APOTHEOSIS.

For the first part of our world tour, I am to dance Odile to the Russian principal's Odette. If it was any other ballet, if I did not know Swan Lake like I know my own heartbeat and the shape of my spine, I would find her intimidating. They say she is perfection incarnate, the shimmering Jewel of Moscow. The Tsarina of the Bolshoi Ballet, where they train the best of the best. It may well be the crowning achievement of my career. There are those that say this about all of my roles but I believe this time the statement rings true. Even after we are long gone, ours will be a performance remembered throughout the ages. 

I wish you could see it. I wish you could watch me dance one last time.

On stage, I dance like each show might be the last and there is no other feeling like it in the world. Almost as if I could dance myself into fairytale, into the storybooks you used to read me when I was small and thought your eyes held the stars. 

Above all, beyond all, I dance for you, Mama.

They say it gets easier with time, but the truth is I do not want it to. I do not ever want it to get easier. The aching makes it real. It is a constant, reliable and ever-present, and it fills some part of the absence you have left. The physical space it seems to have carved out in me, amidst everything else that is yours.

Sometimes, for a moment, I forget. I will be in the middle of a faultless sequence, and for a single moment in my brief triumph, I will forget you are gone. And then I reset, exhale, and I awaken, and the guilt of forgetting floods my veins with ice. It terrifies me, the thought of forgetting you, the thought of time smoothing away all the edges and shadows of you, blurring and eliding everything I try to remember into the same echo of past tense. I do not want you to be only memory but memory is all I have. That, and my music box and the locket inside it with the photograph of me.

I will write you again next week, and the week after that. I will write you always, and I imagine that you forgive me for it. You understand more than anyone what it means to love someone from afar, powerless to touch them or speak to them truly by their name. I think about all those times you called me little bird and darling girl, when really what you meant was daughter. I think about how I have written you a hundred times over calling you Mama, when I never once had the chance to say it aloud. 

These letters are for all those moments when I held your name in my mouth not knowing.

𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐋.

𝐅𝐔𝐋𝐋 𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐄:  eva madelena riviere, known professionally as eva miro 𝐍𝐈𝐂𝐊𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐒:  swan queen; the swan 𝐁𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐇𝐃𝐀𝐓𝐄:  march 18th 1934 — 27 years old 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐁𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐇:  arlington, virginia 𝐎𝐂𝐂𝐔𝐏𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍:  principal dancer at the new york city ballet 𝐏𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐓: HERE

𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐈𝐍.

EXT. ARLINGTON   /   a midsummer day; old southern gothic; dawn breaking over a horizon; the scent of magnolia and vanilla sweetening the air; homemade iced tea at the height of noon; secrets sealed in closed lockets and closed rooms; sun swept afternoons; the feeling of grass beneath your bare feet; wet blood streaked across palms; picking wildflower bouquets; the skeletons buried in the family closet

if this was a fairytale we would begin not at the beginning, but here, in the still antebellum calm before the storm. here is the amber-glaze veneer of old world nostalgia, curled at the edges like a faded photograph; a moment in time slipped between acts, between prelude and prologue: it begins in a garden.

a girl, half-sunbeam and half-wildness, twirls across the grass barefoot, lighter than a wayward breeze. there’s a woman watching her dance, an exclusive performance for an audience of one. the piece ends and the girl sweeps into an extravagant bow, dipping her head to the imaginary shower of roses raining down upon her impromptu stage of weeds and wildflowers. her solitary spectator bursts into jubilant applause, her laughter incandescent, filling her from throat to limb to toe. the both of them, radiant, the colour of sun swept afternoon, sprawl in the golden hour shade beneath the willow oaks. the girl lays her head in the woman’s lap as she soothes her fingers through the dark tangles of hair so like her own. she closes her eyes, breathing in the tenderness and blooming summersweet in the air.

her name is eva.

            —

there is a way of telling this story that makes it bearable, but only just. enduring, in the way of the tide wearing away a thousand years of sand and stone, returning everything to seafoam.

perhaps we start with once upon a time, because it’s familiar and feels handmade. once upon a time, there was a prince. he was handsome and charming — two things too easily mistaken for good — and beloved by all that encountered him. magnetic by nature and flirtatious by disposition, he deflected the rumours and speculation swirling around him about marriage by declaring that he would go down on one knee only when he had met the most beautiful woman in the kingdom. but summers passed and the prince remained inexplicably unmarried. you see, though the kingdom was rife with dainty high-born ladies and heiresses, the most beautiful woman in the kingdom was not a lady or an heiress. she was the daughter of the castle’s steward, kept out of sight and mind by the humble circumstances of her birth. her beauty is fairytale, dreamlike, unrivalled by any woman the prince had ever graced with a smile or a kiss to bare knuckles. he thinks, at last, i’ve found you. 

in the story, the prince and the steward’s daughter fall in love. against the king and queen’s wishes, the prince announces his engagement to his newfound love. they are married in the palace gardens, a simple ceremony with only a priest in attendance. nonetheless, their happiness glows with tangible sunlight. 

a year later, the steward’s daughter gives birth to a princess. the last thing she sees in the world is the sight of her daughter’s eyes peering up at her, dark and starlit as her own. the prince takes his daughter into his arms as his wife draws her last breath, his greatest joy and most terrible loss coalescing with his daughter’s first cry. 

despite the tragedy surrounding her birth, the little princess’ childhood is full of life and laughter and simple pleasures. she is raised by a nursemaid who becomes like a mother to her. what more is flesh and blood, after all, than the woman who cradles you at night and sings you lullabies to sleep, who kisses your scratched knees and teaches you how to dance? she is her world, and her world is everything the nursemaid nurtures within her, stoking the embers of imagination and zeal, courage and fearlessness. the princess learns to dance almost as soon as she learns to walk. she is raised with music and song, the rhythm of hands and feet barely a step from instinct. she dances as she breathes, intrinsically, innately, like the music is another facet of bone or artery. when she is seven years old, she begins classes with a private master. by the next full moon, she is ready to leave the kingdom to dance, to dance forever.

INT. NEW YORK   /   the cold curling around your skin and through your bones like a well-worn blanket; the loneliness of being inimitable; the becoming of a star; the aching of muscle and sinew; gazing out at the city skyline at 3 in the morning; the whispers trailing in your wake; tongues and nails sharp as razor blades; hunger blooming in the dark

interlude: eva is twelve when she wins a scholarship to the school of american ballet in new york. sixteen, when george balanchine handpicks her to join the new york city ballet. eighteen, when she becomes the first black principal dancer.

she is one of only two dancers in the ballet that is not white, and mariana was at least born and bred in spanish harlem. eva, with her burnished skin and southern lilt, sticks out like an unruly hair from a bun, like a ballet master’s correction. she is good, unrivalled for her age, but not the best, and it doesn’t take long for the muffled whispers and cutting glances to score and scrape away at any last shred of resilience. the isolation and playground tyranny, she can live with, but it is the loneliness, the distance from her aunty celia, the homesickness that festers in her stomach like spoiled milk, that makes her bend until she feels like she could break. she writes dozens of letters home to her beloved nursemaid that she doesn’t send, and resolves to wait out the year until summer when she decides she will quit. 

the magnolia trees are in full bloom when she arrives in arlington, and maybe it is the smell of home, or the jetlag, but when she sees aunty celia, she dissolves into a cloudburst of salt and tears. she spends the summer in a daze of blissful relief, tucking ballet from her thoughts like a chest of old dolls in the attic. it isn’t until the second last day before she is to return to new york that aunty summons her to the garden. aunty, who is nothing like an aunty, really, with her petite frame and miles of thick, dark curls framing a painter’s muse of a face. tell me what is wrong, aunty celia says. you haven’t danced a single moment since you came home. eva bites her lip and stares skyward. i’m quitting, aunty. i hate it there. i don’t belong there, it’s cold and i miss home. i miss you, and papa, and being here. aunty arches a picturesque brow. but what about dancing? won’t you miss it? eva clenches her teeth, insistent. i can dance here, too. i can dance anywhere.

listen, little bird, aunty never calls her that anymore, not since she was tiny and still begged for bedtime stories. aunty holds out her hand and eva takes it, reluctant but with a quiet thrill at the easy gentleness of her touch. aunty twirls her slowly in a semi-circle, arm raised elegantly above her head. you will never belong anywhere because you weren’t meant to; you were made to be brilliant. you are a star, and stars only shine brightest in the dark.

so eva returns to new york, carrying a music box — her parting gift from aunty, specially crafted just for her, to play whenever she feels cold and misses home — and an inimitable light inside her that refuses to be tamed for anyone or anything. she is relentless, driven by more than mere ambition and pride. everything she does, she becomes the first. the exception and the exceptional. the trailblazer on an ever-ascending meteoric rise without a summit. 

this is her becoming.

INT. VIRGINIA HOSPITAL CENTER   /   the smell of antiseptic clinging to skin; an expressionless mask; sickly saccharine platitudes; the knife of betrayal sinking into raw flesh; a broken locket; a sea of faceless strangers; the long soundless scream of grief; mourning lace; the suffocating weight of revelation

three days before eva is to dance the defining role of her career at age twenty-three, she receives the call. it’s papa. there’s been an incident; aunty is in the hospital. 

in the midst of final rehearsals and preparations, eva leaves. the director threatens to drop her from the show altogether, threatens to blacklist her from all future roles and performances. with her career hanging in the threadbare balance, eva nods, gives her full blessing and best wishes to the cast, and leaves. 

she arrives that night at the hospital and finds auntie swathed in the stark white sheets of a hospital bed, smaller than she’s ever seen her. a stroke, papa explains, hemorrhagic bleeding, a rupture in her brain. eva clutches at aunty’s hand, tears blurring her vision even as she scrambles to drink her in, by eyelash and smile line, the last glimpses of her she will ever have. aunty wakes with a small rasping inhale when she sees eva at her side and not in new york, getting ready for her stage.

of course i’m here, eva says, how could i be anywhere else but here? aunty shakes her head, lifts a shaking hand like a marionette extending beyond the life of her puppet strings to brush her fingertips down eva’s cheek. my eva, my beautiful girl. eva swallows, throat thick with love and apologies she doesn’t know how to speak, i’m sorry i did not write you every day, i’m sorry i did not come home last summer. i’m sorry i don’t know how to tell you how much you have made me who i am. worry creases the lines of aunty’s face, sunken deeper than ever before, in the sketches of time through across her features. she asks about the show, and what will happen to her career, and all eva can think is, i only wanted to dance because of you, because so much of me is just you.

you have to go, little bird. aunty smiles, and it reminds eva of endless afternoons in the garden, their very own kingdom, whirling barefoot beneath blue sky. time for you to blaze like the sun.

           —

this is the end of the fairytale: the steward’s daughter dies in a hospital bed holding her daughter’s hand. the princess rises to discover she is gone from this world, as if every star and the sun itself has gone out. 

this is the truth, which will be brief, because when the truth comes, it comes hard and fast like a knife in an alleyway: eva was born out of wedlock, a wealthy heir’s bastard daughter. when his parents gave him the ultimatum, the girl he loved, or the business empire of his inheritance, he chose empire. the truth of eva’s birth was concealed, obfuscated when her father married an heiress selected for her surname and birthright. they told her that her mother died in childbirth, and allowed celia to care for her as her nursemaid, raising her not as a daughter but a ward.

after celia’s death, eva is given a letter from her father with her mother’s dying wish, and the terrible secret she had taken to her grave, sealed within. in the letter, celia tells eva the one fairytale she had never spun for her as a child. she tells her about how the prince and the daughter of his family’s groundskeeper fell in love, and everything that came after. she tells her that she never regretted a second of it, watching the supposed love of her life marry another woman and build the family he was always meant to have with them. he made his choice, and i made mine, and i would do it all again in a heartbeat because our love gave me you. my daughter, my eva.

tucked inside the envelope is the locket celia used to wear but never allowed eva to open. and inside the locket is a picture of a seven year old eva.

eva packs everything in her suitcase and leaves for new york the next day. she never sees her father again. 

INT. NEW YORK CITY BALLET THEATRE   /   a single silhouette beneath a spotlight; silk sculpted to a perfect body; the headliner that the crowd has been holding its breath for; gilded thread on golden skin; the blaze of a meteor; the coil of anticipation in your gut; adrenaline pounding through your veins; the exhilaration of perfection; the metamorphosis of the swan

the evening of the first show of swan lake by the new york city ballet, eva goes on stage. she dances odette, and it is the defining performance of not only her career, but of american ballet history. she is the first african-american principal dancer of the new york city ballet, and the first to dance odette in swan lake. it is a triumph and a magnum opus of a performance. 

she takes her final bow before an endless sea of faces, her heart going cold in her chest knowing the only one that she wanted to see is not there.

𝐅𝐎𝐎𝐓𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐒.

after her history-making performance as odette, the media and arts society gave her the name swan queen. patrons and friends of the ballet frequently address her as odette or the swan at NYCB galas.

eva’s most prized possession is the music box her mother gave her during the summer she had made up her mind to quit ballet. it plays a version of the lullaby she used to sing to her as a child and features a specially hand-painted black ballerina as the miniature figurine that dances when you wind up the mechanism. she keeps the locket her mother used to wear inside it.

to watch eva dance is an experience — she makes ballet feel alive. while famous for her thirty-two fouette sequence in swan lake, it’s the emotions and tragedy she breathes into each performance that makes her dancing unforgettable. she lives and dies on the stage, dancing as if each show is a swan song.

largely alienated from the rest of the corps throughout her training at SAB and within the NYCB, eva is accustomed to solitude and keeping herself company. a combination of prejudice and envy at her exceptional talent kept her isolated, but rather pushing her to the margins as would have been preferred, it thrust her directly into the spotlight. over the years the whispers and rumours that she has only excelled and outstripped her rivals because of her unique circumstances have shadowed her. she’s proven them to be blatantly and objectively false time and again but it doesn’t stop the insidious nature of the hearsay from spreading. the instinct to brace herself for the worst when she meets new dancers, even those untouched by the poison of the NYCB corps, is deeply ingrained in her. it’s a habit she’s never had reason to break. 

there have been a handful of flings and stolen kisses with dancers from the corps, girls and boys alike. her longest and most serious relationship was a brief but volatile affair with a renowned artistic director visiting from paris. it was a passionate but disastrous love, and they ended things as the season came to an end and he returned to france. eva has never had relationships, or even dalliances, with anyone outside of the ballet. in her mind, it’s unlikely anyone that isn’t involved in ballet could ever capture her attention long enough to spark her interest. 

she’s well-versed in a variety of dance genres and still enjoys dancing for the simple pleasure of it outside the ballet. she frequently dances without music, on the rooftop of her apartment in the late hours of night, occasionally humming music notes and melodies. 

since her debut as a principal dancer, she’s had a number of suitors — mainly wealthy patrons, older men with fortunes to spare — that would send gifts and bouquets. other than wine or champagne, eva tends to give away the lavish gifts of perfume, makeup and jewels to other dancers. 

she has a younger half-sister and half-brother from her father’s second marriage. they don’t speak much anymore but she still sends them tickets to NYCB shows.

eva speaks slightly beyond conversational french and is fluent in spanish. other than ballet, languages are the only thing she has ever put her mind to seriously studying and learning. she’s interested in learning russian, particularly while she’s immersed in the culture at the bolshoi theater. 

𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒.