on/in mirrors - by jessica dai - letters to my friends :~)

This essay is anthologized in SINOSTORIES, and was a finalist in Ploughshares’ 2021 Emerging Writer’s Contest. I remember saying I didn’t want to do ballet anymore. Every Saturday morning my mother and I sat in the backseat of the parked car, thirty minutes early to class. Tears smarted in our eyes — mine in pain, hers in frustration — as she tried to wrestle my frizzy hair into a smooth, hairsprayed bun, one that might hold up against the unforgiving gaze of my thin blonde teacher and the quiet disapproval of the other moms. Hudie Dance Academy was different. On the first day we visited the studio, they were doing back flexibility exercises, snow angels in reverse: hyacinth leotards scattered across the floor. Fragments of loud gossip slipped under the door, no matter how loudly the teacher cranked the music. I remember the piece we learned for my first recital at Hudie, Seagull; I remember being exhilarated by how different it was from the dry monotony of ballet. Our skinny legs were

This essay is anthologized in SINOSTORIES, and was a finalist in Ploughshares’ 2021 Emerging Writer’s Contest. I remember saying I didn’t want to do ballet anymore. Every Saturday morning my mother and I sat in the backseat of the parked car, thirty minutes early to class. Tears smarted in our eyes — mine in pain, hers in frustration — as she tried to wrestle my frizzy hair into a smooth, hairsprayed bun, one that might hold up against the unforgiving gaze of my thin blonde teacher and the quiet disapproval of the other moms. Hudie Dance Academy was different. On the first day we visited the s