Girl Runner (26 page)

“You will be fit to begin running again, soon,” my mother says.

My whole body shudders, turns in on itself. “I don’t want to,” I say, weeping helplessly. The weeping seems connected to the general leakiness of my state, the discharge, the rich brown droplets of early milk, the tears, even a strange perspiration that soaks the sheets at night. Seepage. Cleansing.

I do not recognize myself: Where is my trusted toughness, my innate daring, my willingness to suffer? Have I birthed a new self, vulnerable, tremulous, fickle?

“You’ll want to, in time. It’s too soon,” says my mother.

“What if I don’t? What if I never want to, ever again?” It seems possible, just then. Possible that I have turned into someone unrecognizable, that I’ve crossed into an unknown mirror landscape where nothing makes sense, and from which I cannot return. Weak body, collapsing mind, empty arms, leaking breasts, loose skin, muscles as sore as if I’ve run a long race; but I haven’t. I have nothing to show for this. Nothing.

“Aggie. You will have another child, someday, other children.”

I fall back against the pillows with tears leaking wildly, tea sloshing over the quilt. I do not know until she says it that this is what I need to hear. My mother lifts the cup from my hands, sits beside me on the bed, strokes my face. She blesses me with her promise, even if her prophecy will prove untrue. She trusts in the possibility. She trusts in me.

What has my father to say?

He is silent, and I do not see him. He does not come to my room, nor do I expect him to, nor want him to. It is almost as if he refuses to know what is happening, what has happened, in his own house. His dead wires tunnel the walls, binding the rooms together, but they don’t come this far.

What has Cora to say?

She interrupts without knocking.

“Aggie should rest,” she says with a frown, as if my mother is a naughty child caught misbehaving. Cora does not ask permission, or explain, just comes at me and digs into the same place, between the hip bones, where my mother has kneaded. Cora’s touch is dark, piercing. I can feel her judgement.

“Stop.” Mother pulls Cora’s hands away, roughly. A cry hangs in the air. Mine.

“It’s going down nicely,” says Cora, looking down on me, her hands loose at her sides, as if she has not just hurt me unnecessarily. Sisters. The things we take. The things we give. The ways in which we are nothing like each other.

Her disgust, hiding in plain view, decides me. I will tell Johnny that the baby died. It doesn’t occur to me that I’ll never get the chance to tell him anything—I’m still comforting myself with the impossible, imagining now that this is over, we can start at the beginning, as if nothing has happened. He needs to know nothing of this—for him, it can be as if nothing has happened. That is the gift of the Granny Room. I feel my heart empty out, clear of bitterness.

I say, “I’m thirsty,” and Mother brings me a fresh cup of cooling tea.

“Thank you.” I lift the cup and drink steadily, a tonic, a comfort. If I turn my head just so, away from them both, into the light, blinding myself, if I do not glance over at the mirror, I can make myself believe that I too can go on as if nothing has happened.

And so I have done until now. Now, will I try to tell them—my granddaughter, my great-grandchildren? What am I to do?

I GO TO SEE HER ONCE,
the girl.

I walk across the fields on a visit home, the next summer.

I slip away from the house. It is easy not to tell anyone where I am going—perhaps I don’t even tell myself. The corn is taller than I am and I follow the rows like a child, pretending that I’m exploring, until I come to Edith’s yard and there is the girl sitting fat and content, as far as I can tell, on a quilted blanket in the sunshine. She hears me cry out the name I would have given her:
Fannie.
She hears me and sees me. She pushes herself upright and toddles toward me on her rounded baby feet—has she recognized me? Does she trust me, know me for who I am? I feel sure I am doing some terrible wrong—or might do something even worse—and in my fear I back away, whispering “No. Don’t come near.” As if I am composed of something toxic.

And then Edith comes from around the side of her house with a clothes basket pinned on her hip, her expression pinched and clouded, and I cry, “Edith, am I never to see her, then, never?”

I regret the outburst. I try to apologize, but Edith snatches up the child and covers her with the quilt, as if she too believes the sight of me might harm the girl, and she runs with her into the house.

I can’t leave, not knowing what to do, tearing my hair, turning in circles, until Carson comes and finds me and walks me home. We walk along the road, not through the corn. He guides me with his hands on my upper arms, a kind touch, a warmth that I imagine drew my sister Fannie. I’m weak enough to be grateful.

Carson doesn’t accompany me up the lane. He says that the baby girl—Frances, they’ve named her—is a good baby and happy, and Edith too. Edith is happy too. He and Edith, they are both happy, together. He thanks me.

I am glad of that. It means something. Not enough, maybe, but something.

And then he says, “Leave us be, won’t you?”

He sees my expression, gutted and raw.

“It will be easier for all of us. There’ve been rumours—I’m not accusing you, I’m just saying. It only upsets Edith.”

I draw myself up, straighten my spine. “I understand,” I say with difficulty. I see, in a way, that Cora has been right—that talk and trouble comes from a gift like this, so close to home, so close to the bone—and I want to prove her wrong.

I take Edith’s daughter’s name, and shout it away across a chasm I’ll never cross—Frances, Frances, Frances—and I hear only now, from the boy’s lips, its echoing refrain.
Fannie.
Is it a gift for me, from Edith, in return for mine? I receive it as if it were.

THEY WANT THE LAND.

I suppose it is mine to give, lawyers be damned, as much as the land is anyone’s to give.

My great-grandfather Robert Smart bought this section from a Mr. MacDoughall, a Scots entrepreneur who purchased plots from the Indians, who had been titled the land by the British government for help in the War of 1812, and therefore I suppose it is mine, now, as the closest surviving direct descendent of my great-grandfather, but I suppose, also, that it is no more mine than it has ever been any of ours, who claimed ownership all the way along.

The young ones want to sell it so that strangers can haul in earthmovers and tear and raze and plot and erect. The idea does not upset me.

I see that houses and barns and gardens and fences, even the trees, are as transient as we. The pavement, the concrete, the very foundations, even the most massive of inventions and corruptions cannot last, nor hold. I see the contours of the land slowly shifting, rising, falling, turning up new stones each spring. I see the wildflowers that belong returning.

I could give this all to you. I would like nothing more, for what it’s worth.

The girl is breathless with relief, and her hands are cold. “Mom, did you hear?”

“It is yours, by rights,” I tell them, but do not add,
because you are mine.
Do with it as you wish, children of the line of Edith.

Look at the girl leap and whoop and grab me and rock me and almost pull me down, staggering. I can’t understand how she’s so small when I was so tall.

“She was always like this—bigger than she looked,” says the girl’s mother, proudly. “Threw herself out of her crib before she could land on her feet. Walked before she could crawl. Never afraid to fall.”

The glass lens of the camera catches the sun and throws its light into my eyes. I say, as clearly as I can, that I wish to give my property to this family, my only known living relatives, directly descended from my sister Edith. The glare from the lens is all I can see, and then it moves off, and I see again the woods, and the mud, and the lowering sky. I’m glad to be here, and a bit surprised, it must be said.

“Is that it? Have we got it?”

I say, more quietly: a promise is a promise. Maybe what the woman claims is true—that Edith was a great gardener, while I—I must have been born to run. I gave what I had.

I take a step away, and another. Drawing apart.

It makes sense to see Fannie here, beckoning me. It makes sense that she would be walking the field and quietly making for the woods. It makes sense that I am to follow. There is a crack in everything. I don’t know that I can run that far. I don’t know that I can run at all, but it seems that I am. I am running. Fannie calls me, ever ahead. She knows me as I was, as the girl I will always be.

She’s kept her watch. She knows.

Fannie has reached the woods. I am catching up to her. The trees loom up before me and cut off the fast-slipping sun with their cool stand, their long shadows, their pale flowering undergrowth. Fannie pauses, just ahead, her hair thrown out around her head as she turns.

She turns. Her face is full and kind.

She waits.

I’m coming.

AGANETHA SMART IS
a fictional character whom I’ve imagined into the 1928 Amsterdam Olympic Games, the first at which women were allowed to compete in select track and field events. I was inspired by real athletes who participated in the Games, specifically “The Matchless Six,” as Canada’s female track and field team came to be known. The six women performed above expectation and returned home to great celebratory fanfare, having earned medals in a number of events, including gold in the 4 x 100-metre relay and the high jump.

Contrary to my story line, it was not a Canadian woman who won the inaugural 800-metre event: that honour went to Karoline Radke-Batschauer, of Germany, with silver to Kinue Hitomi, of Japan, and bronze to Inga Gentzel of Sweden. Canadian runners Jean (or Jenny) Thompson and Bobbie Rosenfeld placed fourth and fifth, respectively, in the final, a race that instantly became subject to controversy. This was the slice of history I chose to explore in the book.

It was reported in some contemporary news sources that at least half of the 800-metre finalists collapsed or failed to finish the race, a story whose accuracy was only recently called into question. There is no doubt that the pace of the race was gruelling—the winner broke the world record by several seconds—and it is possible that the athletes showed fatigue, as athletes do, at the finish line of a hard-fought race. But as noted in an article published in 2012 in the magazine
Runner’s World
, film evidence exists that shows the entire field finishing the race, and only one woman stumbles and falls at the line before recovering her footing within seconds. (That woman appears to have been Bobbie Rosenfeld, one of Canada’s greatest all-around athletes, in whose name an award is given annually to Canada’s top female athlete; hardly a weak specimen.) In my own research, I came across at least three differing and contradictory versions of the race, and find it impossible to declare with any degree of certainty how it unfolded. What is not in question was the fallout: a committee was immediately struck and women were banned from racing distances farther than 200 metres in future Olympic Games.

It wasn’t until the 1960 Games in Rome that women were again allowed to compete at the 800-metre distance.

Lest one imagine discrimination is gone from distance running today, in 2011, the IAAF (track and field’s world governing body) ruled that official records could only be set, by women, in women-only races. This is to prevent women from being paced by faster male athletes. How men are to be prevented from being paced by faster male athletes is left unaddressed by the IAAF. The ruling would nullify records formerly set in mixed-gender races. Presumably the women who set records in those races ran on their own legs, not riding on the men’s backs, but perhaps I lack a nuanced understanding of the issue. And perhaps one can see from that last sentence why I chose to write about the subject in fictional form; when I consider these issues in any other way, steam comes out of my ears. And steam coming out of one’s ears makes for an argument undercut by its own stridency.

Hence, Aganetha, girl runner, for all girl runners, now and then.

There is one character in the book who is based on a real person. Miss Alexandrine Gibb was as I portray her to be: a former athlete who became a driving force for Canadian women in sport, and served as team manager to the Canadian women’s team in 1928, while also writing about women in sport for the
Toronto Daily Star.
When researching this book, I began quite by accident with her columns covering that summer’s Games. Alex Gibb’s independence, vision, wit, and force of personality seemed integral to the story of the 1928 Games, and I chose to write her into Aganetha’s story in what I hope is a tribute to the women and men who work supportively behind the scenes, in administrative capacities, to spark changes so that others may shine.

As I was finishing revisions on the manuscript, history was made. On October 20, 2013, the Canadian women’s record for the marathon, which stood for twenty-eight years, was finally surpassed by Lanni Marchant of London, Ontario, and, in the same race, 32 seconds later, by Krista DuChene of Brantford, Ontario. I think Aggie would be pleased.

Carrie Snyder

October 2013

THIS BOOK WAS
a pure pleasure to write. I think Aganetha must have been there waiting to be found, because she seems as real to me as if I’d transcribed her voice rather than invented it.

As always, there are many people to thank for the existence of this book. I thank my agent, Hilary McMahon, for her dedication and energy. I thank my editors: Janice Zawerbny of Anansi for her thoughtful initial reading and Claire Wachtel of HarperCollins for respectfully pushing me to dig for clarity. I thank everyone (publishers, editors, designers) involved in turning the manuscript into a finished book, a magical art that I will never tire of witnessing. I thank Lisa Highton, and all of the publishers who’ve signed on to bring this Canadian story to a wider audience.

Thank you, friends and family, for your unflagging support, and for spontaneous celebrations when the moment calls for it. Thank you, Angus, Annabella, Flora, and Calvin, for giving me the time and space to write, and also for invading that time and space—you keep my head in the game and my feet on the ground. And thank you, Kevin, for a partnership that includes but is not limited to meals prepped and schedules juggled and optimism shared; but most of all, thank you for changing as I’ve changed.

When I started this book, I knew only that I wanted to put into words the deep joy of becoming and being a runner. My final thanks go out to all runners everywhere, whether you run in body or in spirit. May your path be your path.