Run
by Maureen Sherbondy
7
The flag waves in the breeze. It’s October in New Jersey. I challenge a second-grade boy to race me around the half-circle in front of Campbell School. No one can run faster—this is my early pride I carry to school every morning, along with my notebooks and colorful pens.
We start at the flagpole. Someone yells, “Go!”
My thin legs, my wiry body, my brain come alive. If I arrive at the halfway point on the sidewalk before my challenger, then I know it’s a win
My fast-moving feet reach the flag. Kids cheer. The school bell rings. We scamper like squirrels in the autumn air.
Girls never want to race me; I don’t know why.
In homeroom, the other students obediently place a hand on their chest and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I do not. It is my small rebellion. Flag only means starting and ending point.
12
In middle school word gets out that the popular girls are forming a track team. They’ve already selected the members.
With shoulders squared, I approach the captain at recess, say, “How come I can’t be on the team?”
Her kiss-up squad members smirk and shake their heads. I slump down, deflated, but hold my ground.
This is after my parents’ divorce. For years I hide in my room with piles of books and emotional neglect. Before the divorce, I held my hands over my ears trying to block out the screams from my parents’ bedroom. There is nowhere to run away from these walls.
The refrigerator and pantry are bare. My stomach growls with constant hunger. After years of hearing my father hitting my mother’s face or punching their bedroom wall, I’ve turned quiet and sad. At school, I wear too-short hand-me-down pants from my older brothers. Meek is how other girls see me. These girls who have already developed and have confidence. Not me.
My brothers tease constantly with the refrain, “you’re flat as a board.” I cry in my room.
But when I run, I am fearless.
I look at the mean girls and their judging expressions. The captain says, “You’re not good enough to be on the team.”
The other girls laugh.
“Race me,” I say.
One of the pretty girls who will later become a cheerleader, marry a football player, and never leave this town, holds up her arms to the gray sky. She lowers them as if starting a hot-rod race and yells, “Go!”
The captain runs beside me, but not for long. I pump my arms and my legs faster and faster. My body knows motion and speed. It escapes hunger, loneliness, rejection. I become the wind, then a bullet train whizzing beyond the captain.
At the pre-determined finish line, a fence in the distance, I wait for the sweetness of the words to come. She arrives seconds later, out of breath. Bending over, hands on her hips, she softly says, “Okay, you can join the team.”
I stare at her dark eyes, shake my head, say, “I don’t want to be on your damn team.”
I walk away from the fence, from the gaggle of girls, a smile spreading on my face.
14
In ninth grade I run three miles around the track with the other high school girls. We also practice sprints. My body is changing. I’ve grown several inches since middle school. My hips widen, my arms and legs get longer. Though my body is strong, when I race fastest top girls, I’m not even close to their speed.
That’s when I discover the javelin and shotput. It’s fun to throw things. I can’t forget the blender flying across our kitchen. Did my father hurl it at my mother, or was it the other way around? Throwing the javelin is blissful, like releasing every bad thought and memory into the sky.
I still run around the track for practice, but begin weightlifting too. My unfamiliar, constantly changing body grows stronger by the week. I am no longer shy. I make friends with the other weight-team girls. They are kind and easy to talk to. In the sun beneath the blue April sky, we stand in the grassy field together. I run up to the foul line, release the long metal spear, then watch it travel across the air and land point-down in the ground. Here, I too become firmly planted. My new identity—spear-thrower, teammate.
In front of Metuchen High School, the flag blows. Those stars.
Out of habit, the pledge still doesn’t find my tongue. I have a best friend now. She asks, “Why don’t you ever say the pledge?”
Shrugging, I answer, “Freedom of choice.”
She doesn’t understand. Neither do I, really.
18
After years of empty pantries, I make up for it as a freshman at Rutgers. My financial aid allows three meals a day. This is new to me and quite shocking.
By the end of first semester, my body carries an extra 10 pounds from too much fraternity party beer, late-night pizzas, and heavy cafeteria food. My clothes are tight. Since I can’t afford a new wardrobe, once home for summer break I dust off my sneakers. Wearing my Sony Walkman, I run three miles a day. The sore muscles at night remind me of the strength my legs once held. Every day I circle my neighborhood, pounding feet against concrete over and over again. The sweat drains my body of excess from the college cafeteria. Cookies, ice cream, pasta. Eventually, my pants become looser, my hips slimmer, my belly flatter.
By the time I begin sophomore year, all my clothes fit again. A cute guy stops me in the parking lot the first week back. He says, “You look fantastic. What did you do over the summer?”
“I ran,” I say.
29
I’ve had three sons in 34 months. Too busy to exercise, I add 30 pounds to my 5’8” frame. There are stretch marks on my thighs and hips, a horizontal C-section scar across my lower belly. I bathe babies, change diapers, wipe spit-up from my clothes, cook meals, clean an entire house. Wake up and start all over again. Wheezy. Exhausted. Sweatpants and oversized shirts become my daily wardrobe.
My body is not my body. It is a milk-filling station for baby boys. I breastfeed for years. One child after the next. The feeding stations balloon three bra sizes. My arm muscles are strong from carrying babies around all day, but my leg muscles have lost their firmness. Flab appears in places I never had flab. Merely walking in my neighborhood at night feels like an alien has descended into my body and taken up residence.
32
We move to North Carolina. I join a great YMCA with a day care center. Every day I lift weights, walk on the elliptical trainer, pace around the small circular track. Small steps, I tell myself.
For five years I work on finding my body again. It hurts. Parts ache that I did not know could hurt. Neck, shoulder, ankle, butt, wrist. Eventually, power replaces pain.
37
On 9/11, a flag waves to me on the way to the gym. It’s pretty against the Carolina blue sky. A crisp day, I breathe in early autumn air. My three sons are now in elementary school. My body is firming up. The baggy sweatshirts and pants have given way to yoga pants and V-neck cotton shirts.
While exercising on the Stairmaster, I watch the television up on the wall. A plane hits the Twin Towers. I stop moving. We all stop. The machinery halts. Silence. Images of smoke and crumbling buildings. I think of death. Of the body turned to ashes.
55
My sons are adults. One moves to Singapore for a job. One lands in Charlotte, North Carolina. One relocates to California.
A pandemic begins. Gyms close. Everything shuts down. People are dying. Thousands and thousands of people are dying. They can’t breathe. As though in empathy for them, I begin wheezing badly. My inhaler provides relief for me. What about them?
I can’t sleep, but when I do, I dream of running. For months, I dream-run and wake up happy as if endorphins found me during the night.. I have not run since college.
My running dreams haunt me. The COVID-19 extra 10 has found my hips. If I don’t start running, I may never be capable of running again. Ever. My blood pressure and cholesterol are high already. What if I am unable to run at 60?
I find my sneakers and take a walk in my neighborhood. Then I run. Walk, then run. Little bursts of speed. A week of this, then longer runs. It feels familiar like an old friend. At first, my breathing is heavy, so heavy I have to turn up the volume on my pink iPod. I take breaks. Holding onto a pole, I nearly vomit. This is my body. My 55-year-old body.
It hurts terribly—knees, feet, thighs, hips. Everything hurts. I take long salt and lavender- infused baths at night. Get up. Do it again. Uphill. Downhill. Straightaways. I run until I can’t run, then I trick myself, say, “Just go as far as that stop sign.” Then I go beyond it.
Muscle remembers how to move. The pacing of the legs, the pumping of the arms, the hands gently holding invisible eggs. Forward motion. I wave to my neighbors along the way.
Sometimes I think about how terribly this country is doing. When my knees hurt, I think about football players taking a knee. About people refusing to wear a mask. About people dying daily.
Passing flag after flag and signs for Black Lives Matter, I hold up my chin and move forward. In California, where my oldest son lives, the state is burning. Yesterday, the sky turned orange there. My face is on fire with anger. I am worried about America, about every single person I know.
But I keep running, putting miles behind me. Ahead is a hill and my legs keep climbing. I am still that seven-year-old girl in front of the flag, but this time the only person I am challenging is myself.
Maureen Sherbondy’s work has appeared in Calyx, Prelude, The Oakland Review, and other journals. Her most recent poetry book is Dancing with Dali. She has also published a YA novel and 10 other poetry books. Maureen lives in Durham, North Carolina.