—
At eight o’clock on the dot, Shirley opened the doors. From her post at the refreshment table, Lily had a good view of the whole gym. Their friends arrived first: Will and Hanson in sport coats; Flora and Mary in pink and green party dresses. Then some boys from the football team and their dates, and then a big crowd of students all at once around eight fifteen. At first everyone mingled: the Chinese and the Italians, the Negroes and the Caucasians. The girls stood in circles as they admired one another’s dresses and compared their carnation corsages. The boys moved between the refreshment table and the girls, offering them cups of punch and awkwardly hovering nearby while they got up the nerve to ask them to dance.
Lily saw Shirley flitting from one place to another, her tea-length dress floating around her in a cloud of baby blue. Shirley had saved up her money to buy that dress, and then Mary helped tailor it to fit, taking in the bust to better show off her figure. She had acquired a glittering cubic zirconia necklace and matching earrings and found some white satin gloves in the back of a Chinatown boutique. She looked like the princess of the ball, and she was reveling in it. Every so often she glanced at Lily, and once she even came over to ask if everything was all right. But she didn’t suggest that Lily join her and their friends, and Lily was relieved to have an excuse to hide behind the table.
It was Shirley who made the first brave foray onto the dance floor, dragging Will with her, and soon afterward other couples followed, holding each other at regulation distance as they moved like jerky robots across the gym. The mixing and mingling was over now; the couples were all matched pairs—Chinese with Chinese, Negroes with Negroes. As Lily eyed Shirley and Will, a fragment of a memory floated into her consciousness. Hadn’t his brother, Calvin, caused something of a scandal a few years ago? She couldn’t remember exactly what it was, but it had to do with a girl he’d brought to a dance. Shirley would remember, because she remembered everything, but Lily didn’t think that now was the right time to ask.
She glanced up at the giant clock on the gym wall beneath the scoreboard. It was already half past eight, and as the minutes continued to tick by, there was no sign of Kath. She kept the punch bowl filled and rearranged the cookies and poured out more pretzels, but there came a time when there was nothing else for her to do, and she didn’t want to stand up anymore. She drifted over to the bleachers with her own cup of punch, feeling like a wallflower and trying not to stare too anxiously at the main doors.
When the band struck up “ABC Boogie,” almost everyone surged onto the dance floor. The boys swung the girls out, their skirts twirling as they swirled back into their arms. There was laughter and shouting, and someone was singing the lyrics above the sound of the band, and the girls were taking off their heels to dance. Lily watched it all from her perch on the bleachers. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that she was quite alone; all of the other wallflowers had found partners or chosen to join the dance with friends. Lily crossed her arms around her stomach and pasted on an expression that attempted to declare, I’m perfectly fine over here.
It hadn’t always been like this. Lily never used to question whether she should go to a dance, or whether she would enjoy it, or even what she would do if nobody wanted to dance with her. They’d all freely traded dance partners, because nobody was allowed to go on dates. At least, that’s the way it used to be among her Chinatown friends. Now everyone knew that Hanson and Flora were steadies, although they wouldn’t admit it because their parents still didn’t allow it. And the kids who weren’t Chinese seemed to all have girlfriends or boyfriends this year. A few of them were already engaged to be married. When had everything changed? She felt as if it had been very sudden.
As the band began another popular song, some of the dancers switched partners, and Lily took care not to meet anyone’s eyes; she didn’t want anyone to ask her. Instead she glanced over at the refreshment table—it didn’t look like the punch needed replenishing—and around the periphery toward the main doors, where she caught sight of a girl hovering near the wall, hands clasped in front of her. Lily stood up abruptly. The girl was obscured by the dancing couples, and Lily had to climb down the bleachers to get a better look. Yes—the girl was wearing an ordinary brown skirt and a white blouse beneath her jacket—it was Kath.
Lily ran across the gym, narrowly avoiding the twirling couples, only to trip over a pair of discarded patent black heels. Kath grabbed her arm, and Lily clutched Kath’s hand, and they spun through half a circle, as if they were dancing, before Lily broke away, breathless. “Let’s get out of here,” she said, and headed for the exit.
14
The doors to the gym slammed shut behind them, muffling the sound of the band. Lily and Kath stood on the wide landing outside; below them, concrete steps descended to the exterior door. The gym was in a building across the street from the high school, which meant there were few places for them to go: two flights down to the locker rooms, or outside into the night. Lily chose the night.
“Where are you going?” Kath called, hurrying after her.
“Anywhere,” Lily said, and shoved open the heavy doors.
Bay Street was filled with fog. Aquatic Park was only two blocks away, and the scent of the ocean was thick in the air. Lily rubbed her hands over her bare arms and realized she had left her jacket inside, but she couldn’t go back in—not yet.
“Let’s walk to Aquatic Park,” Lily said.
“Are you sure? You don’t have your coat.”
“It’s not that cold. Or at least not that windy.” She cast a glance at Kath as they began heading toward the corner. “I just need some air. I didn’t realize it was so stuffy in there.”