She opened the door, her smile warm and sensuous as she saw Bernardo, with Chino behind him. The tip of her tongue flicked between her lips, and Bernardo gave her a quick wink before he shifted his features into blankness.

With his shoulder he gestured for Chino to come into the store and step aside as Anita locked the door. Hands clasped awkwardly behind his back, Chino bobbed his head and spoke hardly above a whisper as he greeted both girls, but looked only at Maria, still posing in the white dress.

“How’d things go today?” Bernardo asked, after he permitted Anita to kiss his cheek.

“Pretty good,” Anita said. “A couple of customers came in. And one of them said she wished her son was marrying a girl as pretty as either of us.”

“As pretty as you,” Maria corrected Anita.

“I heard it otherwise,” Anita said. “Chino, why are you leaning against the door?” She pointed to a chair. “Sit there.”

“This is a shop for ladies,” Chino explained. His nervous fingers plucked at his shirt collar and he fanned himself with his light straw hat. “Some day outside,” he observed, because weather was the only thing he could discuss with girls and not feel awkward.

“Forget about the day,” Maria ordered him. “It’s this night that’s important, ’Nardo.” She turned to her brother. “It’s most important that I have a wonderful time at the dancing tonight.”

“Why?” Bernardo asked. He tried to catch Chino’s eye, to urge him to say something, even one of the things he had suggested on the way to the store, but Chino insisted upon staring at his shoes. “What’s so important about tonight?”

Whirling, pirouetting before the three-paneled mirror, so that her reflection was multiplied again and again, until, from where Anita stood, it appeared as if a full ballet dressed in white was interpreting a dance of innocence, Maria pointed and skipped toward her brother who smiled now as he had in the old days. Tonight was going to be so wonderful, Maria thought, that she had to imitate Anita, so she kissed Chino on the cheek. His skin was very warm, very nice, and nothing more.

“Because tonight is the real beginning of my life as a young lady of America!” Maria sang. “Chino”—she grasped his hands—“I want to dance tonight. And dance and dance and dance! Even when there is not playing music.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Several years earlier, two congregations of a religious denomination had combined, and the older of the two churches on the West Side, the one more in need of repair, had been put up for sale. For almost a year the church had stood vacant, its windows a natural target, until the religious denomination had offered the building to the city authorities if they could find use for it. The gift had been accepted and the church converted into a community center. A variety of clubs for boys, girls, and adults had been started and the center creaked along, never quite successful enough to instill pride in the social and community workers assigned to it, but never an outright failure.