Spitfire

by Evan Balkan

  She stepped on to the ice and took off full speed across the reservoir. She sprinted back and forth, back and forth, exhausting herself. But it felt good to feel the pain, to suck in the cold wind, to cramp up. It reminded her of real life and while that was the last thing she wanted, it was where she must return and where she’d spend her days, so why not make a friend of the pain? She held her stick across her chest, swept it down low on the ice, reared back, and fired slapshots with invisible pucks at an imaginary net.

  She ran through the same routine again, only this time, just as she was about to shoot, her skate caught a divot that sent her sprawling across the surface. She slid to the edge of the ice and crumpled onto the frozen ground.

  She did not get up. Instead, she cried—long and hard and with abandon. She wasn’t hurt physically. Instead she cried for an injury that penetrated deep inside and that had been begging for release.

  When she got home, she took her skates and hockey stick and bundled them down to the cellar. There, she pressed her lips to the Clippers man on her stick, held back more tears, and placed it behind a pile of taped up boxes, out of sight. Like some sort of burial ritual, she took the laces of her skates, wrapped them around the boots, threading them through the open space between sole and blade, and then tucked them inside a box and put them away.

  She hardly knew what she was doing as she did it, but it felt to her like the right thing to do, the only thing to do. It was something she couldn’t name and something she didn’t understand. Something that told her that hockey belonged to a part of her life that was over now, that her need to assert herself in a world that told her she couldn’t do things was a losing strategy in the end, that maybe, in some weird way, the universe was punishing her for even trying, for daring to scream, “Yes, I can!” at a world that told her, “No, you can’t be anything you want. No, you can’t do what you want. No, Miss Caroline Panski. No, you can’t.”

  THOUGH THE DAYS AND WEEKS seemed endless, they passed nonetheless. Mother Nature offered up longer days, barely perceptible at first until the sun was still up past 5 p.m. The daffodils bloomed, followed by daisies and tulips. Then the presence of a few solitary buds. The trees burst forth soon after, and all at once it seemed, donning their fuzzy coats in a gorgeous and life-affirming display.

  The boaters took to Druid Lake. Kids skipped stones across Lake Montebello. Families picnicked atop Federal Hill. Wash day came and whole families appeared on their front stoops wielding cans of Ajax and scrub brushes until the marble shined. And the hockey pond turned into a soupy mix of rainwater and mud.

  Spring continued its lovely march unabated, soon melding into a blazing hot summer that, despite the malaise-inducing heat, was a glorious prospect of long days and endless promises. But soon it became nothing more than heat and boredom.

  Caroline was certain she’d read every book in the local library, and it was still only July. Her mother suggested she go to the pool at Druid Hill, but, of course, she wouldn’t go. She wouldn’t go because she’d have to walk past the “Negro pool” crammed with hundreds of people. Yes, the people using it acted happy enough, but the indignity of it was too much. The pool was one large square—a paltry four feet deep all around and had no diving board. It was barely deep enough to lower yourself under, and if you did, it was so crowded that you’d probably wind up with a knee in the eye.

  Yet she’d have to pass the Negro pool to get to the white one, with its snack bar, its tables with umbrellas for shade, its diving board and slide, its deep end, and its happy, privileged families. Of course, the real privileged families were at their private clubs, and there were loads of them, practically overlapping one another all across the broad, manicured spectrum of north central Baltimore.

  Druid Hill was no luxury, Caroline knew that. She knew that when she went to the white pool, most of the kids were from families just like hers. But to be within earshot of the Negro pool, to know what the scene was just over the hill was too much. No, she would not go to Druid Hill.

  So Caroline sat in her room, passing long hours doing nothing but resisting her mother’s requests that she get out, do something. Sam flew out of the door by nine each morning and often didn’t return until suppertime. Of course, the activities acceptable for a young boy were essentially without limit. Not so for her, Caroline reminded her mother. “Oh, please, Caroline. You don’t believe that for a second,” Mrs. Panski responded, and Caroline couldn’t even bring herself to argue about it.

  “What about your friends?” Mrs. Panski asked.

  Caroline did occasionally go over to Alma’s, but the last two times she’d gone there, it was terrible. She’d watched silently while Alma and her mother gaped at the television, watching Strike it Rich which featured wretched people explaining their tales of woe—a needed surgery or a poor family living in a destitute place—who had to answer a series of questions to win some money. In one episode, the woman answering the question—she was missing a tooth right up front—flubbed a pretty easy one: “What state was George Washington from?” She answered, “California,” and lost the $90 she had already accumulated. The audience groaned while Alma and her mother, practically in shock, asked each other how on earth she’d missed that. The host opened up the “Heart Line,” a phone line for viewers to call in and donate to the woman and her family. The show gave Caroline a stomachache, and she excused herself. Neither Alma nor her mother noticed her leaving.

  And so the summer ground on, molasses-like, toward fall and a return to school. Except this time school was different—it was junior high.

  The junior high school was bigger and there were more kids from adjacent neighborhoods, some from merely a few blocks away, but places Caroline had hardly ever ventured and didn’t know much about. In contrast, she knew every street and block in her own neighborhood, which she mentally defined as a radius of three or four blocks around her house.

  She found that the kids from Patterson Park seemed to carry a chip on their shoulder. In school they moved in packs and were loud and boisterous, as if they had something to prove. Same with the North Canton kids who could be seen huddling in groups in the cafeteria and before and after school. The sprinkle of kids from Brewers Hill, less a residential area than the place where their dads worked in the breweries—Hamms, Gunther’s, National Bohemian, Pabst’s—seemed primarily to keep to themselves, too, content not to raise any trouble. And of course there were the black kids from Linwood who knew enough, despite their increased numbers, to keep their heads down.

  To Caroline’s mind, the black kids carried a certain quiet dignity with them. Often, she looked over at them at their table in the cafeteria and wished she could simply go over and sit with them, befriend them, swap pieces of their lunches. But her old friends thought she was weird enough already. Of course, she didn’t see or talk to the girls who used to be her closest friends much anymore anyway. Alma hadn’t forgotten Caroline’s distaste of television, though the two of them did get together occasionally, Genevieve was going to a Catholic school, and while Beatrice went to the same school as Caroline—they were even in the same homeroom—she and Caroline hadn’t spoken to one another since Joseph was beaten up.

  She learned from a black classmate that Joseph was now attending a church school up in Middle East—just for black kids. One time, on an errand with her mother to see an inexpensive and apparently expert seamstress recommended by a friend, they passed through McElderry and Elwood Park, past the color line at Madison and Biddle. There, Caroline saw a group of black girls and boys spilling from some church doors in matching uniforms—blue slacks and skirts, white button up shirts, blue ties for the boys, blue hair ribbons for the girls—and scanned them all looking for Joseph. But she didn’t see him, or at least she couldn’t know for sure if she saw him. Through the gauzy bus window, coupled with the speed with which they passed, combined with the fact—embarrassed though she would have been to admit it out loud—that the boys all looked the same to her with their hai
r cut close on their head, she just couldn’t know if he was one of them.

  So just like that, he was gone, as if swallowed whole by the city, by the times, by events larger than the both of them put together.

  So the school year went on this way—fall to winter, winter to spring, spring to summer—just like it always had. Caroline focused on her school work and did her best to not think too much about the things that used to provide her pleasure and that were no more: her father, hockey, Joseph. She never even went over to the frozen pond during the winter. It was too painful. Her skates and stick remained tucked away in the basement. Going back there, retrieving them, would remind her too much of her father, and so she didn’t do it.

  Instead, she built imaginary bubbles around herself. Whenever things got too difficult, she closed her eyes and blew out, imagining a force field around her to keep her safe. It worked, most of the time. But she knew what people said about her, that she was quiet and withdrawn, and that she was resigned.

  Of course, Caroline wasn’t completely without friends. It was easy enough to make new school friends. But that’s really all they were—school friends, nothing more. She still saw Alma occasionally, but separate interests turned them into mere acquaintances, girls who had shared good times and memories when they were younger, but who now regarded those earlier years as little more than a prelude to the present.

  But, for Caroline, the present held little promise. The Panskis seemed to be living in their own separate worlds. Sam was always busy with school and activities. Her mother was always busy, too. Her mother no longer asked for her help with Sam and rarely even asked what she was up to or reminded her to attend to her studies. Because Caroline was an ace student, schoolwork had never been an issue, and so now that she was in junior high, she was left to her own devices. She could come and go as she pleased, within limits of course.

  But what did all this independence get her? Her life was boring. Everything was boring. Boring. Boring. Boring. Boring. Nothing but the same thing, over and over and over again, even in a new school.

  Mrs. Panski sat on the edge of Caroline’s bed. “Don’t you have something to do?” she asked.

  Caroline shook her head and kept her eyes on her book.

  “What about your friends?”

  “I don’t have any friends, Mama. Not ones I want to see anyway.”

  “That can’t be true. I know things haven’t been great with Beatrice and Genevieve and Alma, but—”

  “I gave them all up for Joseph. I just wanted to spend time with someone who understood me. His daddy died, too. None of my friends understand.”

  Mrs. Panski winced and turned away, hiding the tears brimming in her own eyes. Then, without a word, she got up, left the room, and then returned a moment later.

  “Here,” she said, handing a piece of paper to Caroline.

  “What is it?”

  “I saw it posted while I was shopping the other day. Read it.”

  Caroline unfolded the paper and read while Mrs. Panski left the room again. “Open call. Hockey Club tryouts. Sports Center, North and Calvert, Balto.”

  Caroline looked it over a few times. She didn’t know what it meant.

  Mrs. Panski returned, holding Caroline’s skates and stick. “It’s time,” she said.

  “Mama—”

  “I’ve watched you mope around this house for over a year now. You need to snap out of it. And this”—she pressed the stick and skates on the bed next to Caroline—“is the only thing I know of that will do the trick. It scares me no end, Caroline. That you’ll get hurt. If you do, well, I’m not sure I’ll be able to live with myself. But I can’t just sit around and allow you to stay miserable forever.”

  “But—”

  “Oh, Caroline, stop. You don’t believe in ‘but.’ You never did and you never will. This past year has been hard, but now it’s time to make a change. Do this for me, for your father. Do it for yourself, it doesn’t matter. Just don’t give up. Because if you do, you’ll never forgive yourself. And if you never forgive yourself, I’ll never forgive myself. You understand?”

  Caroline nodded. She did, indeed, understand. Before, hockey reminded her too much of her dad, which was too painful, so she just couldn’t bring herself to play. But now, well, it reminded her of her dad, and so she wanted to do it. It was time.

  Many of the city’s elite private schools—Gilman, Boys Latin, Loyola Blakefield, among them—fielded hockey teams, and the competition was always fierce. The boys who filled out these teams knew they had to practice hard, and so a flourishing club level existed for just this purpose.

  But girls? No way.

  But that reality made it even more attractive to Caroline. She was ready for another chance to show the boys what she was made of, to show them she could be just as good as they were. Even better.

  When she tried on the skates, they were a bit snug, but they’d do. Thank goodness they were big when her mom gave them to her. All she needed now were pads. She took all the money she’d ever saved—from Christmases, the tooth fairy, odd gifts for occasions she could no longer remember—and turned it all over to Mr. Reider, who owned a sporting goods store on Eastern.

  “You’re thirty-nine cents short,” Mr. Reider said after counting it all out. “What do you need this for anyway?”

  “I’m trying out for a hockey club.”

  Mr. Reider grinned, revealing several missing teeth. The remaining choppers were not only yellowed, but appeared blackened in the middle. Holes? Food? Tobacco? Caroline didn’t know, but the sight nearly made her sick. She shuddered and bit back the angry comment bubbling behind her tongue. She started to sweep her money back off the counter.

  “Well, hold on now,” Mr. Reider said. “I admire your moxie. I’ll take what you got here. Here are your pads.”

  Caroline forced herself to look him in the face. “Thank you, sir.”

  “I want you to promise me one thing, though.”

  “Sir?”

  “I want you to show them boys up, y’hear?” She smiled and straightened her shoulders. “I’ll do my best.”

  As she left, she heard Mr. Reider telling someone—perhaps a stock boy in the back—about the crazy girl who wanted to play hockey.

  A curious sensation spread through her. This was excitement. This was exhilaration. And she realized that she hadn’t felt anything like it in a long, long while. Probably not since she’d kissed Joseph right out on the sidewalk.

  It was a lovely feeling, and Caroline relished everything about it. And she liked everything about her hockey gear, too. She liked the way the long sock stretched from her toe, unrolling as it went, over her shin, all the way up to her knee. She even liked the smell of it; the years of sweat and dirt and use and wear a potpourri of staleness. And yet it smelled good, the scent of excitement. She was nervous. She hadn’t been practicing. But she hoped that instinct would take over the moment she hit the ice.

  After she dressed, she presented herself to her mother, who managed a smile. It was an unreadable smile, though, one Caroline hadn’t seen from her mother before. Some odd mixture of grief, pride, love, distance, all wrapped up in one.

  “How do I look?” Caroline asked.

  “You certainly look …” Mrs. Panski trailed off, mid-thought, and then didn’t recover that thought, as if it had floated away.

  After a moment more, Caroline no longer waited. She knew how difficult is was for her mother, so she didn’t push it. “You’re not coming with me to tryouts, are you?”

  “I’ve got Sam,” was the response.

  There was no reason Sam couldn’t accompany them, and they both knew it. Given the choice, Sam would undoubtedly have liked to go along. He loved riding the trolley and would take any excuse to do so. But there’d been a strange distance since her mother had given her the tryout notice.

  Caroline’s mom had been more than quiet, and she’d often kept her gaze averted. Every time Caroline mentioned hockey, Mrs. Panski steered
the conversation elsewhere, as if she hadn’t heard her daughter correctly. When Caroline said, “I can’t wait to get out on the ice, show those boys what I can do,” her mother replied, “Honey, can you hand me that dish towel, please? And don’t forget to put away the folded laundry I put next to your bureau.”

  So Caroline resigned herself to going alone. And why not? At first, she was hurt—after all, her mother was the one who had suggested it in the first place. But Caroline knew this was her adventure in any case. Hers and hers alone. To win or lose, but at least to try.

  Once she had on all of her pads, she kissed her mom goodbye and headed out, her hands in oversize gloves, the stick heaved over her shoulder like a hobo’s kit bag. Her skates rested over her other shoulder. She’d put them on when she got to tryouts. But she looked forward to that, too, the roiling gait, the short mincing steps as she headed out onto the ice.

  At the trolley stop, she was a spectacle. She may as well have been a blue whale out for a stroll. This young girl, puffed up in her pads, her long hair tied up in a sloppy bun with its loose strands dipping over her neck and shoulders. It was an incongruous sight for sure, and those waiting for the trolley didn’t even bother to hide their curiosity. They gawked, unembarrassed. Little kids, tethered to their mothers by gloved, clutching hands, some of them with snot trails adorning their upper lips, just stared as if Jesus himself had arisen from the dead and stood waiting to hitch a ride on the Number 9 to North Avenue.

  Some people smiled at her, but none of these smiles were of encouragement or for an appreciation of her chutzpah. They were, instead, discerning, judgmental, patronizing smiles. Smiles that said, “Are you serious?”