Pas de deux
A ballet, for the festive season
Overture
It begins with a knock on the door. You know the one. You recognise it by how your stomach plummets while the shabby contents of the room around you become abruptly weightless, insubstantial, yet more vivid than they have ever been. Mama is nursing my little sister, and they have come for me. She turns away before the door has even closed.
Act 1
They do not tell me their names. I suppose they have names. Nobody has much to speak of but names we do have. Too many, some of us, and not of our own choosing, much less liking. These two are from the block opposite. The principal one has faded red hair and a smudge-lipped mouth whose vagueness she compensates for with the sharpness of the words that come out of it. Of the other I notice only an incomprehensible motif of a red hand on the bum of her corduroys. They stand in the doorway, taking what light they can from the gloom of the stairwell.
‘Can we take Sasha to the swing-park?’
The answer is always yes.
Red-Head interrogates me, ‘Do you know what arse means? Do you know what tit means? Do you know what cock means?’
When I gaze up at her in bewilderment she shrieks with forced laughter.
‘Let’s play on the slide!’ Red-Hand says.
There is a big slide and a little slide. We always play on the big slide. Sometimes it has a peculiar, not unpleasant smell arising from the sun-warmed sheets of brassy metal where other kids have ‘candle-greased’ it to make it go faster. Red-Head and Red-Hand take turns. One takes up her station at the end of the slide while the other balances me on her hip and climbs the ladder to the top. I am set down on the narrow wooden platform and must reach up high to grasp the bar. She folds her anorak into a rough cushion on the lip of the slide, plumps me down upon it and with a shove and a yell of ‘Off you go!’ launches me over the top. Now I am hurtling towards the ground, too wide-eyed with amazement and terror ever to cry out. As I near the end the other girl pushes herself to her feet and stands off to one side, profound boredom weighting her limbs and suffusing her face. There is nobody to catch me.
Act 2
I am late for school. Mama didn’t think to take me so by the time I arrive several months after everyone else, my classmates have long since determined their standings, which I haplessly disturb as I enter the classroom to a hostile crowd of hard eyes and fierce whispering behind hands. The teacher shows me my place at once but gives me nothing to do. I take a new packet of crayons (I scorn the used ones) and while a little girl called Elena pretends to apply lipstick and eye-shadow to my non-cooperative face I draw a space rocket.
Act 3
I get the swing going as high as it possibly can, leaning back with my small weight until the chains go slack at the height and the swing judders. Except it isn’t a swing anymore: it is not even a seat. It is just a plank of wood upon the air, untethered. This is it. No hesitation. The next time the swing comes forward, as it reaches its zenith I let go, leap into the air’s open arms and hang suspended for the briefest moment as the seat falls back and away and I am free of it all until the Earth catches up to the shock of the sight of me there, my frail body pinned to the sky, and the ground belatedly remembers that it loves me and pulls me roughly back into its embrace. The ongoing dance of attraction between one body and another.
‘Hey, Crasher, you mongrel! You gone into orbit yet? Bet you’re begging those guys to lick you into shape, aren’t you? Space cadet!’ Red-Head, with a baby in her arms.
‘Fuck your brother,’ I say. ‘My mistake: looks like you already did.’
Entr’acte
The assumptions of rogues and rascals! Always looking at the wrong thing. It’s a matter of simple misdirection. Didn’t I become renowned for my technique, my spectacular high leap in particular? You think it’s in the thighs and arse, don’t you? You’re wrong. It’s up here. That’s where it all happens.
Act 4
It was never about the thrill, the danger, much less the applause, the flowers hurled at the stage like rejected proposals and, in time, accusations. It was a matter of testing myself each moment, sensing the turning point and taking one step beyond it. To feel again the solidity of my body, the undeniable fact of my being. Gauging how far you would let me go. How far would I get this time before you noticed I had left your side? As if I could float off altogether and you not claim me, not feel the missing of me. The landing was never easy. But didn’t I hurl myself at you again and again as hard as I could? Yours yours yours!
Finale
These days all it takes is standing up too quickly as the blood pressure hits an all time low.
Ah. Are they ready for me, now? Curtains, then!
‘Puh-yekhali!’ as the Major said, ‘Off we go!’