Various Positions Read online

  I barked an uncomfortable laugh.

  “No, it’s true. They say his approach to teaching is like systematized humiliation. And do you know why?”

  I shook my head.

  “Do you know why?” Sixty asked Chantal.

  Chantal shook her head.

  “Because he hates women,” Sixty pronounced. “Ballet is his revenge.”

  “Revenge?”

  She nodded.

  “For what?” Chantal asked.

  Sixty shrugged. “I don’t know the details.” She turned to me, twisted a lock of hair on her finger. “But I’m sure it’s something horrible.”

  I followed her toward the door, paused. My attention went back to the corkboard, the feet that moved without moving. I wanted to ask Chantal who they belonged to, but I didn’t want Sixty to hear me.

  “Bye,” I said.

  Chantal looked up. Her eyes were soupy, the kind that never focus on anything, that thrive off their own secret. It made her look a little cross-eyed but there was something pretty about it too.

  “Bye,” she whispered.

  * * *

  Roderick Allen stood in the center of Studio A, tall and fixed, like the spiked leg of a drawing compass, his eyes tracing the circle of dancers in the room. His hair dashed away from his forehead, leaving two gothic points of skin. My lungs felt slippery with nerves but I tried to breathe normally. I wanted to look just right. I had my back to the barre but was careful not to lean against it. I felt it was important to stand up straight. Sixty was next to me and Veronica, blond and square-shouldered, was on my left. My other new classmates curved around the room.

  Roderick considered us slowly, his feet still. There seemed to be amusement hidden somewhere in his expression, but it wasn’t on his lips and I couldn’t pin it down. He nodded at the pianist, a nod that seemed to mean more stop than go. I looked at the funny recession of his hairline. I thought of what Sixty had just told me, that he hated women, that ballet was revenge. I searched his face for evidence. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for but I thought I might know when I found it.

  Suddenly, Roderick jerked his arm out and lifted his sleeve to look at his watch. He smiled now, widely. It crinkled the corners of his eyes.

  “Sorry to keep you all in suspense. I just like to take a little time on the first day of school to find my bearings.” He had a resonant voice, warm and deep, but shaped into careful consonants. “And I’d say that’s a good starting point for all of you, taking some time to find your bearings, because you’re going to find that the demands placed on you here are, well, different. And different in the most exceptional way.” He looked around, made sure he had everyone’s attention. “I’m going to throw something at you. Just a thought. A phrase.” He paused again, frowning. “Reading between the lines. What does that mean to everyone?”

  I looked to my right, toward Sixty. She was looking at the rest of the class. No one said anything.

  “Reading between the lines,” Roderick repeated. “Tell me what that implies.” He crossed an arm over his chest and propped the other elbow on top of it. He held his face in his hand, his middle finger curving beneath his nose like a mustache. He started to walk along the perimeter of the room, taking one slow step at a time.

  “You probably all have similar stories. Similar stories with minor variations. You love ballet more than anything. You’ve been dancing since you were five years old. You were the star of your regional school.” He turned his head and flashed a few teeth at the girls he was passing. “Not to insult anyone with a glib generalization.” The girls blushed and one of them giggled.

  “Now you’ve been accepted into the program of your dreams and you’ve arrived with a variety of preconceived ideas. And here’s where your stories diverge.” He stopped abruptly and uncrossed his arms. “Because no two of you will have come with the same assumptions. But you will all have your assumptions, and they’re the first thing we have to address.”

  He started to walk again, looking down at his feet. There was a rhythm to his behavior, as though this speech was a phrase of music and he was waiting for the instrumental part to end.

  “Some of you are going to be tempted, tempted right from the very beginning, to behave in a certain way.” He lifted an eyebrow, held it there. “If I can leave you with one thing this afternoon, one suggestion, it’s this: if you feel yourself tempted to behave in a certain way, you should take a moment, and stop yourself.”

  I looked around the room. Fifteen girls and two boys. I got a good glimpse of the boys now, both smaller than any at my old school. They had tidy haircuts and gentle faces.

  “One of the first things that will happen is your consultation. Each of you will be having a one-on-one meeting with me. We’ll start scheduling them as early as tomorrow.” He hooked an arm behind his neck and rubbed it. “Don’t be intimidated by how that sounds. You’re going to hear some difficult things from both myself and the rest of the faculty over the course of your four years here—it’s a policy we’re really committed to. And that will start with this first consultation. I’ll be talking you through your weak points as a dancer and I won’t be mincing my words. We can save that luxury for amateur hour. Understood?”

  I nodded quickly. I itched to know how my classmates were reacting, but I needed to appear focused. I had known that studying at the academy would present a host of tests and challenges, and this was the first. I could take it. It was crucial that my expression reveal this, in case Roderick could see it.

  “And we’ll be discussing more than just your physicality at the consultation. Be prepared for that.” He paused. “Ballet is physical, yes. Ultimately it’s a physical medium. And some ballet schools are happy to leave it at that. They train physically proficient dancers. Graceful athletes, I like to say. But that isn’t what we’re doing here at the academy. We’re here to train artists, and this demands something else.” Again he scanned the barre, swallowing us with his eyes. “So if you aren’t interested in becoming an artist, please”—he lifted his hand and held it out toward the door—“get out of my studio because you’re wasting everyone’s time.”

  The change in his expression was immediate. It wasn’t anger. It was more like a shock of blankness, a TV screen turned to snow. An embarrassment flooded up from my chest. I didn’t understand it, but I had to look away. There was an enormous silence in the room. After a moment Roderick cleared his throat. He told us to face the barre and began to count us through the first exercise.

  I couldn’t concentrate throughout the class. I moved my arms and legs in the appropriate configurations, but my attention wasn’t inside my body like it should’ve been. It was on Roderick. Unlike all the ballet teachers I’d had before, he didn’t circle the inside of the studio while we danced, poking bent knees and keeping the rhythm with his foot. He stood in the very far corner, almost completely behind the piano. He leaned his body into the crook of the walls, holding his face so that his fingers covered most of it. I tried not to look at him but it was impossible. His reaction felt so important. We were doing what he’d told us to do but still, there he was, slinking as far away from us as possible. I couldn’t see his mouth but I was sure there was something strange along his eyes, something almost sneering. This is it, I thought, this is the Rodomization. I bent forward in a deep port de bras devant and felt a tingle all over my body.

  FIVE

  I watched the other girls in the change room the next morning. Sixty chose a locker next to mine and Veronica was beside her. They took off their tank tops and skirts and stayed naked for much longer than necessary. There were no windows in the change room, just long tubes of yellow light that dangled beneath exposed piping. Veronica had blue underwear with white elasticized trim. It cut a blunt line below her hip bones, and she had moles there too, hooking beneath her belly button in the shape of a bass clef. I tried not to look even though I wanted to, but then my eyes were on Sixty instead, tanned everywhere except for a tube around her boobs
and the white ghost of her bikini bottom.

  “You should really use a higher SPF.” Veronica sat on the bench now, gathered her tights into scrunches, and placed a foot inside. “Tanning will age you prematurely.”

  Molly Davies laughed. She was the black girl with a cloud of curly hair. She only had her tights on, and she reached up for something on the top shelf of her locker. The seams curved over both her bum cheeks, dropped straight down the middle of her legs.

  “Gorgeous.” Veronica smacked her lips at the magnetic mirror inside her locker door. In her hand was an uncapped lipstick, rolled up to reveal a ruby bullet of wax.

  “Gorgeous for who?” Molly leaned over her shoulder. “Nathaniel or Jonathan?”

  Everyone laughed. Nathaniel and Jonathan, the two boys in our class, looked like mannequins for kids’ clothes and weren’t the kind of boys that anyone normal would date.

  “We’re going to need alternative options.” Veronica shut her locker with a clang. “I’ll make it my mission.”

  Molly tossed her ballet slipper like a Frisbee, aimed straight for Veronica’s gut. “Nympho,” she said.

  “Pretty much,” said Veronica.

  At ten minutes to nine we left the change room as a class and made our way to Studio A. I felt slightly deadened by the conversation about boys. It hadn’t been what I’d expected. We were supposed to be focused on the task at hand, preparing quietly and seriously for our second technique class. But I forgot about it as soon as I saw Roderick. He had the same air of lazy interrogation, eyeing us up and down as we walked into the studio. It sent a throb up my body, the challenge of it. He leaned against the piano. His striped dress shirt was rolled neatly above his forearms, and he pulled on the end of his chin as we arranged ourselves at the barres. I yearned for invisibility. I would watch him stare at the girls, observe exactly where his eyes went, figure out what went on in his mind.

  We completed the first exercise. “That was awful.” Roderick shook his head. “Terrible.” He turned his body toward the piano, as though too repulsed to look our way.

  My head dropped to my feet. I wasn’t individually responsible for this assessment, but I felt the shame of it intensely.

  But when Roderick turned around again he was smiling. “Disgusting. Do it again.”

  I adjusted my leotard strap. Molly, in front of me, did too. Something about his nastiness was irresistible. It was like when someone teases you, and you’re charmed against your will. We repeated the exercise. I channeled pure power into my muscles, could picture the energy, hot and white. I had never wanted to be so perfect before. When we finished, Roderick pushed himself off the piano and walked slowly across the studio floor. I could only see the side of his face, but I was desperate to read his expression. Was he pleased with our work this time?

  “Let’s do center.”

  We moved away from the barres to begin the center portion of the class. Roderick didn’t demonstrate the exercises. Instead he talked us through them, occasionally lifting a hand to symbolize a jump or a turn. We were divided into three groups to perform the exercises. This meant I could watch two-thirds of the class dancing, and I did, greedily. Veronica was in the first group. She was an athletic dancer with high jumps and quick turns. Her footwork was what teachers called clean. She moved with an edginess that made her body seem two-dimensional, cut from paper and easy to fold. Molly danced beside her. Her legs were long and bendy, and her arms undulated as if they had no bones. When she paused in a développé à la seconde, I measured the distance between her head and foot. She was more flexible than I was, not by much, but by just enough for it to bother me. Sixty was in this group too. Her legs pierced the floor like spikes.

  My attention went back to Roderick. Did he prefer the fluidity of Molly’s body, the strength in Sixty’s balances, or Veronica’s speedy turns? A perfect pirouette was wasted if he hadn’t turned his head to see it. Veronica stepped into a first arabesque, stole a glance at him as she rolled through her foot. Molly did this too, sneaking a peek toward the mirror as she aligned herself for a sequence of turns. The girls spun around each other, vying for his interest.

  When it was my turn, I felt a thirst right in my gut. I needed to have him watch me. I pushed myself through the steps, my mind storming with instructions: pull up, turn out, lift from beneath your arm. I caught a glimpse of Chantal in the mirror. She was beside me and I saw immediately how good she was, even though she was chubbier than everyone. Her flexibility was second nature, but she had muscles too, the strength to hold her legs high and propel her body upward. She moved ethereally through everything, a quality that rarely coexisted with such steady athleticism. I forced myself to look away. A low panic flapped in my chest. We finished the exercise and I looked at Roderick. He was leaning against the mirror now, eyes on Chantal. His expression was unsettled, as though he hadn’t quite made sense of things. But the approval in his eyes was clear.

  “Don’t forget”—he pushed his body off the glass, took a step toward us—“that I’m not interested in good students. I’m interested in good dancers. If you don’t understand the difference instinctively, then it’s something you’ll need to figure out.” He scanned our faces one last time and started to walk out of the room. “Let me just suggest that a student brings her emotions into the studio. Her feelings are hurt when she receives a harsh correction or embarrasses herself by falling out of a turn. A dancer is never hurt or embarrassed.” He paused. “I want you to think about that.”

  We whispered about this as soon as we’d left the studio. Veronica said the girls in grade eleven had told her that Roderick hated wimps.

  “Last year, a girl started crying in pointe class and she was expelled a few days later.”

  “That’s terrible,” Sixty said.

  “Sounds like bullshit,” said Molly.

  Veronica shook her head solemnly. “I’m sure there were other reasons. But the crying was the last straw.”

  We moved as a group into the lobby, where the air felt cool after the studio’s humidity. I had never cried in Mrs. Kafarova’s class but the idea of expulsion freaked me out. I couldn’t fathom the sadness of it, being forced to leave the academy after working for so long to get in. I followed Sixty toward the bulletin board to check the master schedule for any changes. Veronica stood in front of us and she pointed to something tacked onto the cork. It was an envelope with Molly’s name on it. People started whispering. Molly weaved her way to the board, reached up, and took it down. She ripped it open and took out the letter, read it with a look of stern composure.

  “My consultation,” she said, folding the paper back along its seam.

  The meeting was scheduled for the second half of lunch. The girls made sympathetic sounds that I knew were mixed with envy. Molly assured everyone that she didn’t mind being first, and Veronica wrapped an arm over her shoulder, ushered her through the crowd.

  * * *

  The cafeteria was a small room on the other side of the basement. The walls were a pale blue, the color of newborn boy stuff. It emphasized the air’s dampness; dips on the surface looked wet to the touch. There were only four round tables, room for seven or eight at each, which meant there were two separate lunch periods and we overlapped with a different grade each day. Today we ate with the grade-twelve class. They were already there when we walked in, seven of them ringed loosely around the table beneath the only window.

  “There used to be fourteen,” Veronica said as we unstuck orange trays from a plastic tower, rolled them onto the metal tracks.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Veronica reached into the refrigerated compartment for a carton of apple juice, placed it on her tray. “If you piss Roderick off, it’s pretty much curtains.”

  I accepted a plate of spaghetti and followed Veronica and Sixty to the nearest table, inhaled a spicy steam of tomato and starch. I looked at the grade-twelve class as I walked. There were three boys and four girls. They were hardly talking to one another,
and I wondered if that was normal. Two of the girls had finished eating and didn’t seem to be doing much. One seesawed her fork, pressing down on the end where it overhung her plate, let the tines crash into the ceramic. The other had her head in her hand, was staring out the window.

  Sixty sat next to Veronica and I sat next to Sixty. Chantal, Anushka, and Sonya came over to our table and sat down too. Chantal sat right across from me, her tray stacked with spaghetti and all the extras: fruit, yogurt, a granola bar, and salad. She wore a different pair of bad shorts, plaid and cotton, something a kid would have worn. Her T-shirt was baggy again too, and I looked at the soft arms that extended from the sleeves, not quite fat but chubby and formless. I knew I wouldn’t like them if they were mine. Strangely, her face was full of shape. Her lips formed a perfect rosebud, dipping to make the cleft of a heart, and her nostrils were wide and shadowed, as big as kidney beans. It wasn’t unattractive. The largeness of her features pulled you in.

  I heard a giggle and turned toward it. Veronica had her wrist pressed into her mouth, pretending to choke her laughter. She pointed at Chantal’s plate.

  “Do you always eat like that?”

  “Like what?” asked Chantal.

  “There’s enough on your plate for all of us.”

  Chantal looked down at her tray and I could see her whole face go funny. I thought she wasn’t going to say anything but then she whispered, “Fuck you.”

  Veronica turned to Sixty and then to me. Her lips parted in shock and she exhaled loudly. “It was just an observation. Excuse me.”

  I kept my focus on my spaghetti because I didn’t want to get involved. Veronica whispered something to Sixty and I heard Sixty mutter something in agreement. When Veronica had finished her lunch, she asked Sixty and me to come with her to meet Molly. “I told her I’d meet her in the change room after her consultation. We should make sure she’s okay.”