Incarnate

The chill of the auditorium intensifies with every soft step toward center stage. Goosebumps scatter across my skin despite the thick layers of body shimmer I scrubbed on until my arms were tinged as pink as my sheer tutu. They gleam now in the harsh spotlights. I feel the piercing gazes from the sea of dark faces before me, sliding up my toned legs, assessing my delicate tutu fanning out from my tiny waist, and savoring the youthful glow still emanating from my flushed cheeks. Years ago, I traded girlhood and friendships for this crowd of strangers who only know me as beautiful.

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I wobble—my pointe shoes slip briefly on the vinyl floor—and the audience recoils. A man purses his lips, eyes narrowing. I swallow, my heartbeat pounding against my stiff bodice, rattling my teeth. I owe the audience a perfect performance. That’s the deal. I dazzle them in exchange for something I won’t find later tonight in my desolate apartment, the calendar on the fridge still void of get-togethers with friends, the dust thickening on the guest room’s bed sheets. I clench my jaw into a smile and lift my arms. I stare, unblinking, at my strawberry milk nail polish on my hand on my arm extended one hundred thirty-five degrees from my torso. Pointe shoes fifteen inches apart. Chin tilted up, ninety degrees from my neck. I am so still I cease to exist.

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Classical music flicks a switch in me. My body flows as smoothly as the violins, as lightly as the flutes bouncing between octaves. I am beauty incarnate, lulling the audience until one glassy-eyed woman clutches her heart and sighs. That sigh is why I train twelve hours a day, six days a week to perfect the art of making the unnatural seem natural. My stick-straight legs flutter across the vinyl floor in time with the piano keys, quadriceps flexing so tightly they burn as I lift my leg and thrust my arms up and back, arching my spine in such a sharp curve it begs to succumb to gravity. Gasps course through the auditorium at this elegant pose and the sweet validation of strangers rushes through my blood. I clench my abdominals and drag myself up like a swimmer wheezing for air.

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Piano flurries up the octaves. Delighted audience members spring to their feet, their thunderous applause deafening me. They demand more, more, like perfection is effortless. Like I am merely a wind-up toy whose spine was wrenched in a violent twist backstage so I can pirouette two, five, eight, twelve consecutive times. They think they are at a ballet performance. They’re wrong. This is an exhibition of years in the studio, my ballet coach shouting to jump higher, higher, my fistfuls of hair when my twirls are a millisecond too slow, sharpening the definition of perfection until it slices my mind into shreds. They don’t understand that these pirouettes—my skirt billowing like flags on Independence Day, arms swooped over my head in a false halo—is all I have to show for rising onto my tiptoes again and again until my toenails crack down the middle in a jagged, bloody line.

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Around.

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‘Round.

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‘Round.

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Delighted faces flash in and out of sight. Air whips my cheek. Hands on hips. Leg up. Leg down. ‘Round. ‘Round. If I sweat I do not notice. I am light. I am grace. My bodice tightens, crushing my breasts into my lungs. The crowd cheers and fury consumes me. The spotlights enlarge and burn until my corneas erupt into flames.

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I scream.

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Flung to the side mid-pirouette, my body smashes against the floor so hard that snapped planks of wood protrude up around me like an altar lined with stalagmites. On my broken knees I scream at the wide-eyed audience until the spotlights shatter and falling glass shards slice a million cuts across my skin. Maggots spill out, a tsunami of juicy creatures that squirm down my legs and chew a gaping hole into my side to expose crumbling yellow ribs, soaking my tutu in maroon watercolors. Blood trickles down my ass like tears. The stitches on my bodice pop one by one. It falls and my palms cover my breasts but they swell and burst, two bloody, torn bags hanging from my chest, splattering crimson and chunks of meat onto the petrified front row. A woman shrieks but I overpower her with a screech that blows out my teeth.

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I heave. Silence hangs in the air. I look up to a sea of horrified faces, recoiling back into their seats.

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I haul myself up and brush the maggots off me. Center stage, pointe shoes together, arms extended in a flourish. I bow. Pink saliva drips from my chin.

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I walk offstage, glass crunching under my pointe shoes.