Shiny Broken Pieces

by Sona Charaipotra

  Two hours later, all the girls are outside the studio, preparing to be invited in. Cassie sits beside me. We shake out our legs and bounce on our heels and smile at each other. Neither of us says a word. We both have to dance well tonight, and it’s getting hard to concentrate as the room fills up with dozens of bodies.

  The studio doors open.

  “Good luck,” she whispers. “Merde.”

  “You, too.”

  All the Level 8 girls line up, along with a few select lower levels, like Riho and Isabela. We are each given a place at the barre. A few company members stand outside the glass walls. There’s waving behind the glass. I squint to see.

  It’s Mama and Aunt Leah. An embarrassed flush covers me. Mama smiles and blows me a kiss. Despite the hovering, I’m glad she’s there. Better than any lucky charm, her presence makes me stand taller, feel stronger, more like my old self.

  Damien marches into the studio, then Mr. K right behind him. There are two rows of chairs in the front of the studio, and it feels like the most important audience I’ve ever danced for.

  Damien gives us barre combinations in rapid-fire succession from pliés to tendus to ronds de jambe and turns at the barres. We do twenty minutes of exercises, then he comes around to inspect each one of us on the last combination. “Tendu front. Demi-plié. Then, tendu back. Turn away from the barre, arabesque.”

  I can feel him getting closer, but I try to focus on pointing my toe and working through the positions fully. I try to center myself in the here and now, knowing every second counts. Damien gazes at me for a moment, but he doesn’t say anything. He gives us twelve more barre combinations, and we work until our feet are warmed up and sweat drips down our backs. I try not to watch the company members in the mirror, but their faces are distracting. So I focus on my breathing, listening to the rhythm it makes. I tell my heart to be strong. I remind myself it has to be all effortless turns, soft fingers, and the cleanest positions.

  Damien motions to the pianist to stop. “Please remove the barres. Put them in the far corners. Change into pointe shoes.”

  I quickly change shoes, take a gulp of water, then warm up my feet.

  Madame Dorokhova shows us the adagio routine she’d like to see. It’s based on one of Odette’s Swan Lake solos from Act Two. She goes through the complicated series of arm lifts, combinations, glissades, and turns. We mark it twice with the music. Then she splits us into small groups of three. I’m up first, with Eleanor and Cassie and a few others. I don’t make eye contact with Eleanor. I haven’t been able to apologize to her yet—and maybe after a month, it’s too late. Guilt creeps up every time I see her, and I have to work to push it down. June’s among girls in the second group, left to wait in their pool of anxiety and panic. I can feel her eyes boring into me, nearly throwing me off-balance.

  Focus, I tell myself. Relax. I know I’ve got this. I position myself in front. I close my eyes until the third chord beat and I let myself forget that anyone else is in the room. I sink into the melodies. Madame Dorokhova’s adagio is sad and slow and we have to hold poses for long stretches. I explode out of my stance with big leaps and sweeping arms, catching everyone by surprise. I dance long after the adagio has ended and the other girls have stopped. I build on to Madame Dorokhova’s beautiful choreography, and the company pianist gives me another full chord to finish.

  When I’m done, no one looks particularly pleased. I know I shouldn’t have done that, but I smile, curtsy, move out of the center for the next group of dancers. I should go, but I need a minute to just revel in the flush of heat inside me and my labored breaths.

  That was just for me, and for Mama.

  21.

  June

  FOCUS. THAT’S WHAT I KEEP telling myself. In thirty more minutes, this will all be over, and my fate will be decided, for better or worse.

  “Out of the center,” Madame Dorokhova tells Gigi. I wish I could be like Gigi in that moment, just happy to be here, embracing the journey as much as the destination. But it’s not about that for me. I need to do well here. It’s now or never.

  “Next batch,” Dorokhova shouts, and I leap forward.

  Eight of us shift from the studio’s edges into the center. My legs are steady and strong, even as my heart thumps so hard and fast I feel like the whole studio must hear it. I look at the familiar faces all around me, some wrecked with nerves, others calm and determined. I wonder where I fall on the spectrum.

  Dorokhova positions all of us, putting Sei-Jin, Riho, Isabela, and me at the very front.

  “Ready?” she says.

  I take a deep breath and steel myself. Eyes stare in from behind the glass and the ballet masters and mistresses sit right in front of us, taking notes, whispering assessments. The light in here is so bright you would think it was the sun. I arch my back. I flicker my hands out so they look soft and delicate.

  The music starts. My heart drums alongside the syncopated beats from the piano.

  You deserve this, June, I tell myself. You’ve worked hard to be here.

  I step up on pointe and into glissade and arabesque and then piqué turns. The music builds into a series of crescendos. I turn, lift, and glide; turn, lift, and glide. I hear Bette’s voice in my head, reminding me to relax, to smile, to enjoy myself, all while keeping my lines lean and endless, my jumps graceful and controlled. Her advice anchors me. I take a moment to listen to music as we move, letting it envelop me, letting myself forget that Damien, Dorokhova, and the others are here. I imagine myself basking under the bright lights of Lincoln Center, the warmth of the audience’s applause as they celebrate my movements, fluid and flawless.

  At the same time, I concentrate on lengthening, showing how far I can stretch my legs and arms in these movements. When I was little, I used to wish I’d been made of gum so I could bend myself into impossible shapes. Ballerina shapes.

  I buzz with adrenaline. The rush leaves me breathless and flushed, a pretty ballerina pink. I beam outwardly, embracing the final thrums of the music as I spin into the final, impeccable pirouette. As we all curtsy into deep révérences, I’m still smiling.

  No one claps or comments or even looks up. They’re too busy scribbling notes in their files as if we’re strangers—as if they hadn’t spent the last decade grooming us.

  “Company dancers, cast list shortly!” Damien Leger shouts, and we’re escorted off center. Just like that, it’s all over.

  As we exit the room, Sei-Jin and her gaggle embrace one another in a relieved, exhausted group-hug thing. For just one second, I want to join them, wrapping my sweaty, shaky arms around the pack. Instead, I take a seat on the floor near the door, not far from where Adele and the other company members are settling in. Their cast list is about to go up, and my curiosity won’t let me leave this space, this moment, its gravity.

  I watch the company apprentices gather, their excitement heady and sweet. They’re all beautiful, stunning in their easy grace. There’s Russian import Katarina Plotkin, with her dark eyes and hair framing snow-white skin, lithe and elegant. She’s whispering with all-American Becca Thomas, who looks like she stepped out of Dance magazine, all long, lean lines and bright green eyes. Then there’s Ting Wu, a Chinese-born Cali girl, an inspiration to Sei-Jin and her crew. And to me, I guess, if I let myself admit it. She gives me hope.

  If she can make it to the American Ballet Company stage, maybe I can, too. I imagine Damien looking at these beautiful dancers and picking them apart—putting together the perfect ballerina, piece by piece. He’d pair Ting’s strong legs and Katarina’s flawless feet, and add Becca’s corn silk crown. They all fly now toward a flushed, happy Adele, who throws her head back laughing.

  “Odette and Odile, can you believe it?” she says, and the others wrap her into a warm, congratulatory huddle. “It hasn’t hit me yet!”

  Damien made a great choice in casting her. She’s a melding of form and technique, of beauty and charisma. It’s a rare thing she has. I see a raw version of it in Bette.<
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  My phone buzzes once, twice, three times, an endless stream of texts from my mom, ranting about the fact that I’ve missed yesterday’s appointment with Taylor, the therapist.

  That’s three in a row.

  You need to get better.

  This is costing me money.

  Do you want to get better?

  Of course I do. But I also want to be here, to do this. Preparing for auditions has taken up all my focus the last few weeks, and rehearsals will take over soon. If I want what Adele has, I can’t afford to focus on anything else.

  22.

  Bette

  MY FATHER DOESN’T COME INSIDE when he arrives. He stays in his car and has the driver honk. When he called, he wouldn’t give me many details. He just said that he’d talked to Damien, and that I should be ready for an audition. I was too busy shrieking with glee to catch much of the rest of it.

  Audition. That word pulses through me like my own heartbeat. My hair is pulled back tight into a proper bun, and I have on a brand-new leotard. I always buy new ones at the start of every school year and I was cocky enough to think that I would be back for the first day of school, so I bought a bunch of new ones. I chose a long-sleeved one that dips low in the back. I can feel the cold pushing in through my down coat as I walk out to the car.

  “What’s happening?” I slide into the back of his car.

  As the driver pulls into Central Park, headed for the West Side of Manhattan, my father’s staring out the window like a tourist.

  “Dad?”

  “You haven’t called me that in so long.” He laughs.

  I lightly hit his shoulder and start to laugh, too, even though I’m mostly a bunch of nerves and questions and worries. It feels good to be with him like this after the disaster that was Thanksgiving.

  “It’s over. You’re clear,” he says, and he’s grinning, even though I can tell he’s trying not to.

  “You went to the school?”

  “I went with the lawyer, and showed him the video you sent to your mom and me. He called that stuffy Russian man at the conservatory, and he came to my office. Then I got it done.”

  “Got it done?”

  “Done.” The car pulls up to the light across from the school campus. “Suspension is gone. Your record is cleared. And your audition is for a role in the anniversary ballet. Swan Lake?”

  “Just like that?”

  “Yes.”

  The driver pulls up to one of the entrances to the plaza. Seeing the building now with this new information and all dressed up, a flicker of excitement rushes through me. Getting back here always felt like some far-off thing. I could see it in the distance like a blinking light, always there and always just a little bit out of reach.

  The driver opens my door.

  “I’ll be waiting here when you’re done. Have a conference call to take—” The phone interrupts. “There’s my call.”

  “Dad.” I want to hug him, but I feel awkward. The distance between us might be too far to cross, even after this. “Thank you.” I slide out of the car. He smiles at me, and I realize that his mouth curves up just like Adele’s does when she smiles. I think about asking him how much it cost or what promises he made or if the video actually took it all away. Instead, I hustle across the Rose Abney Plaza and into the company building before the whole moment disappears.

  The man at the front desk looks at me and smiles. “You must be Adele’s little sister ’cause you look like she spit you out.”

  “Yes. I’m here to see Mr. Leger.”

  “They told me to send you upstairs to Studio Four. Take the elevators to the fifth floor, then turn right once you’re off it.” I let him tell me all these details, even though my sister is the new face of ABC, and I know this building backward and forward.

  It’s eerily quiet upstairs. The company members are long gone for the day, and most of the studios are dark and empty, only reflecting bits of light from the street across the barres. But the very last one at the end of the hall is bright, glowing, almost like it’s on fire. I inch closer, moving more slowly than I’ve ever walked. For once I’m scared, and it vibrates through my whole body. I take a pill out from my necklace, and swallow it down without a sip of water, wishing I could feel that hum of focus immediately. I close my eyes and ask it to help me get through this, help me to get all the things I’ve worked for, help me remind them (and myself) that this is where I’m supposed to be.

  Inside the studio are Damien and Yelena Dorokhova, another company director. I stand in the doorway, unsure of what to do with myself. Should I announce that I’m here? Should I stand here and wait for them to invite me in?

  I’m Bette Abney and I belong here.

  I smooth the edges of my hair and walk in.

  Damien turns around. “Well, aren’t you a little Adele?”

  “I’m Bette.” I want to add that I’m strong, not delicate like my sister.

  He shakes my hand, and I curtsy. “I’m pleased to meet you. Your sister said wonderful things about you and your technique. And she did say you were different from her.”

  The way he says the word different makes me wonder exactly what Adele said, and if it was positive. She never tells me what she thinks of my dancing.

  “We are different.”

  “Well, then, I’m looking forward to seeing that.”

  They give me fifteen minutes to warm up, even though I really need at least an hour, but I don’t dare complain.

  “Start at the barre, please.” Damien takes a seat at the front of the studio. Madame Dorokhova shows me combinations, working through the positions, and then signals a pianist to play. She doesn’t let me mark it, but now the sharp focus of my pills rushes through me and I don’t miss a word from her mouth. I do every motion perfectly—elongating my neck, softening my hands, fully pointing my toes, extending through each position. Morkie’s instructions are on repeat in my head—her familiar bark echoing like she’s standing right there in the corner of the studio. Extension, grace, clean footwork, beauty, precision.

  After they’re pleased with my barre work, I move to the center. She gives me classical combinations from Odette’s first act solo. I remember seeing Adele cast as a little swan when Mr. K did the ballet with the Level 8 girls during her ninth-grade year. She was pulled from Level 5 ballet to rehearse. She showed me her variations in our basement ballet studio whenever she came home for the weekend. She reminded me that the trick is in the contrast—the light, airy goodness of the white swan, versus the dark seduction of the black. If you can’t pull them both off, you’re not cut out for this at all.

  Swan Lake is the most beautiful ballet there is, and my time with Adele in our studio together, working on these very steps, is one of the reasons I wanted to be a ballerina.

  I lengthen my line so that I have the perfect reflection of a ballerina in the mirror, and when I turn I make sure to point my foot as far as it can go before getting a cramp or triggering a muscle spasm. I dance as if someone is pulling me up toward the sky. I smile with each piqué, pirouette, and arabesque.

  Damien claps when Madame Dorokhova is done with me. My cheeks are pink and I’m that good kind of exhausted, the kind that makes you sleep better at night.

  “You have your sister’s feet, but a sharper edge.” He circles me like a vulture, hungry, pleased. “It’s an interesting combination. I can definitely cast you. And I don’t know what you did in past years, or even what your role in the conservatory scandal with the other dancer was, but leave it behind. Start over.”

  “Yes,” I barely get out. And just like that, I’m back.

  23.

  Gigi

  A WEEK AFTER THE Swan Lake auditions, we’re in the lobby after ballet class, waiting for the revelation of the cast list. Parents shuffle in through the doors. A heavy snow starts to fall outside the windows. The wind slams up against the panes. It feels like last year. Except this time I revel in the whispers. My name is whispered alongside Odette and Odile. It ge
ts louder and louder, like the crescendo in a wave or orchestra music. It’s all I can hear as the teachers start to file in. It’s all I can think about. How different it will be. How rare it is—nearly impossible—for dancers of color to earn the lead in the “white” ballets dependent on the ballet blanc. How I’ll be the first one at the conservatory if I’m picked.

  I look for Will and spot him near the front desk. His back is to the crowd, and even from here I can tell he’s tense. I wave my hand in the air, hoping he’ll turn around and come to where I’m standing. I’ve carved out a little spot with my dance bag plopped on the floor.

  Alec is to my far right. I can hear him talking to the boys, saying, “May the best Siegfried win.” Each word seems to hit me, makes me miss him, the warmth and safety of his arms wrapped around me, having someone to share this moment with.

  Eleanor is the only one of us sitting on the floor. She’s stretching with her eyes closed and her lips mumbling. June is somewhere behind me, but I don’t want to turn and look. All I think about when I see her are my butterflies and cutting her hair. A knot twists in my stomach just thinking about it. I remind myself that she deserved it. I remind myself that her hair is already growing back, so it’s fine.

  Cassie comes up. “You ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is it.” It’s weird talking to Cassie about everything. In the few months she’s been here, she’s really been a friend to me. But in this moment, as much as we’d like not to think about it, we’re competitors. Still, I tell myself, it’s good to know that there’s someone in this cutthroat world that I can just relax with, trust a little. I still haven’t worked up the courage to bring up what she had me do to Eleanor with the hummus. I’d rather not lose her.

  The next fifteen minutes drag out for what feels like hours. I keep waiting for Will to turn around and find his way over to me. I look for him again.