The Other Side of a Fourth-Place Medal

by Christa Rohrbach

The Other Side of a Fourth-Place Medal

You are 18 months old when your first hairs sprout. Your mother is ecstatic when she sees them: three tiny, fair, and thin little hairs that were somehow able to pierce through the smooth porcelain of your scalp. She thinks maybe you will stop being mistaken for a boy, maybe she can finally stop telling people your name is him.

But after this, the hairs do not stop; you have a full mane by the time you are two and a tiny beard before you can speak. Your mother becomes afraid of what people are going to say when you can, asking you the questions she fields in your silence: “How old is your son?” (You are a girl.)  “He has so much hair!” (This is not a question, but these strangers expect a response and your mother reverts to a seemingly polite head nod or a curt thank you—polite because the stranger beams like they have done something right, but still curt enough that you know mother feels like she’s done something wrong.) “Where did this little guy come from?”  

You have some sort of lung condition that the doctor refuses to diagnose because there is a slight chance you will grow out of it. As a result, you are the wheezy child on the playground, never able to reach full capacity because your airways inflate like the mattresses your father used to sleep on before he stopped visiting. Your hair has tinged sepia by now, and it flies behind you—rippling in the wind as you rasp along and the other kids laugh with pointed fingers and crooked teeth you never get quite close enough to hit. 

It isn’t until your early teens that the hair stops being “a phase” and starts becoming “a concern.” You feel the change in your bones, though you are not sure how or why it has happened. The hair is still reddish-brown, though always more brown than red, and it still grows out of almost every pore in your body, but it is clear to you that it has become something much more serious. You see specialists—dermatologists and endocrinologists and even one trichologist—but none of them seem to know as much about your newfound condition as the people you pass on the street do. You want to grab each one as they scamper by, want to grip the hard nub of their shoulder as you shake them, demand that they tell you what you cannot find in the mirror amongst all the hair and uncertainty. 

Whatever it is, it causes each person to ogle at you in horror as you walk the same streets as them, feel the same things as them, always managing to retain your pronounced difference. It will be enough for you if they just help mother to stop her crying, but they won’t. They just keep walking and staring, turning heads to follow as you pass and craning necks around street corners until you no longer exist in their frame of vision and become something altogether outside the realm of possibility—something that can’t be real but somehow is, living in the corners of their imaginations and reserving reappearances for early morning nightmares.

And as if it isn’t bad enough that you are terrifying, you are also somehow violently awkward and inept at social interactions. If someone is able to muster enough courage to actually speak to you, you always say yes when you mean no and smile at the wrong time—usually concluding an exchange by shattering some illusion that they have, or, otherwise, terrifying them inadvertently with your enormous girth and strength. The courage they have mustered deflates quickly, and they often scramble to gather their belongings, mumbling about homework or waiting carpools or anything, really, to get away from you. You would have cared less if they had just excused themselves politely and refrained from briskly walking—almost running—away. 

In an attempt to normalize you, mother insists that you consistently participate in sports.  She contends that you must try everything—and so you do. You rip ballet tights and break baseball bats and make the other kids on the soccer team cry, but mother still makes you go to every last practice. At the end of each season, when she asks you if you want to continue and you shake your head no, she always smiles thinly and says, “Well, maybe the next one will work out better. What do you think about [and she inserts some sport you haven’t yet maimed, even though you keep telling her you don’t want to play any longer—at which point she says, “Well, you haven’t tried this one yet.”  

To mother’s credit, you do end up liking some of the sports. Basketball is one you really would have enjoyed if you had been a bit taller, mainly because the other kids are usually so scared of you that they don’t bother to block your shots. You can sink shot after shot in the drooping fabric of the net without anyone trying to stop you, mother clapping wildly from the stands after each one. She cheers like you’ve won the Nobel Prize rather than scored two points at a middle school basketball game, and you blush sheepishly—knowing her applause isn’t an indication of any significant accomplishment but feeling the heat tinge your cheeks anyway. You think this is the sport that will be the most difficult for you to leave, if only because mother droops like a flower caught in drought when they tell her that you cannot play anymore:

“Your daughter is going to have to stop coming to practices,” coach says, tapping his deteriorating clipboard against his leg. “The league officials and I have agreed that her—her condition is going to be too confusing to explain to the others going forth. Her eligibility is already hard enough to prove for the regulations—it will probably just make things easier if she doesn’t come anymore.” Mother dips her head low and nods stoically at him, shadowed eyes taking in what he says so seriously that you correctly imagine she is embarrassed it has taken this long for you to be kicked out. You think to yourself that you wish someone would tell you who the others are, and why things will be easier for them if you no longer play basketball. 

When you reach high school, it is time for you to join the cross country team. Your lung condition, which has improved steadily as you’ve aged, still affects you enough that this is one of the sports your mother has left for last, hoping you will be able to run just well enough to keep you on the team. To your surprise, you do not simply maintain: it turns out that years of running from kids on the playground and speed walking past the onlookers has made you fast, so fast that you beat all of the girls and some of the boys, earning a spot on the men’s team—which is okay because you will win at states, and the coaches don’t care enough about your body or its condition to place you on the right team; everyone just wants you to win. And, to their surprise and excitement, you do. At the state finals, you are the fourth fastest boy in the five-kilometer race and you will go on to compete in nationals next week. Mother is glad about you winning, tells all of her friends about how far she will drive next week to see you compete yet again. They applaud, ask if you think you’ll win a medal this time.  

Mother has also started to buy you more sweatshirts and funky baseball caps, reminding you it is what all the other boys on the team wear while they are waiting for races to start and pushing each other around in the hallway and walking home from practice in the flickering twilight. She starts to ask when you want to cut your hair again more often, poking her head into your room with the scissors dangling from one hand, a twinkle of hope in her eyes as spindly fingers clutch the door frame. “Are you ready for your next haircut?” She giggles nervously, knuckles turning white as the trim they grasp as she awaits your reply. You think about how, sometimes, she doesn’t ask if you want your hair cut and just does it anyway—the snip of the scissors catching you unawares as you work diligently on your chemistry homework. You tell her it’s not time to cut it again yet, your favorite movie star’s hair is much longer than yours, and since you both possess the same muted red color locks, there is a good chance you will look like her when they grow out just a bit more. Mother’s mouth pulls together then, taut and full of unspoken feelings you wish she would speak one day. You still think she might share, one day. But that day is not this one and she turns to go, tossing one phrase over her shoulder in a tone that is barely audible, yet the words themselves are so deafening you could not escape them if you tried:

“Your hairs are not red.”  

You are the only one who notices that your nationals qualifying time is also faster than that of any girls in your high school age group. You think to yourself how rare it is for a freshman to beat all the girls in the state, wonder what it would feel like to actually win a gold medal as you brush your mahogany locks in front of the mirror. The spectator cheer echoes in the back of your mind as you picture it: you, with blazing speed, shattering records as feet glide across the finish line leagues ahead of the others. Turning to wave at the stands clutching your first-place medal like an Oscar, mother cheering above all the rest, burnt red ends dancing in the wind all around you. 

Author Christa Rorhbach views herself primarily as a hybrid writer though she also writes fiction and poetry. Her previous work has been published in Outrageous Fortune and Bellingham Review. Most recently she appeared in Blood Tree Literature as second-place winner in their first-ever Chimera Hybrid Contest. She currently lives in Central Oregon where she is a middle school teacher.

Artist Zoe Stanek was born in Nebraska, raised in Western Colorado, and has found her place among the trees in Oregon’s Pacific Northwest. She’s a creator who takes inspiration from landscapes and everyday magic. Her dream is to become a published author. Zoe sells her work online.