by Pamela Moses
“Oh, yes, Ma. Yes, that’s good.” Always her new phrase seemed better than what I had written. Change after change after change, until, by the time our final draft was done, I could no longer remember what the essay had once been.
I received an A− on the assignment Mama had helped with. Well executed, Miss Fielding wrote on the final page, though I am surprised you abandoned the original plan for your paper.
“A-minus, Ma,” I said later that day, and showed her the mark. But I did not mention Miss Fielding’s comment on the essay or that I wondered what my grade might otherwise have been.
The next September, as Mama had hoped, another small increase in Poppy’s salary allowed them to enroll Sarah in private school as well. “Your turn will come, too.” Mama had stroked Valerie’s hand the first morning before Sarah and I set off together as Valerie sniffled over her boiled eggs. I liked having Sarah’s company as we trod along Fieldston Road to school each morning and back each afternoon. I now looked forward to the walk, which had seemed lonely the year before—to the earthy smell of the leaf piles along the curbs of the landscaped yards, to the game Sarah and I sometimes played, imagining scandalous secrets of the inhabitants of the most stately homes. In the evenings, of course, with our many assignments, all games ended. And we toiled over our work as Mama remained close.
But during the third week of the semester, I brought home a slip of paper—a notice to all high school parents of the options for participation in some extracurricular activity. I could choose a club—drama, chess, or debate—or a sport—track, volleyball, or swimming. All activities met after school, the clubs two times a week, the sports teams five. The slip was to be signed, it said, by a parent or guardian.
As Mama scanned the paper, she adjusted the reading glasses on the bridge of her nose, pushing them close to her eyes, then pulling them forward, as if she could not find just the right position. “Do you really think it’s wise, Ruth, to take hours away from the time you need for schoolwork? And you’re in high school now—your assignments will only become more challenging.”
“But the activities don’t last the entire year, Ma. Besides, I’ve been keeping up with all of my quizzes and papers.”
I saw the pen Mama held in her hand. Already I knew which box I wanted her to check. The previous year, the windows of my homeroom had overlooked the school’s glass-walled pool, and at the end of the afternoon, as I packed my books, I had often caught glimpses of the swim team members stretching on the pool deck in their racing suits, diving gracefully into the water, skimming the surface like sailfish.
As I’d walked home that day, I had imagined myself gliding beside them and wondered if I could remember all of the swimming techniques Poppy had taught me. When I told Mama what I was hoping for, she nodded but looked past me, out the kitchen window, as if something there annoyed her. Over the weekend, we had driven to Scarsdale to visit Nadia and Leonid. Gregory had just joined his school’s Model United Nations Club. “They investigate all kinds of international affairs,” Nadia had told Mama. “Gregory was the ambassador from France in their last debate.” She showed Mama all of the materials Gregory had studied to prepare for his role and then the award he had received for Best Delegate. Mama had looked impressed. “It’s too bad your school doesn’t offer Model United Nations, isn’t it?” Mama had turned to me.
But now she said, “Five practices a week, Ruthie. What about the chess club? It’s far less time-consuming. And did I ever tell you Uncle Jacob and I used to play chess for hours together in the Shanghai ghetto? Jacob made us a set out of bits of wood. And then when we came to this country, our Papa bought us a real set with all the proper directions. I still remember lots of tricks. I could teach you—”
But when I begged and begged, Mama finally agreed, as long as I promised that if my grades suffered in any way, I would quit.
The first swim practice was scheduled for the following Monday. In my blue bathing suit with orange piping and wrapped in the beach towel Mama had packed in my bag that morning, I followed the other team members along the corridor of the gym and down the cold tile stairs that led to the pool. The towel was meant to cover me when I was not in the water, but no one else, I noticed as we settled ourselves on the bleachers, bothered with such modesty. So before taking my seat, I quickly pulled at my towel, rolling it into a loose ball on my lap.
Coach Hadley, as I heard the older team members call him, stood facing us, his back to the room’s windowed wall. In the late-day sun, his gray hair, thick as steel wool, shone almost silver. With his fists plunged into the pockets of his satiny red jacket, a gleaming whistle dangling from his neck, he announced that we were forty-one strong this year, twenty-two boys and nineteen girls, an encouraging number in his estimation. He was particularly pleased, he said, indicating those of us new to the team, with the addition of nine freshmen.
Our practice, he explained, would begin with a simple warm-up. He would time us in heats of four to check our individual speeds. He reminded us to avoid splashing as we kicked, to pull at the water with deep strokes, to breathe only when necessary. Before my turn to race, I silently recited these directions, trying to recall simultaneously all of the pointers Poppy had given me in summers past.
By the time I finished the two required pool lengths, my chest pounded as if it would explode, but, much to my delight, I discovered that my time, though far from the fastest on the team, was better than many.
“Not bad, not bad,” Coach Hadley pronounced. I needed to learn proper flip turns, I needed to correct the alignment of my elbows, I needed a rubber swim cap to eliminate drag, but he could see that I had potential. He patted my shoulder, the same sign of camaraderie I had seen him give some of the returning team members earlier in the practice. I nodded to show my eagerness to comply, biting the sides of my cheeks to keep from grinning.
When I returned home that evening, Mama was already home from work, quizzing Sarah on the capitals of the fifty states for her upcoming geography test. She waved a hand at me, but did not look up from Sarah’s book. “It’s nearly dark outside. You must be worn out.”
“Only a little.” Then as Mama left Sarah’s side to spread the floral cloth on the dining table, folding five paper napkins into neat rectangles, setting out knives and forks and glasses of water, I described all that Coach Hadley had taught us that day. Mama nodded but said nothing so that I wondered if the topic held no interest for her. But the following evening, she told me she had a surprise. In the sporting goods store near Broadway Paperie, she had come across two magazines with articles on swimming. Managing to browse through them during her lunch hour, she had been impressed by the nuggets of information they contained, the descriptions of physical techniques as well as mental exercises that would most certainly be to my benefit. “See. Take a look, Ruthie.” She opened to a two-page diagram in one of the magazines. “Physiologists have studied how our bodies move best through water, secrets most swimmers don’t know. This is the newest research.” Over the next several days, I found these materials opened on the dining table when I arrived home, Mama’s reading glasses resting on one of the glossy pages to mark her place. As I washed my hands at the kitchen sink or unpacked texts and folders from my schoolbag, she would read aloud tips. But Coach Hadley had already critiqued our every move. He had shown us how to visualize our performance before we entered the water, how to dive from the starting blocks for maximum speed, how to angle our fingers and point our feet, how to roll our necks gently as we breathed, conserving motion. And for many afternoons after the cool-down, he had drilled me on my turns until I could tuck my body into a tight coil, propelling myself from the wall like an arrow.
“Yes, Mama. I know! These are things we practice every week!” And I would rotate my arms like a windmill to show off my new expertise.
“Oh, well then—” Mama shrugged, and the sports magazines were stacked with her other reading material on the kitchen shelf underneath the telephone. But now and then, when I
mentioned some new skill I had learned in swim practice, she turned to glance at the magazines, as if she still believed they held information of greater value.
• • •
On the first day of the swim season, Coach Hadley had advised us about our diets—heavy meals could slow our systems; we were to think about eating for speed. For some time I had noticed how carefully my classmates, the girls especially, chose the foods they ate. I overheard them in the cafeteria comparing calories, sharing recipes for meals low in fat as they picked at half sandwiches, salads with cottage cheese, diced fruit. But until our coach’s warning, it had never crossed my mind that there was anything to be done about the plumpness around my thighs or the thickness of my middle. “You should be proud to have a healthy physique, Ruthie,” Mama had always told me. “No one’s frame is meant to be skin and bones like so many girls I see these days.” In temple or riding the bus, she would nudge me, jutting her chin disapprovingly toward women whose waists were as small as children’s. “They look as sickly as refugees!” Even Ruby, her new employee, had dropped ten pounds since summer, drinking only strawberry diet shakes for breakfast and lunch. “But now she tells me she is struggling to keep up with her classes,” Mama said. And the other day Mama had caught her incorrectly filling out an order for a wedding announcement—embossed instead of engraved. “Well, what did she think would happen from existing on fruit-flavored sugar substitutes! How can she possibly think straight?”
But after swim practice, in the girls’ locker room, as I blotted my hair with a towel, I began to sneak peeks at my teammates—at their stomachs flat as stone slabs, at the perfect slope of their breasts, at their arms and legs as lean as the classical Greek figures we sketched in art class. To me, they didn’t look bony, but beautifully muscled, feminine and strong. If I followed our coach’s guidelines, would my body slice through the water more quickly? Could I, too, be womanly and sleek? And I stared down at the protrusion below my waist, the lumpiness of my hips.
That evening, Mama, to my dismay, served a supper richer than usual—potato-lentil soup, buttered noodles, veal roast smothered with fat mushrooms, glazed challah rolls. My mouth watered as she placed dishes of the steaming food on the dining table. But I was determined not to weaken. I requested only a single ladleful of soup, rather than the usual two or three. I handed the basket of rolls to Poppy without taking one. Later, when the platters of veal and noodles were passed around the table for seconds, I shook my head, “No, thank you.”
“Is something the matter, Ruthie? An upset stomach?”
“No, Ma. No, I feel fine!” But there was a good reason, I explained, for my modest portions, and I recited the suggestions Coach Hadley had given.
There was a pause in the scraping of Mama’s fork and knife. “It seems your coach has appointed himself the authority on all kinds of matters, hasn’t he?”
But Papa laughed before there was time to answer Mama’s question. “Sarah, Valerie, did you know your sister was turning into such a dedicated athlete!” And he stroked one hand with the other as he did whenever he was pleased, causing my face to warm with pride.
Sticking to my new diet regimen took more effort than I had anticipated. I craved Mama’s breakfasts—salmon scrambled eggs, buttermilk pancakes, oatmeal with brown sugar. And dinners of turkey with gravy, stuffed cabbage, kasha with onions. How easily I would have given in, but after some weeks, I thought I noticed what seemed almost a miracle—a slightly smaller bulge to my stomach, a bit less flesh around my upper legs. Was I merely wishing it? No! When I stood sideways before the full-length mirror on my closet door, I was quite sure I could make out a change. Along my route to school, I began to check my reflection in the windows of the nail salons, the coffee shops, Ganiaris’s fruit market. If I squinted my eyes, I could make my translucent self almost slender, curving only where I longed for curves. I thought of Cole Freeman, our swim team captain, who reminded me of handsome Luke Skywalker from my cousin Gregory’s Star Wars cards, and wondered if Cole would ever notice me the way I had noticed him. “Ooh . . . how do I look?” Sarah teased if she caught me, one hand grabbing her hip, the other cupped behind her head, sashaying down the block until I broke down in laughter.
After a time, I thought I discerned another difference, as well. It seemed I was somehow lighter in the water now, that I felt a quicker energy in our practice drills. So I found the discipline to leave my meals unfinished. To fill myself instead, later, with yogurt and sliced bananas. During a Shabbat dinner at Aunt Bernice’s, as I whispered with my cousin Eva about the R-rated movie she had just watched while on a sleepover with a friend, Mama pressed her lips in annoyance at what remained on my plate. At home that night, she warned me not to believe all of Coach Hadley’s advice. “You know you can’t possibly give proper attention to your homework without solid food in your stomach. Your coach should tell you no one ever got anywhere by starving herself!”
But I laughed and kissed her cheek to show her how wrong she was. “I’m not starving myself, Ma! See, I’ve never been stronger!” And I rolled up my shirtsleeve, revealing the newly defined muscle along my shoulder.
• • •
Several weeks into the season, our team was scheduled for its third meet, but the first in which I would be participating. For days, I thought of little else. At night, I lay awake in bed, listening to street noises, my mind rushing like the cars that rattled past outside my window, imagining how my opponents might leave me behind in a wake of bubbles.
We were driven to Brooklyn, to our rival school, in two yellow vans, and as we drew close, the trembling I had felt in my stomach since that morning worsened.
“Jitters are very normal for a first race,” reassured Celia, a senior team member whose voice turned to music whenever she spoke to any of the boys on the team. Now she let the words drop flatly. “Nerves can even work in your favor, Ruth.” But I was not sure I believed her, and as I was called to my event and curled at the edge of my starting block, I was certain I could see my knees shaking.
But there must have been truth to what she said, or perhaps it was my new eating regime. Never before had I swum so quickly; my arms and legs churned like motors through the water. And at the end of the race, I was presented a third-place medal hanging from a long red, white, and blue ribbon. During the bus ride back to Riverdale, I cradled the medal in my palm, tracing with my thumb the tiny figure of a swimmer etched into the surface. I closed my eyes as our van hummed along Flatbush Avenue and over the Brooklyn Bridge. This was the feeling of winning!
Once at our building, I sprinted up the four flights of stairs, too impatient to wait for the crotchety-slow elevator. By the time I reached our apartment, I was panting so that I could hardly speak.
“Look, Ma! Look!” I dashed into her bedroom, where she was returning to its hanger the silk blouse she had worn to work that day, carefully re-buttoning its pearl buttons. Gasping, I dangled the medal before her.
“What is it, Ruth?”
“Third place. Third out of six, Ma. I had to beat three other swimmers to earn it!”
“Oh?” Mama turned back to her blouse for a moment, fastening the final button. The skin beneath her eyes looked tired; this was holiday season, her busiest time at Broadway Paperie, and the one I knew she most disliked. “Congratulations,” she said, but in a way that made me wish I had explained it differently. A medal was a medal. I had won a point for my team. Maybe if she had been there she would have understood—all of the swimmers were fast, none of them easy to outdo.
Then, soon, I had new reasons for excitement—another third-place medal, and a tie for fourth at an invitational meet where five teams competed. In my bedroom, I hung my second award with the first where they were visible to anyone who entered, from the latch of my window beside the stained-glass flower I had made in art class. Some evenings I draped one around my neck like a necklace, feeling the sway of it below my collar.
Other members of my team were still faster than I,
but Coach Hadley began to compliment my progress, and each afternoon I burst through our door to announce to Mama, Sarah, and Valerie the strides I had made in practice that day. I predicted the medals I thought I could win in future competitions, then repeated these boasts for Poppy as soon as I heard his footsteps at the entry.
So full was my head with dreams that I swallowed the food on my plate each dinner almost without tasting. How easy it was to turn down seconds now, and more often than not, my first servings went unfinished. I began to refuse anything in heavy sauce. I peeled the thick skin from Mama’s spiced chicken legs, cut my pot roast into strips, avoiding every marbled streak of fat.
“What passes the lips resides on the hips!” This was the rhyme other girls in my class sang as they assembled their lunches of sliced pita and unsalted rice cakes and raw vegetables, and I repeated it now for my family as they stared at what lay untouched on my plate.
Poppy would laugh and rap the top of my head with his knuckles. “Dieting like the fashion models, heh!”
“We’re fashion models, too!” Sarah and Valerie would giggle, thrusting their shoulders back in an exaggerated manner, cutting their food into tiny mouse bites.
But the more Poppy and my sisters joked, the quieter Mama grew. For three nights in a row, she said little throughout supper. Silently, she stacked our dishes and carried them into the kitchen, shrugging off the work as if it were nothing when we offered to help. Even her plate washing seemed quieter than usual, only the light scratching of knives on platters, the gentle splash of water. One evening when I followed her into the kitchen for a glass of water, I found her poking with a fork at a plate on the counter.
“Did you eat anything at all tonight, Ruth?” Mama pointed to the bits of lamb chop I had discarded, the remaining pile of barley.
“Yes! Yes, of course I ate! But I’m on the diet of champions—lean, lean, lean!”
Mama pushed the food across my plate. “Do you know you left your geography text and notebook here this morning? I discovered them after you left for school. Last week I found your French homework loose on your dresser.