by Terri Cheney
“She hit me,” Alonzo said.
“I did not,” I said, sounding shocked. “I hit the fly. And there it is.” I pointed to the belly-up fly that had wound up on my desk.
The teacher sighed. “Class, who was Henry VIII’s first wife?”
I didn’t even bother to raise my hand. “That’s easy. Catherine of Aragon.”
“And after that?”
Now it was my time to sigh. It was all too goddamned easy. “Anne Boleyn.” Without further prompting, I reeled off the rest: “Then Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, and Katherine Parr.”
“Excellent, Terri.” The teacher turned the lights back off and resumed the slide show.
Alonzo was still angry at me. He turned around and whispered, “Show-off. Bet you’re not even cool enough to touch that fly.”
He knew, as did all the students who’d been in science class with me, that I was extremely queasy when it came to insects of any kind. Mere spider webs freaked me out; the sight of a scuttling black beetle could make me feel faint. I’d been excused from dissecting worms in Mr. Hamish’s class on grounds of “acute palpitations.”
But the Black Beast was bored, oh so terribly bored, and Alonzo’s words had the ring of challenge to them. No, I said to myself. Not that. Please, not that. But I’d made a pact: whatever the Black Beast wanted to do . . . My hand reached out toward the fly. All the students around us were watching me now, as I picked up the dead fly by its disgusting wings and dangled it before Alonzo’s astonished eyes. Then I slowly lowered it to my mouth, tilted my head back, and popped it in.
I actually swallowed it all in one gulp, but I made a big show of chewing and smacking my lips. “Yummy,” I said, just before Alonzo spit up his gum. It was heaps more interesting than even Anne Boleyn, but it didn’t satisfy the Black Beast’s craving for more, and yet more, stimulation.
Underneath my profound boredom lay profound agitation, and underneath that, something darker still: a sense of slowly approaching doom. My skin felt so prickly, the tiny hairs on my arms seemed to be standing on end. I tried to sit still, but the Beast was too antsy. I kept shifting around and around in my seat, searching for a comfortable position. The girl sitting behind me complained, “Terri, stop fidgeting. I can’t see the screen.”
Asking the Black Beast not to fidget was like asking a tornado to stop whirling around. I tried to find the tornado’s eye—calm, quiet, still—but all around me thoughts were spinning, ideas were pulsing, words were pushing up against my tongue, begging to be released. I grabbed my notebook and started scribbling, pressing the pen down so hard on the paper it tore right through the page.
“The Game.”
I stared at my notebook, unaware that these two little words would eventually change my life. “The Game.” What did it mean, and why had I written it? Understanding didn’t matter. Expression was all. I started to write, the words pouring out of me, rhymes and rhythms and associations all jumbled up together like alphabet soup.
Only one early draft of “The Game” has survived, but I remember well the conceit: I suddenly realized that the integrity of everything around me was hanging by a thread, the tenuous thread of compliance. We had all agreed to play the same game and abide by the same largely unwritten rules. Teachers would teach, and students would listen; cheerleaders would always outrank stoners; stoners would always outrank nerds. Parties and proms mattered far more than politics, even in our tumultuous times. And good looks—not beauty; never beauty—could buy you the entire world.
When had I signed up for this? I hadn’t. I knew in a flash of clarity that all I had to do was stand up and shout an obscenity, or do a bare-ass cartwheel in the aisle, or snap up all the window blinds to let the sun blaze through, and the whole carefully calculated structure would come tumbling down around my ears. The urge to do these things was strong, but the urge to write my revelations down was stronger still. I learned an important lesson that day: writing could sometimes calm the Black Beast. Much as he loved to incite and provoke, he adored the ecstasy of inspiration—the flow of words from ether to pen to page—even more.
History was the very last class of the day, and when the bell rang, I stayed behind and kept on writing. I wrote until my fingers cramped and my feet grew numb. Shadows crept across the room. I didn’t stop, not even long enough to turn on the lights. There were just too many things to say. It was all a game, all of it: family, friendships, school, career, marriage, children, decline. I’d never asked for any of it. I’d just been plopped down in the center of the Monopoly board and expected to know my next move, because Monopoly was always played the same way. When in doubt, consult the rules. But nowhere in the rules did it say what to do if a player all at once decided that she didn’t want to play anymore.
A little knowledge can be empowering, liberating, a giddy thrill. But too much knowledge, too soon, too young, can be a dangerous thing. I felt like I was seeing too clearly. The fabric of the universe was stretched out before me, and it was a pitiful sight: moth-eaten and threadbare. Now that my eyes were fully opened, how I longed to be blind again.
I wrote and wrote until the words began colliding on the page, and I couldn’t make sense out of them anymore. I felt like a windup toy that had been wound too tight: I wanted to stop, but I couldn’t. My hand kept writing the same seven words, first in flowing cursive, then in big block print, then in what looked like a child’s careless crayon scrawl. I filled up several pages, then went back and wrote in between the lines, in teeny-tiny letters so small that I had to squint to see them. The same seven words, over and over and over again: “I have to get out of here.”
And the scary part was, I wasn’t sure who was saying it: me or the Black Beast.
It was dark when I finally raised my head. The room was suffocatingly close, and I felt like I couldn’t draw a decent breath. The writing fury had passed, and in its place was an exhaustion so profound that I wondered how I would ever get home again. I should call my parents, I thought, and tell them where I am. They weren’t coming to the game because of my father’s cold, and I knew they must be worried. But I sat there, not moving a muscle, too tired even to blink. I sat and stared at the words I had written. The words stared back at me, bold and true: I have to get out of here. Yes, but first I had to move.
I tried to raise my little finger. Impossible. Ring finger, middle finger, index, and thumb: not ten minutes ago, they’d been maniacally scribbling. Now they lay inert on the desk, dull and heavy as lead. My body wanted nothing whatsoever to do with my brain. The commands that I issued were simply ignored.
There may be more terrifying things than paralysis, but if there are, I don’t know them. My skin was my prison. My veins and arteries were like barbed wire encircling my body, circumscribing my limits. Alcohol was the only thing that had ever helped me break free of this feeling, but the nearest drink was miles away.
I thought with a sudden staggering fondness of Stinky Pete, and the magical way he was able to transform mere money into a mood-altering elixir. How good he’d always been to me, always ready with a quip or a compliment as he handed me the brown bag. “You look mighty nice tonight, miss,” he’d say, but I was so eager to get at the liquor, I never stopped to say anything kind in return. Just a hurried “thanks,” and I was off to the next party, the next dance, the next big game that seemed so important to me at the time—far more important than a smelly old man’s ragged attempts at civility.
The next big game. Jesus Christ. Panic jolted me out of paralysis, at least long enough to get up and open the window. Sure enough, I could hear the familiar strains of the Chaffey fight song in the distance. I looked at my watch: seven-fifteen. Kickoff was at seven.
I knew I should run to the stadium, but running was out of the question. I trudged to the pay phone at the end of the hall and called home. My father answered.
“Why aren’t you at the game?” were the first words out of his mouth.
“I’m fine, thank you,
” I snapped. I never snapped at my father.
“Where are you?”
“At school. I was writing.”
“Well, you’d better hurry,” he said. “Kickoff was at seven.”
“I know.” I sighed. “Never be late to the game.”
“That’s right,” he said. Then a beat. “Is there something wrong with you?”
It was the question I most wanted to hear and feared the most to answer. “Daddy, do I have to cheer tonight?” I asked, my voice so faint it almost evaporated.
“What are you talking about? It’s the big game. Of course you have to cheer. Why, just this morning you said—”
“I know, I know.” This morning felt like a lifetime ago. What had happened to that chipper cartwheeling cheerleader? Was she still alive inside my body, and was the Black Beast holding her hostage? I wondered what his ransom was. I’d pay any price, anything, just to be the very same person I’d been a dozen hours before.
“I’d better go,” I whispered into the phone.
“Give ’em hell, baby,” my father said, and then the line went dead.
I went to my locker, took out my megaphone, and began to stuff the five hundred dollars I’d collected into my backpack. It was a tight fit and seemed to take forever. There were so many loose bills—ones and fives and tens fluttering through my fingers—that I had to take out all my books and pens and papers to stash it all in. Two-to-one odds. Whatever had possessed me to offer that? If we lost—and now I was sure we were going to lose—I’d owe a thousand dollars. I didn’t have a thousand dollars. I had three hundred or so in a savings account, maybe thirty more in my piggy bank. That left me six hundred seventy dollars in arrears. Even Daddy wouldn’t fork over that large an amount without a damned good explanation.
At last, I managed to zip up my backpack, and made my way slowly to the football field. I had to concentrate on putting one foot after the other. It was a damp night, and the very air felt like it was resisting me, pushing back, impeding my forward progress. When I finally made it to the stadium, the game was in full swing. We were down by seven points.
“Where on earth have you been?” Allison demanded. “We had to do the fight song without you. It totally screwed up our rhythm.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was—”
“It doesn’t matter now. For God’s sake, get in line and get going. We’re already seven down.”
“It’s just a game, Allison,” I said. She looked at me as if I’d gone mad.
Anyone who thinks cheerleading isn’t a competitive sport hasn’t been through Hell Week at USC: seven days in the blistering August heat, doing the same backbreaking routines over and over again, trying to get an edge on the neighboring teams before the real season starts. Our squad never won any awards, but we weren’t that bad. We were blessed with several gymnasts, and the rest were natural athletes—strong and lithe and limber. I wasn’t limber. At the moment, I felt barely alive.
Allison called out the next cheer: “Rock Steady!” Shit. Normally, I liked this cheer. In spite of its stupid words, it was full of sexy gyrations and a catchy rhythm that always got the crowd up onto its feet. All it consisted of was a few nonsensical lines: “Rock steady / What it is, what it is / Get down, get down / Goooooo, team!” But it was followed by our hardest stunt: the pyramid, where we threw Carrie, our smallest girl, high in the air and, hopefully, caught her on her way back down.
“Ready? Okay!” Allison shouted.
Thankfully, I was able to remember the words, since there weren’t that many of them. But the moves? A cheerleader has to be thinking all the time of a dozen different things to make the routine quick and snappy: elbows locked, but never knees; arms stiff and fully extended; ab muscles tight; both wrists aligned; toes pointed, and so on. Constantly look to the left and the right without ever moving your head, to keep in perfect sync. Synchronization was next to godliness and second only to smiling. Smile, smile, until your jaw ached and your cheekbones felt like they were on fire. You loved this team! You loved to cheer! You knew that every girl out there was wishing she was you.
Since our school was so large, the crowds were huge. They made a mighty sound when they roared, like a tidal wave washing over me. I felt their eyes upon me, watching my every move. I owed it to them to sparkle bright, to infuse my body with such pep and vigor it radiated up into the stands, coercing even the most timid souls to clap their hands and stomp their feet and shout until their throats were raw. “Gooooo, team!” It was my job, and by God, I was going to do it if even if it killed me.
“Terri, smile!” Allison hissed.
I smiled. It hurt. Arguing furiously with my body, I mustered all the energy I could, threw my arms up into a V, and kicked my left foot—no, my right; no, fuck, my left—into the air, then I swiveled my hips and turned around. But I turned the wrong way and ran smack into the cheerleader next to me. She glared but kept on smiling, and I did the same, only now I was seriously off rhythm and couldn’t catch the beat. I was cheering at thirty-three rpm, and the rest of the squad was at seventy-eight. I was slowly winding down into paralysis again. In the grand scheme of things, what did it matter which foot I kicked or which direction I twirled my ass?
We piled into the pyramid. I was left bottom anchor, which meant that I had to stay steady on my hands and knees while we balanced and tossed Carrie up in the air. But then I heard the other side yelling and clapping, and I knew they’d scored a touchdown again, and I just couldn’t help it: I started to cry. If we lost, how would I ever get a thousand dollars together? Snot ran copiously from my nose, an infuriating tickle, and I automatically wiped it with my right hand, just as Carrie came hurtling down from the toss-up. The impact caught me by surprise, and I tried to brace, but I was moving too slowly, my mind too thick to react. My elbow buckled, and all at once there were seven cheerleaders on top of me, screaming. Carrie, fortunately, landed unhurt but was pissed as hell at me for weeks after that.
I pled injury—I told Allison I’d sprained my ankle. She had no choice but to excuse me from the rest of the game. I grabbed my backpack and surreptitiously hobbled toward an empty stretch of bleachers, far away on the other team’s side, where no one could see me (or find me after the game was over and we’d lost and they all wanted to collect their money).
Time is an amusing thing when you’re in the mood to be amused. I wasn’t. I wanted instant relief, sudden certainty. But time is elastic as a Slinky toy, bending and stretching its way toward you at its own inexorable rhythm. I knew a little about the fickle nature of time: I lived, after all, at the whim of a Beast who often moved at lightning speed and then, at other times, refused to move at all. But that night, sitting and shivering in the opposing team’s stands, waiting for the game to end, was surely one of the longest nights of my life. I kept checking my wristwatch, shaking it, holding it to my ear to make sure it was working. It was ticking, all right, and the scoreboard showed the minutes passing, but time just chuckled at that. It was slave to no man’s machine.
So days and nights and eons passed, while the silly players in their silly uniforms did damage to a silly ball. Chaffey scored a few touchdowns, and even the Black Beast perked up his head at that and allowed me to feel a little hope. But then the other team scored again and again, and the Black Beast sank back down into despair. “Loser,” he whispered, and the word went straight through me like the cold, cutting wind.
With less than two minutes to go in the fourth quarter, we were six points behind. Although I was still mad at God for wrecking my ’Vette, I knew that it was time to pray. I stared up into the mist-shrouded sky and searched for signs of life. A star—perhaps even a wisp of cloud—but no. The night was bleary-eyed and bruised, a dark purple mass of nothing. I put all of my faith and hope into a single prayer and aimed it at the emptiness: “Dearest God, I swear on my soul that if you get me out of this one last predicament, I will do exactly as you told me. I promise you: I will get out of here.”
As
if on cue, a roar went up from the Chaffey stands. The fog had grown so thick by then that I couldn’t see the field, and the scoreboard was a blur. I ran pell-mell down the bleachers, forgetting about my supposedly sprained ankle, and grabbed the nearest fan.
“What happened?”
“Goddamned Tigers scored a touchdown.”
Then another roar: no doubt the kick, the extra point. I was close enough to see by then, a glorious sight: the Tigers hugging one another on the field, the cheerleaders jumping and screaming and doing herkies like mad, the Chaffey fans in a frenzy. I was saved. It was just a game, I knew it now, but Lord, how good it felt to win.
I didn’t join the other cheerleaders. I hadn’t earned the right to celebrate, and besides, I was no longer really one of them—half my heart was already out the door. I limped to my car, in case someone was looking, and drove away without speaking to anyone. On my way home, I stopped at the 7-Eleven. Stinky Pete was there, as always, huddling under his fortress of boxes in the back. He looked up as he saw my headlights approach. “Hey there, Missy, ain’t you looking all spiffy in your cheerleader’s outfit! So who won the big game tonight?”
“You did,” I said, and handed him my bursting backpack.
College was the only clear means of escaping my life. I knew I had a nice little life compared to most, but that was the problem: it was little, and I wasn’t satisfied. Not knowing what else to blame my ills on, I ascribed them all to suburbia, public high school, and my warped family dynamic (which I, of course, had done my best to create). Once I was as far away as possible from all of that, I thought, my future was unlimited.
As far away as possible meant the East Coast: the Ivy League or the Seven Sisters. So far as I knew, I was the only student in my entire graduating class of nearly a thousand who was desperate to go back East. It puzzled the Chaffey guidance counselor: “Why don’t you just stay here and go to Pomona College?” she said. “You’re sure to get a scholarship, given your past association with them.” In frustration, I turned to Miss Miller, my mentor. She gave me the answer I sought: “Go and find yourself a bigger world. It’s all out there, waiting for you.”