On What Grounds

“Sweet girls can have a dark side,” I pointed out.

“You think that little girl pushed Anabelle down a flight of steps to get her spot in Moby’s Danse?” Cassandra asked.

She stared.

I stared back.

She burst out laughing. “You’re crazy.”

“Why?”

“Ms. Cosi—Clare, these are dancers, not mobsters. With the exception of maybe that Tanya Harding ice dancer nut who hired a brute to knee-cap Nancy Kerrigan before the Olympics, there is no sense in hurting your rival physically. There are far too many good performers to think hurting one will help you in any way. No, the way to win this game is to perform to your very best. To achieve excellence. As competitive and as catty as dance sometimes is, these girls know that.”

I sighed. Cassandra made sense, but I hated giving up a good theory.

“You’re sure Courtney couldn’t have done it?”

“When was she supposed to have done it?”

“Two nights ago. On Wednesday evening. Anabelle would have been closing up about midnight. It most likely happened around that time.”

“Well, I can tell you that Courtney was with me all evening right up until midnight. You see, Moby’s Danse loved Courtney, but they didn’t like the choreography she chose. She scored so high that they agreed to consider her for a very rare standby spot if she reauditioned with a modern piece, and she hired me to tutor her privately. We quit after midnight, and I dropped her at her home myself in a cab.”

“And where does Courtney live?”

“In Brooklyn, not far from my mother. I have an apartment here in the Village, but my mama needed help with some shopping the next morning.”

“I see.”

“It’s preposterous what you suggest,” said Cassandra. “You cannot tell me the girl rode all the way to Brooklyn in a cab after an exhausting class, then turned around and took a subway all the way back to the Village to try pushing Anabelle, who is taller and stronger, down a flight of steps.”

I sighed. Cassandra was right. On all counts. She’d provided the answers I’d come for, and yet I was still full of questions. Mostly about Anabelle. I had known the girl only four weeks—but Cassandra had been teaching her for twelve months.

“What can you tell me about Anabelle, then?”

“The girl is a natural talent,” said Cassandra as proudly as any mother. “She simply never got the training she deserved. The girl’s father died when she was twelve. After that, her stepmother moved her from town to town so often there was never any way to have a consistent course of study. Anabelle told me she had gone to see Moby’s Danse when they’d been on one of their national tours. They’d given a performance in Miami, and Anabelle waited at the stage door, naively asking if she could join them. Can you imagine? A teenage kid with little formal training? She had guts.

“Well, lucky for her they didn’t laugh in her face,” Cassandra continued. “Instead, a kind member of the company explained to her that she was too young to join and that the troupe only took members by audition. They suggested she study here in New York at Dance 10, which is where the troupe rehearses, and perhaps one day she might audition on an open call.”

“And that’s why she traveled to New York,” I said.

“Yes,” said Cassandra. “She borrowed money from her stepmother, came to New York a year ago, enrolled here, and worked her ass off. She auditioned twice in the last year, but third time’s a charm, and last week she got the spot she’d wanted so much—a Cinderella story.”

“Except for the trip down the castle steps.”

“Sadly, yes.”

“What did Anabelle tell you about her stepmother?” I asked.

“Oh, that one’s a piece of work!” Cassandra blurted. She rose from the folding chair. Latte in hand, she glided across the smooth wood floor and gazed out the floor-to-ceiling windows that stretched the length of the room.

“How so?” I asked.

“Anabelle’s stepmother was a nude dancer,” said Cassandra. “Anabelle didn’t want anyone to know. And neither did her stepmother. The nude dancing brought in enough money for them to buy nice things, you know? So she’d do it in one town, then move to another, try to pretend she was classy, hook up with a man with money. When that didn’t work out, and it never did, she’d move along to another town, where they didn’t know her. She’d go back to nude dancing again, to get the cash built up once more. Then they’d leave again—and so on. You get the picture?”

I nodded. After personally experiencing the costly façade and classless behavior of Darla Branch Hart, I got the picture in living color. What kept me silent a few moments was the sadness I felt on behalf of a talented little twelve-year-old girl being carted from town to town without regard to her well-being—

A thought suddenly occurred to me. An ugly thought—

“Did Anabelle’s stepmother encourage Anabelle to…you know, do the nude dancing, too?”

“She did, I am sorry to tell you. About six months ago, Anabelle broke down during an evening class. She had noticed the college boys in the bar across the street. Saw them gawking up at the dancers as they sometimes do. After the class, she confided in me—”

“I was wondering if you knew about that bar,” I interrupted. “Why don’t you install shades or drapes up here?”

Cassandra waved a dismissive hand. “Dancers must learn how to concentrate before an audience. Any audience.”

“But you said the gawking boys bothered Anabelle.”

“Only because they reminded her of another audience. A much baser audience.”

“I don’t follow—”

“They made her feel as if she were up here nude dancing. That feeling led her to admit to me how conflicted she felt. I urged her to quit the nude dancing, and she did. The next week, she took the job at your coffeehouse to make ends meet. She told me it was harder work for the money, but it was honest work, and it allowed her to stop debasing her talent.

“You see, the nude dancing forced Anabelle to put up walls between her outside self and her true self. Art does not do that. Art brings you closer to your true self. As Anabelle progressed in her studies here, she came to that awareness.”

“I think I understand,” I said.

“The things that exploit you—they are the things that harden you. Anabelle had seen such things harden her stepmother, and she confessed to me that she would do almost anything to avoid that kind of life. She wanted her dancing to mean more—as she remembered it meant to her when she first saw Moby’s Danse—to uplift the spirit, bring it closer to the true self, not alienate it, bring it down.”

I rose and stood with Cassandra. We looked at the darkened windows of Mañana below us. “Life is like that, isn’t it?” I said, “Filled with base brutishness as well as higher callings. The vulgar and the sublime.”

“Yes,” said Cassandra. “And the sooner these girls understand that, the better. The choice is ours to make.”

“Not always,” I said. “Sometimes the choice is forced down upon us.”

“In my view,” said Cassandra “that is what art is for: To lift us up again when we are pressed down.”

I nodded.

Outside the door, the sound of eager feet echoed down the hall then swarmed the rehearsal room. Leotards and leg warmers: my cue to depart. After a thankful wave to Cassandra, I did.

Nineteen