it coming, then.”

  “Of course she didn’t, or she’d be here, wouldn’t she?”

  “Would she?” Dr. DeAngelis looked out the window past Aunt Casey, as if he were trying to see the accident, see how it was. I looked through the window, too. I tried to see what he was seeing.

  “What are you trying to say? That she did it on purpose?”

  Dr. DeAngelis brought his focus back to my aunt and so did I.

  “I didn’t know Miracle’s mother. I don’t know the circumstances.”

  “You’re trained to see everything as a suicide. Sheesh, that’s what you do here. Work with suicides. Of course you’d think that’s what happened.”

  Dr. DeAngelis nodded. “Yes, I do work with suicide patients and one of my patients is your niece. I’m sure you’ve studied enough psychology to know that suicide often runs in the family. It’s the family’s learned response to trouble.”

  Aunt Casey waved her hand. “Oh, we never told Miracle. We didn’t tell her anything. Did we, Miracle? Tell him. You never knew a thing. It was just a suspicion anyway. We could never know for sure. We made a pact, we’d never tell. Gigi said for us to make her death a good thing and it was, we have Miracle.” Aunt Casey glanced at me. “Gigi chose her name—Miracle. That’s why she talked about Miracle’s birth so much. She wanted to make it grand, glorious, a miracle. And it was, wasn’t it? It wasn’t a lie. That wasn’t a lie.”

  Dr. DeAngelis shook his head. “It’s a funny thing about children. The very thing adults try so hard to keep secret is the very thing they’ll act out.”

  Chapter 25

  “MIRACLE, what do you think? How do you feel about what you’re hearing?”

  Dr. DeAngelis was watching me, wanting a reaction.

  I wouldn’t react to made-up stories. They were acting, putting on a show, just like in the TV room. I didn’t know this woman they were talking about.

  “Miracle, eye contact, please.”

  I wouldn’t look at lies. I held my head down, tore at a fingernail.

  “I’m sorry, Miracle,” Aunt Casey said, sitting on the edge of her seat and leaning forward, trying to place herself in my view. “We didn’t want you to get the wrong idea. We . . .”

  “Stop talking about it!” I twisted away and covered my ears.

  “You don’t like what you’re hearing,” Dr. DeAngelis said.

  “No! It’s lies. Gigi could tell you. You’re making everything up!”

  “All right, Miracle. You may be right, but what if this were a story you read in a book and there was a young lady such as yourself, fourteen years old and . . .”

  “I’m thirteen.” I turned around to face him and brought my hands down from my ears.

  Aunt Casey said, “You turned fourteen while you were in the hospital, Miracle. It’s almost May now.

  She was confusing me. They both were. Telling me lies and making up birthdays.

  “Let’s get back to the story, Miracle. An adolescent girl discovers her mother dashed in front of an ambulance while she was pregnant with her. What do you think that discovery would mean to that girl? What would it say to her? How would she feel?”

  “Nothing! It’s nothing. I don’t have a mother. I’m nobody, who are you?” I stood up and Dr. DeAngelis held up his hands.

  “All right, Miracle. It’s all right. We’ll leave it for now.”

  They gave me more pills to take at the nurses’ station, to calm me down. They waited, watching me while I took them. They made me open my mouth and show them that they were gone. I didn’t want to sleep. I didn’t want to go to my room with all its shadows. I wanted to be in the sun, sit in bright light. The lighting was poor in the yellow unit. It was dull lighting, dull and somber. I think they used it to keep us all in a stupor. I sat in group that evening, staring through the gloomy haze, watching Leah sliding her bandage back and forth on her wrist and a boy named Rodger tilting his head from side to side, side to side, and all the voices were so far away. Mike’s voice couldn’t carry through the gloom. I saw him looking at me. He must have asked me a question. Everyone was looking at me. I couldn’t hear them, almost couldn’t see them. I needed to get nearer the light. There were too many shadows—too much danger. I stood up on the sofa and tried to climb on its back, but Kyla pulled me down. Then Joe came out of the nurses’ station and they took me to my room. They moved strangely, in slow motion, and they opened and closed their mouths but no sound came out. It was like watching Aunt Casey and Uncle Toole through the window, their mouths both going at once and I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  Kyla stood watch in the doorway. I sat on my bed, huddled up close to the window, my face pressed into the metal cage they had across it. I searched for the sun. The shadows were behind me. I stayed with my face pressed to the window all during group and during the dinner hour and game time. I stayed there as long as there was light. The light calmed me. I could hear sounds behind me. I heard Kyla leave. I heard Leah arguing with Joe about how many points she had. I heard Rodger teaching Deborah how to play Ping-Pong, and I could tell by the singsong tone of Deborah’s voice that she was more interested in Rodger than in Ping-Pong.

  Deborah came in at bedtime, five minutes till lights-out. She picked my schoolbooks up off the floor and dumped them on my bed. One of them hit me and I turned around.

  “You’re losing us points in here. Keep it neat.”

  Deborah looked angry. Her pretty blue eyes were dark; they looked almost black, evil.

  I grabbed the books up in my arms and left the room. Marla, the night nurse, was on duty. She scooted out from behind her glass windows, pointing her finger at me.

  “No you don’t. It’s time for lights-out.”

  “I can’t sleep tonight.”

  The nurse turned back toward her office. “Let’s see what meds you’re on.”

  “No. No. I won’t sleep. I need to be in the light. Please let me stay out here. I’ll be good—I’ll behave.” I stepped over the red tape into the center of the dayroom. “I won’t step over the red tape. I’ll, I’ll read.” I held up my books. “See, I have this book here, these poems.”

  Marla went into her office and picked up the phone. I watched her through the glass, her mouth moving, no sound. I saw her nodding. Then she put down the receiver and came back out to me.

  “Okay, fine. Any trouble though . . .”

  I sat down in the big cushioned plastic chair that squeaked and groaned every time I moved. The cushion made my legs sweat. There was a lamp glued to the table beside it with a tiny metal cage around the lightbulb. They put cages around and over anything glass on the yellow unit. I switched on the lamp and leaned forward into its light. Marla watched me. She waited until I opened my book and started reading
. Then she lifted her bell and shook it, calling “Lights-out!” She went around to all the rooms for the first check of the night, boys to the left of the dayroom and girls to the right, and then returned to her office, setting the bell down with one last clink.

  I read my poems. Page after page of beautiful words and thoughts and truths—the truest, realest things I know.

  I read

  To die—without the Dying

  And live—without the Life

  This is the hardest Miracle

  Propounded to Belief.

  Emily Dickinson was speaking to me, using my name, speaking my life. I felt safe in her words, far from the shadows and the things hidden there. Her words brought me to a memory, Grandaddy Opal’s basement. I was dancing to beautiful music. I remembered Miss Emmaline singing. Her beautiful voice singing such words, words I wanted for myself, and so I danced. That was real. I could feel it—inside, and I decided that night, reading poetry beneath a caged lightbulb, that real was when you could feel your whole body light up from within. When it didn’t matter about day or night, dark or light, because you could carry the light with you, in the dancing, in the music, in the poetry.

  I closed my eyes and the light was still there, the light from Emily Dickinson’s words.

  I was in my own bed when I opened them again. It was morning and Kyla was slapping her sandaled feet past the doors, ringing the wake-up bell. I lifted my head and squinted at the light shining through the window. I reached down and felt my legs the way I did every morning, reaching under the bandages and feeling the scars. Real scars—hot, swollen scars. Another memory flashed through my mind. I was dancing again. It was wild dancing. I was everywhere, diving for the floor, racing for the walls, spinning, leaping, crashing. And every crash, every dive, left a mark. I could feel it, and the next day, I could see it. They called them black-and-blue, but they were every shade, purple and red and greenish blue and then yellow and brown—all the colors. I rolled over and hung my head over the edge of the bed. My books were stacked on the floor with the poetry book on top. I reached out and placed my hand on the book and thought maybe someday I wouldn’t need the bruises or the scars anymore. Maybe someday it would be all right for the scars to go away.