The Devil of DiRisio (3 page)

I stood up, whipped the red dress over my head and said, “You know, he still hasn’t found a therapist here.”

Anna Marie shrugged. “You said his ticks aren’t that bad any more. Maybe he doesn’t need a therapist, just the right girl.”

That didn’t make me feel any better. I couldn’t be single-handedly responsible for someone else’s mental health. I wasn’t even responsible enough to get my own laundry done.

“That’s too much pressure,” I said as I stepped toward the closet, narrowly escaping a hit in the face from Anna Marie
’s foot
. Our room was too small for high kicks. I shot her an annoyed glare to express this sentiment.

“Have you forgotten everything he did for you back at Bridgeton?” she said, switching to
tendues
,
which kept her feet on the ground. Bridgeton Academy was the prestigious prep school Will and I had attended. Socially, I was
a nobody
at that school, but dating Will for a couple of weeks thrust me into the social stratosphere
, a region I was unfamiliar with.
To make a long story short, there were these three girls, Ashley, Brittany, and Lauren, who were so beautiful, rich, and evil that they were lovingly referred to as the Bitch Brigade. Anyway, these girls made it their life’s work to make my existence as miserable as possible. At one point, they got me drunk, took lewd pictures of me, and posted those pictures on the Internet.

When all this failed, they created a fake video that seemed to prove that I had cheated on a Spanish test. A Spanish test, of all things. I was fluent in Spanish. I love languages. Anyway, the person in the video turned out to be my own sister, Sasha, who looks a lot like me. She had joined forces with the Bitch Brigade in order to save herself from expulsion.
Will single-handedly found the proof that I was set up and didn’t commit an honor violation.

He was my rock, my prince, my savior. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have been accepted to
DiRisio
. I would still be living in
Venton
Heights, possibly the poorest, most violent neighborhood in the United States, without the hope of a high school education or any chance of escaping poverty.

“I’m an awful person. I’m a horrible awful person,” I said as I reflected on everything Will had done for me. “What kind of person rejects a guy that’s as sweet and perfect as Will?”

Maybe I wasn’t really in love with him. Or maybe something inside me knew Will wasn’t as perfect as he seemed.

The next day during
pas
de
deux
class, my complex feelings toward Will continued to plague me. I knew I loved him. Why didn’t I just marry him? I shouldn’t have been thinking about Will while dancing with Pierre. That’s a dangerous thing to do. When dancing with Pierre, I needed to be completely aware and on guard in order to catch myself when he inevitably dropped me.

For the life of me, I couldn’t understand how Pierre had been accepted to such a prestigious school.
Cesare
DiRisio
founded La
Compagnia
Dirisio
Di Roma in 1953 and the academy started 30 years later as a way to train younger and younger dancers in preparation to join the company. The academy now accepted students as young as five-years-old. I joined
DiRisio
in what would be the final year of my education. In my short time here, I had to impress all the instructors enough to receive an invitation to join the company at the end of the year. But that wasn’t going to happen with Pierre for a partner.

I returned my attention to the clumsy oaf a moment too late. I heard a thud. Well, I
wish
I’d only heard it. I also felt it in my hip. Pierre had dropped me once again. I looked up just as he mumbled something in French before yawning, then walking over to the mirror to fix his hair.

“What did you say?” I asked, rubbing my sore hip. He didn’t answer. Pierre didn’t speak English. “Anna Marie, what did he say?”

“Oh, I speak French, now?” she replied sarcastically. “I’ve lived here for two years and I can’t even speak Italian.”
Good point
, I thought.

“
Sebestien
?”
I asked.

“You don’t want to know,
ma
chéri
,” Anna Marie’s partner said with a polite smile as he extended his hand to help me up.

“
Psst
,” I heard from the other side of the room. It was Cynthia. “He said, ‘It looks like the American had one too many doughnuts for breakfast.’” She giggled hysterically until Madame Mara yelled at us to start from the beginning. She looked at me and shook her head as she placed Pierre and me where she wanted us.

“
Sebastien
, how do you say ‘stinky smelling buffoon’ in French?” I whispered.
Sebastien
laughed as if I was joking as he took Anna Marie’s hand and began the next combination. I had to learn French.

Days were so long and stressful at
DiRisio
. Class started every day at seven, but they expected you to be there by at least six thirty, warming up on your own. Advanced ballet was from seven to nine thirty. After a ten-minute break we split up into different specialty areas, depending on what guest instructors were in town for the month. The first month after I arrived we did Flamenco from nine forty to eleven thirty. Then next month, Irish step dancing. Then I went on tour with the company, and when I got back they were finishing belly dancing. Now, someone named Damian Karl had been scheduled to teach us hip-hop.

I remember the Sunday afternoon they posted his name; Will was in Turkey playing in a tournament, so I finally had some free time to study for tests. I couldn’t believe that they never actually taught us. Was that legal? Could this place legally be called a school when all they did was give us textbooks, tell us to read them, and expect us to come on Saturdays to sit for exams?

Could they do that? I guess they could, because they did. Well, in all fairness, they did offer private tutoring in all subject areas every night between six and ten. But after dancing for twelve hours, who wanted to go watch a tutor pull his hair out in frustration because after two months you still didn’t know the difference between ionic and covalent bonds for your chemistry class?
Certainly, not me.
Anyway, on that particular day, I tried to make sense of trigonometry when Anna Marie burst into the room.

“Damian Karl,” she panted out of breath. She must have run all the way from the office to tell me about this person.

“What?”

“Damian Karl is coming here!” She jumped up and down, on the verge of exploding with excitement.

“So?” I asked, not sharing her excitement. At first I thought he was her boyfriend from Minnesota.

“You don’t know who he is?”

“Nope.
Never heard of him.”

“Oh, my God.
That’s unbelievable.” Anna Marie grabbed the remote and turned on the TV. “He’s only one of the greatest hip hop dancers ever. He’s choreographed for Justin Timberlake, Usher, and Janet Jackson,” she explained as she flipped through the channels. “And he’s coming here! I can’t believe we’re
gonna
be learning from Damian Karl!” she added as she stopped on MTV.

“Look, this is a Veronica
Valerio
video. He did the choreography for it.” She turned the volume up and started imitating the moves in the video. She was pretty good too.

Anna Marie kept dancing around our dorm room singing the popular Veronica
Valerio
song that I’d heard several times on the radio. “Come on, let’s dance,” she said, shaking her butt like I had seen girls do back in
Venton
Heights.

“Did you learn that in Minnesota?”

“This is how everyone dances.”

“Not me.”

“You’re kidding me, right?” She stopped dancing and gave me a sideways glance.

“Why? You think because I’m black, I can automatically dance like that?” I sat back down on my bed and opened my math book.

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.” Anna Marie was a little offended.

“Seriously, I can’t dance like that. Never have, never will.”

“
Don’t worry
, Damian Karl will find that inner black girl in you,” she had said as she continued to shake her butt closer and closer to me.

“Get off me!” I had squealed.

Anyway, back to our schedule, from eleven thirty to twelve we had another break, then back for
pas de
deux
class from twelve to two thirty where I prayed and prayed that Pierre only dropped me once or twice. It was way too much to ask for him not to drop me at all. I didn’t think it was physically possible.
Pas de
deux
class was also where I got the daily, not-so-subtle talk from Madame Mara about how
big
I was. One day, after Pierre dropped me for the fifth time, Madame Mara said, “You two are horrible partners.”

“I know that. Maybe we should be paired with other people.” I looked at Pierre for a little back up. Maybe if we both complained, they would give us other
partners. Pierre was too busy admiring his reflection in the mirror, however, and was unable to come to my aid.
Madame Mara looked around the room, then back at me.

“There is no one else. You are too big!” I thought I would die. I felt like a cow. I couldn’t believe she would say that in front of everyone. A few minutes later I told her I had
female issues,
went to the bathroom, and cried.

From three thirty until four thirty, the girls had
pointe
class. And from four thirty until God knows when, we worked with Alejandro, the short, militant Spaniard who hated me but happened to be the current studio director.

“I’m so tired of them calling me fat, Will,” I sobbed in his arms as we sat by the pool in his backyard.

“They’re not calling you fat.”

“Alejandro and Madame Mara said, and I quote, ‘you are too big.’”

“I’m sure they just mean you’re tall. You
are
tall. But I thought that was a good thing for a dancer.”

“It is a good thing to be tall if you’re not fat as well, like me. They said if I was smaller, then Pierre could lift me easier.”

“Maybe Pierre needs to hit the gym. I have no problem lifting you.” Will grinned, thinking he was so clever.

“Will, this is serious. This is my career. I’ll never be invited to join the company if they think I’m fat.”

“But you dance with the company all the time.”

I sighed. I got so tired of explaining the situation to him over and over again. He just didn’t understand the ballet world.

“Will, I’m a member of the
academy
. I’m a student. They invite me to dance with the company once in a while, but I’m not paid. It doesn’t mean I’m a permanent member or will ever be a permanent member.”

Even though I frequently got invitations to join the company for one performance or another, Alejandro still despised me. I think he didn’t like that I wasn’t as skinny as the other dancers. I didn’t believe I was overweight. Ms. Alexander, my instructor back in New Jersey, never said I was overweight. But in Alejandro’s mind, I didn’t look enough like the other dancers. The real reason could have been that I was black. I was the only black female dancer in the academy or the company. I was so tired of race always being an issue.

But I was even more tired of not knowing if it was really an issue or just all in my head. And not having anyone to talk to about it made it worse. Will just didn’t get it. He didn’t have to think about being white. For me, I was reminded about being black every time I looked around the dance studio. I always felt so alone. I didn’t think Alejandro would ever invite me to join the company permanently.

It wasn’t that he
wanted
to invite me to dance with the company here and there. It was that he
had
to. I had excellent technique and I was possibly the best at turning in both the company and the academy.
Ever since I was little, I loved
pirouettes,
chaines
,
fuettes
,
pique turns and every type of turn there was. I considered myself queen of the turns in any direction. Anna Marie, on the other hand, had amazing jumps. Her tiny frame and muscular legs allowed her to leap high in the air, like a little jumping bean. But her small stature prevented her from having a striking elegant extension like Olga, Isabella, or me. Isabella was beautifully graceful but her timing was awful. She danced in her own little bubble without acknowledging anyone or anything else. Not even the music sometimes.

I always felt Beatriz was at a disadvantage because she had been dancing with her brother
Acacio
as her partner since she was six. That long, close relationship allowed them to have a great connection on stage. They flowed as one. But she had been dancing with him for so long she didn’t feel comfortable without him. Not only was she virtually incapable of dancing with another partner, she was terrified of doing solos. Also, it kind of freaked me out when they had to pretend they were in love during a dance. They were brother and sister.
Ew
!
Agnes, Raquel, and Cynthia still needed to improve their technique somewhat and really couldn’t compete with Beatriz, Anna Marie, Isabella or me.