by Paul Dini
After a while Mommy came in with food for Barry and Frankie and a bottle of formula for Ezzie and left again. Harleen fed everyone as the tense voices got louder.
“Almost over,” Harleen whispered to Ezzie, rocking him gently. “It’s almost over.”
Barry and Frankie curled up on the floor with their blankets and went to sleep. Ezzie was quiet but his eyes were still wide open. He didn’t cry until the shouting started. Then he wailed and wailed and wailed. Barry and Frankie never stirred. Harleen sang all the songs she knew and recited silly rhymes but nothing she did would comfort him. She could barely hear her parents over his crying. After a while, she wondered if that was why Ezzie was crying—to drown out Mommy and Daddy sounding so hateful.
If Mommy and Daddy asked me right now, I’d say I hate them both, Harleen thought, and for the first time, she didn’t feel a smidgen of guilt. If anyone should feel guilty about anything, it was her parents. But they probably didn’t. Grown-ups did anything they wanted and kids could just lump it.
After what seemed like forever, the shouting stopped and the apologizing began. Ezzie quieted down and went to sleep. Harleen couldn’t, so she was stuck listening to them.
I’m sorry.
No, I’m sorry.
No, I’m to blame, I know how hard things are. I promise I’ll be more understanding, you’ll see.
No, I promise I’ll do better, I’ll work harder—
Rotten cops, Harleen thought, wide awake, wishing she could doze off like a baby. They’d ruined everything.
She tiptoed to the door, opened it and peeked out. In the kitchen, Mommy was sitting on Daddy’s lap and Daddy was promising what happened yesterday would never, ever happen again and they had to stick together. Together they were going places.
Daddy was half right. He went to prison.
Today, seventeen-year-old Harleen Quinzel was exactly where she wanted to be: in the zone. She was so much in the zone, she felt as if she were glowing. Good thing—this was it. Today was the day. The gymnastics lessons her mother had scrimped and saved to give her, the hours she had spent training and practicing, pushing herself and never settling for “good enough,” all the studying, developing her mind as well as her body, never blowing off her schoolwork to hang out at the mall, and today was the day it all came together, just the way she planned, just like her mother had said it would. Her mother had been so sure—sometimes she had even been surer than Harleen herself was. The way her mother believed in her, it was like she’d already seen proof, like she knew for a fact that Harleen was going to get the gymnastics scholarship to college—full ride, four years.
No doubt that was why her mother didn’t feel the need to be here, Harleen thought. She scanned the people in the bleachers anyway, but she hadn’t been there when Harleen had looked thirty seconds ago, and she still wouldn’t be there thirty seconds from now. But all of Harleen’s friends were; that was something at least.
“Next up,” said the voice on the gymnasium loudspeaker, “Harleen Quinzel!”
Her friends cheered loudly, waving at her, calling out, Go, Harleen, go! You got this, girl!
Harleen stood and walked gracefully to the corner of the spring floor. She gave her friends a nod to show she was glad they were there. Still no Mom.
No Dad either, but he was months away from parole. He’d probably get it, too—he’d been a model prisoner. If only he’d been a model citizen, he wouldn’t have been in there in the first place and both her parents would be here today.
Dream on; that was somebody else’s life, not hers, never hers. She was on her own and she should be used to that by now.
Harleen raised her arms and her music began. Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov—she felt her heart lift and she took flight. Two full tumbles one after another, then an aerial cartwheel. She stood for a fraction of a second facing away from everyone before she bent gracefully backward and went into a handstand. She held it for a few seconds, then folded herself in half, keeping her legs perfectly straight in a V-shape, as she swept them just a few inches off the floor. She held it for a few seconds without touching down, then went back into a handstand, followed by a walkover.
Then she was flying across the floor again, flinging herself into a pike, a split, and a straddle in rapid succession before rolling into a pose with her chest on the floor and the rest of her body bent up and over, her pointed toes barely touching her head.
Her legs flowed forward into another back bend as she let the music carry her up into three aerial cartwheels, hitting the floor progressively harder on each one to build up enough lift for the double twist.
She heard everyone in the gym gasp as she came down perfectly, finishing without a wobble. The applause was heartier this time and it wasn’t only from her friends.
Harleen felt her throat tighten. Don’t cry—no tears! she thought as she walked gracefully back to her seat. She had told herself she wouldn’t look at her scores until she sat down again, but just as she reached the chair, she heard her friends scream and the rest of the audience break into wild applause, and she couldn’t help herself.
Harleen felt her jaw drop. Every judge had given her a ten, every single one of them, even that old stick-in-the-mud Anna Carrera. Getting a seven from her was like a nine point five from anyone else. But even she had given Harleen a ten, making it a perfect score. Her friends were still screaming and whistling; everyone in the bleachers was smiling and cheering for her.
And her mother still wasn’t there.
“Malenki zirka! Little star! You did it!” Harleen’s coach, Liliana Lewenchuk, hugged her tightly and gave her a loud smacking kiss on each cheek. Liliana’s eyes were bright with happy tears; she looked at Harleen with so much affection that Harleen had to look away. Liliana didn’t notice—she was already hugging Harleen again, squeezing her tightly.
“I can’t breathe!” Harleen said, laughing to cover how awkward she felt. Liliana let go of her for all of a second, then immediately hugged her again.
* * *
“Of course you did,” said her mother when Harleen told her she’d gotten the gymnastics scholarship. “I knew you would. I never doubted it for a second.”
They were sitting on the shabby sofa in the employee lounge at the cafe where her mother worked her second job, waiting table. Harleen had had to wait ten minutes before her mother could get a break. It was only part-time—thirty hours a week. So was the job at the charity clinic. The clinic didn’t have the budget to put her on full-time. Two part-time jobs added up to sixty hours a week—time and a half at the regular rate. Her mother was a real bargain.
Harleen knew she wasn’t being fair, but she couldn’t help feeling angry that her mother hadn’t told her boss that, just this one time, she needed a couple of hours for her daughter’s important gymnastics competition. She’d missed all the others but this one she had to be there for. Just this one time and she’d never ask again, because this was Harleen’s last high-school competition ever.
She told her mother all about it, only there wasn’t much to tell, seeing as how her mother knew all along that she’d come out with the top score and the scholarship. Somehow that made the post-competition letdown even worse.
“I’m glad you knew it,” Harleen said. “I didn’t.”
Her mother laughed.
“Well, I didn’t,” Harleen insisted.
Her mother laughed harder.
Harleen went into tough-Brooklyn-cookie mode. “So I guess it’s true what they say—Muddah knows best, right? Ya knew it all along so ya didn’t haveta bothah showin’ up, didja? Cuz ya already knew, right?”
Her mother’s laughter cut off instantly as her expression went cold and stony. “Yeah, I was having so much fun here serving crappy coffee for quarter tips that I couldn’t tear myself away to watch you do your gymnastics thing.”
“My gymnastics thing is going to put me through college,” Harleen said. “Not you.”
Her mother’s hardened expression
intensified. “No, not me. Just because I paid for all those gymnastics lessons, went without so you could have the best trainer—whose house I cleaned to make up the shortfall when there wasn’t enough money—that doesn’t mean I contributed to your going to college at all. The only thing I can do is make sure you and your brothers get enough to eat and keep a roof over your head. And in my spare time, I chillax by visiting your father in the pen—by myself, not because I don’t want to take you with me but because your father asked me not to, because he doesn’t want you to see him like that. My life is such a whirlwind of fun and games that, occasionally, I have to let something go by. Suck it up, buttercup.” Pause. “And don’t talk like that, people’ll think you’re a ditz.”
“The more fool them, because I’m not,” Harleen said. “I just don’t understand. All the things you’ve done—all the trouble you’ve faced, that we’ve faced together—and you can’t tell your boss you want a couple hours off to watch your daughter’s gymnastics competition. Why? Just tell me that at least.”
Her mother’s expression didn’t change. “Because I’m not allowed to bring a giant hammer to work.”
Harleen gaped at her, shocked. “Is that supposed to be some kind of joke?”
Her mother gave her a sidelong look. “You hear anyone laughing?”
College set Harleen Quinzel free.
Going away to college is, for many kids, their first taste of freedom, when they can finally make their own decisions—some good, others unfortunate. But for Harleen Quinzel, it was so much more than a rite of passage. It was like being released from prison after an eighteen-year sentence.
As much as she loved her family, she had chafed under limitations that were unavoidable when one parent had to work two jobs to support four kids while the other parent was… away. Once her brothers were all in school, they didn’t need the same degree of attention. But it still fell to Harleen to make sure they had clean clothes, did their homework, ate their vegetables, and stayed out of trouble.
It wasn’t a whole lot of fun being stand-in Mom, but Harleen knew she had to be a good girl and help out. When things were especially hard on her, she reminded herself she had college to look forward to, provided she could get a scholarship. Gymnastics was her ticket out, but only if her grades were equally good—colleges didn’t give a full four-year ride to a C-student, or at least not one whose father was doing time in the state pen.
Her father had been paroled in time to see her graduate from high school. Both he and her mother had been in the auditorium that day with her brothers. It was the only time she could remember the whole family being present for something other than the reading of a verdict.
* * *
The freedom of being at Gotham University was positively intoxicating.
For one thing, she could go by Harley without having to listen to her mother object. Mom wouldn’t tolerate Harley; it always, always, always had to be Harleen. Harleen was an English name that meant “meadow of the hares.” Harley was the masculine form. You are neither a boy nor a motorcycle, her mother would tell her in a that’s-final tone of voice. As she got older, Harley came to understand how seldom her mother got anything her way, so she hadn’t fought her. But once she was out of the house, she decided there were now three kinds of Harley: the masculine form of Harleen, the motorcycle, and the tough Brooklyn cookie with the gymnastics scholarship.
Welcome to the new world order, everyone—hope you like what I’ve done with the place.
* * *
Of course, renaming herself was the easiest part of going to college. Even for someone who had learned to study with three noisy brothers bouncing off the walls; or sitting in a laundromat with a dozen women gossiping loudly around her while their kids were tear-assing through the place; or occasionally in an emergency room, waiting to find out if Barry or Frankie or Ezzie had a break or a sprain after falling off the monkey-bars; college was more demanding than anything she had ever faced. It could even be more exhausting than gymnastics.
And even with a full scholarship, Harley found she needed a work-study job for incidentals like food, clothing, and those books not officially required but strongly recommended by her professors. S.T.A.R. Labs had an animal research facility on campus and they were only too happy to have a pre-med student.
Harley’s grades were good—but, to her dismay, not great. The first semester of her freshman year, she had been mortified when she got a D on her logic mid-term instead of the A or A- she had expected. This, too, was a common experience among freshmen. It was a rude awakening when kids who were ranked in the ninety-ninth percentile in high school discovered they didn’t measure up quite so well in a setting where everyone else had also been in the ninety-ninth percentile. Students who had hardly ever studied found themselves having to hit the books for the first time in their lives.
Harley thought about calling her mother—Sharon Quinzel had been through college and med school; she knew what it was like—but she just couldn’t. Her mother was still working two jobs to pay her father’s legal bills, while her father was having trouble getting any kind of legit work. Jobs were so scarce, even a crappy fast-food joint paying minimum wage could afford to be picky about who they hired, and they weren’t looking for ex-cons. Plus, there were lots of jobs convicted felons weren’t allowed to do, no matter how qualified they were. Harley’s problems paled in comparison.
Calling to tell her mother she was having a hard time keeping up with the reading for her course-work sounded ridiculous even to her—like a rich guy telling a homeless person that he’d had a bad day because his show horse pooped in his car elevator. This was what she had signed up for, Harley told herself, and vowed to do better.
But like so many students—again—Harley learned this was something more easily vowed than done. She did improve but not as much as she’d hoped. She decided to talk to her professors. It only made sense—if you had trouble with a subject, you talked to the teacher about it.
Which was how Harley Quinzel came to the next rude awakening for college students: unlike teachers in public education, college professors didn’t have to care. They didn’t even have to pretend to care. College was a choice, not required by law. Anyone who wasn’t up to college-level work didn’t belong there.
The epitome of this attitude was Dr. Eugene Farrow in the psychology department. Among the many classes he taught was Statistics in Psychology, which Harley had been told was crucial if she planned to go into psychiatry. Harley had studied statistics in high school but this course was exhausting from day one. When she went to see Dr. Farrow, he gave her a slew of extra assignments, telling her the only way out was through.
“Good thing I’ve got a gymnastics scholarship,” she told him with a weak laugh. “I can just cartwheel through.”
Dr. Farrow surprised her by bursting into hearty guffaws. When he caught his breath, he told her to cartwheel on back to his office at the same time next week to pick up more work.
Harley left with mixed feelings. She seemed to have won over a professor not known to be sympathetic to students, especially undergrads. But she’d done it by making tons more work for herself, and she’d already been struggling to keep up with what she’d had before.
Her part-time job in the small animal lab began to feel like a refuge. All she had to do was make sure they were fed and watered and their cages were clean. Oh, and sometimes chase down the ferrets that had escaped. Harley was pretty sure the other student working there had been letting them out and playing with them. Gabriela Matias had some kind of weird weasel fixation. She and Harley never worked the same hours, which suited Harley just fine. There was something creepy about Gabriela and it wasn’t just the weasel thing; the girl could have been obsessed with unicorns and rainbows and Harley still would have thought there was something unsettling about her.
Harley didn’t want to feel that way about her or anyone else—her own background didn’t fit the standard American middle-class mould. But Gabrie
la was just too… icky.
The only thing Harley found more disturbing than Gabriela was Batman.
Growing up in Brooklyn, Harleen hadn’t heard much about Batman. But when she enrolled at Gotham State University, she never stopped hearing about him. It was like everybody was tuned to the all-Batman channel—or Bat-channel—and they never shut it off. She learned more about Batman than she ever wanted to know. Anyone would have thought the guy had cured cancer, ended poverty, and brought about world peace. But as Harley saw it, nothing could have been further from the truth.
Batman was a self-appointed crimefighter who took down the worst criminals—but only by being a criminal himself. Vigilantism was against the law, and Batman, whoever he was, had actually made it into a lifestyle, with clever accessories! Besides the outfit, complete with cape, mask, and utility belt, he had a special car and a panoply of custom-made equipment, all festooned with bat designs. Obsessive much?
But the truly astonishing thing to Harley was that no one in Gotham City seemed to think there was anything weird or abnormal about this. Because Batman was a good guy and everybody knew that good guys weren’t weird or abnormal, they weren’t criminals—they were on our side. Good guys were okay.
And how did everybody know Batman was a good guy? Because everybody said so! If it weren’t true, everybody wouldn’t say it. Nothing like a little circular logic to keep things lively.
When Harley tried to question this, she was brushed off with what was apparently Gotham City’s official mantra: You don’t understand because you’re not from around here.
She might have tried to argue more about that but Gotham’s local TV news changed her mind. As outré as Batman was, he had nothing on Gotham’s hometown criminals. They all wore crazy costumes as if crime were just a form of cosplay to them. They even went by wacky personas with names like the Riddler or the Penguin or the Joker, whom Harley thought was even freakier than Batman. She had watched the viral video of his being loaded into a van bound for Arkham Asylum after his recapture—by Batman, of course—and wondered if it were real or just a reality show trying to kick things up a notch. No, her friends told her, the tall skinny guy dressed like a clown’s nightmare really did have green hair and a permanent clown-white complexion and he always put on a spectacle when they sent him back to Arkham.