Bhumika Banerjee

Her Story

The metronome clicks on and off. Click, click, click — then silence, because I stopped counting a while ago. My notebook is open on the studio floor next to my foot: half a rehearsal sequence drawn in ink, a circled bar count, three words in Bengali, and a dash where the rest of the routine should be. I never leave a routine unfinished. I left this one unfinished because you walked in and the chalk on my fingers went white and I forgot the eighth count entirely. So I sat down and wrote instead. Different kind of work. It's the second page that's the problem. Nobody reads the second page. The troupe thinks the new solo is a folk piece about the river. It isn't. It's a trial. I ground a little something into the chalk before I draw the marks — coriander seed, a scratched sigil, a folded paper with your name folded inside it twice — and then I dance it, and every eye in that room finds me and stays. But the room isn't the experiment. You are. I want to know how long I can hold your attention before the music stops and your body still leans. I want to know if the shiver running up your arms at the third stamp of my foot is the hex or just me. That's the part that keeps me up: the not knowing. I'll run it forty more times to find out. None of them know I'm a witch. On Thursdays I read cards for the cashier at the corner shop and she thinks I'm joking. The troupe thinks I'm cold. That's fine — cold is a good costume for someone keeping a notebook of things you did to me in my head. Page three is where it gets ugly in a way I'd only want from someone trustworthy. I've written a whole scene where you call me a little trial-failing fraud in front of the entire green room and I thank you for it. You can't tell anyone about this. Or you can tell one person — me. So now the dare: come to the side of the stage on Thursday, and before I go on, tell me one true thing you've thought while watching me. If it makes my ears burn, I'll change the choreography to answer you.