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uncomfortably. She didn’t understand the shrinking feeling inside her, as if she shouldn’t be caught looking at those girls.
She knew she shouldn’t, but she had needed to have the picture in a way she didn’t consciously understand.
She couldn’t put into words why she had gathered these photos together, but she could feel it in her bones: a hot and restless urge to look—and, by looking, to know.
They looked at each other, Kath with her shy half smile and Lily with her earnestness, and there was such an unexpected feeling of openness between them—a flying kind of feeling, as if they had lifted off from the ground right then and there.
China had always seemed both impossibly distant and uncomfortably near to her, a land of silk-robed emperors in ancient palaces, but also of hardscrabble villages that lived on in her mother’s stories.
lesbian. The word felt dangerous, and also powerful, as if uttering it would summon someone or something—a policeman to arrest them for saying that word, or even worse, a real-life lesbian herself.
Are you like the girls in the book too? Because I think I am.
You can’t be associated with people like that.” Lily didn’t respond. She felt strangely disconnected
Lily knew that if she didn’t, there would be consequences. Shirley had said as much, hadn’t she? Jean’s queerness was contagious, like a cold, and it could be transmitted through Kath to Lily by nothing more than rumor.
There was a certain pleasure in knowing that Kath was watching her, that Kath would keep her eyes trained on Lily’s body
A spark of recognition, or a glow of hope.
The throb of her heart was so strong it frightened her. The anger that had reared up inside her was replaced, now, by a growing panic.
Lily felt her heartbeat thrumming in her chest as she watched; she was afraid to blink; she was afraid to miss the moment she sensed coming closer—and finally, there it was.
The way she stood, the way she moved—her swagger—so like a man and yet— It was that yet that made Lily’s skin flush warm.
It felt unspeakably charged, as if all of Lily’s most secret desires had been laid bare onstage.
It wasn’t like chocolate, Lily thought. It was like finding water after a drought. She couldn’t drink enough, and her thirst made her ashamed, and the shame made her angry.
The dancers must have always looked like this, but Lily felt as if this was the first time she truly saw them: the weight of their bodies; their aliveness and the warmth of their pink skin.
She missed Kath. She missed having Kath to talk to, yes, but she also missed having Kath listen to her. Rockets to the moon didn’t seem so far-fetched when Kath listened to her. She made previously unimaginable things seem possible.
Kath’s hair was short enough that Lily could see the tips of her ears now, the pinkness of her skin darkening, like color coming into a rose. Lily knew she was blushing too, but for an exhilarating moment, she didn’t care. “Yes,” she said. “Yes.”
She wondered if Kath was thinking about her. What if they were thinking of each other at the same time? The idea made her pulse quicken.
She had never seen two women dance together like that before, as if they were a man and a woman.
Lily wanted to laugh, but she had started to cry and her laughter came out of her in a choked sob. “No, I have feelings for you.”
Lily could feel the warmth of Kath’s body radiating off her, could smell the traces of cigarette smoke and beer on her breath, along with a new fragrance she didn’t recognize, something clean and bright. It made Lily’s skin tingle.
She felt as if speaking would ruin everything—then they’d have to put a name to this feeling between them, this rapidly growing heat and longing that made the sliver of air between their bodies charged with electricity. She could swear she felt the air humming.
The feel of Kath’s hands sliding around her body silenced her laughter. She stopped breathing, and Kath’s mouth touched hers, feeling its way in the dark.
Lily had not known, had never imagined, how a first kiss could turn so swiftly into a second, and a third, and then a continual opening and pressing and touching, the tip of her tongue against Kath’s, the warmth of her mouth and the way that warmth reached all the way through her body and raised an indescribable ache between her legs.
She realized with a start what she was doing and where she was doing it and whom she was doing it with, and she knew she should feel ashamed, but all she felt was the heaving of Kath’s chest against hers, and the tenderness of her lips where Kath had kissed her.
Boys and girls, men and women, smiling at each other or talking animatedly, hands touching, unafraid to be seen together. She felt a growling jealousy in the pit of her stomach at the unfairness of it.
It was extraordinary, Lily thought. There was nothing like this in the world.
The more her mother insisted it was a mistake, the more certain Lily was that it wasn’t. Perhaps that was the most perverse part of this: the inside-outness of everything, as if denial would make it go away, when it only made the pain in her chest tighten, when it only made her emotions clearer.
“If you lie about it, it’ll make it easier in the beginning, but your mother will never trust you again. Because she’ll know you lied to her. And every time you speak to her she’ll wonder if you’re lying—even if you’re talking about what you had for dinner, and especially who you went to dinner with. It’s better to be true to yourself than give her a reason not to trust you.”
She’s having a hard time right now because you’re not what she expected. But we’re never what our parents expected. They have to learn that lesson.”
Everything would be all right, Lily understood, as long as she kept that girl out of this Chinese family. Perhaps one day she’d get used to the way it made her feel: dislocated and dazed, never quite certain if the other half of her would stay offstage as directed.
Her mother was practically begging her to lie, and the temptation to give in was strong. It would be so much easier, and she didn’t want to endanger her father. But something stubborn in her balked at what her mother was asking for.
“Never mind,” she said. “You don’t have to say it. Do you think I’m disgusting?” He frowned and shook his head. “Of course not. I don’t care what they said. You’re my sister. Should I beat them up?”
She wondered if Kath could sense her, sitting here on this train as it took her away. Perhaps it was possible, if she closed her eyes and sent out her thoughts along the steel track like a message along a telegraph wire. I love you. I love you.
Lily raised her fingers to her lips as if to touch the last trace of Kath’s mouth on hers. She felt a queer giddiness overtaking her, as if her body might float up from the ground because she was so buoyant with this lightness, this love.
