The music catches up to me
Or seems to lead.
Señor Medrano draws exasperated fingers
Through his already stand-up hair.
In the car
On the way back to his house
He clears his throat.
“Sara, you work hard, yes.
But on tour dis spring
Bonnie will dance Aurora.
She turn sharp! Yes?”
My mind paints Bonnie’s picture.
She moves stiffly,
A skeleton clown,
Graceless yet precise.
Can this be better
Than what I do?
That jerky scarecrow
Always with the band of white elastic
Around her waist?
“Sure,”
I squawk.
Feel my face burn,
Glad I’ve taken down my bun
So perhaps Señor cannot see
The color of my cheeks,
Though I do not know whether they have turned
To red or white.
“Bonnie, she work hard, too.
Get arms very soft. Steps steady.”
Señor grips the wheel tight
Like Dad.
Stares out at the dimming road.
I know the meaning of averted gazes.
On my dresser is a postcard
From Ms. Alice:
A Russian ballerina in black and white,
Arms open, reaching forward,
Leg behind in arabesque.
“Anna Pavlova.”
Ms. Alice’s handwriting loops in even curves.
“She reminds me of you.
Keep working hard!”
I sit on my narrow bed
In the dank room
Where only strains of Julio’s guitar
And his occasional muttered curses
Filter through the door.
I think of Ms. Alice, Mom, Dad, eyes full of pride.
Bess, the practical genius, sending me off.
Wish there were no photographs,
No mirrors in the world to record
Anna Pavlova
Or Lisette or Bonnie or Rem,
But especially my own reflection.
“C’mon. Get up!”
Remington grabs his rumpled jeans from the floor,
Gives them a shake.
“We’ve got to get back to the studio.”
“Five minutes,” I mumble.
The lunch break during Saturday rehearsals
Is plenty of time
To steal away to Remington’s
And be back in time for subtle, separate entrances
Through the studio door.
So no one will suspect
What everyone knows.
But I am tired.
The bed is warm.
I luxuriate in the lack of music,
The pile of blankets,
The soft shards of sunlight
Slanting through the venetian blinds.
He fumbles for his sneakers.
“C’mon!”
“Okay. Okay.”
I draw my knees beneath me,
Arch my back upward,
Head still on the pillow,
Bun still half pinned in my hair,
Arms stretching up and to the sides.
“Sara!”
Rem squawks.
My head shoots up.
“What?!”
“Do that again.”
He is whispering now.
“That stretch in the bed.”
Barely remembering
But frightened by his tone,
I put my head back down,
Wriggle my knees underneath,
Try . . .
I feel his arm
Lightly
Over me.
He takes one of my outstretched hands.
Draws it beneath my stomach.
“One more time . . .”
This is not sex,
Not friendship.
Something
Strange
Special
In the stillness of his breath,
The waterlike way he moves.
He is making a dance.
We are making a dance.
I do not care about Aurora anymore
And her mincing variation.
Princesses are weak
Compared to the force
Of a muse.
Now
I intoxicate him.
My body a song,
Magnetic as the voices
Of the sirens from Greek mythology
I studied in eighth grade.
We dance behind his couch,
Around the orange chairs,
Over the bed. And after
The sex is something
That I did not know
Before.
He watches me sleep.
Waits for me to stretch, bend.
In the studio
I feel his eyes on my back,
Protective, searching.
I nestle in the clouds
Of his obsession,
Thick, enveloping round
My bright star.
Though sometimes
The density of his gaze
Chokes my lungs,
Weights my feet.
And, other times, I worry
I am giving away something
More precious
Than what Rem has already taken.
I try to write about the creation
Of a dance
In words I can safely say
To Professor O’Malley.
Try to describe
The pressure,
The lightness,
The relief when hands touch,
Legs extend,
Movement flows through music
Or without it.
Milton’s Paradise Lost,
That ceaseless poem
Of beginnings and mistakes,
Takes shape in my mind
As two ballerinas
And I understand
Why the poet
Needed to write those words.
But my words feel weak.
Everything has shifted
From my pencil
To my feet
To Remington’s eye.
So I am almost relieved
To hear about Rem’s five-day intensive
For young choreographers
In New York City.
He tells me as I lie
Obligingly exposed
Across his narrow mattress
While he packs his things.
Still, it is hard to go to the studio
Without Rem there,
To watch Bonnie and Lisette
Rehearse their solos.
So at last I stop
At Professor O’Malley’s door.
“You wanted to see me?”
“Sara, yes, one moment if you please.”
Irish accent, as usual,
Turns my name to poetry.
He fumbles with the stacks of paper.
“Your essay on Milton.”
His hands search the towering piles,
Fan through thick folders.
“I brought my copy.”
I take it from my backpack,
Set it on a tiny, exposed corner
Of mahogany.
“Yes.” A grin spreads.
He skims the pages.
“It is very good,
Like your essay about dancing.
You write well.”
He lilts on
About connecting ideas
To events,
To images.
About capturing movement
With language.
I feel my weight release
Against the doorframe,
Consider the possibility
Of making myself
A nest of the stranded papers
> In this cluttered room,
And never riding the ogre bus
To the studio today.
Yevgeny’s eyes are black.
They watch not just the muscles
But the bones inside.
Dissecting every step.
Looking for flaws
For missed potential
For what might ultimately be unattainable
By this shape, this form,
This girl.
Today they smoke
In my direction.
I was late to the studio,
My bun unkempt.
I can feel my period coming,
My stomach a swollen mass
Of pressure and foreboding.
I forgot to eat lunch.
The studio turns starry.
I grab the bar,
Feel my leg plummet downward—
Grand battement
Defeated by gravity.
“Sara?”
Yevgeny’s voice is sharp.
“I’m okay!”
I run to the dressing room,
Throw up in the nearest toilet stall.
Curl into a ball
On the cool, black-and-white tile.
I don’t like being sick away from home.
I loll on the yellow couch,
Eyeing the plate of crackers,
The cup of tea
Left for me
On the black lacquer coffee table.
Wish for a down comforter,
Homemade toast with cinnamon sugar.
But I allow Señora to pass a wet cloth across my face,
To ply me with sweet tea,
To look concerned
As I watch the clock count hour after hour
That I lie still without dancing,
And talk on my cell
To my real mother.
Rem and I return on the same day
To the studio.
Four days in bed
And I am better.
Rested.
Fed.
Rem is on fire
With dancing, ideas.
I doubt that he would like me to tell him
About the tortured journey
Of Paradise Lost
As much as he likes
To ride the shallow slope
Of my naked behind.
Yevgeny shows no mercy
In Variations class.
It’s as though I never left.
He looks up and down
At me, through me, trying to read
Something I have not printed in my face,
Because I do not know it,
Cannot give him an answer
To a question I don’t even understand.
Only knowing I want always
To be the girl in front.
Instead I stand behind beaming Bonnie,
A faceless head
In the second row
Of the corps ballerinas,
Ladies-in-waiting
For her precise, twiglike Aurora.
Watching from behind
Sliding bobby pins,
Fingers furtively tugging
Down
Leotard leg holes,
Fixing, adjusting
What cannot be seen
On the facade
Where the smile is wide,
The hair slicked back,
Neck long, chin high,
Everything forward,
Yearning
Toward the teacher,
The mirror,
The hope that lives
Beyond the glass.
The back row
Stinks of despair,
Surreptitious farts,
The breath of disappointed curses.
Is truth here
In the ugly unseemliness?
The graceless moments
Before and after
Eyes are watching?
In the unballerina,
The unperformed?
In the dressing room
I forget to be embarrassed
As I write down this other question,
Sweating through my half-off leotard,
Smeared mascara soiling my cheek.
In my mind Professor O’Malley’s brogue
Singsongs a perfect
Three-word refrain:
“You write well.”
For a moment,
More beautiful than Tchaikovsky’s music,
More powerful than being Rem’s girl.
It must be serious
Because Mom has come.
She and Dad sit across from me
In a darkened booth
At Denardio’s.
A snapshot
Of my first kiss with Rem
Here at this table
Sears my mind’s eye.
I worry they can read past the heat of my cheeks
To the confession
That pumps my heart.
But the conversation’s focus
is on my glorious PSAT scores
And the letter from Upton
That says I will be
A National Merit semifinalist.
This has led my mother,
Crisp in her navy-blue suit,
Lacy under-blouse,
A failed attempt at femininity
(She could use a lesson from Señora Medrano
And her tight silks),
To swoop down to Jersey
With a stack of brochures
From colleges I have never heard mentioned before.
“But I thought you wanted me to be a dancer.”
The words escape my lips before
The thought reaches my brain.
I make up an excuse about a late rehearsal
To avoid sleeping in their sexless hotel room.
Sneak away to Remington’s,
Where I am still a ballerina.
He sits on the tie-dyed couch,
Eyes closed,
Bach cantata playing over and over.
Tries to find the steps
That will meet the music.
I wait,
Ineffectually reading
Professor O’Malley’s next reading assignment,
Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw.
Though saints and martyrdom
Do not feel at all connected
To my confused existence.
I know that, sooner or later,
Rem will tire of his tortured artist solo,
Remember the magic of his muse,
His dick,
The bed.
Blush to think of my parents
Imagining me here.
Ponder whether Señor Medrano, Yevgeny
Know,
Even suspect
What Remington does with me
After the studio is dark and
The other ballerinas have gone home.
Am I the great actress of innocence,
The pure Aurora, despite Bonnie’s better musicality?
Is it worth their averted gazes
For the dances that Rem makes?
Should I shout (as if I ever could),
“This is wrong!”
Is it wrong?
Sometimes you can smooth a fumbled balance
Into another step;
Cover a weak arabesque
With a flourishing port de bras;
Keep your smile so bright, head so high,
They overlook the weakness of your feet.
Feints of the body not unlike
A magician’s sleight of hand.
When he introduced Saint Joan, the author
Told readers there were no villains in his play—
That crime was not nearly so interesting
As what men and women do
With good intentions, or believe they have to do
In spite of what they feel.
“Hey, thoughtful.”
Rem slides a playful hand across my
stomach.
“Ready to dance?”
“Stop
Letting your stage parents
Push you around,” Rem says
After I describe our conversation.
He yawns and stretches,
Circling the white stem of my waist
With a possessive arm.
“They are not stage parents,”
I snap.
But I am glad he doesn’t like them,
Enjoy the battle
Between king-and-queen
And knight in Lycra armor.
They want to take me
To an orthopedic surgeon
To help resolve
The pain in my shins.
Rem says they are looking for a way
Audition Page 11
