You Will Know Me(7)

Despite countless conversations about Devon’s body, her development, her strength, her preternatural calm and focus, she and Eric almost never talked about her foot. About the accident.

“Oh, Eric,” Katie said, wrapping her hands around his forearms. “Like Coach T. says, she figured out long ago how to compensate and—”

“I think about it sometimes, Katie,” he said, nudging closer toward her.

For a second, Katie thought he might say something, an admission. I can’t believe I didn’t see her. I can’t believe I was so careless—

In all marriages, there are questions you never ask. Instead, Katie could only wonder, less and less as the years went by, how Eric could have left unattended, even for a moment, that relic of a mower, hustled from a garage sale, when he knew it didn’t shut off like it was supposed to. Why he’d taken that chance in spite of the way Devon followed him everywhere, all the time, scurrying after him like an eager, pink-tongued puppy.

“I think about what we did,” he continued.

His words landing fully.

“What we did,” she began, head tilting. “We—”

“She was different before,” Eric said. “Devon was. Before the accident.”

And the we drifted away, forgotten. Bourbon-obscured.

She knew he meant different in ways that went beyond the peculiar maceration at the top of her foot, the places two angel-ear toes had once wiggled.

She wished she weren’t so drunk, could stop a million tiny, pushed-away thoughts from scurrying across her brain. About Devon, about the lonesomeness of her daughter’s life, about—

So she spoke instead, to stop the thoughts.

“She was only three when it happened,” she insisted. “There was no Devon before.”

Feeling the bourbon whirl inside her, a heat under her eyes, she said it once, then said it again.

“There was no Devon before.”



In bed that night, her throat scraped dry from drinking, her head muddied and hot, Katie remembered something that had happened not that long ago. She’d walked into the TV room, thick with trophies and the tilting ribbon rack, and saw Devon, her feet propped up on the sofa, her shins aching, rubbing Zim’s Crack Creme on those ragged gymnast feet, the white of the lotion making her foot bright, conspicuous, a white worm wriggling.

Walking by, Katie had plucked at her daughter’s greased toes, saying, cooing even, “Take care of my girl’s magical Frankenfoot.”

A week later, Eric had confided to Katie that Devon had come to him to ask if she could start wearing Dance Paws at the gym so it would be harder for people to see. Because even Mom thought her foot made her look like a monster.

Hearing it was like a punch in the stomach.

“Why didn’t she say something to me?” she asked Eric, and he said she was probably embarrassed.

She always assumed Devon never really thought about it, the telltale white rings of scar tissue banding her forefoot. It just doesn’t feel as much, she confided once. She had less sensation there, and could hold the beam longer without pain. But she never felt pain anyway. Not like the other girls. Besides, her feet, both of them, were, more than anything else, the feet of all gymnasts. Ripped and peeling from the beam. Deformed, clawed, just like that nightmare Drew once had (Devon was a chicken hawk, Mom. With needles instead of feet).

“I’m the worst mother ever,” Katie said, and Eric shook his head, reassured her.

That’s what parenthood was about, wasn’t it? Slowly understanding your child less and less until she wasn’t yours anymore but herself. Especially Devon, who kept so much inside.

“She’s a thinker, a worrier,” Eric sometimes said. “She never stops.”

A serious girl, that’s what all her teachers said. An intense one.

Old beyond her years; they said that too.

That was what gymnastics did, though. It aged girls and kept them young forever at the same time.

And the face Devon wore at three years old, full of stiff determination and a native opacity, was the same one she wore at BelStars today, her nimble body spearing over the vault.

Ice Eyes, the other girls called her. Staring at her from the sidelines. They all wanted to be like that.

Look at Devon, Coach T. always said. She doesn’t give away any of her secrets.





Chapter Two



First the Foot, then the Fall. Katie would always wonder if the first begot the second, but she was certain both begot what came next.



“Whatever happens today,” Katie assured her, Devon’s face drawn and ancient-looking, the oldest thirteen-year-old in the world, “we’re so proud of you.”

“But I don’t know if I’m good enough, Mom,” Devon whispered in the muffled dark of the garage, waiting for Eric and Drew. “I really don’t.”

It was the day of Junior Elite Qualifiers.

At last, Devon Knox would compete and become a Junior Elite gymnast, as the Track had prophesized, set in Sharpie.

And so what if it was happening a year later than they all wanted? That hamstring injury, which Devon concealed from them for months until after one long practice, the back of her leg turning an angry violet. It looks like a grape jelly, Drew had said. Or a smooshed beetle. But now the hamstring was long healed, and this was Devon, after all. She would make up for lost time. She was still on the Track.