To stop me from dancing
Now that they have decided
I am a genius.
I do not believe him
Until later, over coffee,
Mom suggests
We take a trip to visit colleges
And that I can easily miss
A week of ballet class.
Her eyes flutter to some invisible thing
In the corner of the room.
Her fingers roll the brown, raw sugar packet
Into a determined cylinder.
Dad watches her hands—
The brown roll cigarette-like,
Tempting—
Eyes down.
I won’t go
Even though the chance
To run away from all this mess
Holds a certain appeal
And I am just a little curious
About these universities
Katia and Anne
Discuss with bright eyes,
Damp with anticipation,
As if they see that paradise
Milton claims we all have
Lost.
After two days of trying
Mom throws up her hands,
Mutters about a business trip.
Dad escorts her away
Right after an early breakfast.
I watch him drive,
His eyes fixed on the road
So I will not see the sadness
I know they hold.
I am like him:
Drive, drive, drive,
Afraid of the dark,
Even more terrified to stop
To think what it all means.
I am the proud owner
Of three new pairs of tights
To save me so much washing,
Two expensive leotards,
No more because Mom says
That soon there will be changes
(In her mind, college;
In mine, that I will move up a level).
Buying too much
Hunter green
Will be a waste.
I hold a giant file of college brochures
That I have told them will also be a waste.
But I took them anyway.
I don’t know why the cheap novels bother me,
Since waiting is a giant feature of ballet.
Waiting for your ride—
Your class—
Your rehearsal—
Your turn.
Yet somehow I begrudge
The beautiful professional ballerinas
Their stupid, time-killing romance novels.
It seems to me
There must be something more.
Would it be strange to offer
A Tale of Two Cities,
The Moon and Sixpence,
Ragtime?
They think I’m weird enough already.
Professor O’Malley’s office is neater
This time.
Swathes of mahogany in view
Between the sheaves of paper.
A silver cup filled with pencils
Red and blue.
A delicious, musty smell
Like Ireland in my imagination.
The place where George Bernard Shaw was born;
Wrote so many words
About poor and rich, people
And saints,
Plays, novels, criticism.
Refused recognition,
Knighthood,
Even the money that came with a Nobel Prize.
Died from injuries gotten from falling
While pruning an apple tree.
This time,
Professor O’Malley speaks of the story
I wrote about The Nutcracker
And the little children peering from under the skirts
Of Mother Ginger.
Tiny lost souls
Who do not yet understand
That they are on a stage,
That beyond the footlights
People are watching;
Who only dance
Because their bodies are so light,
Because the music carries them.
The lilting melody
To which they dance
Is a Pied Piper’s song.
And, like the children of Hamelin,
They do not know
That they are prisoners.
It is strange to hear my words
Read back to me.
I don’t think I wrote them
To have them ever leave the page.
I think I only write
What happens across my brain
When my feet are too weary
To dance anymore.
Professor O’Malley
Says that it is more than that,
That I have something to say.
I shake my head to disagree.
My hair, not in a bun yet,
Shoots down my back, clean and slick.
My maroon blazer lolls over my arm.
A ruffled, white shirt, another legacy of Mom’s visit,
Gives me a certain shape.
“No. No, Sara,
Do not diminish yourself like that.”
He puts his fine, girl-like hand on my shoulder.
I feel something
In the air
That makes me think of Remington.
His dance is finished
So he sleeps.
“Not now, Sara.”
Remington’s response to my wriggles
Beside him.
He tells me I don’t understand the pressure
Of choreography competitions,
Artist-in-residence applications,
Fighting for opportunities to shape his dances
Onto ballerinas.
The words “explain it to me”
Catch in my throat.
I have heard him tell Paul and Don, Jane,
About his worries.
If he fails,
Will he blame
His muse?
Now Julio is packing
For a student retreat
With his music school.
“Think Simone will miss me?”
He winks.
But Simone is full
And ripe with gossip, friends,
Unafraid to tease and crush,
To ask for things she wants
More than what the teachers,
The mirror, tell her.
In the bathroom at Señor Medrano’s
Julio’s electric razor
Sits forgotten on a shelf over the sink.
Sometimes when we play cards,
I search his face for the need
For that razor.
See only a fine, soft stubble
Over his lip—
No hairs to create
Evening shadows on his chin, his neck,
Like Remington’s.
When we laugh together,
Perhaps I should flirt with Julio,
Playful,
Like Remington still flirts
With Jane.
Is it fair to like apples and peaches,
Steps and letters,
More than one boy ...
Are you allowed to love like that?
Alone in the house with Señor Medrano.
Dinner is a torturous affair but
For some inexplicable reason
I don’t want to go to bed
With Remington.
Give my Saturday to dancing.
Half the night, reread
Professor O’Malley’s scrawls
Commending my language, imagery, ideas,
My ear for the lyrical movement of words,
Something Yevgeny has flatly said
My dancing lacks.
Sunday, exhausted, nap,
Fan the pages of teen magazines,
Where I read about unwanted pregnancies, STDs,
The kinds of protection Rem taught me to use.
These things are less real
Than my loneliness
When I slide out from beneath Rem’s sheets,
Watch him chatting on the phone
With Jane, who has agreed
To be “just friends.”
Sex is a price to be paid
For company.
For a second I consider whether Professor O’Malley
Would trade it for kind words
About my worth.
Shannon watches me limp
Out of her class
On Monday afternoon.
“Come here, Sara.
Let’s have Jane take a look at those shins.”
Unable to refuse a teacher,
I follow Shannon
To the physical therapy room,
Listen to her talk about me
With Jane.
“I’ll leave you to it, then.”
Shannon waves her graceful, silver-ringed hand.
“I’ve got to head out in a few minutes,”
Jane says to me.
Her voice is measured, professional.
“Let me see when I can get you on the schedule.”
“Okay.”
I hover near the safety
Of her office door,
Nod as Simone, Bonnie, some others pass by,
Watch jealously as they settle onto the hall benches,
Tuck away their pointe shoes, chatter about their day.
“Have a good weekend, Sara?”
Jane does not look up from her computer.
“Uh-huh.”
“What’d you do?”
Still steady, now, but Jane’s voice
Rises in pitch.
“I . . . um . . .”
“You disappear all weekend.
He doesn’t make any dances.
Now you’re back and he’s left to imagine
Who it is you sneak off to be with.
You torture him.”
My eyes swell open,
Seized by dampness.
I am not breathing,
Just standing there
Pulsing
Red.
In all those words
She doesn’t say his name; still
Out in the hallway,
The wide circles of the other girls’ eyes
Show she was not quiet
Enough.
“I can see you Wednesday at two,”
Jane finishes, her tone sweet
As if the words that came before
Were as innocent.
I know I won’t keep the appointment
Even as I nod acquiescence, limp back down the hall
Without stopping at the crowded benches.
Later,
In my narrow bed
At Señor Medrano’s house,
I think of my reply.
“But Rem is torturing me.”
My cell phone buzzes.
I jump from my bed.
It is not Remington,
Just another text from Bess.
Going to a jazz concert
With Tina and Kari,
Saying she is sick of boys.
I giggle at Bess’s dramatic statement
Until my eyes fill with missing
A friend who knows how to tap a maple tree,
And help her dad mend a stone fence.
What would Bess have said to Jane?
How can Jane know
These things about me and Remington?
Can there be a friendship
Between Rem and Jane
Like there is between Bess and me?
Or has that friendship, too, become surreal,
Shattered
By my secrets and omissions?
Afraid to make another enemy,
I text back a vapid
“Cool. Have fun.”
Despite the late hour, a soulful Latin melody
Rises through the hall.
I lie still.
Let the guitar strings pulse
Through the twanging nerves of my body,
Stare at the bare, white walls, missing the slick posters
That smiled out at Bess and me
So many innocent nights
While speakers blared big-band music
To fill us up,
Shut out the ordinary.
Can I pretend to be sick?
I am terrified to go back to the studio.
Terrified of Jane,
Of who or what I am—
A pulsing mass of bone
And muscle,
Burning face, feelings
I am afraid to try to sort or organize
Or understand.
I feel naked
Even as I pull on my khaki pants,
White shirt.
So long invisible:
Mama Bear, not Goldilocks,
Outside the social circles of Upton.
Overnight
I will be the subject of every dressing-room conversation.
The villain of Jane’s story.
A bad girl.
Me with the pocket full of vitamins
Who always buckles her seat belt.
Now I will be glad to pose behind
Bonnie’s taut Aurora.
Keep my hand down in English class.
Today is much worse
Than the morning after my first night
With Remington.
I stuff clean tights
Into the purple ballet bag,
Zip the backpack closed,
Walk out to the school bus stop
Without any breakfast.
I make the mistake
Of walking past the headmaster’s door,
Cracked open as usual,
The murmur of intellectual conversation
Buzzing into the hall.
“Sara?”
The high, cerebral voice
In an unpleasant key.
“Um, yes?”
“Where is your blazer?”
In my morning haste
I left my burgundy jacket
On the knob of my bedroom door.
“That’s a detention, you know.”
From the doorway, I see him write my name
On an evil piece of paper.
“But I have to go to dance class!”
He will hear no excuses,
His expression accuses.
I want to call my mother,
Turn her persistent, self-righteous energy
Toward the injustice of my dress-code demerit.
Have her restore
My unblemished record.
Remake me the picture of innocence.
A cell phone call during school hours
Is another infraction.
Do I dare?
There is no way, after all,
To set her on Jane.
I find Ruby Rappaport downstairs
Outside the senior lounge.
Tell her that I will not need a ride.
She grins at my story.
Pats me on the back.
Beckons.
“I have an extra blazer in my locker.
Just go back and show Headmaster Smith
That you put one on.”
That afternoon
The windy fever of her topless car
Is intoxicating.
Simone draws me into a corner
As soon as I arrive at the studio.
“You should have slapped her.”
I think of Julio
Drawn to her buoyant certainty.
Bonnie offers
One of her wide, warm smiles.
The knot in my stomach
Uncoils
Enough to dance.
Remington is at the far end of the barre.
We rarely speak in class,
Though we never discuss the reasons
Señor would disapprove.
I worry what Rem knows,
Whether he’s spo
ken to Jane
Or heard the tale from one of the thousand girls
Who were in the hallway last night.
I watch him do six slow tendus,
Grab the barre,
Lean away to stretch his rippling arms,
Head back,
Breathing deep,
Lips set together, curving faintly upward.
If he is ignorant,
He is the only one.
I feel veiled glances
From all directions,
Simone’s and Bonnie’s comforting touches
Audition Page 12
