Amazons: An Intimate Memoir by the First Woman Ever to Play in the National Hockey League

by Cleo Birdwell

  Floss came over to look at Shaver.

  “Interesting,” she said.

  “He wakes up in July.”

  “Very interesting. Very still.”

  “He looks much better than he did the first few days.”

  “What do you plan to do with him?”

  “Do with him? Nothing. Just look after him.”

  “I’d like to have one,” she said.

  “He sort of glows, doesn’t he?”

  “It’s like a face in a silent movie. I see him in black and white.”

  “Interesting. I think I see what you mean.”

  “It’s a dated face,” she said. “Melodramatic, sentimental.”

  “I’m thinking of taking him out to the park. Spring is here. What do you think?”

  “A wonderful idea. A terrific, larky, grand gesture. I see it as a lyrical sequence in the movie version. Along Fifth Avenue and into the park. Slo-mo, with something Vivaldi-ish on the soundtrack. People doing amusing double takes.”

  “I’ll have to check with the doctor, of course.”

  “Wonderfully composed, isn’t he? Interesting. How do I get one, Cleo?”

  “It’s really strange. I didn’t know this about myself. That I would enjoy an experience like this.”

  “I want one badly,” she said.

  A couple of games remained. We were mathematically assured of a play-off spot. In fact we were the talk of the league.

  But we still felt hounded and harassed. Several players complained that their houses had been broken into. Nothing was missing except the liquor and beer. That night we beat the North Stars 8 to 1.

  I got home, did my chores in and around the Kramer, and hopped into bed. In the middle of the night, the doorbell rang. A couple of Arabs with eight days’ growth. These guys always had eight days’ growth on their faces. They were different guys practically every time, but they always had eight-day beards. Either they knew some trick of grooming that kept the hair on their faces at the same level, or Farouky was rotating his men to give me the eight-day beards, for his own secret reasons.

  “No,” I said, and started to slam the door.

  One of them thrust his hand into the opening at the last possible second. He tried not to cry out. The pain must have been impressive. I heard him sort of strangling on the unvoiced pain. He was determined not to yell or moan. I had all my weight against the door, keeping it closed, except for the narrow, narrow opening which the thrust hand had resulted in. I heard him swallowing the sound of his pain.

  The other fellow said, “This is not a bed check.”

  “What are you checking tonight? Chairs? There is no one in my chairs.”

  “Someone wishes to see you.”

  “I don’t see anyone until your friend gets his hand out of my apartment.”

  “He would like nothing better. But he is trapped, you see. If you will open the door, he will be happy to remove his hand from the premises.”

  “If I open the door, you’ll both come in.”

  “We will not come in. We will simply retrieve the hand.”

  “How do I know that?”

  “I speak it. I would not speak it if it were not true.”

  He was well-spoken. I’ll say that for him. It is easier to trust someone who takes the trouble to speak a foreign language well. It is stupid, but it is easier.

  I opened the door. The fellow retrieved his hand and immediately sat on the floor in the hallway. He put his hand in his midsection, covered it with his other hand, and began moving his upper body forward and back in an expression of deep pain. I guess it helps to move around. Stuck in the door, he could not do much moving.

  The well-spoken one said, “The general manager is waiting. Please follow.”

  I looked at my clothes. I had on pajamas and a robe, and was barefoot.

  “Where is he waiting?”

  “In the elevator.”

  “I am not leaving the building.”

  “Agreed,” the fellow said.

  “What about your friend here?”

  “Leave him. He is at home with pain.”

  I followed the well-spoken one down the hall to the second of the two elevators in the building. The door was open, but the elevator was not quite at my floor. It was between floors. To get inside, I had to sit on the carpet, stick my legs inside the open elevator, and drop to the floor. As soon as I was in, the door closed.

  Ahmed ben Farouky was in his mid-thirties, I think. He had a bristly but neat moustache and wore a suit and tie. Very much the modern petrodollar executive. He stood in a corner of the elevator smoking a Marlboro. There was a briefcase at his feet.

  He studied me in an intense but not unfriendly way. His eyes were extremely alert. They had an animal alertness. Almost a wariness, I would say.

  He handed me a full pack of Marlboros. I looked at it, mindful of the delicate nature of gift-giving and gift-refusing in Farouky’s part of the world, and of the elaborate courtesies I’d heard about. I didn’t want to offend, so I put the cigarettes in my robe, figuring I’d give them to Jeep, who always seemed to be running out.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “I get them duty free.”

  “I am humbly grateful.”

  “It is my own great good joy to see this acceptance.”

  “I would not do otherwise,” I said.

  “That is graciously expressed.”

  “Isn’t this a little ridiculous?”

  “What is ridiculous?” he said.

  “Being stuck between floors.”

  “No one can disturb us here.”

  “Is it necessary to be this secretive? I would gladly go to your office if you’d just ask me to do so.”

  “I asked Meade Sanders to ask you.”

  “Nobody listens to him. You would do better to be direct.”

  “Besides, my office is empty. There’s no furniture. I’m still in ‘Boulder, Colorado.’ This is what Hughes Tool wishes, and I see their point.”

  “I don’t,” I said.

  “Your media isn’t ready to accept a Saudi in a job such as mine.”

  “Well, after all, it’s hockey.”

  “I breed wolfhounds,” he said. “I’m a horseman and dart thrower.”

  “These things are impressive, I am sure. But hockey has its own traditions and rules.”

  “I’ve spent many years in the U.S. I was a student here.”

  “Where?”

  “Texas Woman’s University.”

  “It is not a collegiate hockey power, I don’t think.”

  “Yes, but I know your ways,” he said.

  “You know our ways. What are our ways? I don’t know our ways.”

  I’d put him pretty neatly on the defensive, I thought. A small, sheepish grin appeared on his face. Texas Woman’s University. I wondered how that sat with the sheiks back home.

  “I’d like to put this whole thing in perspective,” I said.

  “By all means.”

  “Nothing personal. But I’m determined to avoid all the craziness and foolishness of life on the road. I’m home now. This is my home, for better or worse, and I don’t want my life to fall back into its old habits. I’m talking about this meeting on a stuck elevator at three in the morning. It is stupid and unnecessary. No offense.”

  His eyes flashed into a higher level of alertness and his smile grew more sheepish and embarrassed.

  “Meade Sanders told me it wouldn’t be easy to talk to you.”

  “It is very easy. People talk to me all the time. Why did you want to talk to me anyway?”

  “Are you in a hurry, Ms. Birdwell?”

  “I am anxious to get back to sleep. I sleep. I am on local time now.”

  “I’ve arranged for coffee to be dropped down to us. Turkish coffee. Good and strong. Very delicious. You accept, of course.”

  “My thirst is always open to a friend,” I
said.

  “I hear this news with great good joy.”

  “I could not but accept to drink with you.”

  “You have stayed the knife from my heart.”

  We were saying these things in English, of course. Stilted and dumb as they were, I have to admit I enjoyed these little exchanges. There is no social usage in America anymore, except in dealings with the police and criminals, and I think the formal codes of Arab hospitality appealed to me for this reason. It was fun to improvise stilted phrases and I was pretty sure Farouky was doing as much improvising as I was. “Great good joy” was an utterance I could accept as genuine, but “you have stayed the knife from my heart” were the words of a man who couldn’t think of anything better to say.

  “While we wait for coffee,” I said, “please tell me what this meeting is all about.”

  “It’s simple,” he said. “Hughes Tool has left the team’s day-today operations very much in my hands. They’re impressed with the team’s record since I became general manager. The bed checks have brought favorable results. In the Gulf, they are also impressed. But in the Gulf, they have different feelings about certain matters. The delicate business relationships between my people here and my people there have given the men in the Gulf a certain amount of leverage in the management of the New York Rangers Hockey Club. I am talking about men who train falcons to hunt and kill. Men who have great wealth and many wives. Men who believe in the ways of the clan, the ways of the tribe, the old, old ways. Men who punish crime with the whip and the knife.”

  “Those men.”

  “You’ve done well on the ice,” he said. “Very, very well for someone who is the first of her sex to make such an attempt.”

  “It’s that extra layer of fat.”

  “In the Gulf, a compromise has been reached. The men in the Gulf have talked and discussed and argued and reasoned, and they have reached a compromise.”

  “What is the compromise?” I said.

  “You must wear the veil when you play.”

  I looked at him. He was fighting to keep the sheepishness out of his face. The door opened and the one who was at home with pain lowered a tray with two coffee cups to Farouky. Then the door closed.

  “It is our coffee,” Farouky said.

  “I feel a gladness to receive it.”

  “Whatever is in my house and in my father’s house, these things are less mine and my father’s than they are yours and your mother’s.”

  “She’s got her own house, but I’ll tell her.”

  “The coffee is good?”

  “Beyond praise,” I said. “To praise it would be an insult.”

  This seemed to please him. We sipped the coffee slowly out of the little white cups. We were catty-corner to each other in the elevator. I sipped too far down into the cup and got a lipful of coffee grounds. Farouky put his cup back onto the tray, which he’d set on the floor.

  “So I must wear the veil when I play.”

  “This is the compromise that comes from the Gulf. You’re allowed to play, but you must wear the veil.”

  “In the team colors, or strictly black?”

  His smile grew panicky.

  “Just the face,” I said, “or do they want me wearing the full-length veil? Because it could impede my slap shot, all that flowing material. I could probably get off a pretty good wrist shot, but the slap shot would definitely be a casualty of the full-length veil.”

  Foolishness and embarrassment seemed to come flooding to his face. I think I saw his lips quiver.

  “I assume they discussed all this in the Gulf before they reached their compromise. My slap shot isn’t that terrific anyway, which probably means they’re leaning toward the full-length veil.”

  I realized I was beginning to get angry.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask Jeep to let me kill penalties. The full-length veil might be a big help there. I could envelop people in it. Neutralize the other team’s power play. Of course, this could lead to an additional penalty. Two minutes for veiling. ‘Birdwell goes off for veiling LaFleur. She veiled him viciously from behind. You saw it, folks. Another gutless attack by the Veiled Marauder.’”

  The more I talked, the angrier I got. I was a little detached from my own sarcasm. I listened to it increase and deepen.

  “Picture me on a breakaway, Mr. Farouky. My black, full-length veil flows behind me as I speed toward the opposing goal-tender. Only my eyes are visible. Maybe my nose, if the Gulf agrees. Will I cut left? Will I aim for the far corner? The crowd watches respectfully. Will I trip on my veil and fall? What am I wearing under my veil? Edible panties and a bra with nipple holes? Do they know about edible panties in the Gulf?”

  He was fatally embarrassed. His years at Texas Woman’s University had made embarrassment and sheepishness possible in his dealings with women. Under the circumstances, these things were signs of grace and maturity. He was sensitive enough to be sheepish, proposing the veil.

  But nothing had prepared him for my vicious sarcasm. He was unprepared. He had just so much sheepishness to give. I was making unreasonable demands on his fund of sheepish smiles and looks and grimaces.

  I kept it up a while longer, getting madder and madder.

  “Do I have to wear black gloves and black skates and carry a black stick to go with my veil? I’ll look like Death at the Ice Follies. Is my veil washed with the other players’ uniforms or is it sent out to a Moslem laundry? Do I have a home veil and a road veil? How do I communicate with my teammates in the heat of battle? Muffled shouts? Eye blinks? Can I wear a number on my veil, so people know who I am, ha ha? Can I wear a number on my edible panties? What did you major in at Texas Woman’s University? Stuck elevators? Turkish coffee?”

  My voice barked out these questions in the angriest of tones. There was enough sarcasm in the air to register on a pollution meter. Farouky’s eyes were darting wild looks in every direction. Hurriedly, he opened his briefcase, plucked out a fresh pack of Marlboros and handed it to me.

  I looked at the pack, then put it in my robe.

  “I receive it with the warmth of its intentions,” I said, a little sullenly.

  “That is a greatness to hear.”

  “The light that falls on this generosity is brighter than suns.”

  “That you have graced this elevator with the length of your body is more than the merest cigarette.”

  Two minutes later, I was back in my apartment. Stay calm, I told myself. They are not going to get to you. Soon the season will be over and no one will call or visit or squat in the dark or telex. You can read and think. You can wonder at the strangeness of things. You can seek the meaning of all this.

  Washington Post was reading the New York Times. The chair he sat in was tipped back against the wall. I walked up to him and sort of knocked on the newspaper.

  He lowered it slowly.

  “I’ve been getting visits,” I told him. “Dawn raids by men in Arab hankies. How come no buzz, Mr. Willie? I miss that soothing sound.”

  “New owners have come to light,” he said mysteriously.

  “New owners of what?”

  “This building and what’s in it.”

  “Which means what?”

  “You’re paying rent to those hankies,” he said.

  The play-offs began and we opened with a win against the Red Wings at home. Afterward I sought out Sanders Meade in the crowded locker room. I told him about the visit from Ahmed ben Farouky. I told him about the compromise that had been reached by the men in the Gulf. Namely, I was allowed to play as long as I wore a veil.

  “I know all about the veil. The veil’s on the back burner. Concentrate on playing, Cleo. Others will negotiate the veil.”

  “What’s to negotiate?”

  “Play hockey, Cleo.”

  “That’s all I want to do.”

  “Incidentally,” Sanders said, “I think you scared hell out of Farouky. He was supposed to be back
from ‘Boulder’ for the play-offs, but he decided to stay away a while longer. I think he’s afraid you’ll go to the media with the veil story.”

  “I assume that won’t be necessary.”

  “He was really shaken.”

  “It’s his years in America,” I said. “They’ve turned him to jelly.”

  Floss and I had lunch in my bedroom. She brought over some experimental soup—a blend of three or four obscure French soups. I carried in a small, collapsible table and we sat on kitchen stools. It was her idea to eat in the bedroom. She wanted to be close to Shaver.

  “The beard is interesting,” she said.

  “It’s coming along.”

  “Does he get erections?”

  “Not that I’ve noticed.”

  “They get erections on and off all night.”

  “I probably haven’t been around when it’s happened.”

  “They go to sleep with erections, they wake up with erections.”

  “Shaver’s brain has been put to sleep by a Butler box. That’s a powerful device. It probably inhibits all sorts of normal activity.”

  “Nothing inhibits erections,” Floss said. “They’re like the passage of the seasons, the journey of the sun across the sky.”

  “Well, I haven’t noticed.”

  “They’re there.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “I don’t care how deeply he’s sleeping, or for how long. He gets his erections. They all do.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Nothing stops it from happening. Not even death. Any medical examiner can cite instances of erections after death. It’s nature, like water flowing to the sea.”

  I asked her about Archie Brewster.

  “The little prick’s back in Metroplex.”

  “Floss, be kind.”

  “I’ve talked to Wing. Wing’s quitting. He’s tired of living amidst a toy drive for orphans. He says the future belongs to homosexual communications satellites. He’s going to work for a man who’s putting together financing for one.”

  “What will it do?”

  “Broadcast,” she said. “Gay news, gay weather, worldwide.”