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Those Who Paved My Way: Kate Chopin

Ribbons around Her Ankles
After Edna left, Mademoiselle Reisz put Robert's letter away and looked at her crinkled reflection in the glass. She sighed, attempted to retrieve the woven fabric of her memories, gathering it around her like a delicate and faded shawl. Delphine felt somewhere in the back of herself for her well known spunk, her effervescent spirit. Oh no, she had not always been old. Like Edna, she had been loved.
For many years, her first twenty-five to be more precise, she had been young. And for six of the most precious months of her life she had painted the ballerinas from the Paris Ballet. This was during the transition from high heeled shoes to pointe, and the first ballerina to wear such modern dance shoes was Maria Taglioni. She was the first woman Delphine ever loved. She was beautiful, statuesque with long, muscular limbs and disfigured feet. Her public only saw those feet wrapped in pink satin shoes with ribbons winding up her ankles to her lean, milky white calves. Her long dark hair was always pinned up into the neatest of buns; it only flowed down her back for Delphine. She had the tiniest bit of dark hair on her upper lip which collected sweat when Maria was exerting herself. Only Delphine had licked that sweat away during fervent kisses in Maria's dark, locked dressing room.
Delphine had painted Maria's long, languid body in various poses. She had watercolors of her costume draped over a chair as Maria, nude, pinned her hair back up at her dressing table. Delphine still possessed sketches of Maria's bloody, bruised feet, fresh from a performance in which she broke-in her new pointe shoes. Delphine had created several oil paintings of the many ballerinas in the chorus, all stretching at the barre. She had sold them all; it was a popular theme for Parisians of that era. Everyone wanted a ballerina of their own. Her capture of Maria, in various mediums, she had kept for herself.
Mademoiselle Reisz, remembering Maria, thinking of those delicate ankles atop such ferocious feet, remembering the feel of Maria's breath on her skin, went to a small cabinet in her bedroom. It was locked. Delphine pulled a long chain from around her neck on which a small key dangled wildly, still warm from her body. She used this to open up her past. On the top shelf, wrapped in some pink satin, was her Maria.
There was Maria lying on her stomach, a charcoal sketch. Maria, draped in watercolors, did a heel stretch in front of a mirror. Maria's feet, covered in pink satin, thin white ankles wrapped in ribbons. This was the last one. With a sharp pain in her abdomen, Delphine was coldly reminded of the day they were found out.
At least you'll never have to worry about pregnancies, a cruel girl had said, giggling behind her hand with a few others, less talented than Maria.
Maria's father, the choreographer of many of the ballets, had told Delphine she was no longer allowed inside the opera house. Neither she nor Maria had suffered professionally. Delphine had simply been forced to leave. She moved on to London. There were other women, other dancers of course, but none whom she felt inclined to paint.
Mademoiselle Reisz put carefully wrapped the artwork back in their length of satin and placed them where they belonged, safely locked in her past.
M.M.