by Abby Wambach
I hate soccer even more when my mother declares that I must forgo my vacation at Stella Maris, the Catholic summer camp I’ve attended for as long as I can remember. My heart deflates. I am fourteen and not yet ready to let go of being a kid. It is the one place where I can do crafts and play tetherball and exist without any obligation to soccer. Instead, she says, I will have to go to soccer camp and work on improving my technique.
This is not the first time our philosophies have diverged. A part of me holds residual anger about her long trips to Florida. You come back and now you want to be my mom? I seethe silently. You haven’t been here! To her alarm, I am now refusing to wear dresses, even to church. On Sunday morning I pull on sweatpants, sending her into apoplectic panic. I know I’m inviting The Look, and she delivers it on cue, a disapproval so potent it heats the air around us. But I dig in, refusing to budge. I might have inherited a sports gene from my father, but my obstinacy comes solely from her. The strategy works brilliantly as a bargaining tool, as a means of finding middle ground, and when I slide into the front pew I’m wearing pants and a shirt. She blames my behavior on a desire to be like my brothers, and I want to tell her, No, this is all me. I want her to love me anyway.
But with soccer, I fear there’s no compromising.
“Mom,” I plead, “I need to learn life. And I need to learn life through my mistakes, too. My life can’t be all your choices. If I make a mistake I want it to be my mistake.”
A persuasive argument, I think, but my mother remains unmoved.
I huff off to sulk in my room but am stopped by my brother Andy on the stairs.
“I’m going to quit soccer,” I announce.
He drops his hand on my arm, holding me still, and speaks to me in a tone I’ve never heard.
“You have such a gift,” he says. “You have to accept that. You can’t quit. You would be doing all of us a disservice. We all wish we had half of your talent.”
I feel as though I’m being asked to choose between soccer and myself, and I’m not sure how—or even if—one can exist without the other. I’m determined to have both.
I acquiesce and spend my summer at soccer camp, all the while plotting other ways to rebel.
3
REBEL
My revolt comes in increments, tiptoeing around the periphery of soccer without attacking it directly. I am playing five days a week for Mercy High School, two games and three practices, and I challenge my body to see how much abuse it can withstand. Every morning on the drive to school, I steer my hand-me-down Chevy into McDonald’s for a breakfast sandwich and a Coke, the first of at least a dozen sodas I’ll drink that day. On a dare I devour an entire stick of butter. I scarf large orders of chicken wings, then hold the box aloft to drink every drop of grease that’s pooled at the bottom. Before practice I eat fifteen fried pizza rolls and then run a timed mile, vomiting as soon as I hit the finish line. I ride a Jet Ski straight into a lightning storm. I smoke pot and discover I can drink copious amounts of beer. When my parents are in Florida I throw a sixteenth-birthday party for Audrey, my friend and teammate, and hold her hair when she’s sick. “All I remember is that your sink is made by Delta,” she tells me the next morning, and from then on every drinking binge is designated a “Delta Night.”
I am the only child my mother doesn’t trust, a fact she shares openly and often. None of my brothers or sisters ever had a curfew, but mine is 11 P.M., a full hour before my friends have to be home. If I pull into the driveway at 10:45, I sit there and wait so I’m not a second early. Once, while she’s in Florida, I get my tongue pierced. As I leave for school, she plants herself between me and the door.
“You have a tongue ring,” she says. “I want it out of your mouth and sitting on this table by 5 P.M. or I’m going to sue the pants off that place you went to.”
I don’t want to be on the news for my tongue ring, so I do as she asks, but our war turns more volatile with each successive round.
“I wish you were dead!” I scream at her, and she spins on her heel and orders me to her “office”—a small bathroom on our main floor. When she closes the door I expect The Look, but instead she is expressionless, all of her features fixed into place. She speaks with terrifying calmness and clarity: “One day when I am dead, you are going to regret saying that.”
She closes the door and I imagine her reaction on the other side. Oh, that got her, I picture her whispering, and this time she’s inarguably right.
My grades are horrendous. Instead of listening to lectures I practice my autograph, filling my notebooks with hundreds of ornate Abby Wambachs, picturing the lines of future fans. I realize my eyes focus differently, one nearsighted and the other far. This discrepancy helps my soccer game, allowing me to gauge the ball at every distance, but thwarts my attempts to read. My eyes fight each other for dominance, exhausting my brain. My book reports have nothing to do with the subject matter at hand. For Pride and Prejudice I might craft an essay on anthropomorphic lions; Orwell’s 1984 inspires commentary about how differently he and I recall that particular year. My English teacher returns my work covered in bright red question marks.
“What book did you read?” she asks.
I shrug and respond, “That’s what I got out of it.”
I know I only have to do well enough to get into college, and that college will be paid for by a full sports scholarship. Soccer is unscathed by my bad behavior. On this front alone I heed my mother’s wishes, listening to my coach, Ms. Boughton, and obeying her every order. In my sophomore year she makes me captain and motivates me with insults.
“Get on your horse!” she yells. “Stop being so goddamn lazy. You’re not playing to your capability. You’re not displaying the level of commitment a leader should have. I don’t give a shit if you want to quit.” I test this assertion, informing her routinely that I never want to play soccer again. Panicked, she calls my mother, who laughs and offers this advice: “Just give her time.” To Coach Boughton’s relief, my mother is right: in two weeks I’m back on the field, chasing the ball with my head.
No one has ever spoken to me like that in my life, and I gratefully internalize every word. I’m tired of hearing about my talent and am desperate to know my flaws; I want to corner and confront them and coax them into improvement. I want to be better, if only because being better ensures more attention. I am the last kid left in high school and now my mother has time to come to my games, chatting with the other parents in between blows of the whistle.
In my mind, her conversations are all about Beth: the smart one, the responsible one, the first great athlete of the family, who led Mercy’s basketball team to a state championship. Beth’s name, in fact, is emblazoned on a banner in the gym. In my mind, my mother’s greatest question is whether I can win the championship, too, and the challenge blooms inside me, shading all of my thoughts. If I win, maybe they’ll love me the most. If I win, maybe I’ll finally love myself.
I have a boyfriend, my first, and he tells me he loves me all the time. His name is Teddy Barton and he plays soccer for McQuaid, the companion boys’ school to Mercy. His older brother knew who I was and prompted him to ask me to a Jerry Garcia concert, and we’ve been together, off and on, ever since. The “off” times come when he becomes frustrated with my commitment to soccer; half of our dates involve him watching my games.
Teddy has dark eyes and long, shaggy brown hair that puts up in a ponytail. After soccer practice we drive his old-school BMW 5 series to his parents’ house. He has the entire third floor to himself, and we are free to smoke cigarettes and drink beer and make out without fear of anyone barging in to stop us. My parents approve: he’s a smart, athletic kid from a good family, with plans to become a naval pilot, one eye already looking toward the future. They even invite us to double-date with them at their country club, where they take pride in the fact that the servers and members all know my name.
We’re the unofficial “jock couple” of Rochester. His friends become my friends
—I can drink them under the table and outplay them on the field—and I pretend not to hear their jokes: Teddy, your girlfriend is bigger than you are. Teddy, your girlfriend is gay.
It’s true, I am tall—I grew ten inches within a year and now measure five foot eleven—but I am not gay. At least I don’t think I am, since I’m not sure what “gay” feels like, or how that identity would fit if I tried it on. On the walls of my room hang posters of the usual nineties heartthrobs, Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise and River Phoenix, and I wouldn’t mind substituting Teddy for any of them. When he takes me to a Dave Matthews concert, the singer kisses me on the cheek and I refuse to let Teddy touch that spot for the rest of the night. I am still a tomboy, but no more so than any other female athlete at my school; we all wear backward baseball caps over our ponytails. I think I love Teddy, but then again, I am not sure what “love” feels like, either.
One Saturday night in my junior year, I am determined to get closer to an answer. Teddy tells me he has a surprise for me and picks me up early, explaining it’s a bit of a drive to our destination. He’s wearing pants and a stiffly starched shirt, a few steps up from his usual attire of ripped jeans and a tee, and he tells me I am beautiful; he especially loves my dimples when I smile.
It’s about forty minutes to his family’s cottage on Conesus Lake, and he holds my hand in between shifting the gears of his BMW. About halfway there it begins snowing; he slows down but won’t turn back. The drive takes twice as long as it should, and when we arrive I see that he’s already been there: a fire crackles, flowers burst from vases, and the pillows on the bed are conspicuously fluffed. He kisses me, and my clothes come off one piece at a time. The heat from the fire pricks my skin. He’s on me now, feeling heavier than he really is, hurting me in a way he never has. I wonder, briefly, if we are doing it wrong, and then it’s over before I can decide.
The more we experiment, the less it hurts. I begin to enjoy it, and I also appreciate the cover it provides me: no one can think I’m gay if I’m doing it with a boy.
On the night of his senior prom, my mom is pleased by the sight of me in a flouncy dress and heels, which do make me considerably taller than Teddy. We drink and dance and he begs me to stay out late, but I have a game the next day and need to be home by curfew. Within the week Audrey is on the phone, saying she has a hypothetical question.
“What if you knew your best friend’s boyfriend cheated on her?” she asks. “Would you tell her?”
“When did Teddy cheat on me?” I reply, bluffing. A part of me doesn’t think he’s capable of it.
“Oh! I didn’t think you’d figure that out.”
“He did?” I ask. “When? Who?”
It was after I left prom, she says. A girl from a different school.
I ignore his repeated pleas for forgiveness and am surprised by my reaction: my pride is wounded more than my heart.
One day after soccer practice, my parents and I stop at the Macaroni Grill. I still remember my precise outfit at seventeen: white turtleneck, blue corduroy pants, Doc Martens, and a bright yellow North Face jacket I’d saved up to buy. Our server approaches, wearing a crisp white shirt and skinny tie. She’s eighteen years old, has long brown hair and green eyes and seems to be smiling only at me.
I can’t look directly at her. I can’t look away. I like her. I like her in a way I have never liked Teddy.
I don’t remember ordering, or what my parents talk about; their words coast over me, and there’s a booming silence in my ears, and my heart lurches against my chest. Energy thrums through every limb; my feet tap and my fingers shake. When the server walks away to get our drinks, I pick up a crayon from the table’s basket and doodle a soccer ball, willing myself to calm. I feel as though a switch has flipped inside me, blinking neon and illuminating my secrets for all the world to see.
When she comes back she’s still smiling at me, and points at the soccer ball I scrawled on my placemat.
“Oh, you play soccer?” she asks.
“Yes, I play soccer.”
“That’s super cool. I played lacrosse and soccer.”
I tell her I attend Mercy High School, and she asks if I know the famous soccer player who goes there, the girl who is always on the local news.
“I know her,” I admit. “That’s me.”
I learn her name is Stephanie, and when she clears our plates her hand skims the length of my pinky finger, a touch all the more powerful in its brevity. I need to feel it again, and I want to understand that need.
Silently I repeat the three syllables of her name all the way home.
I pace in my room, back and forth between my window and my door. What was that? I don’t know what to do with the feeling, which has already taken root in my psyche, robust and resolute. For a moment I wonder if it’s just my latest attempt to rebel, and in a way I know will hurt my mother the most. I’m a bad Catholic, a sexual deviant on my way straight to hell—where, in my private version, I will have to play soccer in an empty stadium for all of eternity.
This feeling is worth the risk. I sit down at my desk and type a letter, picking my words with care:
Dear Stephanie,
I was one of your clients today, and we got to talking. I can’t really tell you who I am, and I don’t know what this feeling is about, but I want to get to know you. I’ve never done this before. If you know who this is, look me up in the phone book and please call me.
Without knocking, my brother Andy barrels into my room.
“Get out!” I yell. “I’m doing something personal.” Hunching over the letter, I turn my face just enough to scowl at him.
He’s curious, I can tell, but he backs away.
I mail it to “Stephanie, c/o the Macaroni Grill.”
I wait, and hold my breath with each ring of the phone. On the third day she’s on the other line.
“Hey!” she says. “This is Stephanie from the Macaroni Grill.”
“Cool,” I say, trying to steady my voice. “How are you?”
“Well, I got this letter. And I wondered if the letter was from you.”
“A letter?” I act surprised. “What letter?”
“Oh, you didn’t send a letter to the Macaroni Grill? My bad, so sorry.”
I laugh and tell her I was just fucking with her, and it was me. It is me. And I know that whatever this feeling is, she has it, too.
We begin to see each other feverishly, discreetly. I tell no one, but a group of Goth girls recognize my covert identity; one morning I find a rainbow sticker slapped to the back of my Chevy Blazer, and I scrape every last strip of it off. I go to great lengths to hide my relationship from my teammates and friends. Once, on the way back from a soccer game in Syracuse, I detour to Stephanie’s house and lose all track of time, missing both family dinner and curfew. My mom calls Audrey’s house to ask if she knows where I am. For once, she doesn’t. Neither does my friend Breaca, who later is offended that I unnecessarily kept my secret from her. When I get home I concoct a plausible explanation, and if my mother doesn’t believe me she keeps it to herself.
I was just as terrible a liar back then.
Throughout senior year I hear daily from college coaches who want me to play for them. They boast about their program, their campus, their vibrant social scene; some jokingly promise half of their salary. My mother gleefully stuffs a binder with offer letters and brochures. I visit four schools in quick succession—the University of North Carolina, George Mason, the University of Virginia, and UCLA—and am convinced I should choose the most geographically distant locale. “I’m done,” I tell my mother. “I’m going to California. UCLA it is.”
“No,” she says, offering a modified version of The Look. “I’m trying to honor the fact that you want to make this decision, but you have to take five visits. The reason you don’t want to go on one more visit is because you’re lazy.”
“Fine,” I concede. “It’s between Clemson or Florida, whoever calls first.”
Slyly, witho
ut saying a word, my mother intervenes. She decides that Clemson is “too southern,” and that, if I choose Florida, she and my father will be able to attend games when they’re vacationing at their condo. She calls Florida’s coach, Becky Burleigh, advises her to hurry to seal the deal, and I’m off to visit Florida within the week.
The university’s soccer program is brand new, a by-product of Title IX, the law that forbids any federally funded school to discriminate on the basis of sex, including in the creation and development of sports programs. Later, I’ll realize how fortunate I was to have benefited from the law, which enabled American women’s soccer to dominate on the international stage; FIFA estimates that 12 percent of youth soccer players are girls, and U.S. players comprise more than half that number. During the nearly four decades from 1941 to 1979, women in Brazil were completely barred from playing soccer. Even today, there’s a stigma against Brazilian female players, who are sometimes called sapatão, a lesbian slur.
But now, as a seventeen-year-old high school senior, I’m not focused on the politics of soccer. I just like the idea of building something from the ground up, of being the underdog with something to prove. It’s settled: I’ll be playing for the Florida Gators. My mother wins the game without my knowing we were playing one.
I’m away on an ODP trip when I make the decision, and my mother helps me orchestrate my announcement. She lines up sweatshirts from all five prospective schools along the kitchen counter and summons reporters to the house. At the appointed time, I call home and tell my mother what she already knows. As she raises the Florida sweatshirt—number four in the lineup—over her head, everyone cheers and claps. “I’m going to a movie now,” I tell her, knowing she’s reveling in the spectacle.
In the waning months of my high school career I have just two things on my mind: the state championship and Stephanie. I know our relationship will likely end once I head to college, so I see her as much as possible, sometimes to the detriment of soccer. During an away game for the U.S. women’s national Under-18 team, I play poorly on purpose, missing headers and tripping over my feet and letting opponents slip past. When the coach questions me I have a ready lie: my beloved uncle is hovering near death, and I really need to go home. I have one prepared for my parents, too: my ankle hurts, and I don’t want to begin my college career as a liability for my team, so I must come home and rest. As soon as I’m there I find Stephanie. We are still the only ones privy to each other’s secret, and I know that soon enough I will have to say it out loud.