Free Dancing on the Edge by Han Nolan

deceit!” She grabbed both my shoulders. “Now you take off that old stinky robe of Dane’s and put on these new spiritual clothes I bought you for your birthday. See if that doesn’t help. Our years of mourning are at an end.” She let go of me and lifted her arms above her head, her face turned to the ceiling. She closed her eyes and hummed. She opened her mouth, still humming, and then with a sudden snap of her lips she stopped. I waited several minutes for her to speak. Then, in a loud quivering voice, she said, “The winds of change are blowing.” Her arms swayed above her. “The stars are realigning. You must be ready. Great things are about to happen to us all!” She opened her eyes and clasped my head in her hands. “You’ve been green way too long. You start wearing your spiritual clothes every day, you hear? You wear nothing but purple, and you meditate on the highest spiritual matters till you have a purple aura, like me. Purple means you possess spiritual and psychic powers. Now, go on and change and bring me that old robe when you’re done.” Then she turned and glided away.
    I took a long time changing my clothes. I undid the sash of the robe and ran it back and forth through my hands, feeling the worn material slipping between my fingers. Then I set it on my cot and took off the robe. It was like peeling off all the layers of my skin. Anytime I removed it, I felt certain that I had become invisible, as if the robe gave my body its shape and substance. Without it I was nothing at all. I cut off a piece of the sash and stuffed it in my shorts pocket. I tied the rest of it around the robe, and after changing into my purple, carried it out to Gigi. I didn’t watch to see where she put it. I went outside to Etain. We rode around and around in the driveway.
    I wore my purple long-sleeved shirts and long pants and waited through the sticky sweet heat of a Georgia summer for my bruises to disappear. And I watched while the winds of change blew through Grandaddy Opal’s house, reshuffling all our lives.
    They were little things at first. Gigi started getting up earlier to spend some time with me before she went off to the shop. Grandaddy Opal grew his tomatoes and cucumbers and shared them with Gigi without grumbling about her macrobiotic foods, and the two of them started talking in front of me as if they liked each other. I had visions of them someday getting remarried and all of us living happy lives together, just the way it was that summer, happy and slow and sweet.
    I got to take over Grandaddy Opal’s newspaper route and spend the money I earned on anything I wanted. I bought a beautiful illustrated set of Grimm’s and Andersen’s fairy tales and the rest of my money I spent on things for Etain, like a rearview mirror and new reflectors.
    I still missed Dane, and I still looked for him, but for the first time in my life I felt a gentleness, a softness in the unfolding of each day. The dark fears that had hovered over me had faded to gray; the shadow kept its distance.
    One evening, near the end of that summer, the three of us were sitting out on the porch eating tomato sandwiches and drinking root beer. The air felt cool and dry for a change, and we rocked in our chairs with our faces lifted to catch the breeze. I could feel contentment riding on that breeze, flowing from one to the other of us. It was the first time we had all sat together in the same place. It was the first time Gigi and Grandaddy Opal were quiet, but all this didn’t last; the winds of change kept shifting.
    â€œYour van is blocking my view!” Grandaddy Opal said. “All them painted-on stars when I could be looking at the real thing.” He sat up straighter and strained to see past the van. “I been studying on stars, and I want to see ’em, so you go on and move that durn van out of my view!”
    Gigi kept rocking, holding her face up to the air.