These Battered Hands

by Laurel Ulen Curtis

  It wasn’t so much that the smile was real when a gymnast saluted, it was more of the whole idea of putting on a show.

  Peacocking, as Nik would say.

  I smiled for real then, the thought of him teasing me with a smile warming and settling my nerves.

  Hovering hands turned into a base for my mount, my weight settling over top of them and balancing on a perfect counter point system. The angles of my body changed as necessary for support, and a slow ascent ended with a pose at the top.

  My motions moved along quickly, following the tempo of the floor music as I always did and making sure to use a fluid system of effortless transitions between skills I liked to think of as checkpoints.

  Each routine had a set of requirements or skills you were expected to perform, the variances and difficulty subject to the gymnast who was performing. The stuffing, or what you put in, as well as how well you actually executed each move were combined to give you an overall score.

  The averages varied by event, but Beam was a lower scoring apparatus by a long shot.

  I prepared and relaxed, sinking into my legs and bounding back into my series, each skill separate but interconnected in importance. You had to finish one before you could begin the other, a misplaced foot without an escape a danger that could really end up getting you hurt.

  But part of the score came from connectivity, and that didn’t just happen by magic. It happened with repetition and faith and a whole lot of muscle memory.

  Half of the time my brain didn’t have time to think what I was doing all the way through, my memory and reflexes no doubt delayed even further by my age.

  But the muscles—they were where the ease originated, their movements almost practiced into undirected submission.

  I could hear Jillian’s cheers as my feet hit the mat, the other girl’s voices blending together in similarity. To me, they all sounded the same.

  I knew that sounded like a terrible thing to say, but that wasn’t how I meant it.

  What I did mean, was that they were distinctly a unit, whereas Jillian and I tried to carry ourselves above and beyond and as figures of authority.

  Given my mental state, it was damn near laughable, but I could guarantee when it came to being here in this moment and doing what I needed to do to not let anyone down, I was giving it more than my all.

  Jillian high-fived me on my return, the other girls converging on the two of us and bringing it into a huge group hug.

  I reveled in it rather than resented, knowing I wouldn’t be in this place again, with this kind of single-minded group initiative, not ever.

  Still, I wondered if Nik was watching, if he wished he could talk to me as much as I wished I could talk to him.

  With the intensity of my own feeling, my own insatiable thoughts and desires, I didn’t know if it was even possible.

  “Floor,” Jillian said simply getting in my face at the first sign that my mind was starting to wander. I needed to leave Beam and everything else behind.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said with a smile and mock-salute.

  I got the distinct impression that she was mentally giving me the finger.

  Maybe even a double.

  Sort of a one stone, two birds kind of thing.

  One look into the crowd reminded me though, one, two, or four, the birds and the stones were welcome. Because words hurt a lot worse and lasted a lot longer.

  My dad looked on with a smile, my mom tucked neatly under his arm, but for me, one look at him took me back.

  All I could see was his office. All I could feel was the pain. All I could hear were the words that haunted me over and over again.

  He agreed. He agreed to—

  Start over.

  As I watched her on the floor, all I could do was hope for more and wish that I could call out for her to start from the beginning. Not because she’d messed up or done something wrong, but because she’d done all the things right.

  Her arms floated like an extension of her eyes and her feet moved with sure, swift steps and jumps from one place to the next. Her musicality was spot on like always, the sound of the song transporting her to another place that she replayed directly on her face.

  The zoom of the camera made me feel like I was there, and Con and Carli were starting to make fun of the results of that fact.

  “Dude. Do you think you can back away from the TV just a few inches so the two of us can actually see what she’s doing too?”

  I only half listened to them as she moved though, focusing on the smirk on her lips and the heave of her chest just before each tumbling pass.

  She flipped and flew with control and precision, harnessing the power like I taught her and turning it into just the right amount of energy. Height and distance didn’t mean loss of control, and by watching her tonight, I knew that she’d mastered it.

  And despite the distance and the circumstances, her victories still felt very much like my own.

  Not as her coach, or her mentor, or someone who’d taught her anything about gymnastics.

  No.

  As I watched her come alive in front of millions and millions of people, I felt it in my chest, in my connection.

  Right in the heart of my pride and love.

  Ironically, the heart of those two things felt exactly like the heart of me. Center-left in my chest, under the skin, muscle, and bone, and rooted permanently through a complex interconnected system to the rest of me.

  “Nik,” Carli said from right next to me, her small hand settling gently onto my shoulder and applying pressure.

  “It feels like me out there, you know?” I said, talking to her and myself at the same time as I realized the reason everything felt so mind-bogglingly powerful.

  She shook her head slowly, a small frown of apology marring her normally proportional features.

  I smiled and shook my head. “It’s just…an investment in her,” I struggled to explain. Her successes were mine. Not because I’d helped her achieve them, but because her success and happiness was what I genuinely wanted most out of life.

  She nodded then, thinking she understood. “You put in a lot of time and effort coaching her. I’m sure her successes feel like your own.”

  “No,” I disagreed strongly, shaking my head for emphasis. “It’s not that at all.”

  I looked to the ceiling and back again, an ache in my chest making my hand float to the space above my heart without prompting.

  “It’s…Callie was broken when I met her.” I smiled, forcing my jaw to unclench. “Beautiful, God, so beautiful, but without pleasureful purpose and drive and lost inside her own head. But the toxic thoughts that haunted her weren’t her own. They were the seeds planted there by everyone else who put her out in the fucking boat destined for the big show and left her to drift.”

  I shook my head, my chest both tightening and lightening—a combination I’d foolishly long thought impossible—as I talked.

  “A woman like her? She doesn’t know how to drift, to fucking wander, to dream and reason and find her way when nothing feels fun anymore.” I corrected myself. “Or she didn’t. But now she does, and not because I taught her how or did the leg work or any other fucked up thing. She’s that way because I told her it was fucking okay. That’s it.”

  Carli hollowed her cheeks and sucked at her lips to keep a tear from escaping, and I clenched my jaw against the onslaught of tears of my own.

  “Years of unhappiness and pressure gone.” I shrugged my shoulders and lifted one corner of my mouth. “All because I gave her permission to let it fucking go.”

  Connor murmured low and slow in the silence that followed. “Dude.”

  “It sounds messed up and twisted and, I don’t know, maybe it’s because I don’t know how to just be her coach, or just be with her, and instead they’re unchangeably locked together, but I’m so fucking proud of her I can hardly stand to be here watching her and not be able to tell her.”

  Carli wiped away tears and turned directly t
o Connor with accusation. “Why don’t you talk about me that way?!”

  His exasperated, pissed off eyes were just what I needed to break the tension, letting me turn back to the TV and watch with wonder as Callie got ready for Vault.

  Chalk clung to her entire body at this point and a tiny line of concentration had formed directly between her chocolate eyes.

  They looked directly into the camera then, holding it as if she were looking directly at me before lifting her hand to look at it.

  I willed the camera to zoom in on the skin, to show me a mix of purple and pain, but it cut away and focused on someone else before there was even a chance.

  A bar routine complete by someone else, the camera cut back to her, the back of Jillian’s blonde head taking up most of the frame. Callie laughed at something she said and I found myself smiling along with her.

  I’d gotten ahold of myself at this point, so I scooted back from the TV, settling onto the couch and watching like a normal person.

  She shoved Jillian like she normally shoved me, climbed the stairs to the platform, and started her routine of chalking the majority of her body.

  The palms of her hands and the bottoms of her feet, as well as the insides of her legs. No friction was good friction, smooth and fluid motion the only way to go when competing on Vault.

  Her ponytail swung playfully as she leaned her head back and forth to stretch her neck, doing several set and twist drills in a row.

  Her face was a mask of concentration, and like always, her pink tongue came out to wet her lips.

  With a salute she stepped onto the runway, double checked her spot and worked her feet until they were flat into the heels. With a push and a bounce to her toes she was off, running and lunging into her round off with precision, back handspringing onto the table and blocking perfectly through her shoulders.

  With force and precision she forced her chest up to assist in rotation and looked over her shoulder and pulled tight for the two and a half twists.

  The camera cut to the back of the Vault for her landing, three lines positioned on the mat to assist the judges and gymnasts alike. It made it easy for both of them to gauge the landing, to find their positioning on a landing that was blind.

  Her toes curled into the mat and fought, forcing what seemed like the unstoppable force of her body to an immediate end.

  The roar of the crowd was almost as loud as this living room, Carli, Connor, and I all yelling and screaming as if she could hear us.

  A neighbor banged on the adjoining wall of their condo, but Carli just ran over and banged back, a roll of her eyes and a toss of her hair reminding me what being with Callie felt like.

  “One more event to go,” I told the room at large, the USA in position to take first. I thought about the prospect of a gold medal for Callie, and I almost couldn’t stand how good it made me feel.

  “How’s she on Bars?” Connor asked, interested and doing a good job of distracting me from missing being in person for Callie’s celebration.

  You wouldn’t have been there anyway, I chided myself.

  Individual coaches were treated like spectators at the team competition of the Olympics, sectioned off behind a wall with all of the others. And I had a feeling her dad would have taken that spot.

  “She’s good on everything,” I told him, shaking myself out of my inner thoughts and watching her tighten the velcro on her grips.

  Jillian went first as the leadoff, and Callie was meant to be the anchor. Much like swimming, coaches often stacked the lineup to set the tone they wanted. A leadoff was often the most consistent, not necessarily bringing in the highest or the lowest score, but reliably bringing one in altogether. And the anchor was meant to seal the results, to hold the team in place with a routine that built on the scores of the other gymnasts and ended on a high note.

  All it meant for me, under these circumstances, was that I had to watch everyone else before I got to watch her.

  Jillian impressed like always bringing in a solid routine and setting a positive tone for the event. Everything was on the line, and you needed a big hitter for big stakes. Jillian was it.

  Being that this was the team final, there was only one girl in between selected to compete along with them for their total score, and I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t even remember her name.

  On a normal basis, yeah.

  While I was waiting to watch Callie compete her final routine in one of the biggest meets of her entire life—no.

  I shook out the nerves as her routine came to a close and Callie climbed up onto the platform to take her place.

  I watched with amusement as she chalked her hands, spitting into each palm on the international stage in front of millions upon millions of people.

  I watched her rub chalk into the palm of each grip, clap her hands together, and then start over again, and I watched all of it with rapt attention as if she was doing something worth watching.

  One final breath, she moved to the front of the Bars, waiting to be prompted for that all important salute.

  Her hands flashed above her head and a genuine smile painted the line of her lips.

  I held my breath as she started her first skill, kipping and casting and hooking her feet to the low bar for a nearly full rotation that catapulted her to the top.

  Her casts were precise and the placement of her hands was dead on. Not even a sheet of paper could fit between her trim legs, the muscle perfectly and calculatedly pressed together in a showing of excellent form and concentration.

  She was killing it, making my heart beat a mile a minute and painting a smile so ridiculous across my face, I was glad no one but Connor and Carli could see me. Each time she hit her handstand at the top of her rotation it was like she was made to do it—like a string pulled taut at just the right moment and yanked her perfectly pointed toes straight to the ceiling.

  She was doing it—what she’d set out to do—showing the world and herself that twenty-six wasn’t too old. It wasn’t past the prime.

  She had never been better.

  Knowing what was coming, I eased myself up off the couch and paced toward the TV, preparing myself nearly as much as she had to be. As her hands left the bar for her Piked Tkatchev, I held my breath knowing she’d be going straight into her Deltchev immediately after.

  But it didn’t come.

  She left the bar beautifully but traveled too far to form a comfortable grip on her return, and I could do nothing but watch as her fingers stretched to hang on, prolonging her swing and changing the angle of her body.

  I reached for her as though I could actually catch her through the TV, but her fingers left the bar unplanned and unhindered. She tucked into herself like someone practiced at falling, but the momentum was too much to combat, and the very apex of her neck and spine struck the ground with a brutality that nearly made me sick.

  Her body crumpled into itself before slowly unraveling into a state of stillness I’d never seen it take on before. Her lifeless legs lulled open and her empty, grip-covered hand fell to her side and unfurled.

  Every normally vibrant indicator of consciousness was absent, and the immediate silence of the crowd and announcers settled hauntingly into my bones.

  My first instinct was to go to her immediately. Just drop everything, run straight out the fucking door, and not even bother turning back.

  Thankfully though, I gave myself just a moment to think it through and realized that would be about the dumbest thing I could do.

  Carli grabbed me on one side and Connor took the other, chaining me like a wild fucking animal, but I’d already figured it out on my own.

  Reasoned it in my head and heart and fucking accepted it just like I did every-fucking-thing else.

  “Cal,” I whispered to myself, watching her on the screen and sinking to my knees in order to pray for a miracle. All I could do was ask for everyone that was there to help her. I couldn’t ask them myself, so I asked God to deliver a message for me. I didn’t pray
often, and I didn’t use language He would be proud of, but I believed. In that moment, I believed and I did it as hard as I could because I had to.

  I was helpless to do anything more.

  She was in Brazil, for fuck’s sake.

  I scrubbed angry hands down the tears on my face.

  It wasn’t like I could be there for her now, in this instant. It was going to take me at least a day to get there. Guaranteed. Between getting on a flight, getting to the airport, actual travel time, and finding my way to her once I got there, I had a long road ahead of me.

  One I fully intended to traverse, but I’d rather do it with some information.

  Stepping closer to the TV, I watched as a crowd of people worked on her, willing her to give me some sort of sign, some sort of indicator that she was okay.

  “Come on, little Pea. Give me something. Move. Please move.”

  Mindless of distance and futility, my fingers sought the skin of her wrist, touching the highly pixilated virtual depiction of it lightly. I willed her to feel me despite impossibility, to give me just one fucking thing I asked for.

  She didn’t.

  Disregarding the past had done me no favors. History—despite hope and mental sorcery—

  Repeated.

  Over and over I pictured his face in my head.

  His eyes were like actual pools of water—moving, flowing, and changing color along with depth. Each time his focus shifted, so did mine, zeroing in on a new fleck of deep blue and trying to help it float through the much more abundant aqua. Their magnetism made it hard to focus on his words, but I wouldn’t have traded those moments spent studying their nuances for all of the words in the dictionary.

  Sure, looks were shallow and words could mean everything, but in those split seconds when his eyes changed before my own, I would have sworn on my every Olympic medal it was the opposite.

  And right now, I needed the comfort of that feeling. I needed it to swaddle me in its warmth and make everything feel right again.

  The word wrong had never been a concept worthy of my focus, but as I tried to make sense of what was happening, denying its existence was no longer an option.