What Is Visible: A Novel by Kimberly Elkins Page B

and when I make her stand with our backs together, she measures in full about three inches taller. So she is tall and reasonably soft, with fine hair that Doctor says is so blonde it’s almost white. It’s stuck very close to her head, a little slick even in its braids. I wanted a teacher with curly hair, very curly hair, so I could spring it and bounce it, but Doctor said that curly hair is hard to find in Boston, and also that it’s not important what kind of hair a teacher has. Doctor’s hair is curled sometimes over his ears or around his collar, tickling at my fingers when he lets me hug his neck. I have not touched him for eighteen months, and at my worst, I believe he is gone from this earth. We will find out in two weeks. And the baby? I am not sure it exists. I am sick of cradling the doll in anticipation, but at least the doll doesn’t wriggle or vomit. Maybe Julia won’t come back. Doctor thought my Julia noise was the best one of all, but Jeannette told me that Julia hated it. I give her my best and she despises me. Sometimes I think she even fears me.
    When Tessy was angry that I let Oliver play with the Laura dolls instead of her, she told me that the newspaper warned against pregnant ladies coming to the exhibitions to see me lest they swoon in fright and their babies be cursed with my afflictions. How might just one look at me brand another human being for life? I cried for days after Tessy told me that, until finally she hugged me in bed for a whole hour. I realized that is probably why Julia has stayed in Europe while she is with child: the fear that it could turn out like me. I wonder if Doctor is afraid too. I cannot let myself think about this or I will run screaming into the Charles.
    I’ll try to say my new teacher’s name out loud now. I’m not supposed to, but I’ll bet she doesn’t know that. “Wightie! Wightie!” I call, and she is tapping my hand, so she heard me. Did she hear her name, her real name, or just a sound, an ugly sound? I make it very small, very tiny, like a mouse practicing in a little hole in the floor, and she lets me. She is a good woman, and I promise for her I will be a good girl. I will try to be a good girl. Well, I’ll do the best I can.
    All right, I can’t speak or sing—for now—but I can do a little dance to celebrate my new teacher. Come dance with me, Wightie; give me your hand—ah, I’ve got one finger to pull. Come on! Doctor says exercise is good for me, how can you resist me one spin? I tap my foot on the floor, tap tap , the way I’ve felt the beats reverberate from the cabinet piano played in the parlor. Today I make my own music— tap-tap-TAP , tap-de-tap-tap —and I pull Wightie’s hands up and over my head, in a twist, in a twirl that I memorized from the raised pattern in the Institution’s one dance book. We will have to do a waltz since there are only two of us. The Viennese waltz is the one I learned, and I write that on Wightie’s other hand, including the sixty measures a minute with a clockwise rotation.
    “A what?” she asks. “Sixty what?” And I realize that maybe she doesn’t know dances, maybe she is not that kind of young woman, perhaps she is too plain to be asked to dance, or maybe she is too religious and strict to indulge. I don’t care. I’ll make her dance. I have waltzed three times with Doctor, and for a summer party we did the Virginia reel with six ladies and six gentlemen in rows. Jeannette says that I’m an excellent dancer. I can see the patterns in my brain shooting straight down to my feet, and my feet in turn relay the calling of the music through its vibrations for a certain type of movement. Oh, the dancing I would do if I were a normal girl: I would jig home to Hanover and back—no, all the way to Africa, where I read the Negroes beat crazily and loud on enormous drums with sticks. I would love it in Africa with all the drums talking to my feet. I wonder do they have pianos there and