by Simone Biles
“Adria, it’s dead!” I hissed from the sidewalk.
“No,” she said, “it can come back to life.”
I don’t know why we thought water would cure everything—maybe it was because in church, when you were baptized or made your first holy communion, they poured holy water on your head and you were healed. That’s the only reason I can think of for why Adria and I submerged this squished turtle in water in the very same pet shop container we’d used to save the bird eggs. Once again, we left the container in our bathroom and checked on it every day. Adria (who, in her defense, was still only five years old) seemed convinced that the turtle would come back to life. But all that happened was that our bathroom began to reek. The smell was disgusting, and when it started invading our room, my sister had no choice but to throw that poor turtle away.
Even though Momma and Poppa Biles were on the strict side, they were really good about giving us space to play and explore—which is how we ended up with a smelly squished turtle in our bathroom. Most of the time, they waved off our exploits as childhood fun, but one time we got into a heap of trouble.
Adria and I were playing in the backyard, jumping on the trampoline, which was still my favorite activity. From the air, I spied a particular rock lying in the rose garden by the fence. It was larger than the pebbles around it, and it looked out of place, as if someone had left it there by accident.
I stopped jumping and went over to investigate. This doesn’t belong here, I decided. And without thinking, I hurled the rock over the high wooden fence at the back of the yard.
Splash!
I froze.
“What was that?” Adria asked. “Is there a pool over there?”
Before I could answer, Adria had jumped down off the trampoline, picked up a stone, and threw it over the fence.
Another splash. We both started giggling.
I still can’t explain why throwing stones over the fence and waiting for the splash seemed like fun to us. But it did. After a while, we started climbing on top of the fence so we’d get better aim and make sure our rocks landed in the water every time. The pool area and the backyard of that house were always deserted, so Adria and I thought our new game was harmless.
Later, we found out our rocks were getting into the pool filter and killing it, but because no one ever saw us throwing rocks in the pool, the man who lived there thought his dog was dropping stones into the water. Then one day, he did see us. When we climbed up on top of the fence, arms raised to hurl our rocks, the man was lying next to the pool, tanning on a lounge chair. He must’ve heard the commotion of us climbing, because when our heads popped over the top of the fence, he was staring straight at us!
“You’re the ones throwing rocks in my pool!” he shouted, his face red.
Adria and I jumped down from the fence, dropped our rocks in the rose garden, and ran back inside our house as fast as we could. But not before we heard the man call out, “I’m coming over there to talk to your parents!”
Hearts pounding, my sister and I dug out our Barbie Dream House from the closet and acted as if we’d been inside playing Barbies all along. “Okay, he’s not going to come.” Under our breath, we tried to reassure one another. “He’s not going to come, he’s not going to—”
Right then, our front doorbell rang. We jumped to our feet and yelled over the stairway bannister, “Don’t answer it! It’s nobody!” Why we thought that would work, I’ll never know.
Mom opened the door, and there was the man, standing there.
“I think your kids have been throwing rocks in my pool,” he said.
Mom looked up at us peeking over the bannister and said, “Is that true?”
I hate to admit it, but we flat-out lied, shaking our heads vigorously from left to right. The man looked at us in disbelief. “I just saw you!”
“You girls did ask if you could play outside,” Mom said, looking at us hard.
After the man left, we got the scolding of our lives, not just for throwing rocks in the man’s pool, but also for lying about it. Strangely, Mom didn’t seem that angry with us, just very disappointed, which made me feel so much worse. As she talked to us that day, we learned two very important lessons. First, always have the courage to own up to your mistakes. And second, respect other people’s property. Actually, Adria and I also came up with a third lesson: a true Cheetah Girl never lies.
CHAPTER 6
A Novena
“Love begins by taking care of the closest ones—the ones at home.”
—MOTHER TERESA, CATHOLIC MISSIONARY
So how would you kids feel about Grandma living here?” It was Good Friday 2004, and that out-of-the-blue question was how Mom announced that Grandma Everista Cayetano (pronounced Kai-ee-tano) would be leaving Belize and moving in with us.
“When is she coming?” I wanted to know because I adored our grandmother. Mom didn’t have a date yet. She explained that Grandma Caye (as her grandkids called her) had been taking care of our grandpa Silas after he’d had a stroke, but now she was suffering from health problems of her own. Mom had decided to bring Grandma Caye to Texas, where she could get some much-needed medical attention and a few months of rest before returning home. But first, Mom had to find a caretaker in Belize who could move into the house with Grandpa Silas to take care of him while Grandma was away.
We were sitting at the kitchen table when Mom told us this plan. Ron and Adam were both home from college to spend Easter with the family. We’d just returned from Good Friday services at St. Ignatius Loyola Catholic Church, and were about to perform my favorite Biles family ritual—tie-dying eggs for our annual Easter egg hunt. In front of us sat two dozen hard-boiled eggs in a bowl. Next to them were six smaller bowls, each one holding a different color of liquid food dye. When we were done, our brothers would hide twelve eggs for Adria and twelve for me to find on Easter Sunday. I could hardly wait.
Distracted by coloring the eggs, I didn’t think much about exactly why Grandma Caye was leaving Belize. Mom explained that she had pulmonary fibrosis, and it was getting worse, but I was seven years old, and pulmonary fibrosis were two big, grown-up words I didn’t understand. Instead, I focused on how much fun it would be to have Grandma with us all the time. I had such good memories of staying with her on family vacations in Belize, going to the beach with her and my cousins, going deep-sea fishing on a boat, doing backflips off the pier, or just hanging out in Grandma Caye’s living room, bent over my Nintendo DS. Sometimes in the afternoons, my brothers, sister, and I would wait with Grandma Caye in the front yard until the ice cream man came by on his bicycle. Grandma Caye would buy orange, mango, or pineapple ice cream pops—still the best ice cream I’ve ever tasted. My mother would sit on the porch next to my dad and smile happily as we licked our ice cream. I loved how relaxed my mom always seemed in Belize and how her accent would come out stronger when she talked to Grandma Caye. Mom was her oldest child, and they’d always been close.
“How long is Grandma going to stay with us?” I asked as I dipped an egg in turquoise blue.
“Not sure,” Mom said, her voice distant.
To me, this seemed like a chance for us to pamper Grandma Caye as she had always pampered us. I imagined bringing her breakfast in bed, snuggling up to her on the couch in the TV room, and seeing her in the viewing area with the rest of my family at gymnastics recitals. I was eager to show her all the new skills I was learning, and to introduce my friends on the Jet Stars team. I especially enjoyed knowing Grandma Caye would be waiting every day when I got home from school.
But when Grandma Caye arrived that summer, she was weaker and moved more slowly than she ever had. She stayed in bed a lot and was often out of breath. Still, she was always up for hugs and kisses and laughs, and she even came with us to one of my recitals at Bannon’s.
That December, Grandma Caye insisted on flying back to Belize to spend Christmas with Grandpa Silas. They had talked on the phone every single day, and they missed each other terribly
. My mom didn’t think Grandma Caye was strong enough to travel and tried to talk her out of it. But if Grandma Caye got something in her head, it was hard to turn her around. In that way, we’re just alike. I think Grandma Caye somehow knew that it would be her last Christmas at home in Belize with my grandpa.
When she returned to us in January, Grandma was even frailer, and she needed to be on oxygen all the time. But it wasn’t until my aunt Corrine flew in from Maryland a few months later that I realized Grandma Caye was sicker than I knew. Mom had called everyone to say they should come soon if they wanted to see Grandma Caye, because she was getting close to the end. During the first two weeks of June, family members visited nonstop—my mom’s cousin, Aunt Florita, from California; mom’s other sister, Aunt Jennifer, from Arizona; and her brother, Uncle Silas, from Washington. Another of my mom’s cousins, Aunt Anjelica, drove in from Huntsville, Texas, and Grandma’s sister, Aunt Anjelina, also came. All the aunts and uncles brought their spouses and children, which meant the house was full of cousins of all ages running in and out. The atmosphere was so playful and lively that it was hard for us kids to understand why everyone was actually there.
Hoping for a miracle, my mom began praying a novena, which is a series of prayers asking for special graces from God. You repeat the prayers for nine days in a row, and by the end you’re supposed to see a merciful shift in whatever situation you’ve been praying about. Mom wasn’t expecting it when, on the eighth day, Grandma Caye called her into her room and said she was ready to die. Grandma had started speaking only in Spanish, her first language, as she became weaker, so I didn’t understand a lot of what she was saying. My mom told me later that Grandma had decided to stop taking her medication and didn’t want to go to the hospital.
“I want to stay here with you until my last breath,” Grandma Caye told my mom on that eighth afternoon. “And I want you to know I am not afraid. God has shown me in my dreams just where I’m going, and I’m ready. I am at peace, Nellie, and I want all of you to be at peace too.”
Mom didn’t know what to say, so she kissed Grandma Caye’s forehead and went to the kitchen and cried. This wasn’t the miracle from God that she’d been praying for with her novena. She wasn’t ready to let go of the woman who had so lovingly raised her and made her who she was. But the next morning, when Mom said the ninth and final prayer in her novena, a feeling of great peace came over her, and that’s when she realized that the novena hadn’t been for my grandma, but for her. Grandma already had God’s grace, and now my mom was being filled with it too.
After her prayer, Mom went into my grandma’s room. “Okay,” she whispered, taking Grandma Caye’s wrinkled hand in hers. “I will do what you ask. I will not force you to take your medicine. I will go on this journey with you.”
Every night after that, my mom slept in the bed next to my grandma, knowing that each breath could be her last. Sometimes, Grandma Caye would wake up in the middle of the night and ask my mom, “Am I dead?” and my mom would say, “Not if you’re talking to me!” Then they’d both laugh a little at that. Even in such a hard moment, my mother and grandmother kept their sense of humor. Watching them together, I felt so blessed to be a part of such a loving and closely bonded family.
One evening, Grandma Caye was having so much trouble breathing that we thought she was going to die that night, but she didn’t. The next morning—June 11, 2005—Mom called everyone who was in the house into Grandma Caye’s room, and we stood around her bed and said the rosary. Her breathing got easier as we prayed, and when we were done, I knelt on the side of the bed and put my arms around my grandma. “I love you, Grandma Caye,” I said, resting my forehead against her cheek. She smiled and patted my shoulder weakly.
A short while later she started fighting for breath again, and Aunt Anjelina sent the cousins out of the room. “Just keep praying for your grandma,” she told the six of us from the top of the stairs. “Please pray.”
In the living room, we cousins made a circle around the coffee table and clasped our hands. “God, please let Grandma Caye be all right,” we said over and over. Soon after, our mothers came downstairs. My mom’s face was stained with tears as she held Adria and me. “Your grandma is with God now,” she whispered. The four youngest of us started sobbing, not only because we’d lost Grandma Caye, but also because our own mothers were crying. To this day, if my mom breaks down, I will too.
The next week we all flew to Belize City for Grandma Caye’s funeral. Adria and I knew that she had died, but we didn’t quite understand that she was truly gone until we stood with the rest of the family at her graveside and watched her casket being lowered into the ground. As some men sprinkled dirt over Grandma Caye’s casket, I looked up at my mom, who had tears on her cheeks. But she seemed calm, as if everything was happening the way it was supposed to happen. I leaned against her side as the priest announced the next hymn. Everyone started singing “Here I Am, Lord.”
Here I am Lord, Is it I, Lord?
I have heard You calling in the night.
I will go Lord, if You lead me.
I will hold Your people in my heart.
I felt my mom’s arm circle my shoulders and pull me close as I gazed up at the cloudless blue sky. I was picturing our beloved Grandma Caye in heaven, looking around and feeling peaceful in the presence of God, but still missing her family. I was sure she was happy that she’d insisted on one last Christmas with our grandpa.
After the funeral, Mom arranged to bring Grandpa Silas back to Texas with us, because she couldn’t bear to leave him alone in Belize. She’d recently gone into a business arrangement to run several nursing homes, and she and her partners had already purchased and renovated six of them. Mom and Dad set Grandpa Silas up in a bright, sunny room in one of the nursing homes since he needed more intensive medical care than he’d be able to get at home.
My mom went to see him there every day, and the entire family visited him on Sundays after church. Adria and I would do wheelies in his wheelchair, which he wasn’t too happy about. Since I was the ringleader, he’d try to distract me by asking what skills I was learning in gymnastics. Sometimes I’d demonstrate a back tuck or a tumbling move, and he’d say, “I was a great tumbler in my day. You get your gymnastics talent from me, Simone.” I loved that he believed that. It was our own special connection.
Every Sunday, while sitting with Grandpa, we’d end up telling stories about Grandma Caye. We never stopped missing her. Maybe that’s why Adria and I loved “Here I Am, Lord” so much; it became our favorite church song. Some nights before bedtime, we’d ask Mom to play the hymn for us on iTunes, then Adria and I would get in the bathtub, prop the little booklet from the funeral service on the side of the tub, and take turns singing. Though Grandma Caye was now in heaven with God, singing that hymn always made us feel closer to her, as if she was right there, still holding us in her heart.
CHAPTER 7
Leveling Up
“Each of us has a fire in our hearts for something. It’s our goal in life to find it and keep it lit.”
—MARY LOU RETTON, THE 1984 OLYMPIC GYMNASTICS CHAMPION
I was stoked. Finally, I was learning how to do full rotations around the high bar with my body completely extended, starting at the top of the bar in a perfectly vertical handstand, legs together and toes pointed to the sky. The skill is called a giant, and it is crucial to a gymnastics career. The sooner I could master it, the sooner I’d be able to move on to harder dismounts and other big skills.
Coach Susan had spotted me in practice the day before, standing level with me on padded leather blocks stacked on one side of the foam pit. She kept one hand on my arm and the other flat on my back as I swung 360 degrees around the bar. Now I felt ready to try doing giants on my own. I’d already completed my conditioning stations for the afternoon—leg lifts and chin-ups on the ladder by the wall, rope climbs, sprints around the gym, sit ups, and push-ups, everything on Susan’s list—so I headed over to the high bar.
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br /> I mounted the bar with a kip and swung myself up to the handstand. I’d completed two or three rotations when, suddenly, my grip slipped a little and I started toppling to one side. Usually, when we make a mistake like that on bars, we fall safely into the spongy foam underneath. But my fall that day was so bizarre that when I hit the high bar, I bounced off it and rolled down the steel cables at the side, landing hard on the concrete. Ouch.
Chest heaving, I lay on my back looking up at the vaulted ceiling of the gym. Tears spilled from the corners of my eyes. I knew how lucky I was to have escaped with no broken bones, but I’d been truly frightened. I was still on the ground thinking, I’m never doing that again! when I saw Coach Nicole standing over me.
“Get up, Simone.”
I got to my feet and wiped my eyes. I was expecting a little sympathy, but, clearly, I’d misjudged Nicole. She was straight-faced and matter-of-fact as she stacked up several of the spotting blocks so that she could stand level with the bar. She climbed onto the padded blocks and stood waiting. I realized she expected me to get back up there.
“I’m not doing another giant!” I burst out.
“Come on, Simone,” she said calmly. “Get up here.”
“Did you see me just fall?”
“Get up here,” she repeated.
“No!” I said, crying all over again. “I’m not doing it.”
“Yes, you are,” she said. “In fact, you’re going to be doing giants by the time we finish bars today. I’ll spot you.”