Properties of Light

My mother takes me to St. Clair Shores on a pale spring morning when I am thirteen years old. She has found a coach there, someone better than Ben, who sometimes shows up to my lessons without skates, eyes shot with red. Skating was my own choice, after my mother told me I needed to be afraid of fewer things. She was a gymnastics coach in China, now a seamstress, stitching together fabric instead of sinew. I know how she wanted me to choose, but I was proud, even then, and had started to bring home medals from skating competitions.

As we drive across the peninsula, it is still early enough to see the moon hang from the edge of the sky. I imagine it rolling softly onto the willows across the lake, or into the water with a quiet splash. If I am to believe the tale of the goddess who shares my name, the moon will do neither of those things and Selene will soon arrive to meet her ageless lover.

After opening the car windows briefly to pay the bridge toll, all I have to embrace is the cold. It lays its hand across my cheek, the only part of my body not wrapped in sweater. Even though I must unravel all my garments before practice, it feels important to stay warm a while longer.

Your jumps are high, Lisa says. Could be ready for triples soon. Around me, girls do jumps that I have only ever watched on my mother’s phone. Even when they fall, it does not look like it hurts them.

How many double loops can you do in a row, she asks. I fall on the first one I try, hard enough to feel something split red inside my mouth. Lisa waves to my mother where she stands in the glass beyond the rink. It’s all right. Back then, this was not enough to take me apart. I do six in a row the next time, which is one more than my mother thought possible, five more than Lisa expected. Good girl, she says.

My mother asks me if it hurts. It doesn’t. I answer, my tongue metallic.

Lisa agrees to be my teacher.

~

My mother tells me stories and I am greedy for them, before I understood that this is all she can give me. I always ask for the one about the girl who turns into a swan. Not “The Ugly Duckling,” where the story ends when she becomes beautiful, but the one of a daughter in the myth of Lir.

She is cursed by her stepmother, the one person she has left who is supposed to love her. Her stepmother cannot bring herself to kill the girl, so she curses her to wander the lakes for hundreds of years as a swan, enduring storms and swamps, her feet mangled from being frozen in a lake. The girl becomes beloved for her song, more famous than when she was human.

When her curse ends, she comes ashore and turns back into a girl. When the enchantment is lifted, her body has not aged a day since she became a bird. But soon, the centuries catch up, rippling across her body. All the townspeople, who once loved her song, look away as she melts into an old woman.

Sometimes, we turn her back into a bird, so she can sing forever and humans cannot take away her youth. Sometimes, my mother says she is christened by God just before she dies, so her name may endure more centuries than she lived. Sometimes, we are not sure what to hope for her, so we don’t let the story end.

~

I have only one good spin. When I show it to Lisa, it is clear that we have different definitions of good. Is it over yet, she covers her eyes. There is a girl drinking water on the stands, who tries not to laugh, her cheeks bulging with the effort. Before I’ve recovered my own composure, Lisa calls her over. She is small, no taller than I am, but that is where the lines are drawn. Next to Lisa, they could have been mother and daughter, incandescent blonde.

Show Selene a haircutter, Lisa tells her. A proper one.

She spins so fast that she dissolves a bit. Hooks her finger around the blade of her skate, brings her leg overhead, higher and higher until she forms a teardrop. Her hair, already the color of honey, whips into a halo. Watching her carve perfect whorls into the ice, I understand what it is I want to become.

This is how I meet Michaela.

~

By summer, I am falling on my first triples. Michaela’s mother tells mine that it takes a thousand falls before you can land a jump consistently. There are five jumps a skater must learn, and every day I do the calculus of how much I improve, watching the bruises on my hips and elbows bloom from plummy red to soft green.

That was close, I know I’m close, I say to Lisa whenever I fall.

What will you do differently, she asks. The answer is not important, as long as I can find a way to land, again and again.

~

So, what’s his name, Michaela wants to know the name of my crush. She presses the eyeliner on my eyelid, hard like a crayon that has forgotten its color. I took it from my mother’s bathroom, it was something she only wore to parent teacher conferences anyways. When I pressed it into Michaela’s hand, it was warm but she didn’t notice. We are both giddy at the thought of doing makeup before the first day of high school.

So far, I’ve told her that my crush has hair like honey. Brown eyes, a thin frame, and a laugh that I’ve collected inside of me many times over. I have just forgotten to give them a name. They must be real enough if Michaela has not recognized herself yet.

Joe, I say. It is also my father’s name, which flickers as distant and unknowable, as any man. There are enough Joes at the high school for me to point one out if it ever comes to that. I cannot say the same for my father.

I messed up, she says. Her hair spills onto my cheeks as she leans in as she licks her finger, rubs the edge of my eyes. She smells like jasmine, I think. Like the tea that my mother brews, all amber and petals to unfurl.

It’s perfect, I say though my eyes are closed.

The bathroom door opens and we startle, her hands falling from my face. When I open my eyes, the liner has left a residue. It doesn’t matter if they are stuck open. I am the one doing the watching once again, and she smiles at me in the mirror.

~

I list all the things that happen whenever my jumps are good.

•     Purple scrunchies, three clips

•     Michaela teaches new spin to me—butterfly, or death drop

•     NO more milk. 1 tomato, coffee, crackers ONLY

My math teacher asks me what these mean when he passes back homework. Nothing, I say. I hope that I have not left these lists in the margins before. Math is my favorite subject, and I always make a clean copy of all the derivatives and integrals, transforming equations until they twist into the same form.

Skating, right? he says.

It’s nothing, I say.

Right, he says. When he moves on, I forget to say, Don’t tell my mother. Please.

~

In English class, my teacher asks us what makes a cliché.

Roses are red, violets are blue, someone says.

Happily ever after.

I didn’t say to name them, my teacher says.

Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Everyone laughs.

Clichés are how I am cursed to think in terms of Michaela. Michaela tying her skates crooning Kesha, Michaela doing cartwheels until she falls over, Michaela pushing me into the lake and I catch her hand, pulling her in with me. All the words in my journal pass through her, like a sunbeam through water, tethering nothing.

Clichés are a naming of everything we already know. I want to ask my teacher how it is possible to name everything else.

~

Let me have a bite of that, Eamon says, when he sees me stuff two pieces of gum into my mouth. He grins under his mop of blonde hair, bleached from swim team or perhaps the sun left too many kisses. He has a locker next to me, and every day there is a different flock of girls leaning against our lockers. Perhaps, they are the same flock, for they always smell of the same perfume. Cherries cut with smoke.

Do you even know my name, I say. There are no girls today, and still, it is hard to look him in the eyes. I know that this attention should be coveted.

Of course, he says and reaching into my locker, takes my phone. It’s Selene, right?

Yes, my mother liked Celine Dion, I say. She wasn’t very good at spelling though. When he laughs, it feels easier than with Michaela. I don’t have to mark what I will lose.

Before practice, I scroll through my contacts under E and cannot find him. Later, I will get a text from your favorite person everrr, and Michaela asks me what is so funny.

Nothing, I say. She nestles her head against my shoulder, and I decide that Eamon is not my crush. They do not need to know about each other.

~

During practice, I would sometimes catch my breath folded over, but I quickly learned that this would earn me many laps. There is nothing more embarrassing than having a woman shorter than you chase you around the ice.

How come I can skate faster than you, Lisa would say. Even when I had breath left, I knew better than to use it. She was the mother I never talked back to.

Her favorite things to say became a language between us. I show her that I understand by taking care each word she gives me no longer stays a mistake. Arms, she would say, and my arms would snap, muscles I didn’t know I had burning. My mother thanks Lisa for my posture, beaming whenever someone tells her that I’ve had a growth spurt. I do not want to be tall, for each inch will shift my center of balance, make it harder to keep my jumps the same. I want to keep this small frame forever. Perhaps this is why Lisa says bend your knees, knees, so often. Even when I think I am safe, rooted close to the ice, she need only say it once, and those roots would have to be torn, growing new ones that might be enough.

During competitions, while other coaches ran their voices dry, Lisa only needed to speak a few words for my body to understand the shape it needed to be.

~

Some days after school, I take the pair of scissors we use to slice open the mail into the bathroom. Starting from my armpits, I line the blades flat against my skin. This way, the hair will be cut closest to where it begins.

In the best case, the faucet will wash away a frequency of hair as blunt as tick marks. In the worst case, there is a little blood. I think of it as preparation for what may come.

You’re lucky you don’t have to shave, Michaela says.

You’re blonde though, I say. You don’t have to pretend, I don’t say. She wears her leotards without a bra, her chest still enviably flat. Watching her, my own fills with something sharp enough to slice through triple after triple. We both know that after puberty, our bodies may no longer carry us as skaters.

~

Halloween, Michaela’s house, on a school night. My mother agrees to let me go so she won’t have to leave work to pick me up from practice. She asks me what Michaela’s mom will make for dinner. I know there will be pretzels and chocolate crackers, spiced chips, and fluorescent drinks to wash it down. The adhesive packaging will tear like a Band-Aid, and I will eat until I can only taste sand.

Spaghetti and meatballs, I tell her. This fits both our dreams well enough.

Our faces are made up. All that’s left is the hair. We are the Powerpuff girls. Sugar, spice, and everything nice. It’s not clear who is who, until there’s knocking downstairs.

That must be Sara Lynn, she says and lets go of the braid in my hair. When they walk into the room, I no longer try to hold the braids together, to wait for Michaela to fix it.

We needed someone blonde. Michaela laughs and this is not one I collect.

I put on the green tutu and do not need to ask if this is the right one, before pulling my black hair into a ponytail. As I watch them spray glitter into their hair, already full of light, I know this only reveals what was there all along. Of course, Michaela is Blossom and Sara Lynn is Bubbles. Of course, I am the only one without unique powers. Blossom can breathe ice, stilling land and people into frozen crystal, while Bubbles can speak to squirrels, any animal that wanted to offer their secrets. Buttercup can curl her tongue. All her other powers, she shares with her sisters.

Of course, curling tongues comes easily enough to me too. My mother taught me English without the alphabet, showing me how to make each sound in her mouth. I think this protects me, being careful to only ever speak English. Michaela and Sara Lynn loop their arms, the sidewalk is only big enough for two and I step on their shadow again and again.

~

Eamon convinces me to skip math. C’mon just once, he says. I let him buy me a milkshake, unroll a blanket at my feet. The autumn wind cuts the clouds loose, weaving shadow and gold stitches of sun everywhere. I tell him his face would make for a good pattern of lace, at least my mother would think so. When he laughs, I fill the air between us with more stories of her: the clothes rich people wear nowhere, the dress she is making me for my competitions.

I didn’t know you ice skated, Eamon says.

You don’t know a lot of things about me, I say. In the stillness, I realize that this is the wrong thing to say so I press my lips against his. When he presses his tongue in my mouth, I am already sewing this into a story that will make Michaela laugh. I do not yet realize how dangerous it is to bury one hunger with another.

You’re a good kisser, he says.

~

Later, it is Michaela, not my mother, who smells him on me. She settles into my side, and the heat of her skin makes my own grow hot.

Do you like him, she says. I have watched enough movies to know that she does not say this with enough jealousy.

I don’t know, I say and make the words as empty as possible.

Let’s go girls, Lisa says, pushing us from the bench, back onto the rink, where the Zamboni has stained the ice clean again.

~

Snow settles onto the ground, whirling thick and fast. I get pneumonia. The doctor asks me to breathe in and out, his hands dry and heavy on my back. I am surprised that nothing comes out as perceptible form when I exhale.

There are snowflakes inside of me, I can feel them, I say. The doctor tells my mother no skating until my fever is gone and I’ve rested for two weeks. My first thought is how much I could lose. Even a few days off the ice could obliterate weeks of practice, replace it with fear.

But two weeks is not something I can mistranslate, so I say nothing when my mother brings her sewing from the kitchen table into my room. She doesn’t use the desk, holding the fabric in her lap, watching that my breath does not disappear when I am asleep. She lays cold washcloths against my forehead, blows on soup made with cabbage, carrots, potatoes, the kind that she only makes for my birthday.

I say nothing when I realize it is my mother who must replace her work, her language, so that I might one day have something worth losing. Even this thought, which glowed generously to me at the time, I will recognize as vain.

~

I wake to find my mother winding a tape measure around my waist.

This is not what you think, she says. For your dresses this competition season. She loops it around my chest and motions for me to tighten it.

The numbers are penciled onto a scrap of tissue paper, the kind I have watched her pin to each dress she sews. I try to move but there are more blankets on me than I fell asleep with. Everything is warm, my throat filled with too much sunlight.

Sleep more, she says and leaves me a mug that is warm to the touch, where everything else is cold.

~

My mother’s sewing machine sounds out stitches.

You didn’t tell me you needed a bra, she says. I am only wearing a thin sleep shirt. Outside, snow plummets. I decide now is not the right time to ask for a razor.

Yes Mama, I say and draw my arms to my chest. Please don’t tell Lisa.

Of course she has to know, my mother says.

~

It’s not a hard question, Lisa says. After I recover from pneumonia, it is already time to choose music for the new competition season. The first time she asks what I like to listen to, I don’t know how to answer. My mother and I listen only to the news on the car radio. When the floors need to be scrubbed, she puts on Celine Dion.

Usually in American songs, the only words I can pick out are the ones forbidden in school, played on the buses. It confuses me how swear words can become every part of speech, but I understand their desire. To become noun, adjective, and verb, all at once.

Lisa chooses a nocturne for my free skate. She plays the music for me over and over, and I wait for something to be drawn inside of me. What do you see when you close your eyes?

She answers for me. Think, serenade. Light a candle. Feel the stars drip.

These can’t be true, I want to say. It’s too cliché. But I close my eyes and make a wish instead. Dream backwards from when I set myself on the podium. Grasp that moment and deepen it into desire. The song moves, and I try not to forget, each time I must dance to it.

~

My mother finishes the bodice of the dress. She doesn’t ask me to raise my arms or give a twirl. Only moves her fingers across the seams, testing how close they are to my flesh.

It fits perfectly, I say.

For now, is all she says and turns away. The mirror isn’t big enough to hold the two of us.

~

Axels have always been my worst jump. The larger your wingspan, the higher your jump. Lisa thinks I do not understand this equation.

Equal and opposite reaction, she says. Shouldn’t you be learning this in all those math classes? Physics, I say. What was that, she says, pulling my arms behind my back. I decide this law does not account for fear. No matter where I put my arms, the jump is always the same.

Do you feel it between your shoulder blades?

Yes, I say. Sometimes this is a trick question. Sometimes, I am supposed to feel nothing no matter how she twists me. This time, I can feel the haunting of wings, long after she has stopped pinning my arms.

~

Competition season arrives as the skies warm and whiten with spring.

Did you hear me, my mother says, as the rain streaks down the glass. We’re driving through its colorless tears to my first competition of the season.

Mama wish you good luck, she says. I have never heard her say these words before. She has never given me luck, even in Chinese.

~

There’s a cute boy, Michaela nods. Says he’s here for you. Eamon, right?

That’s funny, I say. I don’t really like boys.

What, she says, but I am already running into the stands.

You can’t be here, I tell him. My face is made up, my body covered in jewels. It was easier looking him in the eyes when I wasn’t this beautiful.

Why not, he says. A lot of people are here. Just pretend that you can’t see me. Behind him, I see Lisa looking for me, my mother behind her too. I see myself press my hand against his chest and turn away; every word pulled close to me, like armor, like feathers.

In the dressing room, Michaela is tying her skates. I wonder what it would be like to be her, every part of her golden, down to the filaments of baby hair that cannot be tamed with hair spray. I want to hold her, walk away from the ice. I want her eyelashes and freckles, the mole at the nape of her neck, to sharpen into focus, not the competition between us.

You look beautiful, I say when she stands. Let her touch me as casually as dust settling against the light, a particle that must reach its destination one day. Let them be named, even when they are returned as refracted, obliterated. This is a curse of my own physics. I give her hand a squeeze and let go.

~

Before the judges announce my name and I must be alone on ice, before Lisa squeezes my hands and whispers knees, before I must negotiate my heart tightening as the crowds hush, I think of the girl in the story. How she felt when her bones hollowed, her breath turning thin into a song that stills the air. How she would know abandon, the shadows in the faces of the clouds sharper than the ones she loved. How the sky and sun and moon let her wear beams of light, make age matter less in her making. Would she have known when she was close enough to a bird to become one?

You wanted this, I tell myself, and start with the music.