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symphony. Sunday mornings they went to the nondenominational chapel, whose bells rang out over the quadrangle and dormitories to call people to worship. Mina sat among the dancers in an oak pew and learned a whole new set of hymns from the bound hymnals that were kept in a rack at the back of each pew with the bound prayer books. The sun shone through the stained glass windows, coloring the air with reds and greens and blues. Mina had never known how much she didn’t know about dancers and about music; she looked ahead at everything she didn’t know, and was glad.
    There was always a song rising in her heart, one they sang at the chapel on Sundays, while the collection was being taken. “Praise God,” the song rose up inside her. “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” Mina felt like praising God and thanking Him about all day long.
    The majority of the girls had studied longer and more seriously than Mina had and knew more. Isadora, her roommate, was sure she was destined to become a famous ballerina. “My mom says she had a feeling, even before I was born. All the time she was pregnant, she went to at least one ballet performance a week and kept music always playing in the apartment. She named me after Isadora Duncan. I’ve got dance in my blood.”
    Mina knew what it felt like to have dance in your blood. “Who’s Isadora Duncan?” she asked.
    â€œYou don’t know?” Isadora looked at her, as if everybody should know, as if Mina came from a different planet.
    â€œNope, never heard of her. Are you going to tell me?” Mina didn’t mind not knowing, she just minded not having her curiosity satisfied.
    â€œIsadora Duncan was a great dancer, probably the greatest modern dancer. She’s like Martha Graham, Twyla Tharp . . .” Mina shook her head, she hadn’t heard of any of these people. She tucked the names away in her memory, to learn more about them. “Isadora Duncan was the first—she broke away from classical ballet and went back to the ancient Greeks. She wanted dance to be free from rules and things, anything artificial. She thought life shouldn’t have so many rules. She danced in draperies, in bare feet, like the Greeks. Her dances were free and strong. She died young, when the scarf she was wearing got caught in the wheel of a car. See, she always wore long, long scarves around her neck.” Isadora mimed wrapping a scarf around her neck, her long arms graceful. Mina could see what Isadora Duncan must have looked like. Mina was sitting on the floor by her bed, watching Isadora. “But her boyfriend had a convertible. The scarf got caught in the tire and—it just snapped her neck,” Isadora concluded. “It was a tragedy. She had lots of men all madly in love with her, all the time.”
    â€œWhat would your mother have done if you’d been a boy?”
    â€œName me Isadore. There are male dancers.”
    Mina laughed. “I know that.”
    Charlie, short for Charlotte, who lived across the hall with Tansy, said that Isadora’s mother was typical, a typical stage mother. Charlie often said things like that, in a superior way, as if she knew more. She acted closer to sixteen than eleven, most of the time. “Typical, pushy stage mother.”
    â€œYou don’t understand,” Isadora said. “I’m going to be a prima ballerina. It’s nothing to do with my mother, except she thinks I can, so she helps out. And all.”
    â€œâ€”and I should know,” Charlie continued, not paying any attention. “I’ve got one too. It’s pretty pitiful in a way—it’s because she wanted to be a singer. But she got married, instead.And had kids, instead. And keeps house, instead. And nags, nags us all.”
    â€œEven your father?” Mina wondered.
    â€œEspecially Dad. Then she complains because Dad spends so much time out of town on business and nags