Girl Runner

by Carrie Snyder

  One of the runners is Glad, and she’s sailing. She’ll catch the girl in front of me too.

  I watch her go, following her up the stretch, knowing we’re in two different versions of the same story: hers is easy and mine is hard. This does not seem fair, after all we’ve shared. I feel as if she’s grabbed something essential right out of me, a section of my heart or a lung, and stolen merrily off with it, leaving me crippled, drained of my powers. I know this feeling—it’s betrayal, and I’m heavy beneath its weight, I must get out from under it.

  As I approach the finish, I glimpse an open mouth in the crowd, jaw extended, veins popping from his neck. George, my brother—has he come to watch? If it is George, he does not seek me out afterward. I hope I’ve seen wrong.

  I stagger across the line in fourth, out of the medals and the record books and the newspapers. An emotion that could be anger—though I don’t claim it—swells out of me in stupid tears.

  I force myself to approach Glad: “Congratulations.”

  I can hardly hear my own voice. I’m mumbling. I don’t press near enough to give her a hug, my offering measly amidst the grand wild thrill that surrounds Gladys Wright on this brilliantly warm and breezy Friday afternoon. Gladys Wright, the 1927 Canadian women’s champion at the 100 metres, with a surprise win at the 800-metre distance too.

  Mr. Tristan drives me home after the meet, Lucy and Ernestine too. None of us have achieved what has been expected of us—or, more precisely, what we expected of ourselves—although Ernestine made the sprint finals. We are hot and dusty and do not speak, clamping our hats to our heads against the wind blowing into the open-roofed automobile.

  “Chin up, that’s a girl,” Mr. Tristan says as I get out of his car.

  I dread dinnertime. I dread telling Olive and Mr. and Mrs. Smythe and the girls what has happened.

  But dinnertime comes and dinnertime goes, and I am required only to shake my head ever so slightly, no, not good, and the others leave me be. I need to be sad. I need to go to bed early, even though the day is still bright and hot, and I need to curl under the sheet, tuck knees to belly. I need to feel what I’m feeling.

  It is a great kindness that nobody disturbs me with false assurances.

  I WAKE TO FIND Glad smiling out from the newspaper, waving a bouquet of white flowers and holding a big box of Rosebud Chocolates. Mr. Smythe must have shaken his paper open to this page, and folded it over, without making a comment on the subject over dinner. He must have kept the paper specially yesterday evening, he must have climbed the stairs when the house was asleep and quietly slid the folded newsprint under our door, because it is what I step on in my bare feet on this brand-new morning, when I am still my ordinary self, and not the champion I’d let myself imagine I might be.

  I rustle open the page, smooth it across the summer quilt on top of Olive, who is half-asleep.

  I think Glad looks perfect.

  I go for Olive’s scissors and cut out the photo to keep. But my stomach hurts. I don’t eat breakfast. I don’t go swimming. I walk south to the lake, and west along the rocky shore, and north again through High Park and past the mineral pools where strangers are bathing. Eventually, it is time to make my way to practice.

  Glad isn’t there. Perhaps she is exempted today, given her victories.

  I run strong. I run fine. I can feel my sadness running out behind me, like it’s being spilled on the ground, and I figure that will be that. I won’t be sad anymore, not over this. I have a sense of impermeability, of elasticity, of bouncing off of something hard, and believing in the first instant that I’d been hurt, then understanding the pain is superficial. It is already gone.

  This is called recovery. I recognize the sensation from running. Under every layer of pain another layer of recovery lies in wait, the sweet, forever surprising truth of endurance.

  If Glad was here, I decide, I would hug her and I would say, Congratulations, and I would mean it this time. I am sorry she is not.

  The change room is emptying out. I rinse my face in the sink. I strip off my soaked training clothes, peel off socks, dry myself with a large piece of absorbent flannel. I powder my armpits with soda and talcum. I dress. I unbraid my hair and brush it out and let it fall down my back, unfashionably long and loose, crinkled from the braid. I gather my damp belongings and fold them. I am the only person left, and the building is quiet and emptied out, the Saturday shift gone home at five o’clock, the cleaning shift not yet arrived.

  I open the door, quite entirely inside my own head, and thoughts.

  “I think I know what’s wrong.” Mr. Tristan is waiting in the hallway outside the change room.

  My heart is a runaway horse, spooked into a gallop. I try to hide my surprise. His hand on my upper arm, gently, steers me to the little room that is his office. “Now, then. Let’s talk.”

  I refuse to sit, even though he points me to a chair squeezed beside his desk.

  I’m wearing a dress made of summer-weight fabric with a plain collar and short sleeves, belted at the waist, and a skirt, like most skirts, that is too short on my long legs, and falls to just below the knee. It is a yellow dress, pale yellow, approximately the same colour as my hair. There is nothing fashionable about it, nor about the straw hat on my head. I carry my valise, with the sharp-smelling training uniform folded inside, over my left shoulder. I will take it home and wash the uniform and hang it to dry in the room I share with Olive. By practice on Monday it will be dry, but usually, at most practices, the fabric is still slightly damp when I put it on again. I will pull on the shirt and the short pants and the socks and something about the dampness, the odour of sweat and lanolin, will bring me comfort, or nearly.

  “Good showing yesterday?”

  I stare dumbly. Is he asking a question?

  “Are you happy with fourth?” he presses.

  I shake my head. No.

  “You know you can do better. I think I know what’s wrong,” he says, again. He takes a seat behind his desk and narrows his eyelids, scrutinizing me. I have the petrified feeling that he can see through to my thoughts.

  “I’ve been watching you,” he says.

  I feel as transparent as glass, open as a wound. What has he seen?

  “You’re tough as hell in practice, but in races you let her get past. You know who I mean. Glad. You ease up.”

  “I don’t!” The fury of my reply shocks me. I’m shaking.

  Because even as he’s saying it, and I’m denying it, I know somehow he’s right.

  Yesterday’s race washes over me, a series of short sharply illuminated frames, glimpses. Out of a too-quick start, a nervy start, I’m burning, falling to second, but holding on. The pace as we enter the second lap a little quicker than I prefer—can I hold it? I don’t question, just push.

  Here is where I’d like to make my move—on the outside turn, back straightaway. I glance over my shoulder.

  Never look back, I hear Mr. Tristan saying as if he’s running beside me, in the race, saying it into my ear. Too late. I see what I see.

  Glad on my heels, grinning. Glad pulling me back, pulling on me. Like a tide. Like rope. Glad like a stone in a slingshot zinging past my shoulder, brushing arms. My fingers fold into my palms. I let her go.

  The finish line, fluttering tape, one two three four strides behind first, second, and third. My head turns, left shoulder dipping. Too easy, I think. I’ve got too much left in me. This is not what you want to feel at the end of a race. You do not want to finish a race and know you could have given more. You want to pour everything out. You want to be emptied.

  Mr. Tristan is watching me.

  I’m back in the tiny office with him, back with the sharp sunlight angling through the dusty windowpane. It’s hot in here, airless, like a closet. His expression is unguarded, as I am unguarded too. I shake my head violently to shake away the sensation of losing. To shake off the emotions flooding me again, fresh as yesterday: jealousy, envy, shame, and worst of all, betrayal. />
  “You like Glad,” he says simply.

  I flush hot.

  “You’d do well to like her a bit less.” Mr. Tristan speaks coolly, thrumming his fingers on the desk. “Her uncle pays the bills, mine included, but that won’t stop me from telling you the truth, because the truth is I like you, Aganetha Smart. No, don’t go all coltish and startled. I’m speaking as your coach. I like your potential, always have. You work harder than anyone else out there. Harder than anyone I’ve ever seen. You’ve earned your place on this team the hard way. That’s what I like about you. You’re like me. You come from nothing.”

  I do not, I think defiantly, hardly hearing what he’s saying.

  “You like Glad,” he continues. “What’s not to like? She’s a friendly kid, she’s got the world on a string, happy-go-lucky, always gets what she wants, always has.”

  “Stop,” I say.

  “I don’t think Glad is who you think she is,” says Mr. Tristan. “Be careful, that’s all.”

  I’m breathing like I’ve been through a race.

  “She’s quicker over the short run,” says Mr. Tristan, standing and going to the door, holding it open to indicate that our conversation is coming to a close, “but you’ve got endurance. The only way she can beat you is up here”—he leans in close to me and taps his temple—“and don’t think she doesn’t know it.”

  10

  Golden Girl Runner

  I HOLD OUT my arms, and the girl leans down. I must weigh next to nothing, muscle and fat vanished under loosened skin, even while I remain a long woman, long bones, long spine. My feet drag behind me, a huge breath leaving my lungs, and hers, almost simultaneously, ah, as she settles me into the chair. She’s forgotten about the belt, but the complexity of expression necessary seems hardly worth the effort. I can’t remember the word for belt, though I can see it like a picture in my mind.

  “This isn’t my fault!” She yells at her brother, but she’s angry at herself. She shakes out the blanket, which has fallen into the mud, adjusts my ridiculous knitted hat, tucks me in. “Don’t even talk to me,” she orders him. He hasn’t lowered his camera, nor said a word against her, as far as I’ve heard. She’s rattled.

  Well, she’s young. She’s young and she’s ambitious. When you’re young you think you invented the light that shines on you. You think it arrives at your bidding, and you would not claim the shadows that blot this sun of yours. I’m the one who fell, but she’s the one hurt by it.

  She’s pushing me out of the graveyard, forcing the wheels of the chair through the muddy ruts and brambles, and back to the lane, which is smooth, bare of gravel, worn shiny and slippery like a pair of old corduroy pants.

  “There.” The girl’s breathing comes purposefully, but the click click sound of the rubber wheels slows as she pushes me closer to the line of pines planted long ago to hide the house from view. Her brother hurries to get ahead, the shuffle of his shoes scuffing the dirt. He searches for the best angle, a tall figure crouched into a ridiculous position as he crabs himself backward, away from us. We follow.

  I can see the scene this will make in their movie: I am a wizened, gnarled, crumbling creature tucked into a wheeled chair being pushed along a bare farm lane toward a place I can’t recall, not perfectly, but I know that I’m coming home. I suspect the boy would frame this as a sad scene, even pathetic, and he would score it accordingly, with tinkling piano music. In the movie they say they’re making, I’m a helpless being, steered by a strong girl, a teenager clad in fitted, gaudily patterned athletic clothing, a girl who is perpetually prepared to take off running. The girl’s muscled calves are the same circumference as her thighs. Her regimen is different than mine was. I’ve heard they bathe in ice these days—the blithering television is occasionally good for something. On foot, she covers a distance of two hundred kilometres every week in intervals, sprints, tempos, and hills. She swings weights. She crunches. She planks. She stretches. She dreams of gold.

  But it is I, the muttering, bewildered creature in the chair who does not dream, who has no need to. Gold is already mine.

  Once upon a time, I crossed an ocean to catch it and bring it home.

  I wonder, would it be a kindness to tell the girl what it weighed, like a warning, or a promise? It was so much heavier than I imagined.

  1928, AMSTERDAM. The first Olympics at which female athletes are permitted to compete in track and field events.

  I don’t know what I’m doing, not really, nor what it means. I’m pleased as punch to pose on the steps of the pension in Amsterdam with the other girls, all of us dressed identically in the team uniform: white jackets and skirts trimmed in red, with a maple leaf over the left breast, and a cloche hat to match that Glad says suits me better than it does her. I’m happy to do as I’m told, to arrive where I’m taken, dress in what I’m given, eat what’s before me, and run without complaint on the spongy track where the Canadian girls have been assigned to practice in the days leading up to our races.

  The news is broadcast in occasional static flares sent up from the ground. I won’t see my own photo until I arrive home weeks later: my mother cuts out copies to save. Black-and-white, reproduced on newsprint, hawked by shouting boys in the streets, beneath words three inches tall, wide and black: GOLDEN GIRL RUNNER!

  I wonder, do I remember the photograph itself, or do I remember living inside of it?

  The photographer must have placed himself ahead of us on the track, crouched down for the best angle. He snaps me in motion, crossing the line in front of the German girl, though just, her expression stern, mine disbelieving and pained. My head is angled. I am glancing over my shoulder as I lean for the finish, but I’m not looking at the German girl, as it appears. I’m looking behind me for Glad. I can’t understand why she isn’t running beside me. I am sick that she is not here too.

  I am also just plain sick.

  I wear a short-sleeved white tunic, cut into a V at the neck and emblazoned with a red leaf under which my nation is declared: CANADA. Two tight undershirts layered beneath the tunic flatten my breasts to my ribs. Loose black shorts swish around my thighs and are too ample for my waist—I’ve dug an extra notch into the thin leather belt. I’ll have red marks on my stomach afterward from cinching it so tight. Little white ankle socks tucked into inflexible black shoes. My number on paper pinned across my hips: 692. Glad is 689.

  Flash. I am front-page news in Canada, tomorrow.

  I run out of the moment, unable to slow my stride immediately. I keen sideways, collapse to the ground, holding my head with both hands, flat on my back. Mr. Tristan and Miss Gibb, the manager of the Canadian girls’ team, are with me in the next instant, pulling me to my feet.

  “Brilliant finish. World record time,” says Mr. Tristan. “Walk it off, walk it off.”

  “Where’s Glad?” I ask as stars explode behind my eyes. Miss Gibb wraps me in a scratchy woollen blanket.

  “She’s chilled.” She is talking to Mr. Tristan, not to me. “It’s this rain.”

  “Keep them away.”

  “Coming through, give us air!”

  Glad darts into focus, ahead of me, and she turns. Her grin is a mile wide. I can’t believe it, not after what has happened. She swings her hand for mine, shakes it wildly. “Kiddo!” she yells. “I knew you had it in you!”

  I am crying, snot streaming. Glad responds as if she’s decided everything I do is a lark. I love her for not letting me spoil my own moment. She’s pretending to spar with me, her fists up, her feet dancing, her mouth laughing.

  Miss Gibb discreetly daubs my face with her handkerchief. “You should be happy,” she says sternly.

  “She shouldn’t be anything other than what she is,” says Mr. Tristan.

  “She needs to pull herself together. Throw your shoulders back. Now.”

  “There’s a girl.”

  “I’m sorry, Glad.” I’m blubbering.

  “What for?” Glad pushes through the others to hug me tight. “It’s
just a race,” she whispers in my ear while I fold my head down onto her shoulder and weep until I’m done.

  Here is the medal ceremony: I am handed a bouquet of white and red flowers. I stand on the top step, already the tallest girl in the crowd, so tall they’ll remark on it in the foreign papers. “What are they feeding those long-legged Canadian girls?” as if we’re all the same. God Save the King.

  Mr. Tristan helps me down from the podium. He has a tender expression on his face that makes me sad, though I don’t know why. It’s as if he’s saying good-bye, as if he knows something I don’t about this being the end. We’ve gotten what we came for.

  Miss Gibb falls in on my right, holding firm my elbow. I lean away from Mr. Tristan and into Miss Gibb’s trim figure, demure in jacket and long navy skirt. My legs are water and my lungs are underwater, and it is too loud under the drumming stands to speak, and they are walking me out into the Amsterdam morning, into the fine drizzle, and they are delivering me into the backseat of a humming black motorcar.

  “Hot broth,” says Miss Gibb, climbing in beside me. She shuts the door on Mr. Tristan. “Hot water bottle. Sweat it out. You’ve caught cold, that’s all.”

  IT’S JUST A RACE.

  Funny Glad would say that. I wonder—could she mean it? I hide in my room at the pension, huddled under the sheets, laid by with fever and chills. If I am honest with myself, I will allow it is not a fever of the body, but a fever of the mind. I am twenty years old and unprepared for the experiences of the past weeks, all except for one, of course, which was the race itself. For that, I was sublimely prepared; not so, Glad.

  It is Glad I can’t get out of my mind.

  Glad, who goes into the 100-metre dash as the favourite, who breezes through the semifinals with the fastest time, who wears her confidence like a feathered hat. Some brood under the weight of expectation—you see them at meals picking at their food and snapping at any approach—but Glad seems instead to glow. We are dining on cold potatoes, fat slices of ham, and bread with preserves, the day before Glad’s 100-metre final, when Miss Alexandrine Gibb asks to sit with us—although it being Miss Gibb, her request sounds more like a command. “I’d like to write you up in my column, if you’d agree,” she says to Glad. “I think readers would be interested in how you prepare for your race, the little details. What you eat and drink, and what exercises you do to keep strong.”