Dancing in the Dark Read Online Free PDF Page A

side. Around my eyes there’s a little darkness, a brown-grey tinge that makes me look like one of those Arab women who seek that shade for emphasis, or mystery. I feel, peering, like an old watercolour and expect to see cracks like dried paint break across my face.

6
    W hen I was a little girl, I had a full-length mirror in my bedroom. Evenings, when I was supposed to be in bed, I posed before it; practised walking, prancing, standing hand on hip, tilted backward, mimicking advertisements in my mother’s magazines, those models selling dresses and cosmetics.
    “Am I pretty?” I wondered. “How pretty am I?” I couldn’t tell. Even then, I failed to quite see myself.
    Strange, because I could certainly tell about others. People on the street, one knew at a glance whether they were pretty or not. My little sister Stella, born three years after me, anyone could see that she was. People said to my parents, “What lovely little girls,” but perhaps they were taking an average? Balancing beautiful Stella against plain Edna and coming up with a comprehensive lovely? How could I tell if this was what was happening?
    My hair grew long, my mother cut it short, it grew again, it fluffed and bristled with childhood permanents or hung lank. I had bangs, let them grow out, and had them recut—and at each change I peered into the mirror, wondering at the differences, wondering if they made enough difference. “Am I pretty?”
    I suppose not. Surely anyone who is can tell. They can look and see perfect features and know, it must be as obvious as seeing that one is ugly. I was sure that if I were ugly, I would know that, also, at a glance. Therefore, somewhere in the middle: disappointed to be not lovely, but relieved also to be not ugly.
    Anything striking about me, then, would have to be manufactured. But that risks garishness and foolishness.
    Even now I would like to think these things don’t matter. It would be nice to think that one is assessed for virtues only. But not even the teachers liked the fat boys, and no one wanted to be seen with the girl with the glasses, poor clothes, the dark and greasy cast of skin. Certainly I did not want to be seen with her; one would be afraid of being viewed as her reflection.
    No, a good appearance was essential, the first thing people saw and how they judged. It was obvious that it determined, was first cause, of how a life would go. It might be a mask for some other truth beneath the flesh, but people did not look for truth that way. Even a child knew that. Even the child Edna knew that a display of fear or pain would mar the surface.
    And there were other things even a child would know. The proper pattern of a life, how it should be led, this knowledge was absorbed. One was a girl and so inevitably would become a woman and the way to be followed was well laid out and obvious. To wander off was failure. I considered my mother a failure in this way, a mutant of a woman. An embarrassment.
    Before we were married, Harry tried and tried to make me talk. He’d say, “I’m not going to say a word, Edna. I’m just going to sit here until you say something.” Or he’d ask me questions about myself.
    When I met him, I could barely speak.
    He said, “Tell me about your family, Edna.” This was before he met them.
    What I thought was that they were entirely the wrong way about. Why did my mother buy those magazines, when she obviously had no intention of following their advice?
    The magazines and books, the world itself outside our own, showed clearly that the real and normal system was the reverse of the one in our home. My parents’ unaccountable aberrations.
    I see my mother. The last time I saw her, some months ago now, I guess, she was a bit stooped, but still angular and hard. As a child I stood below her and looked up her long plank of a body and knew that in a contact with her I would be hurt. Even a hug when I was small and soft and she was tall and hard was dangerous.
    She