In the summer of 1981, when I was about to be 13, on a clay tennis court on an island close to Boothbay Harbor, Maine, I attacked my older brother with a tennis racket. I turned it sideways, to the hard part. I went straight for the head and I used as much force as I could. The racket was mid-sized, a graphite racket, possibly a Wilson, the size, 4 ¼, the handle, wrapped with blue tape.
I was wearing white shorts, blue Tretorns, and a women's size medium purple Izod shirt with five buttons that my mother had gotten for me at a fancy, preppy store in an old white colonial house with green shutters called The House of Logan. I believe the shirt was $28, close to $100 today. The House of Logan also sold Lanz nightgowns, Hanro underwear and cashmere sweaters stacked in a cabinet. I remember these as being wrapped in plastic or tissue paper but maybe that's not how it was. They also sold Bermuda bag covers. A Bermuda bag has a hinged wooden handle with a muslin lining stapled on, over which the owner can fasten changeable covers, whatever cover matches the season and their outfit. I had a plaid flannel cover that was on the bag when I got it for my 12th birthday, and a plain blue one in light wool that came as an extra gift from a friend of my mother's on that same day, and one for summer, linen, with green, pink, and orange flowers which I bought for myself at a store in the town I grew up in that was a lot like The House of Logan, but called The Lemon Tree.
I turned it sideways, to the hard part. I went straight for the head and I used as much force as I could.
We were spending the summer on an island in Maine where my parents had recently bought a summer house and where I really did not like being forced to go. There were only 30 or 40 houses there, and no cars, everyone knew everyone's business, and some people mattered and some people didn't. The people that mattered tended to have more money than the people who didn't. We were recent arrivals to this island. My parents had bought a three-story yellow cottage with narrow staircases, full of Edwardian era knickknacks and a chest of dress-up clothes, from an old lady for not very much money. Some other couple, allegedly, had tried to outbid them but the seller liked my parents because she had worked in public education her whole life and so had they.
This is a place where you own your house but you don't own the land. That might sound sweet, it's really not, because everyone who lives on the island owns it in common. It's not communist or anything, it's just a bunch of people with some money, or lots of money privately owning a piece of land, just like everywhere else. People who live on islands with no cars often think they are eccentric rather than merely lucky, you can't imagine how tedious it all is, people congratulating themselves for their inborn (innate?) hardiness, spending the summer on an island.
I lost about thirty or forty pounds around this time in my life and it occurs to me now I never would have had the self-confidence to hit my brother over the head with a tennis racket if I hadn't felt control of my body, the right to deploy it as I wanted. Becoming thin was the greatest thing that had ever happened to me at that time in my life and remains in the top three ever. I am an aggressive person, and when people were making fun of or commenting on my body that aggressiveness didn't seem available to me. I felt I didn't deserve it. Hitting my brother on the head with a tennis racket on a tennis court was a little on the nose. Fat, I hadn't been good at any sport, not because fat people can't play sports, but because I couldn't play sports fat, certainly not at that time in history, though I no longer have much confidence that the body positivity movement exists. It seems to have transformed itself into veganism and secret shame at caring about an issue with which our culture has allegedly wrestled. I am sure being a thirteen-year-old upper middle class white girl now offers a relatively equal number of pleasures and indignities as it did in the early 1980s. At the time, all I knew was that I was delighted to have left behind having a certain kind of target on my back. It was my turn to be, if not great at a sport, then decent at one, and also, to start throwing darts. The racket was one of my first darts.
It was my turn to be, if not great at a sport, then decent at one, and also, to start throwing darts. The racket was one of my first darts.
I don't remember what my brother and I were fighting about. I am sure he was being a complete asshole. There's a chance that I did something wrong, but I have to say, I really doubt it. I remember this part of my life as a time when all I wanted to do was to have privacy for myself and my body and I couldn't get it from anyone. I remember this shirt because it was the only shirt that didn't make me feel uncomfortable, tight enough so that I didn't feel like I was wearing a tent, but the longer placket made it not binding, and I might have even known that it was a little sexy, though I don't think I would have known that explicitly, only that leaving the placket unbuttoned left a nice dark shadow in between my two already enormous breasts and that this shadow, a new thing in my life, was preferable and more attractive to me than the two things that made the shadow.
As for tennis itself, it's the only sport in which I ever approached proficiency. I won't pretend to be good at it, but I did like chasing after a tennis ball much more than I liked chasing after a soccer ball, or certainly going around a gate in a ski race, because there would not be another person going after a tennis ball that could hurt me and I could not hook a ski on the gate and wipe out. I did not want to get hurt or kicked and I didn't want to slip in grass or get my cleat caught in mud and snap or pull or sprain something. I did not want to go chin first into a shelf of ice. Tennis, unless you did things like dive for a ball, which I was never going to do, felt safe, so I could let myself go and just play hard without body bracing for injury.
I was saying that some people on this island mattered and some people didn't. My brother seemed to possibly matter. People made fun of him sometimes, but he was good looking and lots of girls liked him, so this was helpful. I was not remotely good looking yet and no boys liked me, and I wasn't great at tennis, only learning, and I wasn't cool, and only getting good at being mean and not yet good at it, though surrounded by fabulous teachers, here and elsewhere, so I definitely did not matter. I was easy to make fun of and my brother was not above sacrificing me if it meant that he could gain social advancement. I am sure this is why I hit him over the head with a tennis racket as hard as I could, in addition to having the confidence of wearing an Izod shirt and not being fat and being sort of ok at tennis, if we were playing, he was winning, but I was probably getting a few points, maybe even a game. The anger I felt toward him was made more bitter by our best friendship. The physical intimidation, the fact that he would sacrifice me socially to put himself in a better spot, in the background was that we made each other laugh more than anyone else could, that we'd sang the Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb duet Guilty in the car together probably 1000 times.
I don't go to that house in Maine often. Maybe every five years I put in an appearance, but something always happens to make me resent it. Last time I was there I took the ferry over with a friend who was leaving, and on the way back was reprimanded for taking up space during peak hours, something I would not have remotely thought of on my own as an issue because I am no longer a regular visitor but was somehow supposed to know. It is always something there, you're always supposed to know something that no one would ever just think of on their own, and so I generally avoid the place, and its rules, gossip, bullshit, assholes. I don't play tennis at the moment, because I have a torn supraspinatus, but it's getting better, and I hope to get back on a court soon. I have this feeling I could still be pretty decent. Despite the years I can remember the feeling of being surprisingly good at running after a tough ball. I have always been incapable of expending real effort in any other sport, my deep fear of injurious contact with another person prohibits it. I hate doubles, by the way. I liked the loneliness of singles tennis, the possibility for absolute responsibility, absolute failure, absolute victory.
It is always something there, you're always supposed to know something that no one would ever just think of on their own, and so I generally avoid the place, and its rules, gossip, bullshit, assholes.
Taking up arms against my brother for the first and last time in our physical rivalry, one that lasted into our late 20s, was like serving an ace against someone who is way, way better than you. Before he got mad he looked so surprised, it had clearly never occurred to him that I would come up with the brilliant, ancient idea of supplementing my inferior size and strength with a weapon. "You're fucking crazy," he said, as he yanked the racket out of my hands, and then held it over my head. I cowered. "Imagine if I hit you," he said. I didn't have to, he hit me all the time, maybe he hadn't for a few years, but he definitely deserved it.
My parents were furious at the idea that I could have really hurt him. No chance, I thought, bitterly. His head was so hard, I thought, what the hell is his head even made of. My hands probably hurt more from the friction of the blue tape when my brother tore it from my hands. But it was a victory nonetheless, my brother got the sense that he was not the only person in our relationship capable of showing a complete lack of regard for the other.
The next day I went fishing with my dad and reached into my underwear to scratch and came out with two fingers coated with brown blood. "I think I got my period," I said. He asked if we needed to go in. I checked my underwear again. "It doesn't seem to be a lot," I said. I rinsed my fingers in the ocean and we kept fishing. When we got home I told my mother and she said, "Ah, well, this explains your outburst yesterday," and my father said, "Ah yes, I didn't even think of that," and laughed to himself as he walked down the steep, dark stairs to the depressing basement with its ancient appliances, prints of old magazine ads, and general sense of a lost era. ⏳