Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress by Susan Jane Gilman Read Free Book Online

Frisbees or spoon collections, but to provide me, personally, with a forum for passing off all of my wildest fantasies as bona fide truths.
    The next day, when Mrs. Mutnick asked who had anything for Show ‘n’ Tell, my hand went up again.
    “Yes, Sapphire?” she said.
    “Today I have something else to tell,” I said. “My family and I are moving to Passaic.”
    Earlier that year, my aunt and uncle had moved to Passaic, New Jersey, and I was completely enraptured by it. All the houses on their street were identical, with tiny, scalloped awnings over the windows and pastel aluminum siding. In their bathroom, they had a toilet seat covered in pink faux fur, a pearly pink plastic shower curtain, and an enormous box of pink rosebud soaps that dissolved like chalk in your hands whenever you used them. We’d been out to visit them twice so far, and I’d spent the entire time in the bathroom, washing and rewashing my hands, then peeking out the frosted glass window to look at their next door neighbor’s raised swimming pool. In Passaic, nobody’s white mother wore kente cloth and big purple sunglasses she’d bought at the local head shop. Nobody’s father walked around in a “Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers” cartoon T-shirt and clogs.
    “Really,” said Mrs. Mutnick. “When are you moving?”
    “I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Maybe next year. For my birthday. We’re going to have a pink bathroom and a swimming pool,” I added. “And a pink fake fur toilet seat cover.”
    “Oh,” said Mrs. Mutnick. “Won’t that be lovely.”
    The next day for Show ‘n’ Tell, I informed my classmates that I would be dancing that weekend in the
Nutcracker Suite
ballet at Lincoln Center.
    “What a coincidence!” Mrs. Mutnick exclaimed. “So are Lucille Suggs and David Gonzales in Mrs. Lowey’s third grade class! Are you in the Jacques D’Amboise program, too?”
    I had no idea what she was talking about. As luck would have it, the famous choreographer Jacques D’Amboise had just started a pilot program to bring ballet to inner city schools; from it, a handful of children were recruited to dance “backup” in some productions with the New York City Ballet. Although I’d planned to tell the class that I was going to be dancing the starring role of Clara, it suddenly seemed like a better idea to agree with my teacher.
    “Mmm-hhmmm,” I said.
    “Well, that’s just wonderful,” said Mrs. Mutnick. She turned to the rest of the children. “Maybe on Monday Sapphire will tell us all what it was like to dance at Lincoln Center. Won’t that be nice?”
    But by Monday morning, I’d clear forgotten my whopping lies of the previous week and had even better things to share.
    “This weekend,” I announced, “my mommy had another baby.”
    “Oh, my! I had no idea!” said Mrs. Mutnick, clasping her hands together. Even Mrs. Flores’s face took the shape of something less than an all-out grimace. “A new baby? Sapphire, that’s wonderful!”
    “It’s a girl,” I told her. “A girl like me.” In real life, my parents had ignored my wishes and coughed up a boy instead, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t correct the situation with a little creativity of my own. “Her name is Sylvia Goldia. Sylvia Goldia Gilman.”
    Saying this, I could almost see my beautiful new sister for real. She was named Sylvia Goldia after my two favorite crayon colors, and she wasn’t a toddler like my brother, but practically my age already, capable of playing “Super Star Girl” in which I was a super hero named “Super Star Girl” and she was a pet dog who didn’t say very much unless I told her to.
    “I got to pick out her name,” I added proudly.
    “Yes,” Mrs. Mutnick smiled. “I somehow suspected that.”
    My life, from then on, was a dream. I danced around the playhouse with my friends, instructing them in proper ballet technique, which they now looked to me for, seeing as I had appeared at Lincoln Center. Everybody