by Ellie Eaton
Just a few days before the start of our GCSE examinations, when I had almost forgotten about the hairpin, Gerry Lake’s stepmother put an end to the weeknight training. My first thought was that Daphne Lake must have caught wind of Gerry’s infatuation with her coach and was trying to avert disaster. Or maybe it was our looming exams she was concerned about. Either way, Miss Graves appeared in our dorm one evening to announce the news.
“Just a temporary measure, dear,” Miss Graves assured Gerry.
Gerry made a hissing noise, kicked back her chair, bulldozing past Miss Graves to call her parents. Those of us on the landing could hear, two floors away, the insults Gerry hurled down the phone at Daphne Lake—vindictive bitch, jealous cow, evil twat—before she demanded to speak to her father. When neither of her parents would capitulate, Gerry let out a high-pitched scream and (a fact people later dwelled on) publicly threatened to run away or throw herself out of a window.
“If only.” Skipper rolled her eyes and returned to her dorm.
The next three weeks Gerry was unbearable to be around. Sullen, vicious, easily provoked. I sat hunched over a mountain of study notes while around me Gerry slammed cupboard doors, kicked shoes across the room, and tore sheets from her notebook, penning vitriolic letters home, the nib of her fountain pen scratching furiously across the page. When I asked her to please keep it down, she turned around and scowled, eyes cut to slits.
“Go fuck your mum.”
By mid-June our exams were over. Gerry was allowed back on the ice. As tradition dictated, the entire year—all but Gerry Lake—gathered in bare feet in the Circle that day, our brown leather lace-ups knotted together and strung from our fingers. Skipper, the first to go, ran forward towards the shoe tree, her arm thrust behind her like a javelin thrower, tossing her shoes up into the weeping cedar. We whooped and cheered. Next Skipper called on Kwamboka, who tiptoed across the grass, jerked her arm, a tentative underarm throw into the lower branches. We applauded and she flitted back to the sideline. There was a great surge, a wave of blue as we all sprinted towards the tree. Euphoric, unshackled from textbooks and exams, we hurled our shoes up into the branches, side by side with the shoes of our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers. We leaped and shrieked and hugged one another. Exhausted, the last shoes thrown, we came to a standstill. Our arms snaked around each other’s hips, our heads resting on one another’s shoulders, admiring our handiwork.
Then we heard it. A shriek like a scalded cat. Gerry Lake streaked out of our boarding house, her head down, exploding across the grass at Skipper, her leather training bag in her hand.
“Give it me,” she yelled.
Skipper raised an eyebrow and looked down at Gerry. Even in bare feet Skipper loomed over her.
Skipper let out a dramatic sigh.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, here we go.”
Skipper looked at the twins and rolled her eyes.
“Yes, Geraldine? What now?”
I kept my eyes down on the grass, arms crossed, my fingers picking at my inner arm. I noticed in the car park the beige Ford Escort waiting to take Gerry to training. A man’s arm dangled out of the open window, fingers drumming the side panel.
“Where is it?” Gerry hissed. “Give it me.”
“Give it to me,” Skipper corrected.
“You fucking cow,” Gerry spat. “I want it back. Now.”
Skipper stood looking down at my dorm mate, studying her as you might an animal in a zoo. Despite not having a clue what she was being accused of, Skipper must have seen that she had an opportunity to rile Gerry further. A thin smile was strung across her face. She stood back and gestured at the tree, its branches dripping with our shoes.
“Haven’t you forgotten something?”
Gerry’s fist bunched, her cat eyes small slits in the bright sun. The grip around the handle of her training bag tightened, strangling the life out of it. She flushed from her neck up to her cheeks, her lips knotting together. It was as if the air around her head was crackling. Recognizing the signs of an imminent explosion—the hand on the hip, the sneer, the red cheeks—we watched, curious to see how this would end.
Gerry cast a look over towards the car park.
Then, to our surprise, she bent down and untied her shoes.
Who of us would have guessed Gerry Lake would give in so easily? Perhaps it was because she knew her coach was watching and didn’t want to be seen in an unflattering light. Or that she was so desperate by then to return to training, she decided for once not to cause a scene. Or maybe, was it possible, Gerry wanted to be Divine all along?
“Jolly good,” Skipper said, masking her amazement with a curt smile.
She stepped aside for Gerry to take her turn.
We quickly realized that despite her skill on the ice, Gerry Lake was a terrible thrower. Her first attempt, a dud, the lace-ups slid off a low drooping branch and fell to the ground in a brown puddle. I giggled with nerves. I wished I could throw them for her so that the whole stupid spectacle could be over. Gerry scowled at me and picked up her shoes for a second try. This time she aimed higher. One of the shoes snagged for a moment, then was pulled loose by its recalcitrant twin, the two shoes tumbling back to earth.
“Rotten luck,” Skipper snorted.
Gerry chose a different side and ran a little way back on the concrete circle to gain some height, which must have unbalanced her somehow, because her toss was wildly off, thudding against the trunk. Divines whispered behind hands and sniggered.
I felt Henry Peck come up behind me.
“Oh my god,” she said, giggling after Gerry’s seventh or eighth attempt. “This is hilarious. Look at her face.”
Gerry’s cheeks had turned deep purple, her lips nipped together. In her fist was one single shoe, now uncoupled from its pair. Her head was bowed in defeat, and her chest puffed up and down. Despite Gerry’s reputation for a quick temper, none of us could honestly say we had ever seen her cry. A hush fell over the group.
“C’est la vie,” Skipper yawned, bored with the whole thing.
This time Gerry didn’t miss. There was a hollow thud, the sound of a heel striking Skipper’s temple, a yelp of pain.
“Fuck the lot of you,” Gerry said.
We gasped in awe. Gerry marched across the car park and tossed her bag through the window of the Ford Escort, a final middle finger thrust in our direction.
24
My due date comes and goes and the only place I’m comfortable anymore is the water. I wade around the public pool, trying to avoid the lap swimmers, the neighborhood kids, splashing and kicking, duck diving to stare at my grotesque belly, the pubic hair blooming from my bikini line like cotton candy. When my phone rings, getting out of the pool is no easy matter.
I lean over my towel, dripping.
Rod.
“Angel,” she says. “Any news?”
This is her third call of the week.
“No,” I snap, sounding brattish.
I’m exhausted. My back aches, I have shooting pains down one leg and, thanks to a heat wave, spent the last two days napping on the sofa, naked, draped in cold flannels. When I sleep I dream I’ve giving birth to an animal—something tailed and furry, a rat or a possum—that the midwife swiftly disposes of. Another time the baby slides right out of me in the middle of the supermarket, a red splatter on the floor, a squashed tomato. Mortified, I step neatly over the puddle, pushing the shopping trolley out of the shop as fast as I can before the guards catch me, practically running.
“Darling, did you get my email?” Rod checks.
“What?” I say, struggling to hear over the poolside screams, boys dive-bombing their teenage sisters, the lifeguard’s whistle.
“My email,” my mother repeats. “About putting the baby’s name down.”
“Name?”
I move towards the lifeguard tower where it is quieter, and pain fires down my leg like a lightning conductor.
“Fuck,” I say, angling the phon
e away from my head, letting Rod do the speaking.
“I know it’s rather early days, but I was talking to Charlie and she was saying that her first grandson had his name down yonks before he was born, so . . .”
None of this makes sense. I’ve missed half of what she’s said.
“Down for what?”
“School, darling. Anyway, I’ve popped a few prospectuses in the post.”
Trying not to overreact, I stare at my stomach, tight and waxy looking, a drum for my baby to pound. I squeeze my inner arm, dig my thumbnail into the scar just below my elbow. Even if Jürgen and I want to educate our child privately—which we don’t—how on earth does my mother think we can afford it? She has no idea how much money a sculptor makes, let alone a freelance journalist.
“And don’t worry about the fees,” Rod says, reading my mind. “I’ve already set up a trust fund.”
There’s a second lightning strike down my leg. I gasp. Before I can react, my mother lays down her trump card.
“It’s what your father would have wanted. Anyway, I’d better be off. Keep me posted.”
By the time Jürgen cycles home at lunchtime to check on me, I’m pacing the apartment, livid, panting so hard he thinks the baby is finally coming.
“My bloody mother,” I shout.
I rant and rail. Why would we ever think about sending our child away to a place like that? I remind him of the kind of girls I used to go to school with—supercilious and lazy, lacking any discernible ambition. The unbelievable snobbery, the bitchiness and backstabbing, how we ripped each other to shreds.
“I mean, a trust fund.” I shake my head. “Fucking hell. What next, deportment lessons?”
At the mention of money Jürgen looks sheepish. We’ve already accepted, reluctantly, Rod’s offer to pay for half the hospital costs, the portion that our inadequate insurance won’t cover.
“Come here,” he says, holding his hand out to me, like a jumper he’s trying to talk off a bridge. He pulls me against his chest, smooths my hair back from my face, still damp from the pool. I can feel the baby, jammed between us.
“Breathe,” Jürgen orders. I rest my ear against his chest. He smells of welding, burnt metal, and bike oil. “Don’t worry about this, I’ll call your mother.”
Our standing joke is that Rod prefers talking to my husband more than her own daughter. He is, after all, easier to get along with. Never flies off the handle, is practical and level-headed and unflappable to the point of annoyance.
“We don’t have to give her an answer right now. Let’s just keep our options open, all right?” he soothes.
I begin to nod, then . . .
“Wait, what?”
I wriggle free from his chest.
He looks uncharacteristically defensive, avoiding eye contact.
“I’m just saying, who knows how we’ll feel in a few years.”
“Oh my god,” I say, close to crying. Rod has already got to him. “You’re such a hypocrite.”
“Sephine.”
He pauses, staring at the ceiling as he chooses his words. Directly above us I can hear the boys watching a Cubs game, pounding their feet on the floor like barbarians, hollering at the television screen.
“Just listen. When I was a kid I had to ride a bus for an hour and a half down the valley to get to the gymnasium, the secondary school. Most of the boys from my village didn’t even graduate. What’s so bad about wanting to give my child a decent education? Does that make me a monster?”
“But we agreed,” I insist, my voice getting higher and higher. I can’t believe he’s really considering accepting Rod’s offer. What does it say about the kind of parents we’ll make if we can’t even agree on something as fundamental as this? My eyes start to burn, red from chlorine, the apartment stifling. The single air conditioner, an overworked and aging window unit, lets out a death rattle; condensation drips from the grate, a puddle staining the wood like blood.
“Come on, we shouldn’t be arguing,” Jürgen says, reaching for the bump.
“Don’t.” I slap his hand aside. “I need some air.” I grab my bag, head out of the door.
“Verdammt,” Jürgen groans. “Sephine.”
Outside it’s a hundred degrees. I walk into the first place I can think of that’s dark and cool—the dive bar on the corner—taking a seat in front of the beer taps. An old man, one of the regulars, sits beneath the television, eating pierogi from the Polish place on the corner, one eye on his dumplings, the other the baseball game. A drunk couple in the corner playing pool are dressed as if they’ve come from a funeral.
“Club soda, Coke?” the barkeeper asks. He’s already dropped a slice of lime in a tall glass.
“Pabst,” I say.
The barman’s hand hovers over the tap uncertainly, looking at my stomach. My whole body aches, swollen and throbbing. My thighs burn where they meet in the middle, rubbed raw. My nipples ooze. All I want is a cold beer.
I give the barman a stiff, dangerous smile, eyebrows raised, defiant.
He’s lucky I don’t snatch the American Spirits out of his pocket and smoke one in his face.
“And some peanuts.”
“You got it,” he says.
I take the beer, ignoring the glass of water he’s placed next to it on the counter, and carry it to the back of the room, next to the jukebox. Wriggling free from my sandals, I put my feet up in the booth. My legs stick out along the bench, fat and formless, ankles like badly molded clay. I’m so tired I feel nauseated.
Resting my head against cracked leather, I immediately regret coming here. I stare up at the tobacco-stained ceiling and wish I was back on my own sofa instead of in a bar. I listen to the cheers of the Cubs game, the smack of pool balls, the drunk woman braying with laughter. Her husband goes to buy the next round, loosening his funeral tie as he walks, and the woman heads over to the jukebox, her black heels clacking on the floor. She casts a look as she passes by my table, then thumbs coins into the slot, standing on one leg as she chooses.
“Good on you, honey,” she says when she’s done. “I had Jack and Coke the whole way through mine and it never did none of my kids no harm.”
I’m feeling too queasy to speak, but she leans against my booth and I can see that I’m stuck with her.
“You look about ready to pop. Boy or girl?” she asks.
“Boy,” I say quickly, even though I have no idea. Jürgen made me swear we’d keep it a surprise, shielding his eyes during the ultrasound. The truth is the idea of a girl—a Gerry or a Skipper—horrifies me. I want a boy, a blond-haired, blue-eyed replica of Jürgen.
“You sure about that, hon?” the woman asks doubtfully.
She scans my midriff.
“I got three kids at home and my sister-in-law, she’s had four. I’m telling you, I guessed right every time. Scooch on over.”
This is what my body has become—public property—something to be stroked and patted and commented on. The waitress in our favorite restaurant, for example, wincing as she speculated about the baby’s head size—enormous—or the gallery owner at an opening, a man I know only in passing, who rubbed my stomach like a poodle, squatted down and called into my belly button, hello there.
Without waiting for an invitation the drunk woman slips into the booth and begins fingering my ribs. I can smell the whiskey on her breath, see the crow’s-feet, cracks plastered over with makeup, a paper tissue tucked down her cleavage.
“Girl,” the woman says decisively. “I’m telling you.”
I go rigid.
My belly tightens like a vise, the breath squeezed out of me.
“No,” I say forcefully, practically shouting, spilling my drink.
She grabs a handful of napkins and tries to pat me dry but I’m already up, charging towards the bathroom. I lock myself in the single cubicle, sitting on the toilet, shaking. There’s bloody mucus in my knickers.
“Shit,” I gasp.
Knocking.
“Hon, ever
ything okay in there?”
The baby elbows for freedom.
Done hanging around.
Head down, cramped and furious, ready to tear me open.
25
After our exams, I went up to London and didn’t see Gerry Lake for another week. Her last as Divine. During that time I was staying with my godmother in Kensington. Each night after supper my godmother and her husband sat in front of the nine o’clock news and I went into their library where I poured myself a glass of sloe gin from a liquor cabinet and called Lauren. When she answered, I could hear her television playing loudly and her mother yelling from the kitchen.
“Who’s phoning at this hour?”
“No one, Mum.” Lauren pulled the phone into the corridor. “It’s for me.”
“Nice one, Josephine,” Lauren said. “She probably thinks I’ve got a boyfriend or something.”
“Sorry.” I giggled. “Will your dad freak out?”
“He’s down the pub.”
“With your brother?” I asked as casually as I could.
“How the fuck should I know?”
I heard a rustle as she tucked the phone between her chin and shoulder. I pictured her sitting on the stairs, painting her toes.
“Did you get my letter?” I asked, thinking of the long memo I’d written her on the Times letterhead.
For one week of the summer term we Fifth Formers had been granted access to the real world, under the guise of work experience. This tradition was something of a misnomer, since the kind of professions we selected—private art galleries, party planning, interior decoration—seemed neither real nor worldly, the offices so plush it was hard to think of it as work. The majority of our placements were sourced by family friends, or well-connected relatives, as well as the small pool of alumni who had gone on to find an actual job. These Divine Old Girls, DOGs as we called them, let us stuff their envelopes and make their coffee and gave a knowing wink as we left at lunchtime to join our friends on the King’s Road. For most it was a glorious week of holiday and gadding about Sloane Square. My godmother, on the other hand, knew an editor at the Times and had pulled some strings.