Chapter 15 Nutcracker
Nutcracker
The season was upon them. The scented boughs and glowing ornaments. Illuminated trees. The neighbors across the way were fully lit, their garden an enchanted forest, their porch, roof, and windows outlined in white lights.
“Why can’t we have lights?” Sophie had asked when she was little.
Debra told her, “You know why—because we don’t celebrate!”
Her husband, Richard, corrected, “You mean we don’t celebrate Christmas.”
“Isn’t that what I said?”
“You make it sound like we don’t celebrate anything.”
Wide-eyed, Sophie had listened to this exchange.
She must have thought her house would remain forever dark with her parents at cross purposes, but that was not her family’s fate.
Years later, each girl had two menorahs—one at Debra’s house and one at the condo Richard shared with his fiancée.
Of course this family celebrated. They lit double sets of candles.
There were presents to bestow. Gift cards for teachers, cute earrings, books, plush animals for friends at school—and this year Secret Santa for Level Seven at the studio.
Sophie should have picked the gift, but she had no time, because of Nutcracker.
Oh, Nutcracker. That tinkling celesta. That supply list for performances.
Lipstick poppy red or scarlet NOT pink, coral, etc.
False eyelashes required Level Seven. This was Christmas for Lily and Sophie, who had risen through the ranks to become a Spanish dancer and a waltzing snowflake.
They couldn’t have Christmas lights at home, but every winter, they rehearsed the holiday.
—
When had Debra signed on for all of this?
Just a few years before, her girls had been seedlings and bees.
They had been tap-dancing vaudevillians tossing and sometimes catching hats and canes at Nicole’s World of Dance.
Then one fateful summer, Sophie’s best friend, Eden, switched out and Sophie had followed her to Mishkin Ballet Academy, also known as MBA.
“She is behind,” Nastia Mishkin had informed Debra, after Sophie’s audition at age ten, “but maybe possible.” Then abruptly Nastia turned to seven-year-old Lily, who was just tagging along, and ordered, “Take off your shoes.”
Standing at the barre in socks, Lily’s eyes filled with light as Nastia declared, “Pretty feet.”
And now? Class four times a week for thirteen-year-old Lily and five times a week including all of Saturday for sixteen-year-old Sophie.
Dinner in the car, and homework late—this was their life.
Eden was long gone. She played lacrosse and had a boyfriend with a car.
However, Debra’s daughters never wavered.
They loved the turning, and the pirouetting, the pointe work blistering their toes.
One by one, their other pastimes fell away.
They quit piano, cello, tennis, even skating.
“You have to be on board,” a mom named Joy had warned when Debra began riding the couch in Nastia’s waiting room. “You’ve gotta be all in.”
“It’s true,” said another mom named Chelsea.
“The kids get stepped on.” Debra had been concerned to hear this—and then shocked, realizing that Chelsea meant it literally.
“Nastia walks into the studio when the girls are stretching on the floor, and when they do their straddles, she’ll step on their butts to push them down. ”
“You saw her?”
“I think she wanted us to,” said Joy. “It was like a test for all the parents.”
Debra had resolved that very day to speak to Nastia. A test for parents? She wasn’t putting up with that. But when Sophie and Lily emerged from classes, they were beaming—and in the car when Debra demanded, “Did anybody step on you?” they said no.
—
She was an old hand now, sometimes amazed and sometimes horrified. She knew the tap and squeak of pointe shoes on the floor, and Nastia’s fury when girls couldn’t get it right. “Everybody work on speed and coordination. Especially you. And you!”
Debra understood the upside as well. Nastia was an inspired teacher, rigorous and pure.
There was a reason her studio won New Jersey dance awards.
The lows were lower at MBA—but the highs much higher.
A perfect leap, as Sophie landed radiant.
A compliment. Betterbetterbetter! An afternoon with Joshua the jazz teacher, who once upon a time had danced in Dreamgirls on Broadway.
He whip-turned across the floor, and then spun around to watch his students following in threes.
Whitney Houston belting, Joshua cheering.
“Go Emily! Yaaas, Lydia! Come on, Rosie. Live your life!” In the next trio Sophie took off, powerful, broad-backed. She could jump!
Debra had hoped to catch a glimpse as she arrived with the Secret Santa gift for Sophie’s friend Emma, but class was over, and everyone was packing up.
“Find your boots!” the dance moms called to their twelve-year-olds, small and light as hummingbirds.
“Come on let’s go.” They hurried their thirteen-year-olds, all legs. “Hurry, we have to get your brother.”
The fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds were just emerging, girls with curves and blooming cheeks, and gauzy Degas practice tutus. They stepped into the dressing room to change, and then they flew downstairs while their mothers shouldered heavy bags and followed, earthbound.
“Where’s Emma?” Debra asked the moms of Level Seven.
No one answered.
Oh great, Debra thought, because she had braved traffic to buy the perfect gift—a silver snowflake pendant—and now Emma was absent?
No. Emma’s mother, Chelsea, was waiting outside the restroom. And now Emma appeared, her eyes red, her face puffy.
“Nastia said her turns weren’t good,” Joy whispered to Debra.
“That’s ridiculous!” Debra replied, more loudly than she had intended, because Emma was Dewdrop! Nobody turned more beautifully. But here she was, crying faster than she could wipe her tears.
And here was Nastia striding through, her hair dyed black, her tracksuit black, her dance shoes black, her mood black too.
Posters of Nastia dancing adorned the waiting room.
Nastia performing Sugar Plum, and Dewdrop, and Juliet, her legs long, her face soft and dewy.
This had been Nastia in Russia. Now she marched through the waiting room, and everyone stopped talking.
“Hello. Hello.” She nodded to parents, but she did not stop to chat.
She stepped into her office and shut the door, leaving silent mothers and the weeping Emma in her wake.
It seemed the wrong time to approach, so Debra gave the Secret Santa gift to Chelsea. “This is from Sophie,” she said, but she was thinking, Why aren’t you comforting your daughter? And protesting!
It was not okay to make a young girl cry like that.
Debra would have followed Nastia right into that office!
But Chelsea did not. She was stoic, and a mom of six.
She had enormous gravitas and a thundering gait.
Only her mouth was small, drawn tight. “Thank you.” She accepted Debra’s little gift bag.
“Thank you so much!” Emma chimed in, even while crying and untying the ribbons on her shoes. Her hair was dark, done in a bun, revealing her slender neck. She did look like a Degas dancer bending down, her cheeks flushed, her arms taut.
“I hope you like it,” Debra said.
“I will!” said Emma, tragically polite.
—
“What happened?” asked Debra, driving home as the girls ate dinner in the back seat.
“Nastia hates her,” Sophie said.
“I thought she said Emma is best in class.” Yes, Nastia actually said these things in front of everyone.
“Not anymore.” Lily was gobbling up Debra’s homemade stir-fry from a glass container.
Sophie explained, “She started doing her cha?nés and Nastia kept stopping her!”
Lily put in, “She says Emma isn’t working.”
“How do you know?” Sophie said.
“Because I saw!”
“Weren’t you in the other class?” Debra said.
“No. We got to watch Level Seven, and we were just sitting by the wall and Nastia said point your toes!” Safe in Level Six with her strict-but-fair intermediate teacher, Lily found Nastia thrilling—scary but awesome. An evil queen.
“If she ever makes you cry like that—” Debra didn’t finish, but she was thinking, You’ll be out of there so fast.
“She only makes you cry when you’re really really good,” Lily observed.
“That’s not true,” said Sophie.
“What do you mean?” Debra caught the sadness in Sophie’s voice. “Did Nasty say something to you? Sophie?”
Silence as she pulled into the driveway of their house without lights or evergreen boughs. Silence as the girls carried backpacks and dance bags inside.
“Hey, Max! Hey, Maxy!” Sophie embraced the dog who had been waiting all day to see her. “No, you can’t have that. It’s not good for you.” She set her stir-fry on the table.
“Don’t you want any of it?” Debra asked.
“I had some.”
“What did Nastia say?”
Lily ran upstairs and Sophie tried to follow—but Debra called, “Soph!”
“I have homework,” Sophie said.
“Hold on.”
“Mom!”
“What happened?”
Debra saw her older daughter hesitate, torn, wanting to escape and to confess. She saw the grief in Sophie’s round face. “She said no bread for you,” Sophie admitted at last.
“She said what?”
Now the tears came. “She said, salad salad salad.”
“Are you joking?” Debra had to steady herself, hand on the banister. “I’m calling her.”
“Nooo!”
“I’m talking to her now.”
“Mom, please don’t call!” Sophie begged. “Please, please!”
“This is abuse,” said Debra, searching her phone for Nastia’s number.
“If you call, she’ll kick me out!” Sophie said.
“I’ll kick her out!” Debra hardly knew what she was saying—but she was certainly no stoic.
“Mom!”