Spitfire

by Evan Balkan

  The rage sputtered from Mrs. Panski in seething, half-formed words as she navigated a dizzying line between screaming and whispering so as not to wake Sam. The result was a strange mixture of sounds squirming through her clenched teeth as she steered her daughter up the stairs and into her bedroom.

  “Sit!” Mrs. Panski commanded, pointing to the edge of Caroline’s bed. Caroline landed there and waited. One foot was bare, and her ankle was badly swollen. Mrs. Panski came in holding an ice pack. She slapped it down onto the ankle.

  “Ouch! That hurts!”

  “Good.” The fury hadn’t yet subsided, and Mrs. Panski’s face was a deep red. As she worked her daughter’s ankle, not at all gently, little wisps of hair kept escaping the band tying it back, giving her the appearance of a madwoman in half-light working some strange machinery. “What were you thinking?”

  “I want to play hockey.”

  “It’s the middle of the night! Do you have any idea what could have happened to you?”

  “Nothing happened.”

  “No? What do you call this?” Mrs. Panski dug an unsympathetic finger into Caroline’s ankle.

  “Ow!”

  “By the grace of God it was nothing worse. Look me in the eye and promise you will never do something like that again.”

  “I promise.”

  “Look me in the eye.”

  Caroline did so. “I promise.”

  Mrs. Panski wrapped Caroline’s ankle with gauze and tape as if she was an expert in treating such injuries. Caroline didn’t ask how she knew. She figured it was simply something that resided in the toolbox of every woman’s maternal skills. Finally, Mrs. Panski got up, paused, and then announced, “I’m taking away your skates.”

  “But, Mom!”

  “This is not a debate.”

  “But it’s not fair. Why can’t I play hockey?”

  “Girls don’t play hockey.”

  “That’s what the boys say.”

  “They’re right.”

  “But—”

  “Not another word. You have school in the morning.”

  Mrs. Panski turned out the light and retreated toward her bedroom door where a dim hall light framed her. Caroline watched as her mother pitched slightly from side to side. That was another thing she didn’t ask her mother about, how she’d got that limp. Well, she did ask about it once, years earlier, and her mother replied, “I was born with it. Now go clean yourself up for supper.” Caroline knew not to ask again.

  CAROLINE STRETCHED, threw back her covers, and hopped out of bed. As soon as her feet hit the floor, she let out a cry of pain and fell back onto the bed. She looked down at a blue and purple ankle swollen to twice its normal size. Somehow, she’d forgotten.

  She managed to get dressed and then limped down the stairs and into the kitchen where her mother was busy over the stove. Sam was already at the table, chomping his bacon. Mrs. Panski turned and her eyes widened when she saw Caroline standing there with her foot hovering above the ground. “Look at you!” she exclaimed.

  “It really hurts.”

  “Of course it does. Sit.”

  Caroline took her place at the table as Mrs. Panksi wrapped ice in a wet towel and put it on Caroline’s ankle.

  “How are you planning to walk to school?”

  “I can manage.”

  Mrs. Panski placed a plate in front of her daughter. “Eat.”

  Caroline obeyed.

  Sam eyed his sister, an impish smile spreading across his face. It was obvious that Caroline was in trouble, a prospect Sam clearly found irresistibly wonderful. “What did you do?” he asked.

  Mrs. Panski took Sam’s empty plate. “Your sister decided to run off to that frozen pond and play hockey and she hurt her ankle.” The plate banged against the side of the sink, producing a sharp piercing sound. “I hope it knocked some sense into her, too.”

  Sam made a face. He wasn’t about to let this go so easily. “The boys make fun of me ’cause of her,” he said. “Whoever heard of a girl playing hockey?”

  But Sam did not get the reaction he obviously wanted. Instead, and in addition to Caroline’s evil eye, Mrs. Panski shot one of her own at him. “Go get washed up for school,” she ordered.

  Sam ran out, but not before sticking his tongue out at Caroline.

  Caroline finished her breakfast and, wincing with each step, hobbled over to the sink with her plate.

  Mrs. Panski sighed and grabbed the plate from her daughter. “Stay here. I’ve got something.”

  From the top of the stairs, Caroline watched her mother rooting around in the basement until she pulled out two crutches from behind some boxes.

  “Try these,” she said, handing the crutches to Caroline when she returned to the kitchen.

  Caroline placed the crutches under each arm and frowned. The metal ends dug into her armpits. She shifted them around, but to no avail.

  “This is worse than just walking on my foot,” she said, leaning the crutches back toward her mother.

  But the moment she put pressure on her foot, she gasped at the pain.

  “Take them. You need them,” Mrs. Panski said.

  “But they hurt.”

  “It’s one hurt or the other. And there’s no way your ankle will heal unless you stay off it.”

  “But it’s really uncomfortable.”

  What Caroline really wanted was to stay home from school and sit with her foot propped up. That would help it heal, she was sure. But one glance at her mother—who stared at her with hands on her hips as if waiting for the chance to say No, don’t even ask if you can stay home—and she decided not to bother. Besides, the prospect of her mother glowering at her all day was worse than making her way to school on the stupid crutches.

  So Caroline hobbled awkwardly down the front steps—one foot, land, the other foot, held aloft, three times until she reached the bottom—to where Alma stood watching on the sidewalk, mouth hanging open in shock.

  “What happened to you?”

  “Take my books,” Caroline said, handing them over and steadying herself. Already, the hollows under her arms ached from the pressure of the crutches. Her coat helped, but not that much.

  Alma’s look told Caroline there was no way she could escape telling the whole gruesome story. So she obliged, leaving nothing out, and even embellishing the part with the drunk guy. “I guess I just got kind of spooked,” she wrapped up as she and Alma made their way toward school.

  “That’s a crazy thing you did, Caroline Panksi. Don’t you know any better?”

  “I guess I don’t.”

  “Why do you want to play hockey so bad anyway?”

  “I don’t know. It’s fun.”

  “There are other ways to have fun.”

  “It’s more like—when I’m out there it’s as if all of Baltimore, all of the world, is just gone. It’s hard to explain.”

  “But if you can skate so good, why don’t you just, you know, skate? Like girls do. I can’t imagine any man wanting to marry a hockey player. What if you lost your two front teeth?”

  “I don’t care about marrying any man.”

  “But, Caroline, that’s why God put us on this earth. I can’t wait to get married, and have eleven children—six boys and five girls—and have my own house, with a washing machine and a television, and a vacuum cleaner and a television—”

  “You said that already.”

  “Well then, we’ll have two. Or even one for every room in the house.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  Suddenly Alma stopped. She looked up and pointed. “Hey, look at that. Something’s going on at the high school.”

  A large group of people milled about excitedly on the sidewalk. It was a larger crowd than the day before. As Caroline and Alma got closer, they watched two police cars pull up. Officers got out of each and went around to open up the back doors, where four black students got out—two girls in one car, two boys in another. The officers escorted the students toward the
school.

  The black students looked dignified and calm—the girls both wore bright colored sweaters buttoned at the very top of their neckline and radiating frills of lace, while the boys wore blazers and dark trousers. But Caroline sensed a palpable nervousness, even fear, simmering just below the surface. No one in the crowd shouted or waved signs, but there was definitely tension in the air. Caroline felt like it was a face off. As if one false move from someone in the crowd could unleash something really bad.

  She tugged on Alma’s sweater. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “WE GIVE THANKS FOR these our gifts which we are about to receive through the grace of our Lord. Father, son, holy spirit. Amen.”

  The Panskis dug in, though Caroline stared at her plate and ate slowly. After a while, she looked up. “Mama?”

  “Hmm?”

  “We saw some Negroes at the high school today.”

  Mrs. Panski nodded. “I heard about that on the radio. Integrating the schools.”

  “What’s integrating?”

  “It means they’re allowing Negroes to go to school with whites.”

  Sam snorted and shook his head. “I don’t want no darkies at my school.”

  Both Caroline and Mrs. Panski said in unison, “Shut your mouth, Sam.”

  “Those people just want an education like everyone else,” Mrs. Panski chided. “These are special students in any case. Real smart. They’re attending the white high schools that offer the ‘A’ courses. For the best students.”

  “Will there be integration at my school, too?”

  “That I don’t know. Eat up now.”

  “Mama?” Caroline asked again.

  “Hmm?”

  “Where’d you get the crutches from?”

  Mrs. Panski stopped chewing, considered, then swallowed her food very deliberately. She stole a glance at Sam.

  “Eat your supper, you two.”

  They ate in silence, and Caroline sensed it wasn’t the best idea to keep asking for an answer her mother clearly didn’t want to give. So she let it drop. But that evening, after supper, Mrs. Panski pulled Caroline into her bedroom.

  “Come in here. I want to show you something,” she said.

  Caroline hoped it was going to be her skates, that her mother had reconsidered and was going to give them back to her. She could see them on the floor next to the closet, in their deplorable condition; it was so easy to notice now: the stitching threatening to burst along the seams, the blades no sharper than a butter knife.

  But Mrs. Panski made no mention of the skates. Instead, she sighed and walked over to her dresser where there rested a picture of herself in a wedding dress with her new husband standing next to her holding her hand. Next to that was the picture of him in his army uniform, the same photograph Caroline had in her room.

  Mrs. Panski opened a drawer in her bureau and pulled out a small brocaded box. She opened it and took out another photograph—a group of hockey players, in uniform, standing square and smiling, an unintimidating bunch, to be sure. But that was something people would notice only secondarily. The first thing they’d see, what was plain as day, was that all the players were women. And, there, in the middle of the second row stood Caroline’s mother, also smiling, looking very beautiful, and wearing goalie gear.

  She handed it to Caroline, who studied it wide-eyed.

  “This is you?”

  “It sure is.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Mrs. Panski patted the bed for Caroline to sit. “I’ll tell you the whole story.”

  Caroline took her place on the bed, her attention rapt on her mother.

  “It was just a novelty at first. And we were rough, I’ll admit that. A bunch of ladies flailing about on the ice taking whacks and more often than not whiffing at the pucks. But Coach taught us the x’s and o’s and eventually we got the hang of it. The better ones among us quickly floated to the top. We were girls who were hockey players and not just girls on the ice barreling into each other for the amusement of the men who came to watch.”

  “And you were the goalie?”

  “That was by accident, actually. The regular goalie had taken a puck across her calf in practice one evening and I filled in. For some reason, I found it kind of easy.” She smiled, remembering. “I turned aside shot after shot. It was more reaction than anything else. I’d just kick out my leg or shoot out my glove and somehow blocked pretty much everything my teammates tossed my way. Soon, shooting practice turned into a game of who could get it past me. I can still picture Coach standing there with his whistle hanging half in and half out of his mouth, the other ladies lined up to cheer me and then each new shooter. One thing was soon pretty clear: I was the new goalie.” Mrs. Panski smiled at her daughter. “And I don’t mind saying, I was pretty darn good, too.”

  “I don’t doubt that.”

  “Once I realized I was going to be playing goalie, then it was practice, practice, practice. And that was something I happily took to. At home, I’d take a tennis ball and whiz it against the side of a brick wall, over and over, catching and blocking each rebound. Everyone thought I was a natural. But that wasn’t true. It was work. And work was something I wasn’t afraid of.”

  “I don’t doubt that, either.” Caroline pointed at the picture. “Tell me about your games.”

  “It started on a cold January evening in 1937. It was the new league’s very first game ever. I was the goalie for the Spitfires. We were playing the Glamour Girls, over at the Sports Center. On North and Calvert, just a few blocks from Penn Station. Huge old place, like a cavern. Smelled of sweat and age. Plenty of National Bohemian beer had been swilled and spilled in there.”

  “Mrs. Eloise Panski, star goalie for the Spitfires,” Caroline said, smiling.

  “Remember, I was Eloise Weatherbee back then, not Panski. Anyway, I took my place in front of the cage. I must have looked really odd, I’m sure. Lipstick, blush, permed hair set with curlers—that was a team requirement, believe it or not—but all of that was hidden the moment I pulled on that gruesome looking mask. I had the same warm-up routine: slide from side to side, pole to pole, nicking up the ice in front of me. I took it very seriously. But even then, I knew, we were out there mostly just to sell tickets and beer. For that first game, there was a reporter there for the Sun papers. My old coach was thrilled with that. I can still remember their exchange: ‘Coach, what is the appeal of these ladies on the ice? Most people prefer to see their girls performing axels and butterfly jumps.’

  “Coach gave that sly grin of his. He spoke loudly, so that everyone taking their seats could hear. He was a natural promoter; the man may have been a carnival barker in a previous life. ‘True, they play hell for leather hockey,’ he said, ‘And put all their hearts into it. They take their wallops and bruises, but when a girl takes a bad tumble, she picks herself right up and grins. But instead of rubbing her bruise, she straightens her hair.’

  “Everybody laughed. It was a spectacle. But like I said, I took it very seriously. We all did. Sure, it wasn’t the National Hockey League, but we didn’t go easy on each other. The girls had no fear of going into the corner to dig out pucks. And when the puck dropped to start a game, honestly, the place went wild. It didn’t matter which team scored. The people went crazy for every goal. There was no home team. During the intermissions, about a dozen boys would jump out on the ice. Each of them carried a snow shovel. Then, side by side, they would put their shovels on the ice and make their way across the rink, smoothing the surface.”

  “Tell me about your first game.”

  “It was a special night. For one thing, during an intermission, when I skated to the bench for some water, I noticed a really handsome guy in the crowd. He smiled at me. Even with that hockey mask, I guess he thought I was pretty.”

  “You’re talking about Daddy?”

  “Let me finish. First, there was the game. We were up by one goal. One of the Glamour Girls skated toward me, barely five seconds left o
n the clock.”

  Mrs. Panski got up, then crouched into position, mimicking a goalie’s readied stance.

  “The crowd was on their feet, breathless. 5-4-3-2 … The Glamour Girl let fly an absolute screamer that I snared out of the air as time expired.”

  Mrs. Panski closed her fist onto an imaginary puck as Caroline beamed up at her.

  “After the game, I was the last one out. Often no one waited for me—it was an eternity taking off all that equipment and they all had to get back home to make supper. But when I came out of the locker room and stepped into that dank hallway, I heard someone. ‘I didn’t think you’d ever come out,’ he said. I jumped, and I saw a man step toward me. I was startled, but he was smiling, and he seemed kind. And then I recognized him as the handsome man I’d exchanged looks with during intermission.”

  “Daddy?”

  “He said, ‘You wanna get out of here?’”

  “That was how you met him? At a hockey game?” Caroline smiled, big and wide, thrilled with every detail of the story.

  “We strolled around the Washington Monument at Mount Vernon Place. I can still picture the way the cobblestone was glistening in the lamplight. And he was so sweet. Said to me, ‘I don’t know how someone so athletic can also look like a movie star.’ I reminded him about Sonja Henie. He just smiled at me and leaned in for a kiss.”

  Mrs. Panski smiled at the memory and put her fingers to her lips, as if she could still feel the sensation, even after so many years.

  “Maaamaaaa—” Caroline groaned, but she didn’t really mind hearing about the kiss. In fact, she loved hearing about her parents being in love.

  “So that was hockey, how it started. How I became Mrs. Eloise Panski. But not too long after, well, I was pretty enormous when I was pregnant with you. Final few weeks of the pregnancy, I barely walked anymore. Waddled was more like it, always threatening to tip over. But I kept up my chores—preparing meals, washing and ironing clothes, sweeping the feather duster along the porcelains, rubbing oils into the dark furniture.