Out of Sight Under The Spotlight

There’s more to dancing than just moving. That’s what you learn when you first step onto the stage, only strings hiding what you’ve covered most of your life, makeup heavy and thick on your face, and heels so tall you feel like a newborn fawn. Advertise yourself as if you're a fresh-cut diamond—even when you feel like a sick animal. Men won’t consume what you’re trying to feed them when your shoulders look heavy with insecurity.

“What you’ve got is currency now. I don’t know where you came from or how you got here but in this place, there is no wasting. It's get good or get out. You’re lucky you’ve got that face of yours,” Carmella told me a week ago, on my first day. Her cigarette caught between two red nails. Her eyes, dusted with blue eyeshadow and her lips magenta—her signature color. She looked at me through the mirror, seeming larger than life itself. As if even the glass knew who owned the room. She spoke to me like she had been in this building since the concrete was poured into the earth. I nodded, embarrassed that I had to be scolded within five hours of working this gig.

I’d pull back the curtain to the mainstage and watch her dance. Her hips moving as if she was telling a story with her body. Her eyes flickered with memory, her hands practically pulling and tugging on the air around her—even catching the dust's attention. Carmella was something fierce, unstoppable. I wanted that. I wanted to be that kind of woman—drawing people in like they were bugs and I’m the porchlight.

But when it was my turn, I couldn’t even grasp the attention of the people sitting in the front row. I’d look up and behind the glare of the spotlights to see men on their phones and looking behind me at other dancers.

I wore tinier and tinier clothes. Danced with more energy. Stayed sober. I went around trying to be a conversationalist. I danced every night, and was ignored every night. I was like a letter no one wanted to open. I only pulled in half as many tips as the other girls. Watched as they whispered about me, even giggled under their breaths.

I decided I could live with this. I had to live with it.

But it was just that day. Any other day and I wouldn’t have cracked under the weight. I woke up, dragged myself from my sheets, rode the bus feeling a husk floating through the wind. I danced four dances. And each one not a single man had laid their eyes on me longer than a few seconds. I felt like I was shouting into an empty room. The music boomed, reverberated through my entire body like a taunt. I felt a half-healed bruise begin to grow again. Like the thin fabric between me and whatever was bubbling up my throat started to fray. I took off the heels biting at my toes and threw them off the stage. I slammed the curtain aside and ran to the dressing room which smelled like sweat, cheap perfume, and stale cigarettes—a smell I began to loathe as each night passed. Some of the other girls eyed me, as if they knew I was going to lose it soon anyway. I pushed off my makeup on the table with one sweep of my arm. Buried my head in my hands. I couldn’t help but hiccup—letting all the tears fall off my face and into my lap.

“Makeup is expensive. You shouldn’t treat it like you can pay for more,” a familiar voice cracked through the dark cloud surrounding me. Carmella bent down, picking up the dropped lipsticks and mascaras from the ground.

“I was going to pick it up,” I said. She leaned against my mirror, lighting a cigarette. Smoke curled through the air. “I saw you run off.”

I turn my head from her, feeling the need to shield my face—to brandish my tiny sword like a wounded soldier. When I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, eyes sunken, cheeks glossy with tears, lipstick smeared, mascara running down my face, I frantically wiped at my skin.

“You can’t remove all that with just your fingers,” Carmella adjusted herself, now sitting on my vanity. She must have just finished her dance, she had a thin layer of sweat on her chest and her blonde curls were messy and casually flipped to one side.

“I ran out of makeup wipes,” I admit.

“Borrow mine.” She opened a drawer and handed me a pack. I stared at the offering for a moment too long. “What? No one ever shared nothing with you?”

“No, no,” I quickly mumble. “Thank you.”

Carmella watched me wipe away what I had left of my makeup, silent, studying me like I was some sort of illusion.

“You’ve got to get better brushes,” she said, picking up a few of my things and fiddling with them in her hands. “That’s why your eyeliner is so uneven.” She let out a cloud of smoke.

“Oh.”

“Didn’t you ever watch your mom do her makeup?”

“I don’t remember my mom.” I tossed aside the dirty wipe. A pressure was building behind my eyes once again. I hated everything about that day. And it only seemed to get worse.

Carmella ashed her cigarette. She dug into her bra and pulled out a crushed pack of cigarettes. She handed me a crumpled one, a bit of tobacco fell from the tip of it.

I shook my head, “I don’t smoke.”

She laughed to herself, “you should.”

“I’ve never heard anyone say that,” I smiled.

“It helps sometimes.” She placed the cigarette back into her bra.

“With what?”

“Working at this place.”

“I thought you loved working here?”

“Who told you that?”

“It’s just…the way you dance.”

Carmella grabbed a chair from the other side of the room and placed it next to me, tapping my shoulder so I could face her. “You still have to dance again.”

I couldn’t help but hang my head. I reached for my makeup until Carmella's hand stopped me.

“Let me,” she said, her smile thin yet warm. Her hands started to roam my face, her fingers surprisingly gentle as they traced the contours of my face, smoothing out the edges of defeat on my features. Her fingertips smelled like the cigarette she had just smoked. “I do love to dance,” she whispered, breaking this silence between us.

“You do?”

“Of course. I feel lost in whatever song that plays. I feel sexy. I feel good,” she said matter-of-factly. “Purse your lips.” She tapped my lips with her fingers, dragging pigment across my mouth.

“I wish I felt that good dancing,” I whispered.

“Dont think I always feel good up on that stage.” She leaned back, looking at my face like it was a canvas and she was painting it. “When I was a kid I wanted to be a secretary.” She half-heartedly laughs to herself at the thought. “Then you get caught in the undertow of your own life. Things happen.”

She continued dabbing eyeshadow onto my eyes, tapping the brush against the pallet. I watched as the shimmer of the eyeshadow fell into her lap. Carmella added, “My mom stopped speaking to me when I started this job.” She rolled a mascara wand along my eyelashes, tilting my head up with a finger under my chin.

“Why?”

“She didn’t like me being seen like this, I suppose.” She licked the tip of a brush, smoothing it out with her tongue and making the bristles come to a point. “If you wet the brush,” she lifted the brush to my eyes. “And then dip into your eyeliner, your wings will come out much sharper.”

“Did your mom teach you that?”

“No, another one of the girls here taught me that.”

Carmella continued tapping, dragging, brushing on makeup atop my face. I sat silently, comfortably. I felt like an old sign about to be engulfed in the bark of a tree. I could have sat there with Carmella touching my face till the club closed.

She tousled my hair, fixed a few strands around my face, stepped back, and told me, “You’re all done.”

I looked into the mirror, taken aback by my appearance. “I look like you,” I said. My lips magenta, my eyes glazed with a blue shadow, my hair leisurely messy and flipped to one side, my cheeks blushed, like I’ve just been told a secret. “No one has ever done my makeup before,” I murmur, mostly to myself.

“My mom used to wear magenta lipstick. That’s why I wear it every night.”

Carmella touched my shoulders, standing over me in the mirror—still looking larger than life. She gave my shoulders a squeeze. I said, as if nothing could have stopped my mouth from moving, “I do remember my mom.”

Carmella took her hands off my shoulder, gave me a solemn look in the mirror.

“Well just one memory,” I continued. "It was my seventh birthday and I had started living with her again. I ran down the hallway in the morning, excited out of my mind. I had dreamed of streamers, and confetti, a big banner with my name on it. A cake on the table and my mom standing with a present in her hand. But she—” I stopped myself, swallowing whatever was in my throat. “She wasn’t there. No cake or streamers. Just an empty living room. Who forgets about their kid? I went back into foster care a few weeks after that.”

I looked up at Carmella, who just seemed to stare at me. “I hate my birthday. Each year I feel like it’s an ugly reminder of everything I hate,” I finally add.

“Today’s your birthday, isn’t it?”

I nodded.

“That’s why you ran off the stage.”

I didn’t need to answer, it seemed Carmella already knew.

A silence collapsed on us both. I opened my mouth to say something only to close it again. Carmella ran her fingers through my hair, adjusting a few strands around my face. The thought of stepping back onto the stage, returning to being a dimming candle in a stadium of floodlights, creeped back into my mind. I felt like curling into myself, hiding behind my own leg like a scared child.

“Y’know,” she said. “You don’t have to be the loudest in the room to be in the room at all. You’re beautiful. Dance like that’s somehow a secret everyone knows but you.” Carmella said to me through the mirror. “I see you when you dance. You’re not bad. You got to get good or get out,” she chuckled.

I laughed. “You told me that already.”

“And I meant it.” She tapped my shoulder, letting me know it was almost time for me to go back to the stage.

I mouthed, “Thank you.” It was all I could get out.

“Don’t thank me.”

As I walked to the curtain, my hand placed on the split, Carmella called my name. “Happy birthday,” she said.

I smiled and so did she. There weren’t any other words needed, I suppose.

I felt the boom of the music through the floor, the heat beaming from the spotlights, and the soft, tender, still sore ache in my stomach. The club was full that night. I remember being nervous. But I wanted to be fierce and unstoppable.

So I stepped onto the stage to dance.