by Cara Hedley
‘Toady, drop the F-bomb a little more, champ,’ Hal said. ‘We’re not convinced you’re rattled yet.’
‘Oh, Toad,’ Tillsy giggled. ‘I’d sacrifice my gay pride any day to rattle you.’
‘You have no pride,’ Toad shot back. ‘This has become alarmingly evident in the last few minutes, friend. I don’t like what I’m seeing here.’
‘Heez, you’re up,’ Hal boomed, raising her voice over the room, a seasoned team orator.
‘Excellent,’ Heezer said, rubbing her hands together. ‘Okay, well, the other night, when Mo and I were taking turns fondling each other’s C cups, he said – ’
‘Fuck you guys, fuck this game,’ Toad exploded, fighting a smile. ‘I’m leaving now. I’m going to get you assholes some chips because none of you thoughtless pricks brought any and I’m a benevolent entity and you’re all a bunch of heinous, bush-league peasants.’ She stalked to the door as the room breathed ohhhhh and, as an afterthought, she turned back and grabbed my arm. ‘And I’m taking a rookie.’
Boz’s 7-Eleven was mine too – the one just off campus. This was essential in Winnipeg – that everyone have a Sev they could claim as their own. This one teeming with Rez-bians, as Toad called them, a vigil of the drunk and hungover circling the Slurpee machine around the clock.
We entered the Sev’s searing light and made a beeline to the chip section. The radio blared through speakers, every aisle inhabited with students, friends shouting to each other from opposite sides of the store.
‘I like All-Dressed,’ Toad said, clutching two giant bags to her chest. ‘I’m devoted to All-Dressed. I can’t believe those sows didn’t bring any chips. What’s your fancy?’
I felt a tap on my back then and turned to find Jacob, clasping, like a bouquet, three long pieces of red licorice that bowed flaccidly over his hands. He thrust them toward me.
‘Pour vous,’ he said and Toad squeaked beside me. My cheek skin itched.
‘Oh wow,’ I said. Bad acting. I darted a glance at Toad.
‘What’s this, kiddies?’ she said. ‘Sweets for your sweet, Copes, or what?’
Jacob grinned at me, eyebrows raised. I took the licorice reluctantly.
‘Jacob and I played hockey together back home,’ I explained to Toad.
‘Well, everyone wants a piece of our Barbie, don’t they?’ Toad said. ‘She’s good shit.’
‘Barbie?’ Jacob said. ‘Like the doll?’
‘No.’ Toad paused. ‘Her real name’s Barbarella.’
I grabbed a bag of chips from Toad’s arms and wagged it at Jacob and then moved toward the cashier. ‘We better get going, eh Toad?’
‘See you tomorrow, Isabel,’ Jacob called at our backs.
I turned and held the licorice toward him like something dead. ‘Did you pay for these already?’
He laughed and shook his head. I could hear him laughing again as we walked out the door.
‘Wow. Boy can giggle,’ Toad said.
It had rained at some point during Tipsy Cups. The asphalt gleamed darkly, air thick with the smell of wet gravel.
‘Isabel, eh?’ Toad kicked a rock like it was a soccer ball. Followed through. ‘You guys are all Victorian with each other or something, eh? Can’t imagine that translates well in the bedroom.’ She stopped suddenly and swung the plastic bag, hitting me on the hip. I stopped and waited while she opened the All-Dressed chips, the bag wafting a smell of vinegar and socks. She stuffed a handful in her mouth, sighing dreamily, shoulders sinking like a heroin addict finally getting a hit. ‘You sitting on it yet?’ she said thickly, mouth full.
I felt like I’d been spinning around and around and was now trying to walk a straight line.
‘Sitting on what?’ I said.
‘That’s what I thought.’ Toad nodded sagely and we kept walking. ‘Watch out for those dudes, though. Seriously. The guys’ team. Know what they started calling us last year? The Scarlet-ettes. First of all, what? Second of all, they have their panties all tied up in knots ’cause they think our team’s going to end up taking away their money from the program. Um, have you seen their dressing room compared to ours? Have you seen their equipment compared to ours? I say lick my bone, princesses. They’re the Scarlet-ettes.’
She chewed the chips angrily for a bit.
‘That sucks,’ I said. ‘But Jacob and I – ’
‘Keepin’ it in the Scarlet family though, eh Barb? Classic tale of incest. Not that our team’s never dabbled in theirs if you know what I mean. I won’t tell on you, though. Secret’s safe with me.’
‘Well, it’s not a secret,’ I said. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘Fuck, it’s cold out. Chips?’
‘Yeah.’
We could hear them laughing from down the street.
About three minutes after we walked through Boz’s door, Toad announced, ‘Well, you know what they say. You learn something new every trip to Sev. I’d like to announce that Barbie’s a slut – in the best sense of the term, of course. But I can’t reveal who the lucky guy is at this juncture – yeah, sorry, it’s a guy, Tillsy. I’m not at liberty to say. Although it’s fascinating.’
At the Rec Centre back home I had dressing room number three every game. Buck used to carry my bag for me when I was young. On his big shoulder, it looked like an oversized purse and echoed a thick clatter when he dropped it on the floor from up there. When he and Sig left the room for the social mixer around the canteen, the door sucked closed behind them and sealed me into the staleness of the room. As though the dark breath from the inside of every hockey bag opened in there had escaped and been trapped between the walls. As I dressed, I listened to the sound next door, tried to pull words from the dulled jumble of boys’ voices. This was my team, this mess of laughter and words thickened by the wall, the timbre of their voices taking on weight, as though they were speaking through water.
I could remember a period as a kid when I absorbed all the intimacies of my private dressing rooms – crushed beer cans from rec league the night before, tape balls, empty shampoo bottles, small graffiti scattered over the benches and walls – with archaeological pleasure. My teammates’ voices inflating my anticipation. I’d perfected the seven-minute change over the years, though, so by the end of Midget, I arrived before each game with just enough time. Then the coach would poke his head in before he went to talk to the boys and I’d walk over to their room and sit in for the two-minute speech and then we’d play.
Once we were all dressed for the Home Opener, Hal began to pound her thighs with her gloves. I felt this beat in my stomach. On one side of me, Clare Segal had a sneeze attack. On the other side, Pelly tilted her grin toward me, nervous, expectant. Hal leaned over.
‘Twenty minutes, twenty miles,’ she said loudly. She looked at me.
The path from the dressing room to the ice went like this: down the hall, a right turn, and there was the door that opened onto the rink itself. Tillsy pushed through, a wide-legged stride in her goalie pads, and we walked into a corridor like a mountain tunnel, the stands high above.
As soon as Tillsy reached the gate to the ice she stopped, all of us held in the thrumming tension of our line. The lights dimmed like it was our birthday and they were bringing in the cake and then the music began. ‘Thunderstruck,’ by AC/DC. The crazed moaning sound at the beginning that got louder and louder, like the band was creeping up behind you and then the first hit of THUN-DER!, a crack felt in the knees.
Hal’s gloves still beating inside my chest. Pelly, in front of me, bounced her shoulders up and down, she shook her head from side to side like a horse.
THUN-DER!
Alberta circled their end of the ice, green and yellow, picking up pucks from a spilled pile of them in front of their box, where a suited coach paced the bench, pissed-off face, studying a clipboard. Players began to sprint arcs up around the red line, coming around the boards and slowing down. Hard slow hard slow.
‘’S go, White!’ Heezer shouted near the front. ‘S
howtime, White!’
‘C’mon, Scarlets!’ someone yelled behind. ‘’S do this!’
Hal, ahead of Pelly, horked out the side of her cage onto the floor. When she turned her head to the side, her face was tight.
The announcer cleared his throat into the microphone and then he yelled in a talk-show-host baritone above the AC / DC: ‘Here. Come. Your Winnipeg University Scarrrr-lettttts!’ And the beat jumped into my throat and cracked open.
One of the Events guys, dressed like a Puck Bunny in a Scarlet Hockey T-shirt, flung open the gate for us like it was a rodeo and we were the bulls, and my team began to waddle-sprint down the hallway, and soon I was leaping through the gate into light and the thick applause of a crowd in mitts and the manic screech of AC / DC and I skated the fastest warm-up circle I ever had because if I stopped skating I would throw up.
Sig sat in an empty row near the back of the stands and searched for Iz on the ice. She found her in the other team’s end, pinning a girl against the boards, the two trapped in the tangle of their bodies, writhing for the puck hidden between their feet. Sig was surprised: Iz, her back leg dug in strong, had the girl caught like a fly by the wings.
She was used to seeing Iz knocked around. The games played out fast when Iz was a teenager, and the boys sometimes didn’t realize they were hitting a girl until she was crumpled on the ice, head curled into her body, trying to disguise the pain. The boys’ bodies slumped when they realized what they’d done, and they’d crouch next to her on the ice, suddenly gentle, offering a hand up. Iz refused. The regret of those boys was what she hated most about hockey. She’d rather have her ribs cracked than hear their sheepish apologies.
The whistle went and Iz skated to the bench. Sig watched her move to the middle, lean an arm over the boards, the other bracing her upside-down stick. The player next to her poked her with an elbow and gestured at the ref, her helmet moving up and down as she spoke. Iz nodded.
They didn’t look so different from the boys, Sig thought. A bit shorter, but they still had that bulky, square-shouldered look about them, the same loping stride. Ponytails whipping around in their wake.
A gust of perfume, and a woman sat down on the seat next to Sig. Sig looked over briefly, caught the bones in the woman’s face, purple scarf wound like a turban around her sharp head, the red lipstick that arrowed from her lips into the outskirts of her mouth. A man in the row ahead of them twisted stiffly. He’d smelled the perfume, no doubt, the exotic scent moving uneasily among the worn rink seats.
‘How are ya, Terry?’ the man smiled through a moustache, eyes slits in his wide face.
‘Just fine, Mo. Hi, Eileen.’
‘Oh hi, Terry! Oh shoot, did you just get here? You missed Hal’s goal.’ Eileen, dwarfed next to the huge man, had the tendoned neck of a bodybuilder, a restless mouth.
‘A beauty, Terry. Top right-hand corner. Deked the goalie. Fucking goalie’s a mess, anyways, but Hal schooled her.’ Mo chuckled.
‘I’ll catch the next one,’ Terry said, and the couple turned back to the game, Eileen gripping Mo’s jacket sleeve as the team threw the puck around the net.
‘Oh. Oh! Oh!’ Eileen breathed.
‘Shoot! Shoot! Corinne, you bloody scag – girl’s got the puck glued to her stick,’ Mo spat as the whistle went. Sig chuckled. Terry looked over at her as she pulled a fleece blanket from a handbag patterned with parrots. She wrapped it slowly around her legs.
‘Hi there,’ she said, smiled.
‘Hello.’
‘Who are you cheering for?’
Sig craned her neck, looked for Iz on the ice.
‘Number Five. Isabel, my kid – my grandkid,’ she said, pointed to the faceoff circle where Iz was locked, arm in arm, with a short girl on the other team, her jersey practically a dress.
‘Oh yes, of course. She’s a rookie.’
‘That’s her.’
The women followed the play to the opposite end of the ice. ‘Poor thing,’ Terry said. ‘How is she holding up? They’re not being too mean, I hope. Those girls can be so silly.’
‘Iz’s tough. Played with boys all her life.’
‘Oh,’ Terry nodded knowingly. ‘What did you call her?’
‘Iz.’
‘Right, right.’ Terry nodded. ‘I’m Terry, by the way. Chris’s mom – Number Seventeen. Right there.’
‘Sig.’ She reached her hand over and Terry took it, her fingers collapsing in Sig’s grip. ‘Good to meet you.’ They were silent for a while, cheers climbing up to them from the rows ahead, contagious spurts of clapping. Clouds of heated air, coils glowing orange on the rafters above.
‘Funny, I was just thinking – you said you call your granddaughter Iz?’
‘Yes.’ Sig looked over, tilted her head.
‘My daughter goes by Hal – that’s what the girls call her. Our last name is Hallendorf – ’ Terry coughed suddenly, her head whipping forward, hand flying to her mouth. She cleared her throat and smiled, one front tooth tilted in toward the other. A cheer swelled above the benches as the team scored.
Eileen, hands blurred in a feverish clap, turned. ‘That’s her third point, Ter,’ she said. ‘She’s on a roll.’
‘Oh, good. She’ll be in a good mood tonight.’ Terry clapped quietly, watched Hal skate past the bench. She drummed her team-mates’ extended gloves, stick dragging next to her on the ice.
‘That her?’ Sig asked, pointing to the pin on the lapel of Terry’s purple coat. Behind a circle of scratched plastic, a girl posed in a jersey, tangled hair, her teeth too big for her head. Terry looked down, rubbed at a smudge on the plastic.
‘That’s her. She’s about ten there, I guess.’ She leaned toward Sig. ‘She hates that I wear it. It’s so embarrassing. I like to razz her, Sig. Is that bad?’ She laughed. ‘Well, and look how darling she is too.’
‘Nothing wrong with a bit of razzing,’ Sig said. ‘So that’s Hal, eh? I think Iz’s mentioned her name before.’
‘Oh, lord. I take no responsibility.’
‘What’s her real name, her girl’s name?’
‘Her girl’s name,’ Terry laughed. ‘Oh God, she would kill me if I called her by her girl’s name.’ Terry looked, distracted, toward the bench. ‘Don’t you dare, Mum,’ she mimicked in a high-pitched voice. Skin pulled tight across her cheekbones, patches of blush like burns. ‘I’m bigger than you, you know, I can kick your ass.’ She chuckled and turned toward Sig, leaned in. ‘Her name’s Crystalline,’ she whispered. ‘This is a big secret, apparently.’
‘Crystalline?’
‘Yes.’
‘Unusual, eh?’
Terry leaned back, pulled the blanket tighter across her knees. She took a deep breath, raising her hands, palms up, as she inhaled. ‘I was so tired when they brought her in after she was born. You need a name, they kept saying. And this was about the time I got into makeup with my friends – I was sixteen, you know – and my favourite – ’ Terry began to laugh. She leaned toward Sig and grasped her knee. ‘My favourite eyeshadow was called Crystalline! The seventies, right? So it was kind of whitish with these sparkles. “Mom!” Chris says, “You named me after a bloody eyeshadow!” I don’t know how to defend myself.’ Terry picked a tear from her eye with a raspberry nail.
‘Don’t know if you can defend yourself on that one,’ Sig chuckled.
She looked back to the ice and searched for Iz.
Number Three on Alberta had her priorities mixed, as Stan suggested gently between the first and second periods.
‘Mixed!’ Toad said, furious and dripping sweat, gulping for words. ‘Mixed! She’ll get fucking mixed!’
Moon shrugged in a not-discouraging way. Voices sprung up along the benches, adrenalin shared around the room in an electric surge. Come on, guys. We can do this. Come on. We’re doing awesome, come on. We can beat them, you know we can. Then Hal began to beat her gloves together, head down, over and over, a tribal drum, until a knock on our door told us the ice was ready.
And there was Three all over Tillsy, and me trying to get Three out of there, shovelling at her concrete shins, Tillsy still getting thrown off balance, Three all over our goddamn goalie, and I kept hearing this word in my ears, pushed like blood with every breath, on the knife edge of hyperventilation. Priorities, priorities, the word over and over again like my brain had shrunk for lack of oxygen and lassoed this word, just this word, and Three’s stick still between Tillsy’s pads, and they’d score if she kept doing that, and I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t breathe.
‘Bitch!’ Three screamed shrilly as she fell. She sprawled face down on the ice, kicking my shin with her skate until I backed away, blood in my ears.
Whistle.
‘Number Five, White, two minutes for cross-checking!’ The ref skated at us as though someone might pull out a gun at any second and shoot, Three still kicking and spitting, and I glided into the ref ’s overeager wake, a handful of road-tripping Panda parents applauding my capture.
Toad opened the door to the penalty box from inside, grinning. She was in for tripping (‘Could she have taken a bigger dive? Look – I can dive too. I’m an actress! I’m an actress! Look at me!’ Tripping along as she was hauled off to the box).
‘Duh, duh, duh – The Sin Bin!’ she sang doomfully as I stepped in. ‘Yeah, don’t do us any favours, Ass Eyes!’ This, shouted in the direction of the ref ’s zebra back as she slammed the door. The box vibrated like the inside of an old piano and I edged around Toad to sit on the bench. I felt a gathering in my throat, adrenalin turning to venom, turning on me – the slow, snake-eyed blink. So embarrassing to be caught like that, acting out a private violence, frozen into a red split-second in your mind, like dreaming of peeing and then wetting the bed. The announcer drawled my penalty over the loudspeaker.
‘Hey, Five, you watch your back, eh? Shauna will paralyze you! She has a black belt in karate! You won’t feel your goddamn legs! Wheelchair!’