Not Otherwise Specified (23 page)

I go to the front desk and sign something and eventually this student comes out who seems bored but nice and takes me on a tour. “This is our practice studio,” she says. “This is our cafeteria, and this is . . . our other practice studio.” She giggles. “And here's another practice studio . . .”

We finally go into a practice studio that actually has people practicing. A choreographer is ordering around a bunch of them, but most of the rest are in small groups—“wait, I thought it was stage right first,” “wait, I thought
frappe
was first”—and a few younger girls are stretching in the corner, maybe about to take their place, plié-ing and
revelé
-ing and making me miss being a kid.

I stretch out one leg and point my toe, just a little. I'm wearing leggings and I have my pointe shoes in my bag, just in case, but right now it's enough just to stretch out a little with the kids, to be part of something.

My tour guide goes over to the choreographer, and he laughs at something she says and takes a swig from a water
bottle. He asks her a question, she smiles and points to me, and then he's motioning at me to come over.

“How many years?” he says. It's a pretty common opener.

I was this little fat-legged kid running all the way up the stairs to her first class while my mom panted and paused on the second flight, yelling at me to wait up. “Thirteen years.”

“On pointe for how long?”

“Five years.”

“And you're how old?”

“Seventeen.”

He smiles. “Impressive.”

“Merci.”

“And you're interested in the school?”

“Uh-huh.” I don't need to mention that I have no idea under what circumstances I could end up here. I don't know if I'm really interested in the school or if I'm just interested in saying good-bye to Nebraska.

He slings his bag over his shoulder and says, “I'm off for a period. Of course I can't officially . . .”

“No, of course.”

“Can't officially
anything
, but I would like to see you dance, if you don't mind?”

I'm not an idiot. I know why he wants to see me dance, and I know it's because I don't look even a little like any of the girls in this room, and hey, if it gets me a look and it gets him to see me I'll take it, right? He wants to know how I dance with
this body, and maybe he wants to know if I'm the black girl I bet they'd like to have at this school, and I will pretty gladly be his experiment if it means I get to dance for someone who knows ballet for the first time in what feels like a billion years.

But then he takes me to this small practice room and I lace up my shoes and holy shit, I'm scared to death.

“Any routine you know,” he says. “No pressure. Whatever you're comfortable with.”

What I'm comfortable with.

Rachel's lap.

Sticking my fingers down my throat.

Geometry proofs.

My attic.

Bianca.

Bianca.

Bianca in my attic.

Fouettés.

I dance.

It feels good. I know I'm doing well, and he's smiling, and I just go and go and go and I'm this free animal, I'm this little bird with a big ass and I am nailing these moves and I am doing them free and big and
me
, I am sinking into them and spinning out of them and I'm stretched and long and beautiful. I'm not wearing the right clothes for this and I don't care. I haven't practiced being up on pointe again enough and I don't care. I don't care about anything because I am in New York
and I am dancing at a ballet school and this, this is the dream, this was always the dream.

Except I stop, and that's it.

The magic's gone.

It was only here when I was moving.

He smiles and says, “You're a fantastic dancer.”

“Thank you.”

There's a
but
.

He thinks a long time before he says, “But—and by no means is this the final word, and you should absolutely audition—”

“Right.”

“I think you should think hard about if this is the right place for you.”

I don't fit.

He says, “There's not a thing wrong with you, my dear, but you don't perform ballet like a ballerina. There's a certain kind of poise, of control—”

Control.

“—a kind of discipline—”

Discipline.

“That I'm not sure I see in you. You're a lovely ballet dancer, Etta. But I'm not sure right now that you're a ballerina. But like I said, I'm far from the final word, and we're not looking for perfect dancers. Just dancers who look like they want to be taught.”

“I don't look like I want to be taught?”

He laughs, not altogether warmly this time. “You look like you're already doing it how you want to be doing it.”

“Oh.”

He says, “No, I just . . . There's a looseness about you, Etta. There's a bit of unpredictability in the way you move. It isn't bad, but it isn't something that's likely to make you a solid part of a company. You have to be able to hold certain positions stiffly, to execute moves with complete precision, and you seem to favor something a bit . . .”

More free.

I favor something a bit more free.

“Thank you,” I say. “Thank you for seeing me.”

I'm walking back to Brentwood, and I just finally put the fucking pieces together.

Rachel was wrong. I was wrong. Ballet was not the problem.

This, dancing, me, was never the problem.

It was these damn programs.

It was these damn rules.

It was everything that wasn't
my feet
,
the music
,
me
.

It was all this stuff shoving me into a box that is too small.

It was all the shit I just do not need in my life anymore.

Back at Brentwood, I turn wild pirouettes that throw me into the trash cans in the hallways and people laugh and laugh and cheer me on. I am curves instead of lines, but that is still shapes. That is still dancing. I'm not wrong, and neither was
the school, we just weren't right for each other, but beautiful ballet can still be right for me.

I don't know where all this perspective is coming from except from the part of me that really wants to logically justify how goddamn much I want to go to Brentwood, holy shit.

Who cares that they don't have a good dance department.

I would be their dance department. I would be the fucking crap out of it.

•  •  •

I'm sitting outside the audition room between John Sable and Mila Tran. They're not exactly chatty, but I can't blame them because fuck if I am either. Every once in a while a real student walks by and wishes us luck and toggles their feet between our sneakers or whatever, like foot-flirting, and then they're gone and I might as well not be in Brentwood, goddamn lovely Brentwood, anymore, because this is just any audition which means I'm just scared out of my mind.

It's not in an auditorium, which on one hand is good because holy shit don't put me on a stage right now, please, but it's also freaking scary because it's just in this classroom and I don't know what it looks like in there. I know we don't get a piano. I know that I can hear just the blur of everyone's voices in there and every single one of them sounds really good.

This isn't like the first round and maybe even the second round where I could scrape by on being just okay. Being funny isn't
going to get me anywhere here. They don't care about my personality, they care about my talent. And I don't have enough.

scared shitless
I text Bianca as John Sable goes in.

She responds almost immediately. She's still at home. She has her inpatient check-in later today. I won't be there.

just remember
she says.
beeeee yourself

Fucking
Aladdin
quote. This shouldn't make me feel better. But it does.

Because you know what, screw it. I'm the girl who's inspired by people telling her the damn cliché to be herself. I'm the girl who's too loud and too much and too
big
for a lot of people. I'm the girl who got through two rounds of cutthroat auditions on her damn personality.

So what the hell, right? Let's see this shit through.

I text just
bee
back, and then Sable comes out and it's my turn.

There's a whole group of people in the front, and I know it's the board, and I don't know why I was expecting a bunch of white guys in suits, I mean, this is musical theater. They're half girls, a quarter minorities, which is obviously better than Nebraska so I'll take it, and they're definitely at least a third gay so that should be cool, but somehow that makes this all a hundred times scarier because eesh, these aren't just clipboarded people I don't know, these are grown-up versions of me, these are people who I actually want to like me.

Okay. All right.

“Say your name and age, please?” one of them says. A black woman. Of course. Deep breath. “Etta Sinclair. Seventeen.”

“What are you singing for us, Etta?”

“ ‘At the Ballet.' Sheila's part.”

She smiles a little and sits back. “Whenever you're ready.”

I start immediately because I know I'm never going to be ready. The first part is talky. I'll ease myself into it. I barely have to do anything. It's just brassy Sheila. Okay. I start.

And—

Oh shit.

This is Maggie's part.

Motherfuck.

They're staring at me like I'm confused. I'm this close to apologizing, starting over, but then I'm just still talking, oh God, I'm still going.

Anyway, I did have a fantastic fantasy life. I used to dance around the living room with my arms up like this

I don't do the ballerina pose. I saw Kay Cole on YouTube just hold her arms out like she's ready to catch someone. She didn't look like a dancer. She looked like a girl.

I do that.

I get through her monologue, and now, presumably, they're
going to want me to actually sing, but Maggie's singing part doesn't come immediately after, so I kind of fake my way through the next section, working myself through three-part harmonies and they're smiling at me, not mean, and I guess this is the part where I show off that goofy damn personality of mine except it's an
accident
, but whatever, I try to smile but if I keep looking I'm going to crack and laugh and not try so I close my eyes and then I have to do it. I can't back out now.

Everything was beautiful at the ballet

Raise your arms, and someone's always there

Oh yes, Etta, cry. That will help your voice.

I take a pause that's a little too long because this is it. This is the moment, and here I am and I didn't know that I wanted to be here, I had no damn clue, and here I am. Singing this part I've never been able to sing. Being this vulnerable dreamy girl instead of that brassy jaded dancer and here I am. Here I just . . . am.

I'm Etta Sinclair and I am a ballerina.

Yes, everything was beautiful at the ballet

This is where Sheila and Bebe slide up gently to a higher note. Maggie doesn't do that. Maggie climbs higher.

At the ballet!

That part went okay. That was okay.

She just shouts it out, is the thing. She's not singing, really, she's . . . exclaiming. It's not pretty and vibratoed. Maggie isn't trying to be pretty. She's just trying to feel something.

So. What the hell, right?

At the ballet!

Holy shit.

I hit it.

I hit it and I just
stick there
, because nope I flat-out refuse to break this off now, I am the girl who aces tests because I
decide I will, damnit,
and I hold it long and hard and I shake with it and then I finally drop off and I just stand there and I'm just ragged with the Maggie-ness, I'm standing there panting and crying and God, this is so embarrassing, a real singer could do that in her sleep.

They don't clap. It's okay. I don't think that's what this is.

“Sheila, huh?” the black woman says, with this side-leaning smile.

“Heh. Didn't work out how I planned.”

“Why don't you tell us why you think Brentwood would be a good place for you?”

I should have prepared something. Shit. Who the hell would be surprised by this question?

But the thing is, I know why I think I belong here.

Because of one little girl.

I say, “I have this friend . . . my best friend. She's really into God. I don't know if I . . . but anyway, she told me this story and it's about this really religious guy like on his deathbed, uh, let's call him Bob, and he's
so
scared, and everyone who loves him is like . . . ‘why are you scared? You've lived this fucking perfect life—sorry—and you are like as close to Moses and Jesus and stuff as anyone ever asked,' and he's like . . . ‘I'm not scared God's going to ask me why wasn't I more like Moses and Jesus, he's going to ask me why wasn't I more Bob-ish. Why wasn't I as Bob-ish as I could possibly be?' And I'm like . . . not saying that I'm anything like Moses or Jesus because I curse and drink and sleep with girls, and I don't even think I believe in God or anything, but I think that if I went here and I tried to sing and I didn't back down and I met people who think being different is okay and who let me do ballet in the halls and stuff, and I listened and I grew up, then I wouldn't ever have to worry that I'm shrinking . . . sh-shrinking myself down, and no one could ever think that I . . . I think that I could be the most Etta-ish I could be. And I think that would be really good.”