‘White On Red’ by Dee Collins

Photo credit: Oisín Hurley

County Final Day. The most important day of the season and maybe the first time they are proud of you. You try to smile, for them.

In the car your father talks about when his team won the county final, and how that game is still talked about today. His eyes light up and he laughs and shakes his head. Four goals he scored. Every single person in the village is going to this momentous occasion. You’d rather not play, but there’s no one else to take your place. The team needs you, your village needs you. Grating, mashing, and bleeping sounds come from your sister’s Donkey Kong game. She pretends the volume cannot be switched off. You roll down the window to clear the rainwater and look out over the ditch, across the fields, towards where the river meets the sea. You tell your father you don’t feel well. Nonsense, he says. It’s only nerves.

*

A fence of diamond-shaped metal links surrounds the pitch, decorated here and there with bleached-out Tayto bags and streamers of baling twine. The carpark beside the clubhouse is covered in loose black gravel. Cigarette smoke is released towards the sky from car windows that are barely open. Nettles and docks flourish in the dampening mist. A huge cloud, yellowed by the seeping April sun, hangs over the washing lines that pull the estate behind the goals tightly together. Against the insipid falling sky, millions of water droplets wait on short blades of grass to be scattered by the charge of foot, stick, and ball.

Two drumlins of white tissue paper scratch against your skin, and item 14023 from page 22 of the Oxendales Spring/Summer 1987 catalogue. Your blue jersey with the white collar at last has something to negotiate. A boy stares at your chest on the way into the team changing rooms. You blush, look away, walk taller, and ignore the darts and twinges that are ricocheting from the place inside of you; the place that tightens everything. And there’s a smell, sweet like a rose but cloying, with a depth you can’t figure out.

The smell is like soil in February.

*

Your boots are polished; the loose stud underneath is tightly screwed. Blue and white striped socks are pulled knee high. Three kicks from your right heel to your left shin confirms the plastic guards are in place. Blue hair-clips hold back wisps of black hair, the escapees that you can never reach through the metal bars of the helmet. Star jumps, press-ups in the rain, laps of the field. Your body is changing. Muscles are visible on your legs and with each step you feel stronger, rooted to the ground. Ready to defend.

Inside of you there’s an expanding. Your top jean-button stays open lately, no matter how deeply you inhale. You have an urge to whip every last raindrop off every last blade, swinging your hurley in a rhythmic circle, to lie back exhausted. The trace of dew on your tongue is sweet and bitter, like you. You hold your tears in your fist.

At the far end of the pitch the goalposts strain high and white and vanish into the vaporous sky. Back behind the main stand, a used-to-be-white chipvan, its back wheels wedged with concrete blocks, blasts out a deafening racket from a fuming petrol generator. Over three rows of tiered wooden seats, a galvanized roof stretches to cover women and children. Above the stand is a metal ladder where the umpire climbs to change the score on the white scoreboard. The numbers 3003 are stuck to it, and there’s a black marker line drawn through both threes.

The team depend on you as the Last Line of Defence. All five foot eight of you dutifully protects your sister’s best friend, the goalie. Her skill and speed belie her twelve years. She will make the County Team, they say. Your father would be proud if you too made the County Team. You can feel that. You played well in the last game, they say. Unafraid to go shoulder to shoulder, you raise and pull, and clash and whip and clash. Playing the ball on the ground is a tactic that works for you, but it feels like cheating.

The referee blows the whistle and a guttural hum rises from the sideline. The voices are muffled; you can’t make out the instructions. Ignoring the sharp pain in your side, you jog on the spot. It’s only nerves. He said it’s only nerves. You refasten the velcro that keeps your skirt in place. The hemline barely covers your bum, the material cut for smaller girls. Turning the grip at the top of your hurley you feel where layers overlap. Knock the helmet with your knuckles; one, two, three. Lift your foot back and tap the toe of your boot; one, two, three. The helmet strap pinches skin on your neck; it is too late to adjust it now.

The rows of seats covered by the tin roof are crowded now. Lads from your class are pucking sliotars back and forth. Each boy has one girl he pretends not to look at. They all cheer for the Captain when she runs with the ball. Men with large umbrellas and walking sticks hover like a cluster of mushrooms by the whitewashed line; one-armed gestures move up and down and left and right. Voices pitch louder and almost reach the far goals where you stand. Corner flags fly straight in the scarabhín wind – the one that scorches the fields. You burn inside and out. The number three is hand- stitched to the back of your jersey.

Your teammates are a mesh of swishing ponytails, flapping skirts and clashing sticks. Behind you, older girls in matching fluorescent ski jackets and snow-washed jeans sit smoking cigarettes at the corner of the clubhouse. Hidden but not quite. Old enough not to care.

The game is a test. You decide to not greet your marker, to not look at her, to not give her any opportunity to get the measure of you. Your studs make holes in the ground as you twist your body into position. You grip the hurley with your right hand on top; the bas held by your left. The stick does not twist or sway. Sand sprays as you kick backwards, then move forward. Your marker follows.

Coloured flags line the pitch and keep all thirty girls and one referee within the white lines. The fathers’ roars get louder and a breakaway group threatens to broach the border. One man is reprimanded by the referee and sent to the stand. Seated, he restarts his campaign, all arms and legs and face about to explode. A loose line of bunting billows and falls. The flow of the game pitches and swells; the ball crowns five sticks held aloft like the Olympic flame. One girl reaches higher and flicks the ball to one side. She runs towards the opposite goal. Her body bends; she sweeps the ball from the turf onto her stick. Momentum carries her now. She solos the sliotar one- handed: hop, hop, hop. She pirouettes between two opponents; her eye never leaves the ball. Keep going, the crowd shout. You are shouting too. She flips the ball from her stick into her left hand, turns her body, throws, connects and the ball is in the back of the net.

You are in position. The action is at the other end of the pitch. Jogging on the spot would help, but you don’t feel like moving. The wind rises and the flags flap westwards. The goalie twirls her stick in the sand with one finger. You’re cold. The rain stops and your hands are numb. You place the bas between your feet; the hurley stands straight. You blow into your cupped hands, cross your arms and stick each hand under the opposite armpit. The action ahead is a blur. At some stage your team got another point; the scoreboard reads 1-1 to 0-0.

Half-time whistle; the girls file back to the changing rooms, past where the boys are jostling and whistling behind the clubhouse. Look behind you, your father is leaning on a hurley, his curly hair matted by the April rain. Your sister is sitting at the corner of the stand – a safe distance from your mother to play computer games in peace. Her head tilts back, maybe in defeat, maybe in joy. You’re too far away to tell.

The dressing room is a fug of aerosol: floral, sticky, sweet. The Captain is talking. She pumps her fist. She is under fourteen, just, because her birthday falls before the cut-off date. She is the pride of the village. In real age, she’s almost fifteen. Clods of earth hit the ground as she stamps her boots. Her jersey falls to tight pleats; her legs are brown. Not like yours. Her hair is shiny and straight. Not like yours. Her teeth are white and even. Not like yours. Her face makes your face hurt from smiling.

The Captain leads all fifteen girls back onto the pitch. A different marker awaits. You say hello this time. Within seconds the ball whizzes past. A knock, a slap, and down on your knees. Blows coming from either side. Where’s the whistle? How long can they keep whaling? You know you have fallen on the sliotar. You stay down. You must be winded. That must be it.

There’s a free in. As the other team move to the twenty-metre line your goalie shouts: there’s blood, there’s blood everywhere. Her voice is high. You look around. The girls are staring – at you. At your skirt – it’s red and it’s bright red and bright red is running down your leg, staining your new blue and white socks. Voices in staccato puncture your head and a wash of white specks cross over your eyes; you fall.

Blood injury, substitution for blood injury, that’s what the referee shouts. Your parents are running across the pitch. The medics check for the cut; someone holds a tin of magic spray. The lads continue to puck and catch. You crouch forward and know that this blood is not from under the surface of your skin. The skin that burns now, with shame. This is blood from an injury you were born with, an injury deep inside of you. She’s not hurt, they say. It’s ... you know ... they can’t say. Your father and the other men go back to the stand. You are sent off. You can’t return until the bleeding stops, that’s the rules of the game.

From issue #9: autumn/winter 2019

About the Author
Dee Collins emigrated to Cork from Clare and has completed a Masters in Creative Writing at UCC. She is the 2018 recipient of the J.G. Farrell Award for Fiction.