Mannequin Girl by Ellen Litman

Author:Ellen Litman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2014-01-21T16:00:00+00:00

AND THIS is what her life has become: at four fifteen she sneaks into the drama room for tutoring; afterward it’s homework (always done in a hurry), supper, the tedious class hour, the survey of the news. She spends hours designing the tutoring sessions, laying out detailed lesson plans, thinking of theorems and proofs. Even at play rehearsals, she catches herself puzzling over obtuse and acute angles.

She’s not suited for this. Anechka was right about that. There are others at school for whom learning comes easier. They gulp down new knowledge instantly, commit it all to memory, wrap up their work in half the allotted time, and their grades, as if shaped by a lathe, are identical, effortless fives.

Gone are the days when anyone thought Kat a wunderkind. She’s become plodding: for hours she pores over her textbooks, and always runs out of time. On tests she makes careless mistakes, because she’s so often anxious. She has the diligence, but diligence alone isn’t enough. The last thing she needed was a pupil of her own.

And not just someone, but Mironov—Mironov, who has always despised her, who grunts and scoffs at her instructions and offers no response. Their situation is unworkable. Their only joint concern is to keep him from flunking. They study in secret, during the evening walks, because it’s too embarrassing for both of them.

How secret these sessions are, to start with, is up for debate. One day Sveta Vlasenko and Ritka Mavrina drop by the drama room and don’t seem too surprised to find them. Sveta drifts over to the piano, while Ritka unrolls a sheet of Watman paper and sets about sketching the poster for their play.

Ritka is an artist, a real honest-to-God artist. Teachers always ask her to do posters or decorate their wall displays. Why pay a professional when a student can do it for free? Ritka says it helps her practice. She’s got her eye on the Stroganoff Art Institute, and she’s constantly practicing. Everyone says she’s destined to get in.

It seems they’re all destined for something: Vlad for medical school, Nikita for the Institute of History and Archives. Sveta Vlasenko, who is a middling student, is mulling over a degree in education, and when the time comes, Jules, with her linguistic prowess, will join the Maurice Thorez Language Institute.

As for Kat, she continues to refine her acting. She has been working on imagination exercises, picturing a tree in Kratovo (a rowan tree or possibly a birch), the park behind the school, a fence with an intricate pattern. She has begun a notebook of observations—because an actor must notice the smallest details, the wing of a butterfly or a spiderweb or the little rolls of fat on the tops of Creampuff’s feet. She tries to keep the notebook private, which means that by the time she gets around to it, her memories have often grown stale. Sometimes she’s so tired that a whole day goes by and she forgets to “notice” anything, and then she worries whether she’s cut out to be an actress.

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