by Ellie Eaton
My mother should have taken me aside when I was a teenager and helped me do something about my unruly eyebrows and the long mousy hair that drowned my face. Perhaps she did try to get me to cut it, I can’t remember. Probably I argued with her that I needed something to flick. Besides, she had bigger worries than my hair. Back then I was far too skinny; no matter how much I ate it didn’t make a difference. Bulimia was rampant in boarding schools. I was forever having my lunch tray inspected or being weighed by the nurse. I wore a baggy gray cardigan to cover myself up, but that only made me look more emaciated.
“Are you sure you’re eating?” she’d probe.
At sixteen I still had no hips. Despite the heroin-chic models that papered our walls, what I craved more than anything were breasts like Lauren and Skipper, something to fill out the front of my striped summer uniform, which sagged like an empty sack. To my horror, even Gerry Lake wore a bigger cup size than me. Formless as I was, I doubt if any Divines, other than Skipper and our small group, remember me at all. When I was at university my mother once handed a boyfriend my year photo and I waited to see if he could pick me out. Our intake had dwindled to the point it shouldn’t have been hard. His finger worked the rows, left to right, but each time he skimmed right over me.
“Is this a trick?” he said.
Perhaps at that age we are all our own worst critics. I might not have been as plain then as I felt—the boys still seemed to like me, after all—but when you put me side by side like that with Lauren, I was invisible.
Lauren got out another cigarette and pointed it at the Polaroid. I felt a wave of panic that she was about to light up, there, in my dorm.
“For the record, it’s not my brother.”
“How can you tell?”
She scissored her fingers through the air.
“He’s had the, you know, snip. Mum had him done when he was a baby. It’s more hygienic.”
I stared again at the photos on the bed. I wouldn’t have known the difference between a circumcised or uncircumcised penis, of course.
“Right,” I said, studiously.
She looked at me and let out a laugh.
“You’re a bit of a weirdo, you know that?” she said and then she reached out, pressed her thumbs to my cheeks, and lifted my mouth, dragging it up at the corners into a clown’s grin. I moved my head away but I couldn’t help it, I started to smile for real.
“That’s better.”
She waggled the cigarette hanging from her mouth in the direction of the smoking den.
“Come on then,” she said.
Just as I was sneaking her out of the boarding house, the blue school bus arrived back from the tennis match, and the team climbed wearily down and walked up the driveway in their Aertex shirts and white pleated skirts, their rackets strapped across their backs like swords. I felt a stab of resentment when I saw Skipper laughing with Henry Peck, the two of them shoving each other affectionately, sharing a joke. When they reached the front of the boarding house Skipper saw me and stopped in her tracks. She stared at Lauren; her racket banged against her shin.
I acted as if nothing was out of the ordinary.
“How was the tournament?” I asked the Pecks.
Dave Peck answered.
“Bloody great, Henry crushed them.”
“Brill,” I said. “Wicked.”
Skipper said nothing. She looked Lauren up and down. As a rule we were suspicious of outsiders. We closed ranks, kept our secrets to ourselves.
“Who’s she?”
Lauren looked at me, waiting to see how I’d answer. I could feel where earlier she pressed my cheeks into a smile, her two thumbprints on my skin.
“We’re going for a fag,” I answered.
Skipper’s legs were slightly spread, I remember, so that she seemed to be taking up more space than normal. A goalie through and through. She seemed annoyed that I had a new friend, a King Edmund no less. I felt a little rush of pleasure, so I stepped closer to Lauren and slipped a hand under her arm. As if she was Divine.
“She shouldn’t be here,” Skipper commented.
Amused, Lauren brushed past her.
“Come on, Josephine,” she said.
There was nothing heroic or even liberating about what I did next; it wasn’t an act of rebellion—I was a follower not a leader, after all. I was simply unhitching my carriage from one train and attaching it to the next. But forward or back, I had to choose.
“Excuse me,” I said to Skipper.
She raised one eyebrow, then stepped aside.
It was easy as that.
12
For two hours every Wednesday we Divines were dispatched, dorm by dorm, to the homes of various old age pensioners around town, part of our headmistress’s bid to ingratiate us with locals, a total failure, of course. We were patronizing and rude, we stole cigarettes and loose change from their handbags, we ate them out of house and home. Now that I shared a room with Gerry Lake, to our mutual disgust we were forced to undertake these torturous visits together, perhaps the only time in the week we ever did anything as a pair.
Mrs. Myrtle, or the Turtle as I thought of her, lived in an overheated bungalow with a Yorkshire terrier. Since she was neither incapacitated nor solitary there was confusion on the Turtle’s part about what Gerry Lake and I were doing there. As we rang her doorbell we saw her craning around her sitting room curtains, scowling, her head snapping back again. We heard a dog’s frantic yapping in the hallway, the door tugging against the safety chain.
“Hello, Mrs. Myrtle,” I said, loud and obsequious. “Lovely to see you.”
Gerry Lake rolled her eyes. She was in a particularly foul mood that day, I remember, returning back late from training the night before, loose strands of hair tugged free from her bun, her makeup smudged. She stood now with her arms crossed, furious to be kept waiting.
There was further rattling and muttering. The Turtle opened the door.
“What happened to the other one?” she asked, looking around for Skipper. “Well, I suppose you’d better come in.”
We followed her into her sitting room where Countdown was playing on the television.
“You interrupted my program,” said Mrs. Myrtle, muting the television and looking us up and down, her mouth puckered like she was sucking on a boiled sweet.
“You’ll be wanting tea, I suppose?”
Mrs. Myrtle disappeared into the kitchen and came back carrying a pot wearing a woolen cozy. She poured milk into two floral cups and waited for the tea to steep. Meanwhile the dog, a bug-eyed Yorkie, jumped up on a chair by the window, pressed its nose to the glass, and began yapping at the King Edmunds walking home from school. The electric heater was on full, the windows slowly misting. The room felt unbearably hot, the fake coals above the electric bars glowing a hellish orange. I found a seat on a stool, and Gerry was perched on the edge of Mrs. Myrtle’s sofa, straight backed, not bothering to make conversation. Even the way she sat seemed hostile. I was a habitual sloucher, something my mother (who had suffered years of mandatory deportment lessons as a Divine) frequently chided me about, needling her finger between my shoulder blades whenever I was home for school holidays. Gerry Lake had the posture of a Russian gymnast.
“If you want biscuits, you’ll have to get them yourselves,” the Turtle instructed and poured a third cup of tea for her dog to drink, resting the saucer on her lap. She switched the volume back up on the television.
The only biscuits left in her tin were a few stale pink wafers and digestive crumbs. The pink biscuit dissolved on my tongue, turning into paste. The dog lapped on its tea. I showed the empty biscuit tin to Mrs. Myrtle.
“I could do some shopping for you if you’d like?” I offered, even though it was against the rules to venture into town on our own. But it was all I could think of to escape the Turtle and Gerry.
Gerry’s head swivelled towards me, outraged.
Likewise, Mrs. Myrtle looked at me incredulously and hacked into a handkerchi
ef. She would rather have starved than hand over her pension to a Divine. For the duration of our visit she kept her handbag wedged beneath her armpit like a shotgun.
“I do my own shopping, thank you very much.”
Mrs. Myrtle’s dog stared at us, panting, his bulging eyes fixed on me. I found little dogs repulsive, glorified rats. On the whole, the parents of the Divine favored hunting breeds—German pointers, Labradors, spaniels—large, well-trained pedigree gundogs with names like Crumpet and Crumble.
“How about I take him for a walk, Mrs. Myrtle?” I asked, desperate now to get out of the house.
Gerry Lake’s back straightened even further, her jaw set hard, livid that I was planning to leave the two of them alone.
The Turtle pinched her lips together as she weighed my offer. This at least would get us girls out from under her feet. Then there was a kerfuffle as she dressed the dog in a checked jacket and, intentionally ignoring me, handed the leash to Gerry.
“Mind he does his business,” she ordered.
Gerry Lake took the rope like it was a pair of soiled knickers, holding it between her finger and thumb, then she shoved past me, furious, yanking the dog out of the door in the direction of the duck pond.
“Well done,” she hissed.
I trudged down the street after her, praying that none of my friends would see us together. The way Gerry Lake walked seemed ridiculous to me—her short arms rigid at her sides, hands curled into angry fists, her chin high, her small torso tilted forward. Maybe because of skating from such a young age, her joints were prone to hyperextension, her elbows in particular, so Gerry looked like a cheap plastic doll, I thought, dismembered, jammed back together incorrectly. Perhaps in the end, the only place she ever felt comfortable was on the ice.
The dog zigzagged around Gerry’s ankles, sniffing, lifting a leg, tangling itself up in the lead, gagging and choking. Any time the terrier came close to her Gerry gave it a sharp kick with her toe. Her face was red, her eyes puffy from lack of sleep, or perhaps, I later speculated, she’d been crying. Who would have dared ask? Her lip curled up in a snarl so that I could see one of her fangs. She seemed dangerous, close to exploding. The thought of Gerry having one of her tantrums in public where anyone—Lauren, Skipper, the twins—could see us together was too awful to think about.
“Fuck’s sake, you little shit,” Gerry yelled when the terrier tried to jump up on her so that even I began to feel sorry for it.
At the duck pond, as if on demand, the dog crapped in the middle of the path. Gerry looked first at the dog and then at me as if she expected one of us to do something about the problem. She muttered under her breath at me and we left the pile there for someone else to scoop up or step in.
We were almost out of the park when another dog, a terrifying-looking pit bull belonging to some townies, lunged at us. Gerry Lake screamed and dropped the leash. I called the Turtle’s dog to heel but the two animals—one thuggish and muscular, one tiny—both ignored me and ran away across the park, sniffing each other’s arseholes, turning in circles, yapping loudly, tails wagging.
The townies smirked and exchanged looks with each other over their cigarettes, one of them mimicking the loud yelp Gerry had let out, raising his hands in the air and flailing them around, another clearly imitating the way I’d yelled out the dog’s name—his voice shrill and histrionic. I cringed with embarrassment; was that really how I sounded? What did I care, I tried to tell myself, they were just drunks who hung out in the park all day, swigging White Lightning from the bottle. Gerry, on the other hand, was vibrating with fury, eyes narrowed, jaw pulsing. More than anything Gerry hated to be laughed at; she never could take a joke. She glowered at the men, then at me, outraged, as if the townies and I were conspiring against her. I shrugged my shoulders; it wasn’t my fault she’d dropped the leash.
“Piss right off,” she said, and stomped across the grass towards the dogs. The townies fell quiet, curious now, watching Gerry.
“Heel,” she ordered.
The Yorkie trembled, its tail tucked under, small black eyes bulging with fear. When Gerry reached down to grab the leash, the dog skittered backwards. Fuming, she dived to grab it, but her sudden, angry movements only alarmed the dog more. Each time she got anywhere close the Yorkie ducked away. Eventually it ran for cover under a park bench. The yobs heckled loudly, cheering on the dog.
“Nice one, mate,” they said.
“You show her.”
Gerry stood for a moment, her face scrunched with rage, her small hands two tight knots.
Then she kicked the bench and let out a sudden, piercing screech.
The drunks laughed even harder, high-fiving each other.
“Time of the month, love?”
Horrified, I stood in the middle of the park watching Gerry explode, my mouth slack, completely immobile—the zombie stare I tried so hard to avoid.
I wanted to die.
“What’s wrong with her?” I moaned to Skipper and the twins later that night, as we brushed our teeth. “Why can’t she just be normal?” On Wednesdays, they visited a local retirement home, while I was stuck with Gerry. It was unbelievably unfair.
Dave and Henry exchanged a look in the mirror with Skipper. I felt my stomach knot. Was I boring them? Had I talked too much about Gerry, banging on and on? I had no idea what they said about me in the dorms, after lights-out. More and more I suspected I was being kept at arm’s distance, quarantined, my punishment for fraternizing with a townie. Lately, when they went for a smoke, no one bothered to tell me. At breakfast they cleared their trays, getting up from the table before I’d even sat down. They slid down the pew in morning chapel, bunched together, gossiping behind their hymnals.
“Oh god, who cares about the bloody Poison Dwarf. Just ignore her,” Skipper snapped.
I stood in front of the sink, humiliated, trying not to cry. My head tilted to one side, hair tenting my eyes, laughing at a joke Skipper told next, as if I found it funny. I brushed my teeth until my gums were raw. I smiled and smiled.
13
I cover the Chicago apartment we’re subletting with photos of gymnasts, police reports, and headshots, plastering them to the wall like Hollywood hunks. Preparation for my interview. As more and more women speak out—three at first, then seven, then ten—an almost unthinkable number, I add them to the collage so it swells in all directions, a rising storm.
“My god,” Jürgen says when he gets back from the studio, stamping his feet free of snow. “It’s unbelievable.”
He stands in his overalls, shaking his head.
“Right,” I say.
I pour him a beer and he walks from picture to picture, looking at the pink cheeks and podium smiles, one of the girls so young she still has her baby teeth, a fact Jürgen finds so disturbing he raises his hand in the air to stop me midsentence.
“How on earth?” he asks.
The hours of training, the late-night returns from far-flung competitions, closed-door pep talks, the leg massages and costume adjustments. The teammates pitted against one another, made to vie for attention. We stand side by side, staring at the girls sitting on a beam—their high-cut leotards, cherry lips, medals around their necks.
He snuck me candy, one statement reads, he took my mum to church. She totally loved him. One time he taught me how to drive in a parking lot. I sat on his lap and steered while he did the pedals.
Four feet tall, nine years old, fifty-seven pounds. In her diary entries she repeatedly misspelled the word vagina.
He liked to snap our leos when he walked by, another gymnast says, the woman I am preparing to meet. He flipped us onto the mat to tickle our tummies, fixed our uniforms to straighten the wrinkles. None of us wore underwear for training. That was the rule.
Jürgen flinches as he reads, swigs his beer.
“Verdammt,” he mutters.
He faces the mug shot of the coach in question. A bulldog with a balding head and wrinkled brow. Jürgen shakes his head slowly,
grimacing.
“The thing I just can’t understand,” my husband says later that night, undressing for bed. “The amount of time those girls spent together, why couldn’t they talk to each other, that’s what I want to know? Where were their parents, for god’s sake? What about their sisters and friends?”
I shrug.
“They didn’t know what he was doing was wrong? They thought it was just part of the job, like being stretched out or getting their bikini waxes. None of them wanted to get him in trouble. He was a con man. They adored him. He was their best friend.”
Jürgen winces.
“Christ,” he says, disturbed, and lies down next to me.
I gaze at the ceiling above our bed, at the layer of dust blanketing the motionless ceiling fan.
In a photo on Gerry Lake’s desk she wore baby blue, sitting sideways on her trainer’s lap, hugging a trophy. I think about how she came back after lights-out one night, shed her tracksuit, stripping down to her costume, and still as a statue—Galatea, milk white, sparkling—stood there in the dark so long I thought she’d stopped breathing.