Dara felt her stomach turn and she wasn’t sure why.
* * *
*
Satin, cardboard, burlap, paper hardened with glue—that’s all they were, pointe shoes. But they were so much more, the beating heart of ballet. And the fact that they lasted only weeks or less than an hour made them all the more so, like a skin you shed constantly. Then a new skin arrived, needing to be shaped.
As soon as their dancers went on pointe, Dara and Marie made them learn how to break them in, how to experiment, fail, adapt, customize. They’d sit on the changing room floor, their legs like compasses, their new shoes between them like a pair of slippery fish.
Crush the box, pry up and bend the shank, bend the sole, soften it, make it your own. Thread a needle with dental floss—far thicker than thread—to sew in elastic bands and satin ribbons at just the right spot, a cigarette lighter on the ribbon edges to stop fraying. Pliers to tug out the nail, an X-acto to cut away the satin around the toes to make them less slippery. That was Dara’s favorite part, like peeling a soft apple. After, taking the X-acto and, thwick, thwick, thwick, thwick, scraping the shoe bottom, X patterns or crosses, giving it grip.
It was all about finding one’s own way to fuse the foot to the shoe, the shoe to the foot, the body.
The shoe must become part of you, their mother always said. A new organ, snug and demanding and yours.
If you didn’t prepare them correctly, if you left out any step, took any shortcuts—too smooth a sole, too low an elastic—it could mean a fall, an injury, worse.
Their mother told them stories of older girls hiding broken glass in other girls’ shoes, which sounded like a dark fairy tale, but was there any other kind?
Ballet was full of dark fairy tales, and how a dancer prepared her pointe shoes was a ritual as mysterious and private as how she might pleasure herself. It was often indistinguishable.
* * *
*
BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!
Marie was not going to stop, her teeth sunk into her lip, her eyes unfocused. She was going to prepare one, two, three pairs.
It was all ridiculous, a waste. Marie, Dara wanted to say, what are these even for? Marie, you’re a teacher now, not a dancer.
And the little girls she taught were years away from going on pointe, their feet still clad in pink slippers.
But Dara was too tired to scold. To say what her mother would have said, You are abusing yourself, ma chère. This is self-abuse.
BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!
Marie would not stop until Dara finally unlocked the front door and the first students pushed through, a gaggle of chirpy eight-year-olds, two bursting into tears at the gossamer pile before Marie, at her gutted shoes.
* * *
*
Everything was a mad crush that day, Saturdays always were, but especially now, with the class schedule overloaded to make up for audition time and their regular substitute, a sprightly college student named Sandra Shu, felled by a snapping hip that, at long last, popped.
The air was thick with anticipation for the final cast list, which Dara, following their mother’s storied tradition, never posted before the end of the day. Otherwise, all afternoon she’d have to endure the crying and mute stares, the sullen faces and despair, the incessant needling of the chosen leads under whispered breaths.
Still, with the pitch of The Nutcracker humming all ears, there were more than the usual share of fretful students, a turned ankle, a jammed thumb, two girls fainting from a secret diet of celery and watermelon juice, the student toilet choked with vomit, a boy’s dance belt come asunder, one girl teasing another about her body hair, the fine down emerging nearly overnight to keep her floss-thin body warm, and Dara losing her temper with Gracie Hent for crowding the other girls, or with the Neuman sisters for coming to class again in black tights. （Black tights like an Italian widow, their mother would say, tsk-tsking.） Pink tights, black leotard, hair fastened for girls; black tights, white tees for boys. The rules were so simple and never changed.
Charlie came in late, moving slowly and warily after a session with his PT. Helga, Dara and Marie had dubbed her, with Marie often imitating an imagined Germanic patter at the massage table. （Elbow sharp as a shiv for my dah-link . . .） It didn’t matter that her name wasn’t Helga and she wasn’t German but some local mom who, as Charlie loved to tell them, had gone back to school for her degree to support her children and make up for a useless husband. For Dara and Marie, she’d forever be Helga, built like bull with hands of iron!
During the hours of his absence, all the problems Charlie typically forestalled had accumulated. There was no one to handle the parents, the niceties, the back office schedule changes, the vomit-and then tampon-clogged toilet, and the boy dancer who wanted to talk, man to man, about how to maneuver himself into that dance belt. （Pull everything up and to the front, Charlie always explained, like it’s high noon.）