C4 antho - Chamber Four

Everything Is Breakable with a Big Enough Stone ~275~
* * * *
When she was twelve, her father took her to Honolulu on
the car ferry. They stayed in a hotel made of crystal chandeliers.
Everything was breakable with a big enough stone:
walls, mirrors, glass elevator. Lyla won a dancing crown
making ribbons come to life like snakes. She kept hula hoops
in motion. She threw balls in the air and caught them in the
arches of her feet, above the swell of her belly, between her
chin and chest. She ate healthy food and drank lots of bottled
water. She did not smoke pot or PCP. She pinched her nose
when her father lowered the convertible roof and, with
closed eyes, called out movie star names, Malana, Sophia,
Ivy.
“Break a leg,” he whispered backstage, sweet charcoal
breath in her ear before she danced and disappeared behind
the rising smoke and music.
She danced to save swimmers from sharks. She leapt
into the air to be discovered and saved. She didn’t think
about her mothers or sisters and imagined everything that
ever mattered depended on the perfect execution of a single
split or pivot. One night, she pounded her bare feet into the
sand until parts of her she didn’t know could sweat were
leaking small waterfalls from her body.
“Slow down,” her father said. “Everything comes early to
you. What do you have left to wait for and accomplish?”
Except that month, her period was late. She missed it ferociously,
even though it was such a pain and mess. She
missed the way it had protected her for seven days and
nights. It had come early, when she was ten, and her sisters
had braided her hair in cornrows, and her mother had given
her napkins to pack in the dirt when she was done.