Audition
Page 13
On my shoulder.
I sink into a split.
A lazy act.
Splits are easy for me.
My hips relax too far in such directions.
Bow my head over my right front knee,
Grab the arch of my foot with my hands.
Don’t want to look up.
Señor’s black shoes
Slide in front of me.
I hold my breath,
Count the seconds as he passes.
Try to tell if he hesitates longer
Before me
Than all the others.
Turn my head subtly
To look again at Remington,
Now swinging his legs
In loose grand battements
As if he didn’t have a care,
As if he didn’t feel even a little bad
For not calling me last night.
Upton is buzzing with semester grades
But I could not bring myself
To open the envelope
Sitting on the Medrano’s kitchen table this morning.
Could not face more judgment.
Told Katia and Anne it had not yet come in the mail.
The slim packet weighs down my backpack
All the way to the studio dressing room,
Where I tell myself I am a ballerina
And silly school grades don’t matter to me.
“You look worried,”
Bonnie whispers.
Her face is gray,
Fine beads of sweat above her mouth.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
Bonnie draws the back of her hand
Across her damp lips.
Nervous brows furrow
Above her stage smile.
“Maybe we’re both a little off.”
I smile back,
Mine a little more real.
I care less about my grades
Than she about the thickness of her waist.
“Let’s go,”
I say as I head for the dressing-room door.
Bonnie follows.
Chatter and piano music make the hall air fresher.
I lead the way to the far end of the hall
Where the ballerinas sit,
And Remington.
“Hey, there.”
He gives the faintest smile
As I drop on the bench beside him.
Maybe Bonnie makes me bold,
Sitting on my other side.
We slip into pointe shoes,
Draw the satin ribbons across our ankles,
Tie the knots,
Tuck them out of sight.
I feel Rem’s thigh against mine,
Warm. Press back.
Lean my head a little onto
His arm, white with straight, brown hairs.
He smells a little of smoke,
A lot of coffee.
Bonnie stands.
Puts her back to the wall.
Snakes one leg up toward the ceiling:
A vertical split.
I tell myself Jane made it up.
I don’t torment him
The way she said I do.
Rem plants a fast kiss
On the top of my head,
Then jumps away
As if I could sting him—
So fast I can’t understand whether or not I am forgiven
Or need to be forgiven.
I slide my satin-cased feet
Beneath the bench,
Draw the report card from my bag,
Trace its sharp edge with my fingertip.
“Maybe you should open it.”
Bonnie is red-faced from stretching upside down.
“Out is always better than in.”
The envelope can wait
Until after ballet.
Bonnie and I
Find places at the center barre.
Remington likes the barre on the far wall,
The spot nearest the mirror.
He can only see his reflection
When he is working the left side.
I do not feel jealous that Remington
Gets to make his own dances.
I am a part of them,
Of their creation.
I have watched him sweat and roar
Play and replay
Bits of music
Move and bend
In the narrow space
Behind the orange chairs
In his apartment.
Watched him come and go.
His giant presence
Warm,
His absence
A still, moist air,
A hollow space
In my gut.
I do not tell him
I write about his dances.
I do not tell him
I write.
Would he be jealous that I can make things, too?
I do not tell him
Writing about dancing
Is becoming the only thing
That makes dancing
Make sense.
In center, the piano plays
A steady, adagio melody to accompany
Développé promenade.
Yevgeny sets the combination
A little bit differently
Each time.
Begin in first position, arms in fifth.
Or begin in the stage left corner,
Left foot front, right in coupé behind.
But always after a series of tendus, perhaps a pas de bourrée,
A high développé a la seconde,
Rond de jambe to first arabesque.
Then slowly, slowly promenade the standing leg
Around in one complete circle,
Keeping the arabesque high.
As you turn
The supporting foot clenches,
The thigh in arabesque grows heavier,
You reach your pointed toe to the ceiling,
Pull in your gut, your chin haughty,
Unwilling to admit defeat
By the laws of gravity.
Ballerinas are better than that,
Even though the accompanist’s fingers
Seem to slow to a near stop.
Each note stretches.
Eight counts will never come.
The weight of grades, Remington’s awkward kiss,
Make tonight an eternal promenade,
Everything pulling down.
After technique class
We break up for separate rehearsals.
Yevgeny takes Remington,
Lisette, and Fernando
To the small studio.
I practice the Little Swans,
A dance for a trio of girls,
With Señor Medrano.
Arms locked together with Simone and Madison,
Heads precise, feet sharp.
The music hums and builds.
We point, piqué, step,
Counting hard to stay together.
Win Señor’s smile
Which makes the evening
Suddenly spin faster.
I am half grinning when I leave the studio.
Simone and Madison head for the dressing room.
“You coming?”
“In a minute.”
At the end of the hall
Is the small rehearsal studio.
I peek inside,
Hope to catch a friendly glance,
A be-right-out gesture
From Remington.
Strains of a slow waltz
Carry through the cracked-open door.
In the mirror, I see the reflection
Of Lisette
On her knees,
Forehead to the floor,
Arms stretching back.
Rem is showing Fernando
How to reach for her hand
Pull it beneath her
Raise her from the bed—
Our bed.
I know this movement.
; I made it with Rem
A Saturday not long ago.
Something catches in my throat
As Remington grins at me
Through the mirror
Points to the imaginary watch on his wrist
Motions me to wait.
And I can’t help myself.
Remington turns up his stereo, grimaces,
Fine, brown mane
Tripping over his forehead,
Brushing his upturned nose,
Arms outstretched.
“What are you doing?”
I sit up on the couch,
Wrapped in his plaid shirt
That smells of ships and vinegar.
“I’m looking for a beginning
For my dance.
It isn’t quite right yet.”
His eyes are exasperated,
Though I know, for this moment,
Not at me.
“First position,” I blurt.
Rem’s expression shifts,
Exasperation
Now more directed.
“No!” I almost shout against
His don’t-interrupt-me-with-childishness eyes.
Desperate to have him see my worth as mind, not matter,
Muse, not obstacle.
“When you first learn to dance.
When you are little,
Four years old.”
I stumble for meaning.
Words cluster in my head:
Beginnings, births,
Sunrises, starts.
“First position.”
I stand up. Toes pointed outward.
“I started ballet later. I was nine.
Before that, I did theatre,” Rem says.
The length of his sentence takes my breath away.
Our relationship built more on movement
Than conversation. I do not know the story
Of how he learned ballet.
Nor does he know mine,
Though I can hardly separate ballet
From all my beginnings—
First memories, first performances.
“Sometimes I feel I’ve just begun to dance,
Since coming here.
I still don’t know why they dared try me.
I’m really too old
To begin,” I confess.
Rem grins,
Exasperation fading from his eyes.
Takes ten steps across the floor,
Uncrosses my arms,
Spreads apart the plackets of his
Worn shirt.
Studies the front of me.
“No, not too old.”
Lifts me up,
Guides me back to his bed,
Beginnings forgotten.
Back at the Medranos
I put the college brochures under my bed
After I brush my teeth.
Pull the hairnet off my bun with care,
Tuck the bobby pins into their white box.
I vow to be more like Lisette,
To warm up longer in the studio
Before the teacher comes in,
Work through my arches,
Perfect my ports de bras
Instead of just dropping into easy splits.
Take more time afterwards,
Repeat any step
At which I failed during class.
Look for approving glances
From Yevgeny or Señor,
Whose touches are not electric,
Who want me only to be
A ballerina.
I wake up facedown
In my math notebook,
Damp from drool
That smudges the penciled equations
Solving for the area under the curve.
Most of my notations are incomplete;
Curves are mystifying from any angle.
Slide out of bed
Curtsy to my mirror
Raise my left leg back in arabesque
Promenade slowly
Holding my leg
Up.
Lisette, Lisette, Lisette,
Who dances my dance
Better than I ever could.
Grab my backpack and
The sealed, white envelope from Upton Academy
For the academic conference today.
My report card is half good:
The English grade is excellent
History okay
Math kind of tragic.
Dad’s tone of sorrowful disappointment,
The angry threat of tutors from Mom,
Echo through the unpleasant telephone call
With my confused Upton adviser,
Who points out that my PSAT scores show clearly
That I can do better.
At the ballet school,
Despite my new push toward perfection,
My ears hear much the same,
Though I try to make my brain ignore it
Like I ignore Jane’s flaming glances.
Rem calls me on the cell.
“Be at the studio later.”
“Okay.”
I do not ask him
Where he is
Nor why
He gave my steps
To Lisette.
He offers no words of comfort,
Just some standard missing-you stuff
I allow myself to believe little more
Than my adviser’s unsurprising counsel,
Than Yevgeny’s incisive critique
That my technique is improving
But my performance seems halfhearted.
It seems I am living
Believing
Doing
Most everything
In halves.
In English, we are on to Heartbreak House,
A play title that resonates through the hollow
Of my bones,
Though I put it aside to reread The Thorn Birds.
Despite my anger, fantasize
About Rem’s massive body
Enveloping mine
In a shroud of delirious protection.
Professor O’Malley assigns
An essay on the notion of reality
In Shaw’s great play.
He looks at me
Quite directly
As he gives the due date.
What is reality
Anymore?
I whisper my own name
As I get dressed for school.
I speak so little all the time.
My words mostly touch paper
Or spill out through my arms and legs and fingertips.
My voice feels raspy,
An unflexed muscle.
Señor Medrano makes my name exotic.
Professor O’Malley turns it beautiful.
Perhaps I should invent a step, a sign,
Since when I say it, it sounds like an echo.
A half memory
Of a summer’s day.
When I was a number
That caught Yevgeny’s eye.
Am I a number still?
Attached to a body,
Finite technique.
I barely speak to Remington,
Yet in his bedroom we make dances
He can give away.
Does it matter that people and things
Have words,
Have names?
If not,
Why read any book?
A litany of useless letters
Detached from bone, muscle.
Or are words the only things
That make the muscle, bone, memory, movement,
Person
Real?
“Sara!”
Señora Medrano’s husky alto calls my name
As if she knew
I needed to hear it
To be.
“Dinner! It ees getting cold.”
Señora Medrano is such a terrible cook
I almost crave the meat-laced peanut butter sandwiches
I ha
ve thrown away most weekdays since last August.
At the table, Julio,
Returned from his music retreat,
Scowls at the dry steak,
Pokes the burned tortilla with his fork.
Sneaks me a grin.
Watches as I try to be invisible,
A quality with value at this dinner table.
Señora asks Julio about his guitar practice.
“I’ve been playing nonstop for a week.
Thought I’d take the evening off.”
That raises Señora’s eyebrows.
A weak giggle escapes my throat.
Julio adds his musical, deep chuckle.
Suddenly Señor is laughing, too.