My Fight / Your Fight (13 page)

My stomach lurched into my throat. Big Jim looked at me with disgust and disappointment, then walked away.

The tournament was over, but was followed by an elite training camp. I had to face Big Jim every day for the next week.

“What the hell is the problem?” he barked at me during one of the practices. I was having trouble keeping my opponents away when they came in to get a grip or do a throw because of my injured arm.

“I hurt my elbow,” I said.

“Stop it,” he said. “Your elbow's not hurt. You're too weak to hold them away. You're not strong enough.”

Nothing I could say would change his mind, so I did what I always did when Big Jim got mad, I bit my tongue and pushed myself harder. I fought through the pain in silence.

The pain was nothing compared with what was yet to come. Big Jim told my mom. I spent the entire flight back to Los Angeles overwhelmed with dread. I had never wanted not to see someone so badly. I stood on the curb at LAX, simultaneously looking for my mom's car and praying she would forget to come. For the first time in my life, my mom was on time to pick me up.

“Get in,” she said through the open passenger-side window. I braced myself.

Before we had pulled away from the curb Mom started, “What the fuck were you thinking?”

I opened my mouth.

“Don't even answer that,” she said, cutting me off. “I don't even want to hear whatever you're going to say, because there's no answer that could justify such a complete lack of respect, not to mention stupidity.”

Her voice was raised, but she wasn't yelling.

Silence was going to be my best tactic. I looked down at my hands, fighting back tears.

She turned right onto Sepulveda Boulevard. I was relieved to see traffic was light. The only thing that could make this moment worse would be having it extended by an L.A. traffic jam.

“Dick Fucking IttyBitty?” my mom asked incredulous. “He's so amazing that you're willing to ruin your relationship with your coach, to go against what Big Jim and I explicitly told you? Give me a break. He'll sleep with anyone. He's a total sleazeball.”

The back of my neck got hot. I felt like I couldn't breathe. I rolled down my window, but the fresh air didn't make any difference. I was jet-lagged. I was hungry. My elbow was throbbing. My coach had thrown me out. I leaned my head back on the beige fabric headrest.

“Things are going to change,” my mom pressed on. “You don't know how good you had it, little girl. You're eighteen, which is technically an adult, even if you act like a spoiled brat. You need to get your act together. The Olympics are over. We made a lot of exceptions and let you get away with a lot of shit, but no more. You're going to take a year away from judo. You need to finish high school. You need to get a job. You need to start paying rent. It's time for you to live in the real world. And the real world is going to be a major wakeup call.”

I stared straight at the windshield, wishing I was anywhere else. But I didn't have anywhere else to go and I didn't know what I was going to do. What I did know was that if I was going to pay rent, it sure as hell wasn't going to be to live in my mom's house.

Our house was less than a twenty-minute drive to the airport, and I had never been so glad to pull onto our street. As soon as my mom parked, I threw open the door and stormed in the house and up the stairs to the bedroom I shared with Julia. I slammed the door and threw myself onto the bottom bunk. The sea lion stared out at me from the under-the-sea mural I had painted on our bedroom wall.

I was devastated to be thrown out of Big Jim's house. I was humiliated to have him catch me with Dick in my room. I was sorry to have let my mom and Big Jim down. I was furious at them for interfering with my personal life and treating me like I couldn't make my own decisions.

Staring up at the slats of the top bunk, I cried hysterically.

I had spent the first several years of my life unable to communicate because of a speech disorder. Now, a decade and a half later, though I was able to speak, I found myself struggling to convey what I wanted to say. I did not know how to talk to my mom or Big Jim. I felt like when I tried they dismissed me. I didn't have the confidence to be able to hold my own in an argument. Part of me felt like they would not respect my opinion, but more than that, I wasn't sure that I had enough experience to make the right decisions for myself. It wasn't at all about Dick IttyBitty; he was just the catalyst for something that had been boiling within me for years. My life was out of my control. It had been a slow creep, but the feeling had become overwhelming, like standing in a room with no exit as it fills with water.

I needed to be in charge of my life. I wanted to prove that I did know a few things and that Mom and my coaches should listen to me. But it seemed much easier to move across the country in the middle of the night by myself than to walk into our living room and have a real conversation with my mom.

I began to plan my “great” escape. Because my dad had died, I was receiving Social Security benefits. The benefits would continue until I turned eighteen or graduated high school, whichever came second. Technically, because I was taking correspondence classes, I was still enrolled in high school. I had just turned eighteen two weeks earlier, so now the checks were coming in my name. I went to the bank, opened my own account, and had the checks directly deposited.

As soon as I had enough money I bought a plane ticket to upstate New York. I figured I could train at Jim Hrbek's club while staying with my friend Lillie and her family. Hrbek had been one of the top coaches in the nation dating back to when my mom had been competing. At least, I hoped they would all be OK with my being there once I showed up. I could not risk my mom finding out about my plan, so I told Lillie, but no one else.

My mom's anger faded over the next few weeks.

Then one morning—two weeks after I had returned and less than a week before I was set to leave—my mom woke up and she wasn't mad at me anymore.

“Let's go down to the Promenade,” she suggested.

“OK,” I said, glad not to have her yelling at me.

We walked the six blocks to the same shopping area I'd gone to the day I ditched school and broke my foot. My mom suggested we check out Armani Exchange. There among the racks of clothes she zeroed in on a white leather jacket.

“This looks like something you'd like,” my mom said.

It was an awesome jacket.

“Try it on,” she urged.

I slipped it on. It fit me perfectly. I felt amazing.

“You need to have that,” my mom said.

I checked the price tag.

“Please, it's too much,” I said.

My mom gave me a hug.

“You deserve it,” she said. “Besides you were at Big Jim's for your birthday. We owe you a gift.”

She brought the jacket up to the cashier, where the sales clerk wrapped it in tissue paper and slipped it into a bag. My eyes stung, my chest ached, my resolve was crumbling. But then I thought about my mom's complete lack of understanding of me. I wanted to be in control of my life—and I wanted to prove to my mom and Big Jim that I could be in control of my life. I knew I had to go. But I wished she was still mad at me. It would have made leaving easier.

The night before I left, I waited until my family fell asleep. I packed my bags, jumping at every sound. Then I sat on my bed, waiting for the hours to pass. At 4:55 a.m., I crept out of my room and walked downstairs. I left a note for my mom, explaining that this was something I had to do and I hoped she would understand. Then I walked out the door.

The world outside was quiet. The sun wasn't up yet and the air was cool and humid from the ocean a few blocks away. I wanted to pull my new jacket out of my bag, but I was afraid to stop. I threw my navy blue 2004 Olympic team duffle bag over my shoulder and picked up my black duffle bag, carrying it by my side. As if a backward glance would wake my mom, I trained my eyes straight ahead and walked away.

I hauled my bags four blocks and sat down at a bus stop, but bus service didn't start until later in the morning so I called a cab and a few minutes later a yellow taxi stopped in front of me. As the cabbie drove toward the airport, I waited for the relief to set in, for the feeling of liberation that I was so certain would accompany my escape.

I didn't feel triumphant. I felt like a coward. I had run away. I may have won the match, but I had been competing for points, not fighting with honor.

I used to have a teammate who always needed the coach to tell her what to do. She could execute that instruction almost flawlessly. The problem was, she was only as good as the person coaching her and as good as the information that she was receiving.

My mom purposely sent me to tournaments without a coach all the time. When I was on the mat, I had to think for myself. If there was a bad score, there was no one to correct it. If a call went against me, there was no one to speak up for me. I would just have to do better and do it again. If I was in a bad situation, I had to problem-solve and figure it out.

I had carefully planned my escape from L.A., but hadn't put much thought into what would come next. Lillie's family was surprised when I basically showed up on their doorstep, but her parents agreed to let me stay. So I hauled my two duffle bags up to her room.

When I first got to New York, I talked a lot about the injustice of my situation, how my mom and Big Jim were so unfair, how every element of my life—from what I ate to how I trained—was regimented by someone else, how no one believed in my relationship, how no one ever asked for my input, how people treated me like I was a kid. The more I talked about it, the angrier I got. I wasn't a kid. I was an adult, as recognized by the US government. Hell, I was a goddamned Olympian. Lillie listened. Lots of nights, we would stay up late talking, sharing a bed. Other nights, it felt like we were just two kids having a sleepover as we stayed up watching romantic comedies and giggling over inside jokes.

Lillie went to Siena College, and I accompanied her to campus on the days she went to class. I bought a Siena College hoodie at the bookstore and wore it to the gym, where they let me in assuming I was a student. While Lillie was in class, I worked out. As I rode the elliptical, I tried to figure out how everything had spiraled so out of control, why I had run away, if I could ever go back, how I could prove to everyone it wasn't about Dick, what the future held for him and I, where I was going to go from here. I didn't have any answers.

The third Thursday I was there, Lillie and I were heading out to practice when Marina Shafir called and said she wasn't going to make it. Marina was one of the top girls in her division and, along with Lillie, was one of the few girls I really liked in judo. She was one of the few elite competitors who weren't concerned with the politics of the sport. We were about halfway to the club when Nina, another girl from the club, called and said she wasn't going to make it.

“It's going to be a slow practice if hardly anyone is there,” Lillie said.

“Fuck it. Let's not go to practice.”

“Well, what do you want to do?” Lillie asked.

Out the window I saw the familiar orange and pink sign.

“Let's go to Dunkin' Donuts,” I said.

The wheels screeched, Lillie made a sharp right turn, and we pulled into the deserted parking lot.

“I'd like four dozen Munchkins,” I told the clerk.

“What kind?” he asked, gesturing to the wire containers behind him.

I paused. I felt as if I was making a very important decision.

“Just give me some of all of them,” I said.

“Will that be all?” he asked.

I looked at Lillie. She shrugged.

“And two chocolate milks,” I said, grabbing them from the refrigerated case by the counter.

He rung me up, then handed me the two cardboard boxes with handles that contained my forty-eight-plus donut holes. Lillie and I sat at one of the tables, each opening a box.

I popped a donut hole in my mouth. It was doughy and delicious. I laughed out loud. Lillie looked at me inquisitively, as if she had missed the joke.

But here, sitting at a Dunkin' Donuts as the counter clerk mopped the floor around us, I had found the freedom I had been looking for. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt like I had control.

I felt a surge of motivation, possibly due to the sugar-rush of twenty-five donut holes, rushing through my bloodsteam.

I love judo.
And I want to do judo because I love it. I want to do it for me.
The realization washed over me. It was a feeling I hadn't had in a long time.

The next day, I went to practice because I wanted to. I trained harder than I had in a long, long time.

Not only did I look forward to training, but I wanted to train as much as possible. In addition to Hrbek's, one of the best clubs in the area was run by Jason Morris. Jason had won a silver medal in the 1992 Olympics. He was a member of the US national team coaching staff. He opened his own “club,” where aspiring Olympians would come to live and train. Or at least that's how he spun it to their parents.

The dojo was actually just the basement of his house with a judo mat thrown down. Space was so tight that when everyone was on the mat, you were constantly bumping into other people and taking care not to get slammed into one of the walls. Still, the level of training was decent and they practiced every day.

Jim Hrbek had been Jason's coach, helping Jason develop and succeed. Then their relationship fell apart.

One day after practice, Jim called me aside. “I know you're training at Jason's,” he said. “That's your choice. But if you're training there, you can't train here.”

It was an ultimatum. I do not respond well to ultimatums.

“Got it,” I said, without saying anything else. But the only thought that went through my mind was,
I'm going to train wherever the hell I want to train
.