Give Me Your Answer True

by Suanne Laqueur

  “Goodnight,” she said, half-backing and half-ducking away. Pretending she didn’t see his disappointed expression. Feeling seventeen, foolish and virginal.

  THOUGH HER MAJOR WAS BALLET, as a BFA candidate and a Brighton Scholar, Daisy had to study contemporary dance as well. In this arena the classroom atmosphere was warm and supportive. It was with her own body Daisy found herself fighting an entirely different battle.

  All her experience with modern dance had been fleeting. A class here, a workshop there. She never pretended it was her forte and may have subconsciously thumbed her nose at it by maintaining a certain pretty lyricism in her movements. Always a bunhead first.

  Now she was faced with modern technique five times a week. Naked feet to the floor and on the other side of her body’s equator where everything was opposite to ballet. Legs and hips turned in instead of out. Arms thrown at angles instead of curves. Working on the plane of the floor as well as the air.

  “Floor is ugly,” said one of Daisy’s teachers at Gladwyne Academy. “Ballerina only touch floor when necessary. Only lie on floor if sleeping princess or dead swan. Floor dirty. Not pretty.”

  Now, in Cornelis Justi’s modern class, pretty had an entirely new definition. Plus Daisy’s body was finding new ways to define pain. Muscles she didn’t know she possessed bitched and moaned. Dancing barefoot was making the callused skin on her toes split into deep, horizontal cracks. Dirt got into the cracks and wouldn’t let them heal. Clutching at the floor with these pained, uncertain feet gave her a nasty case of shin splints.

  “Those will pass,” Cornelis said. “A little more time and your feet will stop trying to do all the work.”

  Everyone at Lancaster Conservatory—male, female, straight, gay or in between—was in love with Cornelis. Everyone lived for the tiny rite of passage when they were invited to use his diminutive name.

  “Call me Kees.” It rhymed with lace. “Or Keesja. But only if we’re dating.”

  He was the most gigantic person Daisy ever encountered. His tall frame and broad shoulders gobbled up the studio floors. He moved like a hurricane, even when demonstrating from a chair. He ate life and spit out the bones. Unlike the scatterbrained Marie, he knew every student by name and his greetings in basso profundo echoed throughout Mallory.

  “William, my friend.”

  “Good morning, Christine.”

  “Look who’s here. Daisy, our little flower.”

  Born and raised in Amsterdam, he could converse, joke and curse in several languages. Prior to Lancaster, he taught for a spell at Louisiana State University. A bit of an evangelic twang accompanied him to Philadelphia.

  “Will you look what the good Lord hath brought to me?” he cried when he saw you in the halls, scooping you up in a rib-crushing embrace as if only you existed for him at that moment. He was a happy creature. A shaken-and-stirred cocktail of black and gay, cultured and cosmopolitan, down-home and up in the stars. Poured out into as many shot glasses as he could afford and thrown back—L’chaim!—with an unapologetic belch before he sent his glass smashing into the fireplace.

  Daisy adored his classes, though she often felt hopeless there. Hopeless and helpless. Her feet continued to clutch the floor while her limbs wrapped around the unfamiliar technique and failed. Kees chased her across the studio in combinations.

  “Bigger,” he said in his booming voice, breathing down her neck. “Bigger. More. Be sloppy. Fall down.”

  She sucked at sloppy. The older modern students patted her shoulder sympathetically. “Tutu lock,” they called it. She laughed even as the frustration gummed up her throat and tears threatened the back of her eyes. This upset her more than the whispers and sneers from the ballet girls.

  Kees was implacable. He kept her after class, patiently worked alone with her, trying to exorcise the ballerina’s marrow-deep need for perfection.

  “Quit wiping your hands off on your tights,” he said. “It’s dirt, but it’s washable. Come on, try again. I don’t care what it looks like, Dais. I care what it feels like. Give me a mess. Show me ugly and hungry then you can show me perfect.”

  One day, he blindfolded her before a combination. Only with a light piece of gauzy material but it was enough to her small comfort zone. She could just perceive light and dark, walls and floor. It wasn’t enough. With no visual cues, no depth perceptions, she was terrified. Not only was she going to fail, but she was going to fall down. Her body stiffened in a primal attempt to survive.

  “Follow my voice,” Kees said in front of her and slightly to the side. “Don’t be afraid. And if you start to fall, the floor will catch you. Make friends with the floor. Trust your body, Dais. It knows where it is.”

  She was alone with Kees in the studio. Even the classroom percussionists had left. She breathed in and dropped her shoulders. Like a horse switching at a fly she flicked off her fear. It was dancing. She had nothing to fear. Kees wanted a mess? He wanted her stupidity, her mistakes, her dirty hands and everything else the Russian Mafia swatted her ass for?

  He could have them.

  She lifted her arms and moved into the silent space. A blind idiot. She reached for the movement but at the last second decided to let the movement reach for her instead and not give a fuck what happened.

  And something happened.

  Her body seemed to peel open. The not-caring-anymore spilled from somewhere beneath her sternum and exploded out into the dark.

  “That’s it,” Kees said. “Beautiful. More.”

  She understood. The dance wasn’t a jacket to stuff her limbs into and make fit. It was a jacket that would self-tailor to whatever emotional color she wanted. But the emotion had to come first—good, bad and ugly. And even ugly could be beautiful.

  She was dancing full out and fearless now, coming out of a turning leap and following the momentum downward. The floor put up its dirty hands and caught her, counterbalanced her rolling weight and pushed her back onto her bare feet. She did the step again. Did it bigger. Did it too big, pushing the limit and breaking the rules. Reckless and imperfect, borne on invisible hands of feeling, pushing from behind and pulling from ahead.

  “Yes,” Kees cried. “Will you look at this girl?”

  One of his hands was gentle on the back of her neck. The other peeled away the blindfold and he brought her to a stop, picked her up and twirled her.

  “Oh my dear, you are going to be something else,” he said.

  “I FIND THAT SO INTERESTING,” Rita said. “The courage it took for you to be a mess.”

  “It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in dance,” Daisy said. “Learn to let go of pretty. But it changed everything. By the end of my freshman year, I was a completely different dancer.”

  Rita nodded slowly.

  “You look on the verge of an epiphany,” Daisy said.

  “I keep coming back to the courage to be a mess,” she said. “And I wonder if you allowed yourself to fall apart after the shooting.”

  “I did. I was a mess.” Daisy looked around, confused. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “What I mean is… I’m sorry. I’m trying to articulate something that’s still forming in my mind and not doing a good job. Let me table it for a bit.” She scribbled something in her notebook. “You go on.”

  Daisy sighed. “I forgot what I was saying.”

  Rita went on writing.

  “I’m all over the place,” Daisy said. “I’m talking about everything but Erik. But I didn’t meet him until November. God, I haven’t even told you about Lucky…”

  Rita looked up. “You don’t have to present me with a perfect story arc,” she said. “You’re not here to entertain me. You can give me the ugly mess.”

  Daisy laughed. “If I have the courage.”

  THE SHIN SPLINTS WORSENED and Daisy was sent to Mallory Hall’s training room for treatment.

  She reclined on one of the padded tables, heating pads on both legs. Next in line for ultrasound therapy, she was trying to
get some reading done for American Literature but the words kept swimming in front of her eyes. Yawning, she rested the book open on her chest.

  On the table next to her, Aisha Johnson had her nose in a magazine and an ice pack on her Achilles tendon. She was the other recipient of that year’s Brighton Scholarship and a rising star in the contemporary division. Her six-foot sculpted body gave off an energy and presence that made Daisy back up a few steps in class. She watched Aisha with half awe and half despair, wanting to emulate something she could barely define.

  They were friendly in class, but not friends. Aisha was fierce, proud and independent. Her circle was predominately black and her loyalty pledged to only a select few. She always held her face like an immutable facade yet often snuck wisecracks out a side door.

  Daisy liked Aisha’s dry humor, and had extended a few overtures, all politely received but not returned. Daisy retreated with no hard feelings and accepted the benign neglect.

  “Everyone has a social bell curve,” her father said once. “And sometimes you are nothing more to a person than scenery. Neither cherished nor detested. Don’t take it personally.”

  One of the student trainers came to Daisy’s side. “How we doing here?” she said. “The royal we. Already I’m talking like a nurse.”

  “We forgive you,” Daisy said.

  The trainer laughed. She was short with a Southern Belle’s hoopskirt figure. Her blonde hair exploded from her scalp in crazy spiral curls, some of which were captured in a hair elastic at her nape while the rest bounced around her face. She took the heating pads off Daisy’s shins and started pressing gentle but competent fingertips up the length of muscle lying against the bone.

  Daisy pulled a quick, concentrated breath into her nose.

  “Be brave,” Aisha said.

  “Jesus,” Daisy said, wincing.

  “I’m sorry,” the trainer said. “This is the injury that makes the athletes cry. You dancers are so much tougher.” One of her hands took Daisy’s ankle while the other flexed and pointed the foot, letting the shin muscle stretch and contract. She put the heating pads back on and gave Daisy’s legs a reassuring pat. “Ultrasound machine will be free in about five more minutes. Let’s kept them warm.”

  “Yes, let’s,” Daisy said.

  Smiling, the trainer reached toward the chair where Daisy had set her dance bag. She found one of Daisy’s pointe shoes. Daisy nodded permission and the blonde girl drew it out.

  “I love these,” she said quietly, smoothing the satin with her fingertips. “What little girl doesn’t dream of pretty princesses in tutus?”

  Aisha turned a page of her magazine. “Ballet broke my heart.”

  “It breaks a lot of hearts,” Daisy said.

  “Being black was strike one,” Aisha said. “Then I was six feet tall in eighth grade. And pointe class was my nemesis. I don’t have the feet for ballet.” She extended one muscular leg.

  “What’s wrong with your feet?” the trainer said, eyebrows wrinkled.

  “They don’t point,” Aisha said. She was extending her toes as much as possible but her foot didn’t curve. “Ugly enough bare. In pointe shoes, they’re horrendous. Not like hers.”

  She flipped her thumb to Daisy’s feet. Daisy pointed them: a ripple from ankle to taped toes, the backs of her legs not stirring from the table top. Her feet curved until her toes touched the vinyl upholstery, perfectly lined up with her heels. Twin arched tunnels you could roll a matchbox car through.

  “I hate you,” Aisha said. She put her magazine back up, excusing herself from the conversation.

  The trainer was still looking at the pointe shoe with a reverent expression. “God, I wanted ballet lessons so bad when I was little.”

  “Did you get them?” Daisy asked.

  “No, my mother said I was too fat and too much of a klutz.” The girl’s voice was conversational, stating a fact and not looking for pity. Daisy studied the face under swinging wheat-colored curls. Its wide cheekbones and pointed chin. The line of tiny studs up one earlobe and a single silver ring through the ear’s cartilage. Her hands weren’t klutzy. Nor was she fat.

  Daisy smiled at her. “I’m Daisy,” she said. “Flatfoot over here is Aisha.”

  “Up yours, bunhead,” Aisha said from behind the pages, not unkindly.

  “I’m lucky,” the trainer said.

  Daisy tilted her chin. “Why?”

  A triangular grin unfolded, wrinkling the blonde girl’s nose. “My name’s Lucia,” she said. “Lucia Dare. Lucky for short.”

  “LUCKY BECAME MY CLOSEST FRIEND,” Daisy said. “My roommate for the rest of college and still my best friend today. Aisha was… She was never my friend but she was an ally. I knew she’d be there if I needed her. Taylor Revell and I began to get tight, both in class and outside the theater. It slowly started to turn around.”

  She stared down at her hands, remembering Taylor’s grey eyes under her thick blonde bangs, taking in the world over her knitting. A high-strung girl, Taylor was never without a skein of yarn or her needles. Knitting kept her anxieties grounded, the repetition of needle through and yarn around soothing her whirling thoughts into peace.

  “Knit one, purl two,” Taylor would chant to the stitches. “Don’t forget, I love you.”

  Aisha Johnson, tall and proud, the unruffled apex of the social bell curve. Neither friend nor foe. Neither cherished nor detested. Yet before every performance, she and Daisy put their palms and foreheads together and whispered, “Merde” for good luck.

  “Besides Will,” Daisy said, “I often danced with this other freshman boy, Manuel Sabena. We had choreography and composition classes together. He was little—five feet five, the same as me, which is short for a male dancer. He couldn’t partner me the way Will did, couldn’t lift me over his shoulders or do all the showy throwing and catching. But we’d hear music and have identical visions of how it would translate into movement. And we developed our own way of partnering that was based on mutual strength and a much more grounded style. Showy floorwork instead of airwork. The creative aspect of my art began to open up and develop. Plus all the ways Kees was teaching me to be more raw and unrefined and nakedly passionate with my dancing—those are the things I was able to work on when I danced with Manuel. Like we were lab partners, if that makes any sense. It’s hard to explain.”

  “Well, what I’m hearing you say is you found your tribe,” Rita said.

  “I did.” Daisy picked at the fringe on her favorite pillow. “I found them but then I lost them. Aisha, Taylor and Manuel were all killed in the theater.”

  “And Marie,” Rita said. “Your teacher. I’m sure she was your good friend by that time as well.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m so sorry, Daisy. It must have been devastating. I can’t imagine…”

  Daisy nodded, chewing her bottom lip. “I still have Lucky,” she said. “She lives in Fort Lee and works in the Bronx. We see each other as much as we can. Will’s in Europe now, dancing with the Frankfurt Ballet.”

  “What about David?”

  “I don’t know where he is.”

  “Was he in your tribe?”

  “He was, but he fluctuated between the extreme ends of the bell curve. He was moody as hell and a terrible tease. Then he had moments when he was chill and approachable and let his guard down. We could speak French together. We had the theater in common. I didn’t dislike him but I didn’t want to date him. And…I don’t know. I tried to be kind about it. Nothing you can say makes it easier when you’re rejecting someone, but I couldn’t keep going on dates and letting him think something was going to come of it.”

  “From the way you described David, maybe he would’ve enjoyed an open-ended pursuit,” Rita said, smiling.

  “You may be right,” Daisy said. “He got off on the chase. He wanted things so badly and then he’d toss them aside. He liked getting there, not being there. Anyway, he took it hard when I said I wanted to be friends and that’s when he st
arted calling me Marge.”

  Rita raised her eyebrows. “Marge? Oh. From Marguerite?”

  “Yeah. I let him. I didn’t like it, but fine. Call me Marge, it’ll be our little…thing. And I learned to ignore his moods. Ignore when he’d get a smarmy look on his face if he saw me talking to a guy. It was a lot of passive bullshit, nothing overtly mean. But one night I was out with my girlfriends and I met this guy. God, what was his name? Ryan? Rob? Rob, I think. It doesn’t matter. It was a random meet. Our groups merged and it was on. Rob and I were talking and flirting and digging each other. And David happened by. He was drunk and belligerent and made a scene.”

  Daisy crossed her arms, hugging the pillow and remembering.

  “It got ugly.”

  “IS HE YOUR BOYFRIEND?” Rob said.

  “No,” Daisy said. Her face burned with anger and embarrassment. “Look, maybe I can see you another time. Let me go handle this.”

  Rob looked over her shoulder with wrinkled eyebrows. “Are you sure? He looks pretty shitfaced.”

  “I’m sure. I’d actually appreciate it. My friends are with me. I’ll be fine.”

  “All right. It was nice talking to you.”

  “Yeah. Sorry about this.”

  “Not at all.”

  Rob walked away. Looked back once and waved.

  “Don’t feel bad,” David yelled after him. “I couldn’t bust that cherry either.”

  “Jesus, Dave,” Lucky said.

  “Come on, let’s go,” Taylor said.

  Daisy started to step off the curb but the light was red. She was trapped. She stepped back, staring through the passing traffic. As David approached, she closed her eyes, breathing slowly through her nose.

  Don’t engage.

  She opened her eyes and the street scene was blurred and trembling.

  And don’t cry.

  She felt all at once lonely and tired and depleted. Wanting her mother came like a punch to the gut. Which made her feel like a baby. She bit down on the inside of her lip and didn’t move.

  “Marge.” David was beside her now, despite the efforts of Taylor and Lucky to thwart him. His hand pulled at her elbow. “Marge. Dais. I’m sorry.”