It’s How You Perform

You must paint your pointe shoes with blood when you sew beige elastic laces on. This

will appease the God you worship, the silver Madame Damant, who puts tacks on the heel of

your slippers to bleed you out anyway. You’ll let her do it too because you’ll get a damn good

arch out of it. Never will you need to stand flat on your feet again.

Skip the cake at your sister’s wedding; exchange it for a flute of champagne and fingers

down your throat in the women’s bathroom (both taste like Elise’s tongue that one New Year's

Eve). Ignore all temptations of cake and sugar and fat. You fought tooth and fucking nail to make

it this far and you won’t give up now, not for anything or anyone.

Replace white grain with salt. Yellow salt cakes the bottom of your slippers so you won’t

slip on sleek flooring. Salt is in your bathwater to alleviate muscle tension. Salt is mixed with

Gatorade for the twelve-hour workshops in June with Elise, always with Elise, ever since you

were too young to know that adoration and hate are twins.

Smile and faux compliment Leah when she flashes the girls in the dressing room after

rehearsal. The rest of the company whistles and cheers. Her nipples are crusted with brown blood

from their new bellbar jewelry and no, of course, Damant doesn’t know she got them pierced.

She never will if all you whores keep your mouths shut, ha ha ha.

Yes, smile for the others, Priya. Acknowledge the sapphire studs so the girls don’t call

you prude, but don’t look too hard or they'll know you’re a pervert. They’ll know you the way

Elise’s eyes know you right now, like she might ruin your part as principal dancer in one glance.

Don’t let it get to your head. Elise is just being Elise! She’s told you time and time again

that New Years and her birthday and last week were all coincidences—strictly platonic! She was

just curious, and isn’t it so great that you two are close enough to kiss and fuck for hours and still

be the best of friends?

Press your flat ass against Angelo’s front so he can feel you during your big pas de deux.

He’s bisexual, so you hope he gets the hint when Damant and the others don’t. The grin he sends

you through the mirror tells you it’s working. The folded arms and tight expression on Elise’s

face when you carpool back to your shared apartment tells you it’s worth it.

Text Angelo that night. Yes, you’ve always wanted to try out that little bar across the

street from Leah’s place. He doesn’t need to know that you have been there before. You have

been there with Elise when she forgot to tell you that Josh-from-the-gym would be there too. You

caught them against the wall of the parking lot, tears in her eyes as she was down on her knees

and deep in his jeans. You cannot forget the sound of it. You will not. You, you, you, you—

You tell Angelo yes to Friday right after rehearsal. It’s a date? It’s a date. Thank God you

have emoticons to hide the guilt burning your cheeks as you finalize the plans.

“Texting your mom?” Elise asks, popping her head into your doorway. You quickly avert

your eyes before her little silk nightshirt can flash you.

“Who else would I talk to?” you say. A joke? A statement? Either way, your smile is salt.

Yet Elise doesn’t suspect a thing; she glows in her polite smile. “Tell Mrs. Kumari I said hi!”

You suck on your teeth as she leaves. Bad habit, whatever, but at least it’s slowed your

smoking habits. Damant would cut you if she knew about your Camels stash in the bottom of

your duffel.

But Damant isn’t here right now.

Steady hands surgically steal the half-empty pack from inside your mattress. Your hands

are always steady, always sure in a way your blasphemous heart never is. Open the window, step

out onto the fire escape and light up. Close your eyes and think of Angelo, not Elise. Angelo, not

Elise.

 

“A date?”

Keep your eyes on the road, Priya; Elise is trying to trick you with her heavy eyes.

They’re the only things keeping her grounded. So light and thin on her feet, she’d float away

without the weight of her sight in her noggin. You’d float away with her — and gladly so —

float as the will o’wisps that your company portrays so well.

The first pointe ballerina was a spirited fairy, light on her feet and ethereal as all high

hell. Except, of course, that light is the one thing a ballerina is not. No matter the core strength,

the gracefulness, the weightlessness — it’s impossible for a pointe shoe to hit the floor without

Sound.

Yet Elise manages it every single time. It shouldn’t be possible; it was an outright scandal

at their academy years ago, but who could fight such heavy eyes? If the metaphor of the mirrored

eyes is true, that means she reflects in you the same heaviness you associate with her. You are

anchored, and she is not. She is your illusion. When she lifts off soundlessly in the air, you are

the audience who is meant to be entrapped in the spectacle. You may be principal dancer, but she

is the fairy queen. She chooses who lives and who dies.

And you choose to be entrapped in her. You choose it so easily time and time again.

(Weightless. Yes, that is the word to describe your relationship to her. You are not the

anchor. You are the aching. You hold onto a weightless fairy meant to perform in the heavens.)

“A date!” says Elise. You are grounded again to the scene. When she laughs, it is a

musical scale on a piano, a rising relevé. “Priya, that’s amazing! You never go out–”

“I wouldn’t say that–”

“Like, ever!” If you look at her, you’d see her twirling black hair over a dainty finger. But

you don’t see that because your eyes stay forward. “Who’s the lucky man?”

“I’ll give you the car keys before I leave,” you say.

“Who’s it with?”

“You’ll have to drive yourself home.”

“Who’s it with?”

“Just make sure to take the offroads, not the highway. It’ll be congested and it’s supposed

to rain. I don’t want you totalling the Honda.”

Elise snorts. She only does that in front of you. “One day you’ll have to choose between

this car and me, and you won’t know what to do.”

You rub the dashboard affectionately. “You’re right. I’d choose my baby over you any

Day.”

She smiles, and you smile, and you run the red light. It’s not your fault the road

disappeared when you met her willow eyes.

 

Is it really a date if you’re going in your ballet attire? You don’t have time to change, not

really, and you’ll stink of baby powder and protein mix anyway. Both of you will.

But Leah is not swayed. You don’t even know how she found out, but your rumored date

has spread around the dressing room as a plague. Practice skirts are replaced with practice sweats

and hoodies emblazoned with the dance company’s logo. Leah gives you her nice jean jacket to

cover your pit stains. It’s lined with fur too rich and clean to really look like it’s yours, and

Alyssa gives you the midi skirt she keeps in her locker for emergencies. Someone else fixes your

hair, fixes your face, throws you a bottle of Coco Chanel with the price sticker poorly scraped off

from over-use.

“Give her your lipstick,” Leah tells Elise, who’s already halfway out the door.

The look Elise throws to the sky says she doesn’t want to. Your chest twists knowing this

performance is meant for you. She tosses her Maybelline lip-stain to Leah who then applies it to

you with an affectionate smile.

“I’d kiss you myself if I swung that way,” she says before doing exactly that, kissing you

on your forehead sweetly, and sending you out in a viking’s farewell.

Angelo smiles in the parking lot. His button-up contrasts his eyes, and he opens the

passenger door to let you inside his Maserati. You’ve been in here twice, but only in the back

with half-drunk ballerinos while bar-hopping three summers ago.

“My core’s still burning from practice today,” you say when you’re at the bar (well, shout

more like because it’s apparently karaoke night and someone’s covering a Sam Smith ballad with

turned-in knees and smudged mascara).

Angelo rubs a finger over your knuckle affectionately. “But I never let you fall, do I?”

“No. You just let me die by the end of the number.”

Angelo laughs and it is an oboe swinging low, a grande plie. It is a sound that makes your

eyes wander away from his affection until you catch yourself glaring at the apartment complex across the street. Maybe it’s the drinks, but you swear that you can make out the shape of Leah’s

plants in her apartment window across the street. There are people in her living room, all of them

probably waiting for her to flash them, too. They will behave appropriately, and they will talk

horribly about you, about how your eyes linger too often, too hungrily. You’re not even attracted

to Leah or her nipples, but the accusation will be a fair one to make because they know exactly

what a fucking slut you are.

Long black hair catches the lights of Leah’s many lamps. Look away, act normal. Keep

your chin down before she sees you.

That’s probably your sign to sober up. Elise wouldn’t dare set foot in Leah’s home.

Angelo orders another round of drinks. These next whiskey shots to your roles as Giselle

and her prince, and when you’re both a lot less sober you dedicate more drinks to secretly

pierced nipples. Angelo sings “Are You Gonna Be My Girl” at the karaoke machine which has

you nodding, clapping, laughing, gushing. It has you thinking about someone else, but what are

you if not an entertainer? Stick up that chin, girl, and give your date your best ballerina smile.

The night is warm, but it sticks coolly to sweat-slicked skin. Angelo’s hand is in your

back pocket as you exit the premises, except you’re both still too tipsy to drive home. You should

have called for an Uber, but Angelo’s eyes tell you he has other plans.

Minutes blur until you’re against the back wall of the karaoke bar and Angelo’s hands are

excavating divots unknown to you before. They’re in your slicked back bun, you’re in his

rehearsal leggings before sloppily you’re on your knees with him in your mouth.

Angelo is a talker, apparently. You should have known from the way he gossips with the

other ballerinos, but he’s nothing but kind words and gasps until he pulls away abruptly, fumbling to pull his leggings back up. There’s a shadow against his side in the shape of a pallid

Wraith.

“Elise!” he shouts, but you’re unsure whether he’s annoyed or pissed or pleading. “What

are you–”

Your head is too cottony to notice the hard smack across your cheek, but you can feel

blood burst when Elise’s nails cross your blushing skin. Angelo lunges for her and Elise fights

back. You’re too drunk and not drunk enough. You are Clara watching the Sugar Plum Fairy’s

candy kingdom put on a show for you.

Remember when you performed The Nutcracker with Elise? You two were so young

then, your breasts still developing with your brain and your legs, and yet pointe was not new at

all. Pointe had already shaped your life the way it shaped the structure of your feet, moulding

your bones into boxed slippers.

Elise told you she’d become prima ballerina assoluta, the once in a lifetime opportunity

that all little girls dream of, and you believed her because she wanted you to. Your own

dedication was a pond’s reflection of the moon, a mad following and failed reach for the greatest.

Even in a cat-fight she is the most beautiful woman you have ever seen. She shouldn’t be

here. She will hate you, and you will be without her forever.

But does the ocean stop swaying when the moon disappears? Does a dancer stop hearing

the 4/4 melody after the piano stops playing? No. The dancer envisions it always. The salt stays

stuck in her teeth. You watch knowing this will be the last time she will let you be near her.

You engage your core when Elise does, snarl like Elise does, taste the blood on your lip

when Angelo makes a devastating blow to her nose. It’s a cartoonish crack, the kind you hear from the pit orchestra slapstick, and you wince.

You should go to her, but the howl that leaves Elise glues you to the wall. The only thing

moving you are broad brown hands, a nervous pet name guiding you to the Maserati. Okay,

someone is telling you. Everything will be okay.

You are in Angelo’s apartment. It has a minimalist American style, all gray and white and

rectangular. Most of it looks like it’s been shaken out of an IKEA catalogue.

“These should fit,” Angelo says, pushing a pair of folded sweats into your hands. He

looks nervous and tired and regretful.

You ask him if Elise will be alright. He shrugs with eyes that won’t meet your own.

“You shouldn’t have broken her nose,” you tell him. “It could ruin her chances of

becoming a prima.”

Angelo guides your free hand into his. It surprised you how steady it is. “Sweetheart, I

don’t like the way she looks at you.”

“How does she look at me?”

Angelo bends and brushes his full lips against your knuckles. You know it should send a

shock up your spine, a flush to your cheeks, but all you feel is dampness and a bit of chapstick.

He pulls you in close and tucks a strand of hair behind your ear.

“Go shower,” he says. “I’ll take you home in the morning. I just think it’s best if Elise is

alone tonight.”

You shower. His shampoo is much nicer than your own, but you smell too much like him

when you dry off and dress. The walls, devoid of color and moist from the humid room, can

barely hide Angelo’s call to the cops from the kitchen. Yes, Elise hit you first, yes he finished the

fight. Please check in, the address is 241 Noble Street, apartment #22.

Saying, of course, that it was Elise there. She looked like Elise and she smelled and

seethed like Elise, but why would she be there in the first place? She hates Leah. You should tell

Angelo it was a mistake, that her presence was all in your head.

The words are on your lips when Angelo kisses your temple with shaking hands. He sets

you up in his room while he sleeps on the couch. You’ve always known him to be a gentleman,

but never like this. Elise would gag and roll her eyes if she knew how soft his ego could be.

You sleep. You wake. There’s not really a difference to the feeling, even when Angelo

pushes you to eat and head back to his car. You only truly wake when you open your own

apartment door and find it empty. Not empty as in without people, but empty-empty. There’s a

couch and a TV and two beds, but only your closet is full. Elise’s room is meant for mess, for

posters of pop star boys she once loved, but it’s barren with the door ajar.

“The cops checked in on her, right?” you ask. It’s impossible to hide what staccato creeps

into your soprano voice.

“Maybe she’s staying with family,” Angelo offers, like it means anything. It’s as

laughable as the idea of you going back to your mother. “I bet she’ll be back for rehearsals,

though. She’s being a bitch because, well, you know.”

I don’t, you want to say. Explain it to me, please. Explain the whole world, the history of

dance, and our place in it if it’ll help solve this mystery behind the aching in my heart. Tell me

why you care so much about me when I care so little for everything.

“Okay,” is what you say instead, because you don’t have rehearsal again until Monday.

The idea of being alone is sickening, so Angelo stays with you. He is not Elise. There is a

real weight to him when you find his arms around you the next morning. There is a groundness

to finding his clothes in your laundry hamper, his Chinese takeout in your fridge. Pointe dancers

were never meant to be this weighted.

Monday morning comes, slowly but surely, with your fidgety hands in your lap in

Angelo’s car. You drive together because your car never did show back up. It’s not in the ballet

company’s parking lot either.

You change, you stretch, you wait. Madame Damant looks at you when she asks the girls

about Elise’s whereabouts, but you say nothing. She huffs, marks something on her clipboard,

and points at Leah with the end of her pen. Leah is chuffed and not afraid to show it. It’s not

every day she gets to play Elise’s part in rehearsals.

There is no pressing against Angelo today. It feels disrespectful to, even without Elise

here to see. Where is Elise? She only misses rehearsals when she’s close to dying, and she is

noisy with her complaining when that’s the case. No prima ballerinas play hooky.

You call her about rehearsal, but the other side of the phone doesn’t ring. I’m sorry, but

this number has been disconnected, Priya. Try looking at the number and redialing it again.

Rehearsal’s the same the next day, and the day after that. Elise is a name rather than a

body, an attitude problem rather than the company’s best dancer. The other girls seem giddy with

her gone, and they are not afraid to hide it from you until, a week from then, you break the mold.

You break a mirror.

“What the fuck is wrong with you people?!” you shout. They’ll call you hysterical the

next day. Absolutely lost your fucking marbles. “No one can find Elise and you’re mocking her!”

Leah rolls her eyes as she brushes the kinks out of her hair. Damant required her to dye it

black so they wouldn’t have to retake Elise’s promo photos for the show. “Shouldn’t you be

happy she’s gone? I mean, let’s be honest. You probably would have gotten Myrtha if she didn’t

raise a whole fit to Damant.”

You call Elise again. Not right then, of course, but when you’re back at Angelo’s place

and soaking in his tub. You call the police, too, checking up on your missing car report and

getting nothing useful in return.

Angelo leans against the doorway, his finger drumming up a tune. He smells like the

frying white onion that’s sizzling on the stovetop for dinner right now. “Any luck?”

You close your eyes, bow and shake your head, but it doesn’t stop the tears that add to the

bath. Salt, like the lavender scented ones Angelo added to the once-hot water. It alleviates the

pain from your legs and your back muscles, but what of your chest? What of the soft tissues of

your memory?

And memory. What a thing that is. A month passes you by and you’re still standing in

that bar parking lot watching Elise’s hand kiss your cheek. You still sit on her bed, lying about

how sober you actually are so she would pull your hand farther down her laughing body.

“Priya,” Angelo calls out, but you’re not in the bathroom anymore. You’re onstage in a

costume you don’t remember putting on. He is dressed as your prince and he is pushing a

bouquet of water lilies into your hands, and he says something else that you can’t hear over the

roar of an applause.

It comes to you as second nature to bow. The audience picks up its tune in a crescendo as

you step back to let the curtain fall. The stage lights go blue so the company can exit without

incident, but there is someone in the wings who won’t move. She is taller than the rest, her dark

hair hidden by the laurel crown fitted to her skull. A queen in her own right, solid and grounded

for the first time in her life.

You go to curtsy, but the queen turns and it is Leah who looks curiously at you.

 

Angelo’s hand finds your lower back and he guides you back to the dressing rooms. He

kisses you in front of the door, and he kisses you later in the rain. He kisses you in his bed and,

two shows later, in front of his parents during Christmas.

And you, dear Priya, perform again. You audition for the American Ballet Theater and

move from Jersey to New York. You rent with Angelo, you say yes to his question done on one

knee, a ring-and-rock in hand, five years later onstage.

And you continue, dear Priya, you continue because you don’t know what it means to

stop, but the moves are hollow in your bones. Your heels never touch the ground because you do

nothing but float, nothing but crane your neck up as your slippers pitter-patter into many dance

partners’ arms. Your daughter is named Adrienne and you are named the brand new prima

ballerina assoluta. Applaud, applaud. It is exactly what your mother wants.

Angelo dances until he can’t, a knee injury during ABT’s Romeo and Juliet. You dance

because you can’t think of anything else to do but—

Raise your child. She will be a violin prodigy, not a dancer. She will get fat off of cake.

Bathe in salt. Bathe for hours on end, and tonight will be no different. You are seventy

years-old and the lavender salts invite you neck deep. Grounded. Heavy. Close your eyes and

imagine a new dance. The music is familiar, and the stage is familiar, and your scene partner is

familiar, too.

Your partner is young, twenty-five years-old at most. She is dark-haired, and for once she

is as grounded as the heavy eyes drilled into her skull. She tells you she is a prima, and you

laugh. No, silly, I’m the prima. You are nothing.

The ghost thinks about this for a moment before coming to a resounding hum on her

tongue. “I had a name once.”

You nod. You think it was Myrtle, maybe, or Myra. It’s something you ought to remember.

“You don’t remember it,” says the ghost. “No dancer ever really remembers the dance

combination. They feel out the memory and let that guide them instead.”

“So guide me,” you say. And she does. She closes your eyes, hums in your ear, dips you

low enough that all you can smell is lavender salt. It burns in your lungs, but it is not your job to

lead a pas de deux, not even when, hours or minutes or seconds later, your space is filled with

shouting cries from husbands and EMTs long ago.

But you are a performer. You smile into a ghost queen’s lips as an audience cheers.