Fairy Queen

I did not want or mean to write this, but Camille wants it documented.

Robin is a real queen, but that doesn’t make her look less like one of the Fairies, as she watches Camille on the empty stage. Camille thinks she is beautiful; small and fine and pale. In school, she has learned that birds need hollow bones, and that a robin is a bird, so perhaps that explains the way Robin the woman’s bones seem more ornamental than simply a means of keeping an ordinary body upright.

Camille only thinks about this afterward, when she is breathless on the stage in no longer lost in lights and story. She doesn’t think of anyone when she dances, Fairy Queen or no. (Robin can see that, though she doesn’t tell.)

“That was very good,” says the Fairy Queen. Her voice is strongest in the middle of that, a tone Camille associates with teachers when she answers a question they think she doesn’t know. But there is something different about it: teachers don’t love you, and they don’t have time to sound sad as well as surprised.

“It’s fun!” says Camille. “Do you like dancing?”

Robin laughs, clutching at her seat from the space of the audience. Camille watches her face flush from white to pink. “Oh, I love it, darling,” she says.

Camille, looking back, wants to die now she knows that she had asked one of the city’s best former dancers if she enjoyed performing on stage. The scene is fixed in her mind; Robin’s laughter mocks her now, even though the queen is nothing if not a kind fairy. Camille is ten, and many things embarrass her these days. Her school friends are noisy, and easy, and aren’t afraid of anything, but they don’t get asked by substitute teachers if they’re in the right class, or get singled out in health because a horrible boy wants to know, “if you’ve got your period yet?” (He was sent home, but that’s not the point.)

Camille’s friends have sleepovers on Tuesdays. Tuesday is Contemporary day, and that is her favourite class. When she asks why they couldn’t just all sleep over on a Wednesday, or even a Friday, they all look like they know something she does not when they say, “But it’s not the same, that way.”

Camille worries that, by the time she is eleven, she won’t have very many friends.

Some teachers say Camille is “dynamic.” These are not the same teachers who ask if, “someone who thinks they understand the question,” will partner up with her in English class. These teachers don’t smile when they’re pleased, and they want her to think, “light! Light!” even as they ask other girls to watch her feet. Soon, Tuesday class becomes a Monday-through-Wednesday class, with extra on Saturday mornings. She is never light enough, but people keep watching, which means she keeps coming back. There are concerts, and kind words, even though nothing means quite the same to Camille as Robin’s fey, “That wasvery good.”

“Most boring lot of shite I’ve ever had to sit through...”

Camille is thirteen, and helps clear out the practise rooms after the babies. She quite likes being old enough to call them babies—as if hauling chairs is a rite of passage. Gina Evans’ dad likes to wait

around and talk to her as she does this, because Gina always takes forever to get changed. Camille has asked him what he thought about the concert dress rehearsal the day before.

“I’m sorry you think it’s boring,” she says. “I don’t understand how you think it’s boring, when there’s all the music and the lights and how they have to work with the choreography—”

“—Yes. But sweetie, you’re forgetting something. And that’s that I don’t give a flying fuckabout choreography.”

Camille flinches, and he laughs.

“Pardon my French,” he says.

“Mais vous ne parlez pas en français,” she answers, stiffly. “And if you really don’t like it, I’m sure you don’t have to come.”

Mr. Evans walks over to her, and takes the chair she was about to lift. “Primadona in training?” Camille, suddenly, doesn’t like his voice, and ignores him.

“How old are you anyway?”

She leaves the room.

Concerts are bigger than exams. Bigger than sleepovers. Bigger than her cousin’s birthday where someone spiked the punch. They make Camille want to cry, but laugh, too, as everyone runs around and hairspray makes her eyes water. (Camille makes sure no one has to do anything to her hair.) This year, her mama isn’t helping out backstage—parents have their own rites of passage, too. This year, mama is a spectator, and Camille feels that she dances better for it, and can almost feelthat dad is awake during her moments of stage space. She hasn’t told them she’s winning a prize this time, and can’t wait to see what they’ll do. All they’re expecting after the bows is a long and boring speech by a woman who doesn’t do anything in the school except take their money.

Camille is backstage, breathless, just about to change into the black leotard and slip the girls are meant to wear when they go back out to collect prizes. The building is a maze, but she knows it well, eyes fixed more on the memory of steps she got wrong or almost-wrong rather than the way to the girl’s changeroom. Teachers, parents, girls, are everywhere. This person hugs her; this person wants to know if anyone noticed when her hairpiece fell out on stage. (“No,” Camille kindly lies.)

“Camille!” She does not expect to hear her name in Mr. Evans’ voice. He’s looking worried; stressed like any other stage-parent. “I need you to help Gina with something...she won’t let me come near her.”

She goes to him, follows as he takes her down another hall. “I’m in a hurry,” she says. “And...this isn’t the way t—hey!”

It comes out as a squeak. He has her by the arm, pushes her into a room. “You’re a fucking tease,” he’s saying, and Camille has no time to pull away or yell or hit before he’s kissing her, one hand shoving aside her leotard to clutch at her chest. She’s trying to scream and pull her head away. This is nothing like kissing her friend Loyal at a birthday party where someone spiked the punch. Is this

punishment for kissing the Fairy Queen’s daughter? Why do people say she’s big? Camille wants to dwindle away and be invisible, like her brain. His hand hurts and she feels sick. She wishes she could throw up in his mouth.

“Good little girls don’t look like you,” he says, pushing her away from him as if she is the disgusting thing. “And no one’s going to believe you if you tell, all right? And I’ll just do it again if you tell.” He looks like he’s going to cry; as if she is the ugliest thing he has ever seen. Camille wants to dwindle away. She forgets that she has a family, and that the Fairy Queen is a real queen, who would believe her. She forgets that her daddy could break this man in three. What if the bits all came back together and he did it again?

He leaves the room.

Camille is late, but not late enough to miss her prize. She creeps onto the stage, but that is embarrassment, of course. Being called twice is embarrassing for any child. That, when she is asked, is why she’s crying.