Читать книгу Bobby Blanchard, Lesbian Gym Teacher - Monica Nolan - Страница 13

The notion of a field hockey team at Metamora had started the week after the term began, when Miss Craybill joined her to clean out the equipment room. Rolling aside the heavy archery targets from the back wall, for Miss Craybill was nothing if not thorough, they had uncovered a bundle of ancient shin guards and field hockey sticks, the old-fashioned kind with the long toe.

“Yes, of course,” said Miss Craybill when Bobby exclaimed over the discovery. “The Metamora Savages. Miss Dennis, our Games Mistress back in 1929, was swept up by the field hockey craze. I believe she had studied under a well-known player, Constance Apley, I think the name was.” The Headmistress poked carefully at the rotted stuffing of the shin guards while Bobby stared at her, agog.

“You don’t mean a disciple of Constance Applebee? What a wonderful connection to field hockey history!” the Games Mistress exclaimed. “Do you think we could revive the team? It would be a great thing for the phys ed program! The cost would be minimal, since we already have the most expensive items of equipment, although we’ll certainly have to replace those shin guards. I believe I have the expertise to make a success of it—and I think some experience with competitive sports would be healthy for the girls here!”

Miss Craybill looked up from the pile of shin guards. “The girls already participate in the state association of track and field sports,” she objected. “And there’s archery and tennis as well.”

Bobby decided not to remind the Headmistress of Metamora’s abysmal record at track and field events. “But don’t you see, none of those are truly team sports,” she argued instead. “There’s nothing like field hockey for teaching girls the valuable skill of getting along with the group!”

“Well, if you’re willing to…” Miss Craybill trailed off as she began to carefully unfurl a stash of table tennis nets, as if hoping to find diamonds wrapped in them. Bobby decided she would take that as consent.

Later that afternoon, after she’d used the third form’s body mechanics class to restore the equipment room to order, she went to see Mona in the little office the housekeeper occupied next to the kitchen in Dorset. Mona, Bobby had quickly discovered, was the one to see when you wanted to get things done at Metamora; especially now, when the faculty followed an unspoken rule: Don’t bother Miss Craybill unless strictly necessary.

Mona immediately recalled hearing that Metamora had once had a field hockey team back in the thirties.

“You were a big wheel in field hockey, weren’t you? What fun for the girls, if you reinstated the team.” Mona’s face was alight with enthusiasm as she sat at her old-fashioned roll top desk. “All you’ll need is Miss Craybill’s signature on an equipment disbursement form—or Miss Otis will do. Here.” She’d turned from the housekeeping bills she was paying to pluck a blank form from a pigeonhole. “And then there’s the paperwork to join the Midwest Regional Secondary School Girls’ Field Hockey League—I can help you with that.”

Mona’s evident delight in the revival of field hockey at Metamora had carried Bobby through the bureaucratic side of the equation, but now she faced the daunting task of forming a squad from scratch. What if not enough girls tried out? Mona had said the students weren’t athletically minded.

Now that the fateful Thursday had arrived, Bobby felt nervous. She glanced at the clock. Five minutes to four. The young gym teacher gathered up her blank squad rosters and playbook, walked across the empty gymnasium and out the big double doors that led to Louth Athletic Field. She’d worked late into the evening the night before, helping Ole Amundsen chalk out a regulation hockey field in the center of the track’s oval.

Outside the double doors Bobby blinked, briefly blinded by the late-afternoon sun. It was a golden September day, warm with just a hint of fall’s coolness. Perfect field hockey weather, she thought. Then she saw that the new hockey field was aflame with scarlet gym tunics. It looked like practically the entire school had turned out for tryouts. Bobby’s heart swelled with emotion.

Why, these poor kids have been just craving a field hockey team! she thought. They had simply been waiting for someone to teach them how to satisfy the hunger for physical activity that had been building inside them. And I’m the one to do it! thought Bobby as she walked toward the sea of girls.

“How do you feel about the turnout for tryouts, Coach Bobby?” Peggy Cotler approached her, flipping open her reporter’s notebook in a businesslike way that couldn’t hide her excitement.

“It’s terrific.” Bobby instinctively raised her voice so that more of the girls could hear. “If the Metamora girls show half as much skill as they do school spirit, why, we’ve got the makings of a great team!”

“What do you consider to be the qualities—” began Peggy, but Bobby interrupted her. “Interview later—I’ve got a lot of potential players to put through their paces!” She blew a sharp blast on her whistle. “Everyone to the end line! Count off in groups of ten, and we’ll start with some sprints!”

Of course the large turnout meant Bobby spent extra time weeding through the mass of field hockey hopefuls. She started by eliminating the weakest applicants—like precocious Lotta Reiniger, who had skipped a grade and was in the fourth form, although she wouldn’t turn thirteen until November. She was followed by eighteen-year-old Munty Blaine, who was as stocky as a stevedore, with a voice as hoarse from her years of illicit smoking. “Your wind’s no good,” Bobby had to tell her. She’d seen Munty panting asthmatically five minutes into a game of ring toss.

“I’m quitting cigarettes, really I am,” rasped Munty pleadingly.

“I’m sorry,” said Bobby, really meaning it. To the younger students she could offer the opportunity to try again next year, but this was Munty’s last year at Metamora. The disconsolate sixth former threw herself down on the sidelines in despair.

Lotta didn’t give up so easily. “If I can’t play, can I be your assistant?” she begged. “I can write down everyone’s names and help you keep track.” And so the pint-sized student followed the rangy gym teacher, busily writing down names as Bobby put each group of girls through basic drills in dribbling, passing, and tackling.

Bobby had to admit that they weren’t an inspiring sight. Most of the girls had never played before. Bobby had passed out copies of the field hockey rules and regulations in all her classes, but learning field hockey from a rule book was like learning the tango by reading step diagrams!

Bobby patiently sifted through the lunging, panting girls, rejecting, suspending final judgment, or marking a particularly promising player’s name with a star. Meanwhile, Munty was joined on the sidelines by curious spectators as well as fellow field hockey hopefuls as tryouts continued. Blowing her whistle to signal to the current players attempting to bat the ball around that it was time to surrender their sticks to the next group of eager girls, Bobby realized that her audience had grown to a sizeable number of students, and even included some faculty.

“Why, Mona,” Bobby exclaimed. “What are you doing here?” Mona was moving about the crowd, pouring cups of cocoa from a keg she’d strapped to her back and handing out apples from a basket on her arm.

“If the girls won’t come to snack hour in the common room, their snacks had better come to them!” Mona replied cheerfully. “I’m terribly excited about this terrific turnout, aren’t you? The Midwest Regional Secondary School Girls’ Field Hockey League won’t know what hit them!”

Bobby was touched. “Gee, Mona, that’s awful swell of you.” She was working her way through the throng to take the apple Mona was holding out when she almost tripped over Hoppy Fiske. Hoppy was sitting in the midst of a group of girls wearing serious expressions. “Sorry, Hoppy, I didn’t see you.” She hadn’t suspected Hoppy was a field hockey enthusiast. “Why so down?”

“We came to support Misako,” she said, glumly.

Misako “Mimi” Nakagawa was a fourth form transfer from Japan. The Young Integrationists Club had taken her under their collective wing, and Bobby had heard that she’d been elected vice president of the group the other night, although her English was still pretty rudimentary.

Now Misako sat with her YI friends with a downcast air.

“Why, Misako did quite well,” Bobby said. “I haven’t made my final decisions yet—there’s every chance you’ll make the practice team.”

Misako brightened at the news. “I work very hard,” she promised.

“It would be a wonderful thing for the league if Misako played,” Hoppy said earnestly. “It would certainly show where Metamora stood on the integration question!”

“Well, the practice team and the varsity team are very different things,” Bobby tried to explain, dismayed by Hoppy’s assumption that a field hockey team was a means of sending political messages. “After all, we want to win, don’t we?”

“Integration will win,” Hoppy said firmly. “It’s the only possible way to resolve the current state of affairs.”

Bobby gave up trying to explain her field hockey philosophy to the Current Events Mistress. Applause and calls of “Way to go, Kayo!” drew her attention back to the field. Two girls were dribbling, push passing, flicking, and dodging as if they’d been playing field hockey all their lives. The other girls had stopped their attempts to play and backed away, as dancers do when mambo experts take to the floor.

Bobby blew her whistle and the two girls stopped, turning toward her with smiling faces.

“Well, well, what have we here?” Bobby recognized the older girl as Carole “Kayo” Kerwin, an attractive sixth former. Her pale blond hair frothed from a high ponytail, and her long thin nose gave her a patrician air. She exuded confidence and authority. As she wiped the sweat off her forehead with the sleeve of her tunic, an eager fourth former ran up to hand her a towel. Kayo was popular, Bobby knew, likely to be elected Head Prefect in the Prefecture elections next week.

More to the point, Bobby had also noticed her ease and agility in the sixth form’s stunts and tumbling class. This display, however, was more than agility. This was experience.

“Our mother taught us how to play,” explained Kayo. Bobby looked at the other girl, who had Kayo’s coloring but a round impish face. “You must be Linda Kerwin,” she realized. This was the girl Mona had told her about, who had caused a scandal with her ouija board the previous year.

“That’s right,” said Linda cheerfully, twirling her stick.

“Mom played field hockey here, back in the thirties, when Miss Dennis was Games Mistress,” Kayo continued. “We’d have scrimmages whenever the Old Girls visited. She’s going to be over the moon when she finds out you’ve reinstated the Savages!”

“Old Girls?” Bobby was puzzled.

“You know, old Metamora girls. They’re called Old Girls,” Linda explained helpfully.

“She means alumnae,” piped up Lotta.

“I know you’ll want to see the other Metamorians who also play with us,” Kayo told the Games Mistress chummily. “Edie, Beryl, Penny, Sue—”

Bobby interrupted her. “I’m sure if they have your abilities I’ll spot them,” she said with a smile. She wanted to make it clear to this self-assured senior—that is, sixth former—that she, Coach Bobby, was picking the team—not Metamora’s future Head Prefect.

The self-assured sixth former blinked, but kept her poise. “Of course,” she said.

Bobby blew two blasts on her whistle. “Next group!” she shouted. Taking the list from Lotta, she starred the names of the Kerwin sisters. Her glance traveled to Kayo, surrounded now by her friends and admirers. Two girls offered her paper cups of water, and Kayo chose one, tilting her head back to drink. Bobby couldn’t help noticing the way the sun glinted on the drops of liquid on the girl’s full upper lip and silhouetted her figure, which made a mockery of the juvenile gym tunic. Irrelevantly, she wondered what Elaine was up to. I should give her a call, she thought as she turned to the next group of players.

The sun was even lower on the horizon by the time Bobby read out the list of girls who’d made the squad. “Penny Gordon, Edith Gunther, Beryl Houck, Susan Howard, Ilsa Jespersen, Dodie Jessup, Kayo Kerwin, Linda Kerwin”—Kayo had been right, of course, about the other Metamorians who had been practicing with the squad of Old Girls;—“Annette Melville, Misako Nakagawa…” Bobby hoped Hoppy would be happy. “Shirley Sarvis, Patty Suarez…” Thirty-five would be the right number, she’d decided. Varsity, Junior Varsity, and a practice squad, plus a couple extras. “Joyce Vandemar, Helen Wechsler, Nancy Yost.”

For a while it was pandemonium on the field. Some of the chosen ones squealed and hugged each other, while others simply beamed or tried to act nonchalant. Applause broke out at Kayo’s name. A few of the unchosen wept.

“Girls will be girls, won’t they?” Mona observed with an indulgent smile as she stood by Bobby surveying the scene. “What an exciting afternoon! My cocoa keg is empty.” With a wave, she hurried off to dinner prep at Dorset and the rest of the crowd began to disperse as well. Bobby was deciding she would squeeze in a little scrimmage when she noticed a student on the sidelines, a tall, rawboned girl, her knobby knees showing beneath her gray skirt, the sleeves of her gray blazer too short for her long arms, her regulation scarlet tie missing. She had picked up one of the hockey sticks, and with one hand she was using it to juggle a hockey ball on the end, bouncing it up and down as easy as a mother burping a baby.

Bobby hurried over to the unknown student, excitement catching in her throat. “Who are you?” she demanded. “Where did you learn to do that?”

“Sorry,” said the teen, letting the ball drop to the ground and holding out the hockey stick.

“No, that’s quite good!” Bobby told her. “What’s your name?”

“Angela Cohen O’Shea.” There was defiance in the girl’s voice and stance.

Bobby tried to place her. “I don’t remember seeing you in gym class,” she admitted. “What year are you?”

“I’m a junior—or fifth former, I s’pose.” The girl shrugged as if Metamorian terms were not only unfamiliar, but also a little ridiculous. “I have a doctor’s note excusing me from gym. Allergies,” she added laconically.

“You’ve played field hockey before, haven’t you?” Bobby tried to reach the taciturn girl.

“Some.”

“Why didn’t you try out today?”

“I’m not a joiner.” The girl turned away.

“Don’t you want to help your school win?” Bobby called after her, although with little hope. She’d seen this type of girl before. A loner. A rebel. No school spirit.

But the girl turned back suddenly. “Against who?”

“Why…why, the other teams in the Midwest Regional Secondary School Girls’ Field Hockey League,” said Bobby, bewildered.

“Does that include St. Margaret Mary’s?”

Bobby tried to remember the list of schools she’d glanced through. “I think so,” she said cautiously.

“Okay. Count me in.”

Bobby decided to wonder later what had motivated the girl’s abrupt change of heart. Right now, she wanted to see what else this Angela could do.

A little murmur arose among the newly anointed Savages as Bobby returned to the playing field with Angela in tow. “What’s Angle doing here?” she heard Beryl Houck mutter. Beryl was a red-faced, boisterous sixth former with a sharp tongue for students outside her own circle of friends. Ignoring her, Bobby blew her whistle twice and shouted, “All right, Savages, let’s try a little scrimmage!” She began assigning positions, explaining, “I’ll rotate players on and off so everyone gets a fair shake.”

The game, when she cried “Ball in play,” was chaotic, only roughly resembling field hockey as the Spitfires played it. Too many of the girls were unfamiliar with the rules. Kayo and Linda and their friends did what they could, shouting, “No obstruction, Annette! You can’t get between Beryl and the ball!” or “Offsides, Anna, offsides! Wait for Shirley to get ahead of you.”

Still Bobby was pleased. Kayo was a really excellent player, feinting, dodging, and dribbling up the field with ease. And it was amazing how quickly the ignorant girls picked up the game. Her spirits rose. It was just possible the Savages would make a respectable showing, their first season out after so many years.

She turned to Angela, who was watching the game with a bored air. “Sub in for Linda,” she told her. She saw the gangly girl tap Linda on the shoulder and take her stick, and then her attention shifted to Edie Gunther in goal, who was positioning herself nicely for a roll-in near the ten-yard line. So she didn’t see how Angela stole the ball from Kayo and left her sprawled on the ground while the rest of the squad howled “Foul!” But she did see Angela dribble the ball up the field in under five seconds and whack it into the goal so hard that Dodie Jessup, the other goalie, shrank to one side, not even trying to block. Bobby blew her whistle as Beryl and Penny helped Kayo pick herself up.

“Go, Angle!” shouted Lotta shrilly into the startled silence.