“Okay,” Tiara said, settling back. “Okay.”
“Isn’t that nice?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you see the stars up there? Can you make out any shapes?”
“Yeah. I can.”
“What do you see?”
Tiara began to whimper. “A pervy dinosaur.” She leapt up and made a serpentine run for the jungle.
“Should we go after her?” Petra asked.
“Go after who?” Nicole asked.
Petra tried to remember, but her mind would not stay on task. “I don’t know.”
Shanti felt the blades of grass petting her ears. “I’m not sure what kind of Indian I am. I’m not really sure what I am at all anymore.”
“We’re not just sashes and states,” Nicole said on a sigh.
“Or gender,” Petra murmured. “Or bodies.”
“I’m sort of everything all at once,” Nicole whispered.
And then they were silent, lost to dreaming.
Shanti was a kite flying high in the sky. She’d never felt so weightless. At first, it was terrifying — where would she go? How would she get back? What if she were to drift away unnoticed? But soon she found she liked the feeling of not knowing. She was in control of her thoughts, and that was all she really needed. A strong tug brought her back.
Down below, Mrs. Mirabov held her string. “Comrade Singh, you are disgrace. Come down at once. We have work to do if you are not to be total failure like high-waisted, acid-wash jeans.”
“But I don’t want to. I like it up here.”
“You will fail, Shanti Singh. You need the winning. As yourself, you are not enough.”
Shanti the Kite wobbled and dipped. She feared that the wind might upend her and she would crash to earth and break into a million small splinters. Everyone would see. In a frightened voice, she called to Mrs. Mirabov. “Hold me up!”
“Only if you do as I tell you.”
“Okay,” Shanti agreed.
Mrs. Mirabov tightened her hold on both the string and the kite’s tail, and the kite went taut. Shanti felt it as a stabbing pain between her shoulder blades.
“I’m going to break,” Shanti gasped out.
“Nonsense. You are only as good as what you can do. Remember that you are not likeable, Comrade Singh,” Mrs. Mirabov called.
“I know.” The pain in Shanti’s back sharpened. It was unbearable.
“It is important for girls to be likeable.”
“But why?” Shanti asked.
If Mrs. Mirabov had an answer, she wasn’t sharing. “Come down this instant and we work on interview portion. You can tell story of how much you wish to be mother someday. People like to hear about your future plans for ovaries.”
Carefully, Shanti inched her way down, but the wind resisted. “Let go,” it whispered.
“I can’t. I’ll crash,” she said.
“Everybody crashes sometime.”
“Not me.”
“Comrade Singh, there are other girls who would not keep me waiting. Other girls who want it more.”
“She’s the best,” Shanti tried to explain.
The wind was warm. It caressed Shanti’s skin. It wanted to play. “We will hold you for a while.”
And for a moment, Shanti wondered why she needed Mrs. Mirabov when she already had the wind.
“I’m sorry,” she called down. “But I have to do this on my own. Thank you. And good-bye.”
“You will fail, Comrade Singh!” With a scowl and a blast of Russian, Mrs. Mirabov let go of the string connecting them. As Shanti soared higher, her handler shouted, “You are on your own! A girl without a tribe is no one. No one!”
“No one,” the wind said, laughing. “No one,” it sang like a round. “No one,” it repeated until it sounded like the ringing of a temple bell signaling something sacred, some great happiness, a moment freed from attachment. “No one,” it chanted, and all Shanti heard was Om.
Petra sat by the river’s edge listening to the night sounds and watching a frog hopping along the marshy, muddy bank. When Petra was little, her mother used to tell her a bedtime story. Now she found herself inside the story, which went as follows:
Once upon a time, when magic was not questioned and the miraculous showed itself in every dewdrop and moon shadow, there lived a frog. The frog had fine, strong legs and a wonderful, full-throated croak and was the pride of its mother and father. They loved the frog’s jolly temper, its warm greeting to the sun each morning, and did not mind at all that the frog thought itself a princess.
When the frog said, “Once I am grown, I shall have the most beautiful golden hair,” they said only, “To match your beautiful heart.” When the frog asked, “When shall I become a princess?” they answered, “When you are ready.”
And so it went, the frog cheerfully insisting to all in the meadow that it was a princess-in-waiting, until one day, a real princess strutted into the meadow, proud and vain.
“Hello, sister princess,” said the frog happily, for it was certain this was a sign that the time for its transformation had come.
“Why do you call me sister, little frog?”
“I’m not a frog,” the little green creature laughed (and Petra felt it deep in her belly). “I’m a princess, like you.”
“You?” laughed the girl. “You’ve no long golden hair like I. You’ve no alabaster arms and delicate feet with toenails painted a sweet pink. You’ve no honey-sweet laugh like mine. You’re just a lowly, croaking, ugly frog.”
“You’re wrong,” the frog said.
“I will show you,” the princess said. She led the little frog to the clearest part of the river. “See for yourself. You are a frog. And I am a princess. And nothing, nothing on this earth, will ever change that.”
The frog gazed at itself in the cursed water as if seeing for the first time and saw that what the princess said was true, and its sadness was beyond measure. In her dream, Petra felt warm tears on her cheeks.
Before sleep each night, the frog prayed to the four winds, to the great fish, to the sun above, and to the goddess moon that when it woke, it would be a princess. Yet each morning, the frog opened its eyes to find it was still only a frog. How could nature be so wrong about something so important? The frog grew bitter and lonely. It despaired. The frog’s parents became terribly frightened.
“We must do something,” croaked the mother.
“What can we do?” croaked the father.
They sat with their little frog and said, “We wish you only happiness. If you are meant to be a princess, then so be it. We will love you no matter what. Perhaps you should visit the Wise Witch of the Woods. She will know what to do.”
It was a daring plan, for the woods were full of many dangers, but the little frog was determined. After kissing its mother and father good-bye, it traveled far and wide in search of the mysterious, elusive Wise Witch of the Woods. For years it searched without luck. The frog feared it would never become a princess.
“Don’t give up,” Petra whispered in her dream, and as if the story-frog heard her, it came upon a large acorn covered in vines. The half-buried acorn was easy to miss, but the frog saw straightaway that the acorn was a false shell hiding something inside.
“Hello? Is there anyone there?” the frog croaked out.
“Yes! I am the Wise Witch of the Woods. I’ve been trapped inside this acorn by a terrible spell,” came the response. “If you can release me, I will grant you your heart’s desire.”
The frog didn’t know how it could possibly save a witch from so great a spell. But it sat for a while and it thought and eventually it came up with a plan. It summoned up all its courage and let loose a mighty croak, which cracked the acorn to bits and freed the witch.
The Wise Witch was very grateful to the little frog. She kept her promise. “What is your heart’s desire?” she asked.
But the frog had almost given up on its wish. It didn’t know if such a wish were possible. “Well,” it said softly, afraid, “I have always wanted to be a princess. But I have seen myself in the river. And it has shown me that I am a frog.”
The witch smiled. “The river does not know everything. Look again.”
Together, they traveled to another part of the river. It was hard to see anything here, but the witch said, “If you are brave and your heart is true, make your wish and jump.”
The frog dove into the water, and soon its legs began to lengthen. Its three spindly fingers became five slender ones with jeweled rings on each. And when the frog broke the surface, its long golden hair shone in the sun.
“I am a princess!” said the frog in a voice soft and sweet as first spring clover.
“Princess,” Petra repeated.
The frog on the bank croaked in response and leapt into the moon-dappled river. On the water’s surface, a bright orange fish swam through Petra’s reflection, blurring all definition.
Nicole could not sit still, and so she went for a walk in the glistening green of the jungle. To her surprise, she came upon a gingerbread house that smelled of cinnamon and cloves. Smoke pumped from its chimney.
“I wonder where I am?” she said.
A beautiful café au lait teen stuck her head out of one of the windows. She wore a pointed princess hat with a #1 on it. “You’re on the corner of stupid and clueless.”
Canned laughter echoed in the trees. It sounded like the laugh track on all those teen TV shows Nicole had seen a million times.
“I’m sorry?” Nicole said.
Another comely sister stuck her head out a window. There was a #2 on her hat. “You a couple snaps short of a gingersnap, aren’t you?”
“I beg your —”
A third girl in a hat marked #3 shoved her hand out the window, palm first. “Talk to the hand.”
The laugh track roared and subsided again. The house, the trees, and the sidekicks cast tall shadows that reminded Nicole of an art exhibit she’d seen by an African-American artist. The exhibit was a series of silhouettes of slaves and minstrels. It was very controversial and pissed off a lot of people. But Nicole had found it powerful; it had made her angry and afraid in equal measure.