The filming is fun. The addition of cameras and crew at our dress rehearsals, plus the thrill of being in New York, add to the overall excitement of the cast.
Andrew, Fiona, and I get in the habit of hanging out with Blitz and the director to look at the new footage, which they call the “roughs.” We all start picking up lingo, more than I learned from Dance Blitz. I never really got to hang out with the film crew back then since the director was so daunting.
They work to solve the sound problems of the hard toe of new pointe shoes banging on the floor. There is also echo effect from the orchestra, since there’s no audience members present to absorb the sound. They finally agree to record the music separately during a live show. It saves them having to add in applause. Apparently the old footage and new sound will be matched up in “post.”
New York is probably the most fun segment of the tour. I feel like a part of the process, an important piece, rather than just the worst-trained member of the troupe who got a part based on fame.
Blitz decides to travel back to LA for a few days with the production team, skipping Miami. We will meet back up again in Houston. I have no way of knowing what happened to the tickets I sent Mom and Dad. After they were mailed, I panicked that Mom would talk to Mindy’s mother and the jig would be up on the ballet prize for the other family, keeping my friend from coming.
But Mindy keeps in touch via text on the phone we slipped her before the tour. Her parents don’t have any idea yet that I am in the show, only that they have ballet tickets and a hotel room. The two families still aren’t on solid speaking terms, even though they do greet each other at church every Sunday.
Mindy reports that my parents seem sadder lately, less involved than before. She hopes they will come to the ballet. The relationship really needs to be repaired for anyone to be happy.
I thought for a while to try sending Gwen tickets as well, but never told Blitz my idea. Probably once she realized I was in the cast, she would either not come or be resentful of my continued interference. I don’t know if I can do anything to see my daughter again. Fourteen years is so long.
On the flight from Miami to Texas, Carla ends up on my row. We haven’t specifically avoided each other since that moment in Baltimore when I ran from her and her daughter and injured my foot in the alley. But we haven’t said more than simple greetings or compliments on a performance since then.
But it’s hard for me to stay silent. I hurt so much for my loss. I have to know what keeps her away, why she would choose that, or if she is forced to, like I am. If so, it’s something we have in common.
We sit in coach with three seats to a side, and one of the fairies is between us. But the other girl quickly puts on headphones and zones out, leaving me and Carla to flip through magazines and avoid eye contact.
After takeoff, and once the beverage cart has passed, I finally work up enough courage to say, “Your little girl is lovely.”
Carla stiffens, staring down at the pages in her hands.
I think she isn’t going to respond, and that will be it, when she finally says, “Her father is better for her than I am.”
This makes my belly tighten. “Did he take her from you?”
She can’t meet my gaze and looks out the window instead. “I was a dancer. It’s all I ever wanted to do. When she arrived, I got so out of shape. I had to work hard to get back in it.”
“You were young, though.”
With this, she turns back. “I’m not as young as you think. I was twenty-three when she was born.”
“So you left her with her dad?”
Her chin drops and she stares at the magazine again. “He is really good with her. I was gone, chasing any dance audition I could get. I wasn’t home.”
“So you two split up?”
“We were never married. There’s no custody agreement. No legal tangle. I just chose dance. It’s what I wanted.”
I have to look away. I can’t believe it’s so simple. She had a daughter and she left her.
We don’t speak again. We might never speak again. I know she made choices the best she knew how. Maybe she would judge me for the adoption. But I have a hard time thinking about the little girl she can have back at any moment, if she would just put her first.
The plane touches down at the airport and the pilot announces that it is 102 degrees. Everyone groans. That’s Texas for you. Even though summer is officially over, the weather often doesn’t break until October.
I realize that while I was away, Gabriella started kindergarten. It hits me what I’m missing, what I’ve already missed. At least before all this happened, Blitz and dancing and fame, I could see pictures on Facebook. Then for nine miraculous months, I taught her dance class.
Now, I have nothing.
I want to lash out at Carla. Tell her how selfish she is. How stupid.
But who am I to judge anyone?
The aisle fills with dancers tugging down their carry-ons. The girl between me and Carla takes off her headphones and looks around.
When I get out, I load up on the bus to the hotel and sit in the front with Betty from wardrobe and other members of the crew. I’m not up for speaking to anyone.
The heat and the smells all make me think of home. I grew up here, before I got pregnant. This is where I knew Denham. Where I had a normal life. If I could go back, I would change things.
But not getting pregnant. Not Gabriella. I could never change the circumstances that brought her here.
I wouldn’t give her up.
Although, then I wouldn’t meet Blitz.
It’s so hard to know what path was the right one. And it’s pointless. I can’t actually change anything. And I can’t willingly give up the parts of my life I love now.
When we get to the hotel, I call a ride share so I can head out into the city alone. Blitz will arrive in the morning, but tonight is all mine to revisit the places I once knew.
I give the young woman driving a yellow Beetle with daisies on the hood the address to my old house.
“You sure?” she asks as she puts it in her phone and tilts her head at the location that pops up. “That’s a really bad part of town.”
“I grew up in that house,” I tell her. “I moved six years ago.”
She shrugs. “It probably hasn’t changed that much, then.”
I think about this as we navigate rush-hour traffic. Was it bad then? I was old enough to know when we left, a freshman in high school. Sure, there were car break-ins and burglaries, and the known drug dealers on a couple corners. This all seemed normal and manageable at the time.
But as we exit the highway and approach the seedy neighborhood, I see it all with completely different eyes. Everything is the same, from the pawn shop with its iron-barred windows to the weedy empty corner lot where I would fly kites. The convenience store has a new name but is otherwise exactly as I remember it.
But I’ve changed. I see the poverty here. The brokenness. The people who work too many hours, have too many problems. They can’t worry about keeping up lawns or getting rid of junked-out cars. Their dogs bark behind chain-link fences, and their kids roam the cracked sidewalks.
Everyone here is barely surviving.
I feel like an outsider.
I am one.
I’m glad this car is low-key, the sort of thing some dad would buy cheap and paint himself for his daughter. It fits in. We don’t evoke any stares, well, at least nothing more than amusement at the daisies, as we head down my old street.
My heart is actually pounding as we approach the old house. It looks terrible to me now. Small and falling apart, one of the porch columns so rotted through, it’s splintered at the base.
Whoever lives there now has a bunch of kids, or one terribly messy one, as the scraggly dead grass is littered with balls and cracked plastic toys, faded from the sun.
But I can see myself on the porch. I picture friends walking up, the path to school, light in the windows.
The girl has stopped in front of it. “You just want to look?” she asks.
“For a minute,” I say.
The fence is in worse shape than in my day, the metal poles listing to one side. It makes me sad, seeing it, and I get this wild idea of buying it and fixing it up again.
Then the feeling passes. Terrible things happened there. I’m glad I can’t see the backyard, where I came in that awful night when I thought Denham was my brother.
I shake my head. This is enough. “We can go,” I say.
The car eases down the narrow street, half blocked with cars parked along the curbs. I realize we’re going to pass the house that had the travel trailer in back. Gabriella was probably conceived there. And my stomach falls again.
I decide not to look, not to think anymore. I rest my head on the back of the seat and remember New York, Times Square, the ballet, Lincoln Theater.
“You want to go back to your hotel now?” the girl asks.
“Yes,” I say.
There’s nothing for me here anymore. If there ever was. Just dusty memories and decaying history.
Moving forward is the only way to go. The only question is, will my family come and be a part of my future?