Chapter 21. Auditoriums of the Adopted Bourgeoisie

Dec 31, 2021

Auditoriums of the Adopted Bourgeoisie

The performance was over and the dancers stood on stage as the house lights were brought up after curtain call and the petals were swept away with large brooms. Some of the troupe went down into the audience to mingle. A few people came up on the stage to talk, gesturing at the golden headdresses, wanting to touch them, but afraid of overstepping proprieties. Suon wandered upstage, avoiding conversation; she could not disrobe from her public persona and greet them in any heartfelt way. She was safe up here on high behind her smile; no need to come down to earth.

Down below, standing motionless at the end of her seating row, earthbound and stuck in the mud, the 15-year old teenager, Lily, looked on as the aura conjured by the Apsara dancers—the closing event of her high school's cultural festival—slowly dissolved back into the banality of the badly lit school auditorium. Her mother pushed at her to go up on stage and talk to the dancers, but Lily was rooted as firmly as Suon, and could only look on from a distance, unable to make a connection, to bridge the gap.

"So many of them were killed, Lily," her mom whispered to her. "You know, they can never take away the dances you’ve danced; the only thing they can do is kill you, and even then that won’t . . . ." The daughter turned her head away, rolling her eyes upward, and did not listen further or reply to her mother. She was so . . . there was no need to trample over the emotion shimmering between her and the stage tonight, to try to break into that world, to force herself in where she didn't belong; it made her angry like it always did. Her mother’s words had roiled her thoughts, however, and weren’t likely to be dismissed easily. Her mother was not one of them, as Lily was by blood; yet, of course, she felt the need to lecture her. Still, her mom did understand dance, and Lily's life, adopted as an infant, was as American homegrown as the next.

The cloak of unselfconsciousness Lily threw over herself when she watched these dancers, similar to when she waded into the world of music and was freely at home, and most particularly whenever she wrote her poems, was now torn off, and an hyperawareness of her own small self and her surroundings engulfed her, suffocating her. Her mother could do that, rip her protection off, just like that, like she did just now. Without its sheltering embrace, Lily was stricken with doubt, afraid her work conveyed little of what she felt or who she truly was. A strong doubt that treated her roughly, that told her she wasn’t anything special, just one of so many others afraid to test their limitations, afraid to venture beyond commonplace boundaries. In fact, she carried around a poem by a Russian poet, Marina Tsvetaeva—Miss Marina, she called her in her own mind—torn out of an old copy of Vogue, and ready to read whenever Lily felt vaguely accomplished.