Girl in the Arena - Lise Haines [25]
The first time Allison took me to a gladiator match I was five. Mouse, my second father, was on temporary disability from the arena then, so we made a day of it, stopping for a picnic at Walden Pond before heading over to the stadium. Mouse liked the deep water in the middle of the pond and the way people crowd near the shore to avoid it. He had a broad laugh, and was once a suspect in a big art heist but never served any time. This was, of course, before he found the Glad life.
Allison reminded him several times that day to watch his ribs. She had him taped in white adhesive from his armpits to his swim trunks to help mend the broken ribs. There was no Thad then. Allison stretched out in the sand, bits of mica clinging to her legs, lighting up her skin. Mouse was the first one who taught me there’s only minimal gain in talking. I saw the way he studied Allison’s glow in a mute way. Then we packed up and headed over to the Romulus.
I have a clear picture of the newly painted blue benches in the stadium that day, and how beautiful Allison looked with one of those thin magician’s scarves she likes to tie in her hair. She had me sit in our reserved box, where she crouched down in front of me and took my hands. Her straight skirt stretched tightly over her lap. Her nylons held her knees so they looked like small pale balloons.
—Kitten, we’re going to see some funny things today. Men being . . . a little silly.
She rubbed my knuckles with her thumbs as she spoke.
—If we see anything that makes us a little sad or upset, we just have to make a game of it.
I said I wanted to play a game. And she started over.
—The men are going to look like they’re having a big fight. Your father is a famous fighter, so this is something we’re proud of.
—He’s a gladiator, I said.
—Yes, exactly, and we know that gladiators have weapons. Like . . . axes and knives and . . .
—And clubs.
Mouse had given me a boy’s plastic club and a matching sword and shield with spikes like small nipples. I had my own bludgeon made of balsa wood. Allison didn’t approve of this kind of thing for young ladies but there weren’t many women’s leagues then—an idea she would never take to. She had been newly widowed when she met Mouse, and she was eager to make a go of things with him, so certain standards were overlooked for a time to please him.
—Yes, clubs too. Good girl. So nothing to be concerned about. And I brought your coloring book and crayons. And look, she said, reaching into her bag and pulling out my favorite stuffed animal. —I brought your dog and her pajamas if she gets tired.
Even then, I knew it was important to get to work dressing my dog Lucy, that if I didn’t Allison would keep talking and rubbing my knuckles and making me nervous. I sensed her fragility the way I knew her scent in a room she had vacated hours earlier. Allison straightened up and sat next to me on the bench and said, —If one of them loses an arm or a leg, we just say too bad or poor man.
—Poor man, I said.
—Sometimes I look at the big screens and it makes it a little less . . . real. And you know, when I cut up poultry for dinner . . . , she said, starting on a new tack.
And that’s how Allison began her lesson about making associations, about ways to detach and get through rotten experience. A man loses a hand in the arena. It hits the sand and that’s a chicken wing dropped into flour.
I don’t have any memory of seeing the fight that day. In fact, I don’t remember what it was like to see the fights before the age of nine or ten, and by that point matches were something we attended regularly, like church.
My family was heavily filmed. So Allison taught me how to look and what my face should and shouldn’t give away to the cameras, as