Shiny Broken Pieces

by Sona Charaipotra

  I sit next to her, doing math homework while she knits and watches a Korean drama. When the show is over, she gets up and heads into the apartment’s small kitchen. I can hear her chopping vegetables, stir-frying beef. The smell makes me realize that I’m starving—and nauseous. “E-Jun,” my mom yells into the living room. “Come set the table.”

  I rise from the sofa like a zombie. I walk into the kitchen and set out two deep, flat bowls, along with napkins, two pairs of chopsticks and spoons, and two tall glasses filled with water. I see her twirling clear noodles into the stir-fry pan, which still glistens with the grease from the beef. The smell is amazing—salty and garlicky, sweet and sour, like soy and sesame.

  Putting everything together, my mother brings the serving bowl to the table. The noodles are glassy and beautiful, surrounded by the bright orange of the carrots, the red of the peppers, and bold green of the spinach and scallions. The scent of the stir-fried beef and shiitakes wafts up. It makes me want to heave, but I sit in front of the bowl and let the steam graze my face, prayerful and soothing. Why can’t I just love this like I used to? Why can’t I just eat it like a normal person?

  I know why she made them. This was my comfort food growing up, when I was all cried out, exhausted and spent. “You have to eat, June,” she says finally, sitting at the table across from me. “You have to, boba.”

  I nod again, but don’t touch the food.

  I imagine myself eating it. I can even see myself chewing and swallowing. I feel the warmth in my stomach. I picture myself asking her for hot sauce.

  “I can’t.” The chopsticks fall from my hands.

  My mom picks them up, wipes them off, and digs them into the bowl. She picks up a few noodles and a mushroom. “Open. I will show you how to eat again.” With her other hand, she pinches my chin and my lips part. She pushes the noodles into my mouth, like I’m a baby who can’t get the food inside. The noodles sit, slimy and salty and gag inducing. My tongue fights them. My mind tells my mouth to spit them out.

  “You eat so you can be strong. If you want to dance, you have to be strong.” She twirls more noodles onto the chopsticks, lifting them to my mouth. She repeats the word over and over again to the beat of my chews, forcing me to swallow. I want the heat, the strength to sink into my skin and muscles and bones and harden me from the inside out. I want to be strong, like she says. It’s just, I don’t know how.

  31.

  Gigi

  THE MIDDLE OF FEBRUARY, WHEN Mr. K watches the girls’ class, everyone is a mess. He barks at Cassie about looking like a mannequin. And June falls when he makes her do ten pirouettes because she wasn’t fully extended. Even little Riho lets her arm slip and her gaze drop and fails to achieve the perfection we all know is expected of us. The left side of me aches, and even though I can see the movements in my head and know where my arm should be, I’m a few seconds behind.

  We should be stronger at this point. I should be stronger.

  Mr. K doesn’t move a muscle, not even in his face. I’m getting better at interpreting his little twitches and squints and almost imperceptible nods. But there’s nothing there today. His arms are crossed over his chest. His mouth is a perfect straight line.

  I want to make his lips turn up. I want him to see me, the way he used to. His moya korichnevaya.

  When it’s my turn to dance for him again, I try to channel that old spirit. I make sure my practice tutu is perfectly arranged and there isn’t a single hair out of place on my head. My right foot’s pointed, torso bending from the hip. I’m ready. I want to do the perfect pirouette, the most delicate arabesque, the most lovely fouetté—to make him see me again, to make him tell Damien that I should be one of ABC’s apprentices next year.

  My music begins. I prepare to step into my first move. The plinks of Viktor’s piano keys feel like waves that my hands, arms, legs, and feet wade through. The movements feel good, but there’s a pinch in my hip as I turn my left leg, and a new pain in my ankle radiates down through my toes. I push through it and try not to let it show on my face.

  “Soft hands,” I hear Mr. K say. “Soft neck.” His deep voice is a ripple in the waves. Tension seeps into my muscles. I can’t stop it. Sweat streams down my back. I clench my teeth.

  “Soft mouth. Descend through the toes.” He walks in front of me now as his voice rises. “Lighter, lighter! You are a swan, not a cow.”

  His corrections drum into me, one after the other. The monitor on my wrist buzzes, but I push harder.

  “The whole school can hear me, but you can’t because you’re still doing it wrong!” he shouts. I can’t keep tears from pricking my eyes. He makes me dance through the messiness that I am right now.

  Finally, he gives up on me, motioning at Viktor to stop. The pianist’s fingers crash on the keys. I have shifted my weight too far over, so I trip.

  I used to think being a ballerina was special, but in moments like this, it is easy to feel like the least original being on earth. I wipe away the tears, willing them to stop falling.

  “Come.” He waves me over to the mirror.

  I straighten my back and step away a few inches, like that will somehow temper whatever terrifying thing is about to explode from his mouth.

  An interruption is never good.

  The other girls lean in to listen. They know that whatever he is about to say is ten times worse than the corrections he’s just hollered at me. He places a hand on my shoulder. I almost collapse under its weight.

  “Giselle.”

  For one glorious moment I lock eyes with his and my adrenaline surges. I try to hold his gaze and not be distracted by the dozens of ballerinas watching our conversation play out in the mirror, trying to read his lips and watch my face.

  “Yes?” I settle my body into a comfortable and respectful third position.

  “My darling, my butterfly. You’ve been through so much. But I will not pity you or give you special treatment. I will treat you like everyone else. Can you do this?” His accent is thick and his manner of speaking cryptic.

  The four-letter word this thuds into my chest. It sweeps together all the recovery progress I’ve made and how hard I’ve been working and all the years of my ballet training, like it’s so tiny and insignificant that it could fit into such a small word. I want to tell him that my mind and heart know each step, each movement, but my muscles are still remembering. I see myself in the mirror. I’m a mop. I’m that sweaty and sad looking. I catch some of the girls inching forward a little, and Eleanor has her eyes fixed on Mr. K. Her doe-eyed gaze doesn’t waver. All the girls hate and worship Mr. K, but Eleanor’s current fixation seems to go beyond that. It’s like she doesn’t see anything—anyone—else in the room at all.

  I’m so busy watching her watching him that Mr. K has to repeat his question.

  “Yes,” I squeak out. I hate myself for the mousiness of the word and the way it gets caught in my throat. “I can. I promise you, I can.”

  This all feels like some sort of punishment for messing with other dancers instead of channeling that rage into stretching and working in the studios. For thinking about revenge all the time instead of the footwork in Swan Lake. For letting this place change me, turn me into one of them.

  “I will fix it,” I say.

  “Good. Show me you’re still my little butterfly.” He leans down closer to my ear. He touches my cheek. “Let me see that spark again.” He turns back to everyone and walks forward. “Gigi, out of the center, and Eleanor in.”

  After rehearsals, Sei-Jin lets me come into her room without a second thought. I’ve decided to apologize to her for soaking her shoes in vinegar, so that I can start over and really just focus on ballet and the Odette role. Posters of Korean pop stars swallow the walls, grinning boys peering out from behind all the hanging tutus. A shoe rack sits at the door where I slipped out of my mukluks. The glowing white bulbs of a vanity table cast a glow on her TV.

  “I can’t believe we’ve never hung out.” She’s sewing
ribbons on her pointe shoes and icing her ankles. “But I’m glad you asked.”

  I try to get comfortable in her vanity chair. I don’t want to see myself in the mirror when I tell her what I did, when I try to make amends. She’s the first on the list. She asks me about California, tells me she auditioned for the San Francisco Ballet, and about her plans to go to college. I ask her about possibly dancing in Seoul or Europe, and tell her not to give up on dancing in a company. There are pauses and lulls in our conversation that I don’t know how to fill.

  I wind myself up to tell the truth. Get these things off my chest so I can start over, go back to the old me. The one who would never hurt another dancer. “Sei-Jin . . .”

  “Yeah?” She pauses her stitching and looks up.

  “I’m the one who messed up your pointe shoes.”

  “Wait, what?” She puts down her half-sewn shoe and slides to the edge of her bed.

  “I did it.”

  “But . . . it was June.” Her mouth closes with a pinch.

  “No, it was me. I thought . . . or I was sort of told that you were the one who put glass in my shoe last year.”

  “I would never do that.” Sei-Jin leaps up.

  My heart thuds and sweat races down my back. I feel like I’m in front of Morkie. Sei-Jin’s brown eyes flash with anger and she clenches her teeth.

  “After what happened with W-Will”—I can barely say his name—“I wanted to come clean. Start over. And fix all the stuff I’ve done this year. I became someone else.” I go to the dance bag I left near the door. I take out a brand-new pair of shoes that I ordered from the ABC shoe room. They’re identical to the ones I ruined, custom for her feet. “I’m sorry.”

  She shoves them away. “You should leave.”

  I say sorry again. I imagined that she’d accept my apology and the shoes. I thought she’d understand. Instead, she holds the door open. “Get out!”

  “Sei-Jin, I am so—” The door closes in my face.

  I stand there for a minute, at a loss, then gather my guilt and walk away.

  The next morning academic classes are canceled for costume fittings. One at a time we file into Madame Matvienko’s room. She circles me as she examines how the Odette costume fits. The white tutu blooms around my waist in layers of stiff tulle. The bodice drips with encrusted jewels. The feathery headpiece sweeps over my ears and has a glittering diamond that rests right on my forehead. In the mirror, I feel like I’m wearing such an important costume. One that defines what most people think of when they think of ballet.

  She hums and frowns and snaps the measuring tape in her hands. “You and Eleanor cannot wear same costume. Will have to take in too much. Ruin the original.”

  How am I supposed to respond to the fact that she’s saying Eleanor is so much tinier than me? I cross my hands over my stomach and feel much more exposed in front of her than I do anyone else.

  She yanks them apart. “Stand still. You American girls fidget so much. Always moving, moving, moving.”

  “Sorry.” She’s never nice to me and I don’t know if it’s because of who she is—a person who doesn’t smile much or seem to like many of us—or if she doesn’t like me in particular. She goes to her worktable and returns with another pair of white tights. She lays them against my arm, then compares them to the ones I’m wearing.

  “Very hard, you know”—she pulls at the fabric—“to match you girls’ legs. Color is too dark for the white. You can see through it. It’s no good.”

  I gulp. I wonder if the way she uses the word girls refers to black girls and not all girls in general.

  “White swans have white legs. Then it would be easy.” She turns back to her table, comes back with another pair. “I have had to spend lot of time dyeing these tights. To make them even whiter. And no matter what, legs still too brown and you can see them right through it.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, and instantly hate myself for it.

  She frowns. “It’s a big problem, you know. Messes up the whole costume, the whole look, the pictures. I have to special order.”

  I gaze at my legs in the mirror. Through the thin nylon, I can see the brown color of my legs a little bit.

  I want to say that it makes me feel uncomfortable that she’d even say something like that, that she’s rude and a little racist for even saying these things. Would she say the same to Bette or Eleanor? No, because their legs are white and blend easily with the tights.

  “What do you want me to do about it?” I ask her with caution. She’s very powerful here. “I can’t change who I am.”

  I want to add that I wouldn’t, even if I could. But I don’t say that. Cassie told me stories about girls Madame didn’t like who performed in costumes that were just a smidge too tight or tutus with pins left in them, pricking them at every turn. I remember June telling me about a girl who Madame Matvienko thought was a little too plump for the Arabian Coffee costume. The girl snatched it out of Madame’s hands and said she’d fix it herself. Three days later, she was dismissed from the conservatory.

  Matvienko laughs. “Well, you can’t change the color of your legs, and that would be best.” She unhooks the bodice and starts pulling it off me. The fabric scratches my skin. “But I will just have to place special order for you.”

  She snatches the tutu off and leaves me there half-clothed, her eyes fluttering over me and my too-brown legs. I quickly get dressed. Every part of me feels prickly and hot. All the things I’d like to call her bubble up, but I can’t get them out.

  “You’re dismissed,” she says. She goes to the back, where her office is, and shuts the door.

  32.

  Bette

  I LIE ON MY SISTER’S bed with my nose in her peach-scented hair. I braid and unbraid it because she says it helps her relax. It’s one of the few things my mother actually did for us growing up, and something she was good at. When I was little and refused to cut my hair so I could be like Rapunzel, she could give me any kind of braid I wanted: fishtail, French, crowns. I’d fall asleep, even first thing in the morning before school, head bobbing back into her lap as her fingers worked their way through my hair.

  It’s Saturday evening, and Adele’s leg is propped up on a set of pillows with her foot swaddled in a cast. Two broken toes, a hairline fracture in her ankle, and three stitches to the knee will keep her off her feet for at least eight weeks, right through the spring gala performance. So I’m doing what I can to help her keep her mind off things—bringing her DVDs and food, reading aloud from Little Women, her favorite. We’ll sit for hours, sharing the latest gossip from school and the company, like who’ll fill her role, now that she won’t be able to dance it. We’re waiting for chicken salads from our favorite local bistro, so when the doorbell buzzes, I jump up.

  But when I open the door, Eleanor stands there. She looks exhausted but upbeat—and surprised to see me.

  “Hey. I thought—I came to visit Adele.” She’s got a bouquet of white roses in her hands. Adele’s favorite. “I thought she might want some company.”

  “She has plenty of company.” I don’t mean for it to sound so bitter, but it’s been two months since I got back to school, and we’ve barely spoken two words to each other since that night I told her I knew about what was happening between her and Mr. K. This should be the happiest time in my life. But it’s not. Maybe I can’t blame her. But I do.

  “Bette? Is that the food? I’m starving!” Adele shouts.

  “No,” I say back. “You have a visitor.” Eleanor follows me back into the tiny living room.

  “Oh, hey,” Adele says, nearly jumping up before she remembers she can’t. Eleanor hands her the roses. “Thank you so much. How are you?”

  “I should be asking you the same thing.” Eleanor’s eyes are on my sister’s cast, and they’re full of worry. “What, uh, happened exactly?”

  “They say it was a switch malfunction—that the trapdoor opened when it shouldn’t have. And I fell right in!” Adele laughs, but I can
tell that Eleanor is thinking the same thing I am: that this was no accident.

  “Can I sign your cast?” Eleanor asks then, and Adele beams at her.

  She’s scribbling on Adele’s leg when the doorbell buzzes again. This time it is the delivery guy.

  “Please share,” Adele says as I pull out the chicken salads and put them on the coffee table. We all pick at them for a few minutes, and I find myself repeatedly stopping myself from spilling Eleanor’s secret. Because if there’s anyone who’d know what to do about it, it’s Adele. After all, she lived it. Sort of.

  The whole meal is awkward and slow and lull filled, like we’re strangers instead of girls who have known one another our whole lives. Too much has happened, and too much is being left unsaid. At nine p.m., Eleanor looks at her phone, which has been buzzing for a while, even though she’s tried to ignore it. “It’s getting late,” she says, standing. “I should get back to the dorm.”

  “Oh, Bette, why don’t you go with her?” Adele says.

  I start gathering up the leftovers, putting them all into one container. “I was planning to crash,” I say, but Adele’s shaking her head.

  “No, Bette, go. It’s Saturday night. You shouldn’t be stuck here with me. And, really, I’m about to take a few painkillers and go to sleep.”

  I open my mouth again, but the look in Adele’s eye tells me she’s not about to listen. I do as she says, getting her the medicine and helping her into her room. Once she’s tucked in, I turn off the lights. Then I hear her say, in the darkness, “You should talk to Eleanor. I think she needs you.”

  I nod to myself in the dark.

  Eleanor and I walk the four blocks back to the dorm in silence. When we get there, I expect her to walk in with me, that maybe we really will pop some popcorn and watch a movie. But she’s looking at her phone again. Which means she’s still communicating with him.

  “Eleanor, don’t.” I put my hand on her arm, but she’s set to walk away. “This—it—it just isn’t right.”