The Women Who Raised Me

by Victoria Rowell

  My handwritten notes of this event, inspired by the Emily Post of Framingham, include some of the following highlights:

  • Always serve from the left, clear from the right.

  • Before guests are seated—cheese, caviar, bread, and silver will be on table.

  • Broil chicken livers on cookie sheet—approx. 10 min.—napkins will be accompanied with basket pans (always keep ice bucket filled).

  • Jell-O appetizer will be served on a bed of lettuce with ring of pinapple, and Jell-O mold atop that—this will be on table before guests are seated.

  • Shrimp oderv (crossed it out, couldn’t spell it) will be served while guests are seated. It will consist of four pieces of shrimp also on a bed of lettuce with special sauce in center.

  • Chicken will need heating maybe until sauce bubbles—put in platter of pineapple chunks, cherries with sauce over it—with clamper. Rice will also be served at that immediate time. One (Robyn) will serve chicken while one (me) serves the rice.

  • Tea and coffee will be served along with cream, sugar, and Sweet’n Low.

  • Cookies, brownies, and tarts will be served after medium saucers and forks and spoons are placed. Immediately cake, chocolate cake, and saucers will be brought.

  Sylvia might have been a composite portrait of all the women who had raised me until this point in time—with the grounding and stability that Bertha Taylor had provided; the boundless energy to embrace life to the fullest that she shared with Agatha Armstead; her honoring of the many faces of womanhood that were so strong in the Wooten and Armstead aunts; the same kind of devotion to ballet, the arts, and teaching that Sylvia and Esther Brooks had in common; and the spectacular beauty mixed with fearlessness that both she and Rosa Turner embodied.

  Many significant, tangible gifts were to come from Sylvia, yet the most important was a level of empowerment that I had never known. Without saying it in so many words, she provided a reminder that I had been given everything I needed from multiple sources in order to flourish in the world. But it was now up to me as to how I would apply what I had received to chart my own course.

  Backing up the message that I was ready to compete on a higher level was Carol Jordan, who had begun to talk more seriously with me about my plans after high school, promising me not that I would get into a top ballet school and professional company in New York, but that I would face the task of choosing which one. There were many to consider elsewhere as well as in New York, but there were really two that topped the list. Would it be George Balanchine’s School of American Ballet and the New York City Ballet? Or would it be Lucia Chase’s American Ballet Theatre School and Company?

  But first I needed to transfer to a high school more centrally located. I began researching schools in the Boston area and found Shaw Preparatory School. I contacted my intrepid social worker, Linda Webb, and informed her of my next venture. I explained that I had found a high school that would award me 50 percent of my tuition if I could find someone to match the other half.

  Together we undertook an Agatha Armstead-like campaign with the Department of Human Services in Augusta, Maine, appealing to my only legal institutional parents to pay the remainder of my tuition. Though my first series of written requests were denied on the grounds that it had simply never been done before, Linda was able to have an exception granted for one year.

  The powerful feeling I experienced from this victory was only tempered by the realization that I had to now live up to the confidence being placed in me. In fact, I had to do it in half the time, mainly because there were no guarantees that the Bureau of Social Welfare in Maine would be willing to make the exception for me the following year. This worked in my favor since Robyn and I had just had a taste of New York that summer and I was raring to return. This all came about quite by happenstance.

  Robyn Silverman’s summer had already been planned out by her mother: she would go to New York City for three weeks in the summer of 1975 in order to take advantage of classes at the American Ballet Theatre School with her sister, Jill. It was soon announced, however, that due to an injury, Jill had to stay behind and have surgery. Rather than cancel, Mr. and Mrs. Silverman proposed that I take Jill’s place for the three-week summer program with Robyn at ABT—public classes offered to intermediate and advanced students taught by a stellar faculty—all expenses paid. Wow! Only later did I realize that attending this summer program was common practice for children of privilege, a rite of passage because it was an opportunity to be seen by ABT’s decision makers for placement and scholarships for the following year, an advantage only the affluent could possibly afford.

  In the weeks of anticipation leading up to our departure, I could not keep my heart in my chest. Taking off for New York with Robs, my transportation, accommodations, tuition, clothing all provided, to study at ABT—it didn’t get any better than that!

  Part of what made this so meaningful was that I wouldn’t be doing it alone, but with someone who deeply shared the same dreams and hopes that I had. We counted the days. Being kindred spirits and greatly admiring each other’s abilities, we usually avoided the inevitable competition that comes with being driven competitors. We both had different challenges. Weight was an issue for every dancer, whether it was a problem or not. Food and body issues became extreme in our adolescent lives, as is common for most teenagers, yet with dancers the sense of control can become all the more heightened. Ballet was inevitably a harsh way to become acquainted with one’s female self. We all battled against our natural development, stunting, repressing the flow of womanly evolution.

  These concerns did not elude me, even with a balletic body. Robyn, though a natural beauty with an enviable instep and arch, had to work hard at her turnout. She did so with athleticism, intelligence, and a daunting force of will. The one thing about our anatomies that we could not manipulate were our robust derrieres. All the tucking under in the world could not disguise what clearly was our ancestral inheritance.

  Our diets could be alarming. I went along with the program with my own restrictive diet of a poached egg on dry toast, a grapefruit for lunch, and “air pudding and wind sauce” for dinner. We knew the exact caloric calculations for whatever meager morsels we reluctantly allowed to pass our lips at dinner. Anything exceeding the quota of eight hundred calories was punishable by running laps outdoors around Maple Street in the dark—hysterically burning off the last bites of a brownie.

  I prepared and practiced for our trip, defying gravity and cutting the air with pirouettes. This time period and the following school year before graduation were marked by a hunger for a life of independence through dance that would have me balancing my existence on five toes at a time, attempting to take flight in imitation of gossamer wings in one movement, and making fists with another.

  A confidence about myself emerged. I felt the line of dance innately. Before nightly prayers, I jogged in place on the shag carpet, adding a series of sit-ups. Exhausted, I fell asleep in a Russian split, dreaming about New York City—all on a grapefruit, a poached egg and toast, and something too minuscule to recall.

  Impossible though it seemed, our three weeks in New York City were more glorious than anything I had dreamt. Unchaperoned, we traveled together daily from our lodgings at the Katharine House, a Ladies Christian Union establishment that offered rooms at 118 West Thirteenth Street. The minute we were situated in our rooms, I had to venture out, and it didn’t take long to realize that I was finally home. Yep, this was it—with all of the indifference, the warring smells, Balducci’s, host to multitudes—orphans and kings. I would melt into a lasting sense of connection to this city, forever thankful that I had lived a life that would confirm my belonging here.

  Those three weeks passed much too quickly. Aside from the city itself, what I experienced and witnessed at ABT’s public classes was electrifying. The classical technique was beyond superlative, built on the foundation I already had—on a very different level of competition. This was an awakening, a sig
hting of where I wanted to be, where I wanted to belong. I had my work cut out for me and couldn’t wait to return.

  When I returned to Cambridge it was with total focus to prepare myself to return to New York that following spring, just before high school graduation, for auditions on April 13, 1976, and to win a full scholarship with the American Ballet Theatre School. Maybe even, as the training program provided, to join the smaller company, Ballet Repertory Company, and eventually, the big company—with Baryshnikov, among others.

  Robyn was right in step with me in her own aspirations. I was hopeful for both of us. Always chosen to demonstrate combinations in class as the kind of attentive dancer who could reverse steps at the drop of a hat, Robs had everything to support her desire, along with the stamina and abandon. We could live together in New York, travel the world as company members. My optimism was boundless. Even the State of Maine, thanks to Linda Webb’s assistance in securing me a bus ticket, was part of the team. My social worker’s good luck note was so cheerful, how could I not be confident? She wrote, “After all your years of hard work, you certainly deserve this chance. Let me know what happens.”

  By the time Robyn and I disembarked from the Greyhound bus at the Port Authority, in the heart of Manhattan, anxiety had set in.

  In the mammoth studio on Sixty-first Street at Columbus Circle, we were given audition numbers to pin to the fronts of our leotards and divided into groups. Mine was C12, a number that didn’t correspond to Robyn’s. That was the first separation between us, a meaningless one, to be sure, but still disconcerting. A row of judges sat at the front of the studio against massive mirrors.

  After the barre work, groups were ushered into formations and led through a battery of combinations. Unceremoniously and very rapidly, dancers were eliminated and excused. After moving successfully out of the early rounds, I was shocked and disheartened to see Robyn gathering her things. She had been eliminated.

  I was crushed for her yet knew that I was still standing in one of the most coveted schools in the world, competing against international contenders, because of Robyn’s unflappable loyalty as a friend. As a competitor, I came to win and would not allow guilt to stand in the way. While I was asked to return on April 15, 1976, for the final round of elimination, Robyn spent time on her own, contending with her disappointment in her own way and time.

  When the second portion of my audition began, I knew I wasn’t walking into that studio alone. In spirit, I was flanked by Esther and Carol, Rosalind and Tatiana, Billy Wilson and Agatha, Bertha and Laura, Barbara, Sylvia, Rosa, and Linda Webb…they all were there with me. Young aspiring dancers on either side of me were excused. Then the legendary Russian pianist Valia stopped playing the upright. The audition was over. A small group of dancers, myself included, remained, frozen in our stances, uncertain. I had everything riding on this decision. Various judges, made up of the crème de la crème of ballet royalty, pointed, then went back to their huddle, then pointed again and began whispering. Finally the deliberations were over. Artistic director Leon Danielian stood without the assistance of his cane, walked toward me with a distinctive limp, took my face into his hands and said, “You’ve won.” He took my face into his hands and kissed me in a European way. A quick peck on both cheeks.

  Hard work had paid off. I wanted to shout to Esther and all my mentors and fosterers right there and then: We did it!

  One among this select group, I looked at my fellow dancers excitedly. None of us could repress our euphoria, as everyone spontaneously hugged each other, too exhausted to leap for joy, victoriously drenched as we curtsied before the judges and speedily exited the studio.

  There was no one who wanted that scholarship as much as I did, for different reasons perhaps, other than Robyn Silverman. My reality broke it down for me yet again, reminding me of that tough mantra—Be counted and don’t ask why.

  Robyn and I made the long trek back to Framingham on Greyhound. We didn’t sit together. How could I bridge the surreal chasm suddenly formed between us? Mr. and Mrs. Silverman met us at the station, clearly challenged as how best to comfort Robyn and congratulate me. The dream long cherished for their daughter had fallen to me, afforded as the result of their fostering. Bittersweet hugs were exchanged between Sylvia and me, few words were spoken, and a somber return to Maple Street ensued. I had to stem my excitement. And I did. That was so, even when a letter soon arrived from American Ballet Theatre School confirming that the summer session would begin Monday morning, July 5, and continue through August 28. I tried not to make a fuss with the flurry of correspondence necessary for my arrangements, quietly writing my social worker to request assistance for caseload number 19267-C—that was me—in any way possible from the State of Maine, Department of Human Services, Bureau of Social Welfare, led by Commissioner David E. Smith. I hoped that Linda Webb and her manager, Richard Totten, would present my appeal to the right bureaucrat. It was a long shot, but I had to try. I had nothing and everything to lose if I didn’t.

  I graduated in the spring of 1976 from Boston’s Shaw Preparatory High School. I completed both my junior and senior academic requirements in one year and I was chosen to be the graduating class salutatorian. The speech that I gave incorporated themes of gratitude and pride in how far we had all come, with a challenge to my fellow graduates to strive to unimagined heights along our different journeys ahead.

  Looking back at the speech that I handwrote, now a fading piece of my history, it is interesting to observe how formed my feelings and attitudes about life already were. This, too, was credit to all those who had helped raise me to this point. What I most wanted to share was that success wasn’t the end goal, but that the feeling of progressing through life mattered most, through individuality, expression of self, and the power of an artistic outlet:

  I have found that being able to express inner feelings and to be unique is far superior than to just follow—never expanding one’s personality to what it could be. I look to the bright side of things and find that a book or a career has an opening and closing, and by that understanding this feeling of excitement fills my heart knowing that my first page has been turned.

  None of my extended family of fosterers attended my graduation, which took place four days after my seventeenth birthday, on May 14, 1976, except for the one person without whom the milestone never would have been reached—Agatha Armstead. As I stood at the lectern, with second-highest honors, delivering the salutatory commencement speech, I had no problem finding her ever-shrinking frame in the crowd. Diminutive as she was, her megawatt smile beamed with well-earned pride.

  Ma had foreseen many pinnacles that she urged me to climb, including this day, so many years earlier, perhaps from the very day she came to Gray to get me, a crying, confused toddler, and brought me home to Forest Edge.

  Though the ceremony conflicted with the Silvermans’ schedule, they had given me the graduation gift of a lifetime, one that was further validation of all that Agatha had done to raise me, and one that had first been handed to me the previous summer when, through a set of seemingly unrelated circumstances, my fate was determined.

  Following the auditions, Robyn and I remained sisters, cheering each other on in every respect. After high school she would be college bound, destined to be an academic star, following in her mother’s footsteps, Robyn became a teacher, now on her second master’s in education and psychology. Not surprisingly, given the example set by Sylvia, Robyn would become the kind of mother to her own two children that you would wish for every child.

  Sylvia Silverman and I had also cemented a lasting foster mother/ daughter bond, for which I was forever grateful. The wheels were set in motion.

  When the day arrived for my departure to New York, it seemed everyone in the Silverman household was elsewhere while I loaded up the waiting van in the driveway—until just before it was time for me to walk out the door. Then Mr. Silverman—who had been watching television—came out of his den and handed me a check.

  �
�Good luck, Vicki,” my last foster father said, the one who showed me how to cook matzo brei that I loved to have as a breakfast treat. Mr. Silverman did not comment on his unexpected gift, the size of which I had never received into my own hands from anyone in my life, over $300. He cautioned me, “Open a bank account as soon as you get to New York.” Then he added, “Never go below that amount.”

  It was to be my only financial security until I could find a job. Having just turned seventeen years old, I had a year left to receive institutional support. Otherwise, I was on my own. I was on the Foster Care Emancipation Clock and it was ticking, big-time. I was about to be a statistic, one of the twenty to twenty-five thousand children released into adulthood at eighteen. I had a head start. In what was the most affection we showed to each other during my entire stay, I embraced Mr. Silverman and accepted love with this most unexpected, never forgotten gift.

  There was never a question as to whether Sylvia knew what her generosity to me had meant and would continue to mean. Of everything that she gave to me, what I would always treasure most was the tacit acknowledgment she conveyed that I had been a gift in her life as well.

  SEVEN

  VALENTINA PEREYASLAVEC & PAULINA RUVINSKA DICHTER