The Queen Bee of Bridgeton (2 page)

My heart raced. My hands were hot and slippery with sweat. A knot developed in my throat making it impossible for me to utter a sound.  What could I possibly say to get out of this? The imminent doom of a life without a high school education pounded my thoughts, and gave me an agonizing headache.  What would I do without a high school diploma? Sasha was going to kill me.  After we'd worked so hard to make it out of the projects, I had somehow figured out a way to ruin it. Well, in all fairness, I didn't ruin it.  It was completely not my fault.  Ashley, Brittany, and Lauren set me up and I knew it. Together queen Lauren and her
hoochies
made up what’s called the Bitch Brigade of Bridgeton. The most feared girls in the school. But why did they have it in for me?  Why were they so determined to ruin my life?  In order to understand, I'd have to start from the beginning.  And I guess the beginning started with dance. 

I remember the day I decided to become a ballerina. I wrote a poem for a third grade contest and won free tickets to see the Houston Dance Company perform in Newark. Actually, the poem was more like a prayer asking God to take me out of the nightmare called
Venton
Heights. My family had only lived there for two weeks, but I had already been beaten up five times for the offense known as "acting white." Because I didn't know the slang or the words to the latest rap song apparently I wasn't black enough.

We had to move to
Venton
Heights because the bank foreclosed on our little white house with the red shutters in Jersey City. For two years it was my mother, father, Sasha, and I sharing a two bedroom apartment until my mother kicked my father out. There were a number of reasons why my parents’ marriage didn't work, but basically, he just wasn't reliable. My mother couldn't rely on him to pay the bills or pay her enough respect to not cheat on her.

At the dance performance, I remembered being completely mesmerized by the movements of the performers. They didn't just dance, they floated like angels.  As they twirled around and leaped ten feet in the air, I could practically see myself on stage with them in the pretty costumes. Every arm movement and leg placement inspired me.  What would it be like to move like that? I could barely sit as I started to imitate some of the steps. After the third dirty look from the person next to me, I brought my knees to my chin, hugged my legs, and continued to stare at the stage in awe.

When I got home from the performance, I looked in the phone book and found Ms. Alexander's School of Dance. As the only ballet school near
Venton
Heights, I knew it would be my only opportunity to receive any ballet instruction.

"Please, Mommy, please. If I don't take dance lessons I'll die!" I pleaded with her late one night when she came home from work.  It had to be after midnight but I stayed awake sliding around the kitchen in my socks trying to replicate the movements I'd seen from those angelic dancers. I stretched my legs and flailed my arms and spun around on my tip toes.  I tried to look graceful.  I probably looked ridiculous.

"Baby girl, I just can't afford it.  You know times are tight for me and your father right now.  Can't you just take a dance class at school?"

"Yeah, if I
wanna
be in a rap video or something.
  They don't teach this kind of dancing.  This is ballet, Mommy. It's special and it's beautiful and it takes years of practice. Ms. Alexander's school is my only chance, Mommy, please."  My mother sat at the kitchen table, slid her shoes off and massaged her feet.  She had worked three double shifts in a row just to make this month's rent. Then, first thing in the morning, she had to go to one of her cleaning jobs. 

My mother closed her eyes, sighed, and said, "I'll see what I can do." Two days later, she brought home a pair of second hand ballet slippers.  It was all she could do.

She gave me those slippers thinking they would appease me long enough to forget this ridiculous dream.  She had every reason to feel that way.  She thought this new found desire was just like when I was five and I begged her to buy me a dell. 
No, not the computer.
  In fact, I didn't even know what a dell was.  I'd just been singing "The Farmer in the Dell" and I decided I wanted to be a farmer so, naturally, I needed a dell. Or, when I was seven and I had just watched Star Wars and desperately needed a light saber because I felt the force and I was definitely a
jedi
.  She thought I would grow out of it, but oh, how wrong she was.  I borrowed books and videos about ballet from the library.  I collected cans until I had enough money to buy a leotard.  I even started hanging out in front of Ms. Alexander's studio watching through the window and imitating everything they did.  One day, Ms. Alexander herself grabbed me by the shirt collar and dragged me inside.

"Why you stand window stare?  No free show!"  I was so scared I thought I would wet myself.  I had difficulty understanding her thick Asian accent.  She would be so much easier to understand if she used a preposition once in a while.  I learned later that Ms. Alexander was Japanese.  She preferred to go by her husband's last name because Americans could never say her real name properly.

"I'm sorry. 
I..
I'm sorry...I didn't know I couldn't watch…I'm sorry."  I kept repeating myself like a babbling idiot.  At eight years old, I was already almost her height, but her demeanor scared me senseless.  Not to mention the fact that she carried a walking stick.  It wasn't a cane.  It was a stick.  It was a huge stick nearly as tall as she was and she looked like she might beat me with it.

"What you want?" she demanded still holding my shirt with one hand and her stick with the other.  She was skinny as a rail but so strong I couldn't twist myself loose.  I didn't know what to say.  I looked around the lobby trying to find an excuse as to why I would be standing outside every day staring in the window.  Nothing came to me.  I got a glimpse into her office and saw papers lying on the floor.  The mess wouldn't have bothered me at all, but I could just hear Sasha's voice in my head telling me for the tenth time in any particular day to clean up my side of the room.  She could be such a neat freak sometimes. Then it hit me.

"A job.
I..
I want a job.  Do you need someone to clean?"

"No."

"I…I work for really cheap.  In fact, you can just pay me with lessons."

"You dance?"

"I want to."  Suddenly she dragged me down the hall and into one of the empty classrooms.  There were mirrors everywhere, and the wooden floor was so smooth anyone could move like an angel on it.  She let me go then walked over to the stereo.

"Move," she barked after she turned on some music.

"What?"

"You too old.
  I no teach if you no move."

"Move where?"

"Dance!" she yelled.  I jumped and then started moving to the music.  She played this beautiful enchanting song I didn't know.  Later I learned it was the adagio for Beethoven's sonata
Pathetique
.  It instantly became one of my favorites.  I closed my eyes and moved to the music.  I didn't know what the movements were or what the steps were called; I just did what I saw all the other dancers do.  When I opened my eyes, Ms. Alexander was gone.  I thought I must have been so bad she couldn't stand to look at me anymore.  I waited and waited.  When the song ended I turned to leave the studio, head hanging low with shame and embarrassment when suddenly, she appeared.

"Take this," she said, as she handed me a bundle of leotards, tights, and ballet slippers.  "Come tomorrow.  Clean mirrors, sweep floors, throw away old magazines.  Take beginner class.  You clean, you dance, that's it, now go."

And that's how it started.  Soon I spent more time in Mrs. Alexander's studio than in
Venton
Heights. And that was fine with me.  Dancing was, without a doubt, the best thing to ever happen to me.  It even got me into Bridgeton.

Bridgeton was never my dream. It was Sasha's. She was obsessed with using her brain to escape the ghetto. Starting in fifth grade, she applied every four months like clockwork. She got accepted in seventh grade but only with a partial scholarship. She kept applying until she was finally awarded a full scholarship for her sophomore year. The next year, my sophomore year and her junior year, I applied and got in as well on an arts scholarship.  And while Bridgeton was a big improvement over Grover Cleveland High School with its metal detectors, drive by shootings, and constantly overflowing toilets, I still never felt safe or comfortable. I always felt like something was bubbling just under the surface of Bridgeton's pristine façade waiting to attack me. So I invoked the power of anonymity as a protection. As far as the Bridgeton populace was concerned, I was invisible. To anyone who was anyone at Bridgeton, I was no one.

Invisibility had its side effects at times, though. For example, one December day, right after the dismissal bell, I was too afraid to ask Lauren
DeHaven
to move out of the way so I could get into my locker. I just stood there silently hoping she'd move eventually, but she never even noticed me. She just stood there twirling her cream knit scarf with green fringes around while chatting with Greg
Smythe
.

"So the money is going to the starving children of Honduras," she was saying in reference to her latest philanthropic fundraiser. Among Bridgeton students, Lauren
DeHaven
was considered the patron saint of altruism. She was constantly raising money or collecting food or organizing benefit walks of one type or another. Most people completely loved her, but to me, she just never seemed genuine. Sasha thought that all the fundraising was just a way for Lauren to draw attention away from her lackluster grades on her college applications and had nothing to do with actually making the world a better place.

"Wait a minute. At the school-wide assembly you said it was for the children of Haiti," George replied.

"Did I?
Silly me."
She touched his shoulder playfully and tossed her golden brown hair. "I get all those little hell-holes confused. Anyway, do you think you can get your parents to donate a few thousand?" 

"Well, that depends, LD. What's in it for me?"

It wasn't like I was afraid of either of
them,
I just always avoided talking to Bridgeton students. I had no idea how to even hold a conversation with a Bridgeton student. We had nothing in common, had none of the same experiences in life. I was afraid I'd say something that would reveal where I really came from.

Finally, I just left without accessing my locker. It wasn't until I was on the bus on the way to dance rehearsal that I realized I'd left my
pointe
shoes in my locker. I slammed my head on the seat in front of me. I needed those shoes. We were doing final rehearsals for the Nutcracker and I was playing Clara. Ms. Alexander would kill me if I showed up unprepared.

It was after five by the time I made it back to campus. Thankfully, all the students were gone. Or so I thought.

As I walked along the hall with sugar plume faeries dancing in my mind, the door to the janitor's closet swung open and smacked me in the face. I sailed to the ground with an ungraceful thud.  While on the ground clutching my forehead, a pretty redheaded girl and a cute blond boy stepped out. I recognized the boy although I didn't know his name. Two weeks ago I'd seen him crawling out from under the bleachers with his pants in his hand followed by a different girl.