I told her I had read some of it in the book she had given me and that I would be sure to mention it to Madame Malisorf.
"Good. You'll pick it up faster than anyone expects. I just know you will," she said.
"We're here," Sanford announced proudly. It seemed that aside from pleasing Celine, the factory was the most important thing in Sanford's life. Maybe soon I would be added to the list.
The factory looked much bigger than I had expected and there were dozens and dozens of cars parked in the lot. Sanford owned all this? No wonder money didn't seem to matter, I thought.
"I'm really very tired, Sanford," Celine suddenly said. "I should take a rest."
"But . . well, can't I show Janet the plant and check on some matters?" The smile and proud glow were gone from his face.
"Take me home first," she commanded tersely. "Besides, Janet's seen the factory. Why does she have to go in and be exposed to all that dust?"
"Dust? It's not dusty inside, Celine. You know how proud I am of our industrial environment." He was starting to whine.
"Please," she groaned. "Between you and Daddy, I hear more than enough about business. My parents own a printing plant," she explained. "Pleas
e, drive on, Sanford?'
I could see his jaw tightening as he looked at her and then he gazed at his factory and shrugged.
"I just thought since we were already here . . ." He had already given up. He sounded like one of us orphans when we'd been passed up by yet another set of potential parents.
"She's not just visiting us, Sanford. She's come to live with us. There will be other times," Celine reminded him.
"Of course. You're right, dear. Home it is," he said and started off with a sigh.
But what about my school? I couldn't help but wonder. Shouldn't we go there now?
Celine seemed to read my thoughts.
"In the morning Sanford will take you to the private school and have you enrolled," she said. "And when you come home, Madame Malisorf will be there, waiting for you.
"Then," she added, her face filled with that eerie light and excitement from before, "we'll begin again."
Five
Later that evening when Celine began to question me about what I had read in the book on ballet, I felt as if I had already enrolled in a new school. She was like a teacher, correcting, explaining, and assigning me more reading. She wanted to be sure I knew the names of all the famous ballets.
"I haven't told Madame Malisorf anything about your background, Janet. She doesn't have to know you've lived all your life in an orphanage," she said. "You could be a distant relative whom I've adopted."
It was the first time she had said anything that made me feel ashamed of where I'd come from. I remembered the first time I heard someone refer to me as an orphan. It happened on the playground at school. I was in the fourth grade and we were outside at recess. There was a small sidewalk the girls used for hopscotch and we often partnered up. When one of the girls, Blair Cummings, was left with me, she complained.
"I don't want to be with her. She's too small, and besides, she's an orphan," she remarked, and the others looked at me as if I had a wart on my nose. I remember my face became hot and tears felt like boiling drops under my eyelids. I turned and ran away. Later, when our teacher, Miss Walker, found me sitting alone in a corner of the playground, she asked if I was sick.
"Yes," I said. It was a convenient way to escape any more ridicule. "I have a stomachache."
She sent me to the nurse's office and I was told to lie quietly after the nurse had taken my temperature even though she found that I didn't have a fever. I suppose that was why people thought of me as sickly. Whenever I felt singled out, I would often get these "stomachaches" and be thankful for the excuse to disappear. Being an orphan made me want to be invisible.
"Most of Madame Malisorf's pupils," Celine continued, "come from the finest families, people of culture who have raised their children in a world of music and art and dance. They have a head start, but don't you worry, dear," she added, reaching out to touch my cheek. "You have me and that, that is a much better head start than any of the more fortunate ones have had."
After dinner I sat with her and Sanford and listened to Celine's descriptions of some of the dances in which she had performed.
"Madame Malisorf compared me to Anna Pavlova. Have you ever heard of her?" Celine asked. I hadn't of course. She shook her head and sighed. "It's a crime, a crime that someone like you, someone who is a diamond in the rough, has been denied so much, denied the opportunity. Thank Heaven I saw you that day," she declared.
No one had ever even suggested I had any sort of talent, much less thought of me as a diamond in the rough. When I left Celine that night and went to my room, I stood in front of my full-length mirror in my new pointe shoes and my leotards and studied my tiny body, hoping to see something that would convince me I was special. All I saw was an underdeveloped little girl with big, frightened eyes.
I crawled into bed that night terrified over what was to come.