Auntie and I used to watch
Shindig! and Hullabaloo
and sometimes Dick Clark
and dance.
She let me wear her white lipstick
and her go-go boots
as we did the Pony.
Tonight is my first real dance.
School calls it Spring Fling,
but everyone else calls it Spring Thing.
Stacey came home with me after school.
Mama made tempura—because she knows people like tempura—
and meat loaf, in case Stacey didn’t like tempura.
We had rice, and Mama asked if she wanted potatoes.
Stacey smiled and said, “We ate rice in Georgia, too.”
Now we go up to my room. I open the windows
because the warm May air puts me in the mood
for getting ready for my first dance.
Stacey’s dress is made of dotted swiss.
It has a white bodice and a violet skirt,
with a thin, white ribbon and a tiny flower at the waist.
She got it at a store called Bonwit Teller in Boston.
Her hair is in big curlers all around her head,
and when she puts mascara on her eyelashes,
her mouth opens, the way mine does when I look at the moon and stars.
Mama made my dress
from the robin’s-egg blue silk
that Auntie Sachi sent her for a kimono.
But Mama said she’d rather make a dress
she can see on me
than a kimono
she can see on herself
only in a mirror.
She said, “Besides, finding a gofukuya here to make a kimono
is like finding snow in Honolulu.”
“Your mother is so talented,” Stacey says,
running her fingers through a pleat in my dress.
“Does she make all your clothes?”
“Most of them,” I say, feeling guilty
that I wish my dress
had come from Bonwit Teller.
Now Stacey’s doing my makeup.
“Not too much,” Mama had told me yesterday.
“You’re beautiful enough already.”
My skin is too dark to wear Stacey’s liquid foundation,
but she pats blusher on my cheeks,
and smooths Vaseline on my lower lip with her pinkie.
“Go like this,” she says, pressing her lips together.
And when she stands close to me to draw on my eyelids,
her breath smells like toothpaste and tempura shrimp.
“Now your hair. Let’s make it loose.”
“No—Mama likes it pulled back tight.”
“She won’t mind just for tonight,” Stacey says,
then undoes my braid and combs my hair with her fingers.
She rubs a dab of goop in her hands
and runs them through my hair again, and says,
“Now your curls are making themselves known.”
She clips the sides together at the back of my head.
“What do you think?” she asks
as we stand side by side in the mirror.
I’m afraid to love what I see—
afraid it would be too vain
to think the girl with the blue dress and shiny lips
and hair curling around her shoulders
is pretty, so I say,
“You are so talented.”
We go downstairs
and Papa takes pictures of us,
together and separately.
Mama holds out her wedding pearls
and tells me to turn around.
They are cold on my neck, and I
feel like I’ve just grown up five years.
“The boys won’t have a chance around you girls,” Papa says,
and Stacey and I look at each other and say, “Eww.”
But I know what the boys think of Stacey
and how they’re afraid to talk to her
because she’s so pretty and has that accent
as fragrant as lilacs.
We put on our shoes at the door,
and Papa presses a dime into my palm.
“Just in case you need to call,” he says.
I don’t understand
because he’s picking me up after the dance.
When we drive past Mr. Dell’s house,
I wish Timothy were here
to see me all dressed up for my first dance.