Sometimes I inhale deeply, deliberately, shakily
and exhale -
with the same amount of effort.

as if to remember when you taught me how to smoke in the carpark behind my house.

If I concentrate hard enough,
I can still hear the echo of your voice,
teaching me how to hold my cigarette.
"Delicately" you said, "casually"
like the way your palm shadowed the back of my hand -
almost touching -
and how your fingers lightly grazed mine.

If I blink fast enough, I can still picture the shadows cast across your face
each time the shitty fluroescent light flickered,
drawing your eyes upward,
dividing your attention.
I'd held my breath each time in those split seconds,
until your eyes were back on my eyes -
my watering eyes,
reddened by the smoke, teary from my spluttering and choking.

I'd burnt myself with your cheap bic lighter,
the blue plastic had melted a bit.
If I run a finger over my thumb, where the burn had been,
I recall the heat, the sting of the burn
and then, the gentle warmth of the flame on that cold night.

I can still taste, in the back of my throat,
the warm smoke and its bitterness.
I can taste the tobacco on my lips and
the satisfaction of my rebellion on the tip of my tongue.

_

Adage

Get ready.

My hands are shaking with nervous apprehension. My eyes are locked onto the back of those blood-red velvet curtains. I’m not sure whether to fear or anticipate the moment when they’d open. It doesn’t matter. With the ease of a practiced hand I bend down and adjust my pointe shoe strap.

“On in 5. We’re up to Trisha’s scene. You ready?”

“You ready?”

It's been a while since I last heard that question.

It was 1977. The summer air was thick and muggy, the heat smouldering and the sun relentless in its pursuit to sear my already freckled skin.

1977 was the year I turned seventeen. It was the year the Beehive opened and we finally got our own national anthem apart from God Save the Queen. A lot of other stuff happened in 1977. July was the month I got an audition from Royal New Zealand Ballet. August was the month I met Mike. I can’t remember how exactly I met Mike, maybe through a friend of a friend or a friend at a party, the details became murky and unimportant. On December the 15^th of 1977, the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion bill was passed with much controversy and outrage. Two days after that, I got accepted into Royal New Zealand Ballet. And two weeks after that, on December the 31st, 1977, (sometime in the afternoon to be precise) I had found myself lying on a soft, secluded patch of grass in the Belmont reserve, my hand in Mike’s and his hand grazing suggestively up my thigh.

You can probably guess what happened next.

“You ready?” He had asked me, like there had been an option. Like I had known any better. My reply at that time should’ve been no. I was not ready for the consequences (and there were much more than I ever would’ve imagined) nor the backlash. My not-readiness was sealed by the shameful fact that I was naïve enough to believe Mike when he’d told me no one used condoms and had reassured me his method would work just fine.

The next “You ready?” came almost precisely 3 months after that. On a chilly afternoon at the end of March, I found myself standing uncomfortably outside a dingy clinic in Auckland. It was dimly lit and all the girls who were in the waiting room looked either sullen or on the verge of tears. I’d felt more near the latter.

Mike had not come with me. He had not bothered to call and check up on me after I told him the news. Later when I bumped into him he said it was because he didn’t have two dollars to make the call. Just like how he didn’t have two dollars to buy a condom I guess.

That clinic had been one of the only ones open in New Zealand at that time. Looking back now, I truly admire my seventeen year old self’s bravery at stepping into that sort of place on my own. It was the autumn of 1978 for god’s sake. Abortions were still frightful, frightful things. In fact, the very notion of it had chilled me to the bone at that time.

The nurse there tried to be nice. She’d given me a tight smile and a tentative, “You ready?”.  She asked me that question just like Mike did. Like I had a choice. Like I knew any better. Nothing could’ve prepared me for the emotional ramifications that followed.

As I laid back onto the sterile, linen-clad operation table, blinded by a halo of cheap fluorescent light, I had never felt so scared or furious or indignant. For the first time the reality of what I was about to do hit me, that I was truly going to end a life – something living, breathing and a part of me. My baby. I had never given abortion much thought before that summer. I’d felt that if you were stupid enough to land yourself pregnant then you might as well have the intelligence to take responsibility for your actions the right way. And yet here I was, stupid, stupid me, going against my very own morals. I had thought about it, honestly I had. For the longest time I had considered keeping her. I’d call her Charlotte. She would be a darling little girl with crinkly blue eyes like Mike’s and they would squeeze up when she giggled. She would have my light brown hair and my father’s nose.

However, even during that period of inner turmoil, every time I closed my eyes it wasn’t Charlotte I saw. Despite the shameful dilemma I was faced with in reality, my dreams were still plagued full of pirouettes and deboulés, jumps and turns and twists and a shadowy figure performing a Grande adage with such fluidity and grace that I would often wake up with tears prickling my eyes from the terrible beauty of what I had seen. I had realised then that dancing was never just a dream or an ambition for me, but a certainty and a necessity. There had been no other option for me.

“Rachel. You ready? You’re on.”

I draw a deep breath. I think of the beautiful Grande adage I dreamt of last night. I press a hand to my belly, silently wondering.

“Rachel.”

I look up. His eyes were as warm and grey as they had been last night, crinkly and smiling. He held my hand, his ring grazing my pinkie.

“Hey baby you’ll be fine. It’s your last show. I know you’re ready for this.”

As I walk on stage I think about the beautiful daughter I will have in the future. As I look across the theatre, a hundred thousand faces look back. Reality sinks in. The blood-red velvet lies behind me, a backdrop of vivid scarlet silhouetting my white leotard.

As I poise myself for the beginning of my final Adage, I ask myself.

You ready?

I draw a deep breath.

I am.