7
Gigi
A WEEK AND A HALF after the cast list went up, we’ve settled into our rehearsal schedule. We pile into the second-floor studio E, where I won’t be able to see the rest of the sunset. I’ve been trying to follow Mama’s advice and watch it every day in order to stay positive. “Don’t carry worries around,” she always says. “They’re heavy.” It’s hard to hold on to her words here. Nerves erase them easily. But I have to, and it helps that I haven’t felt sick since the list was posted. So they have nothing to worry about.
Eleanor walks into the studio beside me and I make a joke about our ballet madam’s new haircut, just to get her to talk to me. It’s hard to have real connections or even conversations with the girls here. She laughs, and so do I.
The room is a mess of leg warmers, pointe shoes, and chatter as we stretch our bodies so they’ll fold like putty. June rests her head against the wall, her legs two arrows shot in opposite directions. She always warms up, even though she doesn’t get to dance in the center with the rest of us. She only sits and marks variation movements and timing in the understudy book off to the side. I imagined that we’d rehearse together, laughing, teaching each other little things, moving in sync, like we used to do back home. But she won’t. No matter how many times I ask her if she wants to.
Bette finishes tying on a translucent dance skirt as if she has all the time in the world, and she’s watching me from her peripheral vision, like I’ve angered her even more by coming to rehearsal with Eleanor. Like I’ve broken some rule. There has never been a knife sharper than those blue eyes of hers. And where her eyes go, everyone else’s follow. It takes only a few moments until the eyes of the whole cast are on me. Enjoying my audience, I make a fart sound with my mouth. Some of them laugh, some of them frown, and Bette rolls her eyes.
I plop down next to June and smile, and she gives the worst imitation of one in return. I’ve learned it’s just her. Not to take it personally. I peel off my warm-ups: cutoff sweatpants that used to be Mama’s and one of my old T-shirts cropped at the top and bottom. I sew new ribbons onto my pointe shoes, my fingers fumbling with the needle and dental floss and slippery satin. I try to shake out the nerves in my hands. Today I have to mark my solo for timing and progress in front of everyone. I’ve only had a week and a half of character instruction with Morkie and Pavlovich. And I should’ve broken these shoes in yesterday so they’d be perfect. I pull the dental floss through the shoe and it snaps.
Get it together, I tell myself, resewing. I stand and push my heel on the front of each shoe, feeling the glued fibers in the toe box break under my weight. With quick fingers, I work with the inside of the shoe, peeling back the fabric to expose the leather shank, like it’s a banana, and use my pliers to pull out the tiny nail. I remember crying when I had to break in my first pair of pointe shoes. I thought it would make them ugly instead of able to support all the new movements I would make. I cut away part of the shank under my heel right where the curve in my arches begins. I secure it with quick-dry glue and tape, then test my weight. I pad my toes with a swath of lamb’s wool, slip the shoes on, and tie the ribbons in a square knot.
Eleanor warms up next to me, and her shoes make a weird crunchy noise. We look at each other and burst into laughter.
A bag clobbers my head. “Oww!”
I glance up.
“Oh! I’m so sorry! I didn’t see you there,” Bette says, standing above me, no longer hovering in the background. Bette plops down in the small space between Eleanor and me, and pulls aside a bit of the fabric covering the mirror. All of them are draped with curtains because Mr. K insists that reflections distance dancers from becoming their characters, that they make dancers lazy.
Bette stares at herself. Her lips, when they are pursed together and painted with that hot-pink lipstick, are an impossible heart shape. With a mouthful of clips and pins, Bette slicks her blond hair into the perfect bun. Each strand obeys her touch, unlike my own hair. She adds hair spray to seal it in place.
I feel my curls fighting against the bun, transforming into a frizzy nest. I should’ve gone to all the trouble to straighten it or asked Aunt Leah to take me to the hair salon. I search the mirror for Bette’s gaze. Casually, artfully, she applies fake eyelashes, dark and feathery, like the wings of my butterflies in their terrarium upstairs. I touch my cheek. My face is naked—no makeup, no lipstick, no eye shadow. Since the first day of school, June’s warned me that I should make up my face, that it is part of being a serious ballerina, that the teachers favor it. But I can’t. I don’t like the feel of it on my face, clumpy and goopy. The lipstick Bette wears would make me feel like a clown. I only wear it for performances, and even then I can’t wait to wash it off in the green room room afterward.
She must notice my fingers tiptoeing over my bare cheek, because she stops her expert application to look at me. “I love how you don’t do anything with your face,” she says, but I can’t tell if the word love might actually mean hate. I am not fluent in the language these ballerinas speak to one another. The girls at my old dance studio were never like this. “Don’t you just love it, Eleanor?”
“Mmmm,” Eleanor says.
“Oh. Yeah. Mama’s always saying she thinks makeup is dishonest, so . . .” Of course, as soon as the words leave my mouth I want to catch them and press them back in. “I mean, not that she’s right, I just never really got into it.” I give her the biggest, most sincere smile I can muster. “You always look beautiful, though,” I add. “Seriously.” I feel like an idiot.
“I really admire your confidence and everything,” Bette says, so smooth she erases how awkward I was. “But you really should put on a little something. Playing the part and looking the part are sometimes the same thing, don’t you think?”
I don’t really agree, but she was so graceful in forgiving my faux pas that I nod a little. She hands me a compact and a blush brush. “Just try a little. You’ll love it,” she says, matching the largeness of my earlier smile. “And boys like it.”
I sweep on a tiny bit of the powder, and maybe’s she’s right. The blush complements my skin tone. I have an extra glow. I’m just about to keep the conversation going and bask a little more in the attention Bette’s suddenly lavishing on me. But before I can say anything, she’s on her feet and hooking her foot on the barre. The moment is over. Liz tramples over. She whispers something in Bette’s ear, and looks down at me, crinkling her thin white nose like she’s smelling garbage left out on the curb.
The boys shuffle in—Alec in the lead and Henri last, as always. Alec winks at me, then swoops in and gives Bette a hug. I feel an unexpected twist of jealousy.
“You coming over tonight?” she purrs in his ear, just loud enough for us all to hear.