A Kind of Grace (10 page)

His voice was also a painful reminder of the problems brewing at home between my parents. Daddy had started coming home drunk and arguing with Momma. His temper was getting shorter, making the atmosphere in our house unpleasant and very tense. Because the track was my refuge from the turmoil, his presence in the stands was an unwelcome intrusion.

The meets held at white schools took us to a wholly different world. Instead of cinders, we ran on soft, cushy rubber tracks.

Competing against Palatine, in a wealthy suburban Chicago school district, gave us an eye-opening look at how the other half lived. While circling the brand-new rubber track, we passed a big elementary school complex that consisted of several buildings. Beside it was the three-story, white marble high school. It had shiny, tinted windows and a three-court gymnasium. My teammates and I were awestruck. The schools were so immaculate and so big, they didn't look real. The whole complex looked like a palace compared to our squat, cramped schools and our grungy facilities.

But Mr. Fennoy wouldn't let us lament the advantages others had. He told us to exploit them for our own benefit, pointing out that the softer surfaces should shave a half-second off our sprint times and as much as a second off our 400 times.

We soundly beat Palatine that day and I was voted athlete of the meet. We got on the team bus for the ride home and sang and cheered all the way, while munching on the Hershey bars and oranges the coaches passed around to help replenish our energy.

Those bus trips were unforgettable and educational. As we rode through the Ozark Mountains in Missouri, we gawked out the windows at the sights below. We marveled at how quickly the sky changed from sparkling blue to white to gray as the bus collided with rainstorms, then turned back to brilliant blue as we moved farther down the highway. On a trip to Miami for an AAU meet, we walked along the shore in shorts and T-shirts and frolicked on the beach, collecting seashells and screaming as the waves sent seawater rushing up our legs. It was the first time any of us had ever been that close to the ocean. The palm trees were like nothing we'd ever seen. The sight of them at night, the long tapered fronds silhouetted against Miami's neon lights, dazzled all of us.

On one of those trips, we decided to give ourselves nicknames. Someone suggested Jazzy Jackie for me; but I didn't think it fit my personality. I picked Joker because I loved playing practical jokes on people. Nothing mean or painful. Just silly, harmless fun to keep the mood light and make people laugh. Like the time I told my teammates that one of our best sprinters had broken her leg. They gasped and cried “No!” I started laughing and said, “Just joking!”

Devlin Stamps, whose mother came along as our chaperone, got her nickname on that trip to Miami. She realized she'd left her shoes in the hotel as we were about to board our bus one morning. She was in such a hurry to retrieve them that she ran into a plate glass window. She cut her leg, but wasn't seriously hurt, thank goodness. To commemorate the disaster, we called her Freda Payne—as in window and ouch.

All of the running and pounding eventually took a toll on my legs. I ran almost every afternoon in fifth and sixth grade and competed in the hurdles, the 400 meters, sprint relays, long jump and pentathlon on summer weekends. In junior high and high school, I ran and practiced six days a week, year-round, first for volleyball from August to November, then basketball from November to March, followed by track from spring to summer's end. The cycle began again each fall.

The first few times I felt stinging sensations up the front of my leg, I just ran through them. Eventually, the pain in my shins became a dull ache every time my foot hit the ground. I had been able to bear it in junior high, but my first season at Lincoln High had worn me down. I played a full season in volleyball, then the basketball team went all the way to the sectional finals. By the time I got to the spring track season the shin splints were so severe, I was, at the ripe old age of sixteen, perilously close to having stress fractures, according to Dr. Stan London, the St. Louis Cardinals team physician who examined my legs.

When he heard the diagnosis, Mr. Fennoy shook his head and apologized. “You haven't had a day off since the fifth grade, have you?” From that moment on, he said, I would take two weeks off between seasons.

That was fine for next season. The problem was what to do about the remaining weeks in this track season. The team needed my contribution in the mile relay, the 400 and the long jump to qualify for the state championship meet. The doctor showed Mr. Fennoy how to wrap the leg to minimize further damage.

Heading into the sectionals—the qualifying meet for state—the situation was bleak. At practice I was sluggish in the 440, running it in 60 seconds. That would never do. We figured the time to beat at state would be nearly three seconds faster. I was inconsistent on the long jump. One minute I looked like the best in the nation. The next, I looked like a novice. I told Mr. Fennoy I could bear the pain; but I was discouraged by my performance in practice. “Just stay confident,” he said. “Everything else will fall into place.”

He consulted with Mr. Ward about my long-jump troubles. Mr. Ward came to the track the next afternoon with a stopwatch and helped me settle into a consistent groove down the runway. He clocked me as I ran down, planted and jumped. As I stood beside him panting after a couple of attempts, with my hands on my hips, he talked me through the run and pinpointed the spot where I needed to accelerate before planting my foot and leaping. I nodded after each instruction. Thirty minutes and a few jumps later, I had the rhythm down and my confidence up.

At sectionals, we performed well enough to qualify for state. During the weeks leading up to the state meet in late May, I stayed off my legs completely, the only stress coming when I gingerly hobbled up and down the two flights of stairs at school.

At the state championships, the Lincoln Tigerettes went about their routine as if it were just another meet. We set up our camp on the infield or in the parking lot just outside the stadium gates. Before the competition began, we all gathered and joined hands with our coaches and prayed. Then we organized our equipment and supplies: shoes, warmup clothes, water bottles, ice, pillows and blankets. Other athletes roamed around, laughing and talking and cutting up with friends. But the Tigerettes always stayed together at our camp—a mass of orange and black. Staying together allowed us to support and encourage each other and helped us stay focused. Meanwhile, Mr. Fennoy nervously roamed between our camp, the coaches section and the track, watching the races, yelling out encouragement as we ran past him, and staying abreast of the team standings.

The track at Eastern Illinois University, the site of the state championship meet, was made of Tartan, a synthetic material softer and squishier than rubber. When I burst out of the blocks, I felt as if I was running on feathers! I finished second in the long jump, with a leap of 19′ 2¾″, which pleased Mr. Fennoy and me. My leg felt fine. I ran the first leg of the 880-yard medley, equivalent to the 800-meter relay, and our team placed second. Then I anchored the mile relay and finished in a dead heat with the girl from Eastside. We both set a state record, with a time of 3 minutes, 55.27 seconds. By the 440-yard dash, my shins were screaming. But I fought through the pain, hitting the tape first, in 56.75 seconds. It was my fastest time ever. When the times were announced, Mr. Fennoy looked at me in amazement and embraced me. We won the meet with a total of 37 points, the most ever accumulated by a team in a state girls' meet. We were 1978 state champs, the first girls' sports title for Lincoln High. We held on to the track championship for the next two years.

I rested my legs for the next few months. To help the shins heal and to stay in condition, I ran in the pool at Lincoln Park. The AAU Junior Olympics were coming up in August and I desperately wanted to compete for another pentathlon gold medal, this time in the fifteen to sixteen age group.

Because of the injury, I had to miss the regional qualifying meet, which on first impression appeared to disqualify me from further competition. I was crushed. But Mr. Fennoy found a loophole in the rules permitting the automatic entry of the defending champion. My legs healed and I came back from Lawrence, Kansas, with my second Junior Olympic pentathlon gold medal and another age group scoring record, 3,817 points. In Bozeman, Montana, the next year, 1979, I improved to 3,953 points. I won again at the 1980 games in Porterville, California, with 4,129 total points. I also won the long jump in Santa Clara with a leap of 21′ ¾″.

The more awards I collected, the more pressure was put on Al to join the track team. My father came home one night, picked up a newspaper article about one of my track victories and said, loud enough for all of us to hear, “I thought my son would be the one bringing trophies into the house, but I guess my daughter will be the one upholding the family name in track and field.”

Everyone told Al he was the spitting image of Daddy as a teenager and probably a natural athlete, just as Daddy had been. Al was over six feet tall, broad at the shoulders, narrow at the waist, with skinny legs. He weighed about 150 pounds, almost none of it fat. Mr. Fennoy told him repeatedly that his build made him ideal for the sport. All he needed to do was train to build up his strength and speed.

But Al had other ideas. Like me, he dreamed of athletic success. And just like mine, his dreams were fueled by watching the Olympics. But unlike mine, they didn't involve running on the track or jumping on the field. He was a great swimmer and passed the lifeguard exam on the first try, when he was fifteen. He idolized Mark Spitz, who won seven swimming gold medals in 1972. But when he watched Phil Boggs win the springboard diving competition in 1976, his fancy turned to that sport. He thought he could learn to dive and walk on to Indiana's team after graduating from Lincoln in 1978. But the pool at the park wasn't Olympic-sized and it had neither a 3-meter springboard nor a platform on which Al could practice. Also, Al didn't have a Mr. Fennoy to help him develop and train properly.

I didn't have much sympathy for him, though. Another reason Al resisted track was that he knew it was hard work and he was lazy. And he was obnoxious about it. He'd never spent a second on the track working out. Yet, one summer day in 1976, after I'd done well at a meet, he and some of his school friends came by our house and started speculating about whether he could beat me in a race. Al was sixteen, about to enter his junior year; I was fourteen, a rising freshman.

“Yeah, she think she's bad but I can beat her easy,” Al crowed.

“Bet you can't,” one of his friends said, taunting him.

“I'll race her right now and show you!” Al said, standing up and sticking out his chest.

I ignored them and continued talking to my girlfriends. I wasn't going to dignify any of it with a comment.

“Come on, Jackie, let's race now and settle this,” Al demanded, beckoning me to the street.

I was so sick of hearing him boast that I agreed—just to shut him up. “Okay, let's race from the front door of the Community Center to the mailbox in front of the tavern.”

“Fine, let's go.”

Like a scene out of the
Little Rascals
series, Al and I walked out of our yard and marched up the street, surrounded by a group of neighborhood kids. We walked the fifty meters to the front door of the Center. Our spectators, about ten boys and ten girls, gathered around the mailbox, the finish line. It wasn't quite a battle of the sexes, though. In addition to all of the girls, some of the boys were cheering for me. The men in front of the tavern watched, but didn't choose sides.

At the starting point, Tyrone Cavitt yelled, “On your mark, get set, go!” The kids all screamed—but Al couldn't stay with me. I beat him by several steps. Everyone surrounded me and patted me on the back, laughing and cheering. Al looked deflated. Word of the race results spread like a forest fire the following day at school. Al's friends teased him mercilessly. I felt sorry for him, but I had to teach him a lesson. I never heard another word of trash from him after that.

The defeat prompted him to go out for track and get in shape. Confirming Mr. Fennoy's prediction, Al was an instant sensation, qualifying for the state championships in the sprint hurdles his first season on the team in the spring of 1977. In his senior year, the coach asked him to try the triple jump and he won the district championship with a leap of 47′ 9¾″, the second-longest in district competition that year in Illinois. He finished third at the state championships. At the AAU Nationals a month after he graduated from Lincoln in 1978, he triple-jumped 51 feet on his first attempt. The meet officials and everyone in the crowd watched his leap in stunned silence. Amid wild cheering, the officials scurried around, trying to devise a method for measuring the distance. Their tape measures didn't extend past 50 feet! Up in the stadium, Daddy kept yelling, “That's
my
boy!”

Later that summer in Lincoln, Nebraska, Al won the AAU Junior Olympic triple jump with a leap of 50′ 2½″. Everyone in town was ecstatic, and for his part, Al reveled in his notoriety and welcomed the spotlight. Like his hero, Elvis Presley, he'd burst onto the scene from nowhere and left everyone breathless with his performance. He turned down several scholarship offers from good track programs, including Illinois and Missouri, to accept one from Tennessee State. The school had a respected women's track program and Al believed the coaches were going to build a men's team around him. Unfortunately, he arrived in Nashville to find that his scholarship was really a tiny student loan. He was always strapped for money, enduring one semester without textbooks. So, after a year, he transferred to Arkansas State. In Jonesboro, he continued his athletic progress, breaking a number of collegiate triple-jump records. But with no scholarship and only loans, his college career was a financial struggle.

A yellow school bus carried a big crowd from East St. Louis, including Della and Daddy, to the state track championships when I was a junior. Momma didn't attend many of my competitions. She felt it was her duty to stay at home with my ailing great-grandmother. The people from my hometown all sat together in a clump, surrounded by the 5,000 other spectators.