twinkletoes

I snapped. Not mentally, not emotionally, but physically. I went down, I collapsed like stack of books being kicked over. Next the ambulances came, sirens wailing louder than I was. They put me in a stretcher and carried me into the back of one of the screaming vehicles. As I lay there it all hit me.

I saw my first pair of ballet shoes; pink, with a small bow on the top, size eight. Children’s eight, that is. I was only three and I could hardly remember it. I saw my teacher though, my first dance class. Miss Deanna. She was young, straight out of college, just trying to make some money. They say those who can’t do, teach, and that’s what she did. She called me twinkle-toes. I remember dancing my heart out in that class wanting so much to be like her when I was older, so I stuck with it.

I could hear the radio chatter and the paramedics talking in quiet voices trying to keep me calm. They kept asking me how bad the pain was, then they would reassure me and say “Hang in there, we’re almost to the hospital, just stay awake now.” I did, but the pain overwhelmed me.

As I looked up toward the roof of the car, the next thing that came across my mind was the year we moved. It took months to find a new dance school and I had to be in charge of my training. I was only nine or ten years old, but I had high hopes and dreams of dancing Juilliard and later in the New York City Ballet. My parents left the garage to me and we improvised a studio just for me. On one wall leaned a mirror cloudy with age, and up against it, some rusty old pipes fastened together to make a barre. Despite the unprofessional nature of it all, I slaved away in there for hours each day. I peeled pieces of skin the size of quarters off my feet, and my shoes were constantly stained with blood.

Blood. Ew. Blood. I lay there, trying not to look down at my leg, which was probably gushing blood. As I had landed that leap, something had gone wrong and my bone snapped and shot out of my leg. The idea of it made me want to scream and retch at the same time.

I looked up at the EMT’s , my face filled with misery. One man was applying more gauze and bandages to my leg while the other just smiled at me and attempted to console me, but it wasn’t working. I closed my eyes and tried to block the pain out of my thoughts.

I gazed into the back of my mind, and I saw my first pair of pointe shoes. Unlike my previous ballet shoes, these were for big girls. I had been waiting to dance in these shoes for years. Seeing the older girls dancing and leaping on the very tips of their toes made me want it more. It made me want to try harder and dance better so that I could finally be able to “dance in their shoes” and go en pointe. The thrill wore off after a while and it was back to the tough training and labor we pushed through day after day, pirouette after pirouette. There were times that I wanted to quit and times that I did, but I always ended up back in that studio doing extra work before class.

Just thinking of the pain I went through brought my mind back to my leg. It was throbbing and I felt so weak from who knows what, blood loss maybe? But we were finally to the hospital. The paramedics unloaded me and set a stuffed animal Dalmatian on the side of the stretcher. What was I, five? Yet it made me feel a little better.

I’d lost it all: my ability to dance, my scholarship to Juilliard, my dreams of being in the NYC Ballet, everything. My life revolved around my ballet and my one talent, how could it all be gone? After all I’d lost, I gained one thing, not a lesson, not a new outlook on life, but a stupid stuffed Dalmatian. Even so, I clung to it like it was the only thing I had left.