I'm Down: A Memoir (24 page)

“I noticed your breast,” he said without a tinge of humor. “If you wanted to keep swimming into the fall, I’d like to try you out on CAST, our swim club.”

“Hmmm,” I said. “I was planning on trying to get a football scholarship, but I’m not big enough yet.”

He snickered in a way I found arrogant. “You might want to consider swimming then . . . on a real USA Swimming club.”

“Does it cost money?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” I said, dismayed.

I turned to leave as the conversation was over, when he said, “We really need a breaststroker, especially for the relay. The board has talked about scholarship spots. Maybe we can work something out.” Then he said the magic words, “Do you want me to talk to your parents?”

“Absolutely!”

So in the fall I started training with the Central Area Swim Club or CAST. In addition to finally being good at a sport, the great thing about swimming was that Dad knew almost nothing about it. Still, when he
would
show up at meets; lack of knowledge didn’t stop him from trying to coach me at competitive swimming.

Before I got on the blocks for my events he’d pull me aside from my teammates and say, “Can we just take a second to talk about your race?”

“Yes, Dad,” I’d say, waving my teammates along. Then trying to mask my sarcasm, I’d ask, “How do you think we should handle this one?”

“Well,” he’d say, scratching his chin. “I think you should take the first lap just real fast.”

“Great idea!”

“Then when you get to the second lap—go for it! Don’t try to coast off that first lap. . . .”

“Okay, Dad.”

“The third lap you just want to give it all ya got.” Then he got really serious, “Then on that fourth lap, you just bring it on home—fast as you can.”

Then I would go talk to my coach, Dan, who would tell me what my competition looked like and what it would take to get me into the finals. Always telling me to “streamline” and to “explode off the walls.” Then he’d remind me, “A winner is
someone who finds the absolute limits of personal agony, and surpasses them every day.” Then whatever was gonna happen would happen, and I would get a hot dog.

As months went by I got a little bigger, and even though swimming was fun, I was sure that football was more important to college types, and I was eager to solidify my future.

“Dad,” I said one afternoon after swim practice, “I think I’m bigger now, and when I checked the scale I gained a few pounds. Hey!” I flexed. “Look at these arms.”

“That’s great, baby,” he said.

“So?” I said expectantly. But he just looked at the road. “Dad!”

“Don’t yell at me.”

“Sorry, Dad. But you said I could play football—”

“When?” Dad asked.

“That I could play football, if I got bigger!” I couldn’t believe he was drawing a blank. “That’s why I was swimming this summer . . . ’member?”

“Those boys would crush you, baby,” he said.

“Well, I can play with the girls. I’m bigger now!”

“Damn, Mishna,” he said impatiently. “When are you gonna get it through your head? There is no girls’ football!”

“There is,” I said. “There must be.”

“Well, there’s not!” he said. “Besides, I would never let you play football. What’s wrong with you?”

“But you said . . .”

“I never said you could play football . . . that’s crazy.”

“It’s not crazy,” I said, not really sure why I was starting to cry. “I want to get a football scholarship!”

“Well, no one is giving them to girls!” he said. “What you ought to do is get yourself a swimming scholarship or something. ’Cause football ain’t on for you.”

“But,” I said, still crying, “nobody likes a swimmer. It’s not like you sit down and watch Monday night swimming.”

Dad looked up from the road and said, “We don’t have that kind of cable.”

That night dribbled by slowly. My life plans all shaken up, my fears of the future multiplied as I helped Dad with dinner. And my good ol’ tension headache came back in the middle of Yvonne’s grace.

But as I picked at my chicken thigh—my purpose for eating evaporated—part of me still wondered if what Dad said about women’s football was true. I mean, maybe there were teams and he just didn’t know about. Secret women’s football teams that met at night and played by candlelight. He didn’t know everything and I decided that before I made myself crazy, I should get a second opinion.

So after dinner when I saw Zwena out on the street with Nay-Nay, I ran out of the house. Zwena had started hanging out with Nay-Nay in the last year or so, and after school she would change out of her uniform into something closer to what Nay-Nay wore, which at the moment were big gold earrings and bright-colored jeans. I was always still happy to see Zwena, but I thought she looked ridiculous in her red jeans. And she was wearing cheap hoops so big, it looked like her ears had been handcuffed and were trying to break free before the fake gold turned them green.

Both the girls were about sixteen now, but looked about twenty-two as they leaned against Nay-Nay’s father’s Caddie and flirted with a light-skinned boy with a fade. Nay-Nay had a bag of cheese puffs and in between bites she would lick the orange powder off her fingers like cheese powder was a delicacy.

“Yo, Zwena,” I said, walking up to them and getting my guard up a little for Nay-Nay.

“Hey, violin!” Nay-Nay said, not bothering to take her fingers out of her mouth. “Where is your violin?”

“I dunno,” I said. “You must have eaten it.” That landed a little harder than I had intended, because Nay-Nay raised her hand to hit me. But when I flinched everyone laughed—and her dominance was reasserted.

“S’up, Mishmash,” Zwena said, acting a little more street for Nay-Nay. Then she pointed to the boy beside her. “This here is Ty.”

“Hey,” I said. “I’m Mishna.”

“Don’t you go wit’ Bijon?” he asked, referring to a light-skinned boy who lived nearby.

“No!” I said incredulously. “He’s gross.”

“Would you like to?” Ty asked.

“Shut up, Ty!” Zwena said.

“No!” I said. “I barely know Bijon!”

“Okay. Dang,” Ty said. “You ain’t gotta yell.”

“Whatever,” I said, dismissing Ty, and then asking the girls, “Hey, do you know any girls’ football teams?”

“Nope,” Nay-Nay said.

“Maybe . . . ,” Zwena said.

“You’re tripping,” snapped Ty. “There’s no girls’ football teams, not at Miller or RB or CAYA.”

My heart sank.

Zwena said, “I know a girl that played football with the boys, though.” She turned to Ty and Nay-Nay. “’Member Shanda?”

“Oh yeah . . . Shanda,” Ty said, giving me a glimmer of hope, before adding, “She was a ho.”

“She was not a ho!” Nay-Nay said—half-eaten cheese puffs falling out of her mouth. “Why you saying that?”

“Because it’s true,” Ty said. “She slept with that whole damn team.”

“That’s what I hear,” Zwena said. “She was on that team ’cause she was hoin’.” I didn’t like Zwena saying
hoin’.
She was a mathlete.

I continued, “Maybe she just really liked to ram things with her head and tackle and stuff.”

“Now that don’t make no kind of sense,” Zwena said. “You’re crazy.”

“So there are no girls’ football teams?”

“What, are you deaf and dumb?” Ty quipped.

“You want to play football, violin?” Nay-Nay laughed. “You better stick with playing your violin and making out with Bijon.”

“I met him like once!” I yelled, and stomped back into the house all bummed out thinking about was how I was never going to college. And on top of it I didn’t think Zwena liked me anymore.

The next week at swim practice I was too depressed to train. I loafed my way through every workout and stopped eating fruit pies. I was good at swimming, but I didn’t really get the point of it anymore. You just swam really fast for the sake of swimming, big deal. It wasn’t like football where people give you college money for it, and scream at the TV, and throw parades where mooning and head-butting might occur. By Friday practice, Dan took me out of the pool. He sat me down by a chalkboard where our team mantra was written.

“You want to tell me why you’re loafing?” he asked.

“I’m swimming as fast as I can.” I said.

“Since when does Sean lap you?”

Since swimming is lame and it’s not football.

“I’m tired,” I said flatly, but Dan simply pointed to the little chalkboard.

“What does that say?” he asked.

I read aloud, “‘A winner is someone who finds the absolute limits of personal agony, and surpasses them every day.’ ”
And that’s why you’re a swim coach and not an anethesiologist. You probably live in a shack.

“Are you a winner?” Dan asked.

“I guess not,” I said.

“Then get out of my pool.”

“What?” I asked. “You serious?” I thought he needed me.

“Yes, I’m serious. You’re not here to win, and you’re wasting everyone’s time. Get out of my pool.”

“I will,” I said, as I headed toward the locker room. Adding, “Also, it’s not your pool, the city owns it!”

“Well, I’m kicking you out of it,” he said. “Go be a loser somewhere else.”

“I will!” I said, getting angrier as a marched away. “And I don’t care!”

“Well, that’s handy! ’Cause you’re kicked off the team! Good-bye.”

“Good-bye!” I said, turning around.

By now everyone was staring and I hoped my teammates got a good look at my face, because they were never gonna see it again!

I hit the women’s showers and threw my cap and goggles against the wall, liking the way the way the goggles echoed against the tile, and excited to have the whole shower area to myself. I picked them up and threw them again.

“All mine!” I said, turning on every shower and running between them—finally deciding to sprawl out on the giant wheelchair shower bench and luxuriate in a seated cleaning. When I was a big rich doctor somewhere I would have a seat in my shower, too. But as I washed the chlorine out of my hair and felt the warm water trickle down my face, I noticed I was
crying, and “all mine” quickly became all alone. And I admitted for the first time that I really loved swimming.

When you’re kicked off a swim team, or any team for that matter, you kinda just want to stomp out, get into a Lamborghini drive off into the sunset. But I was waiting for a ride from my dad, which was like waiting for a really moody slot machine to pay. So in order to give everyone the impression that I was long gone, I had to hide myself on the side of the steps above the pool. And when Dad showed up an hour later, he looked like rush-hour traffic had just handed him his ass, so I didn’t have the guts to tell him I got kicked off the team.

All weekend I obsessed about CAST. I vacillated between feeling bad for being rude to Dan and thinking about all the names I should have called him. I thought about how good it felt to be on a team that didn’t involve numbers. And it’s not like I actually knew colleges didn’t give away swimming scholarships. I had just been so focused on getting big and moving on that I never bothered to check out what the whole sport was really about. Weirdly, now that it was all over, I was really ready to take swimming seriously.

By Monday morning I was exhausted—I hadn’t been able to sleep on Sunday night because all of my neuroses had returned, and I was so distracted I flubbed a pop quiz in math. I took a sad bus ride home instead of going straight to the pool, and when I got home my father was sitting on the couch, looking like he had been there all day. He had the paper spread across the cushions and he looked surprised when I walked in.

“What are you doing here? Why aren’t you swimmin’?”

“There’s no practice today,” I said.

“How come?”

“A pool thing?” I said. “I don’t know. Dan didn’t say.”

“Ah, well,” Dad said. “I saved the sports section for you.
There’s a thing in here about that girl from Stanford, Janet Evans.”

“Oh. Okay,” I said, feeling like dirt.

“Says she swims like six hours a day. . . . You could do that.”

“Yeah,” I said, wishing I had just hid at the corner store for three hours.

“I imagine that would be enough swimming . . . you know, to be the best. She
is
the best, right?”

“Yeah . . . I think so,” I said, wondering if Dan called him and he knew I had gotten kicked off the team.

“Well, you train like her, you could be the best,” he said, smiling. “I truly believe that.” I tried to be a rock, as his eyes filled with pride. But I knew if he said one more word about swimming, I was gonna fall apart and start confessing.

Instead, he stood up and changed the subject. “Well, here’s the paper.” He grabbed his coat. “I gotta go get your stepmom at school.” I wondered if he knew how stupid he sounded when he said that.

The phone rang, and Dad picked it up on his way out.

It was Dan and he handed me the phone before walking out the door.

“Where are you?” Dan asked.

“Home,” I said. “I’m banned, remember.”

“Bullshit!” Dan said. “You get your butt down here and get in this pool, or you’re not going to regionals!”

“But I’m at home,” I said. “You kicked me off the team!”

“Listen,” Dan said, “I don’t have time to argue with you. If you want to be a little baby, stay home. But if you want to be a real swimmer, you get your ass down here!”

I looked out the window at Dad driving away. “I want to be a swimmer,” I said. “But Dad just took off, I don’t have a ride.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Dan said impatiently and hung up
the phone. I didn’t know what that meant—if I was off the team or on, or what. I sat on the couch feeling confused and sorry for myself and decided to pick up the article about Janet Evans. She had a swimming scholarship at Stanford, an Olympic gold medal, and she was white. I didn’t know if I could achieve all of those things, but I felt a twinge of hopefulness about the future. Like maybe I wouldn’t die of hepatitis, my last meal a plate of food-bank cheese with food-bank honey on it—the only two things I got from the food bank that week.

My train of thought was broken by a knock at the door, and as I walked to get it I saw Dan’s car out the front window. Janie, one of the other girls from the team, was waiting in the passenger seat. Her mom had given me a ride to a meet once, so I assumed she had gotten him there. I opened the door, and Dan looked a little horrified as he asked, “You live here?”