Fast Girls

by Elise Hooper

  We must handle the topic of lady athletes delicately with our subscribers and sponsors. During last summer’s Olympic coverage, we received many complaints about photos that showed lady athletes appearing overtaxed and unattractive. According to one of our readers, “There are few things more depressing than opening the evening paper after a long day at work only to find a photo of a tired girl dragging herself across a finish line.” It’s fortunate that you smiled happily as you won your race so that we could publish the photo of your victory!

  I’ve included the business card for Betsy Miller, our senior fashion and lifestyle editor. She will be following up with you to schedule an interview and discuss possibilities for us to work together that I believe fitting for an attractive and talented young woman like yourself.

  Respectfully,

  John Lynch

  Editor-in-Chief

  The Chicago Evening Standard

  10.

  October 1929

  Malden, Massachusetts

  CHICKEN STEW, FRIED SQUASH, GREENS, AND SOUTHERN spoon bread. Louise’s great-aunt Vera could always be counted on to cook a meal that left them all near-catatonic, but still, even after too many courses to count, no one could resist her aunt Lucy’s desserts. Louise slid a slice of apple pie onto her plate and took a seat on the steps to watch Junior, Julia, Agnes, and her cousins play baseball in her great-aunt’s backyard. She bit into a forkful of Macintosh apples, cinnamon, and sugar and let out a low moan as its buttery sweetness hit her tongue. Shadows stretched across the golden light of the yard, and the sounds of her mama and aunts gossiping provided a steady hum under the shouts of the younger children as they played. A feeling of contentment spread through her.

  “Pretty good stuff, huh?” Uncle Freddie said, dropping to sit beside her and nodding at the pie before sitting back to watch the kids play. “Junior’s been bragging about his pitching for a while, but now I see he’s not full of hot air. The boy’s got a fine arm.”

  “He’s still full of hot air, though,” Louise said.

  “I suppose that’s probably true.” Uncle Freddie laughed and they continued to watch the game in companionable silence. Eventually twilight descended and it became harder and harder to see the boys in the “outfield,” but no one stopped playing, even as the whiteness of the ball dimmed in the backyard’s violet-hued low light. The fall days had been unusually warm, but as soon as the sun set, a sharp coolness pierced the evening air. Already the leaves on the trees were brightening into vibrant shades of gold and crimson.

  “You gonna lick that plate clean?” Uncle Freddie asked as Louise scraped her fork over the plate to get the last bit of apple chunks.

  “I might.”

  “Reckon you earned it. Your mama was saying you ran a good race yesterday.”

  Louise took a final bite of the pie and placed her plate on the ground. “I sure tried.”

  “That kind of effort counts for a lot,” said Uncle Freddie, nodding. Julia, who was playing third base, missed a wild throw from Junior. The ball rolled across the grass toward where they sat on the porch steps.

  Julia trotted after it, snorting as she scooped up the ball. “Junior, you really think you’re going to play for the Tigers someday? That was a crazy throw.”

  “Take that back!” he shrieked.

  “Oh yeah? You take that,” Julia said as she wound her arm and threw the ball back straight at him, before sticking her tongue out to make the insult complete.

  The ball smacked into his glove and he glared at it for a second before howling and turning to hurl the ball into the outfield.

  “Junior, what’s your problem?”

  “Why’d you go doing that?”

  Disgruntled voices rose from the far edges of the yard, and Junior stormed from the game.

  Uncle Freddie shook his head. “Junior? Come on back here and pull yourself together,” he called, but a moment later, the back door slammed and Junior’s wail rose from inside the house. Uncle Freddie chuckled. “Julia, you’ll be the one playing in Playstead Park if you keep throwing like that.”

  Louise could see the whiteness of Julia’s teeth as she grinned, and then her younger sister turned and wandered into the outfield in search of the baseball.

  “You looking forward to moving to California?” Louise asked.

  “It’ll be a good adventure. I’m going to miss being close to all of you, but I’m restless. I figure it’s time to try something new, find new work. I’ve stayed in touch with one of my friends from the army, and he finished his engineering degree when he returned home to Chicago. Now he’s in flight school in Los Angeles and believes there are opportunities for more coloreds in aviation. Says he can get me some work.”

  “You going to be the next Lindbergh?”

  “No, but my friend writes about promising opportunities. I’m ready to take my chances and join him.”

  Big, bold headlines in Friday’s newspaper had reported a crash in the stock market, and despite President Hoover’s assurances, people were jittery. Uncle Freddie’s plans for California had been in the works for over a month, but a new urgency seemed to underlie all his talk of the future.

  “California sounds grand. All that sunshine.”

  “I won’t miss our winters, that’s for sure.” He paused and lifted a fallen elm leaf from the step of the porch and studied the swirl of vivid colors bleeding along its surface. “I’ll miss fall, though. Not much can beat the beauty of these colors.”

  “It’s not going to be the same around here with you gone,” said Louise. As the bachelor of the family, Uncle Freddie could be counted on to pay attention to his nieces and nephews. He’d help with geometry homework, debate the merits of chewing Chiclets versus Juicy Fruit gum, and provide exercises to strengthen pitching arms—these were the important things the kids could entrust to Uncle Freddie.

  “Don’t worry, this isn’t the last you’ve seen of me, but I wanted to give you something before I go.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. When he saw Louise’s face brighten, he laughed. “Don’t get too excited, I’m not giving you money.” He pulled out a photo and handed it to her. “Maybe you don’t remember because you were pretty young, but I showed you this photo after I took you to a Fourth of July parade, the one where they unveiled the Great War memorial in 1920. Remember?”

  Louise looked at the photo’s younger version of Uncle Freddie, sitting in a café with a friend. Both wore their army uniforms, and they looked handsome and confident, content. “I remember this. After I saw it, I thought the war didn’t look so bad.”

  “True, if you only saw this photo, no one could blame you for thinking that. Do you remember what I told you about why I served in the war?”

  Louise nodded, though her uncertainty must have shown because Uncle Freddie continued. “I told you I served because I felt it was important to show my respect and pride for my country, even if the same type of respect and pride wasn’t necessarily returned to me by my countrymen?”

  “I remember.”

  “You’ve been racing awfully well, and this whole running business could lead you to something bigger. I saw some of those newspaper stories in the Globe about women competing in the Olympics. Maybe you could be one of them. You’re strong, fast, and have a good head on your shoulders.”

  “I didn’t see anything about girls like me competing in such important races.”

  “You mean colored girls? It’ll happen someday.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure, change may be slow, but it’s coming.”

  It sounded like a long shot, but if her uncle wanted her to try, she could do that. Since she’d started practicing with the team, she felt stronger and her mind was quieter, freer of the worries that had nagged her. She was tired at the end of each day, but tired in a good way that helped keep her bad memories at bay. She no longer climbed into bed and replayed that awful afternoon of Grace’s accident in her mind. Now she fell asleep quickly and slept hard
. “All right, I’ll stick with it.”

  “Good girl. If you ever end up heading to California for races, I’ll come and cheer you on.” He put out his hand to shake hers. “Deal?”

  Louise nudged his hand aside and embraced him. “Deal.”

  11.

  October 1929

  Fulton, Missouri

  ONE SATURDAY AFTERNOON, HELEN SHAMBLED TOWARD the barn. The air felt warm on her bare forearms, but there was a crispness in the wind, a feeling that the weather would turn soon. An eerie silence hung over the farm. Pa was off working in a distant field. Ma had taken to her bed the day before, complaining of a headache, and one of Pa’s sisters had taken Bobbie Lee to her house for a few days. Helen couldn’t remember the last time Ma had taken to bed. Even after Bobbie Lee’s early morning arrival several years earlier, Ma had been back in the kitchen by lunchtime making Pa his midday meal.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a red-tailed hawk’s scream cutting through the whisper of the surrounding cornstalks. She glanced at the sky and saw the creature gliding on updrafts, circling, focused on an unfortunate victim below. Helen stopped for a moment, admiring how it moved with effortless speed.

  For the last year Helen had been reading and rereading the Missouri Daily Observer’s Amsterdam Olympic coverage. The newsprint smudged, the paper turned brittle and yellowed, but she continued to pore over the articles, memorizing the results. Since Miss Thurston had found her in the outbuilding with Jimmy, Helen had been spending more time alone, thinking. She couldn’t change the past, but moving ahead, she could do things that would make everyone proud of her. Reading about the Olympics had given her some ideas.

  She proceeded to the barn, went inside, and rummaged around Pa’s worktable for a moment, looking for a hammer. Once she found one, she walked to the barn’s wide entryway, drove a couple of tacks into the dry wooden doorframe, and strung a line of twine across the opening. She then paced a couple of hundred feet down the driveway away from the yard, turned, and raced back toward the barn with everything she had. Her bare feet thundered along the packed-dirt road. Her lungs burned with the sudden exertion. She reached the doorway and pulled through the twine, imagining it was finish tape. Truth be told, she hadn’t made it loose enough and it stung a little across her chest, but she didn’t mind. She welcomed the pain. It told her she had been running fast. Really fast.

  When her breathing settled, she reached for the pitchfork leaning against the wall next to her and got to work mucking out the horse’s stall. After she finished her chores in the barn, she headed for the house. Dr. McCubbin’s Model A was parked next to the picket fence by the farmhouse. Helen slowed. What brought him out here? At the fence gate, she paused, peeling a few chips of white paint off the wood with her grubby fingers. Tense voices floated toward her from the open windows of the parlor. She edged toward the house, stopping upon the first step of the porch, listening, and hunching her shoulders, making herself small so no one would see her.

  Dr. McCubbin said, “Now, Frank, you must take this seriously. Your wife is to have no more children. All things considered, it’s fortunate this pregnancy ended as it did. Bertie needs some rest, but everything will be fine.”

  “Fine?” Pa huffed. “Doc, don’t you see where I live? What farmer doesn’t have a bunch of kids to pull their own weight around the homestead? I need help.”

  “You have a mighty strong daughter. Sure, she’s a bit accident-prone, but she’s stronger than most boys her age.”

  “A girl.” A derisive snort. “I never wanted her.”

  Dr. McCubbin spoke again, assuring Pa that Bobbie Lee would be helpful, but the words dropped away. Helen suddenly felt light-headed and she dropped to the first step of the porch. She rested her skinned elbows on the knees of her overalls, staring into the distance.

  I never wanted her.

  Her vision blurred with tears.

  There were so many ways she had disappointed her parents over the years. She knew Ma wished she could muster enthusiasm for playing an instrument. She knew Pa wished she were a boy. She knew both Ma and Pa were shamed by what she had done with Jimmy. Why, she had shamed herself with that too. She gave an involuntary shudder at that memory and glanced back at the door.

  From the sounds of it, Dr. McCubbin would be leaving soon. Desperate to avoid detection, she dashed from the porch steps, out the gate, into the cornfield adjacent to the yard. She galloped along a path where the cornstalks stood tall, blocking her from view. When she reached the far end of the field, near a bare patch of ground, she stopped at the salt lick. No one could see her here. She could be by herself, do some thinking. To keep her lower lip from trembling, she tore a foxtail from next to a cornstalk and placed it in her mouth, the bitter taste of it a welcome distraction from what nagged at her.

  I never wanted her.

  She lay down on the warm, hard-packed earth. The cornstalks fanned around her, cutting her off from the rest of the world. Above, cumulus clouds swept across the sky. She studied them, playing her favorite game, looking for shapes. A lamb. A pail. A feather. She tried to push Pa’s words from her mind.

  I never wanted—no, stop.

  She closed her eyes, tried to banish the sick feeling that slithered around her stomach as she thought about Ma’s troubles. At least Dr. McCubbin made it sound like she would be fine after a few days with her feet up. In the distance the rumble of the doc’s automobile revved, but she stayed, savoring the feeling of the sun warming her. Her breath slowed. Her toes splayed out as the cords of her legs loosened. It felt as though she were drifting on one of the clouds overhead.

  And then she was running again, surrounded by people smiling and cheering. Hands waved in the air, applauding. She ran and burst through a finish ribbon; a sensation of silk slipped across her chest and arms, almost like walking through a spiderweb. Someone handed her a silver winner’s cup and she held it aloft. It glimmered in the sunlight, blinding her as she turned in a circle so everyone could see. She basked in the crowd’s joy. Hands patted her shoulder. The warmth of victory suffused every inch of her.

  Everyone wanted her.

  Her eyes cracked open to see blue sky but she closed them again, eager to hold on to the sense that everyone loved her. A line from one of the newspapers about the Olympics came back to her, the typed words drifting across her mind’s eye the same way clouds floated across the sky. When notified by phone, Mr. Robinson said of his daughter reaching the finals, “She’s the greatest girl in the world. I’m the happiest man alive.”

  A searing pinch scorched the soft inside of Helen’s forearm and she smacked it reflexively with her other hand. A horsefly lay on its back next to where her arm had been resting, its legs still twitching slightly. Helen pulled her knees into her chest. The race, the crowds—it all felt so real. Her finger pads still tingled with the feeling of the smooth silver of the winner’s cup.

  Surrounded as she was by parched fields and cornstalks, Amsterdam felt mighty far away, but still. The vision of the race was trying to tell her something. Though the papers had made such a fuss about Betty being young, Helen was even younger. She had time. Maybe she could overcome all the ways she had disappointed everyone. What could she do to make people proud of her? How would it feel to make Pa the happiest man alive? She clambered to her feet. The first thing she could do was go back to the house and make Ma a cup of tea.

  Part 2

  July 1931–December 1932

  THE CHICAGO EVENING STANDARD

  July 5, 1931

  “Betty Robinson Defeated by Stella Walsh”

  Lady Athletes Look Forward to Olympics in Los Angeles

  Dallas—After a history-making series of recent victories, the tide has turned for Chicago’s hometown sprinting champion, Betty Robinson. She returned home today disappointed after running into stiff competition in the form of Cleveland’s Stella Walsh at the National AAU Championships held in Dallas yesterday at Southern Methodist University Stadium. The two girls raced th
e sprint as if their lives depended on it, but in the last few yards, Walsh pulled ahead to take top billing. After setting world records in both the 50-yard and 100-yard dashes, Miss Robinson of the Illinois Women’s Athletic Club (IWAC) had set a high bar for the rest of the world’s lady runners.

  Miss Walsh, who competes for New York Central Railway, enjoyed a banner day and set records in the 100-yard, 220-yard, and broad jump. When Miss Robinson was asked how it felt to come home empty-handed of her usual haul of medals and trophies, she conceded, “Miss Walsh competed admirably. If I’m to recapture my top ranking, I need to get more serious about my training and make some changes.” Pressed about what kind of changes she is considering, Robinson refused to provide any clues to her plans.

  With last spring’s International Olympic Committee’s confirmation that women will be permitted to compete in future Olympics, Americans can look forward to all the drama that lady athletes bring to the sporting arena. More than 150 of the nation’s top racers turned out to compete in the National AAU Championships, no doubt inspired by the possibility of traveling to the next Olympics in sunny Los Angeles to compete, sightsee, and socialize with other top-notch athletes from all over the world.

  Up-and-coming all-around girl athlete Miss Babe Didrikson of Dallas made her debut on the national stage by setting new records in the javelin and baseball throw and placing second to Walsh in the broad jump. Keep an eye on the outgoing blond girl from the Lone Star State—we think she’s going places!

  12.

  August 1931

  Fulton, Missouri

  AFTER HELEN FINISHED HER STUDIES AT MIDDLE RIVER School, no one in the Stephens family spoke about what she would be doing in the fall. She was thirteen years old. A few of her classmates would travel to the other side of town to attend Fulton High School, but many would stay home to work or be hired out at other nearby farms, while a few would go on to work in the shoe factory near the rail yard. Pa often said he wanted her to earn wages at the shoe factory, but she didn’t know how quickly he hoped to see that plan materialize. Helen wanted to go to high school, but didn’t dare ask about her future because not knowing kept the less desirable options at bay for as long as possible.