A Lotus Grows in the Mud Read Online Free

Goldie, I want you to be in the talent show.”
    “But I’m not perfect.”
    “Goldie, it doesn’t matter,” my mother insists.
    After relentless pressure from them both, I finally give in. “Okay. I’ll dance. But I’m not perfect,” I add, under my breath.
    My mother is so relieved she flops back down into a chair. Unfortunately, it was the wrong chair, because she sat on the only copy of “Sleigh Ride” we possessed. It shattered into pieces beneath her. There was a moment of silence before my mother wailed, “Oh my God! What did I just sit on?!”
    “My record, Mommy. You sat on ‘Sleigh Ride.’”
    She pulls herself up, “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” she says, picking up the pieces helplessly.
    Mrs. Toomey tries to comfort her. “Don’t worry,” she says.
    My mother says, “What do you mean, ‘Don’t worry’? This is the only one. I have to go downtown and get another one.” Bubbles of sweat lace her brow as she speed-walks down the corridor in her torpedo-shaped stilettos.
    I pull my sequined costume up over my shapeless hips in a classroom next to the gym and listen to the music coming through the walls. The show has begun. Some of my classmates are singing, mostly off-key.
    My mom brushes my hair away from my face, which I hate. As soonas she is done, I tease out some strands and pull them down over my forehead. As she fusses over me, fluffing the crinkles out of my tutu, she occasionally stops and stares into my face. I don’t speak. I am too mesmerized by her heart-shaped face and her orangey red lipstick. I love to watch as she sits in front of the mirror each morning, with her big eyes and her auburn hair, and precisely follows the voluptuous contours of her mouth. Pressing her lips together, she always pouts and examines herself critically, one side and then the other, before slipping her feet into her high heels and trotting off to work.
    Pushing my bangs away from my eyes again, my mother’s face softens. “When you grow up, I want you to put my aunt Goldie’s name up in lights.”
    “I will, Mommy,” I reply dutifully.
    Her eyes twinkle. “She was a wonderful woman.”
    I am still young but I will do anything for my mother, even the impossible. Great-Aunt Goldie Hochhauser, a jovial redhead—known in our house as “Tante” Goldie—raised my mother when she was orphaned at three years old in Braddock, Pennsylvania. She died a year before I was born. I was given her name, and I’m very proud.
    “Okay, Goldie,” my mother whispers in my ear as Mrs. Toomey signals that it is time for me to go on. “Remember, nobody’s perfect.” She takes the precious 78 and hands it to the stage manager before running to take her seat in the front row.
    I walk to the edge of the stage, mimicking all the great ballerinas I have ever seen. My arms out in second position, my toe pointed in front of me, I am ready to be swept up by the music. Looking out at the audience, I feel my heart hammering on my ribs.
    Somewhere out there is David Fisher and his brother, Jimmy. “Don’t worry, Goldie, we’ll clap extra hard,” they assured me before I went on.
    A few feet away from me, the stage manager places the needle onto the new copy of “Sleigh Ride,” and the opening bars crackle through the loudspeakers. Closing my eyes, I allow the sound of my favorite song in the whole world to flood my head and my heart.
    “Just hear those sleigh bells jingle-ing, ring-ting-tingle-ing too / Come on, it’s lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you…”
    Before I know it, I am bouncing gently in time to the music, shifting my body this way and that, repeating the moves I know so well and have practiced so hard to get right. Improvising their sequence, I suddenly find my feet lifting me up and taking me flying across the stage, my arms and legs working in tandem, a big grin on my face and my head held high, completely forgetting about being perfect.
    I catch a glimpse of my mom, her hands clasped