She Is Haunted

by Paige Clark

  ‘No.’

  ‘It sounds like you’re lying down.’

  ‘I’m not lying down. I’m stretching. I’m working.’

  I développéd my left leg to the side, out from under the covers, towards my ear. My foot grazed the dog, who was sharing my pillow. He let out a quiet but discernible yelp.

  ‘Was that the dog?’

  ‘The dog’s good. We’re going for a walk soon, I think,’ I said.

  ‘You’re going to love her. I know you will. She speaks Chinese.’

  ‘Rub it in,’ I said.

  ‘What? You said you wanted to learn Chinese.’

  ‘Cantonese. I want to learn Cantonese.’

  ‘It’s all Greek to me,’ he said.

  After we hung up, I watched the video again, waiting for the part where the choreographer’s crisp anger cuts through the drone of the piano. ‘Faster, a little bit faster.’ He claps his hands. ‘Faster, faster!’

  The internet was listening. It recommended I play a video on the six tones of Cantonese. But first I would have to sit through an advertisement for a pregnancy test. Hadn’t the internet also overheard the word used by the company director? I closed the browser before the video started.

  Paul and I made enough money to rent a two-bedroom ground-floor apartment that had a sizeable lounge with wooden floorboards. We kept all of our furniture on sliders so, if we needed to rehearse at home, we could move everything to the edges of the room. Paul’s father made us a large steel barre. Most of the time it was a very useful drying rack. Now I took the clothes I’d washed last week off it and piled them near the base of the barre. The chihuahua turned the pile into his new bed. I made a note not to kick him in the head during the frappé section of my workout.

  I put on the soundtrack to The Mission, a film that is the ideal accompaniment for a barre workout. It is also a film that is approved by the Vatican. I am not a member of the church, but it says so on the front of the CD. I have never seen this movie and I never will.

  I pressed play. Left hand on the barre, ready, begin, I thought and started in on pliés. This is a simple move that involves bending the knees and not much else. But what part of the body does this work? My dogs were barking at me. The chihuahua snored loudly from his pile.

  By the afternoon, my leg felt like someone had sucked the bone marrow out of the shank. There was slurping involved. The way Chinese people eat soup. The way Chinese people eat—well—bone marrow. I didn’t have an appetite, so I made another coffee slop. I gave the dog a lick, straight from my cup. Caffeine isn’t good for him. I looked it up one time to see if I could fill his water bowl with Coca-Cola. I was sad all over again remembering he wouldn’t ever know what it tastes like.

  Then we both took a coffee nap. The dog slept on my belly and I dozed off sniffing his ears. I was sure if I loved that stink then I loved everything about him. Sometimes I felt that way about Paul too. He smoked a single cigarette before bed. Then he brushed his teeth. I’ve always hated the smell of stench being covered up. I retched once after getting in a mouldy car that also had an evergreen air freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror. But I didn’t mind the stink of Paul falling asleep. In fact, when I woke up from my nap, I masturbated one time thinking about his smell. I didn’t kick the dog out of bed for the occasion.

  After I came, my ankle still hurt, but I could bear the thought of Paul on stage with Akane for that night’s performance of Don Quixote. The reviews said Kitri was her part. Made for those expressive feet. I imagined the makeup artist pencilling in a black curl on the side of her face, slicking back the fringe that normally flopped on her forehead as she chaînéd across the stage. The amount of hair gel and hairspray they would have to use would ruin anyone’s hair. I saw Paul as Basilio, in see-through tights and a velvet bolero, twisting Akane over his head, the muscles in his forearms bulging out of the bolero. Those are my favourite muscles of his.

  I had never danced the part of Kitri. I was better suited to the languorous, weepy roles. More of an -ette girl than an -ie girl. Juliet. Odette. Or better suited to be a member of the corps de ballet.

  Our schedules synched up in-between company class and the night’s show. Paul called and this time he was actually kind. I told him my leg had been cooked by his Maltese mother into a lamb shank stew. He told me I was confused and the dish that I was thinking of was actually Italian. I heard voices in the background and tried to make out which one was Akane’s—her English dignified, international, brimming with all the words that she understood and I did not.

  ‘Does she like dogs?’ I asked.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Akane. Does she like dogs?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I think she’s afraid of them.’

  I hung up the phone and stroked the chihuahua. I had an appetite and ate a small bowl of frozen blueberries with chopsticks so as not to stain my fingers, feeding every second one to the dog.

  I started up my lesson again, an instructional video on Jyutping, a Romanisation system of Cantonese. In Jyutping, the Roman word is followed by a number out of six. This tells you the tone. When I began my lesson, the video had 100,270 views. By the time I finished, it had 100,301 views. I have always been a diligent student.

  As a child, I excelled at extracurricular too. I gave them up one by one, the way ancient towns sacrificed virgins. This might be a plot point of The Mission. I don’t know the particulars. I only know the score.

  My sacrifices were for ballet. When I gave up the piano, my teacher’s husband cried. He said he actually looked forward to my performances at the biannual recital. Before I stopped playing basketball, my nickname was the Asian Shaq. This was partly because of my height and partly because of my rebounding skills. When I quit Spanish in high school, Señor Brown announced to the class that me giving up Spanish was like Mozart giving up the piano. I had already done that, I informed him.

  My ballet teachers said they thought I could be a professional dancer, but maybe not. I was a little too tall. Not great at jumps or fast footwork. But those hands! And the arms, great port de bras. They were arms that told a story, though they got me in trouble when I had to dance like a clone in the corps de ballet. I danced in the corps a lot. Paul and I met when he joined the company a few years after I did. He was promoted to principal before I even made it out of the corps. Though it was easier for boys, he said, which was true. I wasn’t competitive with him. For the most part, I was happy with whatever sheen rubbed off on me. After ten years, I was promoted to coryphée. We’ve never spoken about it but I think our marriage is the reason I was promoted at all.

  Studying Cantonese, the rush of being a student returned to me. I downloaded two apps, a Cantonese-to-English dictionary and an ebook with an audio companion zip file. It took me an hour to learn three words. I could say male or son (naam4), female or daughter (neoi5) and person (jan4). I also had a basic understanding of the six tones. I was ready to enrol in face-to-face instruction. It would be my first time back in the classroom in nearly twenty years.

  I pictured myself folded into the student desk, my head high above a sea of diligent Chinese youths. We recite back the six tones to the teacher—si1, si2, si3, si4, si5 and si6. She is a kindly, Asian version of Señor Brown, slightly plump with limp, fraying hair and cheeks with spots of rosacea. Like Señor Brown, she wears garments in muted colours, only it isn’t a gag because her name isn’t also Brown. Nobody speaks any English in her classroom. In my head, she taps out commands like a ballet teacher.

  I paid $540 for the ten-week introductory course. By the time I finished, my company contract would be up for renegotiation.

  The teacher’s name was Li Mei Ling and she was from the suburb of Burwood. She taught Cantonese, Mandarin and English to fund her acting career and yoga habit. She wore tailored suits, always in red. It was her colour, she said. She had been colour-matched by a specialist at a high-end department store.

  She’d guest-starred on an internationally well-known dayt
ime television show. Sadly, her character had died. She was as lean and sinewy as a ballet dancer and taller than I was, easily over six foot. She towered above most of the class, composed mostly of middle-aged white men with the same face and varying body shapes. By week three, most of the students dropped out. Li Mei Ling was impressed that I was a ballerina and unimpressed that I’d mastered the six tones before the start of the class.

  ‘You’re a native speaker anyway,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not,’ I said.

  ‘You look like a native speaker.’

  She wanted to teach me the Cantonese translations of ballet words, but I only knew the terms in French and Li Mei Ling didn’t speak French. She had never taken a ballet class but she was interested in trying it.

  ‘I’ve heard it’s a really good workout,’ she said.

  After the third class, I asked Li Mei Ling why Cantonese uses the same word to mean daughter and female. She asked if I ever got free tickets to the ballet.

  ‘Are there many screen opportunities for dancers?’ she asked.

  I hadn’t looked into it and said so. She seemed disappointed and then searched for barre body classes in the Burwood area on her phone. As she turned to leave, a gaggle of my interchangeable classmates trailed after her. Two of them had enrolled in the introductory course for a second time. One of them was an expert in ancient Chinese bladesmithing. He hung around until I finished talking to Li Mei Ling and asked me about the prop swords we used in productions.

  ‘You must be highly skilled,’ he said, ‘to use a weapon so dangerous.’

  ‘They’re not sharp,’ I said.

  ‘Would you like to go for a drink?’

  ‘My husband’s getting back from tour soon,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, he’s a dancer.’

  ‘He’s the one that uses the sword.’

  ‘I’m sure I could show him a few tips.’ He winked and slinked off after Li Mei Ling, who I could hear through the open door, regaling her crowd of admirers with updates on her recent auditions.

  Paul would be back soon, which meant that I had only a couple of weeks to master my Cantonese before the Australian premiere of Don Quixote. Using my apps, I wrote and practised a dialogue to have with Akane after the performance.

  You danced so beautifully, I would say.

  Paul says the role was made for you. Your arms, she would reply.

  He said that? About me?

  He hasn’t stopped talking about you the entire trip.

  I missed him but I always have the dog. Do you like dogs?

  Not really. I don’t like their poo.

  I did not learn the word for poo. I planned to ask Akane for a translation. Then she would be stuck explaining it all in front of Paul. Stepping in it, so to speak.

  By the end of week five, I knew the most common food words, the majority of my practice dialogue, a whole lot more than I ever wanted to about ancient Chinese bladesmithing, and the names of most of the cast of the popular soap. I have never watched an episode and I never will.

  Every morning, before the chihuahua slurped his butter chicken, I practised my Cantonese online for an hour in bed. Then Paul called at our pre-arranged time and we talked about his show, which usually went well. Another thing I found sexy about him was that he was very professional.

  Afterwards, I would clear off the barre and stand there for the entirety of The Mission soundtrack. Then my tendon would start feeling like deli meat and I’d make myself another coffee and get back in bed. Rinse and repeat. Though I wasn’t washing my hair. I hadn’t washed my hair in weeks.

  In week seven, Li Mei Ling suggested we all go out to eat after class. It was obvious by this point that she taught the class to obtain fans. She mistook my diligence as a student for admiration. But I couldn’t say I hated the woman. She wore a suit well. That night over dinner she spoke more Cantonese than I had ever heard her speak. A lot of the words I knew too, remembered from childhood family dinners. She urged me on and I ordered a plate of barbecued pork for the table. When the caa siu arrived, the bladesmith commended the exquisite knife skills of the chef. I glanced at the chef in the window of the restaurant, hacking at the burnt carcass of a pig with a large cleaver. One of the three men I could not tell apart toasted Li Mei Ling.

  ‘She is a great teacher,’ he said and we all cheered.

  Leaving the restaurant, Li Mei Ling linked arms with me. She told me that her name is a lie. It’s not Mei Ling. Her surname, Li, is the most common surname in China. It’s boring. It doesn’t mean anything. If pronounced wrong, it means brown. Brown like the rice she eats because it’s healthier. She said she worried she didn’t get cast in roles because of the way she looked. I don’t have anyone to tell this to, I don’t have many Chinese friends, she confided in me.

  ‘Me neither,’ I said. I thought of the dialogue I’d had with Akane in my head. But she was Japanese.

  ‘My real name is Rita,’ she said. ‘Rita Li. Look me up on Facebook.’

  ‘I’m trying,’ I said, ‘to spend less time on the internet.’

  She’s actually really nice, I told Paul on the phone. The dog and I’d had our morning coffee and were back in bed.

  ‘She sounds like a crap teacher,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve mastered the tones.’

  ‘You knew those before you started!’

  ‘Don’t feel left out when I meet Akane.’

  ‘I just miss you and want to be home,’ he said.

  The ballet company uploaded a video of the grand pas de deux in Act III of Don Quixote. I watched it many times, pausing at the one-handed lift. Paul balances Akane over his head. Their eyes lock. They flash each other matching pearlescent smiles.

  In week eight, I did not interrupt Li Mei Ling’s monologue about the catering service on the set of the TV soap. There was no point interfering in her recollections of bains-marie and soggy salads. The bladesmith mustered up his best Cantonese to ask me what was wrong. I responded in English that I was fine. One of the triplets suggested we all go out to dinner again soon.

  Li Mei Ling cornered me after class.

  ‘There’s this other woman,’ I said.

  She gave me the number of her tailor. ‘Get it in red,’ she said. ‘Red’s your colour too.’

  ‘I don’t have anyone to talk to either,’ I said, ‘except for my chihuahua.’

  ‘I love chihuahuas,’ she said. ‘Even their poos are so tiny!’

  ‘I’ve got a spare ticket to the ballet if you’re interested,’ I said.

  The day before Paul was due home, I played the video of the pas de deux on repeat. I put on my new suit and practised wearing it around the apartment without a blouse or bra to be sexy. I drank too much coffee and masturbated twice. I managed to stand at the barre and listen to the entire Mission soundtrack without breaking down. I took the dog for a walk around the block.

  Afterwards, I called Paul and said my leg felt like corned beef, the tinned kind that his nanna used to make macaroni.

  ‘You’re not a food,’ he said.

  ‘It hurts,’ I said.

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

  In the background of the call, I heard the voice again. It sounded like two perfect feet, flashing across the stage in Kitri’s variation.

  ‘Who’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s nobody. I promise. I’m home soon.’

  On opening night of Don Quixote, Rita sat next to me and held my hand. When Akane walked on stage as Kitri for the first time, she gave my hand two squeezes. Akane’s footwork was fast, as precise and emotive as any I had ever seen. I told Rita this at intermission. She told me to hush and asked if she had as good a brain in her head as I did.

  ‘She speaks four languages,’ I said.

  ‘Well, you speak four now too,’ Rita said.

  ‘I don’t speak French.’

  ‘You don’t really speak Cantonese either,’ she said.

  ‘Pero hablo español.’

  In the third act, during
the grand pas de deux, I waited for the one-handed lift. But sitting there in the audience, it was clear to me that it was just artifice. Paul looked at Akane the way the bladesmith looked at a knife. I felt silly and small.

  After the performance, we made our way backstage. I’d brought a bouquet of lilies for Akane. This was out of politeness, but now I was glad I had them. I had been moved by her performance. She danced how I hoped to dance one day.

  I had reunited with Paul earlier in the week but seeing him in his costume and makeup made me shy. Stagehands and costumers I knew rushed past me, each stopping to give me a little squeeze and say hello. I moved to him, remembering him, remembering that what I saw on stage was really just a combination of latex and jockstrap and my imagination. His black curls were slightly frizzy and there were small beads of sweat on the sides of his nose.

  She was there behind him.

  ‘She’s the kind of woman who breaks a bone easily,’ Rita said in my ear. Rita was wearing heels, wobbling above everyone in the backstage area.

  ‘Babe, this is Akane,’ he said. He waved her down the corridor towards us.

  Then I was talking to her like I’d talked to her in my head. The words rushed forward. It was as easy and as natural as speaking English. I thanked her for her performance. I told her that the way she danced was the way dancing feels when you’re dreaming.

  As I spoke, the faces around me changed. I looked first to Rita, her eyes set in a scream. Then to Paul. I saw that I’d pleased him, amused him. And finally, to Akane.

  Akane is the one who interrupts me.

  In real life, her fringe is held in place by a neat row of metal clips. The drawn-on curl has been smudged out.

  She is still wearing her pointe shoes, her tutu.

  She takes a step towards me now and then another, hesitant at first and then faster, faster. Her footing is a little shaky on the slick of the tiled floor. She reaches out and puts a hand on my arm as if to steady herself.

  ‘I’m so sorry, I don’t speak Spanish,’ she says.