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.”