Life Sort of Imitates Art

While I was getting my picture taken in the group for National Seersucker Day (below), I was also waiting to have my picture taken for Blue and Silver Day, the school colors.  That one attracted a lot more people.  I was standing with another professor who is a biologist with a Ph.D. from Oxford.  She's delightful.  She laughingly asked, "Where are the cheerleaders?"  Now that we have sports at our college, we also have cheerleaders, and she is fascinated by them "in their little skirts and with their bows."  We talked about how this was a new cultural thing for her.

Ironically, even as I said that, I remembered that I wrote a novel about a professor from Cambridge who had her first experience with an American football game.  I have posted it below, hoping to get some book buzz.  This is from Cross Road. 

Celia seemed willing, at least for now, to accompany him on weekend dates and excursions, but not to make a point to see him on campus. That was probably for the best, he knew.  Although none of his attraction had diminished, and although he treasured every moment in her company, he recognized there were many obstacles to their union.

Not the least of which was her thorough un-Americanness.  The language was the same, but not; it was the same song but in a different arrangement.  She didn’t know any pop culture references, from any decade; she barely knew where anything in the North American hemisphere was located; American politics were a mystery.  But he was equally ignorant about Europe and Africa. 

They did attend a high school football game, where the team from Emily’s private school was thoroughly humiliated by their public school opposition in the last game of the season.  This was also the first time Emily met Celia, but Jeff knew better than to expect his social butterfly daughter to sit with them when dozens of classmates were flirting, gossiping, visiting, and even occasionally watching the game.

They picked Celia up and took her out for burgers before the game.  It was by now early November, and dark by 6:00.  Emily was only a little reticent with Celia; halfway through the sandwiches she had told Celia her life story—well, the last few years of it—and more details than Jeff was comfortable with.  About her Iowa grandmothers and how they were different, about their summer in Venezuela, the names of the cute boys—Jared was now medieval, if not ancient, history—at her school and their relatives merits compared to the boys at the school she had attended in Ohio.  Celia responded with nods and a smile that translated to Jeff as mild amusement at this talkative thirteen-year-old.

Once at the game, Emily politely asked if she could disappear, and Jeff decided she’d done enough damage for one evening.

“Sorry,” he said to Celia as Emily climbed down the bleachers.  “She’s a talker.”

“Why should you apologize for her?  She’s delightful.  That’s what healthy thirteen-year-old girls do, isn’t it?”

“Then Emily is surely healthy.”

“Nonsense.  Would you rather she were one of those sullen types dressed in black they show on the television?”

“No, no, not at all.  She’s, well—oh, wait, we have to stand up here.”

The crowd was rising to its feet at the command of the loudspeaker to sing the national anthem.  Jeff joined in, unconsciously.  After the big, off-key ending and the applause, the announcer began to introduce the starting lineup for Heritage School and Roanoke County High.

“All right.  You’re going to have to start explaining this event to me, Jeffrey.  What was that song?”

“Oh, that.  For some reason, it’s played at the beginning of all sporting events.”

“But what is it about?”

“A battle in the War of 1812.”

“Oh—bombs, rockets, I see.  But why—“

He looked at her and shrugged.  “I have no idea why that song.  It’s patriotic, and one thing you’re going to find out here—Americans, especially in this part of the country—are desperately patriotic.  To a fault.  Any chance they get to wave the flag, they do.”

She remembered how he had said he used to abstain from even voting and noticed that he said “they,” not “we.”

“’They?’  Don’t you include yourself in that number?”

“More now than I used to.  Going to Venezuela for the summer cured me of my cynicism.  Landing on American soil was like taking a step over a huge divide.  There’s no place like the U.S., even though it’s corny sometimes about the flag-waving.”

“Corny?”

“Uh, sentimental.”

“Yes, that’s true.  I’ve seen that.”

They turned their attention to the players on the field.  The players were lining up for the kick-off.

“Oh, my, they wear a lot of equipment.”

“They have to.  It’s very rough.”

“It is?”

“Oh, yes.  Oh, you’re thinking it’s like soccer.”

“Soccer.  That’s what you Americans call football here.”

“This may look more like a free-for-all to you.”

The play started.  Heritage elected to receive, and County High kicked it high and far, to the ten-year line, where a Heritage player caught it and ran fifteen more yards until he ended up beneath six of County’s defenders.  Jeff applauded.  “That was a good play.”

 Celia sat open-mouthed.  “Good heavens.  That was extremely rough.  He was literally attacked by the player in blue and gold.  How do they avoid getting terribly hurt?”

“They don’t always.  Some get injured every game.”

“So why would anyone want to play?”

“It’s a big macho thing.”

“Macho?”

“You know, tough guys.  Physical.  Football is like war.  The language has lots of military terms.”

“Did you ever play this?”

“No, I was too skinny when I was a kid, and to be honest, I wasn’t into the macho thing.  I ran track—minimum of bruises and broken skulls.”

They watched a few plays.  Heritage failed to get another first down, and it seemed from Celia’s perspective that this odd game was more fits and starts than real action.  Every one would line up against each other, a player in the center would push the ball between his knees to another lad, who would jog around a bit, and try to throw it to some one ahead of him.  The thrower either was mauled or the throw didn’t get caught, or the one catching the ball—which wasn’t even spherical—would get knocked down.

A line of young girls in matching outfits with short skirts would jump up and down and yell, but the oddest aspect of it all was that the crowd seemed only half aware of the action—what little there was of it—on the field.

“What are those young women doing?”

“Those are the cheerleaders.  They’ll do some stunts later, I think.”

The girls were very exuberant.  Perhaps they were supposed to lead the crowd in being cheerful.  They surely were.  Finally, the team in red and white—the team that Jeffrey supported, she concluded—kicked the ball to the other team way down the field.  This time, the young man who caught the ball quite agilely jumped over and dodged his attackers and ran to the end of the field, where he was greeted by a teammate.  The people seated around her, including Jeffrey, were groaning, but the people across the field were rejoicing.

“I suppose that was a bad thing for Emily’s team?”

“Oh, yes.  They couldn’t stop him.  He’s quite a receiver for his age and size.”

“So, did he make a point for his team?

“Actually, they get six points, and now they will try to get an extra point by kicking it through the goalposts.”

“Six points?  Why so many?”

“Because a touchdown is hard to get, it’s like invading enemy territory and taking a city in war, so there’s more points.”

The ball, when kicked, did go through the two raised poles, and the fans on the opposite side yelled again.  “This doesn’t look good for Heritage.  Five minutes and already behind by seven.”

“I thought you said a touchdown was hard to get?  It didn’t seem too hard for that player.”

He laughed.  “No, it didn’t.  Theoretically, it’s hard.  For Heritage, it’s hard.”

The only sport Celia knew or understood was real football, which was played as fanatically by the Africans as the Europeans.  Its action never stopped, and a goal was very hard to score and still only yielded one point, and while the players did get hurt, it wasn’t the point of the game.  These players seemed to relish the piling on top of a smaller, running player.  But she sat back and looked around, trying to take in the strange sounds and accents and smells of this vast country. 

Americans, although most of the ones she saw were white, and may have had some ancestry in Scotland or England, as she was told, didn’t look like the people back home in the UK.  They were darker, heavier, with wider faces.  They smiled more.  They touched more than the people in England, but less than Africans, her Hutus and Tutsis.  Ah, those lovely people.  And now so many of them were dead.  Most of the students in the training school and seminary.  Most of the villagers where she helped with the medical mission.  Most—no, almost all--of the children who played around Gikongoro.

And most of the world would never think of them as lovely, but only as barbaric killers and their victims, if the rest of the world ever stopped to think at all.  How many people had she run into even at the university, who knew nothing about Rwanda, even asked if it was in Africa.  And why wouldn’t the world think that?  It made no sense, how even some professed believers had been caught up in the evil, although she didn’t know how a true follower of the teachings of Christ would succumb to the madness she saw that last day, those few hours before the helicopter came to whisk her and the others away.

The crowd was yelling and jolted her back to where she was.  Jeffrey was standing, applauding.  She looked around.  Where was she?  In her mind a second ago, she was in Gikongoro.  It was so real, and it happened so fast—she could be back there before she knew what was happening. 

Her heart was racing.  This man, his name is Jeffrey.  We are at a sporting event.  She had to talk to herself and regulate her breathing.  He’s a teacher, a professor with me.  I’m in the United States.  She had to stop the dizziness before it overwhelmed her.  She couldn’t have a panic attack here, in front of all these people, not with a date.  I’ll be all right.  You’ll be all right, Celia.  She breathed as slowly as she could, she focused on one of the—what did he call them, cheering leaders?  She was a tiny girl; she couldn’t be five feet tall, with those metal straps all the children wore on their teeth. The girl was awaiting a cue from the director of the cheerers, perhaps.  The girl’s shoulder length hair was pulled back and held by a red ribbon.  Her red and white outfit was spotless.   The youngster seemed bored, but she also seemed totally sure of who she was and what she was doing, that amazing way some teenagers have of looking totally secure and oblivious of insecurity.  “I used to be like that.  I can be like that again.  I can be like that now.”

“Celia, did you see that?  It was a two-point conversion.  I haven’t seen that in a while.”

She turned her head quickly to him, but said nothing.  The confused look on her face startled Jeff.

“Celia, are you all right?”

She only nodded, barely perceptible.

“Are you sure?”  He reached for her hand.

“Yes, I’ll be fine.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Ah, no, just, long week, I’m fatigued.”

“If you like, I can take you home.  This is probably enough culture shock for one evening.  And Heritage is greeting creamed.”

She took that to mean they were not scoring touchdowns.  “Is there an intermission?”

“Uh, yes, half-time.”

“Let’s stay until that, and I’ll see how I feel.”

“Do you want me to get you a drink, a soda?”

Americans loved those carbonated beverages, but they were so sweet.  Besides, she didn’t want to be left alone.  “No, to be honest, I’d rather you stay with me.”

“All right.”  Perhaps, he thought, he should pay more attention to his companion than the game.  It was an embarrassment for Heritage, anyway.  But what went wrong with Celia?  Maybe she was just tired.  It was hard to know what was going on in her head, but her face looked like she was panicking.

Celia could feel her heart slowing.  It was good Jeffrey spoke to her at just that moment.  She really did feel as if she would faint.  She’d have to renew her prescription for the anti-anxiety pills.  She hated them, but the alternative was the rash of memories that smothered her and made her forget where she was, with whom, even her own name at times.  She’d tried not to use the pills in the last two weeks, but now was not the time to experiment on herself.   Yes, she’d ring the chemist in the morning.

The seat was hard, so she decided to follow the lead of those surrounding her and stand up, even if she didn’t know why.  She didn’t want to judge something—or a person—prematurely, but if Jeffrey really enjoyed these so-called football games and expected her to attend them, that might be a problem.  Perhaps it was just an avenue for meeting his daughter and acclimating herself to the U.S., something she had asked him to do.

His daughter was remarkably cheerful and extroverted for a child whose mother had died when she was six or seven and in such a violent way.  No, Celia, stay away from violence.  That was rather hard to do, when these athletes looked like violence was more the goal than running with the ball that didn’t look like a ball.  At any rate, Emily was an enigma to her, as was Emily’s father.  What did he want?  A friend?  More?  Don’t be foolish, Celia.  You know what he wants.  He wants to marry you.  She may as well say it; it was abundantly clear.

So what do you want?  You want to be back in Africa, two years ago.  To know and to warn everyone what was coming and to tell them before it was too late.  The only thing you want is for the massacre not to have happened.

How could this man be serious about marriage?  Well, of course, he could be serious about it.  He’s probably dreadfully lonely, away from his family, and his son, too, trying to raise his daughter.  He’s trying to find his way, too.  No, the question is, how could he be serious about marriage to me?  He has no idea what a package of—of what?  Madness?  No, of grief and fear and uncertainty I am.  How I don’t turn off the lights when I sleep, and how I keep music playing, and how I must take pills to sleep, and how I drink half a bottle of wine every evening.   He’d be scandalized.

I should break this off now, tonight.  Well, not with his daughter with us.  But soon.

Yet there was something to be said for not succumbing to loneliness.

They were on their feet; again a pile of bodies was trying to extricate themselves from their opponents.  Are we supposed to give a standing ovation every time that happens? She thought.

“Heritage stopped County from getting a first down.”

“I see.”  She didn’t.

The game dragged on.  Finally, a buzzer sounded.  The score was 21 to 0, in favor of the opponent.

“Now what happens?”

“It’s half time, and there’s a show.  Do you want to leave?”

“A show?”

“Yes, a marching band does a routine.”

“A band, that marches?”

“Yes.”  He held back a laugh at her innocent lack of comprehension.

“We have to stay and watch that.”

“Are you sure?”  He looked disappointed to her.

“What’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing.  It’s just that, if the Star Spangled Banner was corny, you’re really in for corny now.”

“What is the etymology of ‘corny,’ by the way?”

He laughed out loud this time.  “Let me see.  Probably farmers, country people.  Unsophisticated.  They grow corn.  Where I come from they grow lots of it.”

“Nevertheless, I’d like to see a band that marches when it plays.  They don’t run into each other and knock each other down, do they?”

“No, let’s hope not.”

“Good.  I think I’ve seen enough of that.”