Happy Noises

There are ballerinas living in the dorm right now. The Bossov Ballet Theatre runs out of MCI and they are preparing for their Cinderella performance this weekend. While carrying in our boxes, we met the Executive Director of the program, a retired colonel, who named composers and choreograhers and flitted a hand through the stuffy, dorm air like he was conducting. He told us the girls could be boisterous and that although it might get a little loud, it's all "happy noises."

First, the girls discovered Darby. He sat in the shady, green-like-Girl-Scout-uniforms grass outside  while Jared, a friend and Grampie carted boxes and furniture. Every time I'd look for Darby, there would be a small harem of long-haired girls in tiny shorts gushing over him. He leaned his head into their hands, basking in the glory. Even when I locked him inside, they saw him through the screen sighing, "Ohhhh, puuupppppy." And Darby, pretending to be bashful, would rise slowly from his pose of the child position and stretch into a downward dog, yawning. The girls would squeal and he'd amble to the screen to be adored up close.

Yesterday, as I washed our new silverware and colanders and Jared assembled bedside lamps, the girls watched Chicago in the main room. One girl said, "You haven't seen Chicago???" to another and they rewound and replayed "He Had it Comin'" several times. Boys in sweat pants and graphic T-shirts walked by our window occasionally and, minutes later, the girls giggled.

This morning, Henry and I watched the girls race to practice with high buns, black leotards and pale skin-colored tights. They scurried like cartoon mice. Henry yelled "HI!" out the windows, but they couldn't see him through the screen though they turned around, scanning the windows, waving absently to the high, unfamiliar voice. They look like they are nine to eleven years old, but they are probably closer to fifteen or sixteen. They walk with more confidence than I had at their age, no matter what age that is, and their thin, wraparound sweaters are tied with lazy, casual knots in the smalls of their backs.

I don't know how many, if any, of them will stay for the year. The ballet program is ongoing, but this is just summer camp. I wonder if my dorm of girls will be like them, flitty and smiling. Happy noises. But these girls are committed to something. It is fun (hopefully) and they chose to come here (hopefully). My girls, who'll arrive throughout August, will be high schoolers who'll want to sleep in, visit instead of do homework and clomp around the building. They'll fight over washing machines and which movie to watch on the big TV. They may still like my dog, but may not like me. They'll sometimes be sullen and, a moment later, laughing with friends. Some days they will hate their clothes and their body and nearly everything about themselves. Others they will be proud of a grade or like the way a pair of pants falls on their body, but not say a word about either.

I'm glad to have a week to settle in before work starts. Although I am looking forward to the girls' arrival. They will come from China and Japan and Russia and other places, maybe feeling strange and different and weird. What I wish I could tell them, what I wish I knew then, is that everyone feels a little foreign and out of place. But I wouldn't have believed it then either.