GOING IN CIRCLES by PAMELA RIBON

Author:PAMELA RIBON
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DOWNTOWN PRESS
Published: 2010-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

23.

I’m having a hard time with transitions.

Yes: ha, ha, ha, that’s quite the understatement, Charlotte. But transitions mean something different in roller derby.

A transition is when you turn around and skate backward. You can’t do it like you normally would skating for fun, coasting in an arc until you’ve circled around to face the other direction. That’s dangerous, and maybe even impossible when you’re skating at high speed on the banked track. If you even managed to do anything other than spin right onto your ass, you’d definitely slam into someone in the process, or have someone roll right into you.

To execute a transition, you have to lift your foot and turn around. That means you’re skating forward, pick your foot up into the air, drop it behind you facing the other direction, and then have your other foot follow suit. Sounds simple, but it’s terrifying.

I’ve been coming here for three weeks now. I’ve probably put in a good fifteen or twenty hours on this track. Still, I can only land a transition when I’m standing still. Trash told me to pretend my body is a door. You “open the door,” or lift one leg and rotate your body toward the direction in which you want to go. For about a second you’re skating sideways, like a flattened frog. Then you lift the other foot and “close the door,” bringing the other half of your body to join the rest of you. When it’s over, you’re still skating in the same direction but you’re facing the other way. You’re going forward, facing backward. A transition.

It sounds so easy, but my brain doesn’t want this to happen to my body. Clearly it’s thinking, Why on earth would I want to turn around while I’m barreling forward?

The really good girls, the ones who know what they’re doing, their transitions look like hip-hop moves. Boom-Boom! And they’re suddenly backward, booties up in the air, wiggling their hips to pick up speed. They make it look so easy.

It’s not.

God, it’s not. I’ve fallen 6,315 times. Not that I’m counting. I feel it in my body. In my muscles, in my bones, there are little reminders that I’m not good at this. The aches and pains yell at me: Please don’t try this again! You are making a huge mistake! Falling hurts! You are thirty.

Last practice I was working on a hitting drill, partnered with a girl named Muffin Top. We were practicing hip blocks—using the better part of your ass to knock a girl aside, or even better, over. Getting knocked to the ground is tough enough, but getting up quickly over and over again is exhausting.

We’d been doing the drill for about five minutes, which in derby time means it felt like an hour and a half. Muffin Top was tired; I was wishing I could shut off my pain sensors.

That was when one of the coaches shouted from the infield, “Broken! I know you can hit harder than that! Get her!”

That’s what they call me.

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