Fast Girls Read online

  She looked down at her clothes on the floor and pulled them up slowly, wincing against the pain between her legs. He slapped the hay off her overalls and pointed at the door for her to leave ahead of him. She turned to him, searching for something to say, but he was whistling a tune, a piece of hay stuck between his lips like a cigarette, and he gave her a wink. She hurried out, eager to push what had just happened from her mind.

  OVER THE NEXT few days, a dull headache plagued Helen. She struggled to focus on her lessons. When classes ended each day, she considered leaving the schoolhouse in a knot of students. Nothing would happen with Jimmy if her classmates surrounded her, but then she pictured the condescension of the other girls. The way they would eye her overalls, uncombed hair, and dirty fingernails and then whisper about her, cruelty glimmering in their viper eyes. No, thank you. But she didn’t dare risk falling in with the boys and riling Miss Thurston again either.

  So she was stuck. She continued to meet Jimmy in the barn after school and knew these meetings were wrong, but the other options felt bad too. At least Jimmy seemed pleased with her.

  Each time she saw him standing in the doorway, she looked backward, hoping a classmate would be near enough so that she couldn’t go to the outbuilding unnoticed. But each time there was no one. It always felt like she was being pulled on a rope, a fishing line of sorts, as she moved over the clumps of grass to enter the outbuilding. At the door, he always patted her shoulder and she wanted to pull away, but for reasons she couldn’t explain, she followed him.

  One afternoon, with her back up against the wall of the barn, Helen watched with a strange detachment over Jimmy’s shoulder as Miss Thurston appeared, marching up behind Jimmy and yanking him off her by his ear. For some inexplicable reason, she could hear nothing, but watched Miss Thurston’s red-lipsticked mouth contort into a slash while Jimmy’s turned into a large O, and then her ears worked again, although everything sounded far away, as if she were underwater.

  “Jimmy, I never want to catch you around this school again,” her teacher was saying, giving him the stink eye. He slunk away. With a frustrated-sounding sigh, Miss Thurston turned to Helen. “Well? Pull up your clothes. I’m walking you home.”

  Helen knew she should have felt embarrassment standing there practically naked, but all she felt was like the wind had been knocked out of her. She dressed and then trailed her teacher out of the barn in silence. What should she say? Was she supposed to apologize? It had been Jimmy’s idea. But was it her fault somehow? How had she let this happen? And why on earth had she let it happen several times? She wanted to ask Miss Thurston these questions, but didn’t know where to begin.

  And also, silence felt easier. If they didn’t speak, maybe all the bad feelings would go away. But they didn’t. Those bad feelings wormed their way deep inside her gut and stayed there, hurting.

  By the time they reached the gate to the Stephenses’ yard, Helen felt awful. Miss Thurston paused and took Helen’s chin in her hand, turning it this way and that as she studied the girl. “Why couldn’t you’ve done what I said and stayed away from the boys?” she murmured, her hand lingering on Helen’s face for an extra beat before she turned and sighed, unlatching the gate. Helen remained frozen outside the yard. So, it had all been her fault. She wished she could turn and flee from what she knew was coming, but she followed reluctantly, drooping as her teacher rapped at the Stephenses’ front door. When it opened, Helen kept her gaze to the ground, even as Ma urged them into the kitchen and they stood around the table.

  A window across from Helen was half-open, its Swiss dot curtains limp in the still afternoon. In the distance, she could hear Bobbie Lee’s laughter and Doogie’s barking. Helen rubbed her sweaty palms up and down the sides of her overalls and then alternated between clasping and unclasping them in front of her. Pa appeared in the doorway, a suspicious look creasing his features into a scowl.

  Miss Thurston waved away an offer of a cup of tea. “I won’t stay long but wanted you both to know I’ve just discovered Helen in the barn behind the school with Jimmy Leary.”

  Silence yawned among the four of them, broken only by the occasional pop coming from a pot of baked beans simmering on the stovetop behind Ma.

  “Jimmy? Her cousin?” Ma looked confused.

  “That’s the one. He’s been doing some repair work around the school for me, but not anymore. They were up to no good.” Miss Thurston emphasized the last two words with a raise of her eyebrows to stress that she was talking about a very specific type of no good.

  Helen wished that a gust of wind would blow into the kitchen and push her right outside the window, far away from the stunned consternation filling Ma’s and Pa’s eyes as the full implication of what Miss Thurston was telling them sank in.

  Pa vanished from the doorway. Moments later, a clicking sound rang through the kitchen as he reappeared cocking his shotgun. Miss Thurston gave a small nod, but Ma’s face blanched as she looked from Pa back to Helen.

  “Helen, you best go upstairs. Clean yourself up,” Ma said.

  Helen didn’t need to be told twice. From her bedroom window, she watched Miss Thurston stomp from the house, straight-backed and grim-faced. Helen crawled out of her overalls and underpants and put on pajamas and climbed into bed, wishing that if she fell asleep, everything that had happened in that darned outbuilding could disappear. She couldn’t tell how long she lay there, but the shadows in her room elongated, the lighting dimmed. Her stomach moaned from hunger.

  “Hellie?” Bobbie Lee’s voice squeaked from the hallway outside her room. She crawled out from her bed and cracked the door open to peer back at him. From over his gray eyes, blond lashes blinked in confusion. “What’s happened? What did you do? I just ate supper all on my own. Ma’s saying nothing and Pa just came back from somewhere cussin’ a blue streak. He’s in the barn now, smashing things around and making a racket. What happened?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe whatever you want.” Her stomach grumbled again. “Will you go down and nick me something to eat?”

  Bobbie Lee’s eyes narrowed, no doubt considering if he could strike a deal for information in exchange for grub, but Helen gave him a severe expression so he thought better of it, nodded, and retreated downstairs. Several minutes later he was back, with a biscuit wrapped in a muslin dish towel that he pushed through the crack in the door before disappearing. Helen wolfed down the flaky biscuit and then climbed back into bed, hunger gnawing at her as if the biscuit had awakened all that she was missing. She stared out the window into the velvety darkness, pushing thoughts of her parents, Miss Thurston, and Jimmy from her mind.

  The next morning, Ma served up Helen’s usual two strips of bacon and hard-boiled egg with no mention of what had happened the day before. Pa was already working in the field, so Helen didn’t have to face him. At school, Miss Thurston only remarked that Helen’s spelling needed improvement. When she got home that afternoon, she went straight to her room and sat on the edge of her bed, staring at the newspaper photo of Betty and her father that Helen had cut out and taped to her wall. She would never have that. After a minute, she turned and curled into a fetal position, facing the wall.

  No one ever mentioned anything more about what had happened, but they didn’t have to. In the space of one week, Helen felt like she had lost everything and was alone.

  9.

  October 1928

  Riverdale, Illinois

  BETTY RETURNED TO HIGH SCHOOL FOR HER FINAL year. One of the first things she did was fill out a form for her senior page in the yearbook. In the section for “plans for the future,” she wrote: Go to the 1932 Olympics and win another gold medal. She spent the rest of the year busy with the Girls’ Glee Club, serving as president for the Girls’ Club and secretary of her class, and performing in several school shows, all while managing to take the forty-five-minute train ride into Chicago almost every day after school to train with her running
club, the IWAC.

  One afternoon when IWAC practice ended, Betty found Coach Sheppard, her head coach from the Olympics, sitting on a park bench gazing at the lake.

  “You’re looking faster than ever,” he said as she jogged to where he sat.

  “I’m working at it. What brings you here, Coach?”

  “I’ve just come from a meeting over at the IWAC. Are you heading back? I need to talk with you. Let’s walk.”

  She raised her eyebrows and followed him. “This sounds serious.”

  They headed across the park to Chicago Avenue, and out of the corner of her eye, Betty studied how his weak chin bobbled as he appeared to unclench his jaw and clear his throat. “I have it on good authority that the International Olympic Committee will be voting to bar women from competing in track and field events at future Olympics.”

  Betty gasped and stopped walking. “What?”

  “It’s true.”

  All that Betty had been focusing on for the future was wrapped around the premise that she would be able to keep running competitively. “But why?”

  “It’s no secret that many on the committee don’t want women competing in the Olympics at all, but track and field is the focus of their ire. The old guys are saying that it’s too strenuous and they want women to compete in only what are being called ‘aesthetic-only’ events. Sports like gymnastics, swimming, tennis, and skating.”

  Betty shook her head in disbelief. Too strenuous? She had seen her older sister, Jean, wan and exhausted but triumphant, after giving birth to her daughter, Laura. Now that had looked strenuous, and it was considered the utmost accomplishment for a woman. But running? By comparison, running was easy. This news made no sense. “I won a gold medal and haven’t suffered from any problems. Where’s all this fuss coming from?”

  “Remember what happened with the women’s eight-hundred-meter race?”

  “Sure, those women ran hard and the ending was a real nail biter.”

  Coach Sheppard jammed his hands into his pockets. “But that’s not why it made it into the papers.”

  A quick, furious heat spread through Betty’s chest. Back in Amsterdam, she had attended the 800-meter finals. Betty and Caroline had sat next to Dee, who hadn’t made it out of earlier preliminary rounds and scowled at the track, her arms crossed. At the starting line on the track, nine women lined up, and when the starter’s gun exploded, they took off at a furious clip. Betty and Dee both cheered the lone American in the field, Florence MacDonald, who was in the middle of the group, racing neck and neck with Canada’s Bobbie Rosenfeld. Though they weren’t among the top three finishers, as Florence and Bobbie neared the finish, Bobbie lunged forward and fell over the line to stay ahead of Florence. She lay for a moment before rising slowly and staggering to the side where the other finishers stood, hands on their hips, panting, their faces slack with weariness. It had been a tough race, hot and fast, and the announcer came over the loudspeaker and proclaimed, “The top three finishers have all set new world records—” but the crowd’s excitement drowned out the rest of his message.

  “What a race!” Caroline shouted over the cheering, clapping.

  Dee leapt to her feet, applauding. “I sure wish I had been out there, but those girls did us proud.”

  The following day, the sense of excitement evaporated when reporters appeared at the practice track as Betty and her teammates arrived to train.

  One man called out, “Girls, The New York Times is reporting that Miss MacDonald fainted and all of the finishers collapsed at the finish line of the eight-hundred-meter yesterday and needed medical care. Renowned football coach Rockne was in the stands and he said”—the reporter glanced down at his notebook—“‘It was not an edifying spectacle to see a fine group of girls run themselves into a state of exhaustion.’ So, whaddya say about that?” The fellow cocked his pencil, the delight on his face unmistakable.

  Betty and Caroline looked at each other in confusion. There had been no fainting, no medical care on the field.

  Another reporter shoved his way in front of Betty. “The New York Evening Post describes the women looking ‘wretched’ and said that five of the racers couldn’t even finish the course.”

  “That’s not what happened,” Betty said. “Are we talking about the same race? Yesterday’s women’s eight-hundred-meter?”

  The reporter scratched his forehead and scanned his notes. “That’s what I’ve got, but wait, have the lady runners collapsed in other races too?”

  “No, no, they haven’t,” Caroline said, tugging Betty away from the reporters and into the entrance to the locker room. Once inside, the women put their track shoes on in silence.

  “Why do those reporters say such horrid things?” Dee asked.

  “Because they don’t want us out here,” Caroline said.

  “But we’ve been doing well. Better than the men, that’s for sure. We’re winning medals for our country. The satisfaction these reporters take in making us all sound like a bunch of ninnies sickens me.”

  The memory of that race made Betty grimace at Coach Sheppard. “I don’t care what made it into the papers. None of those reports were right. I’ve been running my heart out and now I’m just supposed to quit? I can’t do that.”

  Coach Sheppard’s expression slid into something approaching wariness. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that this debate isn’t over. I’m going to write to General MacArthur as soon as I get home and tell him this isn’t fair. And then I’m going to write to all of the women who were my teammates and tell them not to quit either just because we make a bunch of old men feel uncomfortable. Amsterdam was just the beginning.”

  Coach Sheppard scratched his forehead. “Sure, go ahead and try to enlist as much support as you can. The AAU has been working for years to find and cultivate talent—talented runners like you—and we don’t want to see women dropped from the Games in Los Angeles either, got it? You gals have been costing us money, time, and a lot of effort. I hate to see it all go to waste. We’ll fight it with you, tooth and nail.” They had reached the entrance to the IWAC’s stone building and paused in front of the main entrance. “But here’s another thing: you’ve got to continue to have good races. Great races, in fact. You need to set records at the next AAU Championships. You need to show that you’ve got more to offer, that you’re not going to fade away before Los Angeles.”

  “Are you worried I’ll get married and retire?”

  “It’s been known to happen.”

  “I have no plans to marry. But even if I did, who says that would be the end of my running?”

  “Listen, just keep getting better and better,” Coach Sheppard said, squeezing her shoulder before turning and waving goodbye. Betty watched him saunter toward Michigan Avenue and tried to shake the sense she was treading on shaky ground.

  WHEN SHE RETURNED home that evening, she flopped across her bed, jotted a quick letter to General MacArthur, and then dropped her head onto her forearms. She’d write to everyone else tomorrow. She couldn’t believe she had gone to Amsterdam and won gold right under the noses of all those Olympic officials and now they were telling her to quit. What exactly did she and the other women need to do to be considered good enough? She pictured the intensity of Coach Sheppard’s expression as he told her she needed to win at the next National AAU Championships and shuddered. And what would happen when she lost a race? Would it undermine everything she had accomplished?

  FROM THE OFFICE OF COUNT HENRI DE BAILLET-LATOUR

  PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE

  LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND

  January 6, 1929

  Dear Mademoiselle Robinson,

  Thank you for your recent correspondence regarding the participation of women in future Olympiads. The passion you show for your cause is admirable. The IOC strives to provide an event that demonstrates goodwill, athletic greatness, and peace between the advanced nations of the world. While your recent athletic successes are commendable, t
here are a number of reasons for why the IOC plans to bar women from future competition. Promoting good health is the foremost concern of the IOC and many notable physicians have stated unequivocally that engaging in strenuous physical activity has many adverse effects on women, both physically and mentally. Athletic competition makes a woman overly assertive and bold and ruins the beauty of the feminine physique by eliminating her soft curves through strengthening her arms, broadening her shoulders, narrowing her waist, adding bulk to her legs, and developing power in the trunk, all characteristics that could render a woman overly masculine and unattractive.

  Our founding member, the visionary Baron Pierre de Coubertin, has always believed that the primary measure of a woman is the number and quality of offspring she produces, not the number of athletic records she achieves. A woman is best suited to encourage her sons to excel rather than focus on her own ambitions. It has become fashionable for women to claim attention in physical and mental endeavors outside of the domestic sphere, but the IOC supports the timeless ideal of maintaining traditional roles for women as wives and mothers and does not bother itself with fads.

  We urge you to look ahead and focus on the most important feminine job: shaping the young minds and bodies of the next generation. Best of luck.

  Cordially,

  Johann Clieg

  Undersecretary, Public Affairs of the IOC

  FROM THE DESK OF THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF THE CHICAGO EVENING STANDARD

  January 12, 1929

  Dear Miss Robinson,

  Thank you for writing to us to share your frustration that women may be banned from future Olympic competition. We appreciate your proposed editorial on the subject of encouraging women’s participation in sports, but after discussing it with our editorial team, we concluded a “Day in the Life” piece with a focus on your fashion choices would be far more popular with both our readers and sponsors. In fact, one of our leading cosmetic advertisers would be willing to name a shade of lipstick in your honor if you are interested in developing some compelling business opportunities that capitalize on your recent accomplishments.