Practice Makes Perfect

 

Inhale, exhale. Lift your chin up.
Inhale, exhale. It’s going to be alright.
Inhale, exhale. You’ve done this a million times before.

Her mother had always told her that practice made perfect, and so far, it had. She used to love being the centre of attention, used to crave the delicious thrill that would make her heart sing when people would look at her…she used to thrive on being noticed. But now their stares burn her skin, making her heartbeat increase – a feat she would have thought impossible five minutes ago since it had already been beating rather fast.

Inhale, exhale. You’re going be okay.

The people are getting restless; the bald man in the front row is bouncing his leg with a scowl on his face, the man in the dark blue suit is swirling the drink in his glass, and the noise in the area has increased. She runs her eyes over the crowd and feels her fingers turn cold…there are too many here.

Inhale, exhale. They don’t know you.

She can see Madame from the corner of her eyes, glaring at her for taking so long. She knows that glare well, because anytime she had been at the receiving end of it; her skin would be marked with all sizes of shapes in shades of blue and purple later on.
“JUST DO IT SWEETHEART! IT’S NOT LIKE WE HAVEN’T SEEN IT BEFORE!”, someone yells from the back, making everyone laugh. By now it’s obvious that the deep breathing isn’t helping at all. She isn’t surprised, but she did hope it would work. There’s only one way that she knows of to calm herself down; but she loathes even thinking of doing it.

Biting her lip to push back the tears, she forces a smirk onto her face, and nods for the music.
She can hear the drums, the high lilt of a woman’s voice and she strikes a sultry pose, slowly taking off her silk kimono. The noise from the men is deafening once they see what she has on underneath, but she doesn’t seem to notice anymore.
Her body moves along to the upbeat tune and seductive lyrics, but she hears a very different kind of music in her head, making her ignorant to the howls and whistles that come from the crowd.

She is 16 again, sitting on the kitchen countertop, her Math book lying open next to her. The sound of a badly tuned piano floats in through the open window, sounds that would have made any other person cringe, but to her, being the only music she has, it’s beautiful. She’s watching her mother fry potatoes over a small stove, so old and used that the markings on it had been long gone. She wants so badly to scold her mother for tiring herself out in her condition, but she knows better than that. They never mention the illness that’s raiding her body. No one speaks of the way her mother curls around the worn out cushion and doesn’t move for hours when she has a migraine. No one ever speaks of the fact her mother is becoming thinner, so thin that the skin that stretches over her bones is translucent; you can almost see through her in the light.

She could remember a time where her mother would dance to songs on the radio, twirling so fast that she was a blur of colours and laughter, eventually collapsing on the sofa, breathless, but still laughing. Her mother used to love to cook, even though she wasn’t very good at it, and weekend nights would end up with the two of them on the floor, howling with laughter at a failed recipe. There was always laughter around the house; beautiful, uncontrolled laughter that filled the house with warmth even when they couldn’t afford heating.
But now, even that was stolen from her. Cancer was good at surprises, and hospitals welcomed only the rich.

 As her mother places the piping hot potatoes on a plate lined with newspaper, she makes a vow to somehow make her mother proud. Unknowingly, she says this out loud. Her mother, whose face is always sorrowful, smiles and says, “But you already do, my love”.

That was nine years ago, she realises as she twirls a final time on stage, the other dancers slowly shimmying closer to her.
She is still deaf to the whistles and yells from the audience, but it’s because she’s trying to shake the mixture of guilt, despair and anger from her heart. It isn’t fair that she wasn’t able to keep any of her promises, because anytime she’s in a bad space she only has to think of her mother and it gets better; yet the only thing she had managed to do for her mother was bury her.