Ribbon, Pink Wool & You

Your body is not suitable for this program. We wish you well.”

The letter had been very polite about it. That was almost the worst part.

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A humorless laugh bobbled through me as I read it again, the words blurring between the lines as I slumped down the wall, my back sliding against it until I hit the floor, a shaky breath escaping my lips while I blinked repeatedly up at the white ceiling of my apartment.

I turned the letter over because maybe there was something written on the back, maybe they had reconsidered, maybe there was a sentence I had missed that changed the ones before it, but there was nothing there except the blank underside of expensive cream-colored paper.

My throat bobbed as I stared at it, remembering every pound I had saved across two years of weekend shifts. I had used it to buy the train ticket and the new expensive leotard because apparently my size was scarce and specially made. I had split a hotel room with two other girls I barely knew because it was cheaper that way and had walked into that audition for one of the city’s most prestigious ballet companies three months after graduating.

Thinking at least I could pull it off, express myself, and be accepted. It would be different from teachers who scorned me and picked me to be under them because it was hard to teach someone like me, but what did I expect when the panel had watched her with disinterest, looking bored and mumbling while I danced? I could hear snickers from some of the other participants watching from the side, but I didn’t let that affect me as I gave in to all the hours of practice into the music, letting myself move freely.

The first time, I thought I found a place to be accepted when they said they would call me back after consideration, and like a fool, I was happy.

The response came nine days later in an envelope, and I had stood in the hallway with it in my hands before I even opened it, feeling my heart racing unsteadily in my chest, and then I had read it, and there it was: unfortunately, you are not suitable.

What had I been expecting? I would never be accepted.

I did not speak to my parents for two whole weeks after that and did not pick up their calls because I did not know how to say it and did not want to hear the disappointment in their voices even though I knew it was my brain projecting the disappointment because my parents were never once disappointed in me.

I sat alone in my room, wallowing in my dark room and starving myself, trying to understand what the letter really meant, whether it was about my talent or only about my body, or whether in ballet there was even supposed to be a difference between those two things.

I knew it was not my talent; I was certain of that because I had practiced until I could not feel my heels, thighs, and ankles for days and still continued anyways. Because what’s worth doing is worth doing to perfection.

If not talent, then it was definitely because of my body. My body was not suitable for ballet as I lay in the dark, asking myself whether there was supposed to be discrimination between body types.

When I finally found the courage to call my mother, she went silent on the phone so that I could hear my own heartbeat pounding so irregularly that I nearly felt it in my throat.

Then she told me to breathe, “You did good, sweetheart.” She praised me, and that landed somewhere deep in my chest so that the tears I had been holding for two weeks finally slipped free, running down my face while I sat on the edge of my bed with my knees pressed together and my free hand gripping the fabric of my jeans.

I sniffed shakily, and my mother said softly, “I know, sweetheart. I understand everything. But will you give up now?

My mother had been a prodigy twenty years earlier, had built a career from sheer refusal to accept the industry’s verdict on her body, and had kept dancing until an accident made a decision for her. But she had never once said she regretted it. Not one single time.

I wiped my face harshly with the back of my hand and straightened. “No,” I responded with conviction. “The rejection was not enough to crush me, and it would not be the first rejection or the last.” I grinned through the tears.

“That’s my girl,” my mother said, and I nodded even though she could not see me.

My mother had never given up, and I would not either. My momma did not give birth to a quitter.

“So what are you going to do now?” My mother asked, and I smiled because I knew what to do now. As the call ended, I packed two suitcases, bought a one-way ticket to a new city, and left without a plan.

I did not know what I would find when I got to the new city; maybe a smaller company would accept me, maybe a school where I could teach children, or maybe just a job first to keep myself alive while I figured out the next step, because my money was gone, had been spent on train tickets, hotels, leotards, and dreams, and I needed to eat and sleep somewhere before I could audition again.

Then I’ll try again and again and again.

It was my friend who found me the job, putting my name forward to a large private household in the city that was looking for additional staff, the kind of household that came with rooms for its workers and meals provided and the kind of quiet employment that asked nothing of me except to show up and do my work. I was grateful for it.

The mansion was large, well-kept, and run with the kind of order that suggested the person it belonged to valued their privacy because on my first day the head maid had walked me through the ground floor with a clipboard and a list of rules that included, stated clearly, that the studio at the end of the east corridor was off-limits.

that it belonged to the young master of the house and was not to be entered under any circumstances, and I had nodded with them, but I broke that rule on my fifth night.

I had not planned to; I had been walking the corridor on my way back from the kitchen, restless because I’ve not been able to practice and dance.

The door had been slightly ajar, I had seen the light from inside it, just a faint glow, and I had pushed it open. I stood in the doorway and looked at the floor, the proper sprung wooden floor with the barre along one wall, mirrors, and a piano against the far side.

And I exhale a breath I didn’t know I had been holding for weeks.

I went back the next night at eleven o’clock, after the house had settled, slipping out of the staff room in my socks and carrying my shoes so they wouldn’t make a sound on the floor. I changed in the dark, wrapped my ribbons, crossed, and tied. I stood in the center of the floor and pressed play on my phone.

Nobody watched, nobody made remarks about my body or my weight. There was only the music, the faintly lit room, and my body, which was capable of extraordinary things regardless of what anyone had told me, and I let myself be free in the beat, let myself be lost in it, and let myself remember what it felt like to dance without waiting for a verdict.