Various Positions

by Martha Schabas

  I moved my cursor to the download button and clicked. My heart beat faster in my chest. The blank screen of the QuickTime Player popped up into the center of the page. It framed a small circle with a rotating bullet lodged inside its border, like a skater lapping a rink. Then my computer was making noises, man and woman noises, loud grunting moans. I fumbled for the volume dial, but my thumb slid over the serrated edge and the grunts were instantly louder. I slammed down the screen and jumped into my bed. I waited to hear shuffling in the hallway, felt a certain terror that those sounds would have been audible from the bathroom, possibly from my parents’ bedroom.

  When I didn’t hear anything, I loosened my grip on the fistfuls of comforter I’d grabbed in my hands and tried to fall asleep. I couldn’t. I saw interwoven limbs. There’d been two bodies rocking across the screen and so much skin it had been impossible to tell what belonged to whom. What kind of men looked at stuff like that? I brought my hands to my sides and felt my body through my pajamas. I rubbed my legs against each other under the blanket to see how soft they felt. It was like sex was in everything, lodged in men’s heads and drowning in women’s bodies. I curled into my extra pillow and wondered whether sex was in ballet too. It was the most horrible idea imaginable, but it didn’t gross me out as much as it should have.

  TEN

  There were two weeks of school left before the Christmas holiday and I had my work cut out for me. I needed to find the perfect balance of focus, a way of working effectively on my dancing while all the time charting Roderick’s moves. The two were not unrelated; improvements in my dancing would only make him like me more. This made my job easier. I worked as hard as I could in ballet class, holding my legs in the air until the muscles trembled like moth wings, letting sweat rain down the gully of my spine. I would show him I had all the strength to master the MacMillan choreography, that I possessed the stamina for the demanding partner work, the presence to carry the role. At the same time, I watched for any changes in his behavior. On the surface there appeared to be few. He directed class with the same casual scorn, stopping to pick on unassuming victims before retreating to his corner of the room. Occasionally our eyes would meet and he’d acknowledge me in the ritualistic way we’d established, a shared look like a silent alliance, pitting him and me against the rest of the class. When I turned to face away from him, the pleasure would linger, sticking to my face the way gum does if you blow a stupidly big bubble.

  Once, Sixty caught me midway through one of these expressions and gave me a weird look.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked after class.

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “But you were laughing about something in the middle of adage.”

  “Was I?”

  She bugged her eyes. “Yeah.”

  I took a step away from her, longed to tell her the truth. But this was impossible. How could I explain my special situation with Roderick? I could barely make sense of it myself.

  I followed Sixty to the change room. Everything was quieter since Molly had left school. The entire subject felt bandaged in something gauzy and thick, like a mess of blood would leak everywhere if we unwrapped it. People checked the bulletin board regularly, worried about themselves. We laughed less in the change room and Veronica generally left Chantal alone. Today was different, though. Veronica whined about how bored she was and fell back on the cushioned bench like a heroine in a play.

  “Boredom striketh!”

  Anushka climbed on top of her so that her legs straddled Veronica’s waist and the two of them pretended to have sex. Everyone howled with laughter.

  “Let’s see what the Coffee Time guys are doing after school,” Veronica said. “I would kill for a beer.”

  “Hell, yes,” said Anushka.

  Veronica sat up and looked over at Sixty and me. Sixty nodded enthusiastically.

  “Should we say hi to your boyfriend?” Veronica called out in Chantal’s direction.

  Chantal didn’t look at her, didn’t say anything at all.

  I turned back to my locker. I had to get out of this Coffee Time trip. I’d planned on going to the academy’s library after repertoire class to borrow the DVD of Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon and to print out the food schedule that I’d made up for Chantal. I dawdled with my jeans and sweater so that I was the last dressed and Sixty had to wait for me.

  “I can’t go after school,” I told her when we were alone.

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “I just … My legs are kind of sore. I think it might be shin splints.”

  “Oh no!”

  Her sympathy stung me. I wasn’t being a good friend. I should tell her everything I was discovering about Roderick and warn her that aligning herself with the sex girls could jeopardize her position at the academy. But instead I just told her not to worry about me.

  I went straight to the school library after class. I didn’t want to see everyone and have to explain why I wasn’t going along. The librarian helped me find the DVD, a recording of Manon done by the Royal Ballet in 1982, and then I printed out the schedule that I’d designed at home.

  Chantal was waiting for me, as we’d arranged, in her dorm room. I changed out of my ballet clothes in her room and talked her through the schedule. She needed to lose weight quickly but she needed her energy too, so I had her eating mainly fruits and vegetables.

  “You can’t pig out at dinner,” I said. “No matter how hungry you are.”

  Chantal nodded solemnly. She folded the schedule in half and put it inside the bottom desk drawer, the one that was hers. I remembered something else I had in my knapsack for her. I pulled out my copy of Dancing on My Grave. Normally, I would never have considered lending it to anyone, but it felt right helping Chantal, wonderful even, as though a secret about my own dancing could be wrapped up and cherished in her success.

  “I’ve marked the parts where she stops eating. Read them whenever you have a craving.”

  Chantal took the book from my hand. She handled it with extreme care, as though I’d passed her a valuable heirloom. She pointed at the black-and-white dancer’s feet on her corkboard, the ones I’d noticed on the first day of school.

  “Those are Gelsey’s.” Her eyes were bright.

  Somehow I felt like I had always known this. “If the book doesn’t do it, you have to promise to call me before you put anything in your mouth.”

  “I promise,” she whispered.

  * * *

  That night, I took the DVD of Manon down to the basement, where my mom wouldn’t bother me. I watched it over and over again. The story was so tragic; a young French girl accidentally destroys her only meaningful relationship and dies as a hooker in the swamps of Louisiana. The music sounded like beauty on the edge of disaster. I stayed up until midnight and tried to work my way through the famous first act pas de deux. Manon is in love for the first time. She awakens in her Paris boudoir and is overcome with the happiness of existence. I found a broom in the laundry room and used it as my supporting man.

  Sixty was waiting for me in the lobby when I got to school the next day.

  “I think I got drunk last night.” Her face glowed with pride.

  “How do you know?”

  “You know. You start to feel really wobbly and amazing.”

  I tried to look as pleased about this as she was, but the truth was that I didn’t understand. It was the worst possible time to be messing around. Roderick was in the process of casting Junior Showcase and a bad move now could affect the size of the part you got. Sixty kept talking. She told me how the Coffee Time guys had bought a case of Molson with fake ID and how they’d all huddled outside the Palm House at Allan Gardens and sucked them back as fast as they could.

  “When it got too cold out, we poured all the beer into our water bottles and walked up to Bloor Station and hid in the bathroom and drank the rest. Veronica and a guy called Steve went into a stall alone and stayed there for fifteen minutes.” She beamed. “I didn’t think we’d m
ake last call for dinner, but we did somehow. Eight o’clock. We thought people could tell we were drunk so we told the residence mom that we’d gotten flu shots that afternoon and that they made us feel weird.”

  “And she believed you?”

  Sixty shrugged. “I guess.”

  Roderick announced in technique class that the casting for Junior Showcase would be posted before the Christmas break. He said that while a small role wasn’t a death sentence, we should nonetheless consider it a marker of our progress.

  “Casting is something of a barometer. A low reading means I see trouble ahead.”

  Everyone talked about this in the change room. We’d heard rumors about girls in higher grades. Ana Hernandez had graduated the year before and was already a first soloist with the Frankfurt Ballet. She’d danced a solo from Paquita in her Junior Showcase. Linda McAdams had been scooped up by the San Francisco Ballet before she had even finished grade twelve. She’d been cast as Don Quixote’s Kitri in her Junior Showcase.

  “I heard that sometimes he just doesn’t cast you,” Veronica said. “That’s how you know.”

  “Know what?” Sixty asked.

  “That you’re kicked out.”

  It was a horrible thing to consider. Anushka fixed her bun beside me and I breathed in her hairspray, a cloud of damaged fruit and rubbing alcohol.

  “You must be worried.” Veronica tapped Chantal’s shoulder as she made her way to the sinks.

  Even though the contact lasted less than a second, Chantal flinched like she’d been attacked by a bug. Veronica’s words really pissed me off. Chantal had been working so hard on so few calories, and the truth was that Veronica wasn’t half as good a dancer. She just had a better body.

  “Leave her alone,” I said.

  Veronica stopped in her tracks. She turned around to confront me, and everyone else in the change room stared at me too.

  “I mean, I don’t really think she has much to worry about,” I muttered.

  I had never noticed how icy Veronica’s eyes were. They were the chemical blue of antifreeze.

  “How are your shin splints?” She smirked at me, didn’t wait for an answer.

  * * *

  I established a routine from there on in. I came home every night and had dinner as quickly as possible. It was usually just my mom and me and sometimes we barely exchanged so much as a word. When I finished eating, I went down to the basement and rehearsed Manon. I made my way through the first- and second-act choreography, learning the partnering with the broom and faking all the elaborate lifts. By the second week of December, I had started Act Three, the most tragic part. Sometimes at the height of a sustained balance, I’d close my eyes and feel the heart of the ballet emanate from inside me. I was Manon. I was French but exiled far from home in the wilds of newly colonized Louisiana. My arms were feeble and intentionally shaky. Soon I would die on stage, damaged, deserted, and disgraced.

  Chantal often called me while I was rehearsing and I’d pause the DVD to talk to her. She’d lost almost six pounds since I’d given her the schedule and it was crucial that she avoid the rebound effect. All the books I’d found on nutrition warned about it.

  “I’m really hungry, Georgia.”

  “You’re not,” I assured her. “Your body’s sending you mixed messages.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Did you read the parts in Gelsey’s book?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Didn’t they inspire you?”

  “I guess.”

  “Just concentrate on the role you want the most in Junior Showcase. Don’t let yourself think about anything else.”

  When I finished rehearsing, I went up to my room and sat at my computer. Roderick’s face saturated the screen and I gave myself a moment to really observe it. I could see it clearly now, the place where he was handsome. I imagined our first rehearsal for Manon. He would walk into the studio with the same crumpled look on his forehead and watch me dance from the corner of the room. I’d be suspended over a développé devant when he’d stop the music, move toward me. You’re doing it all wrong, he’d say. My arms would be arced over my head in fifth position and he’d take hold of one biceps, wrench it backward about an inch. His hands would drop to my rib cage, seizing it on either side so that I could feel his fingers between the bones. You’re leaning back, he’d say. He’d push into the hollow slats of my torso, force my weight forward. The trick would be to show zero resistance. Otherwise I might piss him off and this could bring a spiral of bad things. So I would need to seem compliant, even encouraging. He’d move his hands up farther so that an index finger grazed the underside of my boob. Would it be intentional or accidental? Our eyes would meet. I’d give him a couple of moments to move his hand of his own accord. If he didn’t, I would have to subtly take control, lifting from my stomach so that his hand slipped to somewhere more acceptable. Then our rehearsal could resume.

  The casting for Junior Showcase wasn’t posted until the last day before the holidays. I was at school earlier than usual and I walked into the lobby, a whack of cold pressure in my chest. I saw the notice on the bulletin board immediately. Manon was the first ballet listed and next to it was my name. I had been cast in the famous Act One pas de deux with Nathaniel. I looked at the ceiling and breathed in the enormity of the news. My lips inched upward, a childish smile that felt bigger than my face. I scrutinized the list some more. Chantal had been given a beautiful solo to learn from Coppélia. Sixty and Anushka had been cast in a pretty duet from La Bayadère, and Veronica was one of many cast in a corps de ballet segment from Balanchine’s Serenade. I went to the change room and put on my ballet clothes at the slowest possible speed. The happiness flowed through me, making my limbs heavy and my head light. Maybe this is what it felt like to be drunk. I heard the door of the change room open. I was a little annoyed to have my private celebration interrupted, but when the intruder turned the corner, I saw that it was Chantal. We threw our arms around each other and said congratulations so many times that it was hard to tell whose voice was whose.

  ELEVEN

  On the first day of the Christmas holidays, the sky turned as white as the ground so that the whole world looked anemic. My mom set the furnace too high and a film of static electricity lifted the hairs on my arms. Sixty was leaving for Argentina to meet her dad that afternoon and I felt a dull softness on both my temples, the throb of encroaching boredom. I slid around the house in my socks, trying to see how long I could go without lifting my feet off the floor. I ended up in the kitchen, where the linoleum made this easier. My mom had made a list of possible activities for me and posted it on the fridge with a magnet from our dentist. It was my least favorite magnet, shaped like a giant molar, with a dented top and big, leglike roots. It gave me the creeps. I pushed the magnet aside and looked at the list. I hated it already, hated it from a tightening knot in my stomach. When I saw that the first idea was to pick up my mom’s dry cleaning, I crumpled the sheet into a ball and tossed it into the recycling bin.

  For the first few days of the break my mom was attending a seminar at the university, so I had the house to myself until she came home in the late afternoon. I took scalding showers in the morning and sat in my towel in front of my computer, leaving beads of water dotted on my shoulders, my wet hair heavy like an animal on my back. I checked my e-mail first. Chantal had gone home to Saskatchewan for the holidays, so she e-mailed me now instead of calling. She was becoming increasingly disciplined and made only small mistakes, like having one too many bites at dinner or accidentally drinking a regular pop. I wrote back one-liners that I knew would encourage her, things like You’re almost there! and You’ll do better tomorrow! and I actually prefer Diet Coke!

  I googled Roderick over and over again. I found pictures of him with different haircuts, longer layers that grazed the back of his neck, messy bits that hung in his eyes. He was much younger in some and his face had a clumsiness to it, a goofy smile that favored one side, like his features had
n’t quite figured out the best place to settle. I wrote girlfriend beside his name in the Google bubble and searched for more pictures of him next to women. I wanted to see what they looked like, the women he had loved, see if they were tall and beautiful, whether they had wide shoulders and prominent wrist bones, wore silky things that gaped off their backs. Or would they have frizzy hair and Japanese running shoes; would they be looking sideways, beyond the camera, impatient to get back to their intellectual lives? Would any of them be teenage girls?

  At some point amidst all this wondering, I scrolled down my Web site history and, turning away for a second as though I wasn’t completely aware of what I was doing, let the cursor hover over a particular spot. The screen was like paper towel laid over pink Kool-Aid, instantly absorbing a spill. Then came Mandi. She materialized in two round phenomena, bum and head, a crescent of tanned back in between. My eyes dipped from one end to the other, trying to take her all in at once. I had discovered that if you clicked on the FREE TOUR button on the top right corner of the Web page, you could meet Mandi’s friends too. There was Jordan, who sat with her legs akimbo, rubbing a Popsicle between her boobs. She was smiling, sticking out her purple tongue as if to prove that the Popsicle wasn’t just for her chest, that it had been in her mouth too. There was Puma with white-blond hair and complicated underwear that didn’t cover anything that underwear was supposed to cover. And there was Valeria, who was hard and oily, a rhinestone floating over her belly button like a shimmering star. She lay on her side, her knees folding open with the looseness of a baby’s while she pressed a long, white-tipped fingernail between her legs. But Mandi was my favorite. I loved her face, the sleepy weight of her eyelids, the soft indifference around her mouth. It hung open just the right amount, looked wet without being slobbery, as if her saliva were made of something thinner than usual. The bones of her bum amazed me. They were so visible, flexing up into the camera, tightening her flesh into two perfect humps. Then, between these humps, that mysterious circle, dark and colorless at the same time, impossible to really see, and yet still the focus of the picture.