“Not allowed,” said Pa. “The bubbles will counter the power of the soup.”

I was heaving like I was going to vomit. I wanted to, only Pa would be so disappointed.

“Here.” Pa gave us each a piece of dried salted plum. It was a relief to have another taste in my mouth.

“They were boiled so long, all the germs in the caterpillars must have been sterilized, right?” Lisa said.

“Sure,” I said. “Can we talk about something else now?”

Pa said, “I think I feel stronger already.”

—

The next morning, I woke up and my cold seemed to have been cured overnight. Lisa, though, remained unchanged.

—

For the first time in my life, I now rode the subway every morning, rocketing north out of Chinatown. I descended into the station in one world, and I emerged, half an hour later, in an entirely different one. Riding the subway was fascinating to me, watching all of the people get on and off. As the train went uptown, the number of Chinese people in the car decreased. They were replaced by men and women in long black coats, reading their cell phones. When I spotted a subway car ad for lupus treatment, I bit my lip, wondering if Lisa had some disease like that. What if she was really sick? No, she was a young healthy girl. She was just stressed.

More people got on and off. I particularly studied the other young women who seemed to be, like me, on their way to work, yet in some ways looked so different. Many of them wore simple clothing that somehow still managed to be attractive by the way it fell over their bodies. They all seemed to have the same types of flat shoes or black boots and oversized bags. It felt as if the rest of the world knew something I didn’t, like they were dancing the tango together while I was doing freestyle, flailing away by myself.

At the studio, I’d grown more comfortable since Estella left. Simone still intimidated me but she kept more to herself. The class of potential new dance teachers had recently petered out: Adrienne and Dominic had narrowed it down to three people, but then all of them had dropped out for one reason or another. One had gotten a job at another dance studio, another decided to move out of New York, and they couldn’t reach the last one at all. Now they had decided the upcoming period was too busy with ballroom shows and preholiday preparations to start another audition process, so they would wait until after the New Year to hire someone.

Adrienne was in the office every day at seven months pregnant. And I was still making mistakes. When I was under stress, I would sometimes forget how all of the buttons on the phone worked.

I had so much trouble with writing things down that Adrienne had said one day casually, “I think you may be dyslexic. Have you ever considered that?” I remembered a teacher in high school had mentioned that possibility to me as well, had wanted to talk to Pa about testing he’d need to approve. But Pa had been too nervous to come to school and I didn’t want Uncle Henry or Aunt Monica to think I was somehow damaged goods, so I’d told Pa that the problem had been solved. I couldn’t even really explain what dyslexia was to him either, since I wasn’t sure myself. But in any case, it was not a positive sign if your boss thought you might have a learning disability.

I overheard Dominic talking to Adrienne about me in the office next to the reception area. “She cut off Giovanni on the phone.” Giovanni was the Avery head of our entire region.

“No. Was he angry?” Adrienne sounded horrified.

“He seemed to think it was funny. Said she had a sexy voice but maybe we should hire someone who could actually do the work.”

“Sexy?”

“I know, but on the phone you can’t see how she’s hiding in her baggy clothing.”

I was mortified. I’d hoped the glamour of the studio had rubbed off on me and that I was becoming a bit stylish since starting work there. Aunt Monica had told me I was too boyish and muscular, so I tended toward clothes that helped compensate. Pa taught me to cover my legs at least below the knee, midcalf if possible, and now that it was cold out, I was wearing a few layers underneath my clothing to add to my thin coat. I spent as little as possible on my own clothing, knowing how important it was for Lisa to look nice at school and fit in with the other girls. I didn’t want her to be as unpopular as I’d been. Most of my dresses and more formal clothes were hand-me-downs from Aunt Monica or leftovers the local ladies had saved for us from the garment factory.

Growing up, my only female role models had been Aunt Monica and Godmother Yuan, and even though I’d known Aunt Monica’s taste for shiny fabric and large flowers was not the epitome of elegance, it was probably unavoidable that it would influence me a bit. Zan and Mo Li weren’t much help either; then, they’d been just as clueless as I was. But it was obvious even to me that neither the dancers nor the students at the studio dressed the way I did. The students’ clothing was plain but sleek, while the dancers, of course, wore flashier, more clingy clothing. It was so confusing. I’d never really cared about how I looked before. Once again, I longed for a mother I could talk this over with.

I remembered a time Ma and I had been at Aunt and Uncle’s house in Queens. I was about ten years old. It was before Lisa’s birth. We were waiting for them to come home and Ma had taken me into their bedroom, then opened Aunt Monica’s jewelry box.

“Should we?” I asked.

She’d giggled like a child caught in the act. “No. This is very naughty of us.”

Then she’d put a gold bracelet on her slender wrist and a jade necklace around my neck. She held up her arm, allowing the sleeve of the shirt she wore for waitressing to fall away, revealing the curve and muscle of her skin, her fingers unfurling like the petals of a flower as she watched herself in the mirror. Then with one arm high and one bent in front of her like a branch in the wind, she’d whirled into a series of turns, one after another after another, until suddenly she stopped with her arm still high, facing herself in the mirror. Even then, I understood it wasn’t the bracelet she longed for but the space that went with such a piece of jewelry, the room and time to dance again.

“I am like a little girl here, Charlie,” she said. “Playing at dressing up. Just the weight of this thing makes me remember.”

I’d hardly dared make a sound for fear of disturbing her strange mood. I was afraid to frighten her into silence again but I wanted to know. “What, Ma? What do you remember?”

She gave a little laugh and said, “Lights. The smell of powder. An empty stage and my arms and hair weighed down with jewelry and clips. Everything made to catch the light.”

“Like you,” I said.

She’d caught me up in her arms then and held me. “You, you are my light-catcher.” And then she’d tickled me until I couldn’t breathe and when we were done, we both put back the pieces of jewelry we’d borrowed.

Even now, I wished I’d been old enough to buy her jewelry, to dress her up one more time before she died.

—

Then I made another big mistake. I’d booked Simone for the beginners’ group class on Tuesday evening but didn’t realize she had an extra lesson with her private student Keith then. They were getting ready for an upcoming showcase at the Copacabana and she couldn’t move him. And now no one else was free to teach the group, either. This emerged at the Monday meeting, and to make things worse, dance coach Julian Edwards was present because he had to finalize details for the show with the dancers.

“Who is responsible for this?” Dominic roared.

I could feel everyone trying not to look at me.

“I’m really sorry,” I said.

“This is the final straw, Charlie,” he said. “We gave you a chance but there have been so many issues.”

Adrienne laid a hand on his arm. “We’re already looking for a new dancer, Dominic. Unsuccessfully, I might add. Let’s not have to find a new receptionist at the same time, okay?”