Home Body
On a Tuesday, in May, a little girl enters the new house. Ten almost eleven, she sports a baseball uniform and hurriedly removes her dirty cleats. Barefoot and wild she runs through the furniture-less house, quickly claiming the biggest room as her own. She inhales the fresh paint scent, buries her toes in the soft carpet, runs her fingers along the tiled shower wall. This house is wonderful and it belongs to her.
In June she spends her days delighting in the lush green yard of her new house. In the evenings, she rides her bike up and down the house’s long gravel driveway. One evening a thunderstorm hits during her bike ride. Elated, she calls her brother to come out of the house. Together, they ride their bikes into the storm, never having felt this free. With thunder booming as their glorious soundtrack, they ride through mud and puddles, shrieking as they pull their front tires into the air. That night when they enter the house, they are soaked and dripping mud, engulfed with the smell of rain, and overcome with a joy they could feel in their bones.
One day, East Coast Uncle is coming to visit the new house. “Why don’t you put some more clothes on before he gets here,” Mom suggests, and the girl disappears into the closet in the big bedroom she claimed for herself. She tries on yoga pants that are now too short, jeans that are now too tight, and a loose tee that she suddenly notices is see-through. For the first time, shame enters the house.
The following May, the girl’s “Rising Star” trophy enters the house, after her first big ballet recital. She played a flamingo in Alice in Wonderland and she fell wildly in love with the dance world. The banisters become ballet barres and the wood panels in the kitchen become the perfect dance floor. Tchaikovsky reverberates through the house, and soon the girl’s first pair of pointe shoes make their way through the door, followed by bandaids, lambs wool, tape, gauze. Pride becomes a resident in the house.
Next winter, the girl, having recently committed to becoming a serious ballerina, enters the living room and straps on her new ankle weights. “Unless you puke, faint, or die, keep going!” the tv shouts and the girl listens. When the TV finally releases her from her cardio prison, she slides into her splits. Front leg first resting on the floor, then a book, then a pillow, then forced all the way up on a chair. She pushes her flexibility until the pain makes her nauseous. Is almost puking a good enough reason to end a workout? She decides that almost puking is good enough for today and finally leaves the room.
Finally, her training efforts pay off and the highly anticipated Purple Folder is carried delicately into the house. Inside the folder, the girl finds an letter of acceptance into her dance studio’s official performing company, a stack of confusing contracts that she carefully signs, order forms for official company dance apparel, the rulebook that every dancer must memorize, and a list of all the actions that could get her kicked out of the program. She places the folder on her bedside table and studies it each night. These rules about how to be pure, professional, talented, and thin become residents in the house.
Ballerinas, seven of them, enter the house. Dressed in miniskirts and high heels, they wear their hair long instead of in their typical low buns, but the rigid dance studio posture follows them even to this party. In the kitchen, each girl unveils the beautiful dish she’s prepared. They arrange the food on gorgeous platters across the dining table. They decorate the spread with candles and roses. Obsessively, they photograph the food from all angles. They circle around the table and worship the food. They each take a bite or two of pure ecstasy. Then, one by one, the girls discreetly enter the restroom. Smelling the hot vomit of the girl before them, they make it quick. Swish water and reapply lipstick. Glance at the disgusting creature they see in the mirror. Then they hurry back out to the party, knowing another girl is waiting her turn for the bathroom. The ballerinas leave the house early tonight, each hurrying home to their beloved treadmills. The photos of their feast are promptly moved to password-protected folders. All evidence of this indulgent affair is hidden.
Some Boy, newly sixteen, drives his new car down the long driveway to the house. The girl trudges out the front door, a stack of his sweatshirts washed and neatly folded in her arms, and takes a seat in his car (this was far too much drama to invite into the house). He wants to read her his pre-typed list of apologies and excuses and pleas. He says things like he’s sorry, he didn’t realize she was so sensitive. If you think about it, really, all of this is actually his parents’ fault. He doesn’t know how he’ll live without her. He’d do anything for a second chance. Dry-eyed and silent, she keeps her head coldly turned toward the passenger seat window, contemplating just opening the door and walking back into the house. Hours pass and finally he begs for at least one last kiss before she leaves. She never says yes but is struck with his salty snotty kiss anyway.
Late one night while the family sleeps, the girl sits alone in the darkness. It’s just her and the house. She pulls her heavy head up off the table, takes a big gulp from a mug of cold, bitter coffee, and brushes her finger over her laptop’s trackpad to bring it back to life. Her essay is submitted at 2:48am. It is hard to leave the house that next morning.
One night, late December, the dog’s bark alerts her that Ex-Boyfriend is standing at the backdoor of the house. “I just couldn’t stop thinking about you” he says, his father’s whiskey on his breath. She stands in the open doorway, frigid wind blowing through her loose pajamas (she had no time to grab a jacket). Crossing her arms tightly over her chest, she prays that her hair is long enough to cover her braless breasts. She notices the way the street light illuminates his familiar jawline, wonders for just a moment what it would be like to let him into the house. But she knows better than that, so she closes the door. He leaves a trail of footprints in the snow as he walks away from the house.
Months later, Childhood Crush, charisma like his preacher father’s, visits the house uninvited. No shame, he marches right up and walks in the front door. Confused and embarrassed by her messy bun and glasses, she invites him down to the basement. On the way, he pets her dog and shakes hands with her father. “I was hoping you could help me study for our biology test,” he says as he unfolds the blanket he finds on her couch. Flustered, she tries her best to explain the intricacies of the semipermeable cell membrane while he plays with her hair and breathes down her neck. Under the blanket, his hand creeps up her thigh. His fingers spread, grip tightens, the butterflies in her stomach quickly turn into bees. She pulls the blanket up, and the heavy textbook hits the floor. “Why’d you have to go and make this awkward?” he scoffs. “You’re the one that invited me in.” He drives off to find another house. She stays frozen inside of hers.
Then comes the plague year when the girl cannot leave the house. What an awful place to be trapped in, she thinks as she looks with disgust at the faded paint and matted carpet. Her disgust grows into anger. She grows angry at the front door that never locks properly and the backdoor window that fails to hide her from the world. She grows angry at the TV for always yelling at her and the mirror for always growling at her. Her hot anger seeps through her body and melts areas she didn’t know were hardened. She cries for the first time in years.
Each day of the neverending quarantine, her ballet teacher’s voice booms through the house. The girl builds herself a ballet barre out of pvc pipes and sets it up in her bedroom for her virtual ballet classes each evening. Counts, choreography, and criticisms invade her favorite corner of her quiet room. Anxiety becomes a permanent resident of her house. Every evening, there are fewer and fewer boxes on the Zoom grid as more and more of her friends start to log off and leave ballet behind. She contemplates doing the same, but a force she cannot explain compels her to push the blue log on button every evening. She desperately wants her dance classes to feel like the sanctuary they once were.
One month into the shut down, the girl’s brother decides that he has to get out of the house. He starts going for long bike rides on the country roads beside the house that were temporarily closed for construction and now completely empty since the construction workers were stuck in their own houses. The first three times that he asks his sister to join him, she refuses, worried that somebody she knows might see her riding her bike around like a child. The first ride she agrees to go on is awkward. Her legs are weak and the silence makes the siblings miss the connection that they once had. By the third ride, the awkwardness dissolves and they start to laugh with each other just like they had when they were kids. They keep riding together each day, and she becomes stronger, learning to breathe in the freedom she had been missing for so long. One day, they ride for so many miles that she misses her nightly virtual ballet class. She is shocked by how unapologetic she feels. They do not come home to the warm glow of the porchlights until late that night. She realizes how peaceful it is to come back to a quiet bedroom and a closed laptop screen.
One by one, books, in blue amazon envelopes, start to enter the house. The girl reads about how The Body Keeps the Score and how The Body is Not an Apology and eventually the Purple Folder Rules lose their residency in the house. The weekly grocery order gets bigger and more varied each week. The girl actually eats the beautiful cakes that she bakes. Each morning, while the rest of the world is still asleep, she crafts a rich, sugary latte and drinks it slowly while she reads, writes, and cries.
When this long miserable year is over, she invites her first guest back into the house. A New Friend enters her bedroom, land of dead plants and empty coffee mugs and perpetual piles of clothes, some dirty, some clean. Deeply ashamed, she tries to kick the piles under the bed. But before she can finish, he kneels on the ground and starts tenderly folding a stack of clothes. They pick up the room together and when they finish, he pulls her close and gently kisses her forehead. She remembers just how wonderful it feels to be held.
The next summer, she prepares to leave the house for the first time. Her favorite corner of her bedroom is filled with organized stacks of all of the things she will need for college. On the other half of the room, she makes a pile of everything that she no longer needs. High school projects, ballet costumes, her company apparel, and the pointe shoe graveyard, a wooden crate filled with almost a decade’s worth of dead pointe shoes. The purple folder is permanently kicked out of the house.
During winter break, seven ex-ballerinas waltz into the house. Dressed in vibrant flowy skirts and Docs, they sway drunkenly to a Christmas classics playlist. Dancing purposely off beat, with flailing arms and sloppy posture, they know this is a moment that no cruel ballet mistress can take from them. Tonight, this kitchen belongs to them. They collectively cringe as the first notes of Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers creep through the speaker. “Alexa, skip this song!” one yells. As they dine, they glance awkwardly between each other and the bathroom door. Everyone understands the unspoken promise – no dancer will enter that dreaded bathroom tonight. That night when the dancers leave the house they are full – of chocolate mousse and champagne and gratitude and some righteous anger about those years and a whole lot of compassion for their younger selves.
After her guests leave, the girl enters the kitchen to clean up. It has been months since she has been all alone in the house. She wipes off empty plates and smiles at how there are no leftovers for her to put away. Soft rain begins to tap against the windows. She dances across her beloved kitchen dance floor as she puts the dishes away. This house is wonderful and it belongs to her.
Katie Clem is a sophomore at Saint Mary’s College who is pursuing a self-designed major titled Arts Innovation and Leadership with minors in Creative Writing, Religious Studies and Theology, and Justice Studies. She enjoys researching and writing about themes of embodied living, trauma and healing, nature and spirituality, and the beauty and pains of ballet. In addition to writing, she spends her time practicing yoga, dancing, choreographing, and teaching and ballet.