Here is Jimmy in 1921 with his winner’s grin, holding the tennis racket like a trophy. He snagged it from behind the umbrella stand, and with Cousin Marty’s help, tripped his younger sister Eliza on the way out. Her shin still hurts from where she banged it on the staircase, but she won’t let on. Won’t let them see her wince. No siree. She’ll get her revenge, and she grabs the camera, waits for a shot of Jimmy picking his nose and Marty, looking like he is slow; winds it forward. For now, she calls it a family photo, and the two boys pose, and try to make their stance look natural. But Eliza knows that there is nothing natural about that. The picture, pungent while developed in the dark room, still reeks of their disdain. Disdain for girls joining the league. The boys claim girls slow them down. Whenever she can get a hold of the racket, she goes to practice against a wall in the park. One afternoon, a teenage boy intercepts her ball, and moves closer, but she won’t beg. She finds an opening, maintains her grip on the racket, and outruns him.
Eliza is in her Sunday whites with patent leather shoes, dressed for church but not the racquet sports clubhouse. Marty taps her on the shoulder and leaves an ugly coal smear.
“You nincompoop,” she shouts. “Keep your filthy hands to yourself, or better yet, go wash up!”
Marty looks to Jimmy for support, but Jimmy doesn’t move; he still holds onto the racket for dear life.
Eliza zooms in on Marty’s palms, but he flips his hands at the last minute. Mom will scold her, will make her soak the dress and put it through the wringer washer. Eliza spends the next two years washing, hanging and ironing Jimmy’s tennis outfits. Red clay marks and grass are the worst, and she declares them her personal foes. Each stain deserves documentation: before and after. She gets an after-school job in a launderette; her family can’t afford the club fees for two kids.
With her savings, Eliza goes to try on canvas sneakers, a white calf length dress, and selects a hickory racket, checks its gut strings for tension, and puts it down next to an empty application form for the club. She leaves the store empty-handed, her shoulders relaxed and down, still light on her feet but she no longer needs to outrun disdain. Instead, she purchases a compact folding camera and improves her skills, until her pictures and byline appear on the cover of American Lawn Tennis; she is in a league of her own.
When Jimmy and Marty lose their match in the doubles finals, she is there at court level with her camera: she points and shoots!
***
Astrid Egger lives in Daajing Giids on Haida Gwaii, Canada. She is semi-retired from working in the mental health field and enjoys biking and hiking. Sometimes she conjures up characters and follows them through sticky situations. Her stories have appeared in Active Muse, Blink-Ink, Culture Cult Anthologies, 50 Give or Take, Sea &Ceda, Sleet and in Understorey Magazines. She is a long-term volunteer with the Haida Gwaii Arts Council.
