Ava pointed to the little boy, a skinny little thing with big eyes and long lashes that girls would always covet, smaller than most of the girls in line at the ballet barre. Girls would admire him, giggle with excitement behind their hands when he passed. He would avoid the chunky stage so many boys struggled through and sail into his old boyhood and manhood as straight and lean as a dancer, though this class would be the closest he’d ever get to that profession. “See there, I keep telling him. He won’t follow directions.” As if on cue, the only boy in the line of ballerinas glanced up at her. Warned by the teacher against waving during practice, he held his hand in front of his chest and gave Ava a tiny peace sign with two fingers.
You need to mourn your pain or it will rot you. Don’t let anybody tell you different. Ava spent months on her couch watching every game show and every real housewife that came on television, wishing for a different reality and then not wishing at all. After a few months her mother said, “It’s time.” And to Ava’s surprise she realized that it was. She got up. On the North Carolina Adoption Services site pictures of her children popped up. Free and open for adoption the caption said. The pair wants to stay together. They are bright, happy children. Wesley loves music and loves to play board games. May is a pretty, sweet girl who wants to be part of a family. Ava called the agency the next day and they began visitations.
“Look at him trying to be slick,” Ava said and tried giving him a stern look. “He’s the only boy in the class. Free lessons.”
“The only boy? He’ll appreciate that in a few years,” Henry said.
“Actually he’s the only boy in the whole school,” Ava said. The children were aged four and six, a sibling pair. How it happened that she couldn’t remember her life before their arrival was a balm and a miracle to her. Some glorious trick of memory inserted their sweet faces into every circumstance and location of her life past, present, and future.
“Well, he’s making the most of the lessons looks like.” Henry laughed. The little boy counted on his fingers, marched in place while the little girls in line moved their feet from first to second position.
“Look at May.” Ava pointed.
“She’s getting good,” Henry said, though he had only seen her dance on a video. Their time together now was the longest he’d spend with Ava in almost a year. “They look just alike.” The little girl tried hard not to look in Ava’s direction and concentrate on the precision of her feet, her tiny pointed toe.
Ava and Sylvia had cleaned out their house. They considered having a giant yard sale but instead stacked the junk in a pile and put a FREE sign in front of it. The room that used to belong to Devon was now a room for the kids, full of hard plastic toys in cheerful colors. Ava liked to think that Devon had been too good for this world and he must have been raptured, but with her children in his room she could not believe that he was fully gone. There had been no rapture, because the rest of them had not been left behind.
“Zeke is coming to Daddy’s tomorrow. I told you Sean got out, didn’t I?” Henry asked.
“He is? Home already? No, you didn’t tell me. I want to see him. You don’t tell me anything. Tell him to come by and see us.”
Ava smiled but kept her attention on her May’s serious face. She would have to remember to tell her to have fun, to not worry about being perfect, that she is loved and can make mistake after mistake with the certainty that her mother, her grandmother, and a small but passionate group of people would open their arms, cluck their tongues, but keep their arms open to her every single time. “I told my May about perennials, you know the flowers? You know what she said?”
Henry shook his head no.
“She said, ‘Mama, if I die, I’ll come back, but maybe not in the same way.’ Can you believe that?”
“Kids. They kill you, don’t they?”
Ava and Henry watched the little dancers run through their jetés and frustrated leaps across the room. Miss Parsons’s slicked-back brown hair was clasped into a neat bun at the base of her neck. She was very young and full of the zeal of the young. Marking time with claps to the music, pointing to errant feet and arms, her mouth in a grim set. Though the kids were babies, she did not smile. She would make dancers of these preschoolers and they would return to her in a few years, thank her for the hard lessons, the harsh instructions that had seemed angry at the time but now felt necessary. They would all name her as their inspiration. She clapped her hands, the signal for the kids to surround her.
“I’ve got an Atari for the kids,” Ava said.
“Atari. Where did you find that, Goodwill?”
“No, they make new ones now. Everything comes back if you wait long enough,” Ava said. Ava almost told Henry to bring Zeke to her house to play. She could feel the words forming in her mouth, but she couldn’t yet say them. Maybe in time.
“How long have we been here, a week? Is it Sunday yet?” Henry whined.
Ava laughed. “It’s almost over.”
“You know, I didn’t used to think that black people did this.” Ava turned to look full-face at Henry.
“Did what?” Henry said.
“Spoke to each other after they hate each other.” Ava half-smiled.
“Me neither, tell you the truth.”
“I thought it was like if I wanted to talk to you, ever, I would have stayed married to you.” Ava laughed.
“Well, we don’t have to be what everybody else is,” Henry said. “I think we’ve proved that enough times.”
Henry had begun calling her every couple weeks and Ava looked forward to talking to him. She even let him talk to her children. He asked them stupid questions like did they drive, did they work? did they know how to plow a field? Ava wanted to talk to Henry. She couldn’t remember when she’d wanted to talk to him while they lived together. For a couple of fleeting moments she had considered taking him back into her home and her life, but the simple truth was he had killed that part of her. She didn’t want him. Lana was right. She’d been lucky or at least lucky enough. Maybe she would welcome another man into her life when the time came, but right now, too much had happened that could not be overcome. She felt peace. Her mother had asked her if her heart was healed with her babies in the house. “What is dead is dead, Mama, not gone. But I’m like you, the part that keeps on living, lives large.”
“Did you hear Plant Four is closing this summer?”
“I hadn’t heard,” Henry said, but the news sucker punched him. Both his parents had spent years pacing that concrete floor imagining that life might be lived differently behind a desk or at a job with clean, unstained clothes. He had spent his young adulthood there himself. Good lord how he had hated it, and every single day he felt the fist clench of his shrinking soul contract a little tighter in his gut when he knew he had to punch that clock. What a disappointment that the place, even the death of it, could still move him. He was glad he wasn’t in town to see it happen.
“You look sad. Are you sad about it?” Ava said, an incredulous look on her face.
Henry shrugged away the tears that threatened his face. “Hey, I was young there.”
Ava squeezed his hand. The children stood in a line and waited for the teacher to adjust their posture. They were supposed to keep the bowl of their pelvis straight not tilted.
“Keep the milk in the bowl,” Miss Parsons said.
“Stop fidgeting. It only seems like a long time. Wait until the recital,” Ava said.
“I’m busy recital day,” Henry said.