The Great Destroyers

by Caroline Tung Richmond

  “We aren’t talking about Sam.” Malcolm sighs through his nose. “Look, Senator Appleby might’ve thrown her husband’s weight around to get you here to Washington, but this isn’t her team. It’s mine. You want an endorsement? Then you better prove yourself in the pit and listen to what I tell you to do. Show me that you’re capable of that, and maybe I’ll sign off on a deal or two when this is all over. Understood?”

  “Crystal clear. I can do that.”

  He seems to take this as an open invitation to order me around. “You can start by studying the folder I’ll send up to your room tonight. You’ll find the team’s code of conduct in there, and I expect you to abide by it during your time at the Games. You’re representing our country, so you need to look the part.” His eyes skim over me and apparently find me lacking. “Back straight. Hair combed. Smile. Or at least stop scowling all the time. You ought to speak the part too. In private you can rant and rave about the Vietnam War or King’s letter from jail, but in public? Don’t get political. Talk about how gosh darn excited you are to be here, not some deep dive into what’s in the news, like that mailman who died down South.”

  “Who was murdered,” I mutter. Malcolm is talking about William Moore, a white postal worker who was protesting segregation in Alabama last month when someone shot him twice in the head. When Peter read about the death in the paper, he asked me if I thought the killer would get arrested, and I said that we’d have to wait and see. But deep down, I think we both knew that no one would ever get charged. And no one has.

  Malcolm shakes his head. “That’s Exhibit A of what exactly you shouldn’t do, rookie. So I’ll repeat myself: Don’t get political like you did with the entrance guards today.”

  My eyes fly toward his. How does he know that? He must have spies planted all over the city to tattle on his fighters.

  “Okay, okay,” I say with a sigh. I don’t like the thought of being muzzled, but I’ll put that muzzle on myself if it means saving the shop and our home. “I’ll talk about the weather and my family.”

  “Actually, I’m glad you bring that up.” Malcolm pauses like he’s searching for how best to phrase what he wants to say. “If anyone asks about your family, stick to stories about your dad and brother. Don’t mention your mom at all.”

  I blink fast at him. “What—why?”

  “For one thing, your parents weren’t married when they had you and your brother.”

  “How did you know that?” I blurt. He really does have a small ring of spies, doesn’t he? Because it’s true what he said. When my parents got together in ’46, it was illegal for whites and Chinese to marry. The California Supreme Court ended up striking those laws two years later, but I guess my mom and dad never got around to getting hitched. Maybe they got too busy to head down to city hall or maybe they didn’t care about making it official.

  “I do my due diligence on my fighters,” Malcolm explains, “which is how I also learned about your mother’s background.”

  I flush. My heart feels strange and fluttery, and my palms feel hot. He doesn’t spell out what he means by “background,” but I know exactly what he’s referring to. I’d thought that my race had slipped by unnoticed because Senator Appleby hadn’t mentioned it, and I let my guard down because of it.

  “Like I said I do my research, unlike the senator’s staff apparently,” he says as he scrutinizes my face. “Although if I’m being honest, I wouldn’t have guessed from looking at you that your mother was Oriental.”

  I may not be my mom’s number one fan, but he makes it sound like she was some sort of rug. “Gee, thank you,” I reply, unable to hide my sarcasm.

  “You should take that as a positive. Wilma Rudolph might be the fastest woman in the world, but how many commercials have you seen her in?”

  As if I hadn’t noticed. Rudolph won three gold medals and a bronze at the ’56 and ’60 Summer Olympics, and yet she has had precisely zero sponsors. You won’t find her face on the front of a Wheaties box—because she’s Black.

  “I’m only telling you how it is,” he continues like he understands my plight. “When my grandfather immigrated to the States, he knew he better change his name from Manikowski to Maines. He did what he had to do and so should you. Endorsement deals don’t fall out of the sky, all tied up with a pretty bow. Companies are choosy about which athletes they work with.”

  In other words, sponsors don’t want a half-Chinese fighter selling cornflakes and coffee beans. They want someone who looks all-American.

  All white.

  “Glad we’re agreed on that,” Malcolm says, even though I haven’t said a thing. He starts heading toward the exit but pauses halfway there, only long enough to glance back at me.

  “By the way,” he says, “welcome to the Games, rookie.”

  “It’s Jo,” I reply, but he doesn’t hear me.

  After I take a scalding hot shower in the locker room, I wrap a towel around myself and wipe the fog from the bathroom mirror. I’ve got about five minutes before the hairdresser knocks down the door to primp me for this luncheon, but for now I’m blessedly alone. In the quiet, I breathe in the wet air and try to forget what Malcolm told me about my mom, but it’s impossible.

  Ever since she died I’ve trained myself not to think about her. It was too painful at first, and then it made me too angry. So ignoring my mother’s memory was the next best option.

  I stare at my reflection, relieved that I don’t find a trace of her there. I’ve always felt a little bad for Peter because he takes more after her in appearance, even if it isn’t by much. What’s it like for him to look in the mirror every day and see pieces of her staring back?

  But if that has bothered my brother, he has never mentioned it to me. If anything, it was the opposite. When he was younger, he’d ask all sorts of questions. What was Mom’s favorite color? What did her voice sound like when she sang? Eventually he stopped pestering Dad and me about it because I didn’t know the answers while Dad would clam up and say he’d forgotten something at the shop. We stopped talking about the fourth member of our family, and I preferred it that way. It felt like justice. Mom didn’t want to be a part of us; why should we make room for her at the table?

  So Malcolm’s request should be an easy one for me to follow. It’s not like I want to talk about my mother to the press or bring up her “background.” Why should any of that matter since I hardly remember her anyway? She’s practically a stranger to me—and one that I’d rather forget.

  I sigh and glance away from the mirror. Dad has never asked Peter and me to flat-out hide that we’re part Chinese, but we have this silent agreement that we don’t bring it up with other people. Not at school. Not to our customers. Not even to Mrs. Watters. It’s safer this way, I’ve told myself. Look at the Chinese Exclusion Act. Or simply turn on the nightly news to catch Governor Wallace chanting, Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever. He might’ve been talking about Black people down in Alabama, but it’s obvious that he wouldn’t let my mother enter that schoolhouse he was standing in front of.

  Or girls like me for that matter.

  But Malcolm’s advice pricks at me. I’m not sure why, considering I don’t feel very Chinese, but it’s probably because of the unfairness of it all. No one cares if Sam’s family emigrated from Ireland or if Ted Rochester has roots in Germany. For some reason, that’s all fine and something to be proud of. And yet if the press catches wind of where my mother’s ancestors lived, that’ll get written up in the headlines and I’ll have to kiss any sponsorships goodbye. Thinking about that difference makes my stomach clench.

  The mirror has fogged back up again, blurring my reflection until my face is only a haze. I don’t wipe it away though this time.

  An hour and a half later, I arrive at the historic Manger Hay-Adams Hotel, where the luncheon will be held. The elevator opens onto the hotel’s rooftop terrace, and I make my grand entrance in a teal-blue dress, with a skirt so full of taffeta that I can barely
fit through the doorframe. I feel like an ostrich considering the amount of plumage around my midsection.

  As much as I don’t want to be here, I do have to admit that the view is spectacular. The White House is only a couple blocks away and the Washington Monument is just a bit farther down. The hotel itself has also been decked out to the nines. The vases overflow with peonies and hydrangeas the size of my head while a string quartet plays classical music—probably Mozart or Vivaldi, though I couldn’t tell the difference. The guests aren’t looking too shabby either—the men in their dark suits and the ladies in their silk and satin gowns even though it’s the middle of the day.

  I can’t help but feel like a sad old dandelion compared to the rest of them. None of the other women seem to be stumbling in their heels or tugging at their bodices. The dress I’m wearing has a sweetheart neckline, and the stylists told me that it was “modestly flirty,” but it feels strange for me to expose any skin beneath my collarbone. And yet when I cross my arms, that only seems to draw more attention to my bustline.

  “I give up,” I mumble to myself before I search for something to eat since I’m starving.

  Flat-topped service bots roll slowly up and down the hallway, carrying bubbling flutes of champagne and platters of hors d’oeuvres that make my mouth water—sweet onion tarts small enough to eat in one bite, slices of baguette topped with pâté, and poached baby artichokes. I take one of each and start feasting.

  “Don’t they feed you back home?” Sam says, sauntering up to me as I’ve bitten into another onion tart.

  “Speak for yourself,” I say through crumbs, not caring if I’m being unladylike because it’s only him I’m talking to. Besides, he’s holding a plate piled high with cheese and olives and rolled-up cold cuts. “Careful with all that cheddar. It’ll make you bloat up before the opening parade.”

  His eyes go wide because I don’t think he’s used to girls talking to him about bloating, but he laughs. “I appreciate the advice.” There’s a glint in his eye when he asks, “Does it come from firsthand experience?”

  “No,” I say flatly and humorlessly, which only seems to delight him more. I pivot away from Sam and sweep my gaze around the room to keep him at bay, but I soon realize that it’s a mistake. People are looking at us. Or at me in particular. I’m the new kid, after all. The rookie.

  “Eh, you’ll get used to the gawking,” Sam says, not taking my warning and eating a big bite of cheese. “Ignore it and they’ll stop.”

  But they don’t. Soon, more fighters start whispering and eyeing me up and down since I’ve crashed their little shindig. Most of them have spent a full year of qualifying to reach the Games. They first had to get through their own nationwide trials that whittled down their respective competitor pools. Then they had to survive a dozen international tournaments that determined the top twenty-five countries that would enter the ’63 Games. It’s a grueling process of elimination and hand-wringing, but even after you’ve been selected, there’s more work to do. Drills. Scrimmages. Watching countless reels of other fighters to pick up their tics and sniff out their weaknesses.

  I’m the unknown quantity though—the wild card coming in at the last second. They don’t know what to expect out of me in the pit, whether I’m left-handed or right-handed, whether I favor punches or kicks, whether I come out of the gate swinging or if I prefer to hang back.

  “Anyway, we should go make the rounds. Say hello to the guests,” Sam says.

  “You go on ahead,” I say, busying myself with a bite of a potato croquette that I picked up from one of the service bots. It melts in my mouth, and I wish I had grabbed a few more.

  “Come on, it might not be fun, but it’ll be educational.”

  “Educational how?”

  Sam doesn’t answer that. Instead he starts pulling me toward a group of fighters on the balcony. “Look, Team Britain is standing by a tray of onion tarts. I can do the talking while you eat.”

  I sigh but follow him, mostly because I’m still hungry after our training session and these little bites of food are barely filling me up. At least I’ll be able to eat all the tarts I want since Sam will keep the conversation going based on how much he likes to flap his lips.

  We’ve walked about ten paces when my foot slips in my heel, and I go a little sideways and almost bump into Team Senegal.

  “Pardon me,” I say, and they wave it off like it’s no problem.

  I can’t help but notice that the two of them are only a handful of nonwhite faces at this luncheon, along with teams like Iran and Egypt. And me. Although only Malcolm and I know that secret. I wonder how the Senegalese feel about coming to a city like Washington, which was only desegregated nine years ago. If my mom had visited back then, which bathroom would she have used? Thinking of that makes me want to grab a glass of wine from one of the bots and down it fast.

  No alcohol, Malcolm would chide me.

  And don’t bring up your mother’s background.

  Just like that I’m in a prickly mood again, but I have to spread a smile across my face because I need to look like a pitch-perfect hostess—because Malcolm or one of his little birdies is keeping tabs on me.

  Sam sidles up to a group of European fighters, four of them total, and all of them from fellow NATO nations. There are the two boys from Team Britain, both of them in smart-looking navy blazers, alongside a fighter from West Germany, who’s probably the tallest person at this banquet, standing at six foot six. I don’t catch his name though because I’m too busy scowling at him for using his height to peer down the necklines of every female in sight, me included.

  “Flake off, buddy,” I say to him, with enough oomph in my voice that he slinks toward the only other female in our little group.

  The girl in question is Giselle Boucher of Team France, and she reminds me of a swan with her long pale neck and her formfitting dress draped in white feathers. She’s the picture of cool elegance—I’ve heard that she’s dating the French rocker Johnny Hallyday too—but when she catches the Ogler trying to peek down her cleavage, she jabs an elbow into his stomach, hard enough to make him choke on his bite of crudité. When he’s done coughing, she thrusts her half-empty champagne glass at him and tells him to get her a refill.

  Looks like the Ogler just learned that swans can have a pretty sharp bite.

  Giselle greets Sam and kisses him on both cheeks. “You look very handsome tonight, Samuel.”

  “Oh, this old thing?” Sam says, tugging at the cuffs of his very new tuxedo, custom-made for him.

  “You are Ted’s replacement, no?” Giselle says, turning to me. “It’s wonderful to have another girl at the Games.”

  Her words are kind, but I can tell that she’s scrutinizing me too, trying to snuff out something useful for her advantage in the pit. The two Brits are doing the same, sizing me up. I guess I should be used to this type of treatment—it happens at most of my matches during the school year since I’m such a novelty. But I usually deal with the stares by climbing into my Goliath and getting down to business in the pit. There’s nowhere to hide on the terrace though, not even behind my thousands of layers of taffeta. My only defense is to stand up straight and pretend to look bored.

  “So has anyone spotted the Soviets out in the wild yet?” Sam asks.

  One of the Brits, whose nose looks like it has been broken a couple times but not properly set, shakes his head. “I heard the Soviets are training early in the morning or late at night,” he says, his accent threading through each word. He introduces himself to me as Albie and says that he’s from a city called Essex, which I couldn’t place on a map to save my life, but there’s a familiarity to him, a roughness that I recognize from growing up in a big city.

  “And when the Soviets aren’t training, they’re hiding away in their nest,” Giselle adds with a laugh. When I look confused, she goes on to explain that the Eastern Bloc countries—the USSR, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Yugoslavia—have insisted on having
their own floors in the dormitories, away from the rest of us riffraff.

  “Communist Row,” I say, thinking that my comment is pretty clever, but the others don’t seem to hear me. They’re suddenly sneaking glances at the company that has joined us on the balcony.

  It’s a small group of Commie fighters. The Federovas are nowhere to be seen, but I recognize the others from last summer’s World Championships, which Peter and I watched on our TV before Dad had to pawn it. I spot fourteen-year-old Mihaela Lazarescu of Romania, one of the youngest at the Games, and next to her I notice the Tilov twins of Bulgaria. The oldest and biggest of the bunch though is Lukas Sauer of East Germany, a real refrigerator of an eighteen-year-old, brawny and thick and currently ranked number three internationally, right behind Lidiya at number one and Sam at number two.

  Sam tilts his head toward Lukas. “Anyone know if old Sauer Face has fully recovered from that knee injury he got at the Euro Cup?”

  “I saw him running along the track yesterday. His knee wasn’t even taped,” says Albie.

  Sam sips his drink and makes conversation about the other fighters that have arrived. Team Switzerland. Team Iran. Team Japan. He casually asks if anyone in our circle has faced off against the others, and I realize what Sam had meant earlier when he said that our conversation would be educational—because he’s gathering intel about our competition.

  I guess he isn’t as meatheaded as I had thought.

  But Sam can’t dig up clues on all the fighters. Some remain complete mysteries.

  “What have any of you heard about Team China?” I ask the group, remembering the fighter I glimpsed at training today, the one doing flips inside the pit.

  Sam points out the Chinese team to me—a boy and a girl. The two of them look like they’ve been dropped into Disneyland for the first time, their eyes bright and their mouths open. The boy marvels at a service bot that’s tasked with collecting empty glasses and used napkins while the girl can’t stop gaping at all the food. She takes a nibble of shrimp cocktail, and I watch a smile creep onto her face as the spicy sauce hits her tongue. She finishes it off in one big bite before looking around a little embarrassed.