Someday Dancer Read online

  Andrea gives me a shove, and I step forward as brave as I can.

  “I’m number 53.”

  “Mr. Balanchine would like to see you,” says the woman.

  Suddenly, I wonder if I’m in trouble. Maybe he’s mad that I came without having had a lesson, but who is he to be mad? I was meant to be here, I remind myself.

  I set my shoulders firmly on top of my spine and follow the long, thin woman out of the dressing room. I glance over my shoulder just before I get through the door. The last thing I see is Andrea grinning and holding up her thumbs. I smile, and then I go to see Mr. Balanchine. If he thinks he can just send me home, he’s got another think coming. No more tears. I didn’t dance myself all the way to New York City to go home without a fight.

  I storm into the empty audition room nothing like a ballerina, slapping my feet down without even trying to keep them quiet. Mr. Balanchine is standing there, waiting for me. He smiles. I put on the nastiest scowl I can manage without being rude. I’m no pushover. I’m here and I mean business. Mr. Balanchine looks at me standing like a soldier in front of him. Then he looks at his clipboard.

  “So you are Casey Quinn,” he says. His voice has a rich foreign accent that sits at the back of his throat. I hadn’t really noticed it before. I was too busy trying to understand all of the dance words. The r’s roll around in his mouth now, and he clucks his tongue disapprovingly.

  I let him look at me without flinching. I know what he’s looking at. He’s looking at my toes poking through the holes in my tights, and at my scrawny legs. He’s thinking, This child is no ballerina. I stand up tall and put my feet in first position, just to show him he doesn’t know a thing.

  “Is it true what you have written here?” He taps his finger on the clipboard. He’s looking at the form I filled out when I arrived. “Have you really never had a ballet lesson before?”

  I stick out my chin. “Yes, sir.”

  “Have you ever had any formal dance training?”

  “No, sir.”

  He takes a deep breath. Then he looks at me, really looks at me, like I am a book and he is reading me. I try not to twitch as the seconds tick by. This is a test, I tell myself. He’s watching for something. Suddenly, Mr. Balanchine lets the breath out in a whoosh.

  “Well, then you are a natural dancer,” he says.

  “Then why didn’t I get in?” The words are out before I can stop them, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

  “You don’t have enough technical training. If you’d come a few years ago when we were just starting, I would have trained you myself. But now . . .” He makes the little shrug with his shoulders that grown-ups make when they want to say, It’s not my fault.

  “You can either go home and take a few years of lessons, or” — he holds up his hands before I can interrupt to say I don’t have money for lessons — “or, there is something else.”

  He takes a piece of paper and writes something down. “There is another audition in two months. It is not a ballet school. It is a different type of dance, but I think it will suit you very well. And” — he pauses — “I think you will like it. When are you going home?”

  “My bus is at six.”

  “Good,” he says. “Take this note to the studio on 316 East 63rd Street. Just between First and Second. Can you get there?”

  I nod. Now that I’ve seen the street system, it isn’t so hard. The street and avenue numbers all go in order, and I can count just fine.

  He puts the piece of paper in my hands. “Don’t ever stop dancing, Casey Quinn. You have a great gift. You either go to her, or come back to me in a few years. Now, hurry up or you will miss the class.”

  Most of the girls are gone when I get back to the changing room. They’ve started the next stage of the audition. As I grab my bag, I notice a note tucked inside it. It is from Andrea. It says “Good luck.” Her address is written on the back. I stare at it for a moment, not sure exactly what to do.

  It seemed so easy for Andrea to decide we’d be friends, like she made new ones all the time. I wonder if she’d still want to be my friend if she knew more about me. Then I remember how she took on the Priss, and I smile. I take a deep breath and I pull my crumpled number 53 out of my bag and write “You too!” on the back, with my address, and tuck it into Andrea’s street shoes. Today is a day for taking chances.

  I walk out onto the street and I smile. I really hope she gets in.

  I eat the rest of the lunch Mama packed me as I soar down the sidewalk, skipping in my high-tops. Hope lifting me up at every turn.

  I watch where I’m going this time, and steer well clear of the subway steps.

  I arrive at the dance studio fifteen minutes later. It’s a dark little hall, with stairs leading up behind the front desk. Very different from the School of American Ballet, but there is a buzz in the air that reminds me of the city, fast and exciting. The woman at the desk frowns at me at first, but when I hand her the note her face opens.

  “Come with me,” she says, and I follow her upstairs.

  Strange, pulsing music is pouring out of the walls. I’ve never heard anything like it. One, two, three. One, two-three. One-two, three. The beat shifts from one count to the next without taking a breath.

  At the top of the stairs is a large room filled with dancers. They are striding, knees bent low to the ground, straight-backed. Another group is standing to the side, waiting for their turn. And in the middle of the room is the most amazing woman I have ever seen. She is tall, larger than herself somehow. Like her spirit is too big for her body. Little pieces seem to pour out every time she moves. The air bends around her as she prowls between the dancers.

  “Stop!” She claps her hands, and the room is silent and still.

  “You’re missing it. Push off on one, stay in the air on two. Listen to the music. Again.”

  The music starts again and I move my feet without moving. I want to feel how those dancers look, like I’m flying. They go around the room again. Then the woman claps once more, and they stop.

  “We’ve run over. That is all for today. Thank you.”

  As the dancers file out, the other woman, the one from the front desk, leads me into the room.

  “Martha,” she says to the teacher, “this girl wants to audition for the scholarship program.”

  Miss Martha looks down at me. “That isn’t for two more months.”

  Somehow I find my voice. “I know, ma’am,” I say, pulling the words from the back of my throat. “But I was at the ballet audition and Mr. Balanchine said I should come here. So I came here.”

  The other woman hands Miss Martha the note.

  I hesitate. Then I say, “What kind of dance do you teach? I’ve never seen it before.”

  She arches one eyebrow without looking up from the paper.

  “A new way to move,” she says. Other dancers are coming into the room for the next class. They don’t even look at me. They’re too busy getting ready.

  “I like it,” I say.

  She looks at me, first my face and then my body, like she’s looking for a lie. But I’m not lying. Those dancers danced right out from their insides.

  “Well then,” she says. “You may sit in the back row and learn something today, and come back for the audition in two months.”

  I struggle out of my shift, glad that I left my tights and leotard on underneath it. All of the other dancers have bare feet, so I grab the holes in the toes of my tights and rip them until my feet fit through.

  “Bounces,” says Miss Martha, and the piano starts to play.

  Everyone sits on the floor with their knees bent and the soles of their feet together, and bobs their heads toward the floor. Then Miss Martha snaps her fingers, and everyone spreads their legs out to the side and keeps bobbing. Another snap, another position.

  People are curling up on the floor and springing loose. Standing and falling and rising from the earth.

  “Don’t just go through the motions!” Miss Martha yells
at us. “At all times, the dancer should feel poised as if in flight — even when sitting.” She looks at where I sit, and almost smiles. I think she can see it. The way I am sitting. The way I’m dancing on the inside. The way I am flying. It is like no dance in the world. It is better. I can feel each move in my gut. You could dance anger like this. Not just the way anger looks or feels, but the anger itself. Or joy, or sadness, or anything.

  It is like I am watching their bodies talk, and mine wants to talk, too. And it doesn’t matter that my legs are too skinny or I have more freckles on my face than there are stars in the sky. It doesn’t matter that my ears stick out, not one bit. Because this is my kind of dance. It is already inside me, and no one can take it away. This is where I am meant to be.

  Miss Martha claps her hands again and tells us the lesson is over. The other dancers move to the sides of the room, pulling on their over-clothes and shoes, and filing out of the room through the small wooden doorway. They are laughing and talking with each other, and I follow them quietly.

  I feel a hand clamp down on my shoulder and spin me around.

  “Now, show me what you’ve learned,” Miss Martha says, waving me to the middle of the room.

  My heart trills like a songbird, but when the music starts I take a breath and let it carry me. It sweeps through my body like it is talking to me, and I dance my answers all the way to my fingertips.

  “All right, that’s enough.” Miss Martha stops me.

  My heart leaps up into my mouth, and I have to swallow it back down again as I stare into Miss Martha’s eyes, black like the middle of the night. She stares right back at me, and I go all cold as if she’s looking through me.

  It seems like forever before she speaks.

  “Very good,” she says. “I will see you in two months for the audition. You have promise.”

  Then she is gone.

  I walk out of Miss Martha’s studio and down the street, floating toward the bus station. I don’t care if people push past me, or shoot me the greasy eyeball for not scooting fast enough. I want to soak up every last second of the city. I breathe the air deep, trying to memorize the smell. I know I’ll be back, but I want something to hold on to, something to remember while I’m waiting in the wings in Warren.

  When I get on the bus to go home, my heart is full and I am twitching all over to try my new moves. Gran would say that I’ve reached for the stars and landed on the moon. But I think it’s the other way around. I think this is how Mama must have felt when she was painting my room. I can’t imagine ever giving this up. I think Mama must have been real sad to stop painting.

  There is no one in the seat next to me, so I stretch out. With my face up, I can look out the bus window into the sky. The sun goes down slowly, and the sky is peachy-pink, a celebration. It melts slowly into darkness, first purple and then navy. And one by one the stars pop out, bright silver dots that light up the night sky, twinkling just like I imagine the lights in Times Square must twinkle.

  I lie there as the bus carries me through the night. And I don’t mind that it’s taking me back to Warren. I have something new to reach for. Maybe you can’t do ballet in high-tops, but that don’t mean you can’t dance. I look at the papers Miss Martha’s assistant gave me, running my fingers over the magical words: THE MARTHA GRAHAM SCHOOL OF CONTEMPORARY DANCE.

  My school.

  It is just afternoon when the bus gets back. I expect Mama to be there, but she isn’t. She must be working another emergency shift at the hospital.

  I am humming into my fingertips as I run down the empty street. Warren is quiet and still and so small compared to New York City. I feel like a giant stepping through the dusty streets. One, two, three. With a leap up on the two. My high-tops drum out my happiness.

  Our house is empty when I burst inside. I walk around, twitching to tell someone about my adventure. I check all the rooms, but Mama and Gran aren’t anywhere. It’s strange that Gran is out. She must be at the hospital, too. I sit at the table and wait. My fingers dance impatiently over the tabletop, itching to tell Mama and Gran my good news. The sun begins to wink down toward the horizon, and I have no sleep in my bones. I put some water on the stove for when Mama and Gran come home. Then I sit at the table to wait.

  When I wake up, the water is off the stove and Mama is sitting across the table, watching me.

  “Casey,” she begins, and I sit up with a start.

  “I’m sorry I left the water on, Mama. I wanted to surprise you when you came home. And I didn’t think I was tired.” The words spill out of me like music. “Oh, Mama, I didn’t get into the ballet school, but it’s OK. There’s a new school, a better school.”

  “Casey . . .” Mama says it like she hasn’t slept for days.

  “But Mama, it’s true. And if I go back in two months there’s a scholarship audition.”

  “Casey!” Mama bangs her hand on the table. Then she starts crying.

  I pull my breath back into my body. Something is wrong. Mama cries like a runaway train tearing down a mountain. Her huge sobs gain speed until she stops them all, crashing her fists against her thighs and roaring at herself with a tight, strangled growl.

  My heart beats a deep booming in my hollow chest. Something is wrong.

  “Mama,” I ask softly. “Where’s Gran?”

  Mama’s breath catches, and I see her pinch her leg to keep from crying, the same way I do. “Gran is in the hospital.”

  She says “in” not “at” — and that one little word brings down the sky.

  “Gran had a heart attack.” Mama starts to cry again. I’m still for a moment before I get out of my chair and put my arms around her. She sobs into my shoulder and my neck.

  “I don’t want my mama to die,” she says.

  “Gran won’t die. You’ll see,” I say as I rock her back and forth, because Gran can’t die. Gran is too alive to die.

  But Mama keeps on crying, clinging to me like I am a rock in a fast-moving stream, like I am the mama. I hold her until she stops crying. Then I make her some tea and carry it to her bedroom. Mama lies in her bed, but she doesn’t drink her tea and she doesn’t sleep. She just looks white and worried.

  I sit on my own bed with my knees pulled up to my chest. I feel very small and too big for my skin all at the same time. I never realized how much Mama loves Gran. And when I think about that, I realize that I don’t know how much I love Mama. That love is big, like an endless lake sparkling so bright in the sun that it hurts even to look at it. That is my love for Gran, too. I get up and look in the mirror. How can such a scrawny body hold so much feeling inside it?

  I never knew my father. Not really. He left for the war before I could remember more than crawling by his feet. In fact, the only thing I remember about my father is his shoes. Chuck Taylors, just like my high-tops. The official shoe of the army. I wonder whether my love would be divided up more between him and Mama if I’d had him for longer, but I don’t think so. I think we stretch out forever in our hearts, just like the water on my wall.

  In the morning, when Mama wakes up, we go to the hospital to see Gran. I fight to remember that I was there just a few days ago, dancing with a broom in time to the beeping machines. They don’t sound so musical now.

  We go down a long white hall to a small room with a smaller window high in its wall. There is a bed in the middle of the room, but it isn’t Gran in the bed. It can’t be. Gran is large and always moving. She has wobbly arms that shake when she laughs or mashes potatoes. She smells like warm bread and love, and she vibrates with life.

  The woman in the bed just lies there. She’s not awake, but she’s not dreaming, either. Long wires go from her skin and attach to a small machine by her bed. But it is Gran.

  Mama and I hold hands as we walk to the bed. Gran fills it up, but she doesn’t fill up herself. She looks light, like she might just up and float away.

  “Hi, Gran,” I say. Mama lets go of my hand like she’s going to say Gran can’t hear me. But I don
’t let her.

  “I’m back from New York City,” I say. “I did good. I didn’t get in, but I did good. The head teacher said I was a natural dancer. And he told me about a new dance school. And I went there. It was amazing, Gran. People danced with their guts. I’m going back in two months to audition there. So you’ll have to come see me.” My voice cracks. I stop talking, but I think I see a smudge of a smile spread on Gran’s lips.

  I look up and Mama is crying again, more gently this time. I wrap my arm around her waist and squeeze gently. She squeezes me back. I squeeze again, this time with one of the beeps from the machine by Gran’s bed. Mama squeezes back on the next beat. We stay hugging each other to the beat of Gran’s heart until the nurse comes in and tells us we have to leave.

  On the way out of the hospital, I see Mrs. Ryder.

  “I’m so sorry about your grandmother,” she says. “But I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

  “Me, too,” I say. “Did Ann-Lee get into the school?”

  Mrs. Ryder’s face glows. “She did. She’s been dreaming about dancing in New York since she was little.” Suddenly, she takes off her smile. Ann-Lee must have told her I didn’t even make the first cut. “I’m sorry you didn’t make it, Casey,” she says.

  “That’s OK,” I say. “I found something else.”

  As we walk out of the hospital, I wonder why I’m not more upset about the Priss getting in, why I’m not beating the sidewalk with angry feet. I remember the look on Miss Priss’s face when she bet me she would get in and I wouldn’t. And when she came to gloat because she was right. It had made me mad enough to scream, but I don’t feel mad anymore. I am too full of thinking about Gran. Ann-Lee is a drop in a bucket. I wonder why I ever bothered worrying about her at all.

  Mama takes my hand again, not like I’m her little girl and not like I’m her mama. Like we are friends. And we go home and cook dinner together, waiting for tomorrow when we can visit Gran again.

  Gran died in the night. Her heart stopped working. And when Mama tells me, my heart stops working, too. It beats, pumping blood up and down, but that’s all it does. It doesn’t feel, and I don’t cry. Mama is awash in tears, but I am bone-dry. I am too empty for tears. I am too empty for anything except a low dull ache at the back of my eyes.