The pond behind our yard has frozen
solid, and Papa said it’s time to skate.
He brought Stacey and me home after school.
Mama gave us cookies and a thermos of cocoa
and told us to be very careful.
I know she wanted to come and watch
over us, but Papa said we’d never learn anything on our own.
They can see us through the kitchen window
and the bare trees.
Stacey and I hang our skates over our shoulders.
They glint in the thin sunlight
as we walk the snowy path to the pond
that’s ringed in dry timothy grass
and cattails poking out of the snow.
I brush off a stump
and we take turns lacing up our skates,
our bare fingers turning numb.
“Ready?” Stacey asks.
We tiptoe to the edge, where snow meets ice.
“Here goes,” I say,
push off on one skate,
slide both together,
and push off on the other.
Stacey catches up, wobbly,
and we circle the pond slowly
side by side, our arms held out to steady ourselves
and each other.
After one time around, I know how this ice feels,
how frozen ripples change the sound,
and how to swerve around pebbles and twigs.
“Look—I can skate backward!” I call,
and show Stacey how I wiggle
into the center of the pond
like that girl at the mall rink.
“Twirl, Mimi!” Stacey says, clapping her mittens.
I laugh and hold out my arms.
“Watch me,” I say,
and stop—
Because I’m not the girl with the cute skirt
and the ponytail that sticks out when she spins,
the perfect girl in the center
who everyone wants to be. I’ll never be her—
No—
I’m the girl with cooties, the foolish girl
who wants to be an astronaut,
who eats by herself in the cafeteria.
I’m the girl all alone at the center
of attention,
not because of what I can do
but because of what I am.