But five years after we’d arrived at Harold’s apartment, Mommy decided that, once again, it was time to pick up and go.
Mommy strapped Lindsey into her car seat in the blue Mercedes station wagon while the rest of us squeezed in around her, finding space wherever we could. As we drove to God knew where, there was no tussling, no yelling. We were too confused to laugh, too scared to play around.
Our leaving was always like that—dramatic, hurried, and ragged.
Slender, not quite five feet six, until Mommy reached middle age she looked more like somebody’s cool and sultry big sister than a mother of six. Mommy retired her Kansas City Chiefs pom-poms after only one season, but she carried a cheerleader’s exuberance throughout her life, rooting for her children and always smiling, despite too many marriages gone wrong and, at times, bill collectors on our trail.
To this day, I’m still trying to understand Mommy, all that shaped her and, most of all, the choices she made. She didn’t talk much about her childhood, but from what I could glean, it was filled with pain. She was born to an Italian mother and an African American father, parents whom she would never know. They put her up for adoption, and while they didn’t leave an explanation saying why they didn’t keep her, I’m sure that, at a time when blacks and whites could go to jail for being married in many states, they peered into the future and figured that raising a biracial child was more than they could handle.
Mommy was given a home by an older African American couple, a social worker and her husband, but they died while she was still very young. From there she began to shuttle between the homes of various relatives and ended up mostly raising herself.
Leaving Harold was the beginning of a time when I could measure my days through my mother’s boyfriends, her dependence on an ever-changing string of men. But all that clarity came later, when I was much older. On the night we left Harold, I was only seven, and the movements of my life weren’t yet up to me. Our family was headed to San Pedro, a portside community nestled next to Los Angeles Harbor, and it would be the place to which we would always return, the place that, in between the picking up and leaving, my siblings and I would forever think of as home.
I DON’T KNOW IF Harold knew that his wife and children were leaving him. But the man who eventually became our new stepfather knew that we were on our way. Robert, my mother’s soon-to-be fourth husband, was the polar opposite of the man who had been her third. A successful radiologist, Robert was a little chubby, and, like my half-Italian, half-black mother, of mixed race, with bloodlines that were Hawaiian, Korean, Filipino, Portuguese, and Japanese.
A century earlier, fishermen from Japan, as well as from Croatia, Greece, and Italy, had plied San Pedro’s waters for sardines and albacore, making Los Angeles Harbor the biggest fishing port in the country by the 1920s. Fishing was a hard trade. Growing up, I heard of longshoremen who were killed on the docks. But it was also a good living, and many of the local men—my schoolmates’ fathers, brothers, and uncles—chose to answer the sea’s call.
Life in San Pedro was etched by the sea, so much so that I don’t ever recall learning to swim, only that from the beginning of my time there I was able to glide through the water effortlessly. When I hit my teens, my clothes would carry the scent of burned wood from bonfires on the beach. And there was many a school field trip to the Angel’s Gate Lighthouse, a structure built in 1913 that still serves as the port’s sentry. When a ship needs guidance, the foghorn pierces the quiet with two blasts every thirty seconds. As a child, the sound must have interrupted our games of jump rope, our lessons, our prayers. But it blared so often that the longer we lived there, the less we noticed it, and it faded into the background, like a heartbeat.
We were a part of Los Angeles but about as far from Hollywood, the city’s flashy, mythical core, as you could get. Except for the palm trees, San Pedro was a lot like Mayberry, the fictitious country town that existed only on black-and-white TVs. Generations lived and died there, unwilling to pull up the roots that their grandparents had buried deep in the sandy soil.
There were no skyscrapers. Instead, downtown was like a daguerreotype come to life, with gaslights and Victorian shops. In San Pedro, it was the simple and familiar that mattered. Most of my old neighbors have no recollection of the time I won a life-changing award dancing the role of Kitri in Don Quixote at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, even though my picture was splashed on the front of the Daily Breeze. But everyone still talks about the talent show at Point Fermin Elementary when I wore a white wedding dress and little, skinny Aaron, my classmate, serenaded me from down on his knees. That’s the kind of thing that they remember in San Pedro: Aaron, my frilly costume, and a heartfelt but painfully off-key love song.
There were so many hills and curves on the way to Robert’s home that it looked as if we would drive right into the Pacific Ocean before the car suddenly, mercifully, swerved and hugged the next bend. The house was a single story built in the Mediterranean style, with a huge front yard.
It was a perfect house on a perfect block—and what seemed like the portal to a perfect life. You could even see Catalina Island from the front porch, gleaming like a mirage in the morning fog. But what looks perfect is often just an illusion, like the dancer with a strained hamstring who wears a smile instead of a grimace when she lands as delicately as a butterfly despite her pain.
We kids didn’t pay much attention to the beauty around us. We were too busy trying to figure out why we were here, what had gone wrong, and, most of all, when we would see Harold again. But this was home now, and soon we fell into the rhythms of our new life.
We had chores for the first time: taking out the garbage, washing the dishes, sweeping the breakfast crumbs off the floor. And there was no more grabbing a plate and eating on the couch. We sat down at the dining room table for our meals—morning, noon, and night.
That was okay. We Copelands were like a nomadic tribe: hardy, fiercely protective of our band, and adaptable. We clung tightly to one another. And there were so many of us, we made our own party, our own fun, wherever we ended up and whatever the rules or circumstances.
My oldest sister, Erica, was twelve when we moved in with Robert. She was the most like our mother, vivacious and outspoken. She led our brood on the daily walks to school and tended to my bushel of hair, pulling it back into tight ponytails or blow-drying it straight after my bath.
Doug Jr., our oldest brother, was eleven, the namesake and, we would one day learn, the spitting image of our father. He was fiercely intelligent and so intent on gathering knowledge that he would curl up in the chair and read the dictionary the way other boys burrowed into comic books.
Like so many African Americans, our family was of mixed ancestry. We had an Italian grandmother on our mother’s side, and our father was the son of a German woman and an African American man. But Doug Jr. stood firm in his blackness.
One day, when I was in third grade, I came home and found Doug Jr. sitting on the porch. His brow was furrowed as he fiddled with something small and white that he held in his hands.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
“I’m reading about our history—about slavery—and I wanted to know what it felt like for our ancestors,” he said. “So I’m picking cotton.”
Unlike sand or seashells, raw cotton wasn’t easy to find in San Pedro. But somehow he’d gotten ahold of some and was spending time picking the seeds out of a white wisp. That was quintessentially Doug: intense, conscious, and culturally curious.
After him came our brother Chris, who gave glimpses of the attorney he’d be one day in the way he’d argue every point with absolute conviction. If he was wrong, you’d better not tell him. He was fearless, playing every sport—tennis, basketball, football—at some point in our childhoods. He was so full of energy that he would sometimes just race around the house, literally crashing into the walls.
Our little sister Lindsey, who eventually sprinted her way to a track scholarship at Chic
o State University, was the baby born to Harold and my mother. She had a luminous smile and a raucous sense of humor like her father. And our baby brother Cameron, who would cry his way through T-ball but found his gift sitting in front of a piano, was born after our mother got involved with Robert.
Then there was me in the middle—quiet, introverted, and happy to disappear within the clamor of our rambunctious family.
I was a nervous child. And my unease, coupled with a perpetual quest for perfection, made my life much harder than it needed to be.
I think I was born worried. There wasn’t a day that I didn’t feel some kind of anxiety, especially in school, and my panic would begin from the moment I woke up, fretting that I would be late to homeroom, until I came back home in the early evening. I was just nervous about life, period. I felt awkward, as if I didn’t fit in anywhere, and I lived in constant fear of letting my mother down, or my teachers, or myself.
It wasn’t like Mommy was a scold. But you had to earn her praise, and I craved it desperately. With so many brothers and sisters, it was hard to command her attention, and my voice, muted by my intense shyness, could barely be heard above my siblings’.
I strived to be perfect at school as well. The thought of being tardy could set my heart to racing. The summer before I was to follow Erica, Doug, and Chris to Dana Middle School, I constantly reminded myself that Mommy and I had to pay it a visit so I could memorize every turn and twist: which staircase led to algebra, where my English class was in the building. I was terrified of getting lost and then having to walk in front of a sea of staring faces when I arrived after the bell.
Mommy refused to accommodate my summertime walk-through. She was always trying to get me to relax, to calm down. But later, when I was in high school and could make the trek on my own, no one could deter me from my pre–Labor Day route rehearsal or the other strategies I devised to avoid being late. Pretty much all the way through twelfth grade, I would get to school an hour early, plant myself on the floor in front of my locker, and study until it was time to go to my first class.
I was never late, not even once.
I REMEMBER WHEN I appeared onstage for the first time. I was five years old, but unlike my later performances, what I most recall is not the confidence I felt in front of the crowd, or the rush from the applause, but the way Mommy reacted after the show.
We were still living in Bellflower with Harold, and Mommy entered Chris, Erica, and me into the talent show at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School.
She made our costumes, and we practiced for weeks, shaking our hips and lip-synching to “Please Mr. Postman.” I caught on quickly and I loved the experience, running home every day after school, practicing in the living room. Most of all, it was fun to see my mother so excited, especially when she was getting us ready the night of the performance.
“Oh yes, wait a minute, Mister Postman.”
It was showtime. Erica and I channeled the Marvelettes, while Chris, seven years old and dressed in navy blue shorts and a white shirt, toted a satchel and tossed envelopes to the audience. We were a hit, especially with Mommy.
“You guys were great!” she gushed afterward, snapping our pictures and beaming as members of the audience came over to tell us how cute we were. “You are naturals! Misty, you belong on the stage.”
I felt so special that night. Even though I’d shared the spotlight with Erica and Chris, I felt for once that I’d stood out from the crowd of little Copelands, that Mommy’s attention was focused solely on me.
That happened only occasionally, like when I got a good report card or was picked to be a hall monitor at Dana Middle School. Mommy would bring me bags of sunflower seeds as a treat, or stationery with sketches of sunflowers, or a sickly sweet kiddie perfume called—what else—Sunflower. I would gleefully accept my rewards, clinging to Mommy’s attention for as long as I could.
I didn’t feel particularly good at anything when it came to school. So instead I worked incredibly hard, going over equations, pronouns, and dates of Civil War battles until they were imprinted on my brain. I aced pretty much every exam, but it would not be until I found ballet in my teenage years that I would realize the true gift of my visual memory—the ability to see movement and quickly imitate it.
My first model for movement wasn’t a dancer at all. It was a gymnast, Nadia Comaneci. I wasn’t born when Comaneci made history in the 1976 Olympics, becoming the first woman to score a perfect 10 in gymnastics and winning gold medals for her strength and elegance on the balance beam and parallel bars. Instead, I discovered her when I was seven and saw her story depicted in a Lifetime movie. Smitten, I recorded the broadcast on our VCR and would sit on the floor in front of the TV, pressing the rewind button so I could watch it again and again. I became obsessed with gymnastics, tuning in to any meet or exhibition that I could find. But from the start, I was more drawn to the floor exercises than the aerial acrobatics—probably, I realize now, because it was the closest thing to classical movement and dance that I’d ever seen.
I started to teach myself gymnastics, and my body knew what my mind didn’t yet comprehend: that rhythmic motion came as naturally to me as breathing. In our new home with Robert, we had huge yards in front and back, and I would stretch out barefoot on the grass, teaching myself how to do backbend walkovers, cartwheels, handstands. I already knew how to do the splits, though no one had ever shown me. My legs just slid into position. I could balance on my head the way others stood firmly on their feet. I didn’t question why I could instantly do moves that it might take others months to achieve, why my arms and legs had the elasticity of a rubber band. They just did, and I just knew.
I spent hours after school and on weekends practicing my backyard routines. Then when I was done, I would arch my back, throw up my arms, and let the applause only I could hear wash over me. Just like Nadia.
Eventually, I realized that I didn’t really want to be a gymnast. It was the floor routines that transfixed me, not all the tumbling and flips. But for the first time, I’d tapped into the power of movement and felt its meditative grace. In it, I’d found an escape.
IT WAS AROUND THIS time that I began to get my first migraine headaches. Mommy told me that she had started getting them at around the same age. It was genetic, but I think that the crippling pain I experienced, as well as the vomiting and blurred vision, came mainly from stress. I was a constant ball of fear.
I would leave school early some days, too sick to study or play, falling asleep in my clothes as soon as I reached my bed. Light exacerbated my pain, so I had to lie in a pitch-black room. Robert would wake me when he got home from work and help me change into my pajamas. Over the years, my pain became routine but no less severe.
There was never a moment’s quiet in my house. There was a person sprawled on every chair, a book or toy tossed in every corner. We woke up every morning to a wall of sound, with children yelling, music blaring, and the television on full blast.
The TV became our family altar because that was how we watched sports. It didn’t matter which sport, what game, or which team: the Chicago Bulls, the San Francisco 49ers. Everyone had his or her favorite—everyone, that is, except me. But the Kansas City Chiefs belonged to us all. Before we children were born, my mother had become a Kansas City Chiefs cheerleader just so she could get free tickets to see the team play.
On house-shaking, popcorn-spilling weekends and Monday nights, the rest of the family would gather in the living room and roar over every stolen yard and fumbled pass. My mom and my siblings were consumed by it. I, on the other hand, would retreat to a bedroom, crank up a pop aria by Mariah Carey, and create. I didn’t know it was called choreographing at the time.
It was more hip swaying and head bopping than anything else. Mirroring the dancing I saw in the music videos that were constantly on the TV, I’d perform a pantomime, literally acting out a song’s lyrics.
“I’ve been THINKING about YOU,” Mariah would sing. I’d point my fingers at m
y temples, and then stretch my arms out to my imaginary boyfriend, hips and shoulders pumping to the beat.
Then she crooned that she was falling in love. I’d flutter my arms and slowly drop to the floor.
No, it wasn’t exactly George Balanchine. But I could easily imagine myself directing a video for MTV.
Sometimes I would pull Lindsey into my game so I could see my creation brought to life by another body. She was an unwilling student to say the least, probably because of all of us kids, Lindsey had inherited zero rhythm. We used to tease her mercilessly, asking if she’d been dropped into the wrong family or was secretly a white girl in cocoa skin.
“Please, Lindsey, do this dance for me,” I’d beg.
“I don’t wannnoooo,” she’d wail, tears welling in her eyes.
“I’ll get Chris and Doug to give up the TV and let you watch Sister, Sister,” I’d cajole.
That’s usually all it took. Lindsey loved her some Tia and Tamera Mowry. But she’d pout her way through every step.
Though I discovered dance while we lived with Robert, its true role as my sanctuary was yet to develop. Ours was a chaotic life. We had a house and interludes of stability when my mother had a husband, and crowded, cluttered apartments when we lived life in between.
“Ooh, child, things are gonna get easier./Ooh, child, things are gonna get brighter.” I’d sashay around Mommy’s bedroom, listening to Tupac, hoping he was right.
“Bam.” I’d fan my hands in front of my face, and swing my hips to the left, rocking out to Salt-N-Pepa’s “Whatta Man.”
“Pop.” I’d jerk my head to the right, my arms undulating while Craig Mack gave me “Flava in Ya Ear.”
When I was a girl, I loved watching reruns of The Brady Bunch. The six kids shared rooms in their spotless house, and the biggest crises they ever faced was Marcia’s skin breaking out the night before the senior prom or Greg’s voice changing on the eve of a talent show.
Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina Page 2