Circus by Claire Battershill Page B

high-school cheerleader. We went to all the sporting events we could and cheered just as hard for the six-year-olds competing in the potato sack race at the fall fair as we did for the sweepers at the provincial curling championships. So it was just another family outing when my parents, grandparents, and fourteen-year-old me piled into our van and drove to an elementary school in the next town to see my ten-year-old cousin, Jessie, perform in a fundraiser for her Jump Rope Demonstration Team. We cheered her on as we watched her master the double-under, skip backwards with her eyes closed, and kneel atop a human pyramid while turning two ropes in opposite directions. There were little girls bouncing all around, chattering like wind-up toys. They were barely listening to their coach, an older lady who was head-to-toe Eighties in her neon pink, blue, and white tracksuit, with her hair gathered into a voluminous side ponytail. She seemed to be chewing an entire pack of gum with her back molars, which didn’t stop her from hollering tips from the sidelines: “Smile, Becky! It wouldn’t kill you to grin a little!” The gym was enormous, and the basketball hoops, volleyball nets, and gymnastics equipment were all folded against the walls as if to give centre stageto the event of the moment, the other sports tucking themselves away, quiet as moths. “Baby Love” by the Supremes seemed to be playing on a loop. The girls were performing in small groups all around the gym while their families followed the skippers from station to station. It was like a workout circuit for supportive parenthood.
    My cousin’s show-off move was “The Wounded Duck,” and I whistled as she started jumping with her toes together and then clicked her heels back and forth as the rope swung over her head. It was a wonky, sped-up version of the Charleston, and it was somehow graceless and miraculous at the same time. Jump rope was like that: all about the bravura gesture, the one trick that no one else on the team could perform. One tiny red-headed girl did a somersault into the double-dutch set-up and skipped while sitting on the floor, bouncing her bum over the rope while two other skippers turned the long ropes for her. No matter where you were in the room she was the one you couldn’t help watching, the one who held your attention even in a crowd of twenty-odd teammates popping up and down around her. At the end of her routine, she pulled herself up into a perfect bridge position (still skipping), then pushed into a one-handed handstand (still skipping). The crowd stamped their feet and shouted their love, and I found myself spontaneously hollering enthusiasm for her along with everyone else. She couldn’t have been older than eleven, but already she must have known that she would always be the best at these tricks. I guess it must have been the same for my dad when his hammer hit the dust way ahead of everyone else’s, or for my mum when she stretched out her arms to makeher body into a perfect letter
K
. What did it feel like to be so skilled? Would I ever be that good at anything?
    While the red-haired girl took a break after her routine to greet her adoring fans, I lined up to make a donation at the pledge table, which was manned by volunteers from the grade five boys’ basketball team. They were drawing tattoos on each other’s biceps in ballpoint pen and taking turns throwing their empty juice boxes into a distant garbage can as if they were shooting three-pointers. A boy my own age joined me in line and we signed $1 pledges for heart health and received red skipping ropes for our contributions.
    “What are you going to do with yours?” he asked, flicking me playfully on the shoulder with the coiled jump rope he’d just been given.
    I told him I’d read that boxers use them to stay agile on their feet. I was trying to sound tough, even though my arm was still stinging from where he’d hit me. “And Floyd Mayweather is the best