Almost a Woman : A Memoir (9780306821110) (23 page)

“Maybe you should remove your stockings too,” Miss Cahan said, “so you don't slip.”

“Okay.” I turned my back and discreetly unhooked the stockings from the garter belt and rolled them down, wondering why I needed to get undressed to audition for a children's play. Miss Cahan read my mind.

“I should have told you we were going to dance,” she explained, “so you could come prepared.”

“Oh!” I walked over, my toes digging into the plush carpet as I used to dig them into the soft, warm mud of Puerto Rico, then sat with legs folded under me on the floor, although there were about ten sumptuous chairs I longed to drop into.

Mrs. Kormendi explained that the play was based on an Indian
legend. “India Indian,” she specified, “not American.” They were casting someone to play the goddess Lakshmi, who in the play was a statue that became a swan. I didn't ask how. There was quite a bit of dancing, the reason Miss Cahan was helping with the audition.

“All right, then,” Miss Cahan said. “Let's try some things.”

Mrs. Kormendi sat on the sofa with a clipboard on her lap and took notes while Miss Cahan led me and Claire through a series of steps unlike anything we'd ever done in dance class. They were stylized, dramatic postures that required we move in a wide, second-position plie, our torsos rigid, our arms and hands in gestures that demanded coordination and strength in muscles I had never used. I couldn't follow the choreography and stopped several times, embarrassed and frustrated, as Miss Cahan and Claire moved across the floor with ease.

Miss Cahan adjusted my stance. “Stop thinking,” she said, “and dance. Don't worry about remembering the steps. Your muscles will remember.”

That was a new concept. I worked hard in dance, pushed myself to leap higher, stretch farther. I never just let it happen. But I trusted Miss Cahan, who as a professional knew more about it than I did. I stopped thinking. Next thing I knew, the audition was over and Mrs. Kormendi promised to get back to us.

Claire and I rode the elevator down. While she and I were classmates, we didn't have much to say to one another. She was one of the smart, talented, popular girls who were cast in the best roles: Antigone or her sister Ismene, Juliet, Emily in
Our Town,
Frankie in
Member of the Wedding.
We parted in front of the building, but as I walked to the subway station on my way back to Brooklyn, I knew the part was mine. Claire might be an angelic ingenue, but I'd perfected exotic characters. Cleopatra, queen of the Nile, I was sure, was about to become Lakshmi, swan goddess.

A few days later, Miss Cahan asked me to stay after class and told me that Mrs. Kormendi wanted me in her play. I couldn't wait to get home and tell Mami that one full year before graduation, I already had a part in a play. Only nine more years of sacrifice, and I'd be a star.

The first rehearsal for Mrs. Kormendi's play was on a Saturday morning, at a studio on Madison Avenue not far from her apartment. A ballet class was in session when I arrived. I watched from the open door, but the teacher, a tight-faced woman with a sour expression, came over and slammed the door in my face. I was so embarrassed that tears came to my eyes, but I swallowed them when I heard steps down the hall. Mrs. Kormendi appeared as the ballet class ended and the hall filled with long-legged, haughty ballerinas.

Mrs. Kormendi kissed the sour-faced
madame
on both cheeks, and they talked as the room cleared. The dance teacher looked scornfully in my direction, and I heard Mrs. Kormendi say my name. I stripped to my tights and leotards but didn't dare warm up at the barre while
madame
was in the room. Her eyes followed me, and I expected her to apologize for her rudeness, but she didn't.

Within a few minutes the rest of the cast appeared, boys and girls no older than twelve years of age. They too stripped to their tights and leotards but weren't afraid to use the barre. By now the instructor had left, so I joined the kids, most of whom had obviously studied ballet before they could stand up. They went through exercises and stretches that I tried to copy, but I couldn't keep up with them.

When everyone arrived, Mrs. Kormendi handed out copies of the play, and we read through it. “Memorize your lines,” Mrs. Kormendi instructed, “next week we begin blocking.” Those of us who were dancing were to arrive at the next rehearsal two hours
before the rest of the cast, because the choreographer had to work with us.

The following Saturday, as I came up to the studio, I heard strange music, rhythmic stomping, bells jingling furiously from behind the open door. In spite of having the door slammed in my face once already, I couldn't contain my curiosity. In the room was the dance teacher who'd confused me for an Indian. He wore a sheet wrapped around his waist and legs and a long white shirt with embroidered designs down the front and on the sleeves. On his legs, he wore bells. His movements were fierce, low across the floor in a deep plié, his big toes curled up from the ground. He jumped, his arms and legs jabbed the air, his eyes rolled in his head, his mouth twisted into an evil grin, his head snapped back and forth on his neck, and then he landed in the same deep plié with toes pointed up. I'd never seen anything so savage or so beautiful. It couldn't be dance, but it couldn't be anything else. When he stopped, Mrs. Kormendi's voice called from inside, where she sat on the only chair in the studio, clipboard on lap. She waved me over to her side.

“You know Matteo, don't you?” she whispered.

“I've seen him around school.” The other person in the room was Northern, my Antony, who smiled cheerily at my surprise to see him.

Mrs. Kormendi and I watched Matteo teach Northern the stylized gestures and facial expressions he'd just performed. When the rest of the actors arrived, Matteo taught us our first class in Indian classical dance, which had nothing to do with feathered headdresses and moccasins. It was an ancient dance form, actually six ancient dance forms, each associated with a different part of India, and each having distinctive music, choreography, postures, costumes. The dance he was teaching Northern was based on Kathakali, the dance theater of Kerala, while the rest of us were to learn Bharata Natyam, associated with southern India. Matteo demonstrated some of the ways the two dance types differed in style and in the kind of stories the dancers told with their bodies.
He explained that historically, Kathakali was performed by men, Bharata Natyam by women. He spoke with reverence of choreography passed down generation to generation by dancers who were often ostracized for their dedication to their art. He showed pictures of sculptures based on the movements he was about to teach us.

He put us through a class more demanding than any I'd ever taken. It wasn't just the physicality of the dance that was so challenging. It was that what we were learning was more than theater and more than dance. It was a complete art form that combined theater, dance, music, and spectacle. It had its own unique language; every gesture had a name, every emotion a gesture. When I looked in the wall-size mirror of the studio, I saw what Matteo must have seen the day I was doing plies in front of the Performing Arts bulletin board. I didn't look like a Puerto Rican actress from Brooklyn. I looked like an Indian classical dancer.

Matteo taught at a studio on the Upper West Side. He charged more money per class than I made from ushering. I called Mr. Murphy at the photographic developing company, and he offered me work on weekends and whenever I could come in. The problem was that between school, rehearsals, and the work it took to pay for classes, I didn't have time to go to Matteo's studio. And he didn't appreciate dancers who weren't committed to the art. I took classes with him a few times, but mostly I paid attention to what he taught during rehearsals, came even when my character wasn't involved, and soon learned the dances in the play, including the attendant's story dance and Northern's ferocious devil dance.

As rehearsals evolved, I abandoned my fantasy of being whisked on wires above the stage like Mary Martin in
Peter Pan.
Lakshmi spent the entire first scene standing on one leg inside a temple while the princess cried and prayed, in despair from being
in love with the prince but betrothed to a rajah who was really a devil. At the beginning of scene 2, a sitar thrummed, my cue to begin the transformation from stone to swan. My fingers trembled, my eyes flicked from side to side, my arms softened and fluttered. Flying was simulated by
mudras,
hand gestures that were slow and tentative at the beginning, then fully realized into the sinuous movements of a creature discovering she's no longer hard stone but a soft, graceful bird. In performance, when my fingers came to life, the audience gasped, and by the end of the dance, they were on their feet, clapping.

La Muda came to the last show. My dance, so much like her wordless language, was the best I'd ever achieved. As I transmuted from silent stone to effusive goddess, I
was
La Muda, trapped in silence but avid to communicate, speaking with my body because voice failed me. When I danced, I had no tongue, but I was capable of anything. I was a swan, I was a goddess, I vanquished devils.

When Mami was five months pregnant, she found out why Don Carlos didn't have money to spare and didn't come home every night. He'd told us he was divorced, but the truth was that when he wasn't with us he was with his wife in the Bronx. Mami found out when the wife called and cursed her, her ancestors, and every future generation into eternity. When Mami confronted Don Carlos, he admitted that he wasn't technically divorced but insisted that it was only because the paperwork hadn't come through. Neither Mami, Tata, Don Julio, nor any of us believed him. In my eyes, the courteous and soft-spoken Don Carlos became just another
sinvergüenza
who promised more than he had any intention of delivering.