If I open my mouth,
It will only remind them
Of the imperfections of my limbs.
Silence feels safer.
“Still with Stephen?”
I text Bess.
“He’s FUN.
Movies 2nite.”
Her answer,
A sweet Vermont breeze
That assumes all is still wonderful with me,
Does not ask why I’m texting
Instead of stretching right now.
“Any cute boys in Jersey?”
Her question blinks.
In my class there are so many girls,
So few boys.
There are more amongst
The advanced students and apprentices,
And the company dancers,
Ethereal and mighty.
From my world apart, I watch
Fernando’s perfectly sculpted arms,
Vincent’s dark drama,
Remington’s tall, quiet power that sometimes
Makes me wonder how Bess feels to be touched by Stephen.
Impossible to fit this reply
Into my phone’s tiny screen
Even 4 Bess.
I am not sure
Whether to thank my ambitious mother
Or to curse her
For my place
At the lofty prep school
In which I have been enrolled.
A few of the other chosen girls
Go to an arts school—
Forgiving,
Undemanding,
Maybe fun.
I, instead,
Am the new junior
Amongst the wealthy, college-bound
Boys and girls
Of Upton Academy,
Who are extraordinarily well-dressed
Despite a strict dress code of burgundy
And beige.
Everywhere I turn,
There are colors I must wear on my back.
Every time I try,
I don’t match the others.
Upton Academy sits
Behind an elegant row
Of green pines,
Hidden from the gritty road.
A grand oasis of
Stately walkways
Linking redbrick buildings
With heavy oak doors.
Inside, trim, modern desks,
Computer stations,
Dark, paneled libraries,
A student den with leather chairs,
Where I sit pretending not to notice
Clean-cut boys flirting
With smiling, well-dressed girls.
Pretend I don’t wonder
At the thousand little conversations,
Sprinkles of laughter,
Memories of freshman and sophomore year,
The summer that just ended,
That weave into a fiber of friendship
Where I am only the fringe.
The trip from school to ballet
Is a living nightmare every day.
I stand beside the cold bus stop signpost four blocks from
Upton,
Beyond the protection of the pine-tree fence,
Where tattooed boys
Lean from the windows of motley cars,
Beckon with thick arms.
“Hey, baby . . .”
Their voices make me shake,
Long for the unpaved streets of home,
Where the route to dancing was a cleared path
Traversed by familiar faces.
The bus’s arrival
Barely brings relief,
With its steps too large to climb with grace.
The other passengers glance up—
The housecoated lady with witch’s eyes,
The pale young man who must be dying of something.
I sit in the open seat nearest the driver
Trying to make myself invisible.
Wait
For the bus to stop a block away
From the ballet school.
Dash across the four-lane avenue.
Run through the cracked, asphalt parking lot.
Heave open the industrial door.
Into a cocoon
Of sweat and dreams.
Julio is at the ballet school
When I arrive.
Waiting for his father,
I guess.
I never know the plan,
Only hope someone will be there
To take me home at the end of each day.
He grins when I come in.
Walks over,
Gives my shoulder a playful push.
He is two years younger than me,
Even though dark hairs
Play across his upper lip.
My body stiffens
Against his touch.
The other girls
Beg him to play his guitar.
(He is a hopeless flirt and he does.)
Simone says I am lucky
To be a big sister in his house—
To sit at his table with Señor and Señora
And listen to talk of music and dancing every night.
But I don’t feel
Like a big sister,
Only a frightened fool
And perhaps a bit above
Playing with a little boy of fourteen
Despite sometimes feeling five years old.
It is dark when we get back
To Señor Medrano’s house.
But he sends Julio outside anyway
To rake their sorry scrap of front lawn
With only the pale illumination of the corner streetlight
To guide him.
I watch from the front stoop.
Wait for him to start a conversation.
I cannot tell whether he is angry at Señor’s assignment,
Or at me for my coldness at the studio tonight,
But he does not try to joke or tease.
Blowing wind scatters his pile.
In Vermont, Dad rakes the leaves from the yard
Over the stone fence into the woods behind.
Here a black plastic sack waits for Julio.
I push off the chilly concrete step,
Grab at the flying leaves.
Shove dusty fistfuls into the yard bag.
Julio chuckles,
“You kind of suck at this.”
“You’re not so great yourself,
Mr. Classical Guitar.”
He shakes the rake
Over my head.
Red and gold and brown fall flotsam
Wafts onto my oversprayed hair.
When Señora Medrano returns home
From her most recent trip
The next evening,
The yard is tidy,
The living room cleared of sheet music (courtesy of Julio),
The house vacuumed (courtesy of Señor Medrano) and
Dusted (courtesy of me).
We smile conspiratorially
Behind her scrutiny.
In class today, Yevgeny barks,
“Like Sara.
Follow Sara.”
My ears blink.
I almost stop
Turning
Piqués
Like I have never turned before.
After weeks of exasperation
Something
Has connected
Between my foot
And my brain.
Each time I push off from my left leg
Onto my right toe
The box of my pointe shoe
Centers exactly.
My body lifts over it,
So secure,
So solid,
I could stand there forever.
But instead I turn
Easily,
Generously.
And again.
And again.
I reach the corner barely breathing.
Feel th
e eyes
Following me.
But mostly hear the magic echo
Of Yevgeny’s
Hard,
Russian-accented
Shout.
“Like Sara.”
Near the studio door
Apprentices and advanced students wait
For their partnering class,
Next in this space.
Today, I make my way past
Their superior clusters
With my head up
To where Señor Medrano stands,
Talking with Fernando and Remington.
I wait my turn to ask
When he’ll be ready to drive me home.
“Will there be time to work on my dance?” Remington asks
Señor.
His long eyelashes beat black against his pale skin.
Señor nods.
“Remind me last half hour of class.”
“Sara, you did well today,”
Yevgeny comments, passing.
Señor and the others turn their heads
As if I had just appeared
From thin air
Into an empty space.
“What time will you be finished tonight, Señor?”
I ask.
As the teacher looks at his watch,
Remington gives me a slow, curious grin.
Fondu développé
Is a melting step.
The knees of the standing leg and the working leg
Bend together, straighten together,
Until the working leg is extended in arabesque.
Feels like it should be easy.
My extension is long,
My arabesque high.
But fondu is not in the final pose,
Rather in the process,
The getting there,
With everything working together:
Learning ballet steps, trigonometry,
How to add money onto your transit card,
How to wrap a hairnet around your bun to keep it neat,
Reading so many pages of literature and history every week,
Straightening it all into some kind of manageable whole.
Fondu is not even a little bit
Simple.
Sophomore year in Darby Station,
Our English class
(Taught by Mr. Green,
Also the JV girls field hockey
And boys varsity baseball coach)
Read one single book:
Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations.
Sitting at the desks around me,
It seemed like hardly anyone besides me and Bess
Dreamed,
Even expected
Much of anything.
Later,
After I finished the story
(Our class, in fact, never reached the end),
I saw the true irony,
Tragedy.
Felt Mr. Green was being cruel.
As if he had chosen the novel himself,
Not had it handed down to him
From the weary department head
After a quarter hour’s rifling through the tattered book
stock
To see if there was a classroom set of anything
In the closet beside the library.
Mr. Green kept asking us
About the images of cobwebs
That cluttered old Miss Havisham’s world
Like the distraction of green turf fields
That filled his own.
To me the cobwebs
Were less important
Than the lost love,
Lost hope,
Lost dreams
That led the spinster to
Her dusty rooms, empty, absent life,
Turning those around her cruel
By making them expect, want, too much—
The wrong things.
At my aristocratic new school,
Upton Academy,
Where no expense is spared on copies
Of anything,
A book like that
Fills barely ten days, then on to another,
Another, and
Another with
Expectations
For all.
The October trees are near naked
But my body is covered now
With hunter green,
The more forgiving leotard color
Of the next-up level
At the dance school.
And I am so delighted
That I smile at everyone.
Even the boys.
Even Remington.
He is beautiful
Tall
Strong.
The throb of my heart
Is ridiculous.
I am just sixteen and he is,
God, maybe twenty-two.
Also, he has a girlfriend,
Jane,
The company physical therapist.
I watch him from the corner of my eye
But stay near giggling Simone,
Who talks about studio gossip
And flirts with younger boys.
I would be so safe if he put his long arms around me.
His hands are so wide.
“Rem,” his friends call him
(And, of course,
Jane).
“Hey, Rem!” they greet him.
Teachers and choreographers say,
“Rem, pas de chat to the left.”
“Rem, partner Bonnie over there.”
He is an excellent dancer
But he wants to be a teacher
And choreographer.
Can I seem old enough to like him?
The teachers say I am doing well
And allow me into some of the advanced lessons.
Still, I am officially only in D class
With mostly younger girls.
So, I try to let everyone assume I am twelve
Instead of a backwards ballerina of sixteen.
I wish I could concentrate on dancing
Instead of spending so much time pretending
I am still in junior high.
But with Rem, I want to be sixteen
Or, like Alice in Wonderland,
Sometimes smaller,
Sometimes bigger still.
Dad calls from the orchard,
Where the McIntosh apples are thick and threatening
To tumble off the trees.
He is always in a hurry this time of year
To get the harvest into cold storage
Or off to farmers’ markets.
Though few besides me
Can hear the subtle urgency
In his still-soft tones.
At home, Mom will stay up late
Slicing, peeling, stirring in sugar and cinnamon.
Dad knows that Macs are my favorites
But all he says is,
“Wish you were here.”
I imagine him rushing,
Supervising loaded crates,
Counting and tabulating.
It is easier to write checks for my school tuition and board
In the bounty of fall
Than it will be in winter.
So I will not be so ungrateful as to admit
That my shins ache,
That trying to keep up with city dancers is exhausting,
And that, often, I wish the same.
“I’m promoted to D level,”
I say instead.
“Green leotards and partnering classes.”
I do not mention
The way looking at Rem’s hands
Makes me forget
How to stand in first position,
Which I learned before I got to kindergarten.
Friday at the studio
I put my feet down tenderly.
Lightning jolts through my shins.
I try to keep my head up, move quickly,
But a pained sigh sneaks out
When my weight shifts to my left side.
“Are you feeling okay, Sara?”
Jane calls as I pass her office door.
Last night, while I waited for Señor Medrano,
I watched her kiss Remington,
Watched his endless arm sweep around her waist,
Wondered how old she was to be some kind of doctor
And if Rem likes her giant breasts.
Now, I blush.
“Um, yeah. I’m fine.”
I’ve begun taking Partnering class,
The province of advanced students,
Where boys and girls are taught to dance
Together.
It looks so effortless when you see it happen on a stage.
“Girls must hold their own balance.
Don’t make the boys work too hard, lug dead weight,”