He froze. He clearly hadn’t expected that. “You’ll get a second opinion, though, right?”
“What for? Eloy Sanz is the best trauma specialist in the country. If he can’t fix me, no one can. It’s over, Matías, I’ll never dance on the stage again.”
He expelled a breath of air, exasperated. Then he hugged me again, tight, but differently from before, with an emotion that stirred me in my deepest depths.
“Shit, Maya, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what the hell to say.”
My face still buried between his neck and shoulder, I asked, “So now what? I don’t know what the hell to do.”
Matías began walking again with his arm over my shoulder.
“You could teach. You’re still in time to apply at María de Ávila. I don’t think you’d have a hard time getting in.”
“That’s a four-year degree! Anyway, I don’t know if I’m built for teaching.”
“You could study choreography. You’re creative, and you’ve always had an incredibly artistic sense.”
I thought it over. I didn’t know a world apart from ballet shoes, the barre, steps. Becoming a teacher would keep me close to what I’d always considered my home, but I wasn’t sure if I had what it took. Choreography, though… That had always fascinated me. Making a story arise out of nothing, transforming it into movements, gestures, expressions…emotions that people can feel.
“I’ll think about it, but I need to look for a job first. Whatever I end up doing, I need money. I couldn’t even pay my registration fees as is.”
“There you go—focusing on the future. I like that. No regrets.”
“Matías, I’m a wreck,” I confessed. “I feel like I’m in a nightmare and can’t wake up.”
Matías shook his head and bent over and kissed me on the temple.
“I know. How’d your grandmother take it?”
“What do you think?” I asked, my bugging my eyes out and sticking out my tongue. “It was like it was her life falling apart and not mine. She says I’m a failure, just like my mother.”
“She’s a heartless bitch,” he replied.
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true, though.”
“She’s still my grandmother, and at least she never abandoned me. Maybe she loves me, in her own way.”
“Well, her own way is pretty damn weird,” he responded.
We walked off into the multitude whose lives were so different from ours. Dozens and dozens of stories. Little worlds, each with its own problems and joys, hopes and deceptions.
“You’re not a failure,” he continued, “so don’t you dare think she might be right. You’re amazing, Maya. You always have been.” He gave me a smile full of tenderness.
I smiled back, thinking of my mother, a woman I might have seen ten times in my whole life. My grandmother rarely mentioned her, but when she did, her voice was full of pain and bitterness. She resented her, the same way she had resented me that morning.
I closed my eyes and tried to remember if I’d ever truly seen my grandmother happy. I didn’t think so. Maybe when I passed my audition and became a soloist. At that moment, her eyes shone bright for just a moment. Then she told me, gritting her teeth, that I’d better not disappoint her.
4
At twelve years old
“Again.”
Her voice was like shattered glass.
I took a deep breath and walked to the center of the room. It was Saturday, and I had spent the entire week taking classes at the conservatory, apart from school and rehearsal for our end-of-the-year performance, and all I wanted was to lie down in front of the TV and do nothing.
