Backbackback, in round swoops. Arms out. Gather the strength in your
thighs . . . and
leap.
Just another day, thinks Gina, another fluffy outfit, another arena,
another pair of thick pantyhose and another headache from the damn bun
on my head. Why does she have to pull my hair so tight before the
shows?
The audience looks like hundreds of little moons, the occasional red
scarf or blue hat like a big freaky star standing out here or there.
Darkness mostly. Do they have their hands in their laps? Are they
tensing for the landing? Do
they want to be here?
Along with her own thoughts, her painfully tight hair and the weight
of gravity on her body as she spins, Gina has unbidden foreign
thoughts. "The next five years rides on this landing, Gee," says her
mother. "You'll make it, babe, and we're going all the way," says her
father. "Imagine your skate blade is as wide as a surfboard," says her
coach. "So easy to land on a surfboard,
nein?"
I don't want to land on a skate blade as wide as a surfboard, thinks
Gina. I don't want to land on a skate blade at all. I want to go back
to school, I want to walk on land. Leave the ice to the penguins.
Two weeks ago her mother screamed at her for going out the door in
high heels. "Do you know what would
happen if you twisted your
ankle?" she shrieked. "You'd never compete
again! It's all in the
ankles for ice skaters!"
Gina looked at her and thought of saying it, right then and there: "I
never
want to compete again." Instead she went back upstairs and put
on low-heeled shoes. Just as tonight she'd put on her outfit (oh, how
she hated pink) and her thick pantyhose (so itchy) and her white ice
skates (the dreaded things, the blades glittered her own resentment
back at her when she polished them). What a good girl she was.
Obedient. Talented. This qualifier, this last hurdle before the big O,
was a miracle for the lovely little family down the block. That girl
works so hard!
And she whirls in the air, and the whiteness of the ice overcomes the
rest of the colors in the blur as she whirls, her arms curled against
the polyester body of her outfit, and she thinks to look for the
judges but she has stopped caring about the judges long ago, and she
thinks this is almost the end, almost the end. If I can just get to
the Olympics, if I can just win a gold medal, then maybe they'll leave
me alone and I can live. Just live. What else can they ask me to do
after I win a gold medal?
This question looms, but at this split second while she is in the air
she tries to remember how good this once felt. How she had ignored
that dreadful pull (not just her parents but gravity), how her quick
movements felt as young as her sixteen years, how landing on the ice
and throwing out her leg to balance felt like power, self-generated.
For this split second, when she first learned it, she was breathless.
Now the breath came too easily and it was all motional. Like skating
in toto. Motions, and effort, and control. Not wildness, free
gliding, smelling the ice and feeling the air, and the inheld breath
of the audience at seeing her whipping around the rink with the grace
of a goddess. That's for them, not for me, she thinks.
Time to land. This has all happened before, she thinks. The third
turn, and wide out your arms, and toss your leg back, or you'll fall.
But as she lands on the saw edge of her single blade, there is
something different. She hears, as clear as day, before the audience
rises in a great moan, a tindery
snap, and she thinks as she tumbles
to the ice: I broke my ankle. Thank God.
