Read A Time to Dance for Free Online Page A

prosthesis.
    Wear it as much as you can over the next month
    so your limb doesn’t become
    dog-eared or bulbous.
    Roll antiperspirant on the skin beneath your sock
    so the area stays dry. Keep it clean.
    We don’t want it getting infected and smelly.”
    My cheeks burn with embarrassment,
    as if I’ve been playing cricket in the heat.
    Bad enough having Jim
    see this part of me, naked,
    without imagining it
    dog-eared, bulbous,
    stinking, swollen, disgusting.
    Jim kneels by my foot
    so close I could rest my chin on his golden head.
    â€œHey there.” Jim’s normally buoyant voice is soft.
    One of his knuckles, rough as a cat’s tongue,
    brushes against my inner thigh
    as he helps me pull on my “shrinker sock.”
    His accidental touch tickles,
    sending an uncomfortable flutter through my stomach.
    â€œVeda? I’ll make you a leg you can dance on.”
    I feel dizzy as if I’d stood up too fast,
    though I get up slowly on my crutches.
    Dizzy at the sight of him kneeling by my foot,
    dizzy at the thought of Jim and me alone in his office,
    his dazzling eyes watching me dance
    on the leg he’s promised he’ll make me.

IN
the
EYE
    I’m at the table finishing my homework
    when I glimpse Paati in our kitchen
    wiping beads of sweat off her brow
    with the edge of her white sari.
    â€œPaati, let me help.”
    â€œI was going to make you some
uppuma.
”
    â€œI’ll cook my own snack. You do too much for someone your age.
    Chandra’s grandmother sits in front of the TV all day.”
    â€œDon’t criticize your elders,” Paati says, but her eyes twinkle.
    â€œPaati, I’d never criticize you. You’ve done so much in life.”
    â€œDidn’t you tell me Chandra’s grandmother
    raised eight children? I only had one.”
    â€œYou raised Pa all on your own!
    You became a schoolteacher!
    Most widows of your time didn’t dare leave home!”
    â€œFinish your homework.”
    â€œDone.” I stuff my books into my schoolbag,
    clunk over to help her.
    â€œVeda, you look tired. Go and rest. I enjoy cooking.”
    â€œI’m not tired,” I lie.
    â€œI’m old, not blind,” she says.
    â€œI wish my classmates were blind.
    And the people who ride my bus, too.”
    I warm a blob of clarified butter in a pan.
    The smell of melting butter fills our kitchen.
    I toss in some black mustard seeds.
    They crackle. The sound reminds me
    of Mekha and Meghna cackling. “Everyone stares at me.
    All the time.
    Everyone looks at Chandra, too,
    except that’s because she’s pretty.
    In my case, it’s because I’m not.”
    â€œChandra’s pretty,” Paati says. “And so are you.”
    â€œOnly if I’m dancing.”
    â€œVeda, onstage you sparkle with confidence.
    But your body doesn’t transform
    offstage.
    Your curls are just as long,
    your back just as straight,
    your figure and face just as lovely.
    Your hands flutter whenever you talk. And you
    move so elegantly.
    As delicately as a butterfly flitting between flowers.”
    â€œNot on crutches, I don’t.”
    â€œAll
    the
    time,” Paati says.
    She’s my grandmother.
    No wonder she believes I’m always graceful.
    Beauty, as the proverb says, I now understand,
    is, indeed, in the eye of the beholder.

WHO DANCED Ahead
OF ME
    â€œDid you get those just because of me?”
    I motion at the rows and rows
    of books on Bharatanatyam
    stacked on Jim’s bookshelf,
    in his sunny workroom on the third floor of a redbrick building
    on the forested campus of the technology institute
    right in the middle of the tar-and-concrete maze of Chennai city.
    â€œYou bet, kiddo.”
    The hair on Jim’s hands is powdered white
    from the plaster of Paris
    he’s mixing with water
    to make a mold of my residual limb.
    I can’t believe he’s taking so much time to learn
    about what I most love.
    I