Pieces of a Life

Although it should’ve been irrelevant, it felt like everything had led up to this moment. Leila felt bad for thinking that way, because the fact was that she returned to Baltimore for her father—and she would’ve argued until she was blue in the face if anyone dared say otherwise—but somehow her life always went back to dancing. It was like how she and Alex always found each other. No matter what, somehow all roads led to this. And this, this time, happened to be a special performance for her old dance studio on a stage where she’d danced for years. Somehow the days—was it weeks now? She didn’t know—added up to get her here, the secrets and frustration and how the dam had broken inside her; it all led her to this.

She was alone in a warm up room, one hand resting on the ballet bar while she paused and stared down at her feet. This was a familiar scene. This room—cold, dark, undecorated— this was her life. A life of rehearsals, warm ups, and performances, regardless of whether it was for dance or not, all by herself. Her long curtain of hair was pulled tight on top of her head and she smoothed her hand across it. The nerves had dulled now and her body had gone into a sort of numb business mode in preparation to go on stage. Leila sighed quietly and scratched her nose. The vast room was dimly lit, crushingly quiet, and a little chilly. And as usual, she was alone. She glanced at the clock and calculated that it was only a few more minutes until someone came in to tell her it was time to go.

Mirrors became useless to her after a while. She didn’t even know what to look for. What could she change in the way she moved? The difference would be unnoticed to anyone other than her. She stopped watching her movements and went to what she always relied on, which was how it felt when she moved. She trusted herself, her technique and her passion, to make it perfect. And finally, while she was stretching again after a few minutes of warming up, someone from the studio carefully opened the door to tell her it was time.

Her heart beat loudly in her ears when she walked down the hall to the backstage entrance. Even though she was calm, her mind was restless. Alex would be in the auditorium, she knew he would be. The audience would be small, but personal. Which was the opposite of what she was used to. But she took a deep breath when she stood behind the curtain and smiled. It would be easy. She wasn’t worried.

It was her old dance teacher who gave an introduction, enthusiastic and generous in praise, preparing the people in the audience for what sounded like no less than an act of God on the stage. Leila inwardly hoped she wouldn’t disappoint. The first thing she was doing was just a solo dance, before any excerpts from ballets or any teaching, and that’s what everyone would see to make their minds up. Was she really this world class talent, a gift from the heavens to the world of dance? Or was she just a rich girl with years of teaching who managed to make a living and a name for herself? The first face Leila spotted was Alex’s smirking one and she smiled slightly. It seemed like everything was happening especially slow. She sort of just wanted to get it over with.

When the music finally came on and she began to move she was at ease again. It was slow at first; careful, simple. She was thinking, listening to the music, letting her muscles decide for themselves what they wanted to do. But it felt different immediately: it wasn’t rehearsed, complicated, impressive ballet. It was more lyrical than anything—musical, soft, pure heart. It was all of Leila’s sadness made into beautiful body movement the somehow ebbed and flowed to convey the downward twist of her mouth and the unending stinging of her blue eyes from all her years. It was watching as her mother got weaker and weaker as the sickness took over, only a child and unable to understand. It was letters from Julliard or the American Ballet Theater, read by blind eyes, a mind too sad to get out of its own way. It was that humid, cloudy summer morning after graduation, her life packed in a bag, a ticket to San Francisco in her hand and no goodbyes passing her lips. It was her father cold and still in a padded, glossy wooden box, gone to meet her mother again after years of strain finally doing his heart in. It was her life. She was a marionette puppet controlled by the forceful tug of her own heartstrings. For a split second, the raw emotion scared her. She was always passionate and emotional on stage. But this was different. This was sad. This was her life.

This wasn’t San Francisco, or London, or New York. This was her hometown. These were people who raised her, who saw what shaped her. She had to give them something special. It was only for a tiny moment that she caught Alex’s face, but he looked sad. Awed, but sad.

She had started off moving fluidly to the song and as it changed she changed her dancing—more complicated, moving faster; she loved freestyle dancing, because it was what her body wanted to do most of the time anyway. It was all feeling, it all came from inside. And then it seemed like suddenly everything was happening at a mockingly slow pace, the seconds seeming to hold eternities within them, telling that something was about to happen, and everything happened all at once. To Leila, it was a lifetime. And she didn’t have any idea what was going on.

It all happened so quickly.

What happened first was the noise—it pierced the air it was so loud and intrusive. It was so loud, impossibly loud, and it scared Leila so quickly that everything inside her immediately shut down. Someone, a person she couldn’t see, had thrown the stage door open. The resulting bang sounded like a gunshot, clattering and echoing while the door hit the wall and then slammed back shut. Leila’s heart jumped—you’re not supposed to use those doors, they’re supposed to be locked! She’d scowl at someone about it later, though—and she gasped. The gunshot noise startled her and, terrified in mid pirouette—it was all happening so quickly!—she lost her balance.

It all started with that door. The noise, that terrible, enormous noise, that made her brain freeze and heart stop. But the next awful thing was not a noise, although there was a popping sound she didn’t quite understand, it was just a nauseating feeling as Leila consciously felt something give up and snap. Everything seemed to be moving so slowly and when she felt that snap she thought, well, that’s odd. Then the world sped up and Leila was falling, she was crumpled on the stage in a delicate heap, legs splayed in front of her, and suddenly she was in more excruciating pain than she could ever remember feeling. She stared down at her legs and realized numbly that the snap she’d felt had been her ankle. Her ankle had just broken. And it was dangling, now, in an entirely wrong way. But the meaning of this didn’t reach her just yet.

Two women, Leila’s old dance teacher and the dark girl from Evelyn’s, were standing in a wing backstage, hidden by the curtains but visible from Leila’s spot on the stage. And there, standing in front of the door that had started it all, was Vanessa with a smile on her face like she’d just killed someone and enjoyed it thoroughly. She might as well have killed Leila with what she’d just done. Leila could feel her heart hammering against her chest, pounding no, no, no against her ribs, fast and hard. God, it hurt, it all hurt. Her foot looked like it was detached from her body. The women in the wings were talking in hushed voices with worried faces and somehow she could hear them.

“That’s not an injury you recover from,” Leila’s old teacher whispered, looking at the other girl. The words floated meaninglessly through Leila’s head. She couldn’t process what was happening, it was all moving so quickly.

And then, in reply, the girl looked at Leila sadly and said: “She’ll never dance again.”

The words were just floating in her head and couldn’t sink in. She didn’t understand what they were saying, didn’t understand anything that was going on. Why was she on the ground? This was all wrong. Leila hadn’t even realized she was screaming until Alex was there, crouched beside her on the stage, trying to get her to be quiet.

“Leila, Lei, come on—I know it hurts, okay? You’ve got to stop screaming, sweetheart,” He was murmuring, so calm, clutching one of her hands and tightly gripping her waist with the other. The way he held her so firmly should’ve told her that there was something to worry about. But she was still worried about finishing her performance.

She flung her hand to her mouth and discovered that it was, in fact, hanging open and she was, actually, screaming. She turned to look at Alex with tears flooding down her cheeks. “Help me up, help me up,” She whispered frantically, grabbing him. “Come on, Alex, I—I’ve got to finish, I—”

He started shaking his head, squeezing her and looking at her how she imagined a son looked at his mother in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s. You’re crazy and you don’t even know it. And they love you so much, and it makes them so sad. She gasped in breaths, each one stabbing more pain down her leg to her ankle. It throbbed with its own life, radiating a crackling furnace of miserable pain. Vanessa stood there in front of the door, unnoticed and satisfied, the ultimate cause of it all. Leila stared warily up at Alex. “I’ve got to finish!” She yelled in a watery voice. “Just let me get up!”

People were whispering. The music had stopped. Someone escorted the students from the studio out of the auditorium to give Leila privacy. God, her ankle hurt. The pain interrupted any thought she had and stopped it short. She sobbed loudly, digging her nails into Alex’s arm, staring at him desperately. “Alex, please,” She cried.

He exhaled, trying to be calm for her sake, lips set in a line. Her foot was already swollen and bruised, turning all purple and black, inflating even more because she refused to take off her shoe. He’d seen it happen. He’d watched as her ankle broke. It was her left ankle—it wouldn’t have been so devastating if it had been her right, but your left is your turning foot—and it cracked practically in half while she was mid-turn. It was terrible, it was painful for him to even sit and look at. But she wasn’t making anything easier on him. She was like the injured superstar quarterback, fourth quarter at states. Just put me in, coach. I can play.

Leila gasped so much she gave herself the hiccups. That was really pathetic, she thought. She was starting to get a headache from the pain in her ankle and in the back of her head she thought, I wonder if I’ll faint. Maybe that would be a good thing. Her whole life, her entire career, had led up to this pinnacle moment. A performance where she was dancing better than she’d ever danced before—and that was saying something. Her entire life had nudged her around, pushed her forward, and, finally, unceremoniously dumped her here. On the floor of a Community Center stage, her foot dangling off her leg like it hung by a thread, drowning herself in her own tears. And finally, unable to stop her sobs as Alex scooped her up in his arms to carry her off, the words grew dreadful, cruel meaning.

She’ll never dance again.