l a p s e

the suitcase

My suitcase was purple, I remember. The day I packed it I'd had a terrible fight with my mother, one that involved screaming and throwing and I hate yous. I'd cried and thrown a fit, slammed some doors, run out of the house for a while.

I don't remember what we were fighting about. It's not important now. But it had been important then, and I had come out of the fight seething and bitter, my nerves for the performance turning my irritation into an unsavory thing.

I'd packed my journal last, cocooned inside a pink chiffon skirt. The journal's small but sturdy, with a leather cover and a small silver charm of a dancer dangling off the spine, and when I put it into my bag it had been pristine. Now it's musty and there's one mud stain on the back pages that still smells stubbornly of spruce.

I'd stared at it, thinking. What if I lost my suitcase in the plane? What if someone stole it? Worst of all, what if the plane crashed and it was lost forever?

At the time I didn't really believe that it would crash, but I found myself thinking about it. What would I do, if I survived? I thought that I'd find something to use as a signal, a fluorescent cloth or a mirror, maybe, and I'd wait for the rescuers to come. I wouldn't move. I wouldn't run.

But I couldn't lose the journal, so I picked it up and put it into my purse instead, as if I were less likely to lose the purse than the suitcase. I couldn't think of anything else I'd need if the plane went down; half the things that would be useful weren't allowed on the plane. I'd moved my soap and toothbrush and a set of clean underwear into the purse, though, but I never found them again.

My suitcase was overstuffed – along with the things I needed for my performance I'd packed several extra sets of clothes, a bulky sweater and a thick woolen dress. In addition to my pointe shoes I packed a pair of flats and two pairs of heels. It weighed me down, but I didn't think of taking anything out to lighten it.

I'd skipped dinner that night. We had had to be at the airport at three in the morning for our flight to Vancouver and after double-checking the zip on my suitcase and throwing some extra lip gloss into the purse I'd gone straight to bed.

Sometime in my sleep I heard the door to my room being pushed open, probably by my mother. I wasn't sure if I was imagining it but I heard a zip being opened – it was probably nothing, because both my bags were just as heavy in the morning.

We'd rushed to the airport. My alarm had flung me out of my sleep and I'd immediately thrown on a pair of jeans, put on my glasses and run out with my bags. We'd double checked everything, triple-locked the house, before we got into the car.

I'd steeled myself during the ride to the airport – not for the flight, no, that was nothing, but for that evening's performance, the Nutcracker, in which I had the lead. My earlier worries of the plane going down had disappeared. So had my mother's anger, apparently, because she was gentle with me the whole way there, muttering soft words of encouragement as she put on her makeup in the moonlight.

The cool breeze made me relax, and I methodically went over every step of the dance, each nuance in the music, in my head. Soon I found my eyes closing and felt the muscle memory in my limbs dancing to Tchaikovsky, spinning me away into the night. I fell asleep in the car and in my dreams, everything was alright.