Up to This Pointe

by Jennifer Longo

  “What do you miss?”

  “My sisters. Brothers.”

  “How many?”

  “Well. I’m sixth.”

  “Wow.”

  “Of eleven.”

  “Wow.”

  She nods. “My favorite thing about being here has been that no one knows me as number six. Or anyone’s sister.”

  “Do you all love science?”

  “No. They’re in the Future Farmers and Girls Scouts, and they like math, some of them. My older sisters have a pottery shed and a kiln out back.”

  “They must be so proud of you. Two students in the entire world, and they chose you!”

  She smiles.

  “I miss San Francisco,” I say.

  “That’s what you’re breaking your heart over? Get on a plane, problem solved!”

  “No, not just that! Partly, though.”

  “Sure.”

  “Have you even been?”

  “This is the first place I’ve ever been outside Minnesota. Traveling with eleven kids is no picnic. And not cheap.”

  “You’ve never left home in your entire life, and the first time you do, it’s to New Zealand and Antarctica?”

  “St. Paul folks don’t half-ass anything.”

  “Clearly.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “Oh,” I say. “I’ve been…” And it occurs to me—I haven’t. Been anywhere. One trip to New York to meet Dad’s parents when Luke and I weren’t even potty trained. Mom and Dad and Luke have been lots of places. I’ve always begged to stay home with babysitters, happily giving up travel opportunities to never miss class, rehearsal, performances. “I haven’t been anywhere, either!” I say. “I never cared. I love home—is that weird?”

  “Not to me.”

  “You know what I miss? Knowing. Knowing exactly what I’m doing every day, working as hard as I can and harder, toward a very well-defined goal. Not this nebulous, lost…”

  “Grant writing. I’m telling you, that’s your calling.” She smiles.

  She gets up and goes to the rows of white candles below the window, beside the altar. “I have always been embarrassed that I’m not jonesing to get out of Minnesota—not even St. Paul—the second I graduate. Am I lazy? Or boring?”

  She strikes a match and lights a candle. “Or maybe it’s as simple as I love where I live, and who gives a crap what anyone thinks of me? They can live where they want and leave me the hell out of it.”

  And that is the news from Lake Wobegon: She is a badass.

  Work in the lab the following days is much less like work. Vivian and I chitchat like old ladies, and Charlotte has taken to wearing giant headphones to drown out our gabbing. A raging storm blew through the ice shelf, and Charlotte let the medical center know what’s up—that she’s knocked up, as she fondly refers to the situation, and no one’s panicking. No one’s in trouble. And we’re nearly done with the grants, the research; Charlotte’s thesis is basically complete. So we’re free to openly ferry deliveries back and forth from the kitchen to the lab when Charlotte must have three slices of American cheese or I will cut someone.

  Which I’m on my way out the door to get when a mail guy puts his head in the room.

  “Harper Scott?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Package. Last of the pile, took a while to sort.”

  A box. Wrapped in brown paper, addressed to me in black Sharpie. Inside there is another wrapped box, and a folded letter.

  Harper Scott,

  I’ve been reading up on Robert (Millennium) Falcon Scott. And I came up with some interesting observations:

  He was a scientist. The last letter he wrote from inside his tent before he and his men died, he wrote to his wife about their son, “Make the boy interested in natural history if you can; it is better than games.” I’ll try not to take offense at that last part, but the thing about wanting the kid to like science? Dude loved science.

  So why kill himself and his entire crew trying to get to the pole first? What’s that got to do with science? He was broke. His family was broke, and getting there first would have meant a regular income. Had he just gone there to do the research, no one would have died, people! Apparently he was a great researcher. The writings they found with the bodies are apparently still really useful.

  That whole story seems unrelated, but stay with me. I think my point is this: You love ballet. You are a dancer. A really amazing dancer. Find a way to make it your life. Don’t give it up. But also? Please don’t die for it. There has to be another way to keep it. Isn’t there?

  Yours,

  Owen

  There is a DVD. Our Nutcracker.

  I unwrap the smaller box.

  My audition shoes. My Maltese Cross Yuan Yuan pointe shoes. There is a note tucked in them.

  Please don’t throw this out before you read it. I begged Simone to ask San Francisco to come see me. They weren’t scouting. I wanted to come home. I need to be with you. You’re the only family I have, the one I want. I need you. I love you. I think Owen does, too. I’ll do anything. Please forgive me. Please come home.

  Kate

  Vivian reaches for the shoes. “What are these?”

  “They are mine.”

  “Are you a dancer?”

  I reread Kate’s note. Owen’s letter. I hold the shoes to my heart.

  - - -

  In the movie room, where people usually watch horror movies about isolation in the snow, I put the DVD in the player, settle Vivian and Charlotte in chairs before the screen, and ask them, for the hundredth time, to “Please just tell me what you see.”

  They nod. I leave the room, but listen at the door to the music, still more familiar to me than anything else in life.

  “Where is she?” I hear Charlotte say. “It’s a crowd of skinny white girls all dressed the same, doing the same steps—how can you even tell which one is her?”

  “Concentrate. Right there—see? The left? And then…there, turning, see?”

  “Okay, okay, yes. I’m moving closer. I’ll lose her in that—what the hell is that, snow? Is this The Nutcracker?”

  I hear Vivian heave a huge sigh. “I am deeply concerned for your child. Pay attention!”

  I love them both. So much.

  It ends at last, the parts I’m in, and I go in and pull up a chair beside them.

  “Tell me.” I ask.

  Scientists. Neutral. People who observe, ask questions, gather information, come to conclusions. Objectively. People kind enough to tell me the truth.

  “You’re amazing,” Charlotte says. “So beautiful!” She is crying. Hormones.

  Okay. Maybe one of them is objective.

  Vivian takes a breath.

  “There’s a difference that I see,” she says carefully, “between you and the other girls. I have no idea if it’s good or bad—better or worse. But definitely you’re not like them.”

  My stomach and my heart unclench.

  “Okay.”

  She nods. “Even if I wasn’t watching just for you, I would have seen it.”

  I eject the disk.

  “What does that even mean?” Charlotte cries. “She’s stunning. Did you see her doing all those turns? What is wrong with you?”

  “I’m not saying she’s not really great,” Vivian yelps. “Harper, that was really and truly amazing. I think you’re a beautiful dancer—I’m saying there’s something different. That’s all. It’s an observation. Science,” she says to Charlotte. “What she asked us for.”

  Charlotte sits, pulling at the raggedy edge of her sweater sleeve. “I saw it, too,” she says. Quietly.

  “Really?”

  “Just…different—but isn’t that good? Unique!”

  “Depends,” I admit. “Not always.”

  “Are you all right?” Vivian asks.

  “I think so.”

  “Have I said the most horrible, mean thing ever?”

  Were my throat not tight for crying, I would be able to t
ell her the truth. Which is that, in a little over twelve minutes, here in Antarctica just in the nick of time, she and Charlotte have set me free.

  “Want to be alone?”

  I do.

  I close the door and sit. I put the disc back in.

  I see it.

  What Mom and Dad could never see through a mucked-up lens of way too much love and no dance experience of their own. What Simone was seeing and didn’t want to. Wished she wasn’t. What I should have seen and didn’t. Or maybe, like Mom and Dad, so much love made it unclear, made it not matter.

  And there is Kate. Still, always the way I’ve seen her all my life, even more. Perfection. She could not be more beautiful, and more than that, her love is evident. She is born to it.

  I rewind to watch us both, just once more, and accidentally rewind past the start of “Snow.”

  Here are my angels. Here is Willa.

  Their faces turn toward the wings where I know I am smiling, demonstrating the steps, whispering at them to “Look at the audience! Have fun, turn, turn!”

  They are concentrating so hard. Heads high, feet turned out, arms strong. Listening carefully to their music, loving every second of every movement.

  I walk alone to the basketball court. People are milling around, walking past. Some poke their heads in the open doorway to take a look.

  I tie my Maltese Cross shoes securely on unstockinged feet.

  I turn carefully across the floor, my head light with no hair, familiar stretch and pull in my legs and arms, in my abdomen. People stand and watch me. I keep dancing. They walk away; they walk on and don’t stop. I’m alone—now I’ve got an audience—now alone. Alive, at last, in every second of every movement. I am home.

  “Okay,” I say quietly to Shackleton. To myself. “Okay. Understood, Captain.”

  - - -

  I dance every day, and the last winter weeks fly by. My legs are stronger, arms tighter every moment. I eat vegetables, and cheese, and anything I want. Except white bread and butter. My body is lean and strong, no longer bony. And my boobs stick around. Bonus. The sky is lighter every day until at last, all four hundred of us rush outside, and it happens; the fiery light edges over the mountains. It is a new year. Winter is over. The light is glorious and beautiful and hopeful. We laugh and cry and jump around, strangers and friends. We yell at Charlotte not to jump too much, for crying out loud, the poor baby, jeez!

  In the crowd, a familiar face is near in her red hood. Allison hugs me.

  “You look good in natural light,” she says. “How do you feel?”

  Months of people—of myself—asking me that, but I like it from her.

  “Better,” I say. “Not so…” I gesture around my head. She looks into my eyes.

  “Definitely better. I need to ask you something.”

  Oh, ick…I hate it when people preface things with that phrase, makes me feel like I’m in trouble—just ask!

  “Do you think about the pole still? Would you want to go?”

  I am mute.

  “Because I’m on a flight that’s going in the next couple of days. If there’s an extra spot, I’ve been told I can fill it. You’d need to be ready within minutes when I tell you it’s time. What do you think?”

  I hug her so hard she seems concerned about fractured ribs.

  “Hey,” Vivian says. “Will you help me with something?”

  “Anything,” I promise. “Anything in the world.”

  - - -

  “I am not doing this!” I yelp. “This is horrible. Do it yourself!”

  “Oh my gosh, you big baby,” Vivian huffs. “You said you’d do it!”

  “Because I didn’t know you meant this!”

  She’s sitting on a stool we’ve borrowed from the kitchen, facing the mirror in our room, urging me to grow a spine and stab her earlobe with a needle.

  “No one in my entire family has pierced ears,” she says. “No one. I want them. I’m scared to death, and if I don’t do it now, I never will…please!”

  “But shouldn’t you be numb?”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know! Ice or some shit!”

  “So go get some!”

  I run to the dining hall to find even the drink machine line snaking around the room.

  Ice.

  I stomp back into the room wielding a fistful of Antarctic ice, chipped off the side of our home, Building 155. I mark perfectly even ballpoint dots on her ears, and I take a huge breath.

  Vivian is now the only member of her entire extended family to have holes in her ears.

  “Oh, oh my God, oh oh…” She moans. “That’s awful! Let me see!”

  I wipe the blood away with some hydrogen peroxide, and the tiny silver studs Charlotte gave her for this venture sparkle in Vivian’s ears.

  “I love them.” She breathes through the pain. “Hurts like a mother, but aren’t they so pretty?”

  “Absolutely,” I agree.

  “Want me to do yours?”

  “That’s all right.” I smile. Simone never, ever allowed any kind of “nonsense” with our bodies—no tattoos, no hair color, no painted nails.

  “My hair will grow back,” I say. “But absolutely no piercings. I am a dancer.”

  “Thank you,” she says. And she turns to hug me.

  “That was horrifying. But you’re welcome,” I whisper. “Thank you.”

  - - -

  In the gym room, I push Charlotte’s head slowly toward her knees. “This is going to help, I swear,” I tell her, and she holds the position as long as she can.

  “My back is killing me,” she whines. “How much longer is this kid going to torture me so?”

  “Seriously,” Vivian says from her own stretch, deep into the floor. “Mother of the year.”

  “Scott,” someone yells into the open door.

  Beard.

  “Allison’s on the phone from the fire station. I’m not your personal errand boy.”

  Lovely.

  But my heart is smashing around—this is it. My chance. I run to Beard’s desk, and nearly screech into the receiver, “Allison?”

  Fifteen minutes to gear up—half an hour to get there, twenty minutes at the pole, half hour back. “And it’s gorgeous weather!” Allison reports. I sprint, breathless, to the stairs.

  “Harp!”

  Charlotte’s face is pale, she and Vivian are stumbling from the dance room together. Charlotte has sadly peed her pants.

  Or not.

  “Harp, I can’t have a baby on The Ice!” she cries.

  “You can too!” Vivian snaps. “Harp, hold her other arm, would you? She weighs about a million pounds.”

  “That is not me!” Charlotte sobs. “It’s the giant person trying to crawl out of me. Oh my God…”

  It is suddenly very dramatic in the lobby. I hold Charlotte’s arm.

  “Hey!” Beard yells to us. “Quit screaming. This is a science station!”

  I stand, holding Charlotte up, frozen.

  “Harper,” Charlotte says. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  Frozen no more.

  I beam. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world. Vivian, prop her up against the wall for just a second!” I run to Beard’s desk. He’s reading a paperback book with the cover torn off. Gross.

  Forgive, Shackleton’s voice urges me. Be kind. Be brave.

  “Bear—Ben,” I say, low. “Do you want my seat for the pole?”

  His face is blank.

  “What?”

  “Go to the pole. With Allison. She’ll be here in ten minutes. Be ready. If you miss it, it’s out of my hands.” And I’m back with Vivian at Charlotte’s side.

  - - -

  I’ve never seen more hair on a baby in my life.

  “Was it like birthing a squirrel?” Vivian asks, her fingertips stroking Adelie’s tiny head.

  “I really couldn’t say, Viv,” Charlotte says. “Next time I give birth to a woodland creature I’ll be sure to take note
s.”

  Adelie Siku. Siku is the Inuit name for “Ice.” She is perfect and beautiful, a citizen of Antarctica, the United States, and McMurdo Station’s first native daughter.

  “Are you really coming home?” I whisper to Charlotte. “To San Francisco?”

  She nods, worn out but blissed.

  “Then you’ll never need a babysitter,” I tell Adelie. “Auntie Harper’s got you covered. I’ll wear you in a BabyBjörn to ballet rehearsal.”

  “No way.”

  “Just until she can take a class—come on. We’re never doing The Nutcracker, so calm yourself right down.”

  “No Nutcracker?” Vivian says. “Isn’t that ballet sacrilege?”

  “Not at my studio,” I tell this tiny creature. “Auntie’s superior grant-writing skills will mean anyone can take classes, even if they can’t pay tuition, and our mommies will sew pretty costumes for our winter performance, called Aurora. And you and your friends will be all the colors of the southern sky in winter, and you will be strong and have poise and grace and lots of snow and glitter.”

  “No…,” Charlotte says.

  “Oh, yes!” I whisper in Adelie’s tiny ear, beneath her perfect dark curls. “Glitter! Lots and lots of glittery snow and ice. Your mom loves lots of glitter.”

  And Charlotte can deny it all she wants, but Vivian and I know; we saw our girl smile.

  - - -

  The rookery is bathed in ice-cold sunshine, and Vivian’s smile is, too.

  “Why am I crying?” she says, sniffling in the wind.

  “Because you’re not dead inside!” I sniffle back.

  Allison and a spare flight coordinator are exploring Shackleton’s Hut, but Vivian and I cannot leave the Adélies for a single moment. The babies are nuts, running all over, slipping on the ice, hopping bravely into the ocean to climb right back out and find their parents.

  “We helped them,” Vivian says. “Maybe Charlotte has saved them.”

  Their tiny faces, black-blue eyes in their white rings, sleek bodies—open, trusting hearts. They walk near us, curious.

  “Hey,” we murmur. “We love you! Hello!”

  They look up at us. Right into our eyes.

  “Think they understand?” Vivian asks.

  They stand so close, hold their steady gazes in the icy wind. They don’t move.

  “They do,” I say. “They understand perfectly.”