Up to This Pointe

by Jennifer Longo

  I nod, drain the tea, and open another bottle of water.

  “Plus, if we get trapped in the theater, like if there’s an earthquake or something, we can eat it.”

  “Sure.”

  “Harp,” she says in her mom voice.

  “Yeah.”

  “Come on. It’s like running on ice. I’m amazed all of us didn’t fall.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Oh jeez.”

  “Neither is Simone.”

  “Screw Simone.”

  “Dude.”

  “No, seriously, she’s insane! We get one rehearsal with it and it’s off to the races?”

  I love her for saying it. Still, her kindness doesn’t help.

  I look up into the eyes of Robert Falcon Scott. Explorer. Scientist. His black-and-white image in a place of honor on the wall above Mom’s desk. He is our third cousin’s aunt’s great-grandfather. Or something, I don’t remember. It’s all cross-stitched on a pillow at home if I need to follow the genetics. His blood is Mom’s, the reason for her life of science. His blood is mine, the reason I know I will not fall again.

  In the photograph, my ancestor is standing on the Antarctic ice in 1912 at the geographic South Pole before a British flag planted in the snow. He is surrounded by his weary crew, all nearly dead but at last where they intended to be. Inscribed on the photograph’s frame is Mom’s personal version of Scott’s do-or-die spirit: AUT MORIERE PERCIPIETIS CONANTUR. “Succeed, or die in the attempt.”

  “You are a beautiful dancer,” Kate says. “You are.” She chews in the silence. “Ashley Bouder!” she shouts. “Thank God! I couldn’t think of her name; that would have driven me insane—New York, she’s a principal, she falls all the time and no one cares—she’s amazing!”

  I shrug.

  “Harp. You think Nureyev never fell? Yuan Yuan Tan? Baryshnikov? Come on, that guy probably spends more time lying on the floor than he does dancing.”

  “That’s because of the vodka.”

  She grabs my foot and shakes it. “Everyone falls.”

  What I want to say is, You don’t, but I am a Scott. Self-pity is absent in the double helix strands of our do-or-die DNA, so instead I sigh. “Coconut is too expensive to practice with more than once. She wanted it perfect.”

  “Which is her own problem.” Kate goes to the aquarium, sprinkles some dehydrated worms on the sleeping fish. “Just, if she gets on you about it, scream Ashley Bouder in her face. She’ll love it. So listen—aside from your falling and ruining the entire rehearsal—really, how fun was tonight?”

  I give in. “Amazing.”

  “Right?” She sighs. “Cross that off the life list: dance ‘Snow’ with snow? Done!”

  She’s right. She is.

  “Okay.” I yawn through my smile. “Ready?”

  She catches my contagious yawn and stretches. We pull on sweats over our tights and leotards. I write a note to Mom on a Post-it and stick it to the aquarium glass.

  Thanks for the sustenance.

  P.S. Water your spider plant.

  What kind of heartless monster are you?

  I pour the last of my water into the parched soil of the struggling plant, root-bound in a clay pot my older brother, Luke, made for Mom probably also in his third-grade class—such a crafty age.

  “Shall we?” Kate smiles.

  San Francisco fog is never more beautiful than when we’re boiling hot after rehearsal. I yank my knit hat off my head and shrug out of my hoodie.

  “Don’t,” Kate says. “You’ll get sick.”

  “That’s a myth. Cold doesn’t get you sick; germs do.” The mist winds around the cypress trees and lampposts of SF State’s rolling green campus, just a few blocks down and across 19th Avenue from the ballet studio and both our houses in the West Portal neighborhood.

  “All right,” she says. “Your funeral. Lie in bed miserable and miss the show. Miss graduation. Miss auditions. Just remember I told you so, dummy.”

  I pull my hat back on.

  She smiles.

  The Muni train rattles past, and we cross the tracks against the red.

  She hugs me in the pool of streetlamp light at the bottom of her driveway. “It’s a gorgeous dance. You’re gorgeous in it. We’re almost there. Okay?”

  I nod.

  “Coconut snow is slippery as snot. Everyone knows that.”

  “Gross. Why would anyone know that?”

  “It’s known!” She holds my shoulders. “Harp. It’s Friday. We get to sleep in tomorrow!”

  Sometimes it is hard to tell if she really forgets things or maybe doesn’t listen in the first place.

  “Class,” I say.

  “Not till ten!”

  “Not ours. I’ve got kindies to teach.”

  “Ugh, Saturday morning? Since when?”

  “Three years, dude. Sunday, too.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You just taught a class before rehearsal!”

  “Those were the babies. Tomorrow’s the kindies and first graders.”

  “Whatever. Simone can teach them by herself. Sleep in!”

  The luxury. She knows I would if I could—teaching makes my own classes possible. I start the walk to my house, waving backward over my shoulder.

  “Oh, wait,” I call. “Breakfast! Nine sharp!”

  “I’ll sleep till eight-forty-five,” she says. “Hey! Be careful. Walk in the light!”

  “Got it, Mom.”

  “Good night!” She chaînés all the way up to her door, waves, and shuts it dramatically behind her.

  - - -

  West Portal hums with Friday night–ness. Loud, drunk SF State kids stumble in and out of bars. Neon lights in bar windows buzz lazily. Upstart little restaurants representing the cuisine of practically every member of the United Nations line both sides of the street. Date-night heels click on the gritty sidewalk. A Muni train clangs on the tracks and disappears past the library, beneath Twin Peaks’ red-and-white Sutro Tower along the rails into the tunnel. My driveway curves up a steep incline to a narrow, two-story white stucco house crawling with night-blooming jasmine planted long before I was born, before my grandparents left the house to Mom, the only reason we’re able to live in this beautiful, overpriced neighborhood. Our porch light burns a perfect circle for me in the foggy dark; I turn one perfect double pirouette.

  The house is warm and smells of cinnamon and yeast and cream cheese in the oven—Dad up late baking. HarperCollins published his first cookbook a month before I was born, providing baby-naming inspiration for him, a lifetime of explaining “No, not To Kill a Mockingbird” for me.

  I shuffle to the kitchen, drop my bag and myself on a stool at the counter, and wince, shifting off my painful hip.

  “What are you doing?” I yawn. The guy gets up at four every morning. He can’t be awake at eleven.

  He shakes his head. “What are you doing? It’s a million o’clock.”

  I rest my head on my arms. “Rehearsal. ‘Snow.’ ”

  “Ooh, really? How was it?”

  I shrug.

  “You were so excited! Didn’t it work?”

  “Yeah.”

  I untie my shoes and let them drop, pull my left foot into my lap and start working at the tape wound tight around the callused ball. My middle toes are black-nailed and fused together by dried blood and a weeping blister. Looks worse than it feels and totally worth it for the eight perfect rond de jambe turns I executed this afternoon before my fall in the snow rendered them meaningless. I pry the scabbed skin apart and watch Dad ease a sheet pan from the oven and set it gingerly on the counter. “If these things collapse one more time…” The sink is full of hardened dough disks.

  “What is up?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” he whispers. “Yeast is being stupid tonight.” The rolls on his tray are as big as my face, sodden with cream cheese frosting, and they stand tall and pillowy. He sighs. “I wish your mother would get up and taste
these for me. I can’t tell anymore.”

  Poor man. His own bakery, three cookbooks, and he gets stuck with my brother, Luke, who’s allergic to gluten and nuts and dairy and just about everything else in life, and me, who won’t eat anything, ever. It’s pretty hilarious when people ask if, as a ballerina, I eat like a horse night and day. I have no idea who started this asinine urban legend, but I have personally been on a diet since I was, like, twelve. Thirty hours a week dancing, and still I cannot remember the last time I tasted a real cinnamon roll. I slide off the stool, lean in close to the frosting, and inhale.

  “Yeah,” I sigh. “Pretty sure you’re good.”

  He will not give up until the rolls are perfect—I know. He is not a Scott by birth but took the name when he and Mom married. Because Scotts are badasses.

  He plucks a big hunk from the center of the biggest roll and chews thoughtfully.

  “Huh. All right.”

  It’s actually not too scandalous he’s still up, given that Thanksgiving, four or so weeks away, is the busiest time of the year for the bakery. You’d think it’d be Christmas, but Thanksgiving is really out of control. He wraps the rolls in a shiny blanket of aluminum foil and tucks them in for the night.

  I make my painful way upstairs to get in the shower and soak my injured ass. And my pride.

  “Hey,” he calls. “You okay?”

  “Yep.”

  “Because you’re walking like you’re a hundred years old.”

  “That’s because I am. Good night.”

  “ ’Night, Benjamin Button.”

  I wave from the top of the steps and hobble off.

  - - -

  Oh my God, a hot shower is the greatest thing ever invented. I let the nearly scalding water run over my head and aching body, rehearsing the “Snow” choreography in my mind again and again. I’m perfect every time. Crap, it is going to be hard to wake up to teach in six hours—no, five because I still have geometry homework I have to do tonight. With rehearsals all weekend, it’s sort of now or not at all. But I will, because Kate is right; we’re so close. We’re graduating in December, one of the main action items of The Plan.

  The Plan has been in place since sixth grade. We’ve followed it religiously, and one fall isn’t going to screw it up. We’ve been in ballet class together since we were three years old, devoted to it and to each other. Twelve years old is the magic hour for ballet—by then you either understand this is what you want for your life or you realize it isn’t.

  Our parents insisted that we must graduate from high school—real graduate, not GED graduate—which is ridiculous because there are girls who leave home to be apprentice company members all the time in their freshmen or sophomore years. They have tutors or are homeschooled and use their extra time to take private lessons. They have stretching coaches, and it makes me jealous. Even Kate’s private school schedule is flexible enough to allow for some of that. But none of Simone’s dancers have auditioned for San Francisco. And none of them, not one, has ever been as good at Kate. Everyone knows this.

  So now Kate and I are Simone’s oldest students, which makes us panic. A ballerina has only a precious few years to put her body through what it must do. We already feel old. Simone’s students either fall away from ballet in middle school, when the lure of soccer or swimming or boys becomes inescapable, or they audition and leave for companies in other states. But never New York, never San Francisco, and always before most of them have even started their periods. While Kate and I slog through high school and dance with Simone. Year after year.

  Our urgency, at this point, is palpable.

  In the face of this unfair “diploma madness,” Kate and I, after school one day in our sixth-grade year, made a pact. We used sewing needles for a blood oath and drafted our Magna Carta. The Commandments.

  THE PLAN

  1. Graduate from high school early so when we

  2. Audition for the San Francisco Ballet, we are ready to go when we are both

  3. Offered spots in the school or corps de ballet or even straight-up company positions, which would necessitate

  4. Finding a cheap loft apartment downtown together that has hardwood floors and mirrors and barres on every brick wall so we can

  5. Live forever in San Francisco and eventually be soloists, maybe even principals, in the company and entertain our fabulous dancer friends and our families in our amazing loft—being ballerinas!

  We don’t bother including details such as how there is no such thing as a loft in San Francisco cheap enough to afford on a dancer’s fifteen-dollars-per-hour salary, or the part about the second jobs we’ll have to take just to have enough money to live, loft or no loft. We don’t want to rain on our own parade. Aim for the moon and all that.

  Kate and I are a rare breed—native San Franciscans. No one is from here; people like Dad abandoned their East Coast lives to move here because it is the most beautiful city in the world. And the San Francisco Ballet is the best ballet company in the world. It was the first professional dance company in America, and it gave the first American performance of The Nutcracker.

  This is our home. This is our company.

  Aut moriere percipietis conantur.

  Auditions for new students, apprentices, and company members are on January 3. We’ll have our high school diplomas mailed to us and our bags packed, ready to accept our company positions and start our ballerina lives in the loft on Market Street. Or Fillmore. Or Grant. Or at home with our parents until we’re eighteen and can sign a lease. Details.

  The hot water is gone. I step out of the shower and wipe fog off the mirror.

  Fantastic. Already, a blue-green shadow covers a palm-sized area of my left hip. Hurts to even wrap a towel around me. But I do. And I floss and brush my teeth and comb the tangles from my hair, which falls, straight and dark, way past the bruise, almost to my knees.

  I get in bed, and my heroes look down on me from posters tacked to the ceiling, San Francisco Ballet soloists and principals midleap, midturn, dying as Giselle, as Swan Lake’s Odette. And in the center, my own black-and-white portrait of Robert Falcon Scott in a fur-lined coat beside a supply sled at the geographic South Pole.

  Mom has regaled us all our lives with the stories of the three main explorers, men who wanted so desperately to be the first in the world to reach the South Pole. Amundsen, Shackleton, and our Robert Falcon Scott.

  Shackleton tried, failed, tried again, and was trapped in the shifting ice. It crushed his ship, the aptly christened Endurance, and he and his crew wound up in tiny wooden lifeboats, hiking mountains, and eating penguins for a year to survive and return home. He rescued his entire crew, but he did not cross the continent, the entire point of his expedition. Antarctica won. Mom speaks the least of Shackleton.

  Our Scott was the heartbreaker. He and his crew struggled against ferocious windstorms, suffered snow blindness, and reached the South Pole at last—to find Amundsen’s Norwegian flag already planted.

  “The worst has happened,” Scott wrote in his journal. “All the day dreams must go….Great God! This is an awful place.”

  I think he was wrong; Antarctica is not awful. Antarctica is Antarctica. Scott knew that going in.

  Scott and his crew began the freezing, hungry walk hundreds of miles back to their base camp, dying one by one, until, at last, in a canvas tent, the remaining few men gave in. Scott wrote one last entry: “Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale.”

  So how did Amundsen march in, plant his flag, and escape with glory and his entire crew’s lives intact? How did Shackleton and Scott make such faithful efforts and still fail?

  Why do some people train all their lives to be professional dancers and end up performing interpretive “creative movement” at Renaissance Faires?

  Mom worships Scott because he gave his life i
n his attempt and because he was, to the end, first and foremost a scientist. His insistence, in fact, that experiments and data collection continue as the team struggled to the pole slowed their pace and is possibly one of the reasons why they all died. Nobility.

  Succeed, or die in the attempt.

  I secretly love Amundsen. He knew how many dogs he needed to pull the sleds carrying food for the men—the dogs themselves dined on fresh penguin. He did not bring a huge, heavy supply of people food, because as supplies were consumed and the sled loads lightened, fewer dogs were needed to pull, so the surplus dogs were killed and eaten.

  Precision.

  Studying Amundsen’s and Scott’s nearly tandem journeys reveals what Amundsen would claim the rest of his life is the only truth of his success: “I may say that this is the greatest factor…the way in which every difficulty is foreseen, and precautions taken for meeting or avoiding it.”

  He had a Plan.

  For me and Kate, the Plan is all we have ever worked toward since before preschool. Luck is bullshit. What people refer to as “luck” is actually opportunity meeting preparation. Opportunity will come if you invite it. If you are prepared. If you work your ass off and don’t go to parties or screw around with classmates at the beach on weekends. If you babysit and teach Simone’s beginning ballet students so you can afford your tuition. If you take extra high school classes each semester to graduate early, never eat cinnamon rolls, dedicate your entire life to what you truly love and put all you have into it, then there is no way it will not happen. It is, in fact, impossible that it will not happen.

  It’s nearly midnight, but I pull out my geometry notes. The Plan will not be derailed by something as stupid as a failed math test. Amundsen in my will, Scott in my blood, I will plant my flag.

  The odds of being the first person to reach the South Pole? One in one billion seven hundred thousand.

  The odds of becoming a professional ballerina? One in 0.00532 percent of the world’s seven billion population.

  I like those odds. Those odds are not luck. To become a ballerina, it is understood you are taking on Antarctica. You’ve got to prepare accordingly.