He would dance with each of us. Tonight he chose me first. It always was exciting to be in Daddy’s arms, to move gracefully with him. I could feel my heart synchronizing with his, my blood moving as quickly or as slowly as his blood moved through him. Sometimes I felt as though I were floating and actually had to look down to see if my feet were touching the floor. Daddy’s smile washed over me, and I wished the moment would go on forever and ever.
I thanked him again for buying me my dress.
“You really are quite stunning in it,” he said, and kissed me softly on my forehead.
“I will wear it soon somewhere, won’t I, Daddy?”
“Yes,” he said, looking to Ava. “You will.”
It was very exciting knowing that I would finally be permitted to go on a date or to a party, but before I could ask anything more, he reached for her. Instinctively, I knew that pushing Daddy to say or permit something was not wise anyway. Despite the affection he showed me, the gifts he gave me, I always had this nagging feeling that if I failed him or disappointed him in some way, even something simple, he would disown me. He would send me back to whatever nowhere place I came from, a world in which all discarded children lingered, hoping someday to be given a name.
I had no memory of it, of course. I was just born and hardly there, wherever it was, before Daddy and Mrs. Fennel came along. The little that was told to me was told the way a parent or guardian might tell a child a bedtime story.
“Once upon a time, you were born and lay in a cradle alongside other foundlings. You were crying in the chorus, but when we walked near you, you stopped, as if you sensed our presence and welcomed it. Mrs. Fennel picked you up and said, ‘This one, Sergio.’ I touched your cheek, and you turned toward me, and I knew she was right.”
I had the story memorized. Ava, whether jealous of my joy in hearing the story or simply skeptical, always mocked me when I recited it.
“It’s a fairy tale, you fool,” she would say. “Mrs. Fennel didn’t tell Daddy that. He told her, but that was after someone dumped you on the front steps.”
“Is that what they told you happened to you?” I fired back. When I was brave enough to challenge her, she would suddenly take on this impish grin. Unlike other sisters, we didn’t break out into vicious shouting arguments and fights. She could whip me with her words from time to time, and when it was something serious, I would shrink back or close myself off like a clam, but when it wasn’t, I would throw something back at her. Usually, she would surprise me and act as if she were pleased I had the backbone.
Recently, when I asked her about it, she paused and then after a little thought said, “Like all older Patio sisters, I have to share the responsibility of shaping you into someone Daddy will appreciate. You have to develop some backbone, Lorelei. Without it, without confidence, you’ll fail, and if you fail, I fail, too. Not to mention how you will fail Daddy, how we will both have failed him.”
“I won’t fail Daddy,” I said quickly.
“Maybe,” she said, and then warned me again about doing something stupid with one or more of the boys at school. I had to listen to her warnings. She was more of my guardian now than Mrs. Fennel was.
Marla looked up to her for guidance as much as I did, but after that night when Daddy asked me to wear the dress and made so much of it in front of her and Ava, Marla began to look up to me more, asking me many of the questions I had once asked Ava. I suppose it was because I was closer to her in age than Ava. Marla was very pretty as well, with sea-blue eyes and soft light brown hair, just a shade or two darker than blond. She had dimples in her cheeks and perfect features, but, like me when I was her age, she had not yet matured enough to be popular with boys. I knew she yearned for it but, like me, kept it to herself.
I hated having to tell her I didn’t know the answers to many of her questions or that it wasn’t for me to tell her these things, but there wasn’t much more I could say.
“Maybe you should ask Ava that,” I would tell her.
She thought I was deliberately or jealously guarding something.
“You could tell me, Lorelei. You just don’t want to,” she complained. “And you know I won’t ask Mrs. Fennel or bother Daddy.”
“That’s not true. I would tell you anything you wanted to know if I could. Believe me, I wasn’t treated any differently from the way you’re being treated when I was your age, Marla.”
“You just don’t want me to know,” she insisted.
Frustrated, she complained about all the mystery in our lives. I couldn’t disagree, although I couldn’t do much to help her. It was as if every shadow had a voice whispering, every dark room had someone in it before the lights were turned on, every window had someone looking into our home before I turned to look out. Every creak was a clue, a letter, and a word to a sentence that would tell me something I didn’t know. It would be the same for her. The fact that I couldn’t satisfy her added to my own frustrations.
Later that night, when I was in my room getting ready for bed, Ava came in. She came in the way she often did, silently, as if she walked on air. Many times she had told me we had to practice being soft. We had to catch people, especially young men, unaware. It added to the mystery when we suddenly seemed to appear beside them as if what they wer
e fantasizing about had come true. Those sorts of little things, she said, were important. “Nuances of your sexuality,” she called them. “We finesse men, turn and twist them about like puppets on a string.”
She certainly caught me unaware. I was in the bathroom, gazing at myself naked before the full-length mirror beside the tub. I didn’t know whether it was normal for someone to be so fascinated with her own body. Most of the girls I knew at school seemed to complain constantly about their bodies. They were too fat or had noses and ears that were too big. They were jealous of this one or that one. No one seemed to be satisfied. Sometimes I thought they hated me because I didn’t voice similar complaints or envy.
“You think you’re so damn perfect, don’t you?” Meg Logan snapped at me one afternoon in P.E. All the girls were running through their litany of complaints about themselves, and I remained silent as usual. She realized I was just listening and not offering anything in common. Maybe it was the slight smile on my face that annoyed her.
Actually, I was so curious about them, how they thought and what they said, so I just wanted to listen, almost the way someone from another country might. I couldn’t help wondering if I really was dramatically different from them in ways I was just beginning to understand.
“No,” I told her, annoyed with how she had come at me so viciously. “Just not as imperfect.”
“Huh? You’re weird,” she said. “No one knows who you really are and why you’re so damn secretive, slinking around here like some ghoul and guarding your precious privacy. Frankly, I don’t want to waste my time finding out anything more about you. I know enough to disgust me.”
The others agreed, shook their heads at me, and moved away. I couldn’t argue with what she had said, although I wasn’t secretive in order to guard my precious privacy. I really didn’t know as much about myself as I would have liked to know. Sometimes I felt like someone inhabiting the shell of someone else, wearing my body and face like a costume and mask.