Leap

by Jodi Lundgren

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Do I have to spell it out for you?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  We passed one sad, skinny tree after another, growing in squares of earth surrounded by pavement. The exhaust fumes made me feel nauseous.

  “You’ve been fucking my brother.”

  I reeled as if punched in the gut. She kept walking but I veered to the cement wall of a building that bordered the sidewalk. I leaned my back against it and folded my arms across my chest. She turned around next to one of the skinny trees. We stared at each other. A showdown.

  She shifted her weight and adjusted her backpack. Silence pulled taut between us. “Well? Are you going to deny it?”

  She might have been bluffing. “What did he tell you?” My voice trembled. It was bad enough having her call me a slut way back in my previous life, when I was a virgin. This was too much to bear.

  She strode up to me and stopped, hands on her hips, her dark bangs falling into her eyes. My old friend Sasha. “Remember the night you came over, the night I told you about my mom?”

  “Um-hm.”

  “After that, I kept trying to call you. You never answered the phone. I needed someone to talk to, but I didn’t feel like leaving messages.”

  Another blow. I’d forgotten Sasha. She shared her family secrets that night and never heard from me again. Some friend. “Sash, I’m so sorry.”

  She held up her hand. “I’m not done.” She bit off her words and her eyes flashed.

  “Later that week, I go over to your house. Your mom’s car isn’t there, so I ring the bell. I’m standing there waiting for you to answer the door, and I’m thinking how nice it’ll be for you and me to reconnect. I’m feeling big enough to give you a second chance after you went behind my back to date my brother. I’m remembering how my mom swore at me in front of you that night, and how you didn’t freak out. You just walked with me and listened and acted like a friend. I’m thinking nice thoughts about you, like how we’ve been friends for six years now, how we met in that skipping tournament on the playground, doing Double Dutch. I’m just about to ring the bell again when the door opens. My brother is standing there wearing nothing but a towel! Jesus, Natalie, how could you?”

  She backed up a few paces and stared at the ground. I held my face in my hands.

  She turned and continued walking. I trailed behind. When she reached a small park with grass, flower beds, and a statue of some explorer, she stopped. She sat down and grasped the bench, wrists flush with her legs. Her body curved forward into a tense cat arch. I joined her.

  We sat together for awhile, looking at the rose garden, at the greenish statue of a man on a horse. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I haven’t been a good friend to you lately.”

  “You know what I don’t get?”

  “What?” For a second, it seemed that all our conflict stemmed from a simple misunderstanding. If she stated her confusion and I explained, we could shake hands and make up. Best friends forever.

  “I don’t understand how you can be such a bitch and a slut and still get whatever you want.”

  The words cut. They paralyzed me, especially the s word. It took something precious, filled it with hate, and bashed it. I had sex before I was ready, yes, and I’ve never seen Kevin again. That hurts. It hurts a lot. But to be judged and despised for what happened? The pain deepened with every breath.

  After a long silence, I called up the image of Sasha crying on the ferry. It softened me enough to make one final effort. “Petra asking me to do this performance was my first lucky break all summer. Ms. Kelly kept ragging on me, remember? It was so bad that I dropped out of jazz. I really wanted to go with Paige to visit my dad, but they wouldn’t let me. And my mom took off with her—” I caught myself just in time. This wasn’t the moment to “out” my mother. “—her new best friend. They sure didn’t want me around.” There were my lonely ice-cream binges. “And—and lots of other stuff.” Like losing my best friend, like losing my virginity. I swallowed hard.

  Sasha sneered. “Never mind. I’ll be gone in a couple days and we can forget this ever happened.”

  Our heart-to-heart was over. She took a winding route to a distant bus stop and I followed along. I suspected she was going out of her way to avoid the store she had stolen from. A heaviness settled inside my chest, worse than phlegm.

  She kept the dress. She knows I won’t say anything this time. And if there’s a next time, I won’t hear about it.

  Thursday, August 19th

  Petra pushed back our rehearsal time and urged us to take class at the Dance Centre. For the coming week, the guest teacher is Lance, the man Petra introduced me to after the show last month. She calls him her guru.

  He stood at the studio entrance and greeted the dancers as we filed in. He stopped me and shook my hand. “Welcome! You’re—” He half-shut his eyes as he tried to place me.

  “Natalie.”

  “That’s right—from Victoria.” He smiled. “You’re in town? Visiting?”

  “I’m rehearsing with Petra for Choreofest.”

  He raised his thick gray eyebrows, pushing his forehead into deeper wrinkles. “How wonderful! I look forward to seeing you perform again. Have you taken a Graham-based technique class before? No? Then just find a spot in the center so you have people on all sides to watch.”

  At least twenty professional dancers surrounded me, a decent portion of them men. My neighbor to the left was six-feet tall and wore a wrestling singlet. Islanded in the middle, I followed as best I could. Class began on the floor, with contractions, releases, lifts, and leans. A live drummer made rhythm ricochet off the walls. We stood up for tendues and leg swings. The exercises progressed to combinations full of jumps that traveled diagonally, clear across the space. Lance encouraged and praised us all through the class. “Take the back with you. That’s it. Open the chest around the heart. Beautiful!” His voice filled a hole inside.

  After class, Lance said, “Congratulations, Natalie. You did very well your first time. How did you like it?”

  “I feel like my spine’s been through a wringer, but I loved it! There’s so much more feeling in this kind of dance.”

  He placed his hand on his chest. “That’s my goal: to teach you to dance from your emotional center. I want to make you feel safe enough to express what’s in your hearts. With passion and accuracy.” No teacher I’d ever met talked this way; even Petra wasn’t quite so … spiritual.

  I took a chance and said, “I feel really intimidated dancing with older people. I’m worried that Petra is disappointed in me. I think she must regret hiring me. I don’t measure up.”

  Lance took a breath. “It was very brave of you to take on the challenge of performing professionally at such a young age.”

  Sure, if by “brave” he meant “foolhardy.”

  “You’ve had excellent training and your technique is strong. What it comes down to now is quality. Yes, it’s going to take years to develop your full potential in modern.” He spread his hands as if the future stretched between them.

  “I knew it,” I said. “But I don’t have years, I have days.”

  “I’m not finished.” He clapped his hand on my shoulder.

  I pursed my lips and scuffed my foot on the floor.

  “All you need to do is open your heart,” he said. “Let everything you’re feeling spill into the dance. Even the doubts and fears. If you try to shut down your emotions, you’ll look dry and academic.” He swung his arms stiffly, like a soldier. “But if you welcome them in, you’ll be convincing.” He rolled his spine from side to side, contracted his stomach like he’d been punched, ran backwards, then turned and flung himself into a leap, legs and arms spread wide. He landed in a kneeling position and rolled back up to standing. He faced me. “You see?” He asked.
“Make sense?”

  I nodded. “I think so. I’ll try my best.”

  He frowned. I was confused until I realized that he was mirroring my worried expression. It made me laugh. “That’s better,” he said.

  He seems so wise and kind. I wonder if I could adopt him as my grandfather. I hardly remember Mom’s dad—I was only four when he died—and my Ontario grandparents haven’t flown out since the divorce.

  Evening

  Sasha didn’t show at our meeting spot this afternoon. She’d gone “postering” again. I waited for fifteen minutes, then started strolling. After a few cool, overcast days, the return of hot weather had people parading by in sundresses, tank tops, shorts, and sandals. Bright colors and flowered patterns made a human garden that contrasted with the mannequins, already draped in darker autumn clothes.

  A commotion across the street caught my eye.

  Against a backdrop of giant faces—posters in a window display—a girl was running. The models pouted as she dodged and weaved, her long, dark hair and a pair of jeans streaming behind her. Sasha. In the doorway of the store, a clerk in a white T-shirt was jumping to see over the heads of the crowd. She called to another clerk who punched numbers into a phone. Sasha disappeared around the corner.

  An elderly man with a canvas shopping bag in the crook of his elbow shuffled towards me. I veered to the right and a skateboarder loomed in front of me. He had a piercing in the middle of his lower lip, and round black discs stretched holes in his earlobes. He scowled as he rolled past.

  I kept trying to dart through the crowd before I lost track of Sasha altogether. Finally, I rounded a corner.

  “Why’d you sell my bedframe for drugs?”

  I jerked to a standstill. Was someone yelling at me? A busker swung his guitar to face me. Shaggy blond curls fell over his forehead, and his eyes looked kind of sad. It was a line in a song he was singing, mostly on one note.

  A passing business man bumped the neck of the guitar. “Don’t block the sidewalk.” As he strode by, he muttered, “Scum.”

  The busker kept right on playing. His strumming was fast and precise, like bluegrass music. He delivered the next line to the suit’s back, raising the volume on the last word. “Why’d you sell my bedframe for drugs—MOTHERFUCKER?”

  He looked down at the frets. His hands spanned the strings and his fingers quivered with strength. A guitar case lay open at his feet and a few golden coins dotted the black lining. I shoved my hand into my pocket as I glanced up the street. I’d lost Sasha’s trail, anyway, so I took time to fish out a coin. Busking didn’t look easy. When I dropped in some change, the musician nodded and flashed me a smile.

  “Friends don’t do that kind of stuff. Why’d you sell my bedframe for drugs?”

  I turned back the way I’d come. I didn’t know what to do about Sasha. (“Why’d you pawn off my videos?” the singer asked.) If I tried to talk to the store clerks, they might think I was an accomplice. They would definitely want me to help them catch her. I didn’t want to cover for her, but I didn’t want to turn her in. So I did nothing.

  Tonight, Sasha’s dad called Petra to say that he had come to Vancouver and picked Sasha up and could Petra please send her things home with me next week. He didn’t explain why he was a day early or why Sasha had left her stuff. So I don’t know if she was arrested, or if she just freaked out and called her dad. Petra asked me if I knew what had happened, and I shook my head.

  I didn’t used to have all these secrets. It makes me feel tired and old.

  Friday, August 20th

  This morning in rehearsal, Petra said we were coming across as ethereal and weightless, like good ballerinas. But she wanted us to be grounded and earthy.

  My shoulders tightened when I heard the criticism. I assumed it was directed at me. I’m the one with the least experience in modern dance, after all. Practically none. I was probably bringing down the level of the group. Isn’t that what Ms. Kelly said when she kicked me out of the jazz piece? My God, what was I doing here? I crossed my arms, holding my ribs with one hand and my opposite shoulder with the other.

  “So, to help you with that, I’m going to lead you in an improvisation,” Petra said. “Focus on sinking your weight into the floor.”

  I couldn’t believe the critique was over. Ms. Kelly used to rant on and on until every single one of us felt like crap. Petra was actually offering a solution. Was this what they called constructive criticism? I unhooked my arms from my torso.

  Petra smiled. “Let’s start by lying down.”

  I lay on my back with my knees bent up, arms spread. My lower back released into the floor. My knees toppled to one side, my left leg swung across, and the momentum pulled me onto my stomach. I thought about what Lance had said: express what’s in your heart. The sun slanted across the floor and I was hit with a memory of that afternoon with Kevin:

  Before it happened, we looked into each other’s eyes and he really saw me; I know he did. Separate colors made up the hazel of his eyes … green, amber, brown. But then, snap, his pupils dulled, and all signs that he knew me, let alone liked me, disappeared. He slid inside me, but I could have been anyone.

  In the studio, I twisted and turned, flopping on the floor, a caricature of a restless sleeper. I didn’t want to feel the weight of my limbs. I wanted to split off from my body, I wanted to forget. But after a few minutes of writhing, the movement took over. My arms and legs swept the floor. Soon I was sliding and popping into jackknifes, upside down, weight on my hands, following Petra’s cues to move around the room. She guided us to a standing finish. I pretended to rise from a pile of tangled bed sheets. I kicked them to the side of the room.

  “Good, good.” Petra nodded and made eye contact with each of us in turn. “You’ve got substance now, you’ve got density. You want to bring all of that inner richness to the work.”

  Evening

  Mom called tonight. “Hi, Nat.”

  Warmth filled my chest. “Hi, Mom.” It’s much easier to think fondly of someone when you’re not living on top of each other. Besides, spending time with Sasha had made me feel lucky in the Mom department.

  “You’ve had a couple of phone calls—one from Lisa.”

  I sucked in a breath. “What did she say?”

  Was my luck going to hold? Could I really be both un-pregnant and uninfected?

  “She said to tell you that she has good news. But the details can wait till you’re back in town.”

  Perfect. I released my breath.

  “I heard from Kevin, as well.”

  A bungee jump from a railroad trestle couldn’t have made my stomach lurch more.

  “Nat? Are you there?”

  “Yeah.” I tried to sound normal. “What did he say?”

  He apologized to her for the party. He asked about me and about the yard and whether there was anything he could do. He gave her his number to pass on to me—the number where he’s staying, that is. I’m pretty sure he’s still transient.

  Kevin must have charmed Mom, because she said if I wanted to call him, I could charge it to the calling card. “I really think he just wants to make amends.”

  Can she be that naïve? My impatience with her rushed back. A guy like Kevin never calls up just to apologize. He must want something. I wonder what Lisa would say? Too little, too late, I bet. I really think you should forget him.

  Maybe Mom thinks if I’m dating, I’ll be too distracted to care about her love life. Maybe she hopes that someone else will provide me with TLC (her pet acronym: Tender Loving Care), leaving her free to squander all her love on Marine. Poor Paige! I’ll be all right, but a ten-year-old still needs a mother. I hope Mom pulls herself together before Paige gets back.

  Still … I am tempted to call Kevin. I wonder what he wants? And if he knows what happened to Sasha? It’s calme
r now that she has gone. That mean streak of hers is hardening into a permanent callus, and the things she said really stung. I worry about her, but I don’t know how to help.

  Saturday, August 21st

  Petra’s boyfriend Michel returned yesterday, so I packed up my things and moved to Monique’s studio apartment. Besides a kitchenette, her room contains only a sofa (a.k.a. guest bed), a set of shelves, and a coffee table made from black plastic crates. She sleeps on a mattress in a walk-in closet and shares a bathroom with two neighbors down the hall.

  This morning, before Monique left to get her hair cut, she said, “Let’s go out dancing tonight.”

  “At a bar? I’m fifteen, remember?”

  “Pfff. Fifteen going on twenty-one. Leave it to me, chérie.”

  Monique is still at the salon. The phone is sitting on the coffee table. This is probably the best chance I’m going to have to call Kevin. God, I want to! I can’t believe we were living together like lovers for a week and then, boom—no contact at all. OK. Deep breath.

  Afterwards …

  I didn’t realize how mad I was.

  Mad that he moved into my mother’s house without an invitation, mad that I let him stay, mad that he spent my grocery money on beer and weed, mad that he had that party against my wishes, mad that his friends tore up the garden, and MAD that he seduced me! MAD! MAD!! Mad that I let him seduce me, too. But mad that he wouldn’t realize that we needed to talk about it, that losing your virginity is a big deal, that it might upset me, and that above all we needed to use protection! All these feelings flooded me when he answered the phone. I really let him have it.

  He listened, I’ll give him that. He tried to soothe me. Just hearing his voice transported me to “our” lake, where arbutus leaves were turning color and water lapped the dock. The memory turned me on. I twisted on the couch and hugged a pillow to my stomach. I wanted to soften my voice and touch him with it, like a lover.

  Instead, I described the embarrassing trip to the drugstore and the hideous appointment at the Sexual Health Clinic. “I’m never going through that again.”