Our conversation totters close to the cliff of silence.

Keels over.

Chandra says, "See you later."

Not see you soon.

I try to lift my eyes to meet hers.

But my gaze stays low and follows her quick, sure steps across the uneven floor.

After she leaves, though I shut my eyes, I can't stop picturing the ease of her walk.

STAYING AWAY.

Uday anna doesn't visit.

He's fine, Pa says, when I ask.

No one else was badly hurt.

Except the driver, who died.

After ten years of seeing Uday anna every day after school, I can't believe he doesn't miss me enough to visit once.

Tomorrow he'll come, I keep thinking.

Tomorrows come and go.

He sends a card: "With wishes for a complete recovery."

As if I could ever be complete with one leg half gone.

His absence shows he thinks I'm too crippled to dance again.

I tear up his card.

I'll show Uday anna.

Sooner than he thinks, I'll be back in his cla.s.sroom, back in compet.i.tion, back on my own feet.

Or rather, back on my own

one.

foot.

WHEELS.

SHORTEN.

I avoid looking at my chopped-off lump of leg uncovered.

When nurses change my dressing I stare at the banyan tree outside.

But when I navigate in "my own special wheelchair"

-rigged with a pad to keep my leg elevated- I can't not see this broken bit of my body that I hate.

Chandra hates her flat chest.

Chandra's eldest sister hates her fat thighs.

I never found myself beautiful until the day I won the dance compet.i.tion but I loved my strong body anyway.

Stuck in a wheelchair, I'm waist-high to everyone else.

Or worse, lower than even that.

FORWARD.

Pa, Ma, and Paati are in the hospital room when Jim strides in with a pair of crutches.

Jim says, "Got a feeling you weren't too keen on wheelchairs. Or walkers.

Thought you might prefer to leave the hospital on these."

"Yes!" I can't wait to stand dancer tall.

Move without rolling on wheels.

Jim's eyes sparkle at me. "We'll need to practice.

Especially going down stairs. Come."

Pa says, "Won't crutches hurt her ribs?"

Jim rea.s.sures him it's okay.

Ma touches my shoulder, then draws back quickly, as if she's scared I'll bite her hand off.

I don't like Ma acting so unsure of herself.

I almost prefer the old Ma, who'd argue with me.

Paati pats my cheek, like she used to when I was little and I fell down and hurt myself.

Her firm touch tells me she expects I'll get up without a fuss.

She leaves me no choice except to get off the bed, lean on my crutches, and try.

Bowing low as though I'm a princess, although I must look as ungainly as a clown on stilts, Jim says, ceremoniously, "I'll hold the door, ma'am, while you walk through."

My ribs jolt with pain and my shoulders feel raw but I return his grin.

And I go forward.

NICKNAMES.

My crutches carve wide circles in the air.

"Veda, can you lift and plant your crutch tips?

Please don't swing them."

I plant crutch tips ahead, pull forward with my body and what remains of my legs.

As Jim guides me on my new mode of travel, I get him to tell me how he first came to India.

"On a trip to see the desert in Rajasthan, in the north, with an ex-girlfriend."

I'm glad to hear the girlfriend is past tense.

He continues, "Fell out of love with her but stayed in love with this country."

I wonder how many girlfriends he's had.

Don't ask.

"Beautiful place, Rajasthan," he says.

"Pink palaces, hundreds of years old, women wearing skirts with bits of mirrors sewn on, camels burping in the middle of city traffic."

He wrinkles his nose up as though he can smell them.

I smile.

He says he went to an Indian hospital where they gave amputees free prostheses, and that got him interested in making artificial limbs.

This project was a way for him to travel to India again and use his expertise to help people.

He tells me he loves travel, loves new challenges, loves people.

I've never met another older person as friendly, as open, as carefree.

I refuse to rest until he forces me to turn back, saying, "Let's not overdo it, kiddo."

"I'm not a kid," I rasp.

"Aye, aye, ma'am." Jim salutes with one hand in his pocket.

I start to laugh but my ribs remind me I still have healing to do.

Grinning despite my pain, I say, "That's better."

After that, Jim mostly calls me ma'am.