Read A Time to Dance for Free Online

steep steps
    and out of the bus.

LOOKS
    Clunking along the bleak school corridors,
    I must look as asymmetric
    as a heron balancing on one leg.
    I wish it wouldn’t take Jim so long to make my prosthesis.
    I hate announcing my arrival on crutches
    â€”stomp, clomp, stomp, clomp—
    loud enough to make every head turn in my direction.
    When lessons are over
    everyone pours out onto the sports field.
    â€œYou could coach us, Veda. Please? Come?” Chandra pleads.
    So I go.
    The other girls from the cricket team gather around me.
    A few mumble that they’re sorry,
    their nervous eyes politely stuck to my face,
    wary of accidentally straying too low and catching a glimpse
    of the space beneath my right knee.
    Some welcome me back in extra-bright voices,
    saying it’s nice I’m back
    though they hardly know me.
    Silent, shy, following Chandra,
    at school, I was her shadow.
    Only at dance did I shine in my own light.
    Listlessly
    I listen to girls whack at the red cork ball with willow bats.
    Mekha, a vicious girl, who plays so well
    Chandra’s forced to keep her on the team,
    walks past me.
    â€œHey, Veda, I was pretty lame today. Wasn’t I?” She giggles.
    Her twin, Meghna, peals with laughter.
    As they walk away, I hear Mekha say,
    â€œVeda’s so sensitive!
    Are we supposed to stop using certain words
    because she’s handicapped?
    Should we give cricket stumps
    a new name now that she has a stump?”
    The girls fall on each other, laughing some more,
    and their taunts echo loudly in my head
    long after I leave the field.

NAMES
    Chandra stops by in the evening. “Why did you leave early? Without telling me?
    What happened? I was worried.”
    Words spill out of me, fierce as tears.
    â€œI’m sick of being a cripple.
    I hate hearing people talk about me.
    And even when they’re not talking about me,
    ugly words are always around:
    stump, lame, handicap.”
    â€œIf people are calling you names, I’ll take care of them.”
    Chandra makes fists.
    â€œYou’re just more advanced than we are.
    I saw this TV show about how, maybe, in a hundred years,
    we’ll all have implants to make our bodies stronger.”
    I slap at a crutch. “This isn’t an implant.
    It only enhances my weakness.
    I’m going to drop out of school.”
    â€œVeda, you never give up.
    Not even at cricket,
    which you don’t care much about.
    You know why our team won so often?
    Because you inspired me.
    However desperate a match seemed,
    I could read in your face
    that you refused to accept defeat.”
    She’s right, but her words surprise me.
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œMaybe others can’t see your feelings.
    I, however, have X-ray vision.” Chandra makes a funny face,
    sucking her cheeks in and rolling her eyes.
    My teeth feel stuck together
    like I’ve been chewing cashew candy,
    except my mouth tastes bitter, not caramel sweet.
    It’s work to get my jaws unstuck and laugh
    but I’m used to challenging the muscles of my body.
    I do it for Chandra’s sake. Because friendship is about laughing
    when the other person is joking to make you feel better.
    Even if you don’t find her joke all that funny.

EXPOSED
    Dr. Murali removes my stitches.
    I make myself stare
    at my
    bare
    residual leg.
    As healed as it ever will be.
    Below my knee, above where my leg now ends,
    a grotesque smiley mouth leers at me:
    a C-shaped scar.
    Looking at my uneven skin
    exposed
    hurts
    worse than salting a fresh wound.
    Closing my eyes, I turn
    away.
    Dr. Murali sings the praises of prostheses so enthusiastically,
    it’s as if he’s encouraging
    Ma and Pa to cut off their legs and replace them
    with “marvelous” artificial limbs
    that are “so much stronger” than our own.
    Dr. Murali says, “We will give you a shrinker sock
    to compress your limb
    into a conical shape so it’ll fit easily into your