Tiny Pretty Things (12 page)

I grab one of the glue sticks that sit on top of the TV. I wipe it all over the back of the picture. I slam the page on the wall and smack it hard, like I’m hitting Gigi’s face a thousand times.

I step back to admire the picture among the others. At first glance you can’t tell it’s one unlike the others. I wish I could see the look on people’s faces when they spot it, and the look on Gigi’s face especially.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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I
’
M LUCKY MY WEIGH-IN TIME
is at 5:10 p.m., after academic classes. Gigi is off somewhere by herself, probably smelling the flowers she keeps plucking from God knows where, and I have the room to myself. She’s been at it for the past few days, claiming that her Mama says a flower’s scent helps boost happy brain chemicals. I don’t care about being happy. Only about being the best.

I think through what I’ve eaten today: three cups of clear tea; half a grapefruit sprinkled with a pinch of sugar; one rice cake; a half-pint of soup; a mixed green salad, no dressing; and a half scoop of tuna. Although I must admit, I didn’t touch the tuna. But I count it because it was on the salad. If there were any day I could eat, it would be today. Weigh-in Wednesday is on every calendar in these halls. For some of the girls, like Bette, it isn’t ever a problem. They’re carrying a few extra pounds here and there, just what they need to keep Nurse Connie’s confidence.

But I need more. Nurse Connie has rules. For my height, I should be 110 pounds, a hippo in tights. Instead, I make sure I’m a model of grace, with perfect posture; a lithe, lean frame; a prizewinner all around. I do what I have to do. It’s all a concerted effort. Because I take my work and myself seriously. Unlike some of the other girls.

When I weighed myself this morning, the scale read 99 pounds. A number that the other girls would kill for. A number that means I’m light and liftable. But here, anything less than 100 pounds at my age and height gets you sent packing. And I can’t let that happen. I won’t let that happen.

I pour myself a tall glass of water from my electric teapot. It’s my fourth in half an hour. Today, I need the water weight, as slight as it is. But it won’t be enough. So I sit at my desk and pull a needle and some thread out of my dance bag. From the desk drawer, I take four pieces of the Korean won my grandmother gave me the one time I met her. They are ideal: heavier than American coins. I pick up my clean Wednesday leotard from its labeled bureau drawer and flip it inside out. We’re required to wear them for weigh-in. A little mesh pocket lifts from the crotch area—the perfect don’t-go-there space. I set four won on my digital food scale. The numbers blink: 612 grams, 1.34 pounds. Just right.

The won fit perfectly in the leotard’s little pocket, and I sew the tissue paper–wrapped coins into the flap. Unnoticeable to anyone but me. I pull the leotard on over my pink tights and smooth out the edges, so nothing protrudes. The coin-filled pouch pushes between my legs like the maxipads I don’t have to wear anymore, since I stopped getting my period. I pull on a chiffon dance skirt on over my ensemble. No one will ever know.

I step on my floor scale. The numbers calibrate and settle on 101 pounds. A warm flush rushes through me. Just to be sure, I drink two more glasses of water.

I take the elevator to the basement before going to the nutritionist’s office on the first floor. I stop in the computer lab, printing out a hastily written English paper, since I have some time to kill and
can’t stand the nerves when I’m just standing around waiting for my appointment.

The computer lab has been officially taken over by the Korean contingency. They do everything in a big group: eat, watch Korean soap operas on their laptops, and spend weekends at Sei-Jin’s aunt’s brownstone on the Upper East Side. Right now they are all video chatting with faraway relatives and it’s an assault of fast-paced Korean, so speedy I can’t even make out the occasional noun. I fight the pinch in my stomach, burying the nagging desire to be part of their group. I’ve seen exactly how cruel they can be. So why do I still want that?

Sei-Jin sees me, and as usual, throws out some insults in Korean, commanding the whole room to laugh. I’m sure she’s calling me a banana or whatever the Korean word is for a halfie.

I recognize Sei-Jin’s mother on her computer screen, and a part of me wants to wave hello. Just so Sei-Jin is forced to talk about me and make up some lie about why we aren’t friends anymore. Just to make her feel that pinch of discomfort in catering to Korean social graces. Sei-Jin’s mother used to visit the conservatory when we were smaller, and she always reminded me of my own mom. When we lived together, Sei-Jin and I would compare notes on them, complaining about their constant stress and their ugly haircuts and disdain for American music and food. I taught Sei-Jin how to say curse words in English, and we’d whisper them under our breath when our moms made us angry. She’d delighted in the sounds, and taught me a few key phrases in Korean that I once let fly at my mom during a particularly heated argument. It was worth facing my mom’s wrath when I got to tell Sei-Jin about my triumph.

That feels like a long, long time ago. I don’t even remember myself in that friendship. And I definitely don’t remember her.

She takes off the headphones and microphone. “When my mother saw you walk in, she asked who the ugly new American girl was,” Sei-Jin says, just as I’m about to exit with my English paper in hand. Her accent emphasizes the harshness of her words. “I told her it was E-Jun Kim, and she said she couldn’t believe it. She said whoever your father is, he must be one ugly American pig.”

She emphasizes the insult
pig,
like it’s a current thing normal American teens use. I want to laugh at her. I want to push her out of the way, and explain to her mom how our friendship changed.

“Oh right, you don’t have any idea who he is. Yes, must’ve been a pig to make you.”

I try to stop my body and face from reacting, but the parts don’t listen. I inhale sharply, stumble over one of my own feet, and wish away the sweat gathering behind my ears. I try to remember my plan to hurt her.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Sei-Jin says, watching my face like a hawk. “Maybe I translated wrong?”

She smiles, but even then her perfect creamy skin doesn’t crack. Not a single dimple or smile line or flaw. She hasn’t translated wrong, of course. Her English is perfect, but she always blames her cruelty on the language barrier anyway. And I can’t even defend my mystery dad. I have no idea who he is. Only that he’s white and practically a ghost. The other girls pause their own individual conversations to watch Sei-Jin and me.

Most of them came from Seoul when they were six, right when I enrolled. At first we were all
friends. They stayed with nearby Korean relatives, and my mom would invite them to do things in the city with us. We’d have dinners and sleepovers. But after Sei-Jin spread the rumor, they all took her side. That’s when they stopped speaking in English around me, or coming to my room at night to talk about the stupid American girls. I went from being part of their group, part of something that felt so comfortable, to a total outsider.

Now Sei-Jin likes the others to believe that I don’t fit because I’m half-white, because I can’t speak much Korean, because I’ll try to make out with them all. It’s enough to offend their prudish ways and keep me away, for sure. But really, Sei-Jin is scared of the secret only I know about. How would they treat her? What would Jayhe think? She’d be the one all alone, left out.

“My mother said your mother slept with a lot of people to get ahead,” Sei-Jin says. “She said your father was probably one of the teachers or someone with a bunch of money.” She cocks her head. Unable to defend my mom—for all I know, it’s true—I walk out without another word. But I know her mom said none of these things. Those were my theories I used to go through with her when I was upset with my mom for not telling me about my dad. Sei-Jin’s mom is always nice to me when she sees me. Always pats my head and tells me how pretty I am.

Heat crawls up my neck, and I try my hardest not to look back, even though I can feel Sei-Jin’s heavy gaze on me, her mean words still ringing in my head, taunting me. I walk slow and straight and composed, as if she’s not affecting me at all.

After my run-in with Sei-Jin and her followers, the nutritionist’s office is almost a sterile, metallic relief. Almost. At least I can sit on the cool metal table and savor the quiet until Nurse Connie shows up to ruin everything. The white tissue paper crinkles under my butt as I fidget with anxiety. Her office is sandwiched between the studios on the first floor, a constant reminder that she’s in here lurking and ready to make sure we’re all following the rules about our weight.

The tools of Nurse Connie’s trade are on display in the office: two gleaming, mean-spirited scales, one digital and one traditional. And there, on the wall, are tape measures, strung like snakes that nip at your wrists, your waist, your thighs, threatening to expose your darkest secrets. When these come down, you know you’ve gone too far, that home beckons, that your skin and bones aren’t enough to sustain you any longer.

I’ve only had to face the snakes once, in eighth grade, when I hit ninety-six pounds, and the school called my mom, who nearly hauled me home. I ate and ate and ate that weekend, gorging myself like a fat pink pig, until I hit one hundred and they let me come back to school.

I feel the weight of the coins, comforting, and that’s what I think about when Nurse Connie breezes in, not saying a word before taking my blood pressure—it’s low again—and checking my heart rate.

“Remove your skirt, please,” she says.

“I didn’t mean to—” I stutter.

She waves her hand in the air. Today, she doesn’t want to hear it.

“When was your last menstrual cycle?” she says.

“Two weeks ago.” The lie comes out effortlessly, because I track when my period would come if I still had it. Just to be prepared.

“Are you sexually active?”

“No,” I say, and wonder if one day that answer will change. She gives me safe sex reminders. I remember last year how crazy sex rumors went around about Cassie cheating on her Paris Opera school star boyfriend Henri—futile attempts to break them up and pollute their budding fame as ballet’s new It couple. I wonder if they were having sex. If that helped them dance so passionately together. If Nurse Connie had to give her more than just gentle reminders.

“Stand,” Nurse Connie says, and I do, stepping onto the wobbly pad of the traditional scale, old-school and as mean as any of our teachers. Meaner, maybe. I close my eyes and hold my breath, wondering if the air might make me heavier. She shifts the weights from one end to the other and back, dark and calculating, determining my fate, as she does every week.

“Hmmm,” she says. The concerned tone seeps into my pores. A cold sweat drips quietly down my back and dots my hairline, taking my makeup with it. And that’s when she says it. “About a hundred and one. Not good. Get on the other one.”

I do as she instructs, stepping automatically on the digital scale, as I’ve done once a week for a decade now. I clasp my hands together in almost prayer formation. I gather my breath, again. Liquid churns in my stomach. She doesn’t look happy. She holds a chart that records my height and weight and soul, deciding whether or not I deserve a place in these halls.

“One hundred and one,” she repeats, and I exhale with relief, though it is peppered with fear and doubt and, yes, satisfaction. “Not good at all, E-Jun.”

“I know.” I can’t tell her that I just needed to get above one hundred. That was my goal.

I step down, like a good girl, and take a seat, praying, praying, praying that those snakes don’t slither my way today. They’ll give me away for sure. She touches my leg muscles. I wince and imagine she’s about to say my legs are too skinny, my arms too frail to support the ballet movements. That at some point I’ll collapse, unable to support my own weight. And I can’t have that now, not when I’m so close. Not when I can nearly taste it. Not when my mother is threatening to pull me out of the conservatory.

“I know I don’t have to remind you of this,” she says with a patronizing tone, “but you need to eat more. Tell me, what did you have for breakfast and lunch?”

I don’t tell her the real items. Instead, I repeat my memorized lines: “Half a grapefruit, a cup of nonfat yogurt with fresh cherries, two bananas, a salad with tuna, coffee and cream.” As I give her that embellished list, I can almost feel the bite of the imaginary caffeine and calories swooshing in my stomach.

She looks intently at the chart, seeing right through my lies. “You weren’t in the cafeteria last night. I don’t have your signature on the list.” Her evil sign-in sheets stare up at me—her prison-inspired way of making sure we are present for all meals. “What did you eat for dinner?”

“My mother brought me some
baechu gook
.” I smile sweetly, knowing that the foreign words
will fluster her. “Because I’ve been working so hard, you know, as understudy for the Sugar Plum Fairy.”