Chapter 1
I met Sandra Morrison when she was thirteen and expected her to stay thirteen. I knew that years passed, and that the number clicked up, fourteen, fifteen, but whenever I tried to think of how old she was, thirteen was the first number that came to mind. That was one of the many reasons I was alarmed to see her the other day in an airport looking no younger than twenty. That would have made sense, I suppose. Time must have passed for her too. Her hair was darker than it had been, and her face more angular, but she had the same golden eyes that we used to find so alarming. I was on my way to the South of Sudan for a summer volunteer job and was barely beginning my journey. She was going to London.
Seeing her planted before me as if nothing had happened made me remember the first time I saw Sandra Morrison, in another life. I met her back in high school, when I was a fencer. By fencer, I mean swords and masks and lights. Don’t make a joke about picket fencing; I’ve heard them too many times. I had been in the top twenty Junior Men’s epee when I quit. I devoted a significant portion of my life to it. I had never been quite good enough to make the US National team, which was a fact I accepted somewhere around the time I first met Sandra, but I had fenced since I was ten years old, and kept doing so out of habit. Like all idiots who pick up a foil, epee, or saber, I dreamed of making the world team as a kid. But fencing, like all things, became routine and I had let that dream fade. Sandra was fresh. And I think she could have made it to the top, had the magic not been blasted out of her career .
At thirteen, she started the sport a little late. I saw her at her first fencing competition. Her newness showed. She walked into the room with wide eyes, trailing her parental, a short, rotund woman with a bob dyed blonde and clicking acrylics like insect pincers. Sandra had already pulled up the suspenders of her fencing pants when she entered the building which was a clear sign of beginner or freak. None of the “pros” ever walked in in fencing pants. They’re hideous. They go up past the belly button and have elastic around the knees. What more do you need to look like an idiot? Oh yes, the suspenders. Hers were too big and they belonged to the class of cheap starters equipment that didn’t meet international standards.
I think Mommy did her hair that day, in two braids tight enough to hurt. That was okay, she was thirteen. Mommy still did a lot of girls’ hair back then, though my own sister hadn't let my mother touch hers since the third grade. She said that my mother didn’t know how to do it right and suffered with a tangled mess for a few months until she sorted it out herself. I only remember Sandra’s first day so well because she asked me to warm up with her which, as a sixteen-year-old boy I found disturbing on many levels. First off, I was in the middle of my own tournament. They had set up a Cadet event for no other conceivable reason but to confuse fencers. (Cadet, under 17, is not one of the "youth" categories. Those stop at fourteen, which I’m sure, makes sense to everyone) Secondly, coed warm ups weren’t usual, especially across rival studios. I told her I was waiting for my DE (DEs were direct elimination bouts, coming after the pools in competitions.) Besides three years meant something back then and I didn't want to have anything to do with her. She stared at me, clearly not knowing what I was talking about and walked away, flushed. I thought about explaining, offering to help, but was too flustered to move. I noticed later that she came in last.
Her tournament was on the Regional Youth Circuit, and didn’t make much of a difference to anyone. If a fencer does well in a youth tournament no one cares, and if he does poorly, it’s embarrassing. There's no winning. I was glad to have aged out and resented being placed back at the scene of so many unpleasant memories by some crack-headed tournament official.
The tournament was held in a gym rented from a private high school no one had ever heard of, and the air conditioning was broken. The room fit about six fencing strips, but they managed to squeeze in ten. For the non-fencers, the strip is the area where the bout takes place. On a table behind the middle of the strip there is a scoring box. Customarily, one light is red and one light is green. The scoring boxes are connected with long body-cords to the reels. (A body cord has three wires, two of which set off the red/ green light, one of which sets off the yellow light. The yellow light is the grounding light. This light shows when the fencer hits grounded metal as opposed to valid target area. In most epee tournaments, the only grounded metal on the strip is in the opponents' bell guards, the part of the sword that covers the hand.National tournaments and pretentious clubs have grounded strips as well, to make floor judging easier. Floor judging is as it sounds; the director must decide if the opponent hit their opponent or the floor. In epee fencing where the entire body is a target area, this can be difficult, and often disintegrates into a “do you think he hit you/ do you think you hit him” type discussion.) Another body cord goes through the fencer’s jacket, attaching the sword to the reel, so that when enough pressure is applied to the tip, the red or green light goes off.
They decided to cram three tournaments in there at the same time that day. They always decide to pull crap like that. Everyone was bustling about their business, and the heat and crowdedness of the room were hardly inviting to an inexperienced fencer. It would have been difficult to tell what was going on on which strip, which is probably why Sandra made the mistake of coming up to me.
My sister’s biggest fan at the time, Maya Eisenstein, was in Sandra’s pool. Maya was a leech, blonde, blue-eyed, large and sluggish. She was a groupie type. She latched on to my sister’s connections and her parents' work friends trying to suck out sympathy. She drooled after all the girls who had talent, following them, wearing her hair like them, probably licking their shoes clean when outsiders weren’t watching. She insisted on wearing make-up inside her fencing mask. When I asked her what the point was, she told me that I was a loser, suggesting that I was too immature or unsophisticated to understand. I couldn’t even understand the point of her wearing makeup outside of the mask as nothing could hide her personality, so I agreed to disagree. If Maya could beat Sandra, the girl sucked.
After the pools, I walked over to ask my lovely sister if she had the water and I overheard part of her conversation with Maya.
My sister, Annette Chang was the big fish of the tournament. Dark-haired, slim, and bored, she was looking down on the world that day because of her third place finish in a recent National tournament. The boredom made her more impressive to her competitors and more repulsive to me. Not that my sister was a creative genius. She was nothing interesting in terms of fencing. The rest of the girls weren't either; that was her secret. My mother didn't seem to understand this and let her get away with murder. I had my own share of accomplishments, but not "at such a young age." To be honest, I didn’t compete with my sister at fencing, no matter what she thought. I knew that I was a better fencer and I was content with that. She knew that she had more medals, and she was content with that. That was not the reason we clashed.
Why Annette bothered showing up to the day's event was beyond me. Maybe she wanted an easy win. I wouldn't know.
Annette never graced Maya with her undivided attention for any extended amount of time as the girl and her group of friends were about eight inches too large in radius for my sister. She found them more useful as room fillers, which better suited their physique. I suppose that day Annette felt like being fawned over.
“Oh my god, she is so easy, Annie. She walks into it or she doesn’t move.” Maya giggled. Annette didn’t reply, only smirked. I nodded to her and she nodded back.
“Where’s the water, Annette?”
“Where did Mom put it?” Too bored to move her head, Annette flicked her eyes up through her eyelashes.
“She gave it to you.” I started to look through her bag, which was full of old wrappers and t-shirts. I poked what had once been a tangerine and found that it had hardened into a smooth little disk. “You’re a girl, why is your bag so nasty?”
“You’re a jerk Spencer.” Annette rolled her eyes. Annette had been experimenting with insults since the age of eight when she told me that I was a jerkbrain for accidentally killing her lima bean sprout. Of late, she had become less creative. I’d have retaliated in some way, but Maya was laughing at the both of us from beneath her look of sympathy so I left and borrowed some from a friend, Eric Sanchez. At the time, he was the top male fencer at our studio. I had been coming up on him recently, as he had begun to slack off training. He was six feet and 16 years old. His hair was thick and black, his eyebrows legendary. We were the only two A rated fencers at the studio at the time. (There are six ratings in fencing: Unrated, E, D, C, B, and A. If you’re Unrated, you started, E or D, you’re bad, but compete in tournaments, a C, could be good could be bad, a B, you know how to fence, an A, you’re pretty damn good. Unless you’re a girl and an A, because they separate the sexes in National tournaments. A girl A might be the equivalent of a boy C.) Occasionally Eric would show up to practice hungover, but he was nice enough. I never used to talk to him, and the younger kids were afraid of him. I think they were afraid more of his results than he himself, but it’s easy to confuse the two when speaking of fencers. He had taken second at a world cup the past season. I had never made it past the top thirty-two in a World Cup. Not that I was complaining. I had been relieved to make top thirty-two and it boosted my National rating. While I was drinking, he said,
“Dude Annette has been dominating lately. We should watch her bout.” I glanced at him. As was his habit, he wore a frog beanie on top of his sweaty head. I would have asked him why, but previous attempts to fathom this mystery had failed.
“You know she fences like a girl. It’s boring.”
“Yeah, I know, but she’s hot.” It wasn’t the first time he had taken up this angle. I made a face and whacked his arm.
"She's 14." I said. Why should I be interested if he thought my sister was hot?
"Fifteen Chang. She’s fifteen. Don't you know your own fam-fam?" I shrugged. I forgot that Annette had turned fifteen a month earlier. The way the fencing year worked she could compete in Y-14 until Summer Nationals. I migrated over to wherever Sanchez pulled me. His will was stronger than mine.
Annette was busy doing something to her hair, while Sandra sat on the other end of the line. It had taken Sandra a while to get sorted out. I think she tried to plug her body cord in the wrong way for about thirty seconds, then had difficulty moving the latch to secure it. She might have been nervous, or she might have been an idiot. Eric snickered. Maya, who was also part of the cheering squad, rolled her eyes,
“She so has no idea what she’s doing.” I heard her whisper to a few fellow groupies before glancing back at Eric as if hoping to catch his attention. I snorted. As if Maya had any idea what she was doing. As for Eric she'd have to lose thirty pounds and win a few tournaments before she popped up on his radar. Oh he'd talk to her, sure. But I knew that Eric wasn’t exactly progressive so far as women were concerned.
Annette had waited until Sandra was ready to start her hair ritual. Between the two of them, they added an extra two minutes to the start of the bout. She took an artistically imperfect bun down to shake out her head and put up a new artistically imperfect bun. Smiling to the director of the bout to show us that she knew him, and receiving a “congratulations on last weekend by the way,” she held out her sword to be tested. Shim tests one spring, weight tests another, make sure they have two screws, is the wire glued down, do they have any buttons hidden on the inside of their guard, okay next fencer.
Everything ran smoothly until they had to test bell guards to make sure that the wiring was in order. When Annette hit Sandra’s guard, the buzzer went off and a red light flashed. One of Sandra’s wires was broken. Sandra stared at the box, and glanced back at her mother, confused. A coach ran up to switch out her sword as the director, pulled out a little yellow laminated piece of paper and waved it in Sandra’s face. Her expression unchanged, she stared at him, as Annette, wandered back to test guards again. It buzzed again, a second violation. Her coach was an idiot, in those cases it’s almost always the cord not the sword that has the break. Annette turned around, wearing her mask on her head like a baseball cap looking bored. Her jacket had been washed so many times I could barely read the blue stamped letters that spelled out CHANG on her back. She turned again.
Sandra stood and stared as her coach (who now had the sense to switch out her cord) fiddled with her equipment, while chattering about relaxing in a way that was sure to rattle anyone’s nerves. I glanced at Maya. She was giggling over someone’s smartphone, having lost interest in the bout. The director now pulled out a little red card, and gave Annette a penalty point. Sandra, expression frozen, walked up and tested guards again. It worked.
The first half of the bout was a stereotypical slaughter. Annette, not bothering to get into her full on guard, would lounge around as Sandra stared at her, unmoving. When she felt like it, Annette would release her lunge, accompanied by a single parry. Sandra would take the hit. Our section would erupt into cheering, though why I don’t know. We had an embarrassing number of people there. Eric and I, along with a creep named Tomazeuski, Maya and friends, and a few of Annette’s barbie - doll clique members to round it out. I wondered that none of the girls had any bouts to fence. But that wasn't my problem.
At the break, after the first three minute period, Sandra’s coach ran up, to be pushed away by another coach who I knew to be the head of Sandra’s studio. She was an Eastern European woman named Nastasya Something-no-one-could-remember. We could hear her from where we sat, and we all watched as she gesticulated and stomped her feet.
“Why are you just standing there? You like to get hit is that what it is? Have you grown roots? Move your feet, do something. Why you play live target?” I glanced at the girl’s mother. Her face looked all twisted and concerned, but I couldn’t tell if it was caused by her daughter being used as a pincushion for Nasty, or if it was the stress of watching her daughter compete. My mother, when Annette allowed her to watch, wore a similar look.
“Shit.” Eric said, guffawing.
“I mean, what’s the point?” I replied, also smirking, though I did feel something like pity for Sandra. She was losing so badly, what coach would even bother?
“She’s tearing her apart.” Eric guffawed more as the two of us nodded our heads together. I saw Maya snickering to her friends. Annette had raised an eyebrow for the audience’s benefit. As if it would make a difference, her look said.
The coaching minute was up. Sandra’s coach snatched away Sandra’s water and stormed off, her large hips swaying and eyes bulging. Sandra’s expression was constant to the point where it was starting to freak me out. Her eyes were almost yellow and her eyebrows a close cousin of black, and she gave everything the same stare.
“You think she ever blinks?” Eric asked me.
“Old Nasty probably punishes people who blink.” We snorted together, though I felt a growing uneasiness as her eyes glossed over the two of us. We sobered. Eric leaned into me after her eyes had passed.
“She looks scared to death.”
“Maybe that’s how she always looks.” I said. Eric shrugged.
They tested guards, as was customary, and went back to the bout. As soon as the start was called, Annette flesched. (When a fencer sticks out there arm and launches him or herself at the other.) Of course she scored. Nine zero.
Something clicked on in Sandra then. We saw her glance around, as if looking for Old Nasty. Whether she saw her or not, I don’t know, but either way, she was motivated to move her feet.
Her footwork was hideous and clunky. She was unused to it, that was plain, But her timing--now that was excellent for someone with such uncoordinated feet. Jerking forward, stopping and then continuing, her rhythm caught Annette off guard, and she scored a point. One to nine. We sat in silence. Annette shook her head and returned to the starting line, thinking it was a fluke until Sandra scored two more points in the exact same way. I glanced at Maya. She was whispering to her friends, but what she was saying, I had no idea. Tomazeuski began to whisper to me about how Annette should be doing this or doing that, his thick lips flapping in his pale face. “She’s holding her arm funny right now, she can’t do that she has to relax,” or “should have took the eight, not the six,” and a whole lot of irrelevant things he had read on the internet which had no application whatsoever to the bout. Tomazeuski was full of it. I told him so, and to shut his face. He then tried to bother Eric, but Eric was occupied heading the cheer squad.
“Come on Annette.” Eric shouted out. “You’re way better than her.” I begged to differ but I thought I better shut my mouth.
“Yeah she’s getting lucky. It’s all luck Annie.” Maya amazed me. She could whine and cheer at the same time.
Sandra scored a fourth point, this time executing a most improbable flesche from the starting line. Maybe that was lucky. Annette was taken aback, and took the hit full force. I smirked to myself as Maya’s eyebrows skyrocketed into her hairline. “Come on, Annie,” was the universal cry, which I half-heartedly took part in to avoid dirty looks. The bout was starting to become interesting. You see, epee fencing is a sport that has the most spectacular upsets and comebacks. This was looking like it could be a bit of both. It all depended on Annette losing her head, which would have been entertaining. I'd rather not sit next to a pissed Annette in the car ride home though.
Annette launched herself at Sandra. It was a double-touch, making the score ten-five, but Sandra’s defense was spectacular. She took a four line. If you imagine yourself facing a quartered manikin, the four defense covers the upper right quadrant of the manikin. Sandra twisted into it instinctively, and Annette skimmed her back foot. Annette sauntered back to the starting line, and stopped the bout to take off her mask and rearrange her hair. She shook her head and plopped her mask back down, taking a deep breath. Any pity or laughter I had saved up for the Morrison girl was gone. She no longer deserved it.
When the bout started again, Annette, instead of bouncing forward, took a step back, dragging her feet.
“Don’t give her something for nothing, Annie.” Annette waved Maya away. Sandra took a step forward. Annette had decided to play the waiting game. A good move on her part, but boring, and a game she played way too often. How many times had I been forced to watch Annette go into overtime and still do next to nothing? Sandra sensed that Annette was waiting for her and wavered on her end of the line.
An “Oh god no,” escaped me as I sat back in my chair. I hate women’s fencing. Call me a bigot, but most girls don’t know how to fight.
“What is it?” Eric asked.
“She’s going to run out the clock. I’m going to go.” I stood up.
“Spencer you have to support your teammates. Especially when it's your own sister.” Maya said to me, looking down at her iPhone.
“I don’t think you watching cat videos is very helpful.” She rolled her eyes and gave me the middle finger. Annette had been training her.
“Come on, Spencer, it’s almost over.” Eric knotted his fingers in my t-shirt and dragged me back. I sat down, muttering. I could do without these teammates.
Sandra tried a few weak attacks. They weren’t that bad, but all she got for them was doubles. The second coaching minute came up and Old Nasty descended.
“You dig yourself into a nice hole. At least you looked alive. She’s waiting for you so don’t be an idiot. Those last points were idiot points you are giving her.” Sandra nodded. Old Nasty left before the minute was up, but not before giving Morrison a sharp tap on the head.
Only when she stared at me did I realize that I had been staring at Sandra. I quickly looked away. Truth was, I felt bad for her again. Old Nasty and Annette and Maya were a devilish combination. But what business was it of mine? I couldn’t fix the situation.
Sandra was now afraid to do anything and time ran out, the final score being thirteen to nine. Annette saluted and shook her hand, turning her back on Morrison as their palms touched. She'd won, hadn't she? Sandra tilted her head and stared after her, before unhooking herself from the reel. She signed the sheet without looking at it and muttered a thanks to the director when he handed her her broken equipment.
“Can we leave now?” I asked.
“Yeah, let’s bounce.” Eric said. “Good job Annette.”
Annette waved to him, though she had not recovered a smile. I raised my eyebrows in a way that meant nothing. For a moment, Annette looked at me, frowning. We both knew that it had been an embarrassing win. She refused to speak to me until she won the tournament. The adulation of clingers like Maya put her in a more forgiving mood for the car ride home, though why I needed her forgiveness was beyond me.
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