Bobby Blanchard, Lesbian Gym Teacher

by Monica Nolan

  Sickened by herself, her anger spent, Bobby sought in vain for the words that might repair the damage she’d done. She looked at wounded Edie, who had never been anything but dependable, staring at the floor. Shirley, Annette, and Joyce, who’d done their darnedest, all looked like they’d been punched.

  But it was Angle who twisted the dagger of self-reproach in Bobby’s gut. Looking straight at her coach with disappointed eyes, she broke the silence. “I don’t think I want to be on the National Women’s Field Hockey Team.”

  Bobby sucked in her breath. Had she just destroyed all her hard work at integrating Angle into the team and life at Metamora?

  “Let’s hustle and get dressed, girls,” she said in a voice not quite her own. “The bus leaves in five.”

  Turning, she hurried from the locker room. She leaned against the wall outside the door, trembling with panic and regret. How could she have said those things? It was as if she’d forgotten everything she’d read the past few weeks. They were just kids, schoolgirls—adolescents! In one crazy lapse of judgment she’d destroyed the respect and admiration she’d been so proud of.

  Coach Mabel was right, Bobby thought, heartsick. She remembered the Coach’s visit to her in the hospital, after the accident. “I don’t know that I could ever trust you with responsibility again, Bobby,” she’d said then. If Miss Watkins had known what had happened that night at the swimming pool, would she have ever placed Bobby at Metamora?

  And the worst of it was, Dot was on the money. It wasn’t the squad’s fault they’d failed. It was Bobby’s, pure and simple. Despite all her protestations to Enid, she had built the squad around the experienced DAP clique. When those players failed, the whole team failed.

  I failed, Bobby reminded herself bitterly. She’d failed both as a coach and as a teacher. She’d failed Miss Watkins, Miss Craybill, and she’d failed herself. After this year was up, she’d resign, if the Headmistress and angry alumnae didn’t send her packing first. The vision of the hot plate, the cheap hotel, the job handing out towels at the Y rose up before Bobby like a destiny she’d only postponed. Would it be like that book she’d confiscated from Sandy, when the girl sinks into drugs, degradation, and despair?

  I can’t face dinner in Dorset tonight, Bobby decided. I can’t even face the bus ride back to Metamora. I’ll grab the train to Bay City from Beaverton and drown my sorrows at the Knock Knock Lounge. Get a glimpse of what my future looks like.

  Chapter Nineteen

  On a Tear

  “Yes—no—more—!” gasped the girl in the pink angora sweater. She arched herself against Bobby, who blindly tugged at the girl’s skirt but was unable to get it up out of the way, so tightly entangled were the two of them in the tiny, not too clean bathroom. “Sorry, honey,” she panted in the girl’s ear, then in a flash of inspiration she hoisted the girl onto the sink and knelt down before her.

  “Oh, Buddy, you’re the best! The best!”

  “It’s Bobby,” corrected Metamora’s Games Mistress when she came up for air. Someone was pounding on the bathroom door. “Enough already! I’m going to get Jojo to break this door down if you two don’t come out.”

  As Bobby retucked her shirt and straightened the collar, she reflected that this was the first unfriendly remark anyone had made since her arrival at the Knock Knock Lounge a few hours ago. Was it because she’d dressed the way Pat had prescribed—fly-front pants, man’s shirt, slicked-back hair? Was it running into her old teammate, Lon, who’d introduced her around? Bobby didn’t think so. She had a feeling the gals at the bar of the Knock Knock would have been just as welcoming if she’d arrived in a gym tunic.

  “Let me buy you a drink, lover,” said the girl in the pink angora sweater, snapping her lipstick case closed and leading the way back to the bar. Lon had called her Doreen—or was it Norine?

  Drinking a beer with a pretty girl at her side, Bobby had to admit the life of a failed gym teacher wasn’t as bad as it was painted. But as the euphoria from her tryst with Doreen faded, she couldn’t help replaying in her head that terrible scene in the locker room. She shuddered. How could she have berated the Savages that way, like an unsocialized adolescent with deficient impulse control?

  “What’s the matter, honey?” said Doreen, sipping her beer. “Is it me, or do you have another girl on your mind?”

  “A whole roster of girls,” Bobby told her glumly. The faces of the Savages as they’d looked at her, white, shaken, dismayed, came back to her so vividly she winced. None of this—not the beer, Doreen, her new fly-front flannels—could drown out her realization. She was a failure as a teacher. Damn Miss Watkins, she thought angrily. If she hadn’t egged me on to try this teaching business, I’d never have known how much I liked it.

  Doreen was eyeing Bobby with new respect. “How many girls is a roster?”

  “Eleven,” said Bobby. “A goalie, a center, two forwards, two wings, two halfbacks, three fullbacks. Then there are the substitutes.”

  “Why, you must be all worn out!” Doreen seemed awestruck. “I’ll get you another beer.” She waved for the bartender. But beer couldn’t stop Bobby from brooding over her teaching mistakes.

  “Say, you took P.E. classes in high school, didn’t you?”

  “It was required.”

  “Did your instructors use the module or project method to introduce you to, say, volleyball?” Bobby asked earnestly. “And do you think the particular pedagogic method they chose made it harder or easier for you to absorb the principles of a given game?”

  “Huh?” Doreen’s jaw dropped.

  “Excuse me.” Bobby turned at a tap on her shoulder, and found herself looking into hazel eyes behind a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. “I couldn’t help overhearing your question, and I wondered if you’d read the recent article in September’s Secondary Pedagogy which questions the project-based methodology.” She turned to her companion. “Doris, maybe you have a copy?”

  Standing just behind the girl with the horn-rimmed glasses, waiting for her turn to get the bartender’s attention, was a familiar figure, trim as usual, in a greenish brown suit of cloqué wool.

  “Miss Watkins!” gasped Bobby.

  “Why, Bobby Blanchard!” Miss Watkins smiled in pleased surprise. “I’ve been wondering how you were getting on!”

  Bobby concealed her inward astonishment at Miss Watkins’s unlikely presence in this waterfront dive. Bobby had never even pictured Miss Watkins away from her desk and punch cards. What was she doing here?

  Miss Watkins introduced her friend, the girl with the glasses who had mentioned project-based methodologies.

  “This is Netta Bean, she teaches at the Eleanor D. Roosevelt School for Troubled Girls, where I do some volunteer counseling.”

  “This is Doreen, Doreen…” Bobby was embarrassed she didn’t know the girl’s last name, but she felt even sillier when Netta smiled and said, “Why, it’s Norine Nemickas. Let’s see, you graduated, what is it, two years ago?”

  “That’s right, Miss Bean!” Norine, formerly Doreen, sounded delighted. “After you barely passed me!”

  “You must call me Netta now,” said the inner-city school-teacher. “Won’t you join us?” When they’d all sat down, Bobby couldn’t help asking, “Do you come here often, Miss Watkins?”

  “I like to check on Jojo.” Miss Watkins nodded at the mannish bartender. “You see, I placed her in this job. She was working as a delivery girl before, but she had no penchant for early hours.”

  “What do you teach?” Netta Bean asked Bobby.

  “Physical education,” Bobby replied, wondering glumly how much longer that would be the case.

  “Bobby is Games Mistress at the Metamora Academy,” Miss Watkins put in. “Her first teaching job. And it sounds as though you’ve taken to it like a duck to water.” The vocational counselor beamed.

  “Metamora Academy—why, I think I know one of your colleagues,” said Netta.

  “You must mean Hoppy Fiske,” Bobby realized. �
�She talks all the time about her summer stint at Eleanor D. Roosevelt.”

  “How is Hoppy? She talked about Metamora a lot too. We often discussed some way to bring together the students from the two schools, as a sort of cultural exchange. We think the girls would have lots to teach and learn from each other. Perhaps you might have some ideas?”

  “I’m not the go-to teacher for good ideas,” Bobby confessed. “The truth is, I’ve made a hash of my teaching responsibilities!”

  “Have your reading scores fallen?” Netta asked, concerned. “I find peer tutoring a useful tool in those circumstances. Or have you lost a pupil? I took a group to the Bay City Art Institute and one of the girls got arrested for pickpocketing. My principal read me the riot act!”

  “No, no, it’s nothing like that,” Bobby hastened to correct her colleague. She told the two women about restarting the field hockey team, the enmity between her two best players, the disappearing, reappearing locket, and losing her temper with her team.

  “It sounds to me like you’re making a mistake common to women who move from performing an activity professionally to teaching it at an amateur level.” Miss Watkins soothing voice made Bobby’s problems seem manageable. “I see this quite frequently in my profession. You’re subconsciously trying to satisfy your frustrated ambitions through your hockey team. You’re seeing your players as younger versions of you. They’re not, and never will be.”

  “Why, that’s true.” Bobby felt as though she’d discovered something important. “They’re just kids! It’s way too soon for them to think about playing field hockey at the professional level!”

  “And personality conflicts between students are tough for every teacher,” Netta chimed in. “Especially when violence erupts! I’ve found it sometimes works to focus on the quieter, less demanding students, and often the troublemakers will come around on their own. It’s also handy to know ju-jitsu.”

  “I’ve studied it,” Bobby said. “And the truth is, I have been neglecting my classes in favor of field hockey. Why, I rushed through the third form’s unit on tetherball, and I simply can’t find a way to get the fourth form interested in peasant dance.” She slumped back in her chair. “I’m just so far behind the other teachers in my pedagogical technique! No one else would lose their temper and make such stupid mistakes!”

  “Bobby, Bobby!” Miss Watkins scolded. “Didn’t I tell you you’re your own worst enemy?”

  Netta leaned forward. “I’ve made scads of mistakes, believe me! There was the time I failed to take a student’s threat to assassinate the principal seriously—and the time I borrowed some records from the library and they got broken in a fracas—the time I let the kids use a real noose when they dramatized ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’…oh, I could tell you loads of stories!”

  “I wish wasn’t stuck with Miss Fayne’s curriculum.” Bobby sighed.

  “Rewrite it!” suggested Netta. “Starting with peasant dance. Maybe the reason you can’t make it interesting to your students is that you’re not interested in it yourself.”

  Bobby looked at Netta with respect. She’d hit the nail on the head. Bobby hated peasant dance!

  Norine had left the table, bored with the shop talk, and had joined the women on the dance floor, gyrating to a popular song.

  “Do you know the name of this tune?” Bobby asked Netta and Miss Watkins as an idea germinated in her head. But before either could respond, the bartender stopped by their table to issue a terse warning. “Cops outside. Probably just looking for a payoff, but I know youse got better things to do than spend a night in the slammer. The cellar’s open.”

  “Thanks, Jojo,” said Miss Watkins, getting to her feet. Netta followed suit.

  “What’s going on? What’s she talking about?” Bobby asked, bewildered.

  “A raid, maybe.” Netta replied matter-of-factly. “Follow us.”

  A bevy of girls was already descending the narrow steps to the Knock Knock Lounge’s musty cellar. “For crying out loud, not everybody,” Jojo expostulated. “We don’t want the fuzz to cop to the hidey-hole.”

  “I’m not hiding,” said a woman with a crew cut, whom Bobby had noticed earlier. She rapped the bar. “Another beer!”

  “I’m with you, honey!” cried a girl in a snug red sheath who’d been standing uncertainly in the middle of the floor. Bobby didn’t get to see their romantic reunion because it was her turn to carefully climb the worn wooden steps down into the dimness. She was the last one.

  Abruptly the door behind her shut and the cellar was plunged into blackness. Bobby felt her way down the last few steps, listening to the titters and whispers below: “Is that you, Janet?” “Hey, keep your hands to yourself!” There was a crash and a dozen fierce “Shhh’s!” Meekly a voice whispered, “Sorry—anyone want a broken bottle of beer?”

  Bobby groped her way blindly to where she thought the wall might be, and her exploratory hand collided with a soft sweater. “Whoops! Is that you Doreen, er, Norine?” she whispered.

  “Do you want me to be?” The answering whisper was slightly slurred, and Bobby smelled whiskey on the warm breath that fanned her face.

  “Quiet already!” someone said sharply.

  A hand felt for Bobby’s bicep and tugged her closer until the warm whisper was right next to her ear. “Killjoy,” the mysterious girl breathed. Her hand let go of Bobby’s arm and encircled her waist. “Mind?” came the whisper. Bobby could feel the girl’s lips brushing her ear as she added, “I’m a little unsteady.”

  Bobby couldn’t stop her eyes from straining, fruitlessly, to see the mysterious new friend who stood inches away from her. But if she couldn’t see, her other four senses were tingling. Cautiously, she put an arm around her cellar acquaintance, feeling the soft sweater that had made her mistake the girl for Norine. The girl was standing so close, leaning slightly on Bobby, that Bobby could feel the rise and fall of her breasts as she breathed. Underneath the whiskey there was a clean soapy smell. Bobby put her lips to where she thought the girl’s ear might be, and bumped her nose on something hard. It took her aback for a moment until she figured it out. Glasses.

  The girl next to her was shaking with suppressed giggles; Bobby could read the vibrations like a kind of Braille of the body. The young P.E. teacher felt for the girl’s ear with her hand, pushing aside a silky curtain of hair before putting her lips close and whispering, “Oops.” The body pressed against hers shook again. Then the girl turned her head suddenly, so that Bobby’s lips trailed over a satiny cheek before encountering a soft, searching mouth.

  Pleasure exploded in Bobby like fireworks in the night sky. Any concerns about the possible raid, her vocation as a teacher, or even lingering thoughts about how to make peasant dance relevant to teens faded from her mind. She tasted lipstick, whiskey (or was it rye?), and an ineffable sweetness that was the girl’s own. All she wanted at that moment was this soft, warm, passionate creature who had swum up out of the blackness to meet her in mutual need. This was what she’d been heading for when she got on the train in Beaverton, when she changed into her new flannels in the chili parlor, when she walked into the Knock Knock Lounge; this girl and this sweet, melting feeling, this silent shuddering of desire, the beating of her own pulse in her ears, like a telegraphic signal pounding out a message of lust and longing, and the scratch of wool against Sanforized poly-cotton as the girl twisted in her arms—

  The door above opened, sending a shaft of light into the cellar as Jojo called hoarsely, “All clear, folks.” Instinctively Bobby and her new friend pulled back from their embrace to take a look at each other.

  “Enid!” Bobby gasped.

  Chapter Twenty

  An Unexpected Encounter

  Enid seemed even more astounded than Bobby. She stumbled backwards and would have fallen if Bobby had not caught hold of her arm.

  “Bobby Blanchard!” Enid sounded almost indignant. “What are you doing here?”

  “What am I doing here?” Bobby was
affronted. “What are you doing here? After all, you’re practically engaged to Rod!”

  “Rod’s as queer as a three-dollar bill,” Enid retorted. When Bobby eyed her dubiously, she added, “If you don’t believe me, go ask him—he’s at the Café de Paris, the piano bar down the street.”

  “But—but I thought you were normal!” Bobby blurted.

  “Normal! Where on earth did you get that idea?”

  Enid sounded like her usual acerbic self, despite the fact that her hair was mussed, her glasses were crooked, and her lipstick was smeared. Why—I did that! Bobby realized. She felt confused, pulled in opposite directions by dislike and desire.

  “What about the shove you gave me the other night, after I changed the fuse? You acted like I had leprosy and was trying to infect you!”

  “I’m sorry, I—I—” Enid was at a loss. “Honestly, it had nothing to do with you,” she told Bobby apologetically. “It’s a developmental pattern problem. You see, I have this weakness—this attraction to empty-headed athletes, the gym teacher type. It stems from a role-confusion crisis my sophomore year of high school, which I’ve been working hard to overcome…Look, let’s get out of the basement, shall we?”

  Bobby followed Enid up the stairs wondering whether to feel complimented or insulted. The dance floor was full again, and women crowded three deep at the bar. The good-humored gaiety that made the Knock Knock Lounge so appealing had been restored. But Bobby no longer had any interest in lingering in the convivial atmosphere.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she suggested. “We can catch the local back to Adena and you can tell me about your juvenile development and this problem of yours. Wait for me while I say good-bye to a friend.”