Fire on the Track

by Roseanne Montillo

  “Girls with lots of dimples and personality usually become queens in this sort of thing,” a Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter wrote, reminding readers that Stella had never possessed any dimples and was as cuddly as a prickly pear. But, accustomed to insults, she approached the challenge as she did everything else—with pure logic, devising a step-by-step plan, sizing up the competition, and looking for vulnerabilities in them, while scouting out any advantages that might be available to her.

  When the day arrived and her name was called along with those of the other four finalists, Stella walked up to the stage wearing a new dress and heels she wobbled in, as surprised as everybody else was when she was bedecked in a crown and a glittering robe. She seemed awkward standing next to pretty, blushing Anna Griffith, the girl who had already been pegged as the winner. But Anna had earned a total of 200,900 votes, while Stella—muscular, rugged, boyish-looking Stella—had earned 327,400, thanks in part to her lobbying her Polish neighbors.

  —

  For days afterward, Stella reveled in her new token of femininity with equal parts triumph and sadness. For as far back as she could remember, her lack of delicate features had been a topic of discussion, particularly during track meets, the sarcastic remarks in the locker rooms becoming increasingly common banter. As she had grown with age, she had expected the lines on her face to soften. Instead, they had become more pronounced, sharp and angular, setting her apart from the rest, though her physical attributes weren’t the only thing that was different. She had a penchant for playing basketball with the boys rather than accompanying the girls in their excursions to the cinema or beauty parlors. When she had joined yet another boys’ sports team, she only reinforced the notion that she belonged with men. Because of those ambiguities, she had been given the painful nickname of “Bull Montana,” after the wrestler who’d eventually become an actor playing assassins and pimps.

  And it wasn’t just her schoolmates; later, even her competitors began to harbor their own doubts about her. She had a face without expression, some said. They couldn’t read her, and they distrusted her because of it. But when she heard their disparaging remarks, she pretended not to care, or not to show it when they bothered her. Truthfully, her teammates would have preferred an angry rebuttal, shouting, an argument; even cussing would have been better than her staring at them with the coldest, hardest pair of eyes they had ever seen.

  Stella had never been inclined to socializing, and the silly discussions some of her competitors indulged in didn’t really appeal to her; she thought them petty and useless in an athletic environment where strength of body and mind reigned supreme. Not that she would have been able to carry on a conversation with them; even in that she was lacking. She arrived at her meets already dressed for competition, which spurred rumors. But it was the fact that she always left the locker room without showering with the rest, a wave of perfume in her wake, that got them talking. Her teammates knew she doused herself in large quantities of perfume instead of stripping naked in front of others, some of them mocking her modesty, others suggesting that it was not shyness but something more profound, the result being that they stared at her with not only unabashed contempt but even a touch of revulsion. Throughout her youth and early running days, Stella had achieved legendary status in her neighborhood and around the city of Cleveland, winning races against local opponents who quickly had offered her no competition at all. Very odd, many of her teammates surmised. And though she had no desire to reveal personal matters, she still craved the spotlight she would gain as an Olympian.

  —

  Only once had Stella been forced to show vulnerability, and even that had been out of her hands. Even as she sported her crown and high heels, that episode pained her three years later. In the locker room of the old Woodland Bathhouse in Cleveland, where she often discreetly bathed herself, after she thought everybody else had gone home, an older girl named Beverly Perret had crept in and startled her. Only when Stella heard the whisper of the door opening had she turned around. The terry-cloth towel had slipped from around her chest, revealing a body seemingly at odds with itself. Stella remembered the expression on Beverly’s face as she took in the nonexistent breasts and the limp little stump between her legs. Beverly, who had indeed been startled at first, was unable to speak as Stella hurried to gather up the towel at her feet and hastily tried to cover herself.

  Beverly had sensed her discomfort and drawn closer, wanting to touch her, but much as others before her had learned, Stella had an aversion to physical contact. It was the only time anyone had seen her body for what it was—what she thought was a freakish abnormality, one with which she was growing increasingly uncomfortable. She had worked so hard to bury her secret, somewhere where people could not see it; she had learned to pretend that it could not hurt her, but it haunted her every time she changed or showered and stole a glance at her naked self. She no longer did that—she avoided reflecting surfaces as much as possible, and, most of all, she avoided the possibility of anyone else catching a look at her body.

  She did not know it, but though her condition was rare, it was not unique to her. She was not “a freak of nature,” as she often described herself in private or to Beverly. (Children with mixed anatomical structures had been born before and would be born again, labeled either intersex or hermaphrodite. But Stella was not aware of any of that back then, nor did she bother to find out much about her condition.) Only one thing occupied her mind: hiding her naked body from anyone in sight, while making certain everybody knew she was a female.

  —

  As Stella was relishing her new title, Betty was awakening to her painful new reality. Her head was tightly bandaged, her leg tied straight up in the air. She could barely move, and when she did, pain shot through her like an arrow, wrenching and unforgiving. She could not recall what had happened, and when she tried, she only remembered wanting to go up in her cousin’s plane, the freedom of flying above Riverdale, the clouds surrounding them, then—nothing. Her family carefully explained that there had been an accident. She couldn’t grasp that weeks had passed while she had been asleep. She was now at the Oak Forest Infirmary, an institution she knew from her time in high school, when she had volunteered there.

  She was not comforted by the idea of being in the place, nor had she ever liked it. Located in Dumming, a few miles from Riverdale, the facility had started off as a sort of poorhouse or almshouse, even though eventually people who were mentally incapacitated had also been placed there. Those in the area had heard of its horror stories, a turn-of-the-century article in the Chicago Tribune condemning it as a “crumbling, helter-skelter series of wooden buildings,” whose “inmates” were “crowded and herded together like sheep in shambles, or hogs in the slaughter pens.”

  Betty asked about Wil. Both of his legs had been crushed, and though his doctors still suggested amputating his right limb to relieve some of the soreness, Wil’s mother continued to refuse to grant permission. She thought it better for her son to deal with the pain than to lose the extremity.

  —

  Once she could sit and speak for herself, Betty put up a good front. “Of course, I’m going to try to run again,” she told the Tribune. “After spending the last eight years in preparation for an athletic career, it would be useless for me to give up without at least an attempt to run. But just when I will be able to begin strenuous training is up to the doctors. In the meantime, I’m going to continue my course in physical education at Northwestern,” she said, flashing one of her trademark smiles. But beneath her brave facade, matters were different.

  She knew, for starters, that she would not be repeating her medal run in Los Angeles. Her right leg was now half an inch shorter than the left—her ability to crouch down for the set position had gone. Without that, there was no hope that she would ever run the 100-meter dash. Besides, she should not aim too high, doctors warned her; even walking seemed like a long shot. She should concentrate on merely getting up from the wheelchair, th
ey insisted, discouraging movements they felt would cause her undue pain.

  Wil had not fared any better. The wound on his leg was slow to heal, and infection had set in. That November, he would return to the Ingalls Memorial Hospital to have additional surgery, doctors still insisting on the amputation, if only for pain relief. But his mother still refused, and he listened to her arguments.

  Betty returned to Riverdale to heal and recuperate but found that her recovery was slow. Most mornings, it was difficult to get up and force her tennis shoes onto her feet. Even if her mind willed it, her body would not cooperate. And there were times when her mind didn’t want it, either. On those dark days, she told herself that she could walk in the afternoon or go out in the evening, when the children were playing ball and the sun was waning. Besides, tomorrow morning was just around the corner; she could wait until then. She was recuperating, after all, not training. She had time.

  —

  Bert made the trip from Evanston to Riverdale, what seemed daily at first, though in time his visits dwindled. He sat in a chair in her parents’ living room, across from her, and spoke of the athletes who had remained on campus throughout the summer, their long days of jumping, running, playing—seemingly unaware that those stories were the worst kind to share. Betty sat quietly, her leg tightly bandaged, and made no effort to be pleasant. She wasn’t surprised when he curtailed his visits, nor was she surprised or hurt when he no longer came at all. Oddly, it brought her some relief to have all reminders of a previous life finally behind her.

  She dreaded most days, finding no comfort in being home, surrounded by her family. Instead, a heaviness had settled on her, pressing on her head and squeezing her chest. More than anything, though, she cringed on hearing the footsteps of her brother-in-law Jim Rochfort coming down the stairs, the knocks that followed, his persistent urging that they go outside for a walk, which in time, he promised, would become a short run. She complied, but only out of exhaustion or to avoid arguing, her unhappiness oozing out of her with each step. Much like the ability to run, her willingness to argue had dissipated.

  There were days when her legs pained her more than usual, and it was then that Jim would pick her up in his arms and carry her down the steps himself, all the way across the street to the park, where the cold morning air filled her lungs and the darkness of night still lingered. They would sit on a bench for a few minutes, listening to the birds, the wind so blustery that it stung her eyes, and she would attribute any tears to that. Eventually they would begin to walk, her knees popping as she took her first steps. She suspected that Jim could hear her bones cracking as he marched a few paces ahead. He made light of it, telling her that he just imagined having a popcorn machine trailing him. Around a gravel path they strode, her flat-soled tennis shoes wearing thin, Jim measuring her stride and in time clocking her speed, eventually bringing more intensity to her training. She trusted him; he instilled hope, whereas her doctors had given her none, Jim allowing her to progress at her own pace, which was as slow as that of a toddler trying to find her balance for the first time.

  There were times she couldn’t help feeling sorry for him, up so early every morning to help her, hoping that one day she would improve enough to get back onto a track field. Didn’t he mind, she asked one cold morning as they stretched her stiff limbs—which seemed unyielding—didn’t he mind training with her? Why should they try so hard when the likelihood of her returning to the track, let alone to the Olympic Games, was virtually nil? But Jim, ever the idealist, did not consider the hours with her a sacrifice; he had endured much, much worse during the war.

  It was during those early mornings, as she ground forward and struggled to keep up with Jim, that she realized that nothing about her previous life had ever involved sacrifice, including her track-and-field runs—even her wins. Those had come so easily to her, so effortlessly, through luck as much as talent. Had she truly earned any of them? Having trained for less than four months before going to Amsterdam, she had fit practices in between her other commitments—even bake sales had on occasion taken precedence. She had also never truly taken the time to get to know the other athletes in Newark, the ones who had been training and running for years. Instead, she had strutted onto the field, expecting to win it all with confidence.

  Now, she mused, trudging around the park in the cool morning air, history seemed in danger of repeating itself. She wasn’t working as hard as she should be in order to get better. She pouted when Jim arrived early to call on her, as if the act of walking again were a matter of course, and not an opportunity she had to earn again.

  The recognition of that must have been a shock so severe that it was viscerally painful. Weeks after she returned home, she made a pact with herself that she would not let time slip away but would become a participant again; she would defy those doctors who had not believed in her. She began to wake up even before Jim and quietly make her way outside, heading toward the park when only a few of the neighbors’ windows were illuminated in the predawn darkness. Alone, the echo of her shoes crunching on the gravel, she looked straight ahead as she counted her breaths, attuning her mind to her body, walking slowly at first, a bit faster in the days that followed, trying to push herself that much further with each passing morning. There were no records to break, no stopwatch to count the seconds against her—just the simple pleasure of trying to run as she had years earlier, when running behind Riverdale’s homes with her face slamming into flapping laundry was all there was.

  She came to like that early-morning darkness, its familiar sounds: the birds flitting among the tall branches, the motorcars in the distance, and the bustle of Riverdale’s inhabitants as they shook off the night’s sleep and readied for the day ahead. But mostly she reveled in the sounds of her own two feet pounding over the road, the crunching of twigs and leaves underneath, her heart beating with exertion, for that was when she knew that she was working hard, that she was resuming some version of the life she had led before. Jim often found her there, alone in the park or on the short graveled path, sometimes jogging in place, other times doubling over in pain and exhaustion, nausea overtaking her. But all the while she was learning that her broken body could withstand hardships and discomfort that she had never had to endure before, the pain teaching her the meaning of resilience.

  —

  When Betty returned to Northwestern in 1932, she found Frank Hill awaiting her. He was kinder this time and, beginning her training slowly, patiently determined to get her into fighting shape. Right away he could see that the old Betty was no longer there. Her form was entirely different, as was her overall technique. Her forward lean, having lost its natural bent, seemed forced and rigid. Her sore legs, different in length, possessed a stiffness that only time would ameliorate. She complained that her back was on fire, a burning spreading from deep within it, gradually overtaking the rest of her body. And she could no longer crouch for her sprints; the muscles in her legs no longer supported doing so.

  It would take years of consistent hard work, Frank cautioned her, to regain a fraction of the conditioning and strength that had been hers prior to her accident. By the time she did, many younger, faster athletes would have come onto the scene. He doubted that a full return to the Olympic Games was possible, given that the only thing that appeared the same was her smile, he sadly told reporters; her smile and her unwavering spirit.

  Betty had always appreciated Frank’s advice, as much as she had appreciated anyone else’s. But she had never taken other people’s words as gospel, and she did not let herself believe him now. She possessed a resilience that had taken her this far, a willful streak that she referred to as determination and that she relied on. She was slouchy at first, as she could see in her reflection in the store windows she passed as she ran down Main Street, but she also saw improvement.

  Physically, she could never be her old self, but she did not mind that, for mentally she did not feel like the old self, either. She could run, and that was enough for
the moment. “I couldn’t bend down,” she recalled some forty years later. “But I could still run.” She had won the Olympics once before, she reflected while jogging along Riverdale’s sidewalks or Northwestern’s track. Could there be any way to participate in the Games again? It was too late for Los Angeles, but what about Berlin in 1936? Could she dare to hope for a place on the team, regardless of what form that would entail?

  The papers urged her on. A Chicago Tribune article read, “Betty Robinson, Olympic track star, ready to run again….Every day now finds this Northwestern University junior exercising with dumbbells, on bars and on a bicycle to limber up stiff muscles resulting from torn ligaments, a broken left arm, and a fractured leg.” Yes, she determined as she made her way around Riverdale, she could at the very least allow herself to imagine returning to the track where she had first become a champion.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CALIFORNIA DREAMING

  While Betty continued to rehabilitate, Northwestern’s Dyche Stadium became the site of two major events (technically, it was only one, with a dual purpose): the AAU Women’s Track and Field Championships, which simultaneously served as the trials for the Los Angeles Olympic Games during the summer of 1932.

  Three of Betty’s former teammates were going to participate: Jean Shiley, Lillian Copeland, and Margaret Jenkins. She religiously followed their arrival in Chicago, as well as their doings. The Chicago papers were devoting enormous time and column space to them, and it seemed to Betty that she had grown to living vicariously through the abundant coverage, devouring the articles with a hunger she hadn’t known until then.