Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina (15 page)

Of course I disagreed. I knew what the term
brainwashed
meant, and my life with Cindy and Patrick had been the furthest thing from it. Still, it was true that I brought a whirlwind of publicity to Cindy’s studio and school, with all the accolades I received and the news coverage about me.

Cindy readily acknowledged that I was her star. She would sometimes sell as many as two thousand tickets to one of her school’s performances, the audience packed with balletomanes and the curious, all of whom had come to see the ballet prodigy who’d been discovered at the Boys and Girls Club and bloomed in a working-class corner of San Pedro.

But I still think all that was a happy, unintentional outcome, not the goal. The Bradleys had helped unearth and hone my gift. Instead of treating me like a student or project, they embraced me as a daughter. I was still shy, but thanks to their nurturing, I now knew that my voice was worth hearing.

And as much as I loved my family, I hadn’t missed the chaos or the day-to-day uncertainty that we’d lived with. I liked having my own room, even one that I shared with a little boy. I loved coming home to the smells of the peach cobbler and lemon pie that Patrick had baked. I cherished not having to worry about whether I would eat or where I would sleep. I appreciated that the only thing I had to do was be a girl who loved to dance.

But my brothers and sisters didn’t understand. They were all on Mommy’s side.

I RETURNED FROM SAN FRANCISCO
a different ballerina from when I left, much more educated and refined.

One of the many new steps I’d learned over the summer was a
temps de cuisse,
something I had never heard of, let alone attempted, before.

During one of my first classes back at the San Pedro Dance Center, I did the step literally without missing a beat. Cindy
was in awe. She called Patrick, then asked me to do it over and over and over again, displaying what I had learned.

When I glided across the floor, my
glissades
were smoother. When I did a
grand jeté,
I leaped higher, extended farther. When I performed an
entrechat,
jumping in the air, crisscrossing my feet the way a bird flaps its wings, I felt like a fairy suspended in the sky. Cindy was elated.

I was, too. But I also began to feel a bit as if I’d outgrown Cindy, her studio, and her teaching—if not her devotion.

Meanwhile, my conversations with Mommy were growing more and more fraught.

“What they’re doing isn’t right,” she’d yell when she called me on the phone during the week. “They’re trying to take you away from me. I’m your mother! You have a family! You don’t need them.”

“They’re not trying to take me away!” I’d yell back. “They’ve done nothing but help me!”

It seemed every time we spoke those first couple of weeks after I returned from San Francisco, Mommy and I were performing a variation of our own tortured ballet. Mommy would yell that the Bradleys were up to no good and turning me against her; I would scream in their defense and then, feeling torn and exasperated, I’d hang up the phone and run to my room, in tears.

Finally, one weekend when I was at the motel with Mommy, the moment I’d been dreading arrived.

“You’re moving back home,” she said with finality.

It made sense, she explained. The fact that San Francisco Ballet had offered me a full scholarship for the summer, and then the chance to be a year-round student, showed that I didn’t need Cindy anymore: I was good enough, and had
learned enough, to get major opportunities on my own. Besides, Mommy added, I had probably learned more during those six weeks in San Francisco than Cindy could ever teach me.

I would also be going back to San Pedro High School. Mommy had already called the Board of Education to make sure the school knew that I would be re-enrolling.

Mommy had thought of everything. She’d even made plans for me to continue dancing. Elizabeth Cantine, the drill-team instructor who had first encouraged me to take Cindy’s ballet class and then paid for my leotards and pointe shoes when I went to Cindy’s studio, had become as much a part of my mother’s life as mine. As the relationship between Mommy and Cindy deteriorated, Mommy starting calling on Liz, who became a go-between for the two, expressing each one’s feelings and concerns to the other, trying to calm the building storm.

When Mommy had made up her mind that I would return home, she enlisted Liz to help find a new ballet school that I could attend in the afternoons or on weekends. I would begin training at the Lauridsen Ballet Centre, a small dance school in Torrance, immediately.

Mommy had it all figured out, but I wouldn’t hear any of it. Not that she’d taken the time to find me another school so that I wouldn’t have to give up dance. Not the truth that Cindy had, indeed, probably taught me all that she could. Not the fact that my closeness with Cindy was conjuring Mommy’s deepest fear, that she was losing her children the way she had lost so many of the people she loved before.

All I knew was that I didn’t want to leave Cindy. To me, Cindy and dance were inextricably linked. And in my mind, without her, my career would be over.

MOMMY CALLED CINDY THAT
Sunday night to let her know of her decision. I could go to my dance classes at the studio the next day, but then she expected Cindy to drop me off back home. If that was a problem, Mommy, who now had a car, would come and get me herself.

That was it. Good-bye.

That night my head throbbed and spun. Lying on the couch, I thought of the room I shared with Wolfie. On the wall hung one of those caricature sketches that street artists draw, where you pose, they scribble, and then they hand you a portrait that usually looks nothing like you. Cindy had had such a drawing done of Wolfie and me.

I wonder if Cindy will let me take it,
I thought, tears filling my eyes.

I didn’t bother to put on my pajamas. I lay where I was and fell asleep, knowing that I’d never again return to the room where I’d been lulled to sleep by Wolfie’s soft, steady breath.

The next morning, Cindy drove to the motel to pick me up.

In the car, she looked somber. I suddenly felt scared.

“Misty, have you ever heard of emancipation?” Cindy asked.

I knew that the word literally meant freedom. But what was she getting at?

“A lot of child performers become emancipated,” she explained. “It’s something they seek to have independence from their parents, when they feel they can make better decisions than them about their careers and their lives.”

My heart began to pound. A light was dawning, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to see what it illuminated.

“You’re not going to class,” she said gently. “I want you to meet a friend of mine.”

We drove to a coffee shop near the dance studio. Sitting at a table, drinking a glass of water, was a man dressed casually in a polo shirt and jeans. He had a stack of papers in front of him. He smiled as we sat down.

His name was Steven Bartell, and Cindy explained that he was an attorney. Steven patiently began to explain to me exactly how emancipation worked.

Because I was under eighteen and we lived in California, I would have to petition the court to be declared an emancipated minor. A judge could grant it immediately, or the petition might require a hearing. If my request was ultimately approved, I would then be able to make decisions about my dance career, about where I lived—about nearly everything, really. It wouldn’t be up to Mommy. It wouldn’t be up to Cindy. It would all be up to me.

He paused.

“Do you think you want to do this, Misty?” he asked. “Cindy thinks it’s in your best interest, but you’re the one who has to decide.”

All these years later, I still cannot remember what I felt in that moment. Mommy had not always been the mother that I felt that she should be, but she was still mine. I loved her, and I knew that she loved me. I didn’t want to hurt her.

But did she really know what was best for me? Often it seemed we children had to take care of her and each other, instead of the other way around.

I had to make a choice.

And in that moment, for the first time, I chose myself. I chose ballet. And that meant staying with Cindy.

“Yes,” I said softly. “I want to be emancipated.”

The rest is all a fuzzy nightmare.

I know that Steven Bartell quickly gathered the papers that had been sitting on the table in front of him. “We’re going to need to contact your mother,” he said. “And you shouldn’t be around when we do. I’m sure she’ll calm down once she gets past the initial shock, but in the meantime, Cindy wants you to stay with some friends.”

Cindy hustled me into her car and drove me to the home of another student at the San Pedro Dance Center whom I barely knew. If the girl’s mother offered me something to eat, I had no appetite. They tried to make small talk at first, but I was distracted, dazed. I would respond when spoken to, but mostly I just sat, numb, watching the TV.

“What are they going to say to Mommy?” I wondered, my stomach in knots and my head pounding. “What’s Mommy going to think? How will my brothers and sisters feel?”

I found out later that Mommy called the police and reported me missing. In her frantic search, she also apparently reached out to the media. I can only imagine what might have been said on the six o’clock news.

“Misty Copeland, a local girl who’s been recognized as a ballet prodigy, is missing,” the anchor would say.

“The girl’s mother, Sylvia DelaCerna, has reported her disappearance to the local police. She believes that her daughter’s dance instructor, Cynthia Bradley, is involved.”

Then they would have shown Mommy, terrified and angry.

“I haven’t been able to reach her. She was staying temporarily with her dance teacher, but is now moving back home, and I’m sure Cindy Bradley has something to do with this.”

I felt like I was going to throw up.

I stayed with that family for three days, fearful I’d be in trouble for running away. Then, one morning, Steven Bartell showed up.

“Misty,” he said, “I need you to get your things.”

We met with two police officers, who then drove me to a local police station. Soon after, Mommy arrived. She grabbed me and held on tight.

I walked out of the police station with my mother. I feared I was leaving ballet behind forever. Mommy got behind the wheel, and I climbed in beside her, sobbing hysterically. My world was ending.

LIFE HAD NOT JUST
turned full circle. It had sped up, then rotated in reverse.

I was back with my family, back at the Sunset Inn.

The motel walkways were still covered with grime. The room we shared was unkempt, cluttered. At night, blanket or sleeping bag in tow, I struggled to ferret out a spot on the living room floor where I would sleep among my siblings. This was the life that Mommy had forced me back to. A few days before I’d been in a beautiful condo, the soft swish of the surf lulling me to sleep. Now, the bleat of highway traffic woke me from my dreams. I went days without eating an apple or even so much as a canned vegetable. I thought Mommy was selfish
and cruel, sacrificing my well-being, my opportunity, to soothe her own battered pride. I overflowed with anger and resentment.