A saint
by George Blecher
[ fiction - may 07 ]
Fat Colleen, 11, a perfect mixture of West Africa's Fulani tribe and County Cork by way of Muncie, IN, steps out onto the ice of The Skating Club of Boston on Soldiers Field Road, Brighton, MA, a half-mile from Harvard Square.
All the girls at Susan Seligman's 12th birthday party are perfect mixtures of something and something else. One of the missions of my generation, it appears, is to produce perfectly mixed children, especially female offspring of professors or software designers in the Cambridge area. (Our Samantha is a mixture of Dutch Reform Church and Lithuanian Jewish Orthodoxy.) While we believe that we've been successful in discharging this mission, we also believe in couching our success in modesty and praise for the less perfectly blended.
Terrified, Colleen grips the railing with white knuckles.
Her body is encased in baby fat. She doesn't know that she is beautiful because no one has told her. Her mother uses every occasion to wring her hands, apologize for Colleen's weight and cast her eyes downward. Yet her complexion is burnished copper, with a deep blush beneath; her green Irish eyes are large and melancholy, the mark of true beauty; her graceful lips and wide brow reflect the best features of a famously arrogant tribe whose chief interests are said to be cattle and pulchritude.
(Of course this is all my fantasy: her father, a handsome if troubled man, has a pure Somerville accent; and her mother's county of origin is based on my passing interest in the Viking conquests of Ireland.)
My crush on Colleen has nothing to do with lust. Frankly, I think it's nostalgia for the imperfect. In trying to give our children everything, we have trained them away from us. They treat us like poor relations, the source of their shame. Colleen comes from an earlier era of doubt, awkwardness, innocence. Right now, she's doing everything wrong: her skate tips are crossed, her weight weakens her ankles, her hands grope in the air. While her friends, Samantha among them, sit on the sidelines picking at the homemade birthday carrot cake, she is hoping to be invisible.
At Shady Hill parents' meetings her father always sits by the door, his foot pumping an imaginary accelerator. Whenever Colleen's mother thinks he's not looking, she stares at him with longing that could make a stone weep. Whatever drove them apart - whatever makes him sit as far away from her as the room allows - hums like an electric current between them, and almost makes one wish to be that unhappy.
Now Colleen inches along the ice without holding on or flailing. In addition to an unlimited capacity for embarrassment, she seems to have reserves of grit. How else could she get through her life?
A sharp report echoes off the roof like a rifle shot. Maybe I'm chatting with one of the other fathers doing Saturday pick-up duty, or just lost in my morning depression, but it takes a while to register. Three children are sitting in a row on the ice on their butts. Very odd. Then I see a black boy no older than Samantha or Colleen - a low-slung, athletic kid with Velcro-short hair - come racing on the ice, pursued by two attendants along the sidelines. As the boy passes Colleen, he reaches out with both hands and pushes her over so gracefully that it looks like ice ballet.
"Fuckin' black kid!" says an attendant with genuine admiration.
"I'm black," I hear Colleen say in a clear voice to no one at all. Neither I nor any of the perfect children will ever understand what she just learned.
The boy runs on the ice like a speed skater, as sure-footed as a sprinter. It's as if he has been preparing for this for years. He put on his skates, snuck up to the entrance and burst in - his one chance at immortality.
Romantic garbage: I have no idea what's going on.
In its slow, greedy way the crowd wakes up: a hundred eyes but no brain, only lust for excitement. All heads turn; there's the smell of an impending kill. Colleen sits alone on the ice in her skating tutu with tears streaming down her cheeks. I've seen that expression before: all this must be her fault, just as it is her fault that her father walks around like a man with a burr in his shirt and her mother is always on the verge of crying. Like all saints, she takes her fate for granted: she'll never be thin or happy.
Exhilarated, the other girls waddle from the birthday table to the ice. Mothers rush to their daughters, fathers swell their chests. Nobody notices Colleen. Something in me feels the cold on her bottom and legs. Then I think I understand: she's having her period. If she stands up, all will see the stain.
A brawny attendant comes out from behind the concessions stand, his arms wrapped around the boy's waist, holding him so high that his legs are dangling. They're glued together in a strange dance. At first the boy squirms and writhes, but then, as if held aloft by an adoring fight manager, he starts to shadow-box. Jab-jab-jab-right hook; jab-right hook-jab. Jab-jab-right hook-left uppercut. He's as good at this as he is at skating! Is there nothing this boy can't do? He manages to turn his captor toward Colleen. Though he's not smiling, his expression is so intense that she watches him open-mouthed. Her face is shining - out of fear or love, no one can tell.
"Hey girlie, look at this, girlie!"
Is he in love with her, too? Is she his port in the storm? Is he making fun of her, trying to get her to help him, using her as a ballet focal point, or is he just crazy?
The girls, my Samantha among them, gather at Colleen's side. Mimicking the protective sternness that we have taught them, some try to pull Colleen up from the ice while others strike a pose, hands on hips, frowning in mock indignation. Their eyes glitter with malice. But Colleen doesn't see them. She's frozen to the ice. She must weigh 1,000 lbs. She's staring at me as if I could have helped but didn't.
