Tough Girl by Carolyn Wood

Author:Carolyn Wood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sasquatch Books
Published: 2018-08-13T16:00:00+00:00

FRESHMAN

1959 to 1960

Beaverton High School had more to offer than grade school did—different teachers every period, interesting and entertaining kids from other schools, and a swim team loaded with talent and a friendly coach, Rod Harman, who made workouts fun for everyone. The first weeks swirled with new students, pep assemblies, and homework. We had long lists of vocabulary words to learn for Mrs. Ward’s biology quizzes, book notes for novels in Mrs. Zeller’s English 1C. Spanish wasn’t as hard as I’d feared, and it was actually kind of fun practicing ridiculous role-plays. Algebra made absolutely no sense, so I joked my way through each day by making fun of the geeky teacher. The young and beautiful PE teacher, Mrs. Malcolm, came from back east and wore shirtwaist dresses with unrolled bobby socks over her nylons, a look I recognized from the Philadelphia girls at the trials. Nobody in Portland wore socks anymore, but I started wearing them with some of my pleated skirts.

Our first novel in English was Great Expectations. I loved the title. In the afternoons waiting for swim practice, I’d spread out my notebook and the novel. At first I had no idea what was going on with Pip and Mrs. Joe and Joe Gargery, but I could feel the cold, damp air rising off the dark water and see the ferocious guy who came after Pip. Reading that book transported me the way The Secret Garden had years before. In class, we all hated Estella and couldn’t stop talking about Miss Havisham. Sheila Herman, who wasn’t as threatening as she had been in seventh grade, shared a locker with me. After class we’d walk the long halls and replay scenes from the novel or list details described in Miss Havisham’s room.

I wanted to impress my English teacher, but I wanted to dazzle Mrs. Malcolm. In the late fall, we had a swimming unit in PE. Kids who didn’t know how to swim got lessons. The rest of us swam laps or learned new strokes or lifesaving techniques. It seemed a waste of time to walk over to the pool, dress down, swim for thirty minutes, and then get ready for the next class, especially when I was going to be training after school for another two hours. Mrs. Malcolm, when she demonstrated the breaststroke for the beginners, had a scissor kick, and for the final she told us to swim crawl breathing every stroke. I was not going to breathe every stroke. It was wrong technique. Mrs. Malcolm obviously didn’t know much about swimming. She walked along the deck with her clipboard, then whistled to get our attention. Again she insisted that we turn our heads to breathe every stroke so she could verify that we were breathing.

That seemed ridiculous, and I would not do it. Instead, I held my breath for the whole lap. When the nine-week grades arrived, I had an A in every subject except PE: C!

I couldn’t believe it. She gave me a C because of swimming.

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