I know why she made them. This was my comfort food growing up, when I was all cried out, exhausted and spent. “You have to eat, June,” she says finally, sitting at the table across from me. “You have to, boba.”
I nod again, but don’t touch the food.
I imagine myself eating it. I can even see myself chewing and swallowing. I feel the warmth in my stomach. I picture myself asking her for hot sauce.
“I can’t.” The chopsticks fall from my hands.
My mom picks them up, wipes them off, and digs them into the bowl. She picks up a few noodles and a mushroom. “Open. I will show you how to eat again.” With her other hand, she pinches my chin and my lips part. She pushes the noodles into my mouth, like I’m a baby who can’t get the food inside. The noodles sit, slimy and salty and gag inducing. My tongue fights them. My mind tells my mouth to spit them out.
“You eat so you can be strong. If you want to dance, you have to be strong.” She twirls more noodles onto the chopsticks, lifting them to my mouth. She repeats the word over and over again to the beat of my chews, forcing me to swallow. I want the heat, the strength to sink into my skin and muscles and bones and harden me from the inside out. I want to be strong, like she says. It’s just, I don’t know how.
31.
Gigi
THE MIDDLE OF FEBRUARY, WHEN Mr. K watches the girls’ class, everyone is a mess. He barks at Cassie about looking like a mannequin. And June falls when he makes her do ten pirouettes because she wasn’t fully extended. Even little Riho lets her arm slip and her gaze drop and fails to achieve the perfection we all know is expected of us. The left side of me aches, and even though I can see the movements in my head and know where my arm should be, I’m a few seconds behind.
We should be stronger at this point. I should be stronger.
Mr. K doesn’t move a muscle, not even in his face. I’m getting better at interpreting his little twitches and squints and almost imperceptible nods. But there’s nothing there today. His arms are crossed over his chest. His mouth is a perfect straight line.
I want to make his lips turn up. I want him to see me, the way he used to. His moya korichnevaya.
When it’s my turn to dance for him again, I try to channel that old spirit. I make sure my practice tutu is perfectly arranged and there isn’t a single hair out of place on my head. My right foot’s pointed, torso bending from the hip. I’m ready. I want to do the perfect pirouette, the most delicate arabesque, the most lovely fouetté—to make him see me again, to make him tell Damien that I should be one of ABC’s apprentices next year.
My music begins. I prepare to step into my first move. The plinks of Viktor’s piano keys feel like waves that my hands, arms, legs, and feet wade through. The movements feel good, but there’s a pinch in my hip as I turn my left leg, and a new pain in my ankle radiates down through my toes. I push through it and try not to let it show on my face.
“Soft hands,” I hear Mr. K say. “Soft neck.” His deep voice is a ripple in the waves. Tension seeps into my muscles. I can’t stop it. Sweat streams down my back. I clench my teeth.
“Soft mouth. Descend through the toes.” He walks in front of me now as his voice rises. “Lighter, lighter! You are a swan, not a cow.”
His corrections drum into me, one after the other. The monitor on my wrist buzzes, but I push harder.
“The whole school can hear me, but you can’t because you’re still doing it wrong!” he shouts. I can’t keep tears from pricking my eyes. He makes me dance through the messiness that I am right now.
Finally, he gives up on me, motioning at Viktor to stop. The pianist’s fingers crash on the keys. I have shifted my weight too far over, so I trip.
I used to think being a ballerina was special, but in moments like this, it is easy to feel like the least original being on earth. I wipe away the tears, willing them to stop falling.
“Come.” He waves me over to the mirror.
I straighten my back and step away a few inches, like that will somehow temper whatever terrifying thing is about to explode from his mouth.
An interruption is never good.
The other girls lean in to listen. They know that whatever he is about to say is ten times worse than the corrections he’s just hollered at me. He places a hand on my shoulder. I almost collapse under its weight.
“Giselle.”
For one glorious moment I lock eyes with his and my adrenaline surges. I try to hold his gaze and not be distracted by the dozens of ballerinas watching our conversation play out in the mirror, trying to read his lips and watch my face.
“Yes?” I settle my body into a comfortable and respectful third position.
“My darling, my butterfly. You’ve been through so much. But I will not pity you or give you special treatment. I will treat you like everyone else. Can you do this?” His accent is thick and his manner of speaking cryptic.
The four-letter word this thuds into my chest. It sweeps together all the recovery progress I’ve made and how hard I’ve been working and all the years of my ballet training, like it’s so tiny and insignificant that it could fit into such a small word. I want to tell him that my mind and heart know each step, each movement, but my muscles are still remembering. I see myself in the mirror. I’m a mop. I’m that sweaty and sad looking. I catch some of the girls inching forward a little, and Eleanor has her eyes fixed on Mr. K. Her doe-eyed gaze doesn’t waver. All the girls hate and worship Mr. K, but Eleanor’s current fixation seems to go beyond that. It’s like she doesn’t see anything—anyone—else in the room at all.
I’m so busy watching her watching him that Mr. K has to repeat his question.
“Yes,” I squeak out. I hate myself for the mousiness of the word and the way it gets caught in my throat. “I can. I promise you, I can.”
This all feels like some sort of punishment for messing with other dancers instead of channeling that rage into stretching and working in the studios. For thinking about revenge all the time instead of the footwork in Swan Lake. For letting this place change me, turn me into one of them.
“I will fix it,” I say.
“Good. Show me you’re still my little butterfly.” He leans down closer to my ear. He touches my cheek. “Let me see that spark again.” He turns back to everyone and walks forward. “Gigi, out of the center, and Eleanor in.”
After rehearsals, Sei-Jin lets me come into her room without a second thought. I’ve decided to apologize to her for soaking her shoes in vinegar, so that I can start over and really just focus on ballet and the Odette role. Posters of Korean pop stars swallow the walls, grinning boys peering out from behind all the hanging tutus. A shoe rack sits at the door where I slipped out of my mukluks. The glowing white bulbs of a vanity table cast a glow on her TV.
“I can’t believe we’ve never hung out.” She’s sewing ribbons on her pointe shoes and icing her ankles. “But I’m glad you asked.”
I try to get comfortable in her vanity chair. I don’t want to see myself in the mirror when I tell her what I did, when I try to make amends. She’s the first on the list. She asks me about California, tells me she auditioned for the San Francisco Ballet, and about her plans to go to college. I ask her about possibly dancing in Seoul or Europe, and tell her not to give up on dancing in a company. There are pauses and lulls in our conversation that I don’t know how to fill.