A Wigwam for a Goose's Bridle

She loved her ballet classes.  She found so much joy in her light pink tights, her baby blue leotard and those pretty ballet slippers she wasn’t allowed to wear outside the hall lest she ruin the suede sole.  Her ballet gear would accompany her to preschool in a beige bag, ready for changing into at the end of the day before joining the line of little misses, standing two by two, to be led off to class, practising good toes and naughty toes.  She loved most of all when they pretended to be elegant kittens: curling up asleep in a ball, “waking” and stretching, crawling across the floor in fluid, classic motion to find the invisible saucer of milk to be lapped.  

There was a sick room at preschool; just a bed with cushions in a little room with grey carpet.  A teacher would take her in there to help her change.  A 4 year old sometimes has difficulty getting on a pair of tights.  They are quite tricky things, tights.  Once changed, her clothes would be folded for her, and placed back into the beige bag so she had all her things for when her mother or father picked her up from the hall.

Then one day, a girl was sick, and the sick room was called upon to live up to its name.  When it came time to change for ballet, the sick room was still engaged, so the little girl asked for her clothes so that she could go into the bathroom and change herself.  She always was one for precocious independence.  

Lunch time was almost over, so the main room inside was still deserted, as the teacher started to roll up her tights and told the little girl to change in here.  She didn’t want to.  Years later she would still recall an incredible fear, complete aversion at the idea of changing her outfit in the open, where people may see her, especially when she knew the lunch bell would ring any minute and a flood of preschoolers would flow through the door.  She didn’t understand why the teacher refused to let her change herself in the bathrooms.  It couldn’t possibly be that difficult to do alone.  She was a big girl now. 

The teacher stood her ground, (or was it his ground? The little girl can’t remember, she can only see the hands in her memory, holding the ready stockings, and she can’t tell if they belong to a male or female) and declared that the little girl must change there and then, immediately, or would not be going to ballet that afternoon.  It cost the little girl dearly to give up an afternoon to which she looked forward all week, but she just could not do it.  She could not bring herself to get changed somewhere so exposed, where anyone who came in might see.

The other little misses lined up in their pairs, with one girl missing, and traipsed off to class without her.

The next memory the little girl has is of her mother being very angry.  Part of it would have been that she was called in earlier than usual to pick her up.  Maybe she had even had to leave work early.  She was most angry, however, at the teacher’s report.  The little girl didn’t want to go to ballet today, she was told.  We don’t know why, she just refused to go.  In the car, she fumed at the little girl.  It cost a lot to send her to ballet lessons.  They didn’t mind, because they thought she liked it, and they wanted her to be happy, but it was extremely ungrateful to decide you don’t want to go, just on a whim.  There would be no more ballet lessons, given that they were so unappreciated.

The little girl just sat and cried.  She cried because the teacher had lied to her mother.  She cried because her mother was berating her and even a 4 year old can feel the injustice in being falsely accused.  She cried because she still felt the fear of getting changed in the open.  She cried because she didn’t know how to tell her mother her side of the story, how to explain the fear.  Even if she did, she wasn’t sure she’d be believed.  After all, what mother expects her child’s preschool teacher to lie to them?  Mostly, she cried because she realised her ballet dream was over.

Some years on, watching The Nutcracker at Christmas time, the mother asked the girl why she was crying.  It wasn’t even the sad part yet.  The truth came out – she was heartsick watching others do what she had wanted to do so badly.  The mother said she could have done so.  If she wanted it so badly, why had she not wanted to go that day?  She explained the situation and her mother laughed.  How silly you were, she said, to be so worried.  And how silly not to just tell me the truth at the time.  I’m sure I would have understood!  These years later, ballet classes were resumed, but it was too late to make a professional ballerina of the little girl, and her puppy fat and lack of popularity weren’t at home amongst the pre-teen bitchiness found in a dance class.

Years later, the little girl would feel at peace about missing out on the dream as she came to realise there were too many dreams in life for them all to come to fruition. Yet every single time she saw a ballerina dance, she would experience that same heartsickness, a burning jealousy searing through her chest, fighting back the tears as she wished it were her.  She would often find herself dancing when alone, pretending to be Clara or Coppelia or Aurora or Juliet, humouring the baby ballerina still hiding somewhere within.  And her thoughts would flash back to that one momentous day, and she would find herself wondering what it was that caused a 4 year old to be so self-conscious, so worried about modesty, about her body being seen, so fearful of exposure.  Surely it’s not normal at that age.