Mariposa Girls
She moved on from doubles to triples, as easily as a runner shifts from a jog to a run. She nailed all of them, e.ven the triple lutz. The arc of the landing was smooth and breathless, her leg extending in a stunning line from toe to chin. She stroked back and forth across the ice, sweeping into jumps that ascended above the boards. The mothers let out whoops from the stands, shouted "Again! Again!" At that moment, she became the daughter of all of them, this beautiful creature who could do magnificent tricks. By the end of the session, all the other girls had stopped skating and were lined up against the boards to watch. They sipped silently from their water bottles and wiped their runny noses on the back of their gloves. They were witnesses of a new breed of skater, a strange species: hairless and unconfined at the ankles, jumping higher and further than ever before. By the end of the month there were a dozen of them, bootless girls with blades permanently affixed to their feet, spinning quadruple and quintuple jumps never before seen. The other girls left, the ones who weren't willing to drill blades into their bones, who wanted to keep their hair, their skirts, their tights. Some went to other ice rinks. Some switched to hockey. Most moved on to different hobbies: to clarinets and pianos, to horseback riding and thespian club. The ones who made it became skating prodigies overnight. They swept the medals at Sectionals and Nationals, but were disqualified at Worlds. "No nakedness on the ice," the international judges ruled. "This isn't the Garden of Eden. They must cover themselves with sequins and tights." By that time, their flesh had started changing color. A dark gray spread through their fingers and toes, permanent frostbite setting in. The tips of their appendages were almost black, the skin fading gray as it went up their ankles and wrists. "We'll just paint the rest of their bodies," the mothers said. "Skating dresses are so thin anyway, the judges will never know." They hired artists to blend paint with the gray of the frostbite, spreading unitards on their daughters with blue and silver swirls. To finish the effect, they sewed sequins onto their skin for sparkle and sprinkled glitter over their heads. They were the most beautiful skaters, like snow fairies, icicles stuck to their eyelashes, their cheeks a pale shimmering blue. And so they went on winning all the medals-while the tissue in their feet went numb, while the tips of their fingers went dead. Every so often a skater would disappear. There would be whispers of amputation, but the word was never spoken out loud. The Mariposa club became a mecca, an arena of pale bald pixies spinning through the air. Every girl in America wanted to be a Mariposa girl. They had seen them on TV. They knew Mariposa girls were pretty. They knew Mariposa girls always won. And so they were probably watching the night of the skating gala when one of the pixies fell. Winter路 Spring 2007
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