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Team spirit: Memories of Being a Freshman Cheerleader for the Basketball Team by Donna Tartt

Harper's Magazine, 288, April 1994, 37-40
The year I was a freshman cheerleader I was reading 1984. I was fourteen years old then and failing algebra and the fact that I was failing it worried me as I would worry now if the Mafia were after me, or if I had shot somebody and the police were coming to get me. But I did not have an awful lot of time to brood about this. It was basketball season then, and there was a game nearly every night. In Mississippi the schools are far apart, and sometimes we would have to drive two hundred miles to get to Panola Academy, Sharkey-Issaquena, funny how those old names come back to me; we'd leave sometimes before school was out, not get home till twelve or one in the morning. I was not an energetic teenager, and this was hard on me. Too much exposure to the high-decibel world of teen sports--shrieking buzzers, roaring stomping mob, thunderous feet of players charging up the court--kept me in a kind of perpetual stunned condition; the tin-roof echo of rural gymnasiums rang through all my silences, and frequently at night I woke in a panic because I thought a player was crashing through my bedroom window or a basketball was flying at me, about to knock my teeth out.

I read 1984 in the backseats of Cadillacs, Buicks, Lincoln Town Cars, riding through the flat wintry Delta with my saddle oxfords off and my schoolbooks piled beneath my feet. Our fathers--professional men, mostly, lawyers and optometrists, prosperous local plumbers--took turns driving us back and forth from the games. The other cheerleaders griped about not being allowed to ride with the players, but though I griped along with them, I was secretly appalled at the rowdy team bus, full of boys who shouted things when you walked by their table in the cafeteria. The cars, on the other hand, were wide, spacious, quiet. Somebody's mother usually would have made cookies; there were always potato chips and old issues of Seventeen. The girls punched listlessly at the radio, applied Bonne Bell lip gloss, did their homework or their hair.

Now that I think about it, I believe I read Animal Farm before 1984. It upset me a little, especially the end, but the statement ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS echoed sentiments that I recognized as prevalent in the upper echelons of the cheerleading squad. Our captain was a mean girl named Cindy Clark. She talked a lot about spirit and pep, and how important it was for us to work as a team, but she and her cronies ostracized the younger girls and were horrible to us off the court. Cindy was approximately my height and was forced to be my partner in some of the cheers, a circumstance that displeased her as much as it did me. I remember a song that was popular around that time; it had lyrics that went:

We are family

I've got all my sisters with me

This had for some reason been incorporated into one of the chants, and Cindy and I were frequently forced to sing it together: arms around each other, leaning on each other like drunks, beaming with joy, and behaving in every way like the sisters that we, in fact, were most certainly not.

Though there was a sharp distinction between the older girls and the younger ones, we were also divided, throughout our ranks and regardless of age, into two distinct categories: those of snob and slut. The snobs had flat chests, pretty clothes, and were skittish and shrill. Though they were always sugar-sweet to one's face, in reality they were a nasty, backbiting lot, always doing things like stealing one another's boyfriend and trying to rig the elections for the Beauty Revue. The sluts were from poorer families, and much better liked in general. They drank beer, made out with boys in the hallways, and had horrible black hickeys all over their necks. Our squad was divided pretty much half and half. Physically and economically, I fell into the category of snob, but I did poorly in school and was not gung ho or clubbish enough to fit in very well with the rest of them. (To be a proper snob, one had always to be making floats for some damn parade or other, or organizing potluck dinners for the Booster Club.) The sluts, I thought, took a more sensible view of such foolishness; they smoked and drank; I found them, as a rule, much nicer. Being big girls generally, they were the backbones of the stances, the foundations from which the pyramids rose and, occasionally, fell; I, being the smallest on the squad, had to work with them rather closely, in special sessions after the regular cheerleading practices, since they were the ones who lifted me into the air, who spotted me in gymnastics, upon whose shoulders I had to stand to form the obligatory pyramid. They all had pet names for me, and--though vigorously heterosexual--babied me in what I am sure none of them realized was a faintly lecherous way: tickles and pinches, slaps on the rump, pulling me into their laps in crowded cars and crooning stupid songs from the radio into my ear. At the games they completely ignored me, as every fiber of their attention was devoted to flirting with--and contriving to make out with--various boys. As I was both too young to be much interested in boys and lacking in the fullness of bosom and broadness of beam that would have made them much interested in me, I was excluded from this activity. But still the sluts felt sorry for me and gave me tips on how to make myself attractive (pierced ears, longer hair, tissue paper in the bra)--and, when we were loitering around after practices, often regaled me with worldly tales of various sexual, obstetric, and gynecological horrors, some of which still make my eyes pop to think about.

The gymnasiums were high-ceilinged, barn-like, drafty, usually in the middle of some desolate field. We were always freezing in our skimpy plaid skirts, our legs all goose pimples as we clapped and stamped on the yellowed wooden floor. At halftime there were the detested stances, out in the middle of the court, which involved perilous leaps, and complex timing, and--more likely than not--tears and remonstrations in the changing rooms. As soon as they were over and the buzzer went off for the third quarter, the younger girls rushed in a greedy flock to the snack bar for Cokes and french fries, Hershey bars, scattering to devour them in privacy while Cindy and her crew slunk out to the parking lot to rendezvous with their boyfriends. We were all of us, all the time, constantly sick--coughing, blowing our noses, faces flushed with fever: symptoms that were exacerbated by bad food, cramped conditions, exhaustion, and yelling ourselves hoarse every night. Hoarseness was, in fact, a matter of pride: we were accused of shirking if our Voices Weren't Cracked by the end of the evening, the state to which we aspired being a rasping, laryngitic croak. I remember the only time the basketball coach--a gigantic, stone-faced, terrifying man who was also the principal of the school and who, to my way of thinking, held powers virtually of life or death (there were stories of his punching kids out, beating them till they had bruises, stories that perhaps were not apocryphal in a private school like my own, which prided itself on what it called "old-fashioned discipline" and where corporal punishment was a matter of routine); the only time this coach ever spoke to me was to compliment me on my burned-out voice, which he overheard in the hall the morning after a game. "Good job," he said. My companions and I were dumbfounded with terror. After he was gone they stared at me with awestruck apprehension and then, one by one, drifted gently away, not wishing to be seen in the company of anyone who had attracted the attention--even momentarily--of this dangerous lunatic.

There were pep squads, of a sort, in 1984. I read about them with interest. Banners, processions, slogans, games were as popular in Airstrip One as they were at Kirk Academy. Realizing that there was a certain correspondence between this totalitarian nightmare and my own high school gave me at first a feeling of smug superiority, but after a time I be an to have an acute sense of the meaninglessness of my words and gestures. Did I really care if we won or lost? No matter how enthusiastically I jumped and shouted, the answer to this was unquestionably No. This epiphany both confused and depressed me. And yet I continued--outwardly at least--to display as much pep as ever. "I always look cheerful and I never shirk anything," says Winston Smith's girlfriend, Julia. "Always yell with the crowd, that's what I say. It's the only way to be safe."

Our rival team was called the Patriots. I remember one rally, the night before a big game, when a dummy Patriot was hanged from the gymnasium rafters, then taken outside and burned amid the frenzied screams and stomps of the mob. I yelled as loud as anybody even though I was suffused by an airy, perilous sense of unreality, a conviction--despite the apparently desperate nature of this occasion--that none of it meant anything at all. In my diary that night--a document that was as secretive and, to my mind at least, as subversive as Winston's own--I noted tersely: "Hell's own Pep Rally. Freshmen won the spirit stick. Rah, rah."

It was on the rides home--especially on the nights we'd won--that the inequity of not being allowed on the team bus was most keenly felt by the cheerleaders. Moodily, they stared out the windows, dreaming of backseats, and letter jackets, and smooching with their repulsive boyfriends. The cars smelled like talcum powder and Tickle deodorant, and--if we were with one of the nicer dads, who had allowed us to stop at a drive-in--cheeseburgers and french fries. It was too dark to read. Everyone was tired, but for some reason we were all too paranoid to go to sleep in front of one another: afraid we might drool, perhaps, or inadvertently scratch an armpit.

Whispers, giggles, sighs. We rode four to a car and all four of us would be crammed in the backseat; bare arms touching, goose-bumped knees pressed together, our silences punctuated by long ardent slurps of Tab. The console lights of the Cadillac dashboards were phosphorescent, eerie. The radio was mostly static that time of night, but sometimes you could get a late-night station coming out of Greenwood or Memphis: slow songs, that's what everyone wanted, sloppy stuff by Olivia Newton-John or Dan Fogelberg. (The cheerleaders had a virtual Cult of Olivia Newton-John; they tried to do their hair like her, emulate her in every possible way, and were fond of speculating what Olivia would or would not do in certain situations. She was like the ninth, ghost member of the squad. I was secretly gratified when she plummeted--with alarming swiftness--from favor because someone heard a rumor that she was gay.

Olivia or not, the favorite song that winter hands-down was "You Light Up My Life" by Debby Boone. It must have been number one for months; at least, it seemed to be played on the radio just about every other song, which was fine with everybody. When it came on the girls would all start singing it quietly to themselves, staring out the window, each in her own little world; touching the fogged window-glass gently with her fingertips and each thinking no one could hear her, but all their voices combined in a kind of low, humming harmony that blended with the radio:

So many nights

I sit by my window

Waiting for someone

To sing me his song...

Full moon; hard frost on the stubbled cotton fields. They opened up on either side of the car in long, gray spokes, like a fan.

Basketball Season, Team spirit: Memories of Being a Freshman Cheerleader for the Basketball Team was published in the following:

It originally appeared in Harper's Magazine 288, April 1994, 37-40



Donna Tartt in The Oxford American
The Oxford American vol II, reproduced from Harper's April 1994
Basketball Season
Oxford American #2

"...Donna Tartt offers some insight into class struggle in high school in her reminiscence of her days as a cheerleader."
- from Publisher's Weekly


Donna Tartt in The Best American Sports Writing 1993
Basketball Season
The Best American Sports Writing 1993
edited & introduction by by Frank Deford
Houghton Mifflin
Hardcover
November 1993
ISBN:0395633249
Order
"Donna Tartt writes amusingly about high-school cheerleading."
- Kirkus Reviews


Best of the Oxford American: Ten Years from the Southern Magazine of Good Writing
amazon Best of the Oxford American: Ten Years from the Southern Magazine of Good Writing
Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Hill Street Press (June 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1588180816
ISBN-13: 978-1588180810
Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
Order
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
On May 2, 2002, editor Smirnoff sent a letter to Oxford American advertisers announcing the impending closing of the magazine due to a lack of funds to print the spring issue. On May 10, the New York Times picked up on the news with an essay entitled "A Mississippi Upstart, As It Lay Loudly Dying." The fate of the magazine is still unclear, but this collection should tide readers over for the present with its eclectic array of fiction, essays and poetry. In his introduction, Smirnoff explains the difficulty of choosing the best from a roster of writers that reads like a Who's Who of Southern Lit. After an eloquent foreword by Rick Bragg, these luminaries include William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, Walker Percy, Barry Hannah, Steve Martin, John Updike, Larry Brown, Rosanne Cash, John T. Edge, Steve Yarbrough, Roy Blount Jr. and John Grisham. Of course, there are many excellent pieces: Sister Helen Prejean's "Memories of a Dead Man Walking" is as powerful as it is plainspoken; Rick Bass enchants with "Turtlemania," in which he recalls a childhood encounter with a huge snapping turtle; Donna Tartt weighs in with a moving remembrance of Willie Morris. Despite the heavyweight lineup, or perhaps because of it, the arc of the collection is predictable, but those who like their writing home style will find much to savor here.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Smirnoff introduced the Oxford American in spring 1992, arguing that it was "time for a good general magazine to originate from the South." His goals included publishing various forms of excellent writing for the intelligent, nonacademic general reader. One of the magazine's great strengths has been Smirnoff's willingness to publish largely unknown regional writers, many of whom have gone on to substantial careers. As this "best of" anthology shows, Smirnoff has successfully balanced an intriguing blend of commercial fiction (e.g., John Grisham, who underwrote the project for many years), unpublished manuscripts by Southern stalwarts (e.g., William Faulkner, Zora Neal Hurston, and Walker Percy), and commentary on Southern culture (John T. Edge, Roy Blount Jr., and Hal Crowther). Many of the selections are by noteworthy authors among them Grisham, Cythnia Shearer, Larry Brown, John Updike, John Grisham, Donna Tart, Barry Hannah, and Steve Yarbrough who have lived or set their work in Oxford, MS, the home of the Oxford American. The magazine has been both passionately praised and roundly criticized for its quirky approach to literature, and readers will probably have the same response to this well-crafted collection. Recommended for libraries with large collections of Southern literature and as demand warrants. Pam Kingsbury, Florence, AL
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.






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