You Will Know Me(8)

“You can do anything,” Katie promised as Devon finally slid into the backseat.

“That’s what Dad said,” she whispered. “You guys always say the same thing.”



The four Knoxes, Drew swinging from his parents’ hands, entered the building, a conference center, a hundred girls and their twitchy, caffeine-palsied parents hiving everywhere.

Today: Elite Qualifiers. Registration to Left. The banner so modest, like it had been rushed off at the copy center moments before.

This next step was a big one, but they were all big. Everything with Devon was big.

“Bye,” Devon said, waving as she walked backward, slight as a grass blade, into the Gymnasts Only area.



Next up, Devon Knox!

High in the stands, Eric clasped Katie’s hand.

There Devon stood, on the competition floor. Four feet ten inches tall, nary a curve on her, but her dark eyes heavy with history, struggle. Squinting down, body pressing forward, Katie wondered at those eyes, that face. It was as if this weren’t her teenage daughter but a woman deepened by experience, a war-battered refugee, a KGB spy.

She has a sense of mystery, she’d heard a judge say once about Devon. Like a sphinx.

And it was true. Where did it come from?

A nearly fourteen-year-old girl but with a voice like Minnie Mouse who still slept with her good-luck stuffed animal, the same plush tiger she used to hold, age eight, between her knees on the horizontal bars, trying to keep her legs together.

Except out there on the competition floor, her eyes like hawk slits, that little girl was gone.



Beam, floor, bars. She was achieving.

Yes, there were a few stumbles, which were surprising but nothing that couldn’t be overcome. Katie could barely breathe, Eric kneading his jean legs with red hands. More than ever, watching Devon had become a profound experience for them. Taking in each routine with their whole bodies, every nerve on high, their hearts jammering against each other. Because she was theirs, but now she was also so much bigger than they were.

“She’s got this,” Eric said now, knocking the bench as he said it.

But then it happened.

Devon’s final routine, the vault.

Eric’s fingers laced in hers, Katie watched their daughter stand at the foot of the runway.

Watched her gaze fasten on the vault table, four feet long, three feet wide, its white spring top like a shiny orb, a womb.

Watched her jump up once and explode into her sprint.

Catapulting into the air.

Glorious height, strong landing.

And then, in a heartbeat, it happened.

On the stick, her feet safely on the mat, Devon’s right ankle rolled slightly, and one foot landed just outside the corridor. Only an inch, maybe. (The judges would say it was a shoulder’s width.) And, yes, maybe there was the slightest of wobbles. A minuscule ankle cave.

But Devon lifted her chin high, her face showing no sign that anything had gone wrong.

When the final scores came, however, Devon was out. By seven-tenths of a point.



Down on the floor, Katie wanted to sweep her daughter into her arms, but you weren’t allowed, and all she could do was reach out for her shoulder, squeeze it.

“It’s all over. My life’s over,” Devon said, looking up at Katie, her hand shaking slightly as she pushed back a stray strand from her ponytail. “You know it is.”

Words every adolescent says—grounded, a humiliation at school, first crush.

But Katie secretly felt its partial truth. No Junior Elite meant no Senior Elite, which meant—she could see the black marker skating across Coach T.’s flow chart—no national team, no international. No Olympics.

Devon’s life wasn’t over, but her life, their lives, had changed, in a foot bobble.

“Everything’s gone,” Devon said, eyes shut and face twisted. “Now there’s nothing.”

“Honey,” Katie began. Then, the words slipping from her mouth, the words that would haunt her for years to come, “You’ll compete in college, the best programs in the country will want you. Gymnastics aren’t everything. The Olympics were a long shot anyway.”

The look Devon gave her in return was so fierce Katie flinched.

She knew at once she’d been wrong to say it, at least so soon, in the teary heat of everything. But it was too late.

There was an awful quiet second, Katie stuttering, before Eric seized Devon’s shoulders, making her face him, look into his eyes.

“Hey,” Eric said, “we’re coming back. This was just the first shot. Next qualifiers, we’ll be here. You’ll nail it.”

This is why I married him, Katie thought. Why hadn’t those words come out of her mouth?

Instead, the shameful thought whirring in her head was You’ve fallen off the Track. You’ll never make the next Olympics now. By the one after that, you’ll have pendulous breasts and dragging hips. You’ll be too old, an ancient nineteen.

“I don’t want to do it again,” Devon said. “Ever.”



In the weeks following the Disappointment, everything seemed to shift, perceptibly.

Before, they’d all stay at the dinner table long after the plates were cleared, talking about new recruits, about Devon’s hand rips, about the gym’s aging equipment, and about the need for an inground pit and a new spring floor. These were concerns they all shared.