Making Waves. Chris Epting

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ and looked after me—at least it seemed that way to me, anyway. He was decent and kind and thoughtful, which I think may have helped save me back then and may have even given me the strength to change my situation.

      When I got to Huntington Beach, Susie Whitaker was the girl to beat. And not long after joining the club, I did beat her. But it cost me. She had a big makeup party and I was the only girl not invited simply because I had bested her in the pool. It didn’t really bother me, though; I wasn’t used to being one of the gang and usually kept to myself anyway. And I didn’t care about makeup, or about being popular. I was just there to beat them all.

      These victories of mine over the “best” kids gave me kind of an inner strength. Even to this day, I tell young people: “Don’t ever give up hope. Wherever you go in life, there’s always going to be somebody who’s identified as the best. And if you set your sights on it, there’s no reason you can’t be the one who, one day, everybody will look at as the best.”

      Again, a lot of this came from an inner sense of competition that I think I was born with. I was also very focused because I blocked out other things happening in my life. That combination really helped me develop into someone who was not only unintimidated by the so-called best on the block, but who also relished the challenge of trying to beat them.

      At thirteen years old, I took my first plane trip to Cincinnati for the 1970 Short Course Nationals, which I had qualified for. Getting to the Nationals required hitting a certain time standard in each event. Basically, you had to swim at a sanctioned event and turn in a faster time than the standard in order to be invited to the Nationals. Then, once you were there, you would get seeded based on your times.

      The Nationals are held twice each year. They’re what you’re really training for. Flip was excited the day he told me at practice that I was going.

      “Good news, Shirley,” he said, his ever-present pipe in hand. “You’ve qualified. This is a big first step for you. Don’t be nervous. Just go have fun. This is how you learn to compete, so don’t put any real pressure on yourself.”

      For our trip, one of the girls’ moms, Mrs. Hanson, made matching outfits for all the girls on the swim team: white polyester tops with sweetheart necklines and red skirts.

      It felt so great to be on my own for the first time. I didn’t do that well in the one race I swam, but it was okay; as Flip had said, I was learning how to compete. I was having a blast, too. It was exciting to fly on a plane and compete at a big event like the Nationals.

      I think my first real brush with the media took place when I got back from Cincinnati. Once I was back in junior high, a boy who wrote for the school paper came over to me in the cafeteria. “Do you think I could interview you for an article that I want to write?” he asked. “Sure,” I replied. “Why not?” So we met after school, and he conducted his interview.

      “Did you have fun in Cincinnati?” he asked.

      “Yes,” I answered.

      “Is it true that this was your first plane ride?”

      “Yes.”

      “Is it tough to swim in those races?”

      “Yes.”

      “Are you going to continue as a swimmer?”

      “Yes.”

      “Was it fun coming back to school?”

      “No.”

      A few days later, the school paper came out. When I got home that afternoon, my mom was waiting with a copy in her hand. She was not happy. “You really gave these answers to him?” she asked, pointing at the paper in disgust. “This is your idea of how to give an interview?”

      “Yes,” I answered, without any kind of irony.

      My mother explained that, whenever somebody asked me questions, I was not to give yes or no answers. “You have to make a conversation,” she said. “You can’t just say yes or no. If you want people to learn about you, then you have to give better answers.”

      I understood what she was saying. It made sense. But what my mother didn’t know was that, in the process of teaching me how to do an interview, she probably opened up a bit of a Pandora’s box. When the microphones were in front of me in the years to come, I think a lot of people wished that I would just shut up. For now, I would take my mom’s advice and try to give more developed answers whenever I was interviewed. However, this process also spawned my lack of trust with the media early on, when I was interviewed by our local newspaper soon after my middle school interview.

      As my mother had ordered, I gave what I thought were thoughtful and conversational answers to the questions my interviewer asked me about swimming. But once the paper came out, I saw sections in print that I knew I hadn’t spoken. I didn’t even know the meaning of some of the words being attributed to me, so how could I have said them in the first place? Such was the beginning of my love-hate relationship with the press.

      Back home, it was still a house of horrors. I didn’t want anything to happen to my baby sister, but didn’t know what to do to protect her, either. I couldn’t go to my mother. I don’t think my two brothers knew what was going on. I had not told them, and I doubt they had picked up on anything. What was I going to do?

      As it turned out, I didn’t have to do anything.

      One night, there was a knock at our front door. It was in the evening, around eight o’clock or so. My father was at work; the rest of the family was home.

      As my mother opened the door, I saw a group of men standing in our doorway, maybe six or seven deep. They all looked very angry and upset.

      “Do you know why we’re here?” one of them asked my mother.

      “Do you know what’s going on?” asked another.

      My mother just stared back at them, not saying a word.

      As I looked at these men, I began to recognize them. They were our neighbors. They were the fathers of other children who lived on our street.

      “Your husband has been molesting our children,” one of the men said.

      My mother shook her head in silence, denying the charge.

      Another man spoke up. “Yes, he has! He’s been molesting them in your garage. Our daughters have told us everything, and now we’re doing something about it.”

      My mother took a step back from the door. The color had left her face. I think she knew that this was it. This was the moment. All of the secrets and dark lies and sinister threats and abusive behavior was being exposed right before her eyes—and mine.

      “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she stammered.

      “Liar!” one of them yelled. The others joined in, shouting the word at her.

      As the men continued lighting into my mother, I felt a surge of vindication inside. This was what I had always wanted: adults confronting my parents about their behavior. I had dreamed about this. Back when my first-grade teacher had suspected that something was going on, I had thought СКАЧАТЬ