The Go-for-Gold Gymnasts: Winning Team (Go-for-Gold Gymnasts, The)

by Dominique Moceanu

  Noelle turned white. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Keep count,” I said, and set myself up for the first in the series. I crouched down before throwing my arms back for momentum, propelling myself backward, my body already twisting. When my feet hit the beam, they were totally flat, my toes curling around the edges of the apparatus to maintain my balance.

  I took a deep breath. “One.”

  Noelle didn’t even pretend she was still working on her pirouette. “Britt, please,” she said, glancing toward the office.

  “Your wish is my command,” I said, and executed a second flawless standing full twist. I was on fire! I almost wished Mo could see this. She’d have let me put it back in my routine for sure.

  “You’ve made your point,” Noelle hissed. “Can we get back to work now? Please?”

  “This is work,” I said. “This is me working on the skill that’s going to make me national champion one day.” I saw Mo emerge from the office, but a woman stopped her to chat. “Watch this. Third time’s a charm.”

  I knew from the moment my feet left the beam that I didn’t have the height. My timing had been a little off, my movements too jerky, and I hadn’t been able to fling my body backward with as much momentum as I usually did. It seemed like I was suspended in the air forever.

  My head hit the beam squarely, and I scraped my cheek as I slid down the side of it and crumpled to the floor.

  “Britt!” Noelle jumped down from her beam and knelt beside me. “Britt, say something!”

  But I couldn’t speak. I had the words in my head: I’m okay, or even, What goes up must come down, right? But they wouldn’t come out of my mouth.

  And then I saw Mo’s face looming over me. She told Noelle to move aside. Her hands were light as they skimmed over my body, my shoulders, my neck, asking me what hurt and what I could move. Once she was certain I didn’t have a broken neck or back, she helped me to my feet. She walked with me, supporting my weight so gently I barely registered that we had already crossed the whole gym and were in her office.

  Then she sat me down, and her eyes were not gentle.

  “Very dangerous, what you did,” she said.

  “I’m okay,” I said. I really did feel fine. I must’ve been a little dazed earlier, but other than a slight headache, I was ready to go back out there and continue practice. But when I suggested that to Mo, she shook her head.

  “You go home,” she said. “No more practice for you.”

  “For today? Or ever?” I asked the question, but I didn’t actually fear the answer. Of course it would just be for today. I’d taken a little fall, but that was it. There was no reason for it to derail my whole future in this sport.

  But Mo’s face told a different story. “I have to think about,” she said. “You took risk.”

  “I thought that’s what made me a good gymnast,” I said. “I take risks. I did a full twist at the competition where you saw my tape, and I did two standing back fulls in a row today. Perfectly! You should have seen them.”

  “Two standing back fulls mean nothing if you paralyzed,” Mo said.

  “I’m not.” I waved my arms and held up my foot, rotating the ankle. “See? I was just a little shocked before. But I’m fine.”

  Mo steepled her fingers and paused, as though she had something difficult to say and was trying to think of the best way to put it. That was when I started to get really scared.

  “You don’t listen,” she said finally. “You don’t follow rule. A gymnast is worthless to me if she don’t listen.”

  I started to protest, but Mo picked up the phone. “I call your mother,” she said. “She come get you.”

  The car ride home was silent; when I tried to talk to my mother, she said that she had a lot to think about. As soon as we got home, she said she was going to her room to do some of that thinking and suggested I do the same.

  I wanted to call Dionne, but we hadn’t talked since the time I had hung up on her. She’d actually called me, but I’d told my mother to tell her I was out. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk to Dionne. Once I had gotten over my initial shock that she was apparently still mad at me for something that had happened almost a year ago, I had felt bad. I had kind of monopolized her party, and I knew that sometimes I could be a little self-centered. I realized that all those times I’d turned things into the Britt Show, as she called it, I’d made people want to stop tuning in, and that was one of the reasons I felt so alone now. I wanted to apologize to her. I wanted my friend back.

  But with everything that was going on with Jessie and at the gym, I hadn’t felt as if I could handle anything else. Now I missed her, but I worried that every day that passed without us talking made it that much harder for us to make up.

  When my mom finally called me down to dinner, I was surprised to see my dad there, too. He usually worked until late at night, which meant he came home after I was in bed and slept most of the day while I was being homeschooled by Grandma. It was rare to see him at dinner, since that was the meal he was always cooking for other people.

  “Hi, Dad,” I said, trying to act like I didn’t already know the reason he was home. He kissed my cheek but looked at me as though he had a big presentation later that night and people were going to expect him to report on everything he had observed about me.

  Dinner was homemade macaroni and cheese, the kind with six different cheeses, which my dad could whip up in no time. Although I’d never have told him this, a part of me preferred the processed version made with orange powder. His macaroni and cheese had won awards and everything, but I guess I was just used to having the instant version, from all the nights we’d made dinner without him. There’s something comforting about the way the orange sauce congeals on top of the macaroni.

  I’d finished most of the food on my plate when my father finally turned to me. “Do you know why we made the move to Texas?”

  “Gary—”

  He held up his hand. “Pam, she needs to hear this. Do you know why?”

  I wanted to say, Because it’s warmer? But I sensed that this was not the time for jokes. “No.”

  “We moved here so that you could go to Texas Twisters. We didn’t come here and then find the gym. We came here because of the gym. Do you know what that means?”

  My grandmother had taught me about rhetor-ical questions last year. She’d said they were questions that you weren’t supposed to respond to. I’d asked her what the point was of a question with no answer, and she’d said that it often meant that both parties knew what the answer should be. According to her, if you actually tried to answer the question, it would just seem rude. Apparently you’re supposed to let the person just ramble on and make the point both of you know he’s trying to make, without interruption.

  I didn’t think this question was rhetorical, though, because I still didn’t completely know what it meant that my parents had moved here for my gym. The full implications of it were just starting to sink in. Still, I didn’t say anything.

  “That means that we drove for two days for you. We sold our house in Ohio, left our friends, left our jobs…all for you.”

  “Gary,” my mom said quietly, “don’t make her feel guilty.”

  “She should feel a little guilty,” he said. “She should feel guilty that we’ve made sacrifices and she’s throwing it all away because she can’t stop goofing off. Do you like gymnastics?”

  It took me a minute to realize he’d shifted from talking about me to talking to me. I wasn’t sure how he wanted me to respond, so I just stared at him. I wished my grandmother were there, but there was an exhibit at the museum she’d wanted to see. She’d probably made herself scarce on purpose, because she was smart like that.

  “Do you?” he repeated. “Answer the question.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I thought it was rhetorical.”

  My mom tried to suppress a smile, but my dad wasn’t having it. “It’s not rhetorical,” he said. “It’s an actual question, and
one which you shouldn’t have to think about too hard. Do you like gymnastics?”

  It was true—I didn’t have to think about it too hard. Even though I hated the tedium of drills sometimes, even though I hated all the stretches they made you do, even though I complained about beam and resisted ballet training to improve my floor work, I really loved every second of it. It was the one place where I felt truly free.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Do you want to be a champion?”

  “Yes. More than anything else in the whole world.”

  His face softened, and he looked more like the dad I remembered: the scruffy face, crinkly smile, and twinkling blue eyes of someone I could joke with and tell things to. I realized I’d missed him since we’d moved to Texas.

  “We don’t want to force you into anything,” he said. “You know that, right, monkey? But we want you to have the opportunity to achieve your dream, and we thought this would be the best place for that. I’d just hate to see you throw it away.”

  “I won’t,” I whispered.

  Maybe I hadn’t kept my promise to Jessie. Maybe it wasn’t one I was meant to keep. But this was a promise I would see through.

  All of this had to be worth it, right? Moving to a new city; leaving the safety and comfort of Loveland behind; saying good-bye to Dionne, my best friend since I was eight; alienating the only three girls I’d met so far, who happened to also be my teammates; failing to prove myself to my coach, who obviously thought I was reckless and immature.

  My grandmother wanted me to put myself in other people’s shoes, the way Atticus told Scout to do in To Kill a Mockingbird. But sometimes it was hard enough to wear my own shoes, when I couldn’t tell if they were getting me anywhere.

  First thing next morning, I marched into Mo’s office.

  “I’m sorry about yesterday,” I said. “It won’t happen again. I’m listening. Please just tell me what to do.”

  She looked at me as if weighing my words. “Get out there and run laps around the floor until girls get here. Then you can stretch with them.”

  I’d be lying if I said I didn’t balk a little bit in my mind at that. I’d dragged myself out of bed thirty minutes earlier than usual to get to practice before anybody else and talk to Mo, and the idea of running circles around the blue mat sounded like the biggest waste of time. But I didn’t say any of that to Mo, as I might have just the day before. Instead, I nodded and headed out to the floor.

  I don’t know if it was something about the monotonous pounding of my feet or the constant left turns, but as I jogged I started to think. I thought about what my dad had said the night before, about my whole family uprooting itself so that I could train at one of the best gyms in the country. I thought about my mother’s opening the day care, and how excited she’d been to change the colors of a couple of rooms to put her personal touch on them. Mostly, I thought about Jessie.

  It was possible that I was being a drama queen. Maybe everyone else was right. Jessie had one of the biggest meets of her life coming up, and of course she’d be looking for anything that might help her performance. It was true that gymnasts at the highest levels had to watch what they ate and keep to a strict diet in order to ensure that their bodies were in peak condition. Wasn’t that what being an athlete was about?

  But then I remembered again the way her knees had looked, red and scraped from kneeling on that bathroom floor in the yogurt place. She hadn’t been sick that day; I felt it in my gut. I remembered the way she admired other gymnasts’ thinness on television and made comments about gymnasts who she thought could stand to lose a few pounds. I remembered all the times I’d seen her during snack break, or at the frozen yogurt place, or at her house, or at Christina’s house, not eating, not eating…always not eating. Maybe it was just a diet. But it had gone too far.

  The question was what to do about it. Obviously, bringing it up during a game of Truth or Dare had not been the brightest idea. I had to talk to someone who would actually listen, someone who could help Jessie. But who?

  I saw Mo in the office, her head bent over something at her desk. Before I could have second thoughts, I ran over to her door. I stood there, panting, as she looked up.

  “If this how you listen—” she said, but I cut her off.

  “I know I’m supposed to be doing laps,” I said. “And I will. I’ll do as many laps as you want me to. I’m even ready to start those ballet classes you mentioned. But I have something I need to talk about with you first. Is that okay?”

  She inclined her head, and I pulled up a chair. “It’s about Jessie. . . .”

  And then I told her everything. I told her about Jessie never eating during snack time, Jessie throwing up at the yogurt place, Jessie commenting on how thin the gymnasts at the American Invitational were. I tried to stick to just the facts, not coloring them with my perceptions. Mo had dealt with gymnasts for longer than I’d been alive. If she didn’t think that Jessie’s behavior sounded prob-lematic, then obviously I was in the wrong. I just didn’t think so.

  Mo let me talk without interrupting, and when I was done, she asked only one thing. “Have you talked to Jessie?”

  I nodded. “And the other—” I almost mentioned that the other girls didn’t seem to think she had a problem, either. But I didn’t want them to find out and think I’d thrown them under the bus. This was about Jessie. “I just have a really strong feeling about this.”

  Mo put her hand on my shoulder. “You have good instinct,” she said. “You need to listen to it more.”

  I snorted. I couldn’t help myself. Wasn’t that my problem? That I went with my gut instead of listening to authority? It seemed like that was what had gotten me into a lot of these messes in the first place.

  “Yeah, right,” I said to Mo. “Like my instinct to show off on the beam, until I fell and could’ve hurt myself. Or my instinct to show off in front of Christina, until I made her hate me.”

  Mo smiled. “Perhaps you see pattern not to show off,” she said. “Sometime it not about power. Yes?”

  I still believed that a full twist on the balance beam was the biggest, coolest move I could do, but I understood that Mo was talking about more than gymnastics. Even in competitions, you couldn’t just do trick after trick if you wanted a high score. You had to use those little connecting moves to help tell a story to the judges. Those little moves could seem pointless, but without them, your whole routine would fall apart.

  Mo’s eyes turned thoughtful. “Deep down, you know what to do. But then you second-guess yourself and get in trouble. If you follow what’s in here”—she gestured toward my heart—“you be just fine.”

  It was the most obvious advice in the world. It had probably been written on a thousand Hallmark cards. And yet this time it felt like an epiphany, like something was changing inside me that I couldn’t change back—as if I’d ever want to.

  In the middle of practice, Mo called Jessie into the office. Jessie came out a little later, crying. Mo hadn’t thought it would be a good idea for me to sit in on the meeting, and I was kind of relieved. But of course, Jessie knew who had talked to Mo.

  I followed Jessie into the locker room. “Just listen to me,” I said. “Please.”

  She turned around, not bothering to hide her red-rimmed eyes and quivering chin. “Haven’t you done enough talking? God, as if it’s not bad enough that you told Christina and Noelle. At least they weren’t stupid enough to believe you. But then you have to go and tell Mo? That’s really low, Britt.”

  “I knew you’d be mad at me,” I said. “I knew you’d probably hate me forever. But I’d rather you hate me forever than do this to yourself. Did I ever tell you about Kim, back at my old gym?”

  Jessie chewed her left thumbnail, her no so quiet and sullen that I almost thought I’d imagined it.

  “Well, she had a problem, and you really remind me of her. One time, my friend Dionne and I caught her in the bathroom with these laxatives she was using to lose weight, and—
”

  “I’ve never used laxatives in my life,” Jessie said. “That’s disgusting.”

  “Maybe not, but you and I both know that you’re obsessed with your weight, just like Kim was. I don’t think you see yourself in the mirror anymore.”

  “I’m ugly,” she cried. “Why would I want to see myself?”

  “You’re not ugly. That image you’re making up is ugly. I don’t want to be friends with that girl.”

  “Well, she doesn’t want to be friends with you!”

  I shrugged. “I can’t help that. But I can help you, or at least try.”

  “Some help,” Jessie snorted. “Thanks to you, I’m probably not going to the qualifier, not after Mo meets with my parents. Can you believe that? I’m going to have to wait even longer to become an Elite. Christina will make it, and I’ll be the last person still training as a stupid Level Ten.”

  “Maybe it’s for the best,” I said, but it sounded weak even to my ears. I hadn’t known that Jessie would be left out of the qualifier. If the pressure to compete was part of her stress, then it made sense that Jessie’s parents and Mo might want her to take it easy and help her focus on getting better. But I was getting better at imagining myself in someone else’s shoes, and I knew I’d have been devastated if I lost the chance to move up to Elite-level competition.

  The chances that I’d completely wrecked my friendship with Jessie were high. But at the same time, I couldn’t regret what I’d done. I might have been the least-liked member of the Texas Twisters team, but I was beginning to realize that teamwork wasn’t always just about getting along. It was about looking out for one another, even if it meant making hard decisions. And this had been the hardest decision I’d ever made in my life.

  It was easy to keep my head down and just concentrate on gymnastics during practice. Jessie had been sent home, and the other girls wouldn’t even meet my gaze. After I did five perfect first halves of my beam routine, Mo stopped me. “I think we add full twist,” she said.