Dance of the Happy Shades

empty. Then we had a moving day at school and Myra’s books were taken out of her desk and put on a shelf in the closet. Miss Darling said, “We’ll find a seat when she comes back.” And she stopped calling Myra’s name when she took attendance.
    Jimmy Sayla did not come to school either, having no one to take him to the bathroom.
    In the fourth week or the fifth, that Myra had been away, Gladys Healey came to school and said, “Do you know what—Myra Sayla is sick in the hospital.”
    It was true. Gladys Healey had an aunt who was a nurse. Gladys put up her hand in the middle of Spelling and told Miss Darling. “I thought you might like to know,” she said. “Oh yes,” said Miss Darling. “I do know.”
    “What has she got?” we said to Gladys.
    And Gladys said, “Akemia, or something. And she has blood transfusions.” She said to Miss Darling, “My aunt is a nurse.”
    So Miss Darling had the whole class write Myra a letter, in which everybody said, “Dear Myra, We are all writing you a letter. We hope you will soon be better and be back to school, Yours truly.…” And Miss Darling said, “I’ve thought of something. Who would like to go up to the hospital and visit Myra on the twentieth of March, for a birthday party?”
    I said, “Her birthday’s in July.”
    “I know,” said Miss Darling. “It’s the twentieth of July. So this year she could have it on the twentieth of March, because she’s sick.”
    “But her
birthday
is in July.”
    “Because she’s sick,” said Miss Darling, with a warning shrillness. “The cook at the hospital would make a cake and you could all give a little present, twenty-five cents or so. It would have to be between two and four, because that’s visiting hours. And we couldn’t all go, it’d be too many. So who wants to go and who wants to stay here and do supplementary reading?”
    We all put up our hands. Miss Darling got out the spelling records and picked out the first fifteen, twelve girls and three boys. Then the three boys did not want to go so she picked out the next three girls. And I do not know when it was, but I think it was probably at this moment that the birthday party of Myra Sayla became fashionable.
    Perhaps it was because Gladys Healey had an aunt who was a nurse, perhaps it was the excitement of sickness and hospitals, or simply the fact that Myra was so entirely, impressively set free of all the rules and conditions of our lives. We began totalk of her as if she were something we owned, and her party became a cause; with womanly heaviness we discussed it at recess, and decided that twenty-five cents was too low.
    We all went up to the hospital on a sunny afternoon when the snow was melting, carrying our presents, and a nurse led us upstairs, single file, and down a hall past half-closed doors and dim conversations. She and Miss Darling kept saying, “Sh-sh,” but we were going on tiptoe anyway; our hospital demeanor was perfect.
    At this small country hospital there was no children’s ward, and Myra was not really a child; they had put her in with two grey old women. A nurse was putting screens around them as we came in.
    Myra was sitting up in bed, in a bulky stiff hospital gown. Her hair was down, the long braids falling over her shoulders and down the coverlet. But her face was the same, always the same.
    She had been told something about the party, Miss Darling said, so the surprise would not upset her; but it seemed she had not believed, or had not understood what it was. She watched us as she used to watch in the school grounds when we played.
    “Well, here we are!” said Miss Darling. “Here we are!”
    And we said, “Happy birthday, Myra! Hello, Myra, happy birthday!” Myra said, “My birthday is in July.” Her voice was lighter than ever, drifting, expressionless.
    “Never mind when it is, really,” said Miss Darling. “Pretend it’s now! How old are you, Myra?”
    “Eleven,” Myra said. “In July.”
    Then we all took off our coats and emerged in our party dresses, and laid our presents, in their pale flowery wrappings on Myra’s bed. Some of our mothers had made immense, complicated bows of fine satin ribbon, some of them had even taped on little bouquets of imitation roses and lilies of the valley. “Here Myra,” we said, “here Myra, happy birthday.” Myra did not look at us, but at the ribbons, pink and blue andspeckled with silver, and the miniature bouquets; they pleased her, as the butterfly