Hold onto the air

She was as cool as Nymphadora Tonks. An’ if you don’t know who Nymphadora Tonks is, where have you been? On the mars rover? Holy cow, read Harry Potter won’t you! So, anyway, she was that cool, even before she showed me. And you can’t tell no one. I mean, like, no one! Cos it goes away if you talk about it. She was definite about that and I believe her, cos, well, why wouldn’t I?

Anyway, you know, she was our new Levels five to ten coach; An Olympian, I mean she didn’t get a medal, but she was at the Olympics with stars on her leotard, which is good enough for our crappy gym in Georgia. Good enough for me, anyway. I mean, they thought I was a star cos I got to nationals once and went to the Atlanta Crown Invitational. That was the year before. I was still working like a dog, but I was fighting to survive at regionals in those days. I wanted to make the US National TOPs Team. I figured that leotard would be a cool insta post.

Our dog, by the way, does zero, narda. Yea, I mean he barks at the neighbor's cat sometimes. She’s some sort of Persian tabby and sassy as hell. Anyway, he does his job as he sees it I guess, even though the cat totally ignores him. He licks my face in the morning sometimes, which to be honest I’m not super keen on. I do love him, but I never saw him work, you know, not really. Anyway. I worked like, I don’t know, some dog that works a lot. Home schooled; Breakfast, start math at, like, eight a.m. Then gym, conditioning, then lunch, half an hour, back to gym, then ballet class at three thirty to five, then evening practice to eight forty-five. The gym every day was a normal – striving to prefect my Yurchenko on vault, get a Maloney on bars without a spotter or hit piked Jaegers without hitting the pillow, struggling to catch Giengers, you know. But like, I’m dead when I get home, been known to fall asleep in the car. Now, that’s an insta nobody wants to see. An’ I still got to eat and shower and ice my feet and roll out muscles and stuff. And I don’t stop, ever. I mean, like, I’ll do handstands or burst into a back handspring or slide into a split without reason or warning– in the supermarket, on the kitchen counter, anywhere.

Anyway, there she was, this Olympian. “I’m Delaney,” she says, like there’s anyone on the planet who doesn’t know. Kristen came round and we watched some old YouTubes of her. Delaney was amazing. Like gravity didn’t seem to affect her. She flew. Like Peter Pan, you know or some ninja from crouching dragon, I swear, she could fly. Every vault goddamn nearly touched the ceiling and on floor her leaps went on for yards. I can’t tell a lie; you could fetch a slushy while she was up there and she’d still be in the air when you got back.

I did ballet with Kristen, she was the best bunhead and a good friend. I admit my room was a disaster area and smelt worse than my gym bag. My dad said the floor was sticky enough to keep the Sugar Babes together. Thinks he’s funny. Kirsten didn’t judge. Which is cool of her, cos her room’s like a scene from a Disney movie that the cleaner just finished with. Like that hotel room we had in Atlanta that had film on the toilet bowl and full-length mirrors so clean my reflection looked realer than me.

So that Monday, Riley, a tiny level 6 kid, tells me Delaney wants to talk to me.

“What for?” I ask.

“I don’t know, she didn’t say,” says Riley. “ She just said, ‘tell Gia I want to see her after morning conditioning.’”

“Weird.”

“Yea, that’s what I thought. What did you do?”

I didn’t think I’d done anything, but I was still kind of nervous. I’m still tongue tied in front of Delaney, I mean she ain’t real. She’s been spotting every tiny error and cheerfully giving me advice, real kind like. And I buy all of it. She sees every single out of place toe or finger. An I been working like a dog (see above). I haven’t moaned about the split cuts on my toes or needling and draining my blisters, which I swear I hate more than my brother’s guitar playing. I don’t moan about nothin’, I just keep working hard. An’ on Sunday, at church, I even prayed to get stronger and faster. I’m not good at God stuff. I mean I think the dude is probably cool, an old guy with a kind face like Santa but maybe in better shape. I reckon He’s probably got good abs, don’t you? But, anyway, I wanted it that bad, you know, so I even asked God to help.

“You’re Gia, yes?” she asks.

“Yes ma’am,” I say, already going red for sounding so stupid.

“You work hard,” she says. And I’m waiting for the ‘but you got no talent.’

Then she says “I’m going to do a back flip on beam. I want you to watch how my feet touch the beam, OK. Can you do that for me?”

I’m nodding my head like one of those nodding dogs people put on the back shelf of their car. I just manage another, “yes Ma’am.”

And I watch, and it’s crazy.

“You want me to do it again?” she asks and I nod, but slower this time.

She does it again and it’s the same crazy. I swear, really swear, I looked hard, from different angles, and I swear her feet don’t touch the beam. Like, at all. And I’m looking around above her and under the beam and trying to work it out. I can’t work it out, she ain’t touching the frigging beam. She is like half an inch above it. I mean, I’m crap at science, anyone will tell you that, but even I know this makes no sense. It ain’t normal. Gravity and shit.

“Can you keep this a secret?” she says and I do the nodding again. Then she says, “air is all around you. It’s there for you to hold on to. If you just trust it, it will lift you up. You have to be careful about it. Just a little when you need it, OK?”

I would have thought she was as mad as a chipmunk, but I seen it, I seen her feet float above the bar. Like maybe one toe just grazed it, but like she don’t touch it really. So I want to believe her. I try to do it, but it doesn’t happen for me. She tells me to be patient and keep trying and keep believing. She’s super calm and just says it will come. I got no reason not to believe her, even if it sounds crazy. I seen it didn’t I?

It’s maybe three weeks later and there’s no parents allowed in Ballet class and Madam Bonin is pushing Nadia’s hips around, so I know no one’s watching me. I’m doing an arabesque and I feel my balance going and I push my hand down and it’s solid. The air is solid. I push against it. It’s not like a brick solid, it’s just a little thicker somehow, but damn I feel that and then I know. I can do it. And more and more I feel it. Like I’m being spotted, but there ain’t no one there. The air, it just gently holds me for a second or two, pushes against my hand or my foot or my ass. Wherever I need it.

Well, my balance gets better, I get higher. Bars are harder, cos I’m moving, spinning around and it’s tricksy working out where I need a lift. I get it wrong and hit the pillow a couple of hundred times, but slowly I work it out. I worry if I’m cheating, but I’m just using the air. That’s not cheating is it. And Kristen tells me that Balanchine, this famous choreographer dude, told his ballerinas to ‘hold on to the air.’ So maybe he knew. Maybe they could do it too.

So, I make regionals and get first in everything. I’m all round first. I’m so proud I could explode. Most of my medals are a tangled mess of ribbons in a storage box under my bed somewhere, but these I hang on my dressing table mirror. Move a couple of pairs of old flesh tights which are hanging there to make a space for them.

And I work like that dog all the time. An’ people tell me I can be a gymnast, go to college as a gymnast, or I can probably be a ballerina. Like, some of the girls are getting told they need to ‘lengthen’, which we all know means they are getting too fat, ’cept no one is allowed to say that, you know, but I got good proportions and a figure like an H2 pencil. I’m lean, strong, you know, I mean I’m not getting onto Baywatch or going to be a swimwear model, but it’s good for a gymnast. I’m five feet four without my bun and I look at my mum, cos we have the same genes I reckon. Both have straight hair as black as the bottom of a coal mine on a cloudy Monday. I like to imagine I’m a bit Cherokee or Hitchiti or something. So anyway, you know, I figure I’m a better bet for gymnastics. An’ I keep learning about the air and when and how to use it an I keep getting better at it. Now I fly, even Kristen says so. Asks how I do it. I’m sad I can’t tell her, but she’s pretty excellent, she’ll be fine anyway. She’s a sure bet for SAB.

I told her, “yer name’s already scratched on a locker in Lincoln Center.”

So that’s how it happened, and now, here I am, in my mess of a dorm room, on a scholarship, sweeping take-away boxes out the way and packing my bag. Competition stuff – water bottle, snacks, band aids for my toes. Aleve, tapes and pre wrap, flip flops, grips and spare grips, old tiger paws. The little plastic polar bear Kristen gave me, like years ago, for luck. Poor dudes’ nose is almost worn away. I don’t need luck. I’m on the Senior Elites Team. I’m going to be on the national team, you know. I’m going to the frigging Olympics. Don’t matter if I get a medal or not, but I reckon going will be cool. I will be the Olympian. In a leotard with stars on it. Cool as Tonks. I know it. I mean, I can hold on to the air. I can friggin’ fly.

After, I’m gonna graduate and I’m planning to teach kids. I’m going to go to some scruffy, dead-loss gym in the middle of nowhere and I’m going to find a kid who has a bit of talent and works her heart out. Maybe level six or seven. I’m going to give her a little plastic polar bear key fob and I’m going to tell her to watch me do a backflip on beam.

“Yes Ma’am.”