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By Root 1320 0

between the kids on the dance floor and the unneeded chaperones, perched like fat chickens on the edge of the porch. And though Rose is not prone to saying things like this, she will indeed tell you that night held magic: the way the paper lanterns we had made, decorated with Chinese characters someone had been studying, swayed in the breeze, the way the false stars of the light strings twinkled below the real stars, giving the impression that she could have reached up and held the light of a thousand years ago in her hands. She stood for a while, watching Cordy’s serious, studious waltz with Dr. Ambrose, Bean and Nick’s stiff-armed rocking, and, most wistfully, Lyssie and Daniel’s chastely impassioned repetitive circle. When Bean and Nick turned again, she caught Rose’s eye, and they paused for a moment. And then Rose smiled at Bean, showing in that simple expression how proud she was of the way we had transformed that undernourished scrap of yard into something so beautiful, and Bean smiled back, and then Rose disappeared into the darkness, leaving behind the enchantment for her cruelly cinder-blocked dormitory.

When we got to the hospital, our father was sitting in one of the chairs, reading a wide-spined tome, while our mother poked suspiciously at a tray of food. She looked sallow and tired, the blush we so love in her cheeks still absent.

“Ah, it is my dog-hearted daughters,” our father said, barely looking up from his book. His clothes were rumpled, stray hairs crawled up his cheeks from his beard.

“A decrepit father takes delight to see his active child do deeds of youth,” Cordy shot back.

“That’s a sonnet,” our father retorted.

“No one ever said sonnets didn’t count,” Cordy said.

“Ignore him,” our mother said, and her voice sounded reedy and thin. “Come give me a kiss.”

“Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,” Cordy singsonged. “Is that better, Daddy?”

Our father humphed again and went back to his book. We went over to our mother’s bed and gave her kisses. Rose hugged her tightly, and our mother squeaked at the pressure. Bean gave her a whisk of a kiss, like a broom sweeping clean, and Cordy climbed into bed on her good side and curled up in the crook of our mother’s arm, cat-like.

“How was traffic? You’re here late,” our mother said, shifting gently, leaning back against the pillows, white as her skin.

“Bean drove,” Cordy said. “We got here lickety-split.”

“We went dress shopping for Rose,” Bean said, leaning up against the wall, her legs crossed, fashion-model.

“Find anything?” Our mother reached up to scratch her scalp, which had begun to itch as her hair grew back in, and winced at the stretch of the skin under her arm.

“I’ll do it,” Cordy said, and sat up, rummaging in the thick wool satchel hanging across her shoulder until she produced a mangy-looking, soft-bristled brush, and sat beside our mother in the bed, stroking the brush over the wisps that were appearing along the shocking bare skin of her scalp. We sat in silence for a moment, wondering at the sight, the contrast between the thick spill of hair we remembered, the way it fell, dark wood, over her shoulders when she loosened it, and the sparse fur that was her hair now. When we were little, we loved to watch our mother brush her hair, the long, luxuriant strokes bringing forth the shine, and then the quick, efficient movements as she twisted it into a bun. Cordy’s hands looked thick and inept in comparison, our mother’s head as delicate as an unopened bloom.

“No,” Rose said. The fact that other mothers might have been more eager, flipping through bridal magazines, begging to come along or even organizing the trip themselves, did not go without notice. But this was not our mother. She was not the kind of woman to raise her daughters to read bridal magazines, and therefore, of course, would not read them herself. “Everything looked hideous on me.”

“That’s because everything was hideous,” Bean said.

“It’s a hideous culture,” our mother said as Cordy finished brushing the light fuzz of our mother’s hair. Cordy had propped her up awkwardly,