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She swipes a hammer from the local hardware store on the corner three blocks from her mother’s apartment. The tool thumps against her small chest, tucked just under her bleach-stained crewneck sweatshirt for safekeeping from the store cameras, a drum to the flat tinkling of the old bell attached to the grimy store entrance. Not that she really needs to worry about the security measures, since Mr. Canestro is a sucker for her mother’s vatrushka and only the one camera works anyway. She pants as she deadbolts her front door, the short walk a marathon for her. Endurance has left her, once a friend on the studio floor and the stage, now a stranger since her surgery. ACL repairs take a lot out of a ballerina. Plus, it’s a bit of a challenge to steal with a brace that only lets you hobble. A steady pulsing of dull pain just behind her left eye, matching the rhythm of her hard breaths, reminds her of being unfortunately alive. The mockingly fluorescent bulbs glaring down at her from the ceiling don’t exactly help matters either. She squints as she turns to face the kitchen. Her mother left the blinis from this morning on a nice, Saran-wrapped plate for Victoryia, a white flagged gesture to the war comments from this morning. “You think I’m stupid? Huh? You think I’m a zadrota? This is my house. You will do what I say or live on the streets!” Mama Morozov takes pride in appearances, which apparently extends to Vik and not being allowed to go out in public in sweats, ones she left in anyway. She thinks for the millionth time about the vanity that drove her father away. She understands, but doesn’t miss him. She never knew him anyway. Her heart has no love for those who run. — Honestly, this wasn’t her plan. If Annie hadn’t been such a fucking bitch at brunch today, this wouldn’t be the only option left. “I was nice enough to meet you here, hoping the rumors weren’t true. But why do you think I opened with my dad writing me a scrip? You could’ve at least segued into your request with a little more discretion.” Then again, her plan was never really her plan to begin with. It was her mother’s long lost dream to dance in the Moscow company, but the Soviets had very little room for artists who questioned their supreme authority, an irony if she’s ever known one, living under the woman’s iron fist. Instead, Mama Morozov ran through secret doors and whispered undergrounds with a precious baby in her belly until she reemerged in New York City in the 70s, scrubbing toilets and floors just to make ends meet, with the air of a scorned queen. Vik never heard much about the child lost on her journey. Only that it had been a full-term pregnancy with a lover from matushka rossiya that her mother refuses to talk about without a glass of vodka. She, on the other hand, was the product of an accident, decades later. A quick and angry fuck at the tail-end of a fight with an ex-boyfriend who probably doesn’t know she exists. These days, she wishes the wanted one had survived. Instead, she was gifted with dance classes when she was three that they could barely afford, with teachers as stiff and unforgiving of the imperfection of sickled feet and inadequate turnout as her mother. A fight spawned by her brief desire to take swim lessons gifted her with a scholarship to the premiere dance academy in the city and another’s life’s ambitions. And when a misjudged landing from a grand jeté tore her ACL at the Theatre just before the premiere of Giselle, she was gifted with the sour realization of it being too late to pursue her own dreams, had she even had them to begin with. Her mother was only concerned about her knee and its career that dangled in the fingers of fate. — She stares at herself in the mirror, letting her freshly washed face drip into the bathroom sink, eyes gaunt and hollow with exhaustion. Constant sleep and yet, no rest. But what else can you expect when your every waking and unconscious moment is spent obsessing over one thing? Addiction comes naturally for ballerinas. The pursuit of perfection is enough to drive anyone to desperate measures. The descent starts innocently enough, as all descents do. She fondly remembers when she and Annie and Gabriela started sneaking cigarettes between classes at the school, before competition and ruthlessness had set in. Gabby was the perpetrator, as usual. “They curb your appetite so you won’t be as hungry.” “Gross, Gabby. Get some Benson & Hedges next time. I don’t need the maids ratting me out to my mom because I’m completely stinking up the hallway.” “And pay ten bucks a pack, Annie? Plus the interest my dickhead brother charges? Hard pass, bruja.” She wonders if she’ll ever feel as alive as she did back then. Her dead grey eyes stare back at her. She doesn’t think so. Not until later today, at least. She robotically grabs the towel hanging on the ring to catch the droplet dangling dangerously from her chin, twitching with her hunger shakes like it’s eager to fall, and ignores the irony of it all. — The hammer eyes her from her bed, lying alongside her brace. She knows exactly the story she’s going to tell. It’s one month post-op and she’ll claim she thought she could start practicing turns again. Scared of her mother saying no, she’ll say she tried in secret, only to forcibly whack her repaired joint into the sharp corner of her dresser, busting stitches and aspirations. To make it more believable, she does a few small lame ducks across her carpeted floor, carefully bringing her right foot up only to her ankle. The pain will be real enough to draw tears and truth into her face, masking the lies she knows her Mama will dig for when she finds her. Years of lying and covering up secrets has taught her that you must make an almost-truth. Easier to keep track of when questions arise, easier to convince people when the doubt inevitably sinks in. First it was cigarettes. Then bulimia. Then sex with the sweet boy down the street who left for college upstate. She faintly wonders if it was love. She raises the hammer, aiming at the scar on her right knee. She pauses for a moment to grit her teeth in anticipation, feeling her skin tingle with an itch only an Oxy or two could scratch. That wasn’t love. She swings. |
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Katie Thompson–Taylor is a Muskingum University graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in English Language and Literature. She’s been awarded the Beulah Brooks Brown Award for excellence in Creative Writing and the Sara Wilhelm Award for excellence in Literary Studies. Her work has been published in First Circle Literary Magazine. When she’s not writing, she’s working. And when she’s not doing either of those, she’s probably reading and petting her English bulldog, Ms. Abigail. |
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