Abby's Fabulous Season Page 11

  “Let me remind you that tonight, we’re playing the Toronto Marlboros, the league leaders. If we win, we have a chance to make up ground and secure second place. If we lose, our opponents will be champions.”

  Mr. Grossi pauses to let his words sink in. And I suspect he’s trying to give the journalist time to take notes because he just glanced at her. But Phyllis’s arms remain crossed over her chest. If he’s disappointed, the coach shows no sign of it.

  No player in this locker room intends to slack off at this stage of the season. Each and every one of us loves to play hockey, whether at Varsity Arena or at an outdoor rink. The pleasure of skating, of running after a puck, of deking out a goalie, is like nothing else.

  “I want to score my first goal,” says Scotty, determined. “That really matters to me.”

  “I also have to talk to you about something else,” adds Al Grossi, throwing a quick glance at Phyllis Griffiths.

  Here we go! The time has come…I see Phyllis pull a pencil and notebook from her coat pocket. How will the players react? I inhale deeply to try to calm myself, but it doesn’t work.

  “As you all know,” the coach begins, “there will be an all-star game on March 23rd.”

  I was wrong. Coach Grossi continues: “Four members of the Tee Pees have been selected for this game. I invite them to come to the center of the room when they hear their names—Jim Halliday, Russell Turnbull, David Kurtis and…Ab Hoffman.”

  “What about me?” asks Scotty. No one’s paying attention to him.

  The coach slaps the players on the butt to congratulate them. When he gets to me, he taps me lightly on the shoulder.

  The Tee Pees cheer us by banging their sticks on the floor.

  The coach gives each of us a pen and asks us to fill out a Player’s Certificate. I write down the number on my jersey, as well as my address on Glendonwynne Road.

  The certificate confirms my participation in the Timmy Tyke Tournament of March 23rd. It specifies that I’m a member of the Little Toronto Hockey League All-Star Team. The goal of the this game is explained in one sentence: “Boys on skates may help children who can’t walk…” Boys…

  “All proceeds from the game will go to the Ontario Society for Crippled Children,” says the coach. An image pops into my mind: the smiling boy sitting in a wheelchair at the hospital.

  I write my name at the bottom of the certificate, below Al Grossi’s signature: Ab Hoffman, March, 3, 1956. Ab, not Abby, for luck. Chairman Earl Graham’s signature is still missing. I hand the certificate back to the coach.

  “Here you go, Sir.”

  “Thank you. Congratulations to you all,” he applauds. Go back to your seats.”

  Just as I’m going to sit down, break away from the group, he pulls me by the sleeve. “You should get out on the ice, Abby,” he suggests in a calm voice.

  I heard him correctly. He said Abby, not Ab…

  “The rest of us will catch up with you,” Jim Halliday whispers to me.

  So, to everybody’s surprise, I slip out of the room. When I walk past Phyllis, she gives me a reassuring smile. “I’ll see you in a bit,” she tells me, knowingly.

  Al Grossi closes the door behind me.

  Our opponents, the Toronto Marlboros, are already on the ice. The players are skating and shooting at the goalie. In the other half of the rink—it must look very strange to the spectators—there’s only one Tee Pees player. And she’s a girl!

  I have half of the surface to myself! I try to appreciate the moment and not worry too much about what’s happening in the locker room. On the other hand, imagining Scotty’s expression when he hears the truth makes me smile…“What?” he’ll cry out, horrified. “All year, I got undressed next to a girl?” Then he’ll faint…too funny!

  I kill the time hitting wrist and backhand shots against the boards. I shoot from the blue line; when I miss, I retrieve the puck and immediately go back to my position. But I skate uneasily—I feel like I have lead in my skates.

  From the corner of my eye, I notice that Phyllis is now standing near our bench. She’s furiously scribbling in her notebook. What was said in that locker room?

  My teammates appear behind her. I try to ignore them and act as if everything is normal. Which is what they do too. They get into their normal routine, going through pre-game warm up.

  Sometimes I feel them staring at me, but whenever I make eye contact, they look away. Finally, David Kurtis, who’s waiting for his turn to shoot at Graham Powell, grabs my arm and whispers in my ear: “Is it true, Ab? Is it true that you’re a girl?”

  “Yes. Is there a problem with that?” I say in a detached tone while I continue to handle the puck.

  David lets out a nervous laugh. “No, because you play like a boy anyway.”

  Scotty has his back to me. “Did you leave your doll at home, Abigail?” he teases, in a low voice.

  If there’s one boy on this team whose opinion I couldn’t care less about, it’s Scotty Hynek. Jim Halliday shields me from Scotty with his body.

  “Uh…Ab…You’re one of the gang. We don’t want to lose you. You’re a good hockey player.” He taps my pads with his stick.

  Phew! I feel like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders. Suddenly I skate with much more ease. Russell Turnbull approaches with a big grin.

  “I sure was fooled, Ab! Gee, I don’t know what to say. But we want you to stay on the team. And you should put on your skates in the locker room with us. We won’t look at you! Since you’ve been gone, Scotty has become unbearable. I think he misses you!”

  “Liar!” Scotty replies.

  The referee blows his whistle to start the game. On the ice, representing the Tee Pees, is Jim Halliday’s offensive line and David Kurtis and I as defensemen.

  From my position at the blue line, I hear the two referees at center ice speak with Jim.

  “We heard there’s a girl on your team, Halliday. Is that true?” asks Bob Hull.

  “Maybe,” Jim answers casually. “Who told you?”

  “Our assistant captain, Ab McDonald,” answers Hull.

  McDonald and Hull play for the Junior Tee Pees. They make a little money on the side by working as referees for young kids’ games.

  “You want to know who it is?” says Halliday, “then find out for yourself!”

  “Good idea!” Hull agrees, juggling the puck. “Beauchamp, you want to bet?”

  “I’m in,” says his fellow referee. “We try to identify the girl before the end of the game. We tell you our pick. The loser will have to referee for a week and give his pay to the winner.”

  “Deal!” declares Bob Hull.

  “What?” interjects a player from the Marlboros. “We’re playing against girls?”

  “Against one girl,” Jim Halliday specifies. “A single girl. And a lot of boys!”

  Before we even face off, the rumor has spread like wildfire—on the ice, on the players’ bench, and all the way into the bleachers.

  In the first minute of the game, I find myself fighting a Marlie in the corner of my zone. I knock him hard against the boards, grab the puck and pass it to Russell Turnbull, who completely misses it. I notice the Tee Pees are watching me skate as if it were the first time…This is insane!

  During a break, Coach Grossi gathers his team to address the problem. “Where are your heads?” he explodes. “Concentrate on the game and forget everything else.”

  His outburst has the intended result. The Tee Pees crank up their efforts and forget that the defenseman with jersey number 6 is a girl. For me, it doesn’t make much of a difference.

  We can’t say the same about the two referees. Busy trying to identify “the girl” among the Tee Pees, they make mistake after mistake and miss obvious offsides, one of which leads to a goal by the Marlboros.

  Al Grossi is furious. He grabs Scot
ty’s glasses—Scotty is on the bench—and waves them at the referees. “You need them more than he does!”

  Scotty is stunned by the coach’s behavior. He rolls his eyes, irritated. When he turns to the coach again, one of his eyes—the right one—is still staring at the ceiling! I mention it to him.

  “My glasses!” says Scotty, his hand extended.

  The coach, who changes color as quickly as he loses his temper, apologizes and returns the glasses. Scotty immediately heads for the locker room. When he returns a few seconds later, his eyes are back to normal.

  “No questions, Miss Hoffman!” he hisses.

  The game progresses at a good pace. I try to play normally, without overdoing it to prove what a girl is capable of. I’ve already proven that during the entire season.

  When the siren goes off at the end of the game, we crowd around our goalie, happy with a 4-2 win over the Marlboros.

  Referees Hull and Beauchamp join us, their eyes sparkling. “Wait! Don’t leave yet!” warns Bobby Hull.

  “Yes! We know who the girl is,” adds Referee Beauchamp.

  Rather than going back to their locker room, the Toronto Marlboros move in closer. They, too, want to know who the girl is. Their petty comments swirl around me.

  “She’s the one who can’t skate…”

  “She’s the one who can’t shoot…” (That one, I take note of: number 14. Next time he’s going to kiss the boards.)

  “She’s the one who cries if you touch her…”

  “She’s the one who brought her doll…”

  Referee Hull blows his whistle to shut them up. “You’re worse than a bunch of girls talking on the phone!”

  He points a finger in my direction. “It’s her!”

  That’s it…I’ve been discovered.

  “Me?”

  Behind me, Scotty bursts into a nasty laugh.

  “It’s so obvious, Hoffman!”

  But Referee Hull and his colleague correct me.

  “No, not you, Hoffman. Her…behind you.”

  “Yes,” adds Beauchamp, “the girl with the glasses…”

  “Who? Me?” exclaims Scotty.

  Chapter 17

  “It’s too much, isn’t it?” I ask the members of my family, all leaning over the kitchen table. “I just want to play hockey, not make the headlines like the Toronto Maple Leafs!”

  “No,” answers Mom, moved. “You deserve it.”

  She read Phyllis Griffiths’s article in the Thursday, March 8, 1956 edition of the Toronto Telegram. My father and my brothers are nodding in agreement. Soft light from the ceiling lamp falls on the newspaper, open to the Sports section.

  It’s not the Red Wings’ loss 6-4 to the Montreal Canadiens last night that holds our attention. And it’s not the short article about the Maple Leafs’ battle for a place in the Stanley Cup playoffs. (They’re trying hard to defeat the Boston Bruins. A photo of George Armstrong accompanies the article.) Nor is it the article about Toronto playing the powerful Canadiens tonight at Maple Leaf Gardens.

  What monopolizes our attention is a headline, written in big black letters: “ROUGH, HARDCHECKING AB BACK ON THE ICE—SHE IS.” Then, in smaller type, the byline: by Phyllis Griffiths, Telegram Staff Reporter.

  The article is long, very long…too long for my taste. How did Phyllis include in a single article everything she saw and heard at home and at Varsity Arena last Saturday? With the photograph, the article almost fills an entire page. Just for me.

  The journalist tells my story in all its minute details, from my first time putting on skates when I was three, to my registration with the Little Toronto Hockey League in the fall of 1955.

  She writes about my taste in clothing (or, when it comes to dresses, my distaste in clothing), my favorite subjects at school (geography, arithmetic, spelling—it’s funny, I don’t remember telling her that), my piano lessons, and the Detroit Red Wings.

  She even includes information about my parents and my brothers. (She spelled Muni without a “y.” Too bad, I would have loved to tease him about that.)

  Oh! Here’s something funny! She asked a few Tee Pees players about their reaction when they discovered there was a girl on the team. David Kurtis thought that Phyllis was joking. He came back ten minutes later, clutched her arm, and asked if it were true that Ab was a girl!

  I was touched when I read that Captain Jim Halliday more or less repeated what he told me at the rink: “He—she—is just one of the gang. I hope we won’t lose him—her, I mean.”

  Same thing for super scorer Russell Turnbull, star center on the first line. “I was fooled, like everyone else. But we want to keep Ab on our team, there’s no doubt about that!”

  Referees Hull and Beauchamp’s reaction also made me smile. Especially since they couldn’t identify the girl and mistakenly pointed at Scotty at the end of the game.

  “Number 6 was just another hockey player to me,” declared Beauchamp.

  And according to Coach Grossi, Ab is “one of the best players on the team. His bodychecks are powerful.” But he admits being flabbergasted when he learned, before everyone else, that Ab’s real name was Abigail…

  Finally, Phyllis mentions two important games coming up at Varsity Arena in March: the annual Jamboree on Friday 16th to raise funds for the league’s future activities, and the all-star game on Friday 23rd to benefit disabled kids.

  Yes, a lot of details. And it’s all the more embarrassing because since all five of us can’t read the article at the same time, my mother is reading it out loud.

  And then there’s the photo. A shot of me from head to skates, leaning on my stick. You can clearly see my name on the stick: Ab Hoffman. Luckily, the hole in my stocking on the right knee is not too visible.

  The photo was taken by the Telegram photographer assisting Phyllis after Saturday night’s meet against the Marlboros. He made me skate slowly toward him. He didn’t want a classic pose, like for a face off. I had to do it over again several times and so did he. It was awkward because during the short photo shoot, which felt like an hour to me, none of the Tee Pees or Marlie players left the rink.

  To make things worse, Scotty Hynek kept harassing the photographer. “I’m the girl! I’m the girl! Not him! Hoffman is a boy!”

  My proud father goes to the board—the one with the newspaper clippings. He takes all the clippings down. My mother hands him Phyllis’s article and he pins it on the board.

  Little Benny is awake and shows up, all grumbly. He’s rubbing his eyes, blinded by the kitchen light. He cuddles in my arms. He’s still numb with sleep.

  When he sees my photo, he jolts awake and shouts, “Abby! Abby!”

  The phone rings. My parents exchange a worried glance. When the phone rings this early in the morning, it’s never good news. My father picks up. After a few seconds, he relaxes and smiles at me.

  “Yes, after school,” he says into the receiver. “At Varsity Arena. Abby will be there with her equipment. Thank you, Sir. Good-bye.”

  “That was someone from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. They read Phyllis’s article and the TV producers want to meet you tonight,” he explains.

  I shrug. “We don’t even have a TV.”

  “We’ll go to grandpa Albert’s place,” says Paul.

  “Do the CBC people also want to meet Abby Hoffman’s big brothers?” asks Muni.

  My father shakes his head. “Not this time, guys. Sorry.”

  The phone rings again. My mother answers this time.

  “Yes, thank you, Divine…Uh…Mrs. Hoffman. I will give her the message.”

  My Hoffman grandparents want to congratulate me on the Telegram article. My mother barely has time to hang up, and me to appreciate their call before the phone rings again.

  My father picks up. His smile disappears in a flash. His cheeks turn red, his ex
pression becomes hard. I’ve never seen him like this. He moves the receiver away from his ear. It’s a man’s voice. I catch a few words.

  …figure skating…dress…shame…tomboy…

  My father pulls himself together. “Sir,” he says, trying to stay calm. “I had no idea cavemen could read newspapers and use telephones. Good-bye!”

  He hangs up. “How rude!”

  I’m upset. “What did I do to him?”

  “Abby,” Mom says gently, “there are people in this world who can’t cope with change. Don’t pay attention to them.”

  I’m flabbergasted. “All I want is to play hockey.”

  My mother suggests I get ready for school. From my room, I hear the phone ring repeatedly. In the time it takes me to get dressed and brush my teeth, two more requests for newspaper and radio interviews have come in.

  Few kids from school have read the Telegram article. But many saw the photograph. All of a sudden, the schoolyard becomes too small.

  As soon as I step on the school grounds, I’m surrounded by a mob of students. Most of them congratulate me, some ask for an autograph. Boys older than me take pleasure in mocking me.

  I don’t talk to anyone because all the voices register as a single block of sound. It’s making me dizzy. I don’t recognize anyone anymore. Yes, I do recognize one voice—Susie Read’s.

  “Hey, Abby! Come over here!” I feel a hand pull my coat sleeve and extract me from the crowd. Some kids object.

  “Hey! She’s not yours! Abby belongs to everyone now.” Susie ignores them and drags me away.

  “All of this because I’m a girl who plays hockey with boys,” I say, shaken.

  “Forget about it. In two days, no one will remember. Hockey is not that important.”

  Stung by her comment, I fire back, “Well, it’s more important than figure skating, Miss Ann Barbara Scott!”

  “You don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Susie flares up. “For one thing, it’s Barbara Ann Scott.1 Hockey is turning you into a real tomboy, Mr. Armstrong George!”