White Swan, Black Swan by Adrienne Sharp

Author:Adrienne Sharp [Sharp, Adrienne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-49310-1
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-08-23T00:00:00+00:00

By the time I made it over to Mona’s, it was five o’clock. Mona was in the backyard of her Santa Monica cottage in one of her three-hundred-pound muumuus, watering the lawn. Have I mentioned it was 103 degrees and Los Angeles was stomped flat by a Santa Ana? The grass was brown, unalterably brown, but I watched for a moment as Mona turned the trickling hose this way and that. Then we went inside and she poured us some gargantuan rum and Cokes. Her little boy, Ricky, trailed in our wake with math papers and exercise books. We went into the living room, which was an airy room with a big U-shaped sectional she’d bought somewhere, at some garage sale, with some money she’d gotten editing some documentary, and I put my reels on the coffee table projector. Ricky, who was used to this, settled into his chair with his homework, which we would all ignore.

This was Mona’s first look at my uncut footage of the girls in the dressing room, and I was nervous. I turned on the machine, and it threw a square of light onto the wall and then the image of a thin, blond girl with her hair in a bun, sitting on the floor kneading her pointe shoes with her hands. She looked like me at age twelve. In fact, all three of the girls in the dressing room looked like me. They were getting ready for class, pulling on warmers, spraying Hair Net, drinking Tab, concentrating. Not only did they look like me but they were living my old life, exactly, of ten years ago. Or even of ten months ago.

The wall went black, and then up came the girls again, damp and exhausted in that postclass state of ennui and self-assessment.

Girl 1: I saw Margot Fonteyn on TV last night. You know, her feet really aren’t that good.

That was true. Mona chortled and lit a cigarette.

Girl 2: In flamenco class you know who’s the best one? Athena! And she’s short and fat! Too bad for her flamenco doesn’t count.

To which Mona said, “Why doesn’t flamenco count?”

“It just doesn’t,” I told her. Not unless you intended to spend your whole career playing the Spanish dancer in The Nutcracker.

Mona stared at me and blew a smoke ring.

Girl 3: I’ve got a major blister on my second toe. It’s killing me. I taped all my toes before class, but the tape peeled back during chaînés, and even though I squirted on New-Skin and used two Band-Aids, I could barely stand to finish pointe. I wish I were a modern dancer and could do everything in bare feet.

Girl 2: But who wants to do modern?

“Guess that’s like flamenco,” Mona said. I nodded.

Girl 1: I ate two bowls of granola, three pieces of toast, and half a bag of Oreos when I got home after class yesterday. I’m going to have to throw up or use an enema before weigh-in tomorrow.

“What?” Mona said, incredulously. She shifted beneath her tent dress.

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