Girl Through Glass Read Free

perfume, carrying shiny leather appointment books for their daughters. They wait in the dressing room for their daughters to finish class, crocheting or gossiping.
    But Mira’s mother makes Mira chickpea sandwiches on bread that crumbles when she touches it. Mira’s mother wears orange jumpsuits and culottes, and drops her off and leaves to do errands, floating in at the end of class, smelling fresh and sour, like the ocean and a cloudy day. And instead of a name like a bell or a flower, she named her Mira because it is unusual and different and so now the Puerto Rican girls say Mira Mira, is you red-haired Puerto Rican?
    No, she’s just a white girl with a weird mother.
    But now it scarcely matters anymore. Mira is eleven and can get herself to class. She travels with her friend Val who lives in her neighborhood but goes to a different school. They meet by the subway, their dance bags full, their hair already bound up in high ponytails, their hairnets and bobby pins in the outer pockets of their bags.
    Mira’s mother, in paint-splattered overalls and head kerchief, is conferring with a Selba’s saleslady. The saleslady is rifling through a stack of leotards and her mother is nodding distractedly—Mira can tell she is still thinking about one of her half-finished paintings.
    â€œBetter to get them big,” her mother agrees. The saleslady picks up a cap-sleeved leotard that has come loose from its packaging and lies on the bottom of the bin. She brushes off the lint.
    â€œWe’re supposed to wear spaghetti strap,” Mira says quickly. “Cap sleeve are for Level One and Two.”
    Mira’s mother looks from her eleven-year-old daughter to the wigged saleslady; her forehead pinches together. “Excuse me,” she says to the lady. Then, to Mira, “Outside!” On the sidewalk, they stand in a patch lit by the afternoon sun. The mica in the sidewalk glints all around Mira’s sandals. A fat pigeon with a clubfoot pecks along the curb. Down the narrow street that intersects with this one, Mira can see the tower of a factory spewing smoke into the gray air.
    Her mother puts her face right up to Mira’s. But she doesn’t yell. Instead, she leans against the wall and then slides down until she is sitting on the sidewalk. She drops her head in her hands. “Time for a break,” she says. You can hear a bit of her Manhattan voice creeping in, a snipping of the vowels and a hardening of the consonants.
    Mira sits down next to her. Her mother digs in her big suede shoulder bag.
    â€œMom, people are staring.”
    â€œWho are these theoretical people?” Rachel pulls out a bag of crushed nuts and smashed raisins and offers some to Mira. Mira looks down the long, narrow street. In the distance, she can see someone coming.
    â€œHim.” They stare as a man’s form fills out with details. He has greasy hair and wears a plaid jacket. He is walking under a green and red awning. He is smoking a cigarette.
    â€œYou think you’ll ever see him again?” her mother says loudly as the man lopes past.
    The man steals a glance at her mother, then stops, as if he just remembered something. “Got a light?” he says.
    Her mother scrounges around in her bag. Other mothers have purses, her mother has a bag —it is a big suede one made of colorful leather straps. She pulls out a dog-eared book of matches.
    â€œHey,” he says, looking at the logo of the nightspot on the matchbook cover. “That’s a good place. They’ve got a good piano bar.”
    â€œI know,” she says. She pulls the kerchief off her hair, so that it falls down. It is long, wavy, and very red.
    â€œThat’s some hair, lady,” he says.
    â€œRachel,” Mira says. “Her name’s Rachel.” Her mother lets her call her Rachel sometimes. Sometimes she insists on it. It’s hard to say when she is Mira’s mom and when she is