Calling Card
My nose crinkled as I opened the door to the dance studio. A mixture of stale sweat, stinky feet, and vanilla body spray mingled to create this unique scent. Blindfold me, tell me to take a whiff, and I would know exactly where I was. It was the first time in months since I had stepped inside. Cristina, who had just turned thirteen, requested that I drop her off and pick her up for dance class rather than taking my seat with the other moms. We would sit straight-backed, facing our daughters, wholly invested in the height of a leg in grand battement. The arch of a diminutive foot extending from the slim stem of a limb, elegant as a pale pink tea rose, could hold our attention for hours. But lately I had been banished to the parking lot as an assertion of Cristina’s burgeoning independence. I knew her exploratory steps away from me were a healthy development, but it was painful. I longed for the days when she would crane her neck as she danced, making sure I had not abandoned her. Our eyes would meet, and she would enchant me with her adoring gaze: Watch me, Mommy. Watch me dance. Watch me do everything.
Arriving too early to wait in the car that day, I sneaked past Cristina and her fellow students practicing their grand jete´s. The crescendo of Miss Pauline’s voice set the preposterous pace for the dancers propelling their bodies across the studio floor one by one: “1 and 2, and 1 and 2, and 1 and 2 and GO!” The rhythm seemed impossible to follow, and for a mere mortal, it was. But ballet dancers were miraculous; they transformed the brutal into beauty.
Head down, undetected, I slipped into a chair in front of the windows of Studio Two, where Ballet I dancers stood at the barre awaiting Ms. Natalia’s instruction. Even though the eldest girl could not have been more than nine, these dancers were already a study in poise. Their hands gracefully dusted the wooden barre. Hope, self-doubt, discipline, and passion lived in each of those tiny, delicate fingertips.
The little ones practiced their tendus to Musetta’s Waltz. Puccini’s playful melody and the dancers’ preciousness warmed me and softened my edges, like a generous pour of Sangiovese. Ms. Natalia eventually turned off the music and clapped sharply twice, signaling the end of class. The dancers lined up in front of her to take their leave. Each girl curtsied before Ms. Natalia, honoring the studio’s ballet mistress with a “thank you” before departing. Ms. Natalia nodded solemnly to each one in return, but with a special hint of a smile for one of the dancers. Natalia’s new darling. The coveted position that Cristina had enjoyed before she grew up, grew older, grew breasts.
The door to Studio One burst open and the air buzzed with adolescent frenzy. My pulse quickened as the older girls’ collective annoyance permeated the atmosphere. Their complaints were myriad; So and-so is performing two solos and the rest of us only one; So-and-so stepped on my foot purposely; So-and-so clipped her toenails right over my duffel bag. Dancing together from the time they were four years old, the girls bickered, competed, and loved one another with the familiarity of siblings.
I took one look at Cristina and knew I had roughly forty seconds to get her from the studio to my car before she erupted into tears. Instead of berating me for not waiting outside, her eyes softened in relief and her lower lip quivered at the sight of me. Her eyes glassy, her cheeks red, wispy little forehead curls escaping from her bun, she was my baby again. I gave her an imperceptible shake of my head. Do not cry, I implored her with my eyes. She nodded and sat down heavily to rip off her pointe shoes. She handed me the stinky, pink satin bundle and set about peeling the tufts of lambswool from her swollen, sweaty toes. Even in that condition, I would have taken her feet in my hands and rubbed the ache from them.
I grabbed her bag as Cristina murmured goodbyes with a fake smile.
“Almost,” I whispered to her as we walked out the door, a false smile plastered to my own face. “Almost to the car.”
The car had always been our sanctuary, where tears could flow freely. Right or wrong, I had been instructing my daughter for almost a decade to hold back her tears when it came to ballet. There was no crying in ballet.
“Okay,” I said, closing the car door and turning to her. “Let loose.”
A sob that gutted me escaped from her rosebud lips. “I hate my body! I hate it! I’m so fat, Mom. I’m fat and I need to lose weight. Or I’m not dancing anymore. I can’t.”
She didn’t mean it. She would never stop dancing. Asking Cristina to stop dancing was asking her not to breathe. But that she hated her body, I had no doubt.
“Where is this coming from, honey? What happened?”
Nothing had to have happened to make her say these things about herself. Day after day, Cristina faced the mirror, with her newly developed curves staring back at her, alongside exceptional, pre-adolescent dancers who had been moved up to Cristina’s level, and the handful of girls who had kept dancing into their teens. These older girls were the ones who were sanctioned by the ballet world to stay and dance. Stay as long as you’d like, I imagined the ballet gods vetting these skinny girls. Look at your flat chests and bottoms, broomsticks for legs! Positively glorious with your jutting collarbones and narrow hips! Brava!
Cristina would receive no such benediction from the gods. My daughter had the unfortunate fate of growing into a lovely young woman with curves.
“After class Miss Pauline pulled me to the side and told me I needed a better bra!” Cristina snapped at me from the passenger seat. “Do you have any idea how embarrassed I am right now? Why didn’t you get me better bras?”
I didn’t know you needed better bras! I wanted to shout at her. I didn’t know because you don’t let me come into the studio anymore! You don’t talk to me about anything! You disappear into your bedroom as soon as you get home, and I don’t get to see your face, let alone your body in a leotard! Or maybe I didn’t know because I’m working so hard for us – for you – so you can keep dancing, and I can keep paying the bills! I don’t think about your bras!
Instead of saying any of this, I took a deep breath and gripped the steering wheel so tightly that my forearms cramped. I was desperate to make it better because this was all my fault, in more ways than one. “We can go tomorrow afternoon to get you better bras. What kind of bra did she say to get?”
“Bras for girls with giant boobs!” she roared, snot shooting from her nose. She wiped at her face, exhaled, and then said softly, “I really don’t know what kind of bra. One that holds my chest better.”
“I’m sorry, honey,” I answered, pulling into the garage. “I am so sorry. We’ll get you new bras and a few new leos too. We’ll go to Allegro and you can get whatever you want.”
The promise of a visit to her favorite dance boutique soothed her. A new Yumiko leotard to make you smile? Sure, what’s another hundred and thirty dollars? Throw in a new pair of pointe shoes, since we made the trip all the way here. Might as well get new jazz shoes, too. Oh, you like those warmup pants? You can get them! Get anything you want! Just please don’t start hiding yourself in those thrifted XXL ratty tee shirts again. Please eat some dinner, just a few bites. Please don’t start that calorie restriction business again.
Restricting her calories had been Cristina’s futile attempt to shrink her breasts. They were her birthright, handed down from my grandmother, to me, to her. Mounds of fat and tissue, obsessed over by men, envied by some women, but the scourge of the ballerina.
“Okay, thank you, Mommy.” She stepped from the parked car, taking her dance bag with her, but leaving her school bag in the backseat.
And just like that, I was Mommy again.
Later, I attempted to bread pork chops as twilight covered the sky the way a bruise spreads over flesh. My insides burned. My hands shook. It wasn’t fair. My prayers had gone unanswered. It may seem ridiculous that I had bothered a very overburdened God with a plea for my daughter to have small breasts, but large-breasted women would understand. Men ogling me, a child. Cat calls. Not running track in high school for fear of the jokes. Bathing suit shopping. Unwanted cleavage. The last thing I wanted was to pass on my breasts to my daughter, but heredity had screwed us both.
Year after year, I had inspected Cristina’s body with a critical eye. I was certain she would be petite, small-breasted, lithe. I was almost smug with it. But then puberty rang our doorbell and overstayed her welcome. Cristina had bunions on both big toes, missing toenails, and perpetual blisters. She was proud of these imperfections and wore them like combat scars earned from a legendary battle. Bunions she displayed like trophies; her budding breasts she abhorred.
It’s not rational, one might say, to blame myself for my daughter growing breasts. But what is rational about motherhood? What is rational about the female body? We are walking miracles, givers of life, and yet there is nothing on this earth that has suffered more critique, derision, and violation than the female body. With these dark thoughts in mind, I turned off the stove and abandoned the pork chops in the frying pan. Cristina would not eat them, anyway. I opened the door to the basement, descended into the darkness, and hoped the depths below would consume my sobs.
I sank down to my knees on the carpeted floor and placed my head in my hands. My shoulders shook with hatred for my breasts. My guilt for having passed down these disgusting things to my own daughter overwhelmed me. I curled my hands into fists and pressed them into the soft globes of flesh that had beleaguered me my entire life.
Male silverback gorillas beat their chests for many reasons. They drum to establish their dominance in the hierarchy; they form fists and beat to signal threat, or to attract a mate. They beat their bodies in excitement too, not just aggression. Female gorillas beat their chests more often in a row with another female, or understandably, when annoyed with their offspring. Interestingly, each gorilla’s thumping is unique, a rhythmic drumming that acts as a personal calling card.
What would give a human female reason to beat her own chest? I had no quarrels with the females in my band. Cristina wasn’t an annoyance. Yet still, with the strength of a silverback, I brought both fists to my chest and pummeled the flesh that had once provided my newborn baby milk and comfort. Three, four, five times I beat my chest, again and again, a punishing rhythm that became my calling card.
Beating my chest in this freakish and primal way added to my shame. I had been ashamed of my breasts my whole life. I wished to tear them from my body, as if they were foreign appendages that didn’t belong to me.
I punched in pity and anger for the little girl I had been who lived within the loneliness of a woman’s body. Even my own mother had made jokes about my breasts. I lived in fear as an adolescent that my father was embarrassed and ashamed of me because of my curves. I beat my chest with the accumulation of five decades of shame for a body I despised. I cried and thumped my chest until I realized that if I continued, I could hurt myself.
Spent and frightened of the depths of my self-hate, I walked up the stairs, finished frying the pork chops, and knocked on Cristina’s bedroom door with an invitation to please come eat some food. Just a few bites.
At the dinner table, she dipped her pork pieces into applesauce to please me. We smiled at each other wanly; both trapped in bodies that didn’t suit us. Maybe one might think this was odd behavior, to just carry on with the evening after my vicious bout of self-flagellation. Or maybe one is a mother and understands that the show must go on.
Cristina spent her high school years believing she was a gorilla dancing among gazelles.
I could do nothing to convince her otherwise. But she kept at it. She kept dancing, kept breathing. When it was time to apply for colleges, I knew that Cristina would attend college as a dance major or not attend at all. She chose a school based on the virility of its dance program, and moved two hundred miles away from me.
Her university’s dance department put on a spring showcase which I attended at the end of her freshmen year. My heart thudded in my chest as I chose a new seat in this new place. I hadn’t seen my daughter dance in almost a year, and I was eager to see her take the stage.
The house lights dimmed, and a spotlight shone upon two dancers to open the show. I gasped quietly in wonder and awe at the figures in silhouette. Women’s bodies. Gorgeous, full, round, mature females. Of course! A college dance program meant older dancers and developed bodies!
My daughter finally took the stage for her classical ballet piece with seven other dancers. I could always tell where she stood on stage even before the lights came up. There was something different about her. I could feel it. The music began, and the spotlight found Cristina as she lifted her arms slowly, elegantly, and then pressed into her toes to rise en pointe.
She soared across the stage alongside her newfound sisters. My daughter radiated unbridled confidence and feminine power. She had come out of hiding, shoulders pulled back, daring anyone to tell her that her body was too much. I stopped myself from screaming out her name in triumph.
I was in tears of joy by the last dance number of the showcase. It was a hip-hop routine, and I bobbed my head and tapped my foot to the beat. Cristina would be mortified, but the dancers’ energy was infectious. Bodies moved organically; buoyant breasts bounced under expressive, joyful faces. Restrictions had been lifted – it was time to dance and live with abandon.
Cristina searched for me in the crowd as she returned to the stage for the final bow. I wanted to stand and call to her “I’m here, baby! I saw you! You were beautiful! You’ve always been beautiful, and now you know it too!” I settled for knowing I would embrace her and whisper those words in her ear soon, very soon.
Audience members around me stood and made their way out of the theater to congratulate their dancers. I needed a few minutes to myself. Could I dare let my guard down now, and believe that my daughter had finally accepted herself just as she was? I prayed once more to God, this time that Cristina – and I – would find peace with the body that was hers, rather than begging God to give her a smaller one.
It was time to make peace with someone else, too. I sat back in my chair and held my purse to my chest, leaving just enough room for my hands to fit between. Instead of making fists, I placed my hands flat over my chest and spread my fingers wide. I held my breasts in acceptance and apology. I promised myself to dance and live with abandon, like the beautiful young women on stage. I would beat my chest in celebration only; the calling card of one who vowed to never live in shame again.
-Kathy M
Kathy M is a writer living in the Chicagoland area. She is passionate about writing and reading women's stories.