She stumbles deeper into the apartment and I follow her. It’s a large apartment for Manhattan. Not as large as mine, but decent. We pass something that looks like a guest room and then into a master suite. Her bedroom. This room hasn’t fared well either. It looks like the entire contents of her closet have been dragged onto the bed and floor of her bedroom. The curtains pulled from their rods and left piled on the floor. She points to the nightstand and her jewelry box is open and empty.
“I… I had a lot of jewelry in there,” she says, and then sobs. “They took my grandmother’s ring.”
I feel something crack in my heart. I know how much she loved that ring. She’s been wearing it since I met her. “I so sorry, sweetheart. So your jewelry is gone, anything else?”
She just shakes her head, her mouth gaping open, trying to take everything in.
“I… I don’t know. I can’t tell,” her voice catches on her throat.
“It’s okay, just sit down. I’m going to call the police. Don’t worry, we’ll get to the bottom of this, okay?”
She just nods and I clear a spot for her to sit on the side of her bed, trying to breathe through the fury. Who the fuck would do this? Mess with her? They must have been watching for some time, knowing that she wasn’t spending the night here last night. I’m almost relieved. Relieved that she had been with me and not here. Who knows what might have happened to her if she had been here.
The dial tone barely loops once before I hear her choke on a scream. I turn and see her throw something clear across the room, her face blazing red, her eyes wide, terrified. I hang up the phone and reach out to her,
“What’s wrong? What is it?”
She just shakes her head, her eyes growing wilder and wilder.
“Malynda!” I yell, shaking her.
It only momentarily shocks her out of her trance and she points to the object laying on the floor.
Running over, I pick it up off the ground.
It’s a ballet shoe. Worn. I turn it over and recognize the handwriting on the sole. It says, “Malynda …” Her name. And attached to the ribbon is a note.
“I’m back. Did you miss me?” And it’s signed “DR.”
What does this mean?
“Malynda.” I read off the slipper again. And something clicks in my brain.
I sit down next to her, pulling her into my arms, squeezing her hand and giving her a moment to breathe. When her breath is steady, I tell her once and for all.
“I think it’s time you told me what happened twelve years ago.”
Her
“It started the moment I got to New York. The moment I stepped into my freshman contemporary dance class. The moment he saw me. I thought at first it was just the way he looked at everyone, all the students, girls and boys, sizing them up from the start, picking his favorites, his prodigies. I was so stupid. I thought he liked me for my dancing.”
Her voice is quiet but steady. She stares out the window as she speaks, her hands clasped in her lap, eyes lost in the memory. I tell myself I won’t interrupt until she’s done. I don’t want to spook her, stop her. I need to know it all.
“He never really said anything that I thought was out of the ordinary. It was just the looking, the staring. But that’s what dance teachers do, I told myself, they watch your every movement. I was used to it. I should’ve listened to my instincts. It didn’t feel the same. But I’d worked my whole life to be there, I wasn’t going to ruin my chance. No, I wanted to make the most of it, no matter what.” She nods, as if her past was reminding her of her reasons.
“About a month in, the looking moved onto touching. Again, it wasn’t anything I could pinpoint, instructors touch us all the time, helping our angles, our turn out, making sure our positions are correct. Even a ten-degree difference in the turn of your hips sets the good dancers from the best. I wanted to learn it all. I almost welcomed the touches, because I knew I was improving with each one. Then he started singling me out, picking me for demonstrations in front of the class, praising me in front of everybody. The other girls both loved me and hated me in equal turn. I didn’t really have any friends. I would spend my mornings in dance class, my afternoons studying and my night time writing letters to you. I missed you so much, Xavier, so much. It was almost unbearable.”
Her rhythm breaks for a moment and she turns to me, her eyes sad. I give her a gentle nod, encouraging her to continue. She gives me a tight smile and then turns back to the film running through her brain.
“He asked to see me once, after class. It sounded like just an opportunity to talk about my future. I was the last one to leave one day and he came up and asked me if I had thought about what kind of dance company I wanted to work with. I told him I would work with any that would take me. I just wanted to be given a chance to perform. He told me not to be small-minded and that if I worked hard, I could pick and choose who I could work for. And then he told me to come by the studio later that night and we would talk about some of my options. I didn’t really think anything of it. I showed up that night and we didn’t talk for very long. There were a few stragglers training with one of the other instructors, so he just handed me a few brochures for local dance companies and told me we’d talk another time. But after that, the uneasiness I felt at the start was growing. So I put it off for a while. He didn’t seem too bothered by it, so I thought maybe I was just imagining it.”
She shrugs and then takes a deep breath. I can sense that whatever’s coming next is hard for her. Hard to say, hard to remember. I look down and notice her hands that were laying still on her lap are now wringing themselves. Her fingers nervously tugging on each other as she struggles with her story.
“Go on, sweetheart,” I urge her gently and she just nods.
“About six weeks into the semester, we were getting ready for a performance exam. I was having trouble with it, my pas de deux partner wasn’t very good and I felt like he wasn’t doing the lift right, which affected my own performance. He came up to me at the end of class and said, ‘This first exam is very important, it’s going to set the tone for the rest of your time here. The way you’re going, you might not even pass. If you want help, I only have tonight to help you. All the other girls have booked up my other one-on-one sessions.’ I panicked. As I said, I’d worked hard to be there. If the person who was going to be grading me didn’t think I was going to do well then I was going to get all the help I could.”
She takes one long, deep breath.