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And while I'm at it, this is the (incomplete and unfinished) real (ok, like 15% conjecture) story of Immigrant Girl, because sometimes I like writing about the moons circling the planet instead of vice versa. It's a story that I think about a lot because of everything it encapsulates about gender roles and sexism and the way systems are built to put women second, even if! Even if there are good guys in the picture.
----
She emigrates when she's young. Her father's a big fan of Martina Navratilova, and one day he manages to introduce his little daughter - then a wannabe ballerina - to the star; the star says she should give tennis a shot. The little girl takes to the sport, loves it, commits to it. She's got a good backhand and a punishing work ethic. She knows she's not going to be the absolute best, but she'd like to make it to the top 50. Because she's ambitious, but realistic. An Aries. Strong-willed. So strong-willed that she travels through war zones to get to tournaments. And very stubborn. So stubborn, so Miss Independent, that when a rich boyfriend - some member of a Middle Eastern royal family, so they say - insists that she quit tennis to prepare herself for married life, she breaks up with him. Who the hell does he think he is?
She qualifies for the Sydney Olympics when she's 21. She's on the up-and-up, and she's all discipline all the time. Others on the team tell her she has to come check out this supposed superstar-in-the-making, the one all the girls think is cute. What she sees is an 18-year-old going ballistic in practice. "That guy? Real great," she says, rolling her eyes. But he is cute, and he starts singing Backstreet Boys songs in her direction, trying to talk to her all the time. She doesn't know why. She's just trying to play tennis. Unfortunately, she loses in the first round - singles and doubles. Now she's got little left to do but cheer on the rest of her team. Cute Boy makes it all the way to the bronze medal match, then chokes inexplicably. Afterwards, he's inconsolable. She goes to talk to him. They end up talking a long, long time. On the day of the closing ceremony, he kisses her.
Whatever, she thinks; I'm still just trying to play tennis. The men's and women's tours only occasionally overlap. But Cute Boy, who it turns out has never had a real relationship (that explains a lot), is head-over-heels in love, and soon they're training together, trying to align their schedules as much as possible. She knows he could be extraordinary, if only he would practice more. All she can do is throw out his videogames and set an example. Hours upon hours on the practice court, every day, trying to get her technique right, trying not to envy the way her boyfriend just seems to instinctively "get it." They play mixed doubles at the Hopman Cup in Australia and win one match, lose the second. God, she wishes she could hold up her end of the bargain, be a better partner for him - and her own pride. His friends nudge him that they don't know how his dorky ass got so lucky, but the last thing she wants is to be some tennis babe who can't actually play. She knows what she has to do; she doesn't need a damn coach telling her. One coach actually ends things with her because she's so stubborn. But she's getting there. For the first time, she makes it to the third round of a Grand Slam, and loses to the eventual champion. She's ranked 70-something. She will make it to her goal. She will.
Then she gets injured. Her damn foot. It's always been a problem, and she's aggravated it practicing so much. She gets surgery in a last-ditch, Hail Mary attempt to fix it. It doesn't work. She tries to get back on court, but the pain is overwhelming. The doctors agree: her career is over.
She's devastated. Depressed beyond all measure. She's only 23 and this was her life and that's it, it's over now. While she's in a catatonic state at home, her boyfriend makes a radical suggestion in the hopes of cheering her up: come on tour with him. Doing what? He makes something up: be his press manager. It's ridiculous, but she takes it more seriously than anybody expects, applying the same ruthless discipline to his press engagements and pouring all her fighting spirit into cheering for him from the stands. He soon says he needs her to come to every tournament. He says she keeps him calm; that he loves her. And she loves him, so she agrees. At least he's finally practicing more now. He plays the Hopman Cup with their country's best female player and they win the whole thing; she's sidelined, and it sucks. The next year he wins his first Grand Slam - they rent a house together in London with his coach, and she does the cooking - and then everything starts happening very fast.
She moves in with her boyfriend. His coach isn't sure about her outsized role in his life - he's got limitless potential and has to focus on his career, he says, not a girlfriend. Things get tense and words are said and by the end of the year, her boyfriend has fired his coach. The press blames her for this supposed disaster. One loudmouth former player even calls her a Svengali, suggests that she has torpedoed her boyfriend's career, tells her to get back in bed where she belongs and leave the tennis decisions to the men. She is furious - who the fuck does this fucker think he is? - and when she's asked for comment, rips the asshole a new one, then vows never to speak to the press again. Fuck them all. Her perennially nervous boyfriend - she was always the tougher of the two of them - is too stunned to say anything, even though it was his decision.
So this is her life now. She arranges interviews and manages hotel bookings and keeps the trains running on time for her boyfriend's super-career, and most importantly, she is his rock in the stands. He still doesn't have a coach; she's all he needs, he says. She hears the snide comments - "when is he going to dump her for a hot skinny model?" "he's such a pussy that he can't break up with her" "she just sits on her ass and does nothing but spends his money" "I guess she must give good blowjobs" - and tries to act like they don't matter. He tries to repay her in diamonds - his mother says he spoils her, but she knows the woman understands what she's given up to be her son's emotional stabilizer - but tethered to a man is not exactly how she envisioned her twenties. At least her tennis life continues vicariously through him. After the tennis, they decide, she'll call the shots - but for now, his career has to come first. Except he's so good that his career shows no signs of slowing. Nor does he show any signs of wanting to slow it. As the competition gets tougher, he starts working with coaches again. And he asks her to step back from being his press manager, to let a professional do it. He says he doesn't like that she always has to be the bad guy. She knows it's the right call - that this empire she helped build from scratch in his parents' living room has now outgrown their ability to manage it alone - but now what does she have left except fist-pumping in the player box? She's 30 now. She's a 30-year-old glorified cheerleader.
That year her boyfriend realizes that I-love-you-very-much diamonds aren't enough. "Just wait until after the Olympics," he begs - he's trying for that gold again, for the third time now - "Then we'll do anything you want." Marriage, kids, even his retirement if she's sick of the tour - but she would never ask him to do that. He doesn't win singles gold (sigh) but does win doubles gold, and he keeps his promise. She's decided: she wants a child. She wants their child to be able to watch him play. Pregnancy comes quickly and they find out at the Australian Open that it's twins. She's struck by the terrible thought that there is no way she can stay on tour with him with two babies in tow, and it feels like her career is ending all over again. He insists they'll make it work (somehow?); her not being with him isn't an option for him, either. He loses in the final - another painful loss to his rival - and has a breakdown on the podium, and she's totally helpless to help him.
The pregnancy is difficult, but she stays on tour. She knows he needs her; she knows he's praying her delivery date will come between major tournaments. She watches him win in Paris in the rain, and although she's on the verge of passing out, watches him win in four hours without taking a bathroom break in London in July. The on-court interviewer chastises him for putting her through so much. "I know," he says, with more guilt than she's ever heard in his voice. Almost immediately afterward, they head to the hospital, where it's his turn, finally, to spend two weeks sleeping on a cot, waiting for her. A few weeks after their daughters are born, he's due to play a tournament in Canada. Nothing's changed; he still needs her to be there in the stands. The doctors say it's safe, so they pack up the babies and go. She's so. Fucking. Exhausted.
At least Cute Boy has a private jet now.
Nothing's changed, but everything's changed, too. Sometimes she still comes to watch him practice, to make sure he's practicing, but more often she's with the children, and after she has another set of twins a few years later (seriously? she's thinking), she's got to cut back her time on the court even more. He jokes that she doesn't even know who he's playing next; she rolls her eyes. Of course she knows. At major tournaments, she still commands a small army of nannies, children, and suitcases - sometimes she forces one of his coaches to help, and they always do, because she wears the pants in the family; the press says so, so it must be true. But she and the children stop coming to smaller tournaments - the girls can't be homeschooled forever, and the tour is year-round - and it does make her a bit nervous, after years of never spending a night apart. But she has contingency plans, because of course she does. She immediately befriends every model, actress, Olympian, princess that tries getting too close to him, neutralizing the threat before it even becomes one. She trusts him, but she's realistic. She has been on enough corporate-sponsored awkward double dates with other sports couples that have later divorced to know that she has to be proactive, and she is nothing if not proactive.
Her husband's best friend hires his former coach - the one who thought she was just an over-employed diversion - in a desperate attempt to squeeze the most out of his own potential. Soon his best friend has left his wife and child to focus on his career. She's disgusted - who does he think he is, treating the mother of his child like that? She cheers for her husband extra hard when he plays his best friend in a tight match, and his best friend turns and yells at her to shut up. Like men telling her to shut up has ever worked! She knows that her husband is silently freaking out, but she can't help it - she yells back, "crybaby!" He complains to the umpire; calls her "unbearable." After the match, her husband yells at his best friend in the locker room for going after her, then comes back to the hotel and starts a fight with her. They have to play the Davis Cup together the next week - how could she start this now? Because she's the tough one, damn it, even if she's not the one on court. And because maybe, just maybe, it makes her nervous that his best friend has left his wife for a 19-year-old who can keep up with him on tour. But that fear is ridiculous. He's not his best friend. He made that clear years ago when he fired the coach who dared suggest that his career - his amazing career - was more important than their relationship. "If you tell me to quit, I'll quit tomorrow, no problem," he says, and goes off to win the Davis Cup. Meanwhile, the press pillories her again, this time for being low-class. Whatever, haters. They have no sense of the ugliness being yelled from his opponent's player boxes, and his parents and coaches are all so bloody nice that it's up to her, the hot-blooded immigrant, to stand up for her husband.
She teaches the children her native language, which her husband doesn't understand. He's never even been to the country where she was born, but eh - he isn't missing much. After the boys were born, he didn't do as much to help. As much as they hate to admit it, he has to squeeze the most out of the time he has left too, and he was in such a tizzy after the girls were born: way more focused on diaper changes than on his tournaments. He can't afford to do that now, and she doesn't blame him. He's still as hands-on as he can be. He still lets her bring a sick child into bed with them on the eve of important finals. So hands-on that it's while he's running a bath for the girls after a loss in Australia that he twists his knee and tears his meniscus, requiring surgery. She tries not to think about the surgery that ended her own career what feels like a lifetime ago, to just be strong for him when he worries irrationally that he might not wake up from the anesthesia. He does wake up, but recovery is difficult in all the familiar ways, and after a series of poor false starts, the doctors tell him to take a longer pause if he hopes to actually let it heal. They know, at this point, that a pause might last forever. She tries, as always, to reassure. It's taken her fourteen years, but hey! She can wear heels again. Except he doesn't have fourteen years. On crutches, he asks her seriously: does she think he can ever win another Grand Slam? It's been four and a half years, and now he's on injured reserve. Her answer is unequivocal and immediate, because she is realistic, but ambitious: yes.
----
She emigrates when she's young. Her father's a big fan of Martina Navratilova, and one day he manages to introduce his little daughter - then a wannabe ballerina - to the star; the star says she should give tennis a shot. The little girl takes to the sport, loves it, commits to it. She's got a good backhand and a punishing work ethic. She knows she's not going to be the absolute best, but she'd like to make it to the top 50. Because she's ambitious, but realistic. An Aries. Strong-willed. So strong-willed that she travels through war zones to get to tournaments. And very stubborn. So stubborn, so Miss Independent, that when a rich boyfriend - some member of a Middle Eastern royal family, so they say - insists that she quit tennis to prepare herself for married life, she breaks up with him. Who the hell does he think he is?
She qualifies for the Sydney Olympics when she's 21. She's on the up-and-up, and she's all discipline all the time. Others on the team tell her she has to come check out this supposed superstar-in-the-making, the one all the girls think is cute. What she sees is an 18-year-old going ballistic in practice. "That guy? Real great," she says, rolling her eyes. But he is cute, and he starts singing Backstreet Boys songs in her direction, trying to talk to her all the time. She doesn't know why. She's just trying to play tennis. Unfortunately, she loses in the first round - singles and doubles. Now she's got little left to do but cheer on the rest of her team. Cute Boy makes it all the way to the bronze medal match, then chokes inexplicably. Afterwards, he's inconsolable. She goes to talk to him. They end up talking a long, long time. On the day of the closing ceremony, he kisses her.
Whatever, she thinks; I'm still just trying to play tennis. The men's and women's tours only occasionally overlap. But Cute Boy, who it turns out has never had a real relationship (that explains a lot), is head-over-heels in love, and soon they're training together, trying to align their schedules as much as possible. She knows he could be extraordinary, if only he would practice more. All she can do is throw out his videogames and set an example. Hours upon hours on the practice court, every day, trying to get her technique right, trying not to envy the way her boyfriend just seems to instinctively "get it." They play mixed doubles at the Hopman Cup in Australia and win one match, lose the second. God, she wishes she could hold up her end of the bargain, be a better partner for him - and her own pride. His friends nudge him that they don't know how his dorky ass got so lucky, but the last thing she wants is to be some tennis babe who can't actually play. She knows what she has to do; she doesn't need a damn coach telling her. One coach actually ends things with her because she's so stubborn. But she's getting there. For the first time, she makes it to the third round of a Grand Slam, and loses to the eventual champion. She's ranked 70-something. She will make it to her goal. She will.
Then she gets injured. Her damn foot. It's always been a problem, and she's aggravated it practicing so much. She gets surgery in a last-ditch, Hail Mary attempt to fix it. It doesn't work. She tries to get back on court, but the pain is overwhelming. The doctors agree: her career is over.
She's devastated. Depressed beyond all measure. She's only 23 and this was her life and that's it, it's over now. While she's in a catatonic state at home, her boyfriend makes a radical suggestion in the hopes of cheering her up: come on tour with him. Doing what? He makes something up: be his press manager. It's ridiculous, but she takes it more seriously than anybody expects, applying the same ruthless discipline to his press engagements and pouring all her fighting spirit into cheering for him from the stands. He soon says he needs her to come to every tournament. He says she keeps him calm; that he loves her. And she loves him, so she agrees. At least he's finally practicing more now. He plays the Hopman Cup with their country's best female player and they win the whole thing; she's sidelined, and it sucks. The next year he wins his first Grand Slam - they rent a house together in London with his coach, and she does the cooking - and then everything starts happening very fast.
She moves in with her boyfriend. His coach isn't sure about her outsized role in his life - he's got limitless potential and has to focus on his career, he says, not a girlfriend. Things get tense and words are said and by the end of the year, her boyfriend has fired his coach. The press blames her for this supposed disaster. One loudmouth former player even calls her a Svengali, suggests that she has torpedoed her boyfriend's career, tells her to get back in bed where she belongs and leave the tennis decisions to the men. She is furious - who the fuck does this fucker think he is? - and when she's asked for comment, rips the asshole a new one, then vows never to speak to the press again. Fuck them all. Her perennially nervous boyfriend - she was always the tougher of the two of them - is too stunned to say anything, even though it was his decision.
So this is her life now. She arranges interviews and manages hotel bookings and keeps the trains running on time for her boyfriend's super-career, and most importantly, she is his rock in the stands. He still doesn't have a coach; she's all he needs, he says. She hears the snide comments - "when is he going to dump her for a hot skinny model?" "he's such a pussy that he can't break up with her" "she just sits on her ass and does nothing but spends his money" "I guess she must give good blowjobs" - and tries to act like they don't matter. He tries to repay her in diamonds - his mother says he spoils her, but she knows the woman understands what she's given up to be her son's emotional stabilizer - but tethered to a man is not exactly how she envisioned her twenties. At least her tennis life continues vicariously through him. After the tennis, they decide, she'll call the shots - but for now, his career has to come first. Except he's so good that his career shows no signs of slowing. Nor does he show any signs of wanting to slow it. As the competition gets tougher, he starts working with coaches again. And he asks her to step back from being his press manager, to let a professional do it. He says he doesn't like that she always has to be the bad guy. She knows it's the right call - that this empire she helped build from scratch in his parents' living room has now outgrown their ability to manage it alone - but now what does she have left except fist-pumping in the player box? She's 30 now. She's a 30-year-old glorified cheerleader.
That year her boyfriend realizes that I-love-you-very-much diamonds aren't enough. "Just wait until after the Olympics," he begs - he's trying for that gold again, for the third time now - "Then we'll do anything you want." Marriage, kids, even his retirement if she's sick of the tour - but she would never ask him to do that. He doesn't win singles gold (sigh) but does win doubles gold, and he keeps his promise. She's decided: she wants a child. She wants their child to be able to watch him play. Pregnancy comes quickly and they find out at the Australian Open that it's twins. She's struck by the terrible thought that there is no way she can stay on tour with him with two babies in tow, and it feels like her career is ending all over again. He insists they'll make it work (somehow?); her not being with him isn't an option for him, either. He loses in the final - another painful loss to his rival - and has a breakdown on the podium, and she's totally helpless to help him.
The pregnancy is difficult, but she stays on tour. She knows he needs her; she knows he's praying her delivery date will come between major tournaments. She watches him win in Paris in the rain, and although she's on the verge of passing out, watches him win in four hours without taking a bathroom break in London in July. The on-court interviewer chastises him for putting her through so much. "I know," he says, with more guilt than she's ever heard in his voice. Almost immediately afterward, they head to the hospital, where it's his turn, finally, to spend two weeks sleeping on a cot, waiting for her. A few weeks after their daughters are born, he's due to play a tournament in Canada. Nothing's changed; he still needs her to be there in the stands. The doctors say it's safe, so they pack up the babies and go. She's so. Fucking. Exhausted.
At least Cute Boy has a private jet now.
Nothing's changed, but everything's changed, too. Sometimes she still comes to watch him practice, to make sure he's practicing, but more often she's with the children, and after she has another set of twins a few years later (seriously? she's thinking), she's got to cut back her time on the court even more. He jokes that she doesn't even know who he's playing next; she rolls her eyes. Of course she knows. At major tournaments, she still commands a small army of nannies, children, and suitcases - sometimes she forces one of his coaches to help, and they always do, because she wears the pants in the family; the press says so, so it must be true. But she and the children stop coming to smaller tournaments - the girls can't be homeschooled forever, and the tour is year-round - and it does make her a bit nervous, after years of never spending a night apart. But she has contingency plans, because of course she does. She immediately befriends every model, actress, Olympian, princess that tries getting too close to him, neutralizing the threat before it even becomes one. She trusts him, but she's realistic. She has been on enough corporate-sponsored awkward double dates with other sports couples that have later divorced to know that she has to be proactive, and she is nothing if not proactive.
Her husband's best friend hires his former coach - the one who thought she was just an over-employed diversion - in a desperate attempt to squeeze the most out of his own potential. Soon his best friend has left his wife and child to focus on his career. She's disgusted - who does he think he is, treating the mother of his child like that? She cheers for her husband extra hard when he plays his best friend in a tight match, and his best friend turns and yells at her to shut up. Like men telling her to shut up has ever worked! She knows that her husband is silently freaking out, but she can't help it - she yells back, "crybaby!" He complains to the umpire; calls her "unbearable." After the match, her husband yells at his best friend in the locker room for going after her, then comes back to the hotel and starts a fight with her. They have to play the Davis Cup together the next week - how could she start this now? Because she's the tough one, damn it, even if she's not the one on court. And because maybe, just maybe, it makes her nervous that his best friend has left his wife for a 19-year-old who can keep up with him on tour. But that fear is ridiculous. He's not his best friend. He made that clear years ago when he fired the coach who dared suggest that his career - his amazing career - was more important than their relationship. "If you tell me to quit, I'll quit tomorrow, no problem," he says, and goes off to win the Davis Cup. Meanwhile, the press pillories her again, this time for being low-class. Whatever, haters. They have no sense of the ugliness being yelled from his opponent's player boxes, and his parents and coaches are all so bloody nice that it's up to her, the hot-blooded immigrant, to stand up for her husband.
She teaches the children her native language, which her husband doesn't understand. He's never even been to the country where she was born, but eh - he isn't missing much. After the boys were born, he didn't do as much to help. As much as they hate to admit it, he has to squeeze the most out of the time he has left too, and he was in such a tizzy after the girls were born: way more focused on diaper changes than on his tournaments. He can't afford to do that now, and she doesn't blame him. He's still as hands-on as he can be. He still lets her bring a sick child into bed with them on the eve of important finals. So hands-on that it's while he's running a bath for the girls after a loss in Australia that he twists his knee and tears his meniscus, requiring surgery. She tries not to think about the surgery that ended her own career what feels like a lifetime ago, to just be strong for him when he worries irrationally that he might not wake up from the anesthesia. He does wake up, but recovery is difficult in all the familiar ways, and after a series of poor false starts, the doctors tell him to take a longer pause if he hopes to actually let it heal. They know, at this point, that a pause might last forever. She tries, as always, to reassure. It's taken her fourteen years, but hey! She can wear heels again. Except he doesn't have fourteen years. On crutches, he asks her seriously: does she think he can ever win another Grand Slam? It's been four and a half years, and now he's on injured reserve. Her answer is unequivocal and immediate, because she is realistic, but ambitious: yes.
