It’s 3 a.m. So cold here. I could hear the wind’s singing outside. I looked at my cellphone and it said 4˚C. I couldn’t get to sleep. I was dying thinking about my ballet audition. I was dying thinking about becoming one of The Royal Ballet School’s students. I was also dying thinking about whether doing fouetté or grand fouetté en tournant. I shoved in my earplugs and played all Chopin’s instrument to die trying hard to sleep.
Now it’s 9.45 a.m. I was almost late for my 10 a.m. audition. I wore my coat and got a taxi to The Royal Ballet School’s main building. I could see tons of danseuse and danseur queuing at the main entrance. During my audition, I could see so many talented danseuses and danseurs that I felt like noone-from-nothingness. They all had well-built posture, beautiful legs, typical-feminine-muscled shoulder, no unwanted fat, and of course all that beautiful face, typical European lady that reminded me of the ladies during Victorian era. For your information, I was the only Asian here. I had no white skin but colored, no beautiful legs, my shoulder was also not that cute-athletic and I had chubby cheeks. The good news was that my weight was still proportional, but yes, I still had fat like seriously.
It’s my turn. I came forward elegantly trying hard to hide my nerve. I could see her cynically looked at me.
“So, what should I call you, young lady?”
“It seems that you’re the youngest here. 1994. Well, age doesn’t matter, right? Let’s see the way you move then.” She was like insulting me, but I promised that she would clap her hands when seeing my movements. “Which one will you use, young lady?”
“I think this one, Madame.”
“Are you sure? Ladies and gents here rarely choose it. Time to Say Goodbye. You’ll get yourself in so much trouble then. Let’s see how you move, young lady.”
“Thanks, Madame, and for your information, I’d like to avoid any mainstream thing.”
“Please come forward and show me that you can work with this, young lady.”
I stood up very confidently. I felt the music and I let it flow through my dance. I started with a little slow adagio. Then I, suddenly, felt like my brain’s freezing but I could still felt myself moving. I could see a picture of my childhood in my head space. It was when my parents and I went to Fontana di Trevi. I could still see our smiles, our laughter, and our happiness. I could still remember how they hold my hands, father on the right side and mother on the left side. But then it’s blurred. My heart’s beating faster. I wanted to see them clearly but it’s still blurred. I tried hard to remember all of things. Now it’s sick. I couldn’t easily breathe. All pictures were spinning around my head space. They started fading away. I lost them. It’s all black now.
Then I opened my eyes and saw everyone’s looking at me differently. What the damn was I doing? Why did the look at me that way? I hated to see any strange look, honestly.
“Nice moves, young lady! You did it perfectly well. You’ve done your grand fouetté en tournantthirty times in thirty seconds. So, congratulation, young lady.” She didn’t even clap her hands. Still, I saw her cynical eyes.
I went back and decided to sit at the very back of the lines.
“Bloody hell! How could you do that? Oh, my name is Jennifer but you can call me Jane.”
“I’m Melania and call me Lana.”
“Hi, I’m Olivia. Now tell us how could you do that? You were insanely spinning like merry-go-round losing its control. Were you in a trance?”
“Honestly, I didn’t know exactly what was I doing. I just did that. That’s all.”
They kept on asking me how I was doing, my fouetté. Jane and Olivia were the first people who willingly became my friends. All people here were firstly underestimating me. Maybe, they thought that I couldn’t do the movements. But then after I did my fouetté, suddenly they turned to be nice to me.
I loved studying here. This was what I’ve been dreaming of since years ago. I wanted to be a professional ballerina like what my mother wanted me to be. But deep down in my heart, I wanted to be a professional dancer, not only a classic ballet dancer ballerina. I couldn’t really understand why she wanted me to be so. I always wished to know the exact reason, but I could not.
I thought that my mother was a great ballerina. I remembered how she taught me to do the fouetté when I was five. Foolishly, I never took it seriously. I was not that really interested in classic ballet. Lucky me, when I couldn’t do my fouetté, she wouldn’t get angry. She never imposed her will, but she only wanted me to learn ballet. Therefore, there’s a dance room in our house where she used for teaching me ballet every evening.
She ever told me that I could be whatever I wanted to be. My future belonged to me, not anyone else even her. She gave me freedom to do anything but it must be with my responsibility. It was totally different from my father. I rarely met him. He was a perfectly busy man. One thing that made him different from my mother is that he is a strict person. He didn’t like seeing my mother and I dancing. He would be insanely angry to my mother when he saw we danced. He wanted me to be an engineer. He said that female engineer had brighter future than male. It sounded silly but that’s the fact. I loved my father, but I didn’t like him anyway. He went home once a year. He was just like a stranger in my house. When it’s Lunar New Year, he never went home. Lunar New Year was supposed to be a ‘family-day’ but it seemed that he didn’t understand it well. He never came home, perfectly never. Therefore, hardly I did things that he wanted me to do. Who the hell he was? Did he bring me up?
“Congratulation!!!!!” I see Jane and Olivia brought me a paper.
“Yes, dear. You are officially selected to be our class delegation to contribute in the RBS ballet competition next winter.”
“Olivia is right. You’d better prepare yourself, make some beautiful movements, and don’t forget to amaze everyone out there with your dramatic fouetté.”
“Are you kidding me? I didn’t even fill in the form for the competition. How could I …”
“Madame Fleur chose you, honey. You must be proud of yourself. You are selected. It means that she trusts you. She believes in your talent.”
“I have nothing to say now. I wish my mother were here. I bet she would be very proud of me.” I started to weep. Jane and Olivia began to hug me, tightly. I felt like I couldn’t breathe now.
I was always sad knowing that now I couldn’t share any precious moments with my only mother. She got a terrible Alzheimer and she couldn’t even recognize me as her daughter.
This evening, I went back to my dance room. I never felt this hard to choose the music to use. I hopelessly shuffled every song I had in my iPod. Still, I couldn’t find it yet. Then I opened the small drawer beside the player. I found so many vinyl records inside. Thanks God I still had a gramophone. I took one of the records randomly. Voila! It’s Chopin’s I guessed. I hear beautiful sounds. I felt the music. I remembered one thing. This was Chopin's Waltz in C-sharp minor and Étude Op. 10, No. 5. This what my mother used when she taught me how to dance for the first time. This song was just recalling all my memories. When I took a deep breath, I stood up spontaneously. I could feel my body’s moving. My brain’s freezing. Then, I saw completely nothing. It’s all black.
“Lana.” Oh what a beautiful damnation. I could hear my mother’s voice. She called me. “Come here, darling. Do you still like watching me dancing?” Then I could hear a kid’s voice. It’s me. Years ago. I couldn’t believe it.
“Yes!! Show it to me again, Mom. I wanna see it again. I love watching you spinnin’ ‘round like a magic.” Oh it’s me. I could see my past. It was right the first time I practiced dancing. Then I saw how my mother’s moving with the exact same song. It was so beautiful that now I was weeping to see it. I was so amazed with the way she did her a-minute-fouetté without making any movement. She kept in the center of the room. She moves like a ballerina doll on the music box.
“Do you like it? Do you want to try, darling?”
“But I don’t feel like dancing, Mom. I’d like to be the audience.”
“Oh, come on. Let’s try it. It’s fun doing fouetté.”
“It’s a whipping movement. It is when you raised foot as it passes rapidly in front of or behind the supporting foot or the sharp whipping around of the body from one direction to another.”
“Mom, please don’t use words I don’t understand.”
“Oh, come here darling. You can do fouetté by raising your right foot like this and…” She gave me directions to do the fouetté my moving my leg with her warm hands. I could still feel it until now. It was the prettiest moment I’d ever had during my life time. From childhood to adulthood, there’s only Mother’s warmth in me.
Then I opened my eyes when the song finished its melody. I felt like having a headache now.
“Um, hi Jane. What are you doing here?”
“I saw what you did. Normally, a normal ballerina will only do only thirty second fouetté, but you did a minute one. Therefore, I worried about you. Are you really okay?”
“There’s one reason that makes me do that. Whenever I do that, I will see the picture of my mother, my family, our happiness, and everything I lost. I love doing so as it helps me recall my memories. I promise you that I will be okay, and I am. Trust me.”
“Dinner is ready. Let’s eat. I don’t want you to get sick before the competition.”
At the first round of the competition, my name was called last. I was afraid that the judges were too tired or bored so that they would give me lower score. But I always remembered what my mother had said to me that I should always stand up elegantly and hide all of my negative feeling. I built up my confidence and started to dance. This time, I would certainly do a slow a-minute-fouetté to give an impression to the judge.
Voila! I did it and I could go to the next round. Everything ran smoothly and so was my second. Thanks God for my luck then.
I was in my dancing room trying to dance following the symphony. Then my eyes could not get rid from the mirror in front of me. I saw my reflection through the mirror. I saw myself could not dance in harmony. So pathetic. I lost the elegance. The room turned out so blue. I looked through the mirror. I saw an old-cheap-photograph. There were picture of my father, my mother, and little me. That’s what I call as a family. But that only was, a family.
Now I chose a modern song titled To Build a Home. The song was really difficult to be interpreted by a classic ballet ballerina, but I wanted to try at least. I took a deep breath, I stood up spontaneously. I could feel my body’s moving. My brain’s freezing. Then, I saw completely nothing. It’s all black again. Now I could see my father and my mother, without me. I didn’t know when it was, but it seemed that they were on a fuss.
“You shouldn’t teach Lana how to dance! She’d better be an engineer. It will give her brighter future. Why so selfish?”
“I’m not selfish! But you are! Who the hell you are? Do you also bring her up with your hand? You are always busy with your stuffs and never even care with your family. What’s the point?”
“I hate watching you’re dancing! I know you’re a good dancer, but please don’t dance in my house. It’s disgusting!”
“I love dancing. I had perfectly tasted the salty sweat to get a good career as a professional ballerina but you ruined it! Sometimes I regret being your wife! I’m drown in my regrets! I’m done trying. I’m tired!”
It’s sick watching them like that. Father starts hitting. Mother won't end up crying. And I do completely nothing. Then I tried to open my eyes but I couldn’t. All pictures were just spinning insanely through my headspace. But now, all I saw were my father kept on hitting my mother. It’s suck. My eyes couldn’t be opened. I was weeping. My tears followed the notes in music and inhaled my blood mood. True, I was dying to see the world that my mother’s saw. Therefore, I went back to the past. But it wasn’t something that I wanted to see. It’s hurt to see it all. My little life didn’t have a sequel, but lucky me I still had my own time machine. Until now, I wished I could not only go to the past but also try to fix my future and continue to have my good and happy ending story, of course with my family.
Now I could open my eyes. I could feel my sweat covering my body. I couldn’t believe in myself. I succeed doing a two minutes fouetté. Mother must be proud of me. I broke her record. I feel like having a headache again.
Autumn thinned down with fallen leaves all over the ground. I did not weep. I hold back my feeling. Whenever I missed them all, I would do as much as fouetté until the memories recalled.
