by Evan Balkan
“I only have fifteen slots,” he explained. “Someone had to get cut. Besides, Jones might be joining us after all.”
Jones. Dennis Jones. A good player, but someone who’d disappeared after the third day.
“And that would make sixteen.”
“That’s right.”
“So why not sixteen now?”
“Because then Jones would make seventeen. Too many.” He chuckled as he said this, as if he was incredulous that this kid couldn’t perform rudimentary mathematics.
“This isn’t fair,” Caroline blurted, even though she didn’t want to. She wanted to remain in control, send hammer blows against this stupid guy’s illogic.
“The world ain’t fair, sweetheart. Hey, you made a good effort. You should be proud.”
“I deserve to be on the team. Third line, fine. But I deserve it.”
“I admire your spunk, so I’m gonna be straight with you.” He took a deep draw on the cigar, letting the smoke linger in his airway before pushing out a slow, languid stream of nastiness. “This is a boys’ team. You’re a girl. See the problem here?”
“Then why let me come every day? Why have me go through all that?”
“I figured you wouldn’t make it past the first day. I said that every day until the week ended.”
“But I did make it past the first day. And the second. And the third, and—”
“As I said, I admire your spunk.”
There was little point continuing such a ridiculous conversation. She looked at his desk, the sparse tableau of an ugly man. A chipped coffee mug, dried brown spots clinging to the rim and handle. A pile of mimeographed papers, curled at the edges. A magazine with a scantily dressed woman on the cover. She hardly knew what she was doing and would have been shocked by it if she wasn’t so angry, but as she started to walk out, she turned back toward the coach and slid her arm across his desk, sending his things flying and spilling coffee across his desk and shirt.
“Hey!” he yelled, scrambling backward.
But she was already out the door.
One’s station in life—had the message not been clear before—was a cruel thing dictated not by will, but by circumstance, accidents of time and place.
Soon, she was outside, the sun that had shone so brightly that morning now blotted out by thick, menacing clouds. During times like these, as she had so many times before, she thought of Joseph.
CAROLINE WAS THE PICTURE of nervous energy, vacillating between keeping her eyes down in front of her and stealthily looking up, searching for something, checking out houses as she passed. The houses were narrower, more rundown than in her neighborhood. Every sixth or seventh house was boarded up. She couldn’t recall it being this bad the last time she came.
This was certainly not her neighborhood; that much was clear. It was not where she belonged. One look at her and nothing could be more obvious. But her skin color gave her access that others, like Joseph, didn’t get to share. She turned a corner and crossed East Eager, then another block. She wasn’t even sure if she’d come to the right place. But maybe it was just that the world was different, and all its sceneries and all its sets had changed along with it.
It had gone poorly when she’d come last time, so why come back?
Well, why not? What was there to lose? She told herself that there had been two things important to her over the last couple of years. Two things—besides her family—that had defined her: hockey and Joseph. She’d tried the first one. Tried and, well, not quite failed. But hadn’t succeeded, either. So now it was time for the other.
She reached Wolfe Street and paused for a bit before the house, or what she thought was the house: #1104. But the houses all looked the same to her. The same bricks piled one atop the other, the same filthy stoops, the same windows in the same spots, the same gauzy curtains behind them. But then she spotted the plaster tree branch above the door and remembered. It was just that it looked so much more solid, cleaner, more welcoming the last time. Now the door and windows seemed to make up a crooked leering face, ready to swallow her whole if she came any closer.
But she inhaled deeply, climbed the stoop, and stepped to the door and knocked. No vicious barking this time. No calls from inside. Nothing. She debated whether to walk away or knock again. She stood there, was about to turn, when the door opened.
“Yes?”
There stood an elderly black woman, her hair set in brightly colored plastic curlers. She wore a blue robe, cinched up to her neck. The old woman put a pair of large black glasses to her face. If Caroline was reading this right, the woman looked even more nervous and unsure than Caroline imagined she herself looked.
“Help you?” the woman asked, still shielding half her body behind the door.
“Yes. I was wondering. I’m sorry to bother you. I was wondering . . .”
“Yes?”
“I’m looking for Joseph Wilson. Does he live here?”
“No, miss, he does not.”
“Do you know where he moved?”
“No, miss, I do not. What I do know is that I’ve been in this house with my George for seven months now.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Who’s that?” came a bellowing voice from inside the house.
“White girl. Looking for old tenants.”
The door opened up more and there appeared a lumbering, gargantuan man—gray hair and ponderous belly. “What you want, little girl?”
“I told you already,” said the lady. “She’s looking for the old tenants. Wilsons, I think she said.”
“Yes, ma’am. Joseph Wilson.”
“Well, they don’t live here no more,” the man said.
“And that is exactly what I told her already.”
The couple engaged in what appeared to be a well-worn drizzle of little nags, only stopping when they noticed Caroline had walked down the stoop and was making her way along the sidewalk, a small figure receding into the distance.
“Where have you been?” Mrs. Panski asked when Caroline got home, at least an hour after she had been expected and well after the sun had set.
“Oh, Mama,” she said. But that was as far she got. Her determination to hold it all in was no match for the flood of release. Out it came, in torrents, long gusts of sobbing, punctuated by quick bursts of tears and coughs. She didn’t tell her mother anything about Joseph, of course—there was nothing to be gained in that. She told her instead of the other great failure, the rejection down at the hockey rink. She would not be offered a spot on the team, even though there were going to be no more cuts, and even though she had made it through the entire week. It just wasn’t fair.
“No, the world is not fair, sweetheart,” Mrs. Panski concurred. “But you can take comfort in knowing that you did your best. No one can ever take that away from you.”
“What do you mean? They did take it away from me. And I’ll never get it back.”
Mrs. Panski had no response. Her child was right, after all, and she knew that all too well.
“MY STOMACH HURTS,” Caroline said.
Mrs. Panski placed her hand on Caroline’s forehead. “You don’t feel warm . . . is it that you just want to stay home from school?”
Caroline didn’t answer.
Mrs. Panski got up. “Just this one time.”
Caroline noticed that her mother was dressed more formally than usual—she had donned a blue skirt and sweater, even put on a string of small pearls—and certainly more so than if she was just going to be sitting in the house. And what else did her mother do during the day, really? Caroline never knew.
“Where are you going?” Caroline asked.
Mrs. Panski hesitated. “Nowhere. I have a few errands to run. I’m going to the grocer’s.”
“Can I come?”
“I thought you were sick.”
Caroline didn’t say anything.
“If you’re too sick to go to school, then you are to do nothing but lay here. You can read if you want. I won’t be
too long. For now, I suggest you go back to sleep, little sickie.”
“OK.”
But the moment her mother left the house, Caroline leapt out of bed and peered out the window, watching as Mrs. Panski made her way down the sidewalk—in the opposite direction from the grocer’s. Caroline spent half a second wondering why before she jumped into her clothes and followed her mother out the door. Quickly, she caught up to within a hundred feet or so, far enough away to remain undetected but close enough to watch her mother halt at the trolley stop.
As Mrs. Panski got on the front, Caroline sprinted to the back door and slipped in between two grown men. She stood in the well and then slowly peered over to see her mother taking a seat at the front. Caroline found an empty space in the back and quickly grabbed a newspaper left behind by another rider. She slipped the paper in front of her face, pretending to read, garnering smiles from the adult riders near her, and occasionally looked over the paper at her mother who sat, unmoving, through some ten stops before she got up and exited. Caroline stayed on, afraid of being spotted, but she knew the stop right away. The Sports Center was just down the block.
Caroline got off at the next stop and doubled her way back toward the Sports Center. Sprinting there, she reached the building quickly enough, but found no one outside. She slipped in the front door and walked slowly down the hall, toward the ice. She could hear the sounds of men out on the rink practicing.
She ducked behind two large trash cans when she spotted her mother, standing near the ice. Just standing there. Standing and watching. What on earth was she doing? Was she envisioning that clumsy woman who’d injured her, years earlier, on this very ice? The “oaf” as Mrs. Panski had called her when she related the story to Caroline? The popping sound? The weird, irregular way her leg moved in the immediate years after the injury, as if pieces of her were shifting one on top of another, deep inside, leaving her with the limp that was now her most prominent feature?
Caroline watched as a man approached Mrs. Panski and asked, in a gruff tone, if he could help her.
“Where’s the youth coach?” Mrs. Panski demanded. From the sound of her tone, she was apparently content to meet this guy’s rudeness with her own.
“Is there something I can help you with?”
“I need to speak with the youth coach.”
“About what, may I ask?”
“Are you the coach?”
“No. He’s in his office. Is he expecting you?”
“No.”
“He might be busy.”
“If he is, I can wait.”
The guy huffed out an exasperated breath, but said, “Follow me,” and the two of them walked down the hall with Caroline not far behind. “In here,” the guy said when they reached the coach’s door. Caroline ducked into the ladies bathroom, listening to the squeak of the guy’s shoes on the linoleum floor, getting quieter and quieter as he got further and further away. Satisfied that he’d gone, Caroline tiptoed to just outside the coach’s door, where he heard his voice.
“Yes, ma’am. How can I help you?”
And then her mother: “I’m Eloise Panski”
Then Coach again: “I’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Caroline knew what that office looked like, and she knew her mother would be hating it there, that she’d probably seen the magazine and everything.
“Caroline Panski is my daughter.”
“Yes. Fine player.”
“For a girl?’
“Yes, that’s right. For a girl.”
“I believe she’s a fine player for a boy, too.”
“Perhaps that’s true.”
“If that’s true, then why isn’t she on your team?”
Caroline repositioned herself. Now she was able to see inside, the back of her mother and the coach behind her, his face obscured by Mrs. Panski’s hair. She watched as the coach reached for a drawer in his desk. Sliding it open, he retrieved a nasty cigar and began some laborious attempts at lighting it. It was no easy business, eating up three matches and a full minute before he was successful. The foulodor was instantaneous. Almost immediately, an acrid gray smoke swirled around the closed-in room. Mrs. Panski coughed, twice, stifling both in her clenched hand.
“Did you see the players out there on the ice when you came in?”
“I did.”
“And did you discern what they all have in common?”
“I did.”
“Well, there were no females out there,” Coach said, stating the obvious.
“And did you know that there used to be a women’s league? Played their games on that very ice?” Eloise asked.
The coach reached into the drawer again, this time pulling out an old yellowed paper. “In fact, I did know that. Here, look at this,” he said. “Spitfires, 1937.” He tossed the program across the desk. Mrs. Panski took a look at it.
Caroline smiled. She knew her mother would be in that program, and she knew the coach had no idea.
“That’s me,” Mrs. Panski said, pointing to the woman in the back row, muffled in her goalie gear. Caroline could see the program, held aloft in her mother’s hand, before the coach snapped it back, stared at it, at her, at the picture, at the woman in front of him.
“Well, I’ll be,” he finally muttered.
“Let me ask you, is she a decent player? And I don’t mean, ‘for a girl.’ I mean is she a decent player?”
“She is. One of the weaker, to be sure. But she can play.”
“Then she deserves a spot on your team.”
“This isn’t like that,” he said, pointing to the program. “We compete. We play against other teams. There’s a championship involved. And my teams have won them four of the last six years.”
“And her being on the team will prevent that? Is that what you’re saying?”
“What I’m saying is that she’s a girl. And she’ll be playing against boys. And she’ll most likely get hurt.”
Mrs. Panski was quiet. From where Caroline stood, it looked as if maybe her mother had winced at this. Of course, there was some truth to it, and it must have hurt her mother to hear it. But she knew her mother had already thought about the possibility of Caroline getting hurt just like the coach said. Just like she used to say, only weeks earlier.
She wanted to burst through the door, assure her mother—and the coach—that she wouldn’t get hurt. And that anyway, it was worth the risk. But she stayed where she was, waiting, listening, wondering what her mother would say.
At first Mrs. Panski said nothing. Just sat there in silence. She stifled another cough, the cigar emitting a steady stream of heavy gray smoke that never seemed to rise, but rather hovered, lending a gauzy film to the room.
Caroline thought maybe her mother would just get up and leave, defeated, just like Caroline herself had been. But just as quickly, she knew otherwise. She knew why her mother was there, why she’d come in the first place. She was there because Caroline deserved the chance. Because Caroline lost her father. Because Caroline wanted to be friends with Joseph, and she couldn’t do that, either. Because, in the end, her mother believed that Caroline should have more opportunities than she had herself.
“Let me ask you something,” Mrs. Panski finally said. “Do you believe, do you believe for one split second, that you are more concerned about Caroline getting hurt than I am, her own mother?”
“Of course not, no.”
“Okay, then. I’m glad you agree that you are not more concerned about my daughter’s welfare than I am. Now, that being the case, if that concern was the only reason for you not putting her on this team, then you have my blessing to reconsider that decision and go ahead and offer her a roster spot.”
Coach drew in a breath and shook his head. He smiled. “Okay, okay,” he said, his hands raised in mock surrender, the movement scattering a particularly languid cloud of smoke. “You win. She’s on the team.”
Caroline didn’t know how to feel about this. She appreciated what her mother w
as doing for her. But on the other hand, she wanted to earn the spot herself, and she wanted to do it without any help. That was the whole point.
Eloise gathered her purse and rose from the uncomfortable chair.
Caroline stepped back and took off down the hall. As she passed the ice, she saw one of the larger men smashing a guy against the boards. The assistant coach blew a whistle and everyone stopped, watching as the guy tried to collect himself off the ground. Eventually, the coach and one of the other players helped him off the ice, moving slowly as the guy favored his left leg and hung his head. He had a dazed look in his eyes as he took his place on the bench. Caroline kept going, bursting out of the Sports Center and into the sunlight.
THE FIRST PRACTICE with the boys arrived, and Caroline didn’t want to be nervous. She wanted to believe that she had no reason to be nervous, that she belonged here, that she’d earned it. But she knew that on some fundamental level that wasn’t true. She was on the team because her mother had paid a visit to the coach. When Mrs. Panski first came home to tell Caroline the news, Caroline was back in her bed and under the covers.
She’d pasted a confused look on her face. “What do you mean I’m on the team?”
“You’re on the team.” Mrs. Panski delivered this announcement with a smile on her face, but it was what Caroline and Sam called their mother’s “sad smile.” The lips were upturned, yes, but that was it. No movement of the eyebrows or the lines around her mouth. No spark in the eyes. It was a smile they’d seen a lot of in recent years.
“But how?” Caroline asked.
“I spoke with the coach.”
“And what did you say?”
“That’s not important. What’s important is that he’s agreed to put you on the team.”
“But I didn’t want to make the team that way. I wanted to make it because I earned it.”
“I think you did earn it. I think you were good enough to be on the team. The coach suggested as much. And he said that if you were a boy you would have been on it. So, to me, that seems you did earn it.”