The Queen's Gambit (3 page)

It had been simple—merely a matter of keeping her eyes open and visualizing the ways the game could go.

The checkmate took him by surprise; she caught the king on the back rank, reaching her arm all the way across the board and setting the rook crisply on the mating square. “Mate,” she said levelly.

Mr. Shaibel seemed different today. He did not scowl as he always did when she beat him. He leaned forward and said, “I’ll teach you chess notation.”

She looked up at him.

“The names of the squares. I’ll teach you now.”

She blinked. “Am I good enough now?”

He started to say something and stopped. “How old are you, child?”

“Eight.”

“Eight years old.” He leaned forward—as far as his huge paunch would permit. “To tell you the truth of it, child, you are astounding.”

She did not understand what he was saying.

“Excuse me,” Mr. Shaibel reached down on the floor for a nearly empty pint bottle. He tilted his head back and drank from it.

“Is that whiskey?” Beth asked.

“Yes, child. And don’t tell.”

“I won’t,” she said. “Teach me chess notation.”

He set the bottle back on the floor. Beth followed it for a moment with her eyes, wondering what whiskey would taste like and what it would feel like when you drank it. Then she turned her gaze and her attention back to the board with its thirty-two pieces, each exerting its own silent force.

***

Sometime in the middle of the night she was awakened. Someone was sitting on the edge of her bed. She stiffened.

“Take it easy,” Jolene whispered. “It’s only me.”

Beth said nothing, just lay there and waited.

“Thought you might like trying something fun,” Jolene said. She reached a hand under the sheet and laid it gently on Beth’s belly. Beth was on her back. The hand stayed there, and Beth’s body remained stiff.

“Don’t be uptight,” Jolene whispered. “I ain’t gonna hurt nothing.” She giggled softly. “I’m just horny. You know what it’s like to be horny?”

Beth did not know.

“Just relax. I’m just going to rub a little. It’ll feel good, if you let it.”

Beth turned her head toward the corridor door. It was shut. The light, as usual, came under it. She could hear distant voices, down at the desk.

Jolene’s hand was moving downward. Beth shook her head. “Don’t…” she whispered.

“Hush now,” Jolene said. Her hand moved down farther, and one finger began to rub up and down. It did not hurt, but something in Beth resisted it. She felt herself perspiring. “Ah shit,” Jolene said. “I bet that feels good.” She squirmed a little closer to Beth and took Beth’s hand with her free one, pulling it toward her. “You touch me, too,” she said.

Beth let her hand go limp. Jolene guided it up under her nightgown until the fingers grazed a place that felt warm and damp.

“Come on now, press a little,” Jolene whispered. The intensity in the whispering voice was frightening. Beth did as she was told and pressed harder.

“Come on, baby,” Jolene whispered, “move it up and down. Like this.” She started moving her finger on Beth. It was terrifying. Beth rubbed Jolene a few times, trying hard, concentrating on just doing it. Her face was wet with sweat and her free hand was clutching at the sheet, squeezing it with all her might.

Then Jolene’s face was against hers and her arm around Beth’s chest. “Faster,” Jolene whispered. “
Faster
.”

“No,” Beth said aloud, terrified. “
No, I don’t want to
.” She pulled her hand away.

“Son of a bitch,” Jolene said aloud.

Footsteps came running up the hallway, and the door opened. Light streamed in. It was one of the night people whom Beth didn’t know. The lady stood there for a long minute. Everything was quiet. Jolene was gone. Beth didn’t dare move to see if she was back in her own bed. Finally the woman left. Beth looked over and saw the outline of Jolene’s body back in bed. Beth had three pills in the drawer; she took all three. Then she lay on her back and waited for the bad taste to go away.

The next day in the cafeteria, Beth felt wretched from not sleeping.

“You are the ugliest white girl
ever
,” Jolene said, in a stage whisper. She had come up to Beth in the line for the little boxes of cereal. “Your nose is ugly and your face is ugly and your skin is like sandpaper. You white trash cracker bitch.”

Jolene went on, head high, to the scrambled eggs.

Beth said nothing, knowing that it was true.

***

King, knight, pawn. The tensions on the board were enough to warp it. Then
whack!
Down came the queen. Rooks at the bottom of the board, hemmed in at first, but ready, building pressure and then removing the pressure in a single move. In General Science, Miss Hadley had spoken of magnets, of “lines of force.” Beth, nearly asleep with boredom, had waked up suddenly. Lines of force: bishops on diagonals; rooks on files.

The seats in a classroom could be like the squares. If the redhaired boy named Ralph were a knight, she could pick him up and move him two seats up and one over, setting him on the empty seat next to Denise. This would check Bertrand, who sat in the front row and was, she decided, the king. She smiled, thinking of it. Jolene and she had not spoken for over a week, and Beth had not let herself cry. She was almost nine years old, and she didn’t need Jolene. It didn’t matter how she felt about it. She didn’t need Jolene.

***

“Here,” Mr. Shaibel said. He handed her something in a brown paper bag. It was noon on Sunday. She slipped the bag open. In it was a heavy paperback book—
Modern Chess Openings
.

Incredulously, she began to turn the pages. It was filled with long vertical columns of chess notations. There were little chessboard diagrams and chapter heads like “Queen’s Pawn Openings” and “Indian Defense Systems.” She looked up.

He was scowling at her. “It’s the best book for you,” he said. “It will tell you what you want to know.”

She said nothing but sat down on her milk crate behind the board, holding the book tightly in her lap, and waited to play.

***

English was the dullest class, with Mr. Espero’s slow voice and the poets with names like John Greenleaf Whittier and William Cullen Bryant. “Whither, midst falling dew,/While glow the heavens with the last steps of day…” It was stupid. And he read every word aloud, with care.

She held
Modern Chess Openings
under her desk while Mr. Espero read. She went through variations one at a time, playing them out in her head. By the third day the notations—P-K4, N-KB3—leapt into her quick mind as solid pieces on real squares. She saw them easily; there was no need for a board. She could sit there with
Modern Chess Openings
in her lap, on the blue serge pleated skirt of the Methuen Home, and while Mr. Espero droned on about the enlargement of the spirit that great poetry gives us or read aloud lines like “To him who in the love of nature holds/communion with her visible forms, she speaks a various language,” the moves of chess games clicked into place before her half-shut eyes. In the back of the book were continuations down to the very end of some of the classic games, to twenty-seventh-move resignations or to draws on the fortieth, and she had learned to put the pieces through their entire ballet, sometimes catching her breath at the elegance of a combination attack or of a sacrifice or the restrained balance of forces in a position. And always her mind was on the win, or on the potential for the win.

“‘For his gayer hours she has a voice of gladness/and a smile and eloquence of beauty…’” read Mr. Espero, while Beth’s mind danced in awe to the geometrical rococo of chess, rapt, enraptured, drowning in the grand permutations as they opened to her soul, and her soul opened to them.

***

“
Cracker!
” Jolene hissed as they left History.

“
Nigger
,” Beth hissed back.

Jolene stopped and turned to stare at her.

***

The following Saturday, Beth took six pills and gave herself up to their sweet chemistry, holding one hand on her belly and the other on her cunt. That word she knew about. It was one of the few things Mother had taught her before crashing the Chevy. “Wipe yourself,” Mother would say in the bathroom. “Be sure to wipe your cunt.” Beth moved her fingers up and down, the way Jolene had. It didn’t feel good. Not to her. She took her hand away and fell back into the mental ease of the pills. Maybe she was too young. Jolene was four years older and had fuzzy hair growing there. Beth had felt it.

***

“Morning, Cracker,” Jolene said softly. Her face was easy.

“Jolene,” Beth said. Jolene stepped closer. There was nobody around, just the two of them. They were in the locker room, after gym.

“What you want?” Jolene said.

“I want to know what a cocksucker is.”

Jolene stared at her a moment. Then she laughed. “Shit,” she said. “You know what a cock is?”

“I don’t think so.”

“That’s what boys have. In the back of the health book. Like a thumb.”

Beth nodded. She knew the picture.

“Well, honey,” Jolene said gravely, “there’s girls likes to suck on that thumb.”

Beth thought about it. “Isn’t that where they pee?” she said.

“I expect it wipes clean,” Jolene said.

Beth walked away feeling shocked. And she was still puzzled. She had heard of murderers and torturers; at home she had seen a neighbor boy beat his dog senseless with a heavy stick; but she did not understand how someone could do what Jolene said.

***

The next Sunday she won five games straight. She had been playing Mr. Shaibel for three months now, and she knew that he could no longer beat her. Not once. She anticipated every feint, every threat that he knew how to make. There was no way he could confuse her with his knights, or keep a piece posted on a dangerous square, or embarrass her by pinning an important piece. She could see it coming and could prevent it while continuing to set up for attack.

When they had finished, he said, “You are eight years old?”

“Nine in November.”

He nodded. “You will be here next Sunday?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Be sure.”

On Sunday there was another man in the basement with Mr. Shaibel. He was thin and wore a striped shirt and tie. “This is Mr. Ganz, from the chess club,” Mr. Shaibel said.

“Chess club?” Beth echoed, looking him over. He seemed a little like Mr. Schell, even though he was smiling.

“We play at a club,” Mr. Shaibel said.

“And I’m coach of the high school team. Duncan High,” Mr. Ganz said. She had never heard of the school.

“Would you like to play me a game?” Mr. Ganz asked.

For an answer Beth seated herself on the milk crate. There was a folding chair set up at the side of the board. Mr. Shaibel eased his heavy body into it, and Mr. Ganz sat on the stool. He reached forward in a quick, nervous movement and picked up two pawns: one white and one black. He cupped his hands around them, shook them together a moment and then extended both arms toward Beth with the fists clenched.

“Choose a hand,” Mr. Shaibel said.

“Why?”

“You play the color you choose.”

“Oh.” She reached out and barely touched Mr. Ganz’s left hand. “This one.”

He opened it. The black pawn lay in his palm. “Sorry,” he said, smiling. His smile made her uncomfortable.

The board already had Black facing Beth. Mr. Ganz put the pawns back on their squares, moved pawn to king four, and Beth relaxed. She had learned every line of the Sicilian from her book. She played the queen bishop’s pawn to its fourth square. When he brought the knight out, she decided to use the Najdorf.

But Mr. Ganz was a bit too smart for that. He was a better player than Mr. Shaibel. Still, she knew after a half dozen moves that he would be easy to beat, and she proceeded to do so, calmly and mercilessly, forcing him to resign after twenty-three moves.

He placed his king on its side on the board. “You certainly know the game, young lady. Do you have a team here?”

She looked at him uncomprehendingly.

“The other girls. Do they have a chess club?”

“No.”

“Then where do you play?”

“Down here.”

“Mr. Shaibel said you played a few games every Sunday. What do you do in between?”

“Nothing.”

“But how do you keep up?”

She did not want to tell him about playing chess in her mind in class and in bed at night. To distract him she said, “Do you want to play another?”

He laughed. “All right. It’s your turn to play White.”

She beat him even more handily, using the Réti Opening. The book had called it a “hypermodern” system; she liked the way it used her king’s bishop. After twenty moves she stopped him to point out her upcoming mate in three. It took him half a minute to see it. He shook his head in disbelief and toppled his king.

“You’re astonishing,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” He stood up and walked over to the furnace, where Beth had noticed a small shopping bag. “I have to go now. But I brought you a present.” He handed her the shopping bag.

She looked inside, hoping to see another chess book. Something was wrapped in pink tissue paper.

“Unwrap it,” Mr. Ganz said, smiling.

She lifted it out and pulled away the loosely wrapped paper. It was a pink doll in a blue print dress, with blond hair and a puckered-up mouth. She held it a moment and looked at it.

“Well?” Mr. Ganz said.

“Do you want another game?” Beth said, holding the doll by its arm.

“I have to go,” Mr. Ganz said. “Maybe I’ll come back next week.”

She nodded.

There was a big oilcan used for trash at the end of the hallway. As she passed it on the way to the Sunday afternoon movie, she dropped the doll into it.

***

During Health class she found the picture in the back of the book. On one page was a woman and on the facing page a man. They were line drawings, with no shading. Both stood with their arms at their sides and the palms of their hands turned out. At the V below her flat belly the woman had a simple, vertical line. The man had no such line, or if he had you couldn’t see it. What he had looked like a little purse with a round thing hanging down in front of it. Jolene said it was like a thumb. That was his cock.