Tita by Marie Houzelle Read Free Book Online

Madame Robichon decided that the way it will start is we’ll all walk onto the stage, one after the other, very fast, and do a cartwheel. Zip zip zip, the nine of us, across the stage. After which most of us will stand at the back and let the stars do their stuff. Eléonore will wear six different tutus, all kinds of lengths and colors. Her mother and aunt will be in the wings to help her change. Coralie and I hate tutus. Anyway, according to Justine, you shouldn’t cartwheel in a tutu. She discussed it with her ballerina friends, who called it “sacrilege”.
     
    “Can’t we wear our leotards?” I ask madame Robichon.
    “What a ridiculous question!” she answers, rolling her globulous eyes, whose eyelashes are always congealed by a thick layer of mascara. “This is a show we’re putting on! The whole point of a show is dressing up.” There’s something uncanny about madame Robichon: she wears her hair rather short, in a pageboy, and it’s always exactly the same length. It doesn’t grow.
    “Jordi will wear his leotard,” I say. “Why couldn’t we?”
    “You are not boys, are you? Please, we have a lot to do, there’s no time for silly talk.”
    “I’d like to be a boy,” Coralie says. “I’d wear a leotard. No, I’d play rugby.”
     
    Madame Robichon makes us rehearse our cartwheels. On a beach, it’s fun to turn a cartwheel. Or two, or three. What I don’t like is doing it on a small stage. Anyway a cartwheel, according to Justine, is gymnastics, not ballet, and shouldn’t be part of a ballet performance.
    While Eléonore capers and pirouettes, Coralie turns to me and makes a pig face with her nose and lips turned up. I’m so tired of the whole thing, I squat for a while. “Stand up, please!” madame Robichon cries. “Think of your parents, how proud they’ll be to see you on stage in your beautiful tutus next Wednesday!”
     
    “I’m so looking forward to this show!” Eléonore exclaims in the changing room. We’re all ready to go, but she’s still busy with her many layers of undershirts, blouses and cardigans. “She’s always as covered up as a honeypot,” Mother likes to say. Which doesn’t make any sense to me, but is certainly derogatory.
    Mother is waiting for us outside, with Cami Espeluque and Estelle Vié who, like her, take classes with madame Robichon, twice a week. Not ballet: culture physique , to enhance their figures. Estelle is lean and brisk, she says she’d like to become more flexible. Cami wants to lose the weight she put on when she was pregnant with the twins and breastfed them for more than a year, but I don’t think she should: she’s beautiful as she is, all chubby and sparkling. Mother’s aim is to remain as slim and perfect as she’s always been. For ever.
    Eléonore comes with us in the car. “How’s it going?” Mother asks. Eléonore explains how hard it is to remember all her moves, in the right order. After we drop her in front of her house, Mother says, “That girl shouldn’t do ballet. Not with those thick ankles.”
    “She has strong legs,” I say. “She’s a good dancer.” Actually, I don’t think she’s so great — she tries too hard, and worries too much about how she looks. But I won’t let anyone disparage my friends.
    “Don’t talk nonsense,” Mother says. “She’s a nice enough girl, but her mother shouldn’t put it into her head that she’s pretty. It won’t help her. With her heavy limbs, her pasty skin, her mousy hair, she should realize her prospects are very limited.”
    Mother pays huge attention to appearance. As if she’d never heard of souls. According to school, church, and the comtesse de Ségur, being good is what matters, not looking good. Of course madame Fichini is cruel when she makes Sophie wear a coarse cotton dress with a dirty spot on it to visit her friends. That’s rude. You need to be clean, to dress in a way that suits the occasion, your social situation and your age, neither too coarse