Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina (14 page)

You can have everything that is required physically for ballet, the capability to execute each step perfectly, but if your head is not proportional to the rest of your body, or your eyes are too close together, it could mean the difference between acceptance and rejection by a premier ballet company. Things that may not matter in the studio show glaringly onstage as the corps de ballet performs the garden scene in
Le Corsaire.

It takes so many things to be a great ballerina: talent, strength, the ability to pick up choreography and then turn on an inner light when you perform. Having the right combination is the difference between being an artist who can capture the
nuances of light in a watercolor and one who paints by number. I don’t think that most people realize that.

I had a tiny head, a long neck, boatlike feet, a compact torso—an appearance that would be imperfect by most conventional standards of beauty. But on a stage, floating through the make-believe village in
Giselle,
or the provincial court of
Raymonda,
I was ideal.

A time would come, sooner than I realized, when I would be told that I was too heavy, that my breasts were too big, that my skin was too dark.

But Cindy had always reminded me that when Balanchine described the storybook ballerina, he was talking about me. That I was perfect. And in those golden summers before I hit puberty, in the eyes of the ballet world, I was.

WHEN LOLA SHOWED ME
extra attention, the other girls in the program didn’t seem to mind. I was such a beginner, and most were so far ahead of me in knowledge and practice, that I don’t think they saw me as competition.

There were roughly two hundred students in the summer program, including perhaps eighty boys. Many of us hung out with one another, eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner together, and occasionally forming a rowdy caravan that wended through the streets of San Francisco, reveling in our temporary freedom from home and ballet.

But there were a few girls who clung to one another and kept their distance. They weren’t mean, just in a world unto themselves. Back in San Pedro, I had never been one of the
popular, cool kids, and those girls existed even in ballet, all cliquish, glossy, and gossipy.

They seemed more mature than me and my friends, talking about boys and all the summer intensives they’d been to, conversations I had nothing to contribute to. And they would party on the weekends, staying up all night, drinking beer and wine coolers they got some older boys to buy. Meanwhile, my friends and I would order pizza, tell silly jokes, and be in bed by eleven.

For all of us, though, Alanis Morisette’s album
Jagged Little Pill
was the sound track of the summer.

And isn’t it ironic

Don’t you think ?

I spoke to Mommy and Cindy several times a week, telling them about the friends I’d made, the new things I was learning. Over the Fourth of July weekend, Mommy came to visit and brought all my brothers and sisters.

For some reason, though they had long been separated and continued to have a tense relationship, Robert came, too. Looking back, I assume it was because Cameron was going on a road trip and Robert wanted to be there to look after him. Besides, Robert and I had always gotten along, at least better than he had with my siblings. They drove up on a Friday, and we spent the weekend visiting Fisherman’s Wharf and Haight-Ashbury. Cameron, who was only about eight years old, stopped at one point to play chess with an older gentleman downtown. He was pensive and brilliant.

On Sunday, before they made the six-hour drive back to San Pedro, we stopped at an International House of Pancakes for breakfast.

“You know,” Mommy said, irritation clouding her voice,
“the school’s director was surprised that I was in your life. They thought Cindy was your sole guardian.”

I nodded, focusing on my scrambled eggs.

She continued. “I saw Jackie and her mother the other day.” Jackie, my best friend from middle school, and I hadn’t seen each other very much after I began to be homeschooled and became consumed with my dance classes. “They were so excited about your getting accepted into the program up here. They said they wanted to hear all about it when you got back.”

She took a sip of her orange juice. “You know, Misty, we all miss you,” she continued. “I think when this summer is over, we need to start thinking about you coming back home to live with me.”

I nodded. Not because I agreed, but because I didn’t want to talk about it. I was desperate to end the conversation before it got started. I took a bite of my toast, though it was dry and tasteless in my mouth.

The next three weeks flew by, and sooner than I wanted it to be, the program was over. On the last day, I was summoned to a meeting in Lola’s office.

She was there, perched in front of her wooden shelves lined with books and photographs. Sitting beside her was Helgi Tómasson, San Francisco Ballet’s artistic director.

Lola spoke first.

“You know how impressed we are with you, Misty,” she said softly. “We think you have the potential to be a great dancer, but you need consistent training to refine your technique. We would like you to come to our school and study with us for the full year.”

Helgi sat silently beside her. I’d seen him only a few times, when he would enter the studio and watch the students dance.
He never stayed more than a few minutes, and I’d never heard his voice. Until now. “If you keep working hard,” he said, “I can see you one day being a part of our company.”

The invitation wasn’t unexpected, but still I was overwhelmed and flattered. I managed to eke out a thank-you and told them I would talk about it with my mother and teacher back home.

I floated out of the office, buoyed by their belief in me. Back in the studio, I began stretching before class, as usual. That’s when I noticed the whispered chatter.

All the girls knew that I had been summoned to Lola’s office—and what that meant. Only two other girls and a couple boys in the entire program had received similar invitations.

One girl, speaking in a voice loud enough to carry, decided to express what so many of the others had been murmuring.

“Why’d they ask
her
to stay?” she asked. “She doesn’t have enough training. Anyone could see that.”

I continued stretching but could feel heat rising in my cheeks. I was embarrassed, and the self-doubt that plagued me in so many areas of my life—but so rarely when it came to dance—crept back into my mind.

Do I really deserve this?
I asked myself.
So many of these other girls are so much more experienced, so much stronger. Why me?

I wanted to run away, to retreat to my dorm room, lock the door, and privately dance my sadness away, just the way I did when I was younger, back home. But the day was only beginning. I still had to get through my ballet classes, dancing beside those same girls who had been jealously grumbling behind my back. I couldn’t flee. I had to block out the criticism, the pain, and stand my ground.

At the end of the day, we took a class picture. I felt uncomfortable, but I found my place, in the center of it all, and smiled bravely.

WHAT MADE ME FEEL
even worse is that I knew that some of those girls who’d expected to be asked to stay had set their sights on one day dancing professionally with San Francisco Ballet Company. And I knew even before it was officially offered that I wouldn’t be accepting a full-year scholarship from the school. I didn’t even plan on returning to San Francisco Ballet’s intensive program the following summer.

It really hadn’t been up to me. Mommy had told me several times that she couldn’t wait for me to be back in Southern California, and while Cindy had expected me to get an invitation from the San Francisco Ballet School, she had told me in many of our phone conversations that I needed more training back home with her. She didn’t believe that I would get the same attention in a big ballet school and that my technique would suffer if I didn’t have time to clean up and hone all the little details of my dancing.

Though I knew San Francisco Ballet Company was one of the best in the country, if not the world, and I loved the care and warmth Lola and the many teachers had shown me, I was okay with the decision Cindy and my mother had made. The ultimate prize for me had always been ABT.

At the very start of the summer program in San Francisco, Jessica and I had decided we were both going to be in ABT’s summer intensive the following year. “See you there,” we both
wrote in our farewell notes, scribbled in each other’s photo albums.

ABT had been my goal since I first saw its dancers on the TV in Cindy and Patrick’s home, since I’d seen Paloma Herrera dance the role of Kitri in
Don Quixote
at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. And being in ABT’s summer intensive was a stepping-stone to one day being a part of that professional company.

The last night of our summer in San Francisco, all the girls gathered in a common room reserved just for us. We had pizza and listened to Alanis Morissette together one final time. We stayed up all night, and Jessica handed me a note saying that whenever she saw cotton candy or took a bite out of a piece of rock candy, she would think of me.

I was sad to leave. My first taste of independence had been sweet. I’d forged connections with a lot of the girls, made many new friends. And I’d grown so much as a dancer, with my training far surpassing what I’d received in San Pedro.

I also knew there were issues starting to break out back home between Mommy and Cindy. Mommy’s entreaties for me to come home to her had become more urgent each passing week. Cindy also was becoming more insistent, telling me how much I needed her guidance and care to help prepare me for the career looming before me.

That was the tension I was returning to.

When my plane landed at Los Angeles International Airport the next afternoon, Cindy was there, waiting.

I hopped into her car and made her play my Alanis Morisette CD all the way home.

Chapter 6

ON THE WEEKENDS, WHEN
I’d return home to the Sunset Inn and Mommy from Cindy’s, I began to hear a word mentioned again and again.

Brainwashed.

“Come on, Misty!” Doug and Chris would yell in unison. “The popcorn’s ready and the game’s on.”

My brothers knew I’d never particularly liked sports. “No thanks,” I’d say, clutching a copy of
Pointe
magazine. “I’m going to go into Mommy’s room and read.”

“Ummm,” Doug would say, smirking and giving Chris a knowing glance, “you can’t take a break from ballet for a minute? That woman’s got you
brainwashed.
”

Or there was the time Chris had made a pot of spaghetti with meat sauce. He’d used ground beef. I preferred turkey.

Erica looked at me and frowned. “You didn’t complain about ground beef before,” she said, clearly irritated. “Would you prefer caviar? Cindy’s got you living in a dream world.

“But I guess you should be able to eat what you want at
her
house,” Erica added, sharpening the blade for the final dig. “After all, with all that publicity you bring her dinky school, you’re probably paying for it.”

I’d mostly ignore my family’s snarky comments. Ribbing and teasing had always been a big part of our family chatter. But it was becoming clear that there was a lot of talk about me behind my back that was happening during the week, while I stayed at Cindy’s.

I knew Mommy felt that I was starting to put on airs when I came home, not wanting the food that she bought, turning up my nose at the crowded motel room where we lived. I think she was telling my brothers and sisters that Cindy was trying to make me feel that I was better than them.

My brothers and sisters and I were still extremely close and fiercely protective of one another. They would boast to their friends about the scholarships I’d been offered, the places where I’d been performing. They came to every show that they could, and no one, except maybe Mommy, ever cheered louder.

But their resentment of Cindy was building. I don’t think they were jealous of my new life. I think that they were worried that I might be being used or exploited, and they were concerned what my living apart from them—with a woman they felt didn’t respect our mother or them—was doing to our family.