In person and in spirit.
Through the good and bad.
One at a time I peeled off the tarps, dust billowing into the air before settling back down again on the concrete floor. After I folded them, I stacked them on shelves along the back wall.
Hours upon hours of memories with my family echoed in this place. The first time I ever put on skates and got on a banked track had been right here with my grandmother. Small but strong and unbelievably fast, she continued to skate well into her seventies. She spent time every day out on this track for at least an hour, claiming the exercise kept her young.
From the onset, she’d started me out racing her. After a few months I finally got fast enough to blast past her out of the first turn.
Then our mother died.
When she did, I took my sorrow out on the Masonite track. No more races. Instead, she stood on the infield, her keen eye never leaving me. Like she sensed the bitterness in me bubbling to a dangerous flash point.
They’re orphans now.
I overheard the words, hushed and muffled so I never figured out who’d said them.
We weren’t orphans. We had a father.
Somewhere.
With every lap, I skated harder and faster. I shouted out every last bit of anger and misery filling me. I punished this very track for what I’d lost.
For what I’d never get back.
This track had the power to lift me up so fucking high I’d swear I could touch the angels—and the power to cut me so deep my life leeched out with every bit of sweat and streak of furious tears pouring down my cheeks.
My emotions had always gone to war in these four walls.
What emotions would I face off with this time?
With the tarps off, I started at the first of two bastards, directly across from one another, the center pieces of the turns on each end of the track. I studied every center bolt, every brush of my fingers over the cold metal bringing a fresh memory of my grandfather’s smile and the awe in his voice when he talked about my grandmother.
She knocked me right on my keister from day one, son. Day one. I never even knew what hit me; I just knew I wanted it to hit me again.
Yeah. That sounded about right.
Mayhem.
She’d done the same to me. And here I was, working on a track for her. Just like my grandfather.
Only we wouldn’t have the happy ending. She wanted to be in the WRDF and any long-term attention on her team because of me would risk their chances.
She had a goal and all I brought to the table was endless scrutiny.
And I wouldn’t throw Lana under the bus to save myself. She’d paid plenty already.
My silence was the final nail in my own coffin.
Happy endings were for everyone else.
So bitter and angry, the lessons I learned in this barn—care and respect from my grandfather, fire and hunger from my grandmother—withered under the suffocating blanket of grief for my mother until it turned to poison.
I let the battle fuck with my head until tunnel vision took over, tempting me into giving my father another chance.
I told my grandmother what I wanted. What I thought was right. My words turning sour in my gut like my soul’s warning. She gave me the choice, the adult choice as the older brother, the older twin. The one who'd always looked out for his siblings. She squared her proud shoulders and gave me a firm nod. “If you think it’s the right thing to do, then maybe it is the right thing to do,” she’d said.
Six months later, my twin dead, my father in jail, my sister screaming every night in her sleep and barely eating, we ended up back at the farm.
I never even went into the house when we arrived. I marched straight to this barn and strapped on my skates.
My grandmother didn’t say a word, just followed me and waited for me to skate it out.
We had a shared demon to fight now.
Regret.
I saw it every time I looked into her eyes, and in the mirror each morning.
Eventually she put up obstacles: orange cones, buckets, stools, whatever she could find. Pushing me until the tears dried and all that was left was sweat.
Drowning in my own torment, I didn’t recognize what she was doing, I just kept trying to outrun ghosts.
And when I didn’t believe in myself anymore, she believed enough for both of us and cracked open the door to a family legacy which until then had only belonged to women.
She trusted me to honor the generations before me.
And she taught me banked track derby.
Every day we worked.
Covered in bruises from head to toe from laying my every emotion on the track, and still she pushed harder, faster, stronger.
Over and over she’d challenge me, bet me I couldn’t get through. Hungry for absolution and hell-bent on proving her wrong, I’d swerve, jump, spin, and navigate my way through until I slayed every single challenge stationary objects could bring.
Leave it to my grandmother to up the ante.
Obstacles flew in from the left, from the right, foam padding in a variety of shapes and weights. Forcing me to learn how to be good on my toes, literally, and mastering speed recovery after getting through the pack or past a pileup.
My grandmother taught me how to coach.
Lilith started to wander in after a while. She never got on the track herself. She wasn't into roller-skating, the way we were, but she loved to watch, to play music, and God could the girl cheer.
“You want some company?” Lilith called from the open doorway.
I dropped a rusted bolt into the bucket at my feet and turned to her. For just a second, I saw that young girl. The one who’d been hurt over and over by my mistakes.
The one
