Chapter 2 - Childhood memories

That morning I woke up early; the sunlight was not yet shining through the window. I sat down at my laptop to write. I had a dream, very colorful, filled with music, mambo, and a seductive and secret tango playing behind the curtains. Like a morning ready to be born, waiting for the sunlight.

I poured myself a cup of coffee and wrote:

In New York City, the noise never ceases; even at dawn, the rumble of the train and the hiss of the cars create a rhythm that embodies the movement of the city, just as the roar of airplanes and their flight brushing against the clouds are part of the scenery and colors of the airports. Sometimes I dream of being a writer, being friends with all the words in every language. To write without fear and with courage, knowing that the sunlight will come to illuminate my ideas and sentences, to give life to everything that is beautiful and my words shape. With dance, I experience an antithesis to what is true and proven; dance always makes me revolutionize, transform, and suggest everything I knew about my body to discover that there are no limits. With writing, I feel the same, but in a more elegant, more orderly, more perfect way. Because the words remain in order outside of your mind, constructed while dance fades away, and every day I must return to rescue it.

I would like to be an important writer. Last night I met a seductive woman; she arrived with music that sounded somewhat filled with calm and tranquility. She was firm, and her tone of voice was decisive and emphatic, without hesitation. A writer lives from her experiences; that fills her and helps her grow. If I were an important writer, I would have followed her to her hotel room, but I decided to be a dancer and go home. An important writer is a center where traditions and stories converge, voices and ideas, concerns and questions she asks herself and questions of others. There is a moment when all those potentials and questions harmonize and converge like a perfect dance piece, like the instruments of an orchestra that the writer will play in the open air or on the battlefield, transforming those sounds into the most arduous stridencies. Then, the writer within me can express for others what they live without revelation, sensing in me my beauty, poise, and grace—what others experience in me, solely through the gaze, if they watch me dance, without that being delivered with the intensity and secret clarity that happens in life, in my life, with the same clarity that I would deliver if I were to undress and write it down. I like that writers doubt or question my talent or words, my drive and spirit as a writer, because I do not doubt them at all; I know it lives within me, just as dance pumps and moves from me, words transform and are nourished within me, from everything I live and everything I am.

I sighed deeply, and Everth served me breakfast—freshly made pancakes with orange juice. He kissed my forehead and sat across from me at the table. I closed my laptop and responded to him with a smile.

“Champion's breakfast,” I said with a grin.

“Good morning, beautiful. What time did you wake up?” he asked, taking my hand.

“Early, I wanted to shower and check something online,” I explained. For some reason, I didn’t confess to him that I enjoyed keeping a diary, that I had actually started writing one by hand, and sometimes I organized my thoughts on my laptop too.

“It's all good, darling. Don't watch the news too much. We need to go rehearse.”

“Thanks for making breakfast, love,” I said before taking a bite of my pancake with honey and cheese.

We had breakfast, and I took a quick shower to attend our Ballet Company. But while I showered, feeling the raindrops touching my skin, I remembered a long time ago when I didn’t know I would be a dancer; I enjoyed playing with water. I always used to play with water guns with my sister Ludy when we went to the carousel.

I close my eyes and feel the drops of water running down my back and trickling down my shoulders; the water blends with the lights, like flashes that take me back to my childhood.

Flashback.

Ludwika, a five-year-old girl, walks by a carousel with her ten-year-old sister Ludy and their parents. Her sister Ludy asks for permission for her and Ludwika to go play with the water guns. Their mother, Lorena, is a 35-year-old woman with almond-colored eyes, a refined nose, and thick, full lips. She watches them intently, first looking at the little girl who has begun to develop prominent cheekbones and a chin that highlights her thick, ruby-colored lower lip, which naturally frames the heart shape of her face. She has bright, tender blue eyes; the older sister has a perfectly formed face, high cheekbones, and large, bright almond-colored eyes. She wears a pair of blue jeans and a pastel pink shirt with a knitted pink hat. Ludwika is dressed in a white dress and a white knitted hat that covers her golden hair. The little girl is celebrating her fifth birthday with her family at the amusement park and is staring intently at the water spraying from the guns, which flows through the mouths of the dolls. Her mother watches her closely. Ludwika brings her hands to her sky-blue eyes and rubs her tiny fingers over her eyelashes.

Ludwika:

"Mommy, can we play with the water guns?"

Lorena:

"Okay, sweetheart, but don’t get all wet; you need to be careful."

Ludy takes her younger sister by the hand, and both grab water guns in front of a game where the guns shoot directly into the mouth of a bear. Lorena watches them with a slight smile. The girls have fun until the guns run out of water because their playtime has lasted ten minutes. Ludy is now soaked in her blue jeans, and Ludwika is wet from her dress to her knitted hat since, in the last minutes of the game, the two sisters started splashing each other.

"Perfect, you’ve both gotten wet like two swans," says Lorena, drying her daughters with a knitted sweater.

"Mom, now we can go to the haunted house," Ludy asks, her voice full of excitement.

"Sweetheart, remember that the haunted mountain scares your sister; don’t take her there."

"Mom, we won’t get scared in the haunted house. Besides, Ludwika already knows that witches are just rag dolls."

"Right, bird?"

Ludy turns to seek her sister’s approval; at that moment, she sees her sister standing light and still, as if suspended in the middle of the fair, while people come and go around her.

Ludy walks toward Ludwika; she stares at the entrance to a booth decorated with royal blue curtains filled with green leaves that frame bright and eye-catching oranges painted on the fabric of the curtains. Blue lights, similar to those that decorate Christmas trees, wrap around two plants and cover the trunk that grows toward the sky until the leaves emerge. Ludwika stops as she looks at a woman with deep eyes like a forest and as blue as the sea.

"Who is that lady?" asks Ludwika.

"She’s a witch," says her sister Ludy with an air of confidence and fear. "She’s a real witch; they usually have crystal balls where they see the future and brooms at the entrance of their houses to fly at night and sweep away the evil eye from their homes. But mom says that the future is uncertain; no one can know it, not even good witches, and that once they reveal it to you, it’s destined to change. That means if they tell you something good, it won’t happen, and if they tell you something bad, that won’t happen either. It’s better not to ask anything of witches."

At that moment, both girls entered the tent; a curtain of rain fell over my head, feeling the water run down my body and skin. I took a deep breath and soaped my body, my legs, and my hips.

"Hurry up, love," Everth said to me, knocking on the bathroom door. "We need to get to the company early."